Secrecy

by Belva Plain

  Her letter crackled in his pocket. By now he must have read it a dozen times. After putting the car in the garage, he sat down at the kitchen table and read it again.

  … Mario is a doctor, about my age, both of us old enough to know what we want.… You and I were too young to know, Bill. Don’t grieve over this.

  Grieve! he thought savagely. I grieve for no one but Charlotte.

  … we shall live in Rome. I am hoping that Charlotte will come often, and that you will come with her sometimes, too, Bill. There is no reason why we cannot be amicable toward each other.… I understand perfectly well that Charlotte wants to remain with you, so there is no quarrel over that. Anyway, if we were to fight this out in court, you would probably get custody, since I am the adulteress.… I leave it to you to tell Charlotte in person. Then after you have done so, please let me know, and I will telephone to her.

  So that was that. He gave a short laugh. Perhaps Dr. Mario would have better luck with her. Then he went upstairs to bed. Tomorrow was Saturday, and he must make an early start for Margate Hall.

  * * *

  On the path between the parking lot and the entrance, he met the headmistress. Expecting a brief greeting, he was surprised when she stopped him.

  “I’ve been wanting to talk to you about Charlotte,” she said. “I understand you’re taking her out to lunch, so this can’t be the time. I really would like to make an appointment with you very soon.”

  “Of course,” Bill said in some alarm. “But is anything wrong?”

  “Well, no, and yes. That’s a queer answer, I know. Charlotte is a fine, bright girl, a good student, and we have loved having her here. But I feel I should tell you that this may not be the best place for her. She cries at night. She denies it, but we see her red eyes. I’ve tried to gain her confidence, and it hasn’t worked. Charlotte is very proud.”

  “Are you saying that you don’t want her to come back next year?”

  “I’m not saying anything at all like that. I would hope that we could help her to get past whatever is troubling her, so that she may come to love our school. She has all the potential. So whenever it’s convenient for you, Mr. Dawes, or on the other hand should you not wish to meet with me at all, please let me know.”

  He did not commit himself to a choice, and while he hesitated, the brisk voice added, “Incidentally, congratulations on your good work at the state environmental commission. All of us who care about the world we’re to leave to our children are pinning our hopes on people like you.”

  They parted, and Bill, walking on toward the wing where Charlotte was to meet him, made a quick decision; there would be no conference because he knew all too well what Charlotte’s trouble was and had no intention of discussing it with anyone again.

  He had already met with as many as five professional advisors, had described his child’s situation with complete honesty, and had received a unanimous opinion: You cannot drag a person into therapy. Well, he knew that. He had often implored Charlotte to go, to no avail. He could, for the present anyway, do no more.…

  They sat opposite each other in a country restaurant near the school.

  The first thing he noticed about her now was that she had gained weight. The next thing was a surprising, very faint reminder of Elena, a strong definition of the lips that he had never observed before, a lovely parted bow between which shone a row of flawless teeth.

  It occurred to Bill that nowhere else does one have a better opportunity to scrutinize another human being than when confronting him across a table. Now, clearly, he saw the woman that his daughter would soon become; although just past her fifteenth birthday, she appeared to be much older; she had simply missed the normal years of adolescence.

  He saw, too, that she was still resisting his efforts to touch upon her feelings. Their conversation now, like her letters and phone calls, was one that she might have been holding with a stranger.

  “I haven’t been able to do any real diving because the pool here isn’t deep enough,” she said.

  And he responded, “Well, you can make up for that when you’re back at the lake this summer. I was thinking maybe it would be fun to buy a canoe and try the river. I’ve never learned very well how to handle a canoe. What do you think?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  He was beginning to feel impatience, while he knew that he had no right to feel it. His daughter’s awkward conversation, her silences, and her very posture told him only too poignantly of her need. But all his offers of help were rebuffed. For almost an hour now he had been sitting here in frustration, trying to create a mood between them that would allow him to speak out, but he had gotten nowhere. Suddenly, when she moved, he saw at the parting of her cardigan a large safety pin. She caught his glance, her face reddened, and clutching the sweater closer, she made an excuse.

  “I seem to have gotten fat. My skirts don’t fit anymore.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t call you fat, exactly. But you do seem heavier.”

  A moment later the waitress brought a dessert menu that Charlotte carefully studied before deciding on a fudge sundae.

  “With whipped cream, miss?”

  “Yes, and some chopped nuts, too, please.”

  “Do you think you should?” Bill asked. “Why not have a melon or some yogurt?”

  “Perhaps I’d better not have anything,” Charlotte retorted.

  “Perhaps so.” Bill was angry, and yet again he was aware that he should not be. She was making it so hard for him.… “There’s no need to be angry, Charlotte,” he said. “I only made the suggestion because you said your skirts don’t fit.”

  “You sounded like Elena.”

  To his dismay her eyes filled. And he looked away so as not to embarrass her, saying gently, “We’re both playing a game. You don’t want to tell me, and I’m afraid—or have been afraid—to ask you what’s going on with you. But now I’m going to ask.”

  “I just seem to want to eat all the time, sweet things, candy and cake,” she mumbled. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me.”

  “There’s nothing unusual about it. Those are comfort foods, comfort and escape.”

  “Doesn’t that explain everything, then?”

  Two large, glossy tears rolled down Charlotte’s cheeks. The explanation, the diagnosis, was clear enough, but where and what was the cure? And now there was this news about Elena that he had come here to give her, and who could predict how she would take that? We cheated her, Bill told himself. With all that quarreling over the years, what sort of a foundation did we build? And he remembered, as he often did, his own parents, how they had stood together in the face of his sister’s awful death; surely they must have had other crises, too, but their children had always been protected. Damn Elena. It wasn’t that he wanted to absolve himself of all the blame. That would be untrue and cheap. And yet …

  Charlotte was fumbling for a handkerchief, and he gave her his own.

  “Go out and wait in the car while I pay the check,” he said, understanding her embarrassment at showing wet eyes in a public place.

  In its way this tense control of hers was as painful to him as her most terrible, bitter sobs could be. He was overwhelmed by his own helplessness. Maybe a mother would not feel as helpless as he did. And heavy with dread of the message he had to bring, he walked toward the car.

  “I feel like a bull in a china shop,” he began. “I have something to tell you, and I’m so afraid it will hurt you too much. It’s about Mama. She is going to stay in Italy, to live there.”

  “Why? Has she found a man again?”

  The easier way would be to postpone, to let the truth out gradually. But Charlotte was well aware, or she would not have asked the harsh question. So he simply said, “Yes, she’s going to be married as soon as we can be divorced.”

  It was hot in the parking lot, even there in the shade. Yet at the moment he had not the energy to start the engine and drive away. He put his hand over Charlotte’s, which
lay on the seat between them.

  “Do you want to cry now?” he asked. “It’s better to do it now in front of me than to hold it back and do it alone at night.”

  “No, I’m all right. I’m not as sad as I thought I would be. I knew it would happen someday, although it’s been a long time coming.”

  “Do you want to live there with her, Charlotte?”

  “Dad, I’ve already said no.”

  “But surely you will miss her. Don’t you miss her now as it is?”

  “In some ways of course I do. But not enough to go there and be with her.”

  He could not help, in spite of himself, but feel a little vindicated, a little satisfied. “I want so much to see your smiles again,” he said.

  “Do you know what I thought your bad news was? I thought you were going to tell me that Ted had come back.”

  “No, but it would make no difference to you if he had. Believe me, you will never need to see him.”

  “Oh, God, I should have sensed he was rotten. And you told me to stay away from him, you told me.”

  “You’re not the first person who failed to listen to a parent, darling, and you won’t be the last.”

  “I’m so furious at myself.”

  “Be furious at him, not at yourself. Promise?”

  She gave him a pale smile. And he felt that he had begun to penetrate the chill and lonely place into which she had withdrawn herself all this past year.

  “I wish you would see someone,” he said next. “Someone to help you.”

  Then immediately, as she drew away, he realized that he had again said the wrong thing and that he had lost her.

  “A shrink? But I’ve told you a hundred times that I will not. I will never, never, as long as I live, tell anybody anything about myself. Please, Dad, don’t ask me again.”

  “Okay, Charlotte. Okay, I won’t.”

  Once more, when they reached the school, Bill took her hand and kissed her cheek.

  “It wasn’t such a bad day, was it?” he asked, pleading. “I mean, we’ve gotten through it all right, wouldn’t you say?”

  She nodded, giving him that same pale smile. As she was getting out of the car, he had a glimpse of the safety pin. Somehow it seemed to symbolize her cruel impairment, and with a laden heart he watched her walk away.

  TWELVE

  There was no way Bill could have refused his brother’s tremulous appeal, much as he wanted to.

  “I wish you’d be here,” Cliff had said. “They’re coming over this evening. You can imagine Claudia’s state of mind. And mine’s not much better.”

  “Who are they?”

  “They live over near Arkville. Prescott, Peter Prescott. They didn’t tell us anything more on the telephone except that they had just gotten home from Europe, and that they had seen Ted. By God, I’d like you to listen to them, Bill.”

  There was, Bill reflected now, no mistaking the Prescotts for anything but a pair of solid citizens. He was an accountant, and she was a sensibly spoken, sensible-appearing housewife. There was nothing fanciful about them; in short, they were not the kind of people who were apt to report encounters with little green creatures from outer space. They were quite positive. They had even brought a couple of photographs.

  Claudia was holding these toward the light. Her face had no expression. She looked totally numb, and in fact, her body was numb.

  They were all watching her. Her thoughts were contradictory and distorted, some of them already embracing Ted at the airport with such thankful relief and others in terror of the courts and prisons that awaited his return.

  She bent over the pictures. In one Ted was dressed in what looked like a white uniform of some sort; a table with various heads and shoulders hid the lower half of his body. The other was a three-quarter view with a door in the background. And in each the face was unmistakably Ted’s.

  “Yes,” she said, “yes, it is.”

  There was a long silence. And the part of the mind that can, even in the worst, most painful situations, detach itself from the pain and see objectively, said to her, We are all feeling the drama of this. We are players in an extraordinary tragedy.

  “Tell me about it, please,” she cried.

  Mr. Prescott began. “As we said, it was in Vichy at the spa. We had lunch there a few times. There was this young man, a waiter, whom we both noticed. It was strange that, almost at the same moment, Carol and I were sure we knew him or knew who he was. Of course, we realized later it was because of all the pictures in our local papers. And we heard him speaking English, American English. We didn’t quite know what to do, how to handle it so as not to tip him off. So we asked somebody for his name. It was Timothy Matz.”

  “Maits?” asked Cliff.

  “No, Matz. The suspicious thing is his avoidance of us. Hearing him speaking English, we tried to be friendly, although only in passing because he never served our table. We were sure he was deliberately staying away.”

  “I think,” Mrs. Prescott added, “that he may have seen me with the camera. And I think he was worried about me because the last time we were there, when we were on our way out, he had a rather frightened expression.”

  “I don’t know whether this is good news or bad news for you,” Mr. Prescott said gently.

  “I don’t know either,” Cliff said, “except that at least Ted’s alive, and where there’s life, there’s hope. But what comes next is that tomorrow morning we have to tell the police and our lawyer.”

  “It’s all right to hope,” Bill agreed, “but not to overdo it. We must be prepared to be disappointed sometimes. Then it won’t hurt so much,” he added kindly, “believe me.”

  Claudia held the pictures up to the light again. Yes, there he was, a trifle thinner, perhaps, or perhaps not, but the face was his, his the dark deep eyes, the cheekbones, the narrow jaw … Ted.

  There were so many questions.… What are you doing in France? How did you get there? Are you well? Are you behaving yourself? Will you ever forgive me for reporting you? Will you understand that I must do it? That you must take your punishment?

  “I’d like to keep these if I may,” she said.

  “Of course. We had copies made, enough for you and for the authorities.”

  Cliff warned the couple, “The police will be calling on you too.”

  Mr. Prescott said, “No problem,” and rose to leave.

  His wife took Claudia’s hand. The pressure and the glance into Claudia’s eyes were more expressive of understanding than any words could have been. I, too, have children, they told her.

  “Decent people,” Cliff remarked later. “They weren’t getting any thrill of excitement out of this the way a lot of people would. Are you all right, Claudia?”

  She knew what he meant. Where her health was concerned, Cliff was an incurable worrier. Regardless of the fact that the doctor had cut back on her heart medication and was most encouraging, he still worried.

  Right now her heart was beginning to hammer at her ribs, to race so fast that she herself was frightened. Then she thought, For heaven’s sake, it’s only nerves, and why not?

  “Just nervous,” she said lightly, “and who wouldn’t be on a day like this?”

  She got up and went to the kitchen. A cup of herb tea might be soothing. After that, in a safe bed next to Cliff would come sleep and a few hours of deliverance until the morning.

  * * *

  The sky on this midafternoon in the middle of summer was empty, its pure blue absolute, without cloud or motion. The day, like all the days during these last three weeks, was empty. Beyond a few ordinary chores there was little to do but think. A thousand times Claudia had examined all the possibilities and probabilities involved in the discovery of Ted, and now her thoughts had run dry.

  She drove slowly home from the supermarket. This would be a good time to walk or go for a swim or sit under a tree with a friend and talk, but she had neither physical nor emotional energy for any of these; she was in a lethargy, just
sufficiently alert to control the car.

  It was the sight of Charlotte, walking alone on the side of the road, that aroused her. Not having seen the girl in over a year, Claudia’s impulse was to stop the car and call out. Her second impulse was to drive on. Cliff had reported, and indeed Bill himself had confirmed, that Charlotte did not want a meeting.

  “It’s not that she’s angry at you, far from it,” he had tried to explain. “It’s only that the connection, the memory …” He had faltered to a stop.

  Well, she could certainly understand that. It would not be an easy meeting for me, either, she thought, making a sudden painful connection to that time when, first left alone with a child to support, she had dreaded the sight of a tradesman to whom she owed money. Now she owed Charlotte a great deal more than money; hers was a debt that could never be repaid.

  It was this thought that changed her mind so that she stopped the car and waited for Charlotte to catch up.

  They were both startled and unsure what to say. She’s grown fat, Claudia thought irrelevantly. And she said the first thing that came into her head, which was the natural query, “Where are you going? Want a lift?”

  “No, thanks. I’m just taking a walk.”

  “Will you come back home with me for a while?”

  “No, thanks.”

  Clearly, Charlotte wanted to get away. Good manners alone constrained her. Claudia, however, was suddenly determined not to let her get away.

  “You feel strange with me,” she said, “and no wonder. I can’t blame you. But we were friends once. At least I thought we were.”

  Charlotte nodded.

  “I know it’s asking a great deal,” Claudia persisted, “but can’t you try to separate me from—from what was done to you? Can you try to remember some of the things we did together, the lemon tarts and the books?”

  In a gesture of dismay Charlotte’s hand flew to her cheek. “The book on ancient architecture, that big book of photographs—I never returned it.”