Secrecy

by Belva Plain

  “Here’s the story. We were undergraduates, a bunch of friends in senior year, the three of us here and two or three more—one of them was Larry—all hung out together. Larry had the greatest personality, the most wit and life in him. Am I right, Roger?”

  “You are,” Roger said soberly.

  “And you were the silent one who saw everything and kept your mouth shut. Oh, yes, that’s a fact. Well, Charlotte, we were out celebrating the end of exam week, all of us except Larry. He said he had a cold and fever. About the middle of the night Roger here just suddenly got up and said he was going back to see how Larry was. He was worried about him.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t,” Roger said.

  “Okay, I’ll make it short. We argued with him, but he went anyway, and—well, Larry had swallowed a bottle of aspirins. No need to draw pictures. If Roger hadn’t been worried about him, enough to care—and Roger was the only one of us who ever guessed there was anything wrong.”

  “Tim, will you quit?”

  “All right, I know you hate to talk about it. At least now your young lady will know she’s out with quite a guy. So long. See you around.”

  “He had too many beers,” Roger said when the pair had gone.

  They had embarrassed him, Charlotte saw. Yet the story was extraordinary, and she could not help but ask a question.

  “Excuse me, I don’t want to probe, but was it some sort of ESP? Do you believe in that? I don’t, and still—”

  “No, I don’t either. It was only that, although he never confided in me, I sensed through things Larry said and didn’t say that he was profoundly troubled. It doesn’t matter now what the troubles were, but he had them. The wit, the humor, were a cover-up. They often are. And that’s the sad story.”

  They faced each other across the table. He raised his eyebrows in an unspoken question, which she answered.

  “It was a very moving story. And you are an unusual person. That’s why I’m staring at you.”

  “Come on,” he said, laughing. “Try some dessert. They have homemade pies.”

  The episode had changed the atmosphere between them. It had become intimate. They began to talk about everything under the sun. If I had a brother, Charlotte thought suddenly, this is what I would want him to be like.

  Roger met her at lunch on the Common the next day. “Whenever I can avoid a business lunch, I do,” he explained, “and I have a sandwich in the office. But today I thought I’d join you, unless you’re going to work on your sketch again?”

  “No, it’s finished.” Propped up as it was on a table in her apartment, it would have been better laid away where it was not visible. And yet, she kept it there.

  “It was nice last night. At least for me it was,” he began.

  “It was for me too.” And she felt comfortable, felt free enough to say honestly, “I’d like to do it again.”

  “We will. It was a little hard getting started, though, wasn’t it? At first I couldn’t think of anything to say. And you couldn’t either.”

  For a moment, until Roger spoke again, it seemed as if the previous night’s first awkwardness was about to recur. He looked out across the grass in the direction of the Public Garden.

  “This is the heart of the city, Charlotte. When I was a kid, I used to play at the frog pond. When I was old enough to have a crush on a girl, we went out in a swan boat along with the tourists. I’ll bet that’s one thing you haven’t done yet in Boston. And seeing the Constitution. Am I right?”

  “You are.”

  “I can take you through the Athenaeum. My uncle’s a member. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

  “That I’d love,” she said, thinking that he was moving too fast. He walked quickly, spoke quickly, and now he was leaping from one plan to the next in too much of a hurry. Soon she would have to fend him off, and that would be nasty again.

  But then, remembering last evening’s episode in the restaurant as well as other things he had said, things that revealed sensitivity, she decided that he was a man with whom you could have a friendship. Once Elena had scoffed: One doesn’t have friendships with men. It comes down either to sex or nothing. But Elena was not a modern American woman.… And if friendship should turn out not to be what Roger Heywood wanted, no great harm would have been done after all.

  That summer he made no move toward Charlotte other than a good-night kiss on the cheek. They were wonderfully compatible; they played tennis as guests at Uncle Heywood’s club in the suburbs, they went to the beach, had dinner in famous restaurants, and, at her little flat, dinners that Charlotte cooked, for Claudia had taught her well. By now they talked easily together. Roger told her about his experiences in Shanghai, where the firm was building a skyscraper. He told about his father’s experiences with Mafia kickbacks in Chicago. He could talk about a Vermeer exhibit and the Boston Hockey Club equally well.

  Through it all their talk was seldom personal. The nearest they came to anything personal was once, when discussing a movie, Charlotte heard herself asking whether he thought it was odd for the character in her twenties to be still a virgin. He had looked at her for a few moments. When he himself was not speaking in his fast, urgent way, he was a thoughtful listener, giving the other person his full attention. His eyes then were tranquil, and his speech slow.

  “It’s not all that long since, as history goes, a woman was expected to be a virgin.” He smiled. “So, no, I wouldn’t say it was odd. It is certainly unusual today. But then, the woman must have her reasons.”

  They never came near the subject again.

  They moved casually about the city. Sometimes on a Sunday they went to the market together; this was an errand on which she had formerly gone with Rosalyn, who forgave her for the desertion with a friendly, knowing smile, as if she assumed that Roger was living with Charlotte. Now and then he took her out to a building site; one was a vast new library in a wealthy suburb; it was an oblong concrete box, stark and dull, and when he asked what she thought of it, she told him the truth. He agreed, and they both laughed. They agreed on many things.

  She wondered whether he was even a little bit in love with her. Sometimes she thought he was, and more often that he must not be. They saw each other, after all, only once or twice a week, which left plenty of time for other women. Then she wondered why she was not in love with him. She loved being with him and she admired him, but there was nothing of that almost breathless adoration that she had felt for Peter. It was simply not there.

  One day Pauline saw them together on the street. “You never even told me he called you. You never said a word,” she cried accusingly the next morning.

  “It didn’t seem worth mentioning,” Charlotte replied, which was a foolish fib and not kind to Pauline, who meant so well.

  “I can’t believe you!” Pauline shook her head in disapproval. “Or can it be so serious that you won’t talk about it?”

  “We’re friends, that’s all,” Charlotte said emphatically. “Just friends.”

  “That doesn’t make much sense to me.”

  This was not the first time that Pauline had sounded like Elena. Pauline, the busy architect, to sound like Elena!

  “You mean that there’s nothing between you, that you never—” Pauline began, and stopped, having no doubt seen Charlotte’s expression. And she apologized volubly. “Oh, sorry, sorry! Rudy always tells me I say things I shouldn’t. It’s just that when I care about a person, I tend to pry before I realize I’m prying.”

  “It’s all right,” Charlotte said, meaning it.

  “I’ll never open my mouth about it again, Charlotte. I’ll just say one thing more now: Nothing would make me happier for both of you.”

  There came a week when she did not hear from Roger, and she was very much troubled that he might be ill or might have been in an accident. But when she called his office, her message was accepted without comment, so neither misfortune could have been the case. She considered telephoning him at home, but decided not to; if
she was to be dropped, there was nothing to be done about it. It happened all the time. Anyway, at the very start, had she not foreseen it?

  Nevertheless, she was saddened. And the week had been depressing for other reasons. Affairs at home had apparently reached a crisis. Emmabrown had said that things were bad, that her father was terribly worried; he tried to deny it, but Emmabrown was not to be fooled. Bill, when Charlotte called him, said that Emmabrown had always exaggerated, and Charlotte should know that by now.

  So she was sitting, disconsolate and unsure of everything at this moment in her life, when the doorbell rang.

  “I’m dripping wet,” Roger said. “Let me put my raincoat in the kitchen. I had a devil of a time finding a cab.”

  He had just flown in from Chicago. “I should have called you, but I didn’t. A car struck my kid brother, who was riding his bike. I went right out, of course. My parents were half out of their minds, you can imagine. I stayed through the operation and until they brought him home. He’s going to be okay. Thank God. How are you?”

  She was so glad, so glad to see him! He had brought light into the room. And before she was able to answer, he answered his own question.

  “You’re not yourself. What is it?”

  So she told him about affairs in Kingsley, and about her ambitious plan that was so beautiful—had Pauline and Rudy themselves not said so?

  “Is that the sketch you were doing in the park? Let’s see it.”

  He spread it out on a table under the light and turned it from angle to angle as Pauline had done, asked a few questions, and nodded from time to time as Charlotte explained it.

  “Over here, I was thinking, there could be a huge community swimming pool, indoors because of our long winters. It could be our gift to the town. Then we could give the ground floor of this building in back of the inn to the little theater group. They meet now in a former bus garage that’s absolutely horrible. Naturally, they’d pay rent. With attractions like these there’d be no trouble leasing stores, a fancy baker, a music store—what do you think, Roger?”

  “I think you’ve got a good head for business and for daily life, besides for architecture.”

  “They go together. They should, or else architecture is meaningless. Oh,” she said, “you’ve no idea how much I want this to succeed!”

  Curiously, he asked her why.

  “Because I want to do something good for my father and for the town, and—well, honestly, I want to prove myself.”

  “That’s a very honest answer.”

  “It’s such a pretty town, between the river and the hills. My mother hated it.” Now, why had she told such an intimate thing? “But the rest of us love it. We’ve been there for five generations or more, I believe.” She broke off. “Am I being a bore with all this stuff? Tell me.”

  He was gazing at her. Perhaps she really was being a bore. She had no idea what he was thinking.

  “Would you like me to go and look at Kingsley with you?” he asked. “As soon as we can get a couple of days off?”

  She was astonished. She also had a feeling, against which she fought simply because it was a feeling without any reason behind it, that from Roger would come a solution.

  SIX

  From the bluff above the river they looked down upon the ruination of the Dawes mill. They had been standing there studying it for a quarter of an hour. And the vague idea that had once flashed through Charlotte’s head began to form a shape: Would the Heywood Company perhaps be interested in the project, or was her idea just too ridiculous?

  “I wanted you to see this first so you’ll know what they’re talking about at home, because that’s all they talk about these days,” she said.

  “It’s a nice, level piece of land, worth a good deal, I should think, if you can find the right buyer.”

  “Oho! As if that hasn’t been the problem!”

  At the moment the scene offered nothing tempting to a buyer. The size of the dump had tripled, so it seemed, since Charlotte had last seen it several months before. It was all discouraging: the debris and decay, with the damp wind presaging an early fall—shades of Elena, who in July had always felt the onrush of winter—blowing through her cotton shirt.

  “Let’s go,” she said. “Dad moved lunch to Cliff and Claudia’s house because Emmabrown, who comes in sometimes to cook for him, is sick today. You’ll like their house. It’s got that soft, worn feel of old things, furniture and books and wonderful trees around it. And I think you’ll like them all too. Cliff’s writing a series of textbooks. My dad is a conservationist. And Claudia’s interesting. She gardens and cooks and volunteers in the library. Beside all that, she saw me through my awful adolescence.”

  “I can’t imagine your being awful.”

  “Well, I wasn’t easy, and I know it. Oh, and one more thing,” Charlotte added, “just so we won’t get on the subject of sons or daughters. Claudia has a son. He ran away. Nobody knows where he is or why he ran.”

  Roger winced. “Ran away! How terrible! How old is he?”

  “Not quite thirty.” And as she spoke, the face in the nightmare appeared on the windshield as clearly as if it had been drawn there, the narrow-jawed, narrow-eyed, watchful, gleeful, terrifying face.…

  For years, she had trained herself, steeled herself, not to see that face or to think of anything but normal things when she entered that house. Now, suddenly, as they went up the driveway under the maples and stopped at the familiar green door with the brass pineapple knocker, she was overcome with that first fear as if it were happening all over again.

  * * *

  Claudia had prepared a lavish lunch, actually a midday dinner.

  “You people must be starved after driving since six this morning,” she had explained.

  Claudia’s well-intentioned hospitality embarrassed Charlotte. Probably it had been a mistake to have Roger come here. The overstocked table and the heartiness of Claudia’s welcome must seem to him that he was being accepted as a lover, suitor, or whatever you wanted to call it.

  On the other hand, Bill and Cliff were airing their catalog of worries almost as if they, too, were alone at the table. And that, too, was embarrassing.

  Often Bill sighed. She had started to notice that. He was visibly aging. Pity moved in her throat.

  Roger, taking quick advantage of a breach in the dialogue, inquired, “Has Charlotte ever shown you a sketch of her plan for your property?”

  “No,” Bill said, “but she’s described it. It’s a pretty idea.”

  “It’s much more than that. I’m an engineer in the construction business, and while I’m neither an architect nor an artist, I’ve seen enough to be a fairly sound critic, I think. Believe me, Charlotte has something superb in mind. It’s very impressive. Distinctive.”

  “I understand. I’m proud of her, and I wish to God we could go ahead with it. It would be a blood transfusion for the town and for us if we could do it. But we can’t.”

  Roger interposed. “Perhaps if you showed it around, you might get up a syndicate to finance it.”

  “It’s too late for that. Charlotte knows our situation. We owe back taxes, and the only reason Kingsley hasn’t foreclosed on us is that they would be left with Premier Recycling—they’re the tenants—and that crowd is something to cope with, let me tell you. Kingsley would be in the courts for years. It already has been.

  “Justice Niles has ordered Premier three times to clean up, and three times has granted them delays,” Bill said.

  “Why on earth,” demanded Charlotte, “don’t they just clean up and avoid all the trouble?”

  This time it was Roger who replied. “Because it’s cheaper to play along with the delays. They’ll go as far as they want to, then quit, declare bankruptcy, and move on to the next venture, leaving you without a lease or a tenant. That’s how it works. They’ve got nothing to lose; the real money is with the parent company.”

  “If I had money, I’d fight them all tooth and claw,” Bill cried,
gritting his teeth.

  Claudia, who had been silent, remarked quietly, “They also have teeth and claws, strong ones.”

  “Have you ever looked at those ancestor companies?” Roger asked. “They’re mostly mob operations, these carters and waste removers, interlocking pyramids of companies.” And when Bill raised his eyebrows, he continued, “My father is in business in Chicago, and once in a great while he’s had to come into contact with this sort of thing. A damned nasty contact it is too.”

  “Yes,” Claudia said, “I lived in Chicago once. Not,” she added hastily, “that Chicago is any worse than any other place.”

  “There’s a rumor,” Cliff said, “that the top man in the group that owns Premier is from Chicago and that he’s in town this week, going over the books.”

  “Because of the court orders?” asked Claudia.

  Cliff shrugged. “I have no idea. I only heard it through the grapevine, anyway. It may not even be true.”

  “If he is here, somebody should go to see him,” she said.

  “Not without a lawyer and a couple of armed guards,” Roger said with a wry laugh. “These people, if that’s who they are, are smart and tough. And I mean smart and tough.”

  There was a long pause. A feeling of weariness was in the air. Charlotte saw that the three who sat opposite Roger and herself were approaching the limit of their endurance. And in a way that she could not explain, she also sensed that they were concealing something, that there was something they were not telling.

  Claudia got up to serve the dessert, her famous orange mousse. She had lost too much weight too suddenly; her usually full pink cheeks were sallow. Charlotte was wondering whether it was her heart again, when the doorbell rang.

  “Now, who can that be?” Cliff said, going to the door.

  Men’s voices were heard in the hall. A moment later Cliff came back.

  “Now, take it easy,” he said, laying his hand on his wife’s shoulder. “There are two men here from the FBI.”

  Bill started up from the table. “What the devil—”