Secrets She Left Behind

by Diane Chamberlain

  “You’ll spend a good half your time in here,” Miss Helen said, walking me into the playroom. The room wasn’t very large, but it was a wonderland, full of small chairs and tables, lots of toys and books and movies and a plastic slide. A couple of kids sat in beanbag chairs in front of a TV where Finding Nemo was playing. There were two adult-size rocking chairs, and another volunteer, an elderly man, sat in one of them, reading a book to a pale little bald girl on his lap.

  “That’s Mr. Jim,” Miss Helen said. “He’s here on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Mr. Jim, this is Maggie Lockwood. She’ll be with us every single day. Isn’t that grand?”

  “Terrific!” Mr. Jim smiled at me before going right back to his reading. I wondered how long the listless girl on his lap had been a patient here. I imagined myself reading to a child that way. Holding her or him on my lap like that. My eyes got misty. What was that all about? I thought it had something to do with being trusted with these kids. I wasn’t even sure I should be.

  Saturday—the day after I saw the Brier Glen commercial at Jen’s—I checked out the hospital’s Web site and e-mailed the woman in charge of volunteers—without using my name, of course. The woman, Cathy Moody, e-mailed me back on Monday. She asked for my phone number and said she wanted to talk to me about my reasons for volunteering and have me fill out an application, etcetera. Oh, yeah—and sign a form letting them do a background check on me. Scratch working in a hospital, I thought.

  But I kept going back to the Web site, where it talked about how much they needed help. They especially needed someone in pediatrics. There was a picture of a little boy sitting in the beautiful playroom making something out of clay, his tongue between his lips like he was concentrating hard. Forgetting he was sick for a few minutes. I stared at his picture for the longest time. Finally, I hit Reply to Cathy Moody’s e-mail. What did I have to lose?

  My name is Maggie Lockwood. My name might be familiar to you. I’m the person responsible for the fire at the Surf City lock-in a year and a half ago. I was released from prison two weeks ago and have to do three hundred hours of community service. I know I owe the community a lot more than three hundred hours. Like I said in my other e-mail, I saw your TV ad and knew working in a hospital was the right thing for me. It feels as though it fits my crime, since so many people were hurt because of what I did. I understand if you don’t want someone who’s served time, but I wish you’d give me a chance.

  I typed my phone number and hit Send, and within minutes—minutes, which is how I knew they were totally desperate—Cathy Moody called me. We talked for half an hour, and I told her the truth about what happened when I tried volunteering at the school and the library.

  “Would you allow me to speak with your therapist?” she asked.

  I was surprised she didn’t just tell me it was a no-go, but she sounded amazingly sympathetic.

  “You mean…to be sure I’m sane and everything?”

  “Well…” She laughed. “Something like that.”

  “I see him this afternoon,” I said. “I’ll make sure it’s okay with him and call you back.”

  Dr. Jakes gave me two thumbs-up when I told him I was trying to volunteer at the hospital.

  “Attagirl!” he said. “You took the bull by the horns.”

  I didn’t like pleasing him all that much. I didn’t get why I still had trouble letting him in. He was definitely in my corner. Maybe prison did that to me—made me just not trust people who were nice to me. Jen was the exception. She was so totally easygoing about all the stuff I told her that I felt safe opening up to her. She had some off-the-wall ideas about life behind bars, though. I told her whatever shows she’d watched about what it’s like in prison had gotten it all wrong, and she apologized for making it seem like I’d been on a spa vacation instead of in jail.

  “There’s a snag, though,” I said to Dr. Jakes. “I explained about…you know. My record. And the woman in charge of volunteers asked if she could talk to you.”

  “Ah,” he said. “How do you feel about that?”

  “It’s okay with me. It’s not like you know anything the rest of the world doesn’t already know about me.”

  “Not true,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “From what you’ve told me, much of the rest of the world thinks you deserved more punishment than you received.”

  “You don’t?”

  He shook his head. “No, I don’t, Maggie,” he said. “You’ve already given yourself a life sentence.”

  I looked down at my hands. It was a sentence I needed to serve.

  “Anyhow, I’d be pleased to speak with her.” He leaned forward, his poor old chair creaking beneath him. “This is the first step in saving yourself,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “You took the initiative this time. Your mother didn’t do it for you.”

  “Well, it’s just that I saw the ad on TV and—”

  “Discount it all you want, Maggie,” he said. “You’ve taken a big step forward.”

  I called Jen after my first day at the hospital and told her every single detail about Miss Helen and the kids I’d met and what I’d be doing there. I was sitting on my bed, the angora teddy bear at my side, admiring the purple polish on my toenails.

  “You sound totally psyched,” she said when I finally stopped talking. “I’m still amazed they let you work there. With kids, I mean.”

  “Me, too, but I’m so glad.” The library suddenly seemed ridiculously tame to me. “I think I’m going to love it.”

  “That’s great.” Jen sounded…I wasn’t sure what. Distant, maybe? Or just tired? Had I bored her to bits? I suddenly realized that I was always talking about myself. When did I ever ask questions about her? It had been so long since I’d had an honest-to-God girlfriend, I didn’t know how to be a good one anymore. She was such an excellent listener, and I was totally self-absorbed. “Sorry I talked your ear off about the hospital,” I said.

  “No, that’s cool.” Was she yawning? Maybe I’d caught her in the middle of a nap or something.

  “Do you want to get together again soon?” I was already formulating questions I’d ask her about herself if she said yes.

  “Definitely.” She sounded a little more awake. “This weekend?”

  “That’d be great.” I was relieved by the enthusiasm in her voice. “I want to hear all about you this time.”

  The next day, Miss Helen sent me out on my own. I took the book cart around to the patients’ rooms. I entertained a couple of kids in the E.R. while their little brother got stitches. I sat with a scared four-year-old boy in his room, giving his mother a chance to get something to eat. I helped a few kids color and make things out of clay in the playroom and I tried to keep two boys from clobbering each other over whose turn it was to go down the sliding board. And that was just the morning.

  In the afternoon, I brought a new patient—a five-year-old boy named Jacob—into the playroom. He was in the hospital for asthma, like Andy’d been so many times at that age. Jacob clung hard to my hand as he looked around the room. There was so much to do in there, it could be overwhelming. He was probably already overwhelmed just by being in the hospital.

  The only other kid in the room was that pale little bald girl I’d seen with Mr. Jim the day before. She looked so tired and very, very sick. She sat alone in the big rocker, watching TV. I knew her name was Madison, and Miss Helen had told me she had a rare cancer of the blood and that she was in the hospital more than she was out. “I think she likes it here better than she does at home,” Miss Helen told me at the nurses’ station. She cupped her hand around her mouth like she was telling me a dirty little secret. “Dysfunctional family,” she whispered.

  “Hi, Madison,” I said to her as I pulled out a chair at the table for Jacob. She didn’t answer me and there was no trace of a smile on her face. Her eyes reminded me of my own—huge and dark—except that she had no eyelashes or eyebrows. Her skin was so p
ale, I could see the blue-gray veins beneath the surface of her bare scalp. She had a capped-off tube strapped to her left arm with wide bands of green-and-blue dotted tape, and she held that arm gently cradled in her lap as if it hurt her.

  “Do you want to join Jacob and me?” I asked her. “We’re going to color.”

  She shook her head. “No, thanks,” she whispered, and she closed her eyes.

  At five o’clock, I went to the nurses’ station to check out for the day. Two men and two women were behind the counter, busily writing notes and typing on keyboards. I’d already figured out that some of the men in the peds unit were nurses and some of the women were doctors and I didn’t yet know which was which. They all looked preoccupied, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep that night unless I talked to someone about Madison.

  “Excuse me,” I said.

  A young woman with short blond hair and too much mascara raised her head from her keyboard and smiled at me. “How’d your second day go, Maggie?” she asked.

  “Good.” I was surprised she knew my name before I remembered the name tag pinned to my blue vest, which was the uniform of the volunteers. “But I have a question about Madison…” I realized I didn’t know the little girl’s last name, but the woman—her name tag read Taffy Cruise—knew who I meant.

  “Here’s her doc right here,” she said, motioning to a broad-shouldered, dark-haired man sitting in front of a computer screen. “Dr. Britten? You have a minute for the volunteer?”

  He looked up at me, rubbing a hand across his chin and looking nearly as tired as Madison did. There was something familiar about him that I couldn’t place. Maybe I’d seen him the day before and just didn’t remember him.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  “I…” I felt intimidated all of a sudden. I was a nineteen-year-old ex-con brand-new volunteer. What did I know? “I noticed Madison holding her arm like it hurts her,” I said. “The arm with the—” I rubbed the inside of my left arm “—the tube.”

  “It probably does hurt her,” he said, like it was no big deal. “She’s a tough cookie.” He turned to the other man at the station. “You want to check on Madison’s IV when you get a chance?” he asked.

  The other guy nodded, although he kept tapping at a keyboard of his own.

  “Okay,” I said. “Thanks.”

  “No prob,” Dr. Britten said. He lifted a cardboard coffee cup to his lips and looked at his computer screen again. There was a gold band on his ring finger, a dimple at the corner of his mouth when he sipped his coffee, and I had a sudden, truly terrible feeling of déjà vu. I knew why he looked familiar to me. He looked like Ben. Dark hair, like Ben. Thirtyish, the age Ben would be around now. Big, teddy-bear kind of build. Maybe not quite as massive as Ben, but still. He put down his cup and began typing, and I stared at his hands. I knew those hands. I knew them, and worse—much worse—I suddenly missed them. I missed Ben—the Ben I’d thought he was. The one who touched me with hands that looked a lot like Dr. Britten’s. How could I even be thinking that way? I was so screwed up!

  “We’ll see you tomorrow, Maggie,” Taffy said, and I realized I’d just been standing there like an idiot, staring at Dr. Britten.

  “Right.” I slipped my purse strap over my shoulder. “See you tomorrow.”

  I walked straight from the peds unit to the hospital exit. In the parking lot, I got into my car and rested my forehead on the steering wheel. I took a few long, deep breaths. Did he really look like Ben? He was a little older, wasn’t he? And his eyes were not quite so dark.

  “Stop it!” I punched my fist on the steering wheel. “Just stop it!”

  I rested my head back against the car seat with a sigh.

  There were no parents protesting outside the hospital. Nobody spitting at me in the halls. But there was still one big obstacle standing in the way of me doing my community service there—or anywhere—and it wasn’t Dr. Britten. It wasn’t a man at all. It was me—the weak-willed, easily seduced, insecure girl I’d become. I was the obstacle I’d be carrying around with me for the rest of my life.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Sara

  Painting and Sewing

  1991

  JAMIE SPLIT HIMSELF IN TWO. THAT WAS THE WAY I SAW IT. IF I’d been stronger or tougher or meaner, I would have demanded more. Instead, I witnessed Jamie’s struggle to be there for me and our beautiful son, as well as for Laurel and Maggie, and I couldn’t bring myself to make things harder for him. The baby who was yet to be born would up the score on Laurel’s side. Two to one. I didn’t want to think that way, but sometimes I did.

  I spent a lot of time in the comfort of the chapel. On Sundays, I often stood near the entrance with Keith and Maggie to keep them from disrupting the service. I was there during the week as well. The walls needed painting, and I talked to Jamie about painting them myself—a massive job. I asked him if I could bring color into the space I loved. He looked alarmed at first. His vision for the chapel had always been pure white walls, but when I talked about the view—how it looked outside the panoramic windows after a rain, with the sand that deep khaki color—he understood what I was saying. So I painted the inside of the chapel the color of wet sand, all by myself, in between feeding and changing Keith. Jamie’d found a nanny for Maggie, and although I missed the little girl, I had to admit it was a relief not to have both of them to care for. I loved Maggie, but I would have resented being asked to watch Laurel’s child as well as my own now that Jamie seemed to have chosen between us. That was small of me, but I couldn’t help it.

  When I finished painting the chapel, I asked Jamie if I could make cushions for the pews. The task of making the long, foam-filled cushions would be grueling, but I pleaded, and Jamie finally agreed. I spread fabric on the floor of the chapel office and cut it into long rectangles. I brought in a sewing machine and sewed well into the evenings.

  All my work served a purpose separate from making the chapel warmer and even more beautiful: it kept me from thinking about the Sea Tender. Laurel had stopped drinking, Jamie told me. She was doing much better. He’d made the right decision to go home, he said. All the while, I painted and sewed because I knew which home was ultimately Jamie’s greatest love, and it was the one where I was working.

  I was in the chapel when Jamie called me early one morning.

  “The baby’s here,” he said, and I knew from the thick, tired tone of his voice that something was wrong. My heart dropped. As envious as I was of Laurel, I would never wish for anything to happen to her or the baby.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked. My first thought was that, like Keith, the baby had a hole in its heart, but that was not the problem.

  “They took him away from us,” Jamie said. “Laurel’s been drinking all along. She just hid it from me somehow. She was smashed when she went into labor last night. Marcus drove her in so I wouldn’t know. And the baby—” His voice broke.

  “Oh, Jamie. Honey.” I put down the fabric I’d been sewing. “What happened?”

  “They think he has this…condition called fetal alcohol syndrome. He looks okay, except for being small. But it’s something about his development or…I don’t understand it all yet. I just…”

  “What do you mean, they took him away from you?”

  “Protective Services. They have custody of him, though he’s still here at the hospital. The social worker said Laurel probably had severe postpartum depression after Maggie was born and that she’s been drinking to…they called it self-medicate. I shouldn’t have left her. I should have insisted she get help.”

  “You did everything you could,” I said. “You couldn’t force her. Even that psychiatrist you took her to told you that, remember?”

  “This poor little guy,” he said. “He’s all tied up to machines. I can’t take it, Sara. Laurel’s upset. I know she feels terrible. But she doesn’t really understand the whole thing. The social worker said our best chance of getting the baby back is for her to go into rehab, but
she won’t do it.”

  I turned off the sewing machine. “I’m coming to the hospital,” I said.

  On the drive to the hospital, I felt my anger toward Laurel building. Laurel had everything. Jamie. The money. Two children. And she was doing her best to throw it all away and hurt every single person who cared about her. Everyone treated her with kid gloves, and it wasn’t working.

  When I arrived in Laurel’s hospital room, I found Jamie sitting next to her bed. Laurel looked ashen and tired, her eyes at half-mast.

  “Go get a cup of coffee, Jamie,” I said.

  He looked at me. “I don’t need a cup of coffee.”

  I grabbed his arm, tugged him out of the chair and pulled him physically to the door. He stopped in the doorway, trying to read my face, and I knew he was worried what I might say to Laurel in his absence. Tough.

  “Go,” I said.

  Once he left, I sat down in the chair he’d vacated and skipped right over the pleasantries. “You need to go into rehab,” I said, “for your family’s sake if not for your own.”

  “I wish y’all would just leave me alone.” Laurel’s voice was so whiny and pathetic. I wanted to slap her face. Slap some sense into her.

  I somehow managed to get control of my anger. I told Laurel about the first time I saw her. It was in the chapel, when she’d looked so pretty and so full of love for her husband. I told her how much Jamie loved her. How her children needed her to be whole and healthy for them. For a moment, I thought I was getting through to her.

  Then she shook her head. “All I want right now is a drink,” she said.

  Furious, I sat forward and grabbed her wrist. “You’ve become a selfish, self-absorbed bitch, Laurel, you know that?” I stared hard into her eyes. “I know your hormones got screwed up,” I said. “I understand you can’t help the depression. But you can fix it, Laurel. You’re the only one who can.”