The Secrets We Keep

by Stephanie Butland

  • • •

  And the running didn’t even work. It had been a Tuesday afternoon. Michael had stopped at the fallen tree to refasten his laces, have a drink, and wonder why he ever thought this was a good idea. His lungs blazed, sweat stung his eyes, his muscles sang with the promise of cramp to come, and still he was thinking of Kate. He was no longer sleepless, it was true, but in these nights he dreamed of her pale eyes, her soft skin, and found himself examining Elizabeth’s face every morning with the fear of having breathed out the wrong name in the darkness. He came to be glad of the late shifts, the early shifts, which he had once resented for putting him out of step with his wife. However often he went over the last few months in his mind, he couldn’t find the place where he lost control of himself, and he couldn’t see where to get control back.

  And then, as he had gotten ready to run another lap, Kate had stepped through the grass toward him, her hair tied back so that every clean remembered line of her face was open to him, her eyes hurt, her body brave. She approached him like an equal, like a lover, like a person to be taken seriously. Michael had felt, once more, the water rising around him, chilling his chest.

  “Mike,” she had said, quietly, and sat down next to him. “I thought we should talk.”

  “Yes.” The neutrality of her tone made him ashamed, a schoolboy caught in a lie. “I’m sorry, Kate. I didn’t know how to tell you that I thought we should stop.”

  “Oh, you told me all right.”

  Michael had been helpless in the face of such quiet hurt. He had been prepared for this meeting to happen; he had been ready to be comforting and strong, or calming and firm. But Kate’s solemn honesty had demanded solemn honesty back. “I felt as though I was getting out of my depth,” he had said. “I love my wife very much, and I never meant—I didn’t mean—”

  “I know,” she had said. “Me neither.”

  They had glanced at each other then, daring a look instead of talking to the air in front of them. She had been the first to smile. “You’re not exactly what I had planned, you know, Mike.”

  He had been the first to risk a touch, his hot damp hand covering her cool smooth one where it sat, demure, in her lap. She hadn’t responded, but she hadn’t taken her hand away.

  And, although he hadn’t thought he would ever talk to anyone about this, he had tried to explain to Kate how much more bound he was to his wife than anyone else might be to theirs. Her commitment in coming to live in Throckton, the baby that never was, the way they had built a life together. He wanted her to understand that he was happy; he wanted her to understand that he would never leave Elizabeth. “I’ll be honest, Kate,” he had said. “I don’t know what’s happening to me. I never thought I would be…” He had faltered, and Kate had turned toward him, lifted her hand to his jaw, her thumb smooth as it stroked beneath the cleft in his chin.

  “I know,” she had said. “I know.” And she’d turned her face away and told him how, when she had realized that he didn’t want to see her, she had decided to go away to think, and forget him. She had been to Paris, to stay with a friend who was studying there. She had been angry, upset. “I don’t think you understand,” she’d said, “how much you mean to me. Unless you feel the same way. And I think you are a good man. I don’t think you would use me.”

  Michael, who had his arm around her by then because he couldn’t seem to find a way not to touch her, felt her voice move through his chest. He has always known that he is a good man.

  • • •

  Kate didn’t tell him about the tears and the endless discussion of what she should, could do, the speculation about the future that the two of them might have, the ways in which that future might come about. She had gloried in the feeling that she only got when she was with Mike: the feeling of love, of happiness, of saturation, all combined into something that couldn’t be wrong.

  Nerve endings had danced in her hip where his hand sat.

  She knew that she had to be gentle.

  “I need you to know,” she had said, “that I will never, ever tell anyone about us. I want you to know that I can keep a secret and I will keep this one, for—” She had been choosing between “forever” and “for as long as we need to” when he had interrupted her.

  “Thank you,” he had said. “Thank you.” It had felt as though Elizabeth was safe again.

  It was a very short distance from the eyes front to the eyes locked, the touch to the kiss. Kate, who had once been a holiday, was becoming a home.

  When she had gotten her phone out and suggested that she take a picture of them, he’d agreed and smiled and held her for the camera, and thought, Well, I’m really in this now.

  Mike,

  There were times when I wondered how happy you were. Especially that bit after we decided not to have a baby—I say “bit” as though it was no time, but I think there were probably a good three months when we were finding our feet again. And you were so quiet. And you were so calm. And when I asked you about adoption, and said I felt as though I couldn’t put us through any more baby waiting and baby stress, any more time being patient… You just said, sure, and the way you said it was the way you had agreed when I said I thought I would apple white to peach white for the paint color in the downstairs bathroom. It was as though it was all the same to you. And although I could understand that when it came to choosing between two shades of white to go in a tiny windowless room—a baby, Mike? A child?

  I assumed, at the time, that you wanted to do what I wanted because you were looking after me, and so I didn’t ever really think about it too hard. We were so tired, weren’t we? Sometimes all this missing you feels a little bit familiar, and I realize that the pain is like the pain of knowing that you’ll never be a mother. It’s the certainty. I won’t see you again. I won’t have a baby. And for a moment or two those things are bearable. It’s when you look up, look forward, that it gets terrible.

  Sometimes I wonder whether not having a baby was a rehearsal for not having you. The universe breaking me in gently. The breaking part is definitely true. There’s nothing gentle about this, though.

  E xxx

  Now

  As soon as Rufus has gone, Mel makes tea for Elizabeth, and tells her that she’s taking Pepper for a walk. Then she heads off to Patricia’s house. The fact that she knows it’s Patricia’s day off only makes her angrier with this mad, incestuous place.

  “You’re my cover story,” she growls to Pepper, who tries to lick her hand as she attaches his lead, “so I’m going to have to take you. But it’s not like my day isn’t already ruined.”

  As she stalks through the streets she lets a call from Blake go to voice mail. She doesn’t trust her own voice, and she doesn’t want to give anyone the opportunity to suggest a more measured response to what she’s just learned.

  She thinks about what she will say, later, to Blake and Andy: that tact and diplomacy and quiet conversations and a whole load of dancing about have done nothing but cause pain and upset for all of them. Her heels are furious on the pavement.

  Patricia answers the door in an apron, hands covered in flour. As though butter wouldn’t melt in your mean little mouth, Mel thinks, as Patricia says, “Oh, Mel, I’m just baking.”

  “So I see.”

  “Well,” Patricia says, “if you’re coming in, would you mind taking your shoes off? And I’m not really set up for dogs.”

  Mel looks her full in the face, a look that feels like a blow, and says, slowly and quietly, so that the older woman has to lean closer to hear, blinking as the brightness of the day hits her, “Yes, Patricia, I would mind. So either you can let me in with my heels and this mop on a string, or we can talk about cystic fibrosis on your doorstep. You decide.”

  So Patricia steps back, into the hallway, where it is Mel’s turn to blink and wait for her eyes to make sense of the different light, then into the living room, so f
ull of photographs that it’s like stepping onto a stage. Mostly the pictures are of Michael and Michael’s father, the resemblance strong, although the father’s shoulders are broader, the son’s hair paler. Elizabeth and Patricia make the odd appearance too. Patricia, framed, stands camera shy and formal on her wedding day, then later, outside the same church in Throckton, holding a baby swaddled in a shawl. As time goes on, her pictures become a little more relaxed, the images of her most alive when she is trying to get Michael to do something: look at the camera, blow out candles, ride a bike.

  Mel thinks of how Elizabeth is always lovely in photographs—she has often lamented to Mel that she looks so much better in photos than in real life, and Mel has always said that, if you take the long view, she has the better deal. Except the last time that they had talked about photographs, Elizabeth had just said, “Mel, I really don’t care what I look like at all.”

  Patricia has wiped her hands on the corner of her apron and is turning away—“Well, I’ll just put the kettle on”—when Mel moves in front of her.

  “I do not want a cup of sodding tea,” she says. “I want to talk to you about a visit I’ve just had from Rufus Micklethwaite. And if I hadn’t been there, he’d have made his snide, nasty comments to Elizabeth. Sit down.”

  Patricia, part afraid, part ashamed, part affronted, sits and opens her mouth. She’s not sure where she’s going to start, but that doesn’t matter, because she doesn’t get the chance.

  “No,” Mel says. “I don’t want to hear anything. I want you to answer my questions. Is it true? Did you go and tell Kate Micklethwaite that if it’s Mike’s baby it might have cystic fibrosis? Because if you did, you’re a cruel, cruel woman, Patricia. You were cruel to that girl and you are being very cruel to my sister.”

  Patricia opens her mouth again, but Mel, still standing, with all the advantages of rightness and height and the thought of what havoc this news will bring, holds out an imperious, silencing hand. “Can’t you see that Elizabeth is falling apart? Haven’t you noticed that she barely speaks if she doesn’t have to and she won’t even eat your fucking chicken soup anymore? What do you think this will do to her? Hasn’t she lost enough?”

  Patricia waits, spine tense, heart thumping, but there doesn’t seem to be any more to come. Mel is glaring, waiting, towering in her own righteousness, and out of the tumult Patricia has one lucid thought. Whatever I’ve done, I can’t have another conversation about how hard things are for Elizabeth. I just can’t.

  She stands up suddenly, so Mel steps back, away, and in that moment of advantage she says quietly, “She’s not the only person to have lost something here, Melissa, although no one seems to remember that. My son is dead. And if that baby is my son’s child, the mother needs to know about the risks, so that baby can be cared for properly.”

  “Don’t try to tell me you were doing the mother a favor,” Mel says, scorn written from the arch of her eyebrows to the pitch of her chin.

  “Well,” Patricia said, “I had my own reasons. I’m not particularly proud of myself. But needs must, and I know now that that baby is Michael’s child. When I thought I’d lost everything, it turns out that I have a grandchild. I’m sorry for Elizabeth. I am. But this is my flesh and blood.”

  “So much for your saint of a son then,” Mel says.

  “Yes, I know,” Patricia says. She thinks about telling Mel how she’s lain awake at night, wondering what he’d done, what Elizabeth had done, what she’d done or failed to do in all of Michael’s fatherless years, to make this happen, decides against it. “But we don’t really know what went on.”

  “You mean that you think Kate Micklethwaite seduced him with her wicked wiles, and he succumbed because my sister doesn’t bake her own bloody bread, and he’s as innocent as a married man who got a kid of nineteen pregnant can possibly be, which is not, actually, very innocent at all.”

  Patricia closes her eyes for a moment, opens them again. “Now who’s being cruel?” she asks, but Mel isn’t listening. She has turned away, shoulders shaking, and Patricia realizes that this willful, abrasive young woman, who a moment ago she had feared might hit her, or break things, or do who knew what, is crying.

  And so she takes a step forward, and she touches Mel on the shoulder, and when there’s no reaction she takes both shoulders, more firmly, and she brings Mel to sit on the sofa. Mel responds to Patricia’s touch, goes where she is moved to, meek as milk. Sobs are jolting out of her now. She’s like a little girl who’s lost her teddy in a railway station. Patricia holds her, holds her tight, and she waits.

  “This will break my sister,” Mel gets out between sobs. “This will break her, and I don’t know how to put her back together again this time. I put her back when he died and I put her back when she found that girl in the garden and I put her back when the rumors started. I don’t know how to do it again.”

  Patricia’s heart heaves in sympathy. She says, “We can all get used to terrible things. You know that. I expect you thought you’d never manage without your mother. When John died I was sure that it would be the end of me. Losing a son is the worst thing you can possibly imagine. I know about being broken. I just don’t show it the way you do. The way Elizabeth does.”

  She thinks that she feels Mel nod, but it might be a sob. She is becoming quieter now, softer. Patricia holds on.

  Mel says, “She says you’re the closest thing to a mother that she’s ever had. When I complain about you she says that you’ve looked after and loved her and done your best to help her and she hasn’t always liked what you’ve done but you’ve always acted in her best interests. She says that while she and Mike should have had four parents, they only had one, and you did a great job of doing four people’s jobs. And now she’s losing that too. She’ll be devastated, Patricia. She’ll think you’ve let her down as well.”

  Patricia looks at the photographs all around her, and she remembers how John used to say that there are times for talking, whether you want to talk or not. So she keeps going, down this hard road, with a person she wouldn’t have chosen as a companion.

  “Mel,” she says, and as she speaks she remembers how sometimes the things she says come out sharp when she intends them to be clement, so she does her best to make her voice match her intention. “Mel, have you considered that, perhaps, in time, Elizabeth will be glad to see that there’s a little bit of Michael left in the world?”

  Mel snorts, finds a tissue, blows her nose. “She’s barely coming out of her room as it is.”

  “Well, maybe knowing that Michael wasn’t the saint that we’ve all made him out to be will bring her out.” Mel looks at Patricia now for the first time since she started crying. Her face is a mess of mascara and brooding. Her eyes are surprised at what she’s heard, questioning, checking. “Oh, I’m not blind, Melissa, and I’m not stupid. I just want to think the best of my son.”

  “I don’t feel as though I know how to do this,” Mel says, and neither of them is quite sure how it happens, but a moment later they are embracing, and Patricia is saying, “Mel, none of us know.”

  • • •

  While Mel goes to the bathroom to wash her face, Patricia hesitates over whether to show her the scan picture or not. But she thinks about where secrets have gotten them, so when Mel comes downstairs, face bare and embarrassed, she says, “Richenda Micklethwaite came to see me. At the library. She wanted to talk grandmother to grandmother. She gave me a picture of the baby. A scan.”

  Mel sits down and looks at it, for a long time. Just as Patricia is trying to think of the right thing to say to make the silence stop, Mel traces the outline of the face with the tip of a fingernail, wishes that Elizabeth had been the one handing her a scan, showing her Michael Gray’s baby. “Boy or girl?” she asks.

  Patricia says, “Girl.”

  “Well, at least she can’t call it Michael,” Mel says, and then she glances at Patricia to se
e whether she needs to explain that all she means is that that’s one thing Elizabeth won’t have to contend with. Patricia smiles her understanding. “And what does the cystic fibrosis thing mean? Michael was all right, wasn’t he?”

  “It might not mean anything, the baby may be fine,” Patricia says, “but it runs in my family, so I really did feel she should know.”

  “I can see that,” Mel says.

  Patricia thinks, Well, that’s as close to an apology as I’m going to get. As I deserve, probably.

  Mel stands, rouses Pepper from where he’s sleeping in a nest of cushions in shades of brown and plum. “You’re right. We’re going to have to get used to it.”

  “You’re doing a good job,” Patricia says. “You’re a good sister.”

  Mel feels the honor of a compliment from a woman not much given to compliments. But all she says is, “That’s not what Elizabeth’s going to say when I tell her about this.”

  Mike,

  The trouble with the quilt plan is, I can’t quite bring myself to cut up your shirts. I washed them all yesterday—they were all clean, but I just wanted not to have the smell of our wardrobe when I started this, not have the smell of our wardrobe wafting around me as I cut and sewed. (I’m not even sure if our wardrobe has a smell—I mean, I’m not sure whether those lavender bags and scented, padded coat hangers your mother was always giving us had any impact, but I wanted to be sure. I’m getting good at preempting and protecting myself from the things that I can see might hurt.) I’d told Mel what I was doing before I went to work, so she didn’t think I was going crazy (crazier?) with the washing, and she said, “Sister, if this is what you need to do, I’m right with you.”