Who Will Hear Your Secrets?

by Robley Wilson

  * * *

  “YOU’RE STILL A REMARKABLE DANCER,” I said. It was the baldest kind of subject change, but she seemed relieved by it.

  “I could do endorsements for anti-inflammatories,” she said, “but thank you again for the compliment.”

  “The blues sequence, and that sexy tango piece—you were dazzling.”

  “Not quite as limber as I once was, but I’ve kept in condition, worked out every day even—when I was confined.”

  More silence settled between us. The bartender poured Perrier into her glass, as if on a cue I’d missed. “I’m allowing myself another six months with this ship,” she said, “so at least I can say I’ve seen the Mediterranean. You and I are of an age, so you know the sum of my next birthday.”

  “They say that’s when life begins.”

  “They used to. Now they say sixty is the new forty.”

  “Then where will you go?” I could hardly imagine her giving up dancing, always her lifeline.

  “Anywhere I can afford an apartment.”

  “And to fill the time?”

  “I’d like to open a dance studio.” She sipped her drink and turned a self-deprecating grin toward me. “You know: a school for boys and girls whose mothers want them to learn poise and grace. A little tap, a little fifth position. Those sweaty little bodies—I see them in my dreams of future.”

  “Besides you,” I said now, “I thought the best performer was that singer—the colored girl who did ‘Stardust.’”

  Her face opened into a genuine smile. “Listen to you,” she said. “A ‘colored girl.’ You’re still living in the F. Scott world, and you don’t even realize it.”

  “Then what does she call herself? African-American? Black?”

  “I doubt she defines herself that way, any more than you think of yourself as ‘Caucasian.’” She shook her head in mock disbelief. “Anyway, her name is Twana—which in Swahili means someone not to be trusted. Just your type.”

  “I’ll add that to my Swahili vocabulary,” I said. I was seeing more and more sharp edges of the lover she’d been to me.

  “Twana is my counterpart at the other end of the talent spectrum. I’m going out, she’s coming in. She’s only twenty-four. She’s understudied a couple of famous names, but none of them has had the decency to come down with laryngitis. She signed onto the cruise as a stop-gap.”

  “She’s not staying for the Mediterranean?”

  “She’s flying home from London. Her agent has lined up a bunch of auditions. Maybe this will be her breakthrough year.” She tilted her head and pondered me. “Did you ask because you’re interested?”

  “Idle curiosity,” I said.

  Her laugh was sarcastic. “Still distracted,” she said.

  I signaled the barman for another Scotch.

  * * *

  “WHAT ABOUT YOU?” she said. “What’s in your future?”

  “I’m getting off in Cobh,” I said. “Going to do some house hunting.”

  “You want to live there?”

  “I’m going to give it a try. They say Ireland is fond of writers.”

  “And you crave affection,” she said.

  “Which I’ll trade for the tax breaks.”

  “I’ve actually seen your name on a movie or two,” she said. “Has it made you rich?”

  “Not noticeably.” She might have seen my name, but alas, it had never stood alone on the screen. “‘Collaborative medium’ means the rewards are diluted,” I told her.

  “Has it been a good crossing for you? Besides the privilege of seeing me dance, and watching old movies, have you had fun?”

  “I suppose I have. I was sorry the weather kept us out of Bermuda, but the Azores were a bonus.”

  “I didn’t go ashore,” she said. “The island and the mountains looked gorgeously green.”

  “They were. If Ireland doesn’t pan out, I might look for something on São Miguel.”

  She smiled at that. “How’s your Portuguese?” she said.

  “Nonexistent.”

  “Then you should thrive.”

  She looked at a small gold watch on her left wrist and turned the barstool so that for a moment, and for the first time, she was facing me directly.

  “I really have to get ready for my close-up,” she said. “Rehearsal’s at three and nobody dares be late.”

  “Maybe I’ll come back to see the show again.”

  “You could do that,” she said. “It’s free.” She touched my shoulder and brushed her lips against my cheek as she passed. “I’ll give your idle curiosity to Twana.”

  I watched her as she went, still lovely in her bones, her movements as graceful as I remembered.

  * * *

  THE AFTERNOON BEFORE, coming back to the ship with other passengers from a bus excursion around São Miguel, I’d taken a last couple of touristy photos. On the concrete walls of the bunkers that lined the quay were years of colorful graffiti that seemed hardly to belong with the other photos I had taken that day: bold, painted banners and coats-of-arms; testimonies of allegiance to flags Dutch and Swedish, Chilean and British; what I took to be exotic ship names, like Tom Elba, Moutinho, ENS Toushka, Blanco Encalada. Some were recent, some were old enough to be fading into dim shadow.

  Scrolling through the images in my small camera, these quayside pictures were garish beside the rich green of the island’s steep valleys, or the paler blue and green of twin lakes where an ancient volcano had fallen in on itself. Thinking I’d need space for real estate pictures when I arrived at Cobh, I downloaded everything onto my laptop, changing into my evening shirt and tie while the imports progressed.

  Just before dinner, I took the elevator down to deck five and strolled past the shops that lined both sides of the promenade. Just beyond the duty-free was a florist cart, contrived to mimic a street vendor’s display, and I stopped at it—a whim; not anything I’d planned.

  A dark-skinned young woman sat behind the cart, tying white ribbon around a cluster of miniature pink and red roses. She spoke in what I took to be a Jamaican accent.

  “I can assist you, sir?”

  “If I buy flowers, can you deliver them on board?”

  “My pleasure, sir.”

  I looked over the inventory of the cart. Several corsages, two or three small arrangements in pottery jars. A sparse offering, nothing like the arms-full bouquets a performer might accept across the footlights.

  “Something like that thing you’re working on,” I said. “May I buy one of those?”

  “Yes, surely.” She finished tying her ribbon with a deft flourish and held the roses out to me. “Would you like this one?”

  “That’s fine.”

  I gave her my keycard, signed for the flowers, tucked card and receipt in my shirt pocket.

  “Where shall we deliver?” she asked.

  “You know the evening show? In the theater?”

  “Yes.”

  “The flowers go to one of the performers,” I said. “Can you deliver it just at the end of the second show?”

  “Surely, yes.” She found a small white envelope and took up a blue-and-white ship’s pen. “For whom shall it be?”

  “I believe her name is Twana,” I said.

  She scribbled the name. “And from?”

  “Just sign it An admirer.”

  She did so, frowning as she slid the card into its envelope.

  Going on to the second seating, threading my way to my table at the back of the dining room, I persuaded myself the flowers were a harmless gesture, no different from a sailor’s graffiti—only another way of claiming without possessing.

  Crooked

  Sarah Elliot’s first real boyfriend showed her how to steal. This was in junior high school, eighth grade. His name was Roger Everett, his hair was so blond it was almost white, and he licked his lips whenever it was about to happen.

  The first time was on a cold day in early spring. They were walking to school together after lunch, talking, s
houlders touching. To get to the Emerson School you had to walk through downtown and go past a gas station, a church, two banks, a restaurant, and the five-and-dime. Today Roger said, “Let’s stop at the five-and-dime. I want to buy something.”

  They went in. The five-and-dime was a Woolworth’s, though the name didn’t matter much, since the store was almost identical to McClellan’s, which was on the other side of the street across from the National Bank, and to S. S. Kresge, around the corner on Washington Street. Woolworth’s occupied a deep, narrow space, with two aisles that looked as long as bowling alleys. The floor was wood, unpainted, with a grayish-brown patina of wear from all the customer traffic. The candy and notions were up front; the housewares and pets were way in back.

  Sarah wasn’t sure what Roger intended to buy, but it didn’t look as if Roger was sure either. He led her all the way up one aisle, then around the back of the store under the canary cages, and then down the other aisle toward the front. Sometimes he would lick his lips and pause before some item on the counters they passed. He would pick up a lead soldier, hold it for a moment or two while he examined it, then put it back in its place with other soldiers. At the school supplies counter he picked up pencils and erasers and steel compasses, looked them over, put them back.

  After all this, Sarah was surprised when the two of them were back out on the street, strolling toward school.

  “I thought you wanted to buy something,” she said.

  “I did,” he told her, and as they walked Roger turned out his mackinaw pockets and reached up his sleeve and showed her two mechanical pencils, a lead soldier kneeling with a rifle, and two chocolate-covered malted milk balls. He gave one of the candies to Sarah, and even though it was slightly linty from his pocket, she ate it.

  * * *

  IN JUNE, on the Saturday before graduation rehearsal, she and Roger were walking home from a matinee at the Capitol Theater. They were holding hands. Roger was wearing jeans and a lightweight windbreaker. Sarah had on a white cardigan sweater and a blue cotton dress that went with her eyes; the dress buttoned down the front and had a rim of white lace around the neckline. As they were passing McClellan’s windows, Roger slowed down as if he was studying the display on the other side of the glass.

  “Let’s go in,” he said.

  This time she knew what was going to happen, so she watched him closely as they went up and down the aisles.

  There were clerks everywhere, but Roger didn’t seem to notice them. So far as Sarah could tell, he didn’t take any candy or toys or school stuff, although it seemed as if he picked up everything he saw and turned it around and around in his hands before returning it to the counter. She wondered what he was after, and so she asked him.

  “I just wanted to get something for you,” he said. “A little graduation present.”

  They were in front of the costume jewelry counter, and he stopped her there. He picked up a pair of bracelets, looked them over, put them back. He studied one card of earrings, then another, but returned them. He put one hand to his chin and pretended to decide between a ring with a green stone and a ring with a red stone. A clerk, a tall woman with dark hair twisted into a bun, was watching him.

  “I don’t know,” Roger said in a loud voice. He put the rings down and looked straight at the clerk. “It’s hard to choose,” he said.

  The woman didn’t say anything. She half turned away, but Sarah could see that she was watching Roger out of the corner of her eye.

  “We ought to go,” Sarah said.

  Roger untangled a necklace from a heap of thin chains and held it up. It was a gold-colored chain with a single blue stone dangling from it. He held it against Sarah’s throat.

  “This looks nice,” he said, and licked his lips. Sarah couldn’t see what it would have looked like around her neck, but then she felt it slide down her skin and stop at her bra and become a cold little knot between her breasts. The clerk was behind her, and couldn’t have seen.

  “But I guess not,” Roger said in his loud voice. He took his hands from Sarah’s throat and passed them over the tangle of necklaces as if he were putting something back. “We’re trying to find a present for Mom,” he said to the clerk, and then he took Sarah’s hand and led her out of the store.

  “That was neat,” Sarah said.

  “I wanted you to have it,” Roger said.

  * * *

  SHE COULDN’T UNBUTTON HER DRESS in front of Roger, so she had to wait until he walked her home before she could retrieve the necklace and admire it. When she came into the kitchen, planning to go straight to her room, her mother was putting dirty clothes into the Easy washing machine.

  “Oh, Sarah,” her mother said. “Come here. Let me wash that dress and it’ll be ready for your graduation.”

  She pulled Sarah toward her and started undoing the front of the dress. Sarah was silent, though she resented her mother’s proprietorship of her. When the dress was open to the waist it slid off her shoulders and fell to the linoleum floor.

  “What’s this shiny thing?” Sarah’s mother said. She lifted the necklace out of Sarah’s white brassiere that was mostly padding and let it hang from her fingers. “Where did you get this?”

  “Roger gave it to me.”

  “And where did Roger get it?”

  “At the five-and-dime. It’s a gift.”

  Her mother looked at it. “It looks like a sapphire,” she said. “Where did Roger Everett get the money to buy a sapphire necklace? The Everetts are poor as church mice.”

  “I don’t know,” Sarah said.

  Sarah’s mother put the necklace in her apron pocket and began stuffing the blue dress into the washer.

  “He stole it, didn’t he?” she said.

  “I don’t know,” Sarah said again.

  “Didn’t he?” It was her mother’s warning voice.

  “Yes,” Sarah said.

  * * *

  WHEN SHE WAS A SOPHOMORE in high school, Sarah went with a boy named Leblanc. That was all anyone called him: Leblanc. She never knew if it was his first name or his last name, but it didn’t seem to matter. He was tall and black-haired. He wore leather jackets and cowboy boots. He didn’t go to Scoggin High School, where Sarah went. He was at the Catholic school, St. Ignatius, and he spoke English with a French-Canadian accent she thought sounded exotic.

  Roger Everett was a thing of the past. Sarah’s mother let her wear his necklace when she found it was not sapphire but only blue glass, and one day during gym class it was stolen and never returned. By then she’d met Leblanc, so she could appreciate the irony of her loss. Long after she broke up with Roger—her mother had insisted—she used to see him once in a while in the halls by the lockers. Then, after their sophomore year, she didn’t see him anymore. She heard he’d been caught stealing in Willard’s Hardware, and Mr. Willard had him arrested. The rumor was that Roger had been sent to Bath, to a special school for difficult children.

  Leblanc was entirely different from Roger. Leblanc played basketball and baseball, and he didn’t steal from dime stores and hardware stores. Leblanc stole cars.

  This was shortly after the war, when people still drove downtown in the evenings and parked on Main Street. They sat in their cars just to watch other people walk by. Boys sat hoping to see girls, and girls hoped to see boys, and older people who were already attached or married sat in their cars to see and be seen. If you didn’t own a car, you walked up and down the street looking for friends who did. If you were Leblanc, you walked up and down until you found a car you wanted to steal.

  On their first date, in mid-September of her junior year, Leblanc called for Sarah at her home. His hair was slicked back into a duck’s tail, he wore a necktie, and his boots were so carefully shined, they seemed to glow with a dark inner light. He waited in the kitchen while Sarah finished brushing her hair and putting on lipstick.

  “He seems like a very nice boy,” her mother said softly. “Don’t put on too much of that.”

 
Lately the warning tone had almost gone out of her mother’s voice. Sarah’s father had been home from the army for only a couple of months, and her mother was often distracted. The distraction left Sarah unexpectedly free.

  “We’re going downtown,” she told her mother. “We may go to a movie.”

  “Be home by ten,” her mother said.

  Leblanc took her first to Thompson’s Pharmacy. They sat in a booth in the back of the store and drank Cokes and traded stories about their teachers. Sarah’s were large maiden ladies with thick ankles, who criticized the girls for wearing Tangee. Leblanc’s were nuns; they spoke so quietly, he said, you had to strain to hear what they were saying, but the softness of their voices kept the class from whispering and being rowdy.

  “What do you want to do?” Leblanc said.

  “The movie is all right with me.”

  “I got a better idea.” He stood up and pulled her out of the booth. “Come on,” he said. “Viens.”

  They walked down Main Street in the direction of the town square. Whenever they passed an empty car, Leblanc would drift over to the driver’s side and look in.

  “What are you doing?” Sarah wondered.

  “Looking for keys,” he said.

  They were in front of the Green Shoe Store when he finally found a car with its keys in the ignition. He beckoned to her.

  “Get in,” he said.

  She got in beside him. Leblanc started the car, backed it out of its parking space, and they were off. He drove to Old Orchard Beach and they left the car facing the ocean, the keys still in it. They roamed the arcades, ate fried clams, walked on the wet sand with their shoes off. When it was late, Leblanc stole a different car and drove Sarah home. She would always remember that night as one of the best of her life.

  * * *

  WHEN SHE WENT AWAY to college on an art scholarship, Sarah heard that Leblanc was killed in Korea, but she was too busy being a coed to dwell on her adolescence. She worked on the campus newspaper, where she created a cartoon character named Ignominy Mouse. She designed the covers for the campus literary magazine. In her junior year she pledged a sorority and began running with her sisters, many of whom were rich, and with their well-to-do boyfriends. All the boyfriends owned cars, and nearly all of them had fraternity brothers or real brothers to entertain Sarah. Her social calendar was full to brimming, and on weekends she was almost always away from Northampton, either in New York City or Boston.