Family Secrets

by Nancy Thayer

  His hand accidentally touched hers as they pulled open the folded lids of the first box. Diane drew her hand back.

  “How do you want to do this?” she asked. She felt herself flush. “I mean, would it be faster if we each took a box? There are so many.”

  “I’d rather take my time and be thorough,” he told her.

  I’ll bet you would, Diane thought, surprising herself. She rose. “There’s an empty box over there. We can use it to put stuff in so we don’t end up with a pile on the floor.”

  “Fine.” He crossed the wide attic and got the dusty cardboard box.

  It was a cool October day. The rain had stopped, but clouds still dimmed the sky, parting as the wind moved them to let sudden shafts of sunlight pierce through the gabled windows. In spite of the electric lights, the air in the attic was a shadowy blue. Peter Frost’s breath sounded intimately close and loud.

  The boxes revealed a jumble of letters, photos, knickknacks, jewelry, postcards, chipped souvenirs, scarves, diplomas, medals. Peter Frost insisted that they open every envelope and shake it to see if a locket was inside.

  One box, which had to date back to around 1968, contained jubilant letters and postcards from Diane as she toured Europe from Yugoslavia to the Netherlands, a brilliant red peasant babushka still folded and creased, not Jean White’s style at all, and a heavy, gaudy necklace made from links of brass and a mélange of glittering beads—Diane’s first wildly successful jewelry design, beautifully intricate in an Eastern Orthodox way. Nestled with those items were photographs and letters from Susan, a navy nurse stationed in Soc Trang; letters and photographs of Bert on a destroyer in the Pacific; and incomprehensible scribbles meant to be letters from Art, sent from Vietnam along with an ornate hookah pipe about which Jean White probably hadn’t a clue.

  Diane removed and inspected each item before dispatching it to the pile of examined objects. She worked in silence, but she was filled with emotion. How her mother had loved all her children! How democratic and nonjudgmental she’d been, treasuring each relic of their very different lives. How generous her love had been.

  After two hours, Diane rose from the box and stretched.

  “My back’s breaking,” she said. “Can we take a break and go down and have some coffee? And I need to check my answering machine.” Peter Frost looked at the jumble around him.

  “All right.”

  They clattered together down the stairs, past the bedroom where Kaitlin was running the vacuum, to the kitchen. The day was still so dim and dreary she flicked on all the lights.

  The answering machine was blinking: message waiting. She flicked the button to rewind, then to play.

  “Hi, Diane.” Susan’s warm voice filled the room. “Just calling to see if you’ve heard from Julia. Call me when you get a chance. Everything’s going to be just fine, you know. Love ya!”

  Her sister’s affection and concern brought tears to her eyes, and Diane turned away quickly from Peter before he could see.

  “I’m going to heat a muffin. Want one? They’re good—honey and date.” Her words sounded oddly flirtatious to her ears and she blushed, glad to be busy with the coffee.

  “That would be nice.”

  Peter Frost’s presence filled the kitchen. As she moved around setting out place mats and knives and the butter dish, she was aware of his eyes on her, and she was glad to have something to keep her busy. Finally there was nothing to do but wait for the coffee to drip through the filter and the muffins to heat. She leaned against the counter, folding her arms over her chest. He was standing near the microwave. On purpose?

  Looking up at him, she said, “I hate just waiting like this. I feel so helpless.”

  “Do you have any idea where your daughter is?” he asked.

  “I think so. She went off with her boyfriend, a nice young man—my son’s best friend, actually. So I don’t think she’s in any danger, but still …”

  “Still, you need to know. I guess it’s the first time she’s done something like this.”

  “Yes.” A thought hit her, and she shook her head slowly. “You must run into this sort of thing often in your work.”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Do you like your work?” she asked, genuinely curious. “Very much.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s important. It’s necessary. It’s exciting, sometimes.”

  “Dangerous?”

  He smiled. “I don’t do much that’s dangerous anymore.”

  Suddenly, she wanted to hear about the dangerous things he had done. She imagined him moving stealthily through the dark, carrying secrets.

  He stepped close to her and reached out his arm. Diane froze. He picked up the sugar bowl from where it sat just inches from her elbow.

  “May I?”

  The microwave pinged. Diane put the muffins on a plate, poured mugs of coffee, and gratefully sank into a chair across the table from him. She watched as he stirred sugar into his mug.

  “And I like to travel,” he added. He smiled. “I get to meet interesting people.”

  She smiled at the implied compliment. “I travel a lot in my work, too,” she told him. “I love new sights, new experiences. New tastes.” Why, she wondered, did every single thing suddenly seem sexual?

  “You don’t seem like the traveling type,” he remarked.

  “Why not?” she asked, insulted.

  In answer, he gestured around the kitchen. She saw her life reflected here through his eyes: the pegboard on the wall cluttered with cartoons, letters, invitations, appointment cards; the counters decorated with clever ceramic canisters and a multitude of domestic appliances; the sparkling white curtains and thick dish towels; the bowl filled with fresh fruit in the middle of the table.

  “It’s all camouflage,” she told him, pleased with her answer and thrilled with the understanding smile that he flashed her. Again a flame of desire sparked through her.

  The phone rang.

  Julia! Diane hurried to answer it.

  “It’s for you,” she said, disappointment creasing her face. She handed the phone to Peter Frost and waited just a few feet away from him, listening as he spoke.

  “We have some information about your mother,” he told her when he put the receiver back. “She checked in to the Georges Cinq about a week ago but checked out after a few days. No forwarding address. But at least we know where she started from.”

  “But not where she is now,” Diane said. Something crumbled inside her, and she began to cry. She put her hands over her face.

  “I’m sure we’ll find her,” Peter Frost assured her. “She’s not in danger, you know.”

  “I know, but it’s all too much! My mother and my daughter both missing—” She couldn’t speak for her tears.

  “Perhaps they like to travel. Like you.”

  She raised her head to glare at him. “They aren’t like me at all! Not either one of them! They’re both babies!”

  “They’ll be all right. I’m sure they’ll be all right,” he said. They were standing face-to-face, and he reached out to pat her shoulder reassuringly. His hand was large, warm, and steady, and all at once Diane was vividly aware of her breasts beneath the cotton of her sweatshirt. His hand remained an extra, significant, few seconds. He was so very much there with her at this moment that Diane felt the strangest desire simply to bend her head and rub her cheek along his hand, to touch him, skin to skin.

  Instead, “I’m okay now. Thanks,” she said, looking up at him. He returned her look evenly, and for a moment they were joined on a knife edge of understanding. “We should head back up,” Diane said, grateful that her voice worked. “Yes, we should.”

  Back in the attic they worked quickly in silence. Lust had joined them like a third person, reclining on a nearby box, perfuming the air, grinning wickedly. She’d never had an affair, had never even been really tempted, although she had enjoyed the occasional attentions of interested men. She’d been glad to know she was attractive; and
if now and then her body surprised her by being interested in return, that had been pleasant, too, providing her with a little lift like any special physical treat—a massage, a new dress.

  What she felt now was different, and troubling. When Peter took off his suit jacket and turned to drape it over a box, she could not keep herself from studying his body, which under his shirt was well defined and muscular. He must have to keep himself in good shape, she mused. As he unbuttoned and rolled up his sleeves, he smiled at her as if he knew her thoughts, and several times that afternoon when she handed him a box or took an item from him, his hand brushed hers, causing a spark of desire to leap within her.

  There were so many boxes. Diane worked steadily, glad to use the flashes of adrenaline that her anxiety about Julia and lust for Peter Frost sent rocketing through her.

  One carton held a number of promising small containers that upon inspection divulged hundreds of recipes on note cards, miscellaneous old sterling flatware loosely tied up with ribbons, three brass napkin rings, cracked goblets, decorative tea tins, pretty bits of broken porcelain, tubes of glue, jars of silver polish. The most fascinating find of the day for Diane was an ancient trunk that opened to reveal mementos from Jean’s college days. Train tickets, playbills, folders with class notes and schedules, phone numbers, addresses, photographs, pens and pencils and erasers and boxes of carbon paper, textbooks and writing tablets had been tossed in carelessly, a jumble. Several copies of the same journal were piled in the bottom of the trunk; Diane lifted them out and read the black letters on the maroon cover: War Stories. Opening one to the table of contents, she saw her mother’s maiden name listed next to an article entitled “A War Widow’s Tale.” Vaguely she remembered her mother talking about this, long ago, but she’d never read it, and so she kept one issue out to look at when she found time.

  By the end of the afternoon, they had gone through most of the boxes without any luck. Diane was both relieved and disappointed when Peter Frost rose, rolled down his shirtsleeves, and picked up his jacket.

  “I guess we’d better stop for the day.”

  “Yes,” she agreed. It was almost dark outside, and the attic shadows were thick in spite of the electric lights.

  “I’ll be back tomorrow morning. We should be able to finish this in an hour or two.”

  “Fine. I’ll wait for you.” Her words sounded coquettish when she meant them only as a matter of fact. She felt her face flush and quickly pushed past him and down the stairs. Hurrying into the kitchen, she checked the machine again: no messages.

  “I can understand what a difficult time this must be for you,” Peter said, coming up behind her. His voice was deep and resonant; she could feel it in her chest. “I really do appreciate all your time and trouble.”

  She turned. He was standing very close to her. “Thank you,” she replied.

  “You’ve worked hard. Let me buy you a drink. Or dinner.” The tone of his voice made the invitation sound only kind, not seductive, but she shook her head.

  “I need to stay here. In case Julia calls. But thank you.” Then, boldly, she added, “Perhaps another time.”

  He smiled at her—not his wry, sideways smile but a gentle smile that brought a glow to his eyes. “Good.”

  Diane couldn’t bring herself to move for one long moment, and then she roused herself and said, “I’ll get your coat.”

  She brushed past him, her body inches away from his as she slipped through the kitchen doorway into the hall. He followed her and took his trench coat from her, then left, with a nod of good-bye.

  She walked through her house, gathering her thoughts. It was after five. Kaitlin was gone. Jim was not yet home. A quiche that Kaitlin had made sat on the counter ready to be heated. This entire day had passed without a word from Julia. The big house felt cold and empty now, and Diane was overcome with sensations that felt like the common flu. She was tired and light-headed. Well, she had a right to be after a sleepless night and this long day of waiting and worrying.

  She dialed the Weyborns’ number and got their answering machine. “Hi, it’s Diane. I’m just calling to ask if you’ve heard from Sam,” she said into the electronic silence. She knew the Weyborns would call her the moment they heard anything; still she felt better after trying to reach them. She didn’t know Sam’s number at Wesleyan, or she would have tried him, too. She couldn’t think of anything else to do but wait.

  She climbed the stairs, went into her bedroom, and for the first time in years, she crawled into bed with her clothes on.

  The night before she’d hardly slept. Now she closed her eyes, hoping at least to rest. But it was like trying to relax inside a bomb shelter; her nerves were jangled with anxiety. Jim, she was sure, was plodding away methodically at work, his hands calm, his mind clear. No wonder he loved chemistry: DNA, nature, had not bound him with unremitting ferocity to his children. Jim’s life proceeded along a straight, true line, while hers had been a tangle of love and ambition, work and motherhood.

  When Chase was born, she and Jim had intended to deliver the baby together in a Lamaze childbirth. Diane followed through, panting and blowing and cursing and weeping. Jim fainted in the delivery room when his son’s bloody head crowned in Diane’s swollen vagina. She had her sister, Susan, fly up to help her through Julia’s birth.

  In the very early days of their family’s life, Diane had thought it only natural that she would be more closely connected to her son than Jim was; Chase had been in her body, she had nursed him, there was an instinctive logic involved. But after six months, then a year, and after Julia’s birth, Diane realized that she was connected to her children in a way Jim would never be. It was an invisible, unbreakable bond that was more than chemistry—it was like radar, or the eerie communications of whales. She could put a closed door or half of Cambridge between herself and her children and still her senses remained alert, everything pricked up, her body nervous to the very bones, until she was back again, holding her babies safely in her arms. Nature had not deigned to burden Jim with a similar obsession. He could read while Chase cried in the other room. He could relax and talk with friends while Julia toddled around in a wet diaper on a hot day. And he responded strangely to their many childhood illnesses, in an old-fashioned stiff-upper-lip way that he must have learned from his aunts. It was not that he didn’t want to comfort his children when they had colds or chicken pox or tummy aches; it was that he couldn’t. He seemed almost to resent the children for being sick.

  Friends told her not to worry—men were baffled by infants, but as the children grew older, fathers got more involved, more interested. Yet Diane realized something else was at work here, something personal. Orderly, logical Jim was incapable of dealing with the general mess and noise of children. She thrived on it, the tugs and tears and babble and urgent needs. Jim retreated. He’d loved children as a concept, but he found the reality irritating and even frightening, far past the control of his most meticulous arrangements.

  Somehow during her pregnancies and the early years of her children’s lives, Diane had managed to keep Arabesque afloat—barely. At night when the babies slept she experimented in the basement with bead designs, then took patterns and the materials to the women who strung the necklaces and bracelets for her in their homes. She was happy in a way she’d never known before; and if she was tired, it was in a dazed, blissful way—much like the moments just after making love, when all senses were satisfied. Walking the floor with her babies at night, she hummed ancient lullabies; the tunes and her exhaustion worked like hallucinogens, so that new designs floated up around her in the darkened room. She realized she was immensely proud of herself for the most natural deeds: keeping her son and daughter safe and healthy, nursing them through colds, teaching them to brush their teeth, soothing them when they were unhappy.

  Jim spent more and more time at his lab. When Diane told him he had to help out more because she wanted to start a new line of jewelry, he told her he couldn’t. He was at a crucial p
oint in his work. He didn’t want to chance losing his grant. He suggested that they hire a housekeeper/babysitter, and so Diane did. She put an ad in the Boston Globe, interviewed fourteen applicants, chose one, wrote out a list of duties, and trained her. But she felt betrayed. Before they were married, Jim had yearned for children and he’d assured her he’d share equally in their care. Now, when she reminded him of his early promises, he snapped, “I will help! In just a few more weeks!”

  As the children grew from infants into toddlers, Diane realized that as far as Jim was concerned, his work would be continually at a crucial stage. Her exhaustion was tempered by contentment that sometimes deepened into a feeling of smug superiority. If nature had caused her to undergo the difficulties of pregnancy and the pain of childbirth, it had also rewarded her with a hormonal pleasure from which Jim was excluded. Her children’s existences satisfied her profoundly; they were her treasures, her pride, her joy. Nature had not provided Jim with equal rewards, and she understood clearly why he searched for fulfillment in his work.

  Still, she grew increasingly frustrated by his reluctance to enter into the scramble of their daily life. She tried reason; she tried cunning. Nature had brought her into contact with her children with inescapable violence. She would draw her husband into family life with relentless, gentle requests. When they ate dinner together, she asked him for help with just one task: bathing one child, or helping Chase scrape gum off his shoe. Usually Jim responded with absentminded acquiescence. Then he either did the deed incompletely or forgot all about it. She felt overwhelmed, and finally angry. For the first time since the children were born, her own work was tugging at her now like yet another child.

  A design had been haunting Diane, floating ghostlike at the back of her mind. One afternoon, when Chase was in preschool and Julia was napping, she sat down with pen and paper and sketched it out: a necklace of metal links leading to an octagon, cast in brass, with beads and tiny bells hung on colored silk cords from eight corners. She designed coordinating accessories: earrings, bracelets, belts. She carved the wax model and took it to Providence to have a mold made and the pieces cast, and on a hunch, she dipped into her savings and paid to have a gold-plated, sterling-silver version cast as well. She took the jewelry to Bonwit Teller herself because she had a friend from art school who worked there, and they took her entire lot on consignment. They sold out within a week.