Family Secrets

by Nancy Thayer

  But Sam only looked at her, his black eyes impenetrable.

  “What’s wrong?” she whispered, almost begging.

  A shade of sadness moved in Sam’s eyes. “Look. We’ll talk about it later, okay?”

  “Okay,” she agreed, for they’d arrived at the campus, and as they cut across the grassy yard they were surrounded by people. When they entered the warm building, the bright fluorescent lights hit them and chatter and laughter surrounded them. They joined the line in the dining hall, chose trays of food, and found a table.

  “Do you like your lab teacher?” she asked, trying to steer the conversation to something neutral.

  Sam shrugged. “He’s okay.”

  “What will you do tonight?”

  “Study the mutative traits of genetically altered worms,” Sam said in a monotone, not looking at her.

  “Oh. Fun, huh.”

  Sam shrugged in reply.

  Her food was tasteless. She couldn’t swallow. An icy weight lay against her abdomen. She was unable to eat. If this kept up, the ice would soon press against her lungs, cutting off her breath.

  “Sam. Please tell me.”

  “Tell you what?”

  “Why you suddenly shut me out down there. By the yard with the children.”

  “It was nothing, Julia. Drop it.”

  The icy weight slid through her. She had to move; she had to go outside. “Fine. I’m going back to my room. I’ll see you later.” She rose.

  Sam looked irritated. “I’m going to sleep in the dorm tonight. I’ve got an early class tomorrow. It’ll just be easier.”

  “Suit yourself,” Julia responded. Shoving the chair back against the table, she walked off and out of the dining hall.

  It was like diving into a pool of cold, black water. While they’d been eating, night had fallen. It took her a few moments to orient herself and find the right way back to Mrs. Overtoom’s.

  “Hello! It’s just me!” Julia called as she entered the boardinghouse. The aroma of onions and cabbage filled the air.

  “Hello, dear. Can’t chat. My show’s on.” Mrs. Overtoom was ensconced in the living room in front of the television set.

  Julia walked down the long hall, through the kitchen, and out the back door. She took her clean clothes, stiff with cold, down from the line. For a long moment she stood in the dark backyard, burying her face in the bunches of cotton, breathing in the freshness of a day out in the sun.

  In her room, she folded her clothes carefully and put them away in the drawer. She made the bed and tidied up. She didn’t want to watch television, and she didn’t want to read. She wanted to go back up the hill, to search for Sam, to find out whether or not he was angry with her. She shouldn’t have run away from the dining hall. What was the matter with her? She couldn’t do anything right. Everything was confusing. Kicking off her shoes, she crawled back into bed and immediately fell into a deep sleep.

  When she awoke, she could tell by the heavy silence in the house that it was late. Sitting up, she rubbed her hands over her face. Her eyelids were still swollen and tender from crying earlier in the day.

  She reached over, flicked on the lamp on the bedside table, and looked at her watch.

  It was eleven-fifteen.

  It was eleven-fifteen and Sam hadn’t come. He’d said he had chem lab, but no class lasted till eleven-fifteen. Then she remembered he’d said he was going to spend the night in his dorm. He didn’t want to be there with her.

  She crawled out of bed and walked around the room, restless. All that she longed for—to be married to Sam, to make their life together rich and pleasurable and their own—was at odds with what everyone expected of her. She’d tried to get what she wanted, and she’d failed. And she’d probably made everyone she cared for hate her.

  On the dresser her hairbrush, lipsticks, and pens spilled out of her purse. She ran her hands over them. Mostly plastic, they clicked slickly against one another.

  She went to the door, leaned against it, listened. The house was so quiet. Opening the door a crack, she listened more carefully: no canned laughter or rumble of television. Mrs. Overtoom must be in bed. Julia imagined her landlady’s slumber would be billowy and sweet. She smiled at the thought and slipped out into the hall.

  She was still fully dressed in turtleneck, jeans, and white socks, but she’d taken her shoes off when she got in bed and now in her socks she made no noise as she slipped down the dark hallway toward the kitchen. She felt like a black spirit moving in its element.

  She didn’t want to turn on any lights. If Mrs. Overtoom was not a heavy sleeper, perhaps even a click would awaken her. Julia moved through the kitchen like a blind person, feeling the wall, the chill enamel of the sink, the blank, flat face of the refrigerator. The October night was thickly dark.

  Her hands closed on what she wanted: a long meat knife stuck in a wooden block.

  As quietly as she could, she pulled the knife out.

  The overhead kitchen light flashed on, its brilliance as loud as a noise.

  “Aaaaah!” Julia screamed, shocked by the sudden light.

  “Aaaaah!” Mrs. Overtoom screamed, her eyes wide with terror at the sight of Julia with the long knife in her hand.

  Mrs. Overtoom’s gray hair was wrapped around little pink rubber curlers only partly hidden by a frilly flowered cap meant to hold them in place. Her enormous body was draped in a white flannel nightgown covered with pink roses; a pink ribbon tied the neck of the gown together under her chins. She looked like a big, happy pig in a bonnet.

  “Child,” she said, “you gave me the fright of my life. What are you doing?”

  “I’m sorry I woke you, Mrs. Overtoom,” Julia said. She looked at the knife in her hand and thought fast. “I needed to cut the tag off a new nightgown, and I didn’t have any scissors.”

  “Really? Or were you planning to give yourself a little abortion in my bathtub?”

  The horror of Mrs. Overtoom’s words made Julia flinch. “Oh, no! Oh, Mrs. Overtoom, no. I’d never do that. I’d never kill my own baby.”

  “Ah, then perhaps you were going to hurt yourself?”

  Julia opened her mouth to object, but looking down at the hand holding the knife, she saw the telltale Band-Aids on her wrists protruding from her sleeve. She didn’t speak.

  “Sit down, child, and let’s have some cocoa,” Mrs. Overtoom said. Without waiting for an answer, she swayed across the kitchen, a symphony of pink-flowered flannel, to the stove. “There,” she said to Julia, indicating a chair.

  First Julia put the knife back in the block. She’d get it to use later, but if she sat at the table with the great big thing in her hand she’d look like some kind of maniac from a Stephen King movie, and she didn’t want to give Mrs. Overtoom a heart attack. The kitchen table was covered with a yellow tablecloth with a vase of plastic flowers in the middle of it. The salt-and-pepper shakers were a Pilgrim man and an Indian maid.

  “Cute, aren’t they?” Mrs. Overtoom said, noticing Julia’s gaze. “I’m just going to heat up a little snack for us. It’s been hours since I had dinner, and I won’t be able to sleep on an empty stomach. Look in the cupboard behind you. I’ve got an entire collection.”

  Julia moved her chair around so that she could open the cupboard door. Lined up in pairs, a little midget colony, were salt-and-pepper shakers for every possible occasion. Matching Santa Claus heads with ivy wreaths around their hats; smiling white-sheeted ghosts for Halloween; ducks and bunnies for Easter; green leprechauns for St. Patrick’s Day; fat Kewpie dolls with white banners blaring “Happy New Year”; and a really pretty pair of porcelain hearts and flowers for Valentine’s Day. Crowded against those were ceramic shakers in the shape of penguins, puppies, kittens, bluebirds, tugboats, rosy-cheeked peasants, Cinderella and Prince Charming, the Eiffel Tower, and more.

  “I have more in the dining room,” Mrs. Overtoom said. “The really valuable ones. You’d be surprised how many I’ve got. I don’t even know myself. I
started collecting them a long time ago, and my friends and children have always known what to bring me as a souvenir of their trips. My collection was written up and photographed in Yankee magazine!”

  As she talked, she set a plate of buttery scrambled eggs, crisp bacon, and blueberry muffins in front of Julia. She set her own place, then gave them each a glass of orange juice and a mug of steaming hot cocoa.

  “What do you like to collect?” she asked, grunting slightly as she lowered her bulk onto her chair.

  “I used to collect dolls,” Julia said shyly. God, how embarrassing, how dorky. She’d die if anyone knew about this conversation.

  “What kind? Madame Alexander? Barbie?”

  “Barbies at my grandmother’s. And of course baby dolls when I was little.”

  “Did you have ones that wet their pants?”

  “Yes. And I had one that cried until you stuck a pacifier in its mouth.”

  “Well, that will prepare you for real life. Here’s some butter for your muffin. Please use the salt and pepper—I didn’t put any on the eggs.”

  They ate in a companionable silence for a few moments.

  Mrs. Overtoom smacked her lips and leaned back in her chair. “Well, Julia,” she went on, without any indication that she was changing the subject, “what’s going on? Are you pregnant?”

  Julia sighed. The warm food was comforting. She could feel the tension melt from her body.

  “No. I’m not pregnant. I wish I were. I want to get married and have lots of children.”

  “But …” Mrs. Overtoom gently prompted.

  “But Sam doesn’t want to. At least not without telling our parents.”

  “And your parents wouldn’t approve.”

  “My parents would kill me.”

  “Why?”

  “Oh, because … my mother is such a superwoman and she expects me to be that way, too.”

  “What does your mother do?”

  “She’s Arabesque.” Julia waited for the awe to appear in Mrs. Overtoom’s eyes. “Arabesque! Oh, I know you know about them—Wait.” She got up, tore into the living room, snatched up a glossy fashion magazine lying open on the sofa, and brought it back in. Flipping to the page with a brilliant ad on it, she pointed. “That Arabesque.”

  “You mean your mother works for them?”

  “I mean she is them. She owns the company. She started it. She designs the jewelry. She travels all over the world.”

  “You must be very proud of her.”

  “I hate her.” She let the magazine flap closed on the table and slumped back into her chair. She bent over her plate, hiding her face.

  “That’s too bad,” Mrs. Overtoom said softly.

  Julia raised her eyes enough to see how the landlady was reacting. Mrs. Overtoom was putting jam on toast. Julia continued. “She runs the house like a general giving orders to a corporal—my father. She never cooks. She’s always had a housekeeper to do that stuff. She travels constantly. And she wants me to be just like her, to do something original and fabulous. She’s always saying, ‘Oh, Julia, darling, you’re so smart and clever, you can be anything in life!’ Like she’s expecting me to be the first woman president or something. I mean, she’s really expecting me to do something like that. She’s always praising herself for making it possible for females of my generation to be something, but the things I want to be—a wife and mother—aren’t enough for her.”

  “Have you told her how you feel?”

  “I don’t have to. I know how she thinks. She acts as if my Aunt Susan is a kind of happy peasant because she has four boys and does everything in the house and only works—she’s a nurse—when the hospital needs her. Mom won’t even go visit Aunt Susan. She says all those dogs give her a rash and she feels claustrophobic on the sailboats. She wouldn’t even let us have a dog. Or a cat. Too much work, too much hair.”

  “And you want a life like your Aunt Susan’s.”

  “Yes. Or like my grandmother’s. My grandmother makes things. Real things. Homemade bread. Apple pie.” Julia felt her body relax as she spoke about her grandmother. “My grandmother’s house feels like a home. She had four children, and she loved them, and she did stuff like was the pack leader for her sons’ Cub Scout troop, and she always has time to sit and listen to you, and she hangs her laundry out to dry in the sun instead of tossing it into the dryer. You can always find her to talk to. Half the time if you try to talk to my mother, she’ll be hiding away in her office on the second floor, or on the phone to her business manager.”

  “And where’s your father if you want to talk to him?”

  “Well, he’s at work, of course! His work is really important. He’s a molecular geneticist. He’s trying to locate the gene that carries breast cancer.”

  “My.”

  “You would think my mother who is not totally moronic would realize that compared to what my father does, her ‘work’ is insignificant. But no, she has to act as if they’re of equal value, and Dad’s supposed to spend the same amount of time at home as she does. She has nagged about that every single minute of her life!”

  “She sounds like a very unpleasant person.”

  Julia was surprised. Mrs. Overtoom’s words hit her like a slap. “Oh, well, not really. You wouldn’t think so. I mean, she’s not unpleasant except to me. And she doesn’t mean to be unpleasant. It’s just that she wants me to be like her, and I don’t want to be.”

  “So what were you going to do with the knife?”

  Startled, Julia grinned spontaneously, goofily, the inappropriate way you sometimes do when you hear someone’s died. “Well. I guess I was going to slit my wrists.” She flashed a quick look at the landlady. “In the bathtub where it’d be easy to clean up.” When Mrs. Overtoom didn’t respond, she said, “Sorry.”

  “Maybe we should call the Samaritans,” Mrs. Overtoom said after a while.

  “Oh, I’m not religious,” Julia said. “I mean, I believe in something, but I’m not sure what. I’m sort of in between gods.”

  “No, no, the Samaritans are those people who specialize in suicide. I mean in preventing it. They’d know what to say. I don’t know what to say. I’m not even sure I understand why you want to die.” The landlady looked at Julia, shaking her head. “I’ve had a lot of losses and a lot of pain in my life, and I’ve still never wanted to die. And if I were young and beautiful like you …”

  Julia looked at Mrs. Overtoom in all her old pink fatness. A little tuft of gray hairs was growing out of the woman’s chin. Julia glanced away, hoping Mrs. Overtoom hadn’t noticed her staring. A great wash of contrition swept over her.

  “I won’t kill myself tonight, Mrs. Overtoom. And if I do, I won’t do it here at your house. I promise.”

  “Well, that’s a relief.” The landlady rose, pushing herself up with both hands. She carried her plate and cup to the sink. “It’s after midnight. Will you be able to sleep?”

  Julia brought her plate and cup over. “Yes. I’m sure I will. Would you like me to wash these before I go to bed?”

  “No, no, dear. That’s all right. I’ll wash up in the morning.”

  “Thanks for the food. It was delicious.”

  “You’re welcome, I’m sure.”

  For a moment Julia felt like hugging the old woman. For a moment it seemed as if she’d known her forever, that they were friends or, more than friends, relatives. But Mrs. Overtoom turned away and lumbered over to the wall. She put her hand on the light switch, ready to turn it off. She was waiting for Julia, so Julia smiled and went down the hall to her room.

  This time she undressed completely before getting into bed. The room was cool and the air against her bare skin was refreshing, almost like a touch. She slid under the sheets and pulled up the covers. She was so tired of thinking. Her stomach felt soothingly warm and full. She closed her eyes and fell asleep.

  She’d only been asleep for a few minutes when a noise awoke her. Drowsy, she didn’t open her eyes but merely listened. Someone
had come into the room. She heard the sound of clothes falling on the floor, then the bed sagged under new weight, and Sam lay next to her, pressing his body against hers, wrapping his arms around her.

  “You awake?” he asked.

  She hadn’t realized how cold she was until his arms were around her, his warmth covering her like a quilt.

  “Mmm,” she said, snuggling against him.

  “I tried to sleep in my dorm room, but I couldn’t,” Sam whispered against her hair. “I pulled on my clothes and ran all the way here.”

  “I’m glad.” She hugged him tightly.

  They held each other for a few moments. Sam kissed her forehead, her hair. “I wasn’t being fair,” he confessed. “I did close up this evening. When we saw the children. I need to tell you something.”

  Julia’s breath caught in her throat as she waited for his next words. When they came, she was surprised.

  “I always envied you and Chase.”

  “You did?” Twisting against him, she looked up at his face. It was too dark to make out his expression, but she didn’t want to turn on the light and interrupt the mood.

  “You always had each other to play with.”

  “To fight with is more like it.”

  “Maybe. But you fought in your own shorthand, over things I didn’t know about.” Sam punched his pillow, stuffed it behind his back, and sat up in bed, leaning against the headboard. “When the three of us played together, I was always the one who had to go home alone, or who was left alone. I’d watch out the window. You and Chase would argue while you walked home, or you’d run after each other. You had all sorts of plots to make the babysitters let you have your way. The two of you would gang up against your parents. You’d warn each other. ‘Watch out. Mom’s in a bad mood.’ I love my parents, and I know I ought to be grateful to them for adopting me, and I am grateful. But I wish more than anything in the world I’d had a brother or a sister.”

  “Oh, Sam,” Julia cried. “I never realized.”