The Language of Secrets

by Dianne Dixon

  “I didn’t know what to bring.” As Mitch said this, he was giving her a mass of hothouse violets, glittering with dew and resplendent in a cone of glossy white lace-edged paper.

  The flowers were cold and heavy in her hand, like a fistful of jewels. She gazed at them and said, “Justin’s gone.”

  “I know. That’s why I came.”

  “To see Justin?” She looked around the room, perplexed.

  “Caroline, what’s wrong with you? Are you here by yourself? Where’s Rob? Where are your girls?”

  “In school, but they’ll be back later.” The violets slipped from her hand. She watched them fall. “I’m a little not myself right now. I take pills sometimes. But I try not to when the girls are here.”

  Mitch cupped her chin and gently forced her to look at him. “Somebody should be here to help you. Jesus God, Caroline, is there somebody I can call? … something I can do?”

  “It’s not your fault, Mitch. You’re not the one …” She returned to gazing at the violets. When he had touched her face, she had felt the familiar shape of his hands; somewhere far off inside her, something had stirred, and then gone quiet again.

  “Why did I have to hear it from Barton about your little boy dying? Why didn’t you let me know? Why didn’t Rob?”

  “Because of what I did, Robert doesn’t like you anymore. He’ll never like you again.” She said it without emotion. “And he won’t ever like me again, either. He just doesn’t know it yet.” Then she leaned forward and collapsed into his arms—slowly, like a kite spiraling into soft green grass.

  Mitch had carried her into her bedroom and stayed beside her as she slept. He had sat smoking cigarettes, looking toward the window and the oak tree in the backyard. Caroline had awakened just before the girls were due home from school, and she had said: “You have to go now, Mitch. You have to promise, please, never to come back. Because if you do, Robert will take this house down from around me and my girls. We’ll be alone. And we have no way to survive.”

  Mitch had kept the promise she had asked of him. He had never come back to her. Caroline had taken root in the house on Lima Street. And life had gone on.

  Now she was picking up the bowl of ice cream that Barton had brought and she was going downstairs—because her girls were there, waiting for her.

  Twilight had deepened into darkness and coolness had finally found its way into the summer air. The house had its windows flung wide and its doors standing open. Lamps were lit in every room. The feeling was expansive and joyous. Caroline’s outburst at dinner had been attributed to too much wine and too little sleep, and had been put aside.

  Everyone was gathered in the living room. Julie and Lissa were holding candlesticks, and Robert a rolled-up newspaper. The Motown song “My Girl” was playing on the stereo. Robert and the girls were singing along to it, using the candlesticks and newspaper as their “microphones.” The three of them were serenading Caroline.

  And Caroline was remembering other summer nights, when she’d lived the kind of hungry life she had never wanted her children to experience. A life in which she had haunted the sidewalks of neighborhoods that weren’t her own; where there were places that looked the way the house on Lima Street looked tonight, big and festive and full of light. Caroline had hidden under the bright, open windows of those houses and listened to the music emanating from them.

  And in their melodies, she had heard the promise of safety and the sound of surety. It was what she was hoping, in this moment, each one of her children was hearing—the music of home.

  T J

  ESSEX, CONNECTICUT, AUGUST 1977

  *

  “Is this my baby?” Margaret had barely been able to speak. He was the most beautiful child she’d ever seen. She had carefully taken him as he was being lowered into her arms, and the feeling had been delicious. She’d waited for him for a very long time. He hadn’t come to her until the day before her forty-fifth birthday.

  When she brought her child home, it was through a snowfall as crisp and white as freshly ironed lace. It was February and she was thinking that she should have gotten the Christmas decorations from the attic and put them back up in honor of his arrival. Her son was a miracle; he should be coming into a house dressed for the season of miracles.

  As she carried him, bundled in a blanket, toward her front door, she wondered what she looked like to people passing on the street. What would they think of this middle-aged woman with her unruly red hair, sloping shoulders, and limping gait, running toward a modest New England clapboard house as if she were running toward heaven? Would they know that she was not what she appeared to be; that she had been transformed; that this house was now a home, a place where a mother was being born and a son would grow?

  Before Margaret could reach the door, it was thrown open by Kati. Huge bouquets of helium balloons were tied to the legs of the dark wood table just inside the doorway, and Kati was singing: loudly and off-key, “Happy baby to you! Happy baby to you! Happy baby, dear Maggie. Happy baby to you!”

  Kati was nineteen—adorably pretty, free-spirited and spontaneous. She was the daughter of an old friend. Margaret had hired her a year ago as a temporary assistant to run errands and type lecture notes until someone (someone whom Margaret assumed would be more serious-minded and scholarly) could be found. But Kati had proved to be a conscientious, enthusiastic, and completely competent employee. Within weeks, her status had become permanent.

  “I tried to sing quiet,” Kati said. “I didn’t wake him up, did I?”

  “No,” Margaret told her. “You sang very quietly. He’s still fast asleep.”

  Kati lifted the edge of the blanket away from the child’s face. His skin was creamy white and his hair was the color of chocolate. She gave a quick, soft gasp—as if she had encountered an exquisite work of art. He stirred. For a moment, his eyes opened. They were green, with eyelashes that were dark and extravagantly long. He sleepily closed his eyes again. A tear that had been caught in his lashes slid free and Margaret gently wiped it away. “He was crying a little in the car,” she explained. “It’s hard to be so new in a whole new world.”

  Margaret went to a chair near the fire and carefully lowered herself into it, never taking her eyes off her sleeping child. Kati followed and sat on the floor beside her. “What are you going to name him?” Kati asked.

  “His name is Thomas Justin. I’m going to call him TJ.”

  Kati leaned close and whispered, “Hi there, TJ. I’m Kati. I’m gonna be your baby-sitter while your mama’s off at work. I am gonna take such good care of you.” She looked up at Margaret. “Oh Maggie, I can’t wait to hold him.”

  “Maybe later. Maybe in a little while.” Margaret’s smile was tremulous. “I can’t let go of him yet.”

  *

  After almost three months, Margaret was settling into the routine of motherhood and TJ was beginning to sleep through the night.

  When he had first come into the house, he had wept daily. There was nothing that would comfort or distract him—not the toys that filled his nursery, or the funny faces that Kati made, or the songs that Margaret sang to him as she slowly danced him through the book-lined rooms of the house. His tears had ceased only when he had become too exhausted to shed them. Each night his wailing had filled the dark and he had refused to be consoled.

  On the first night, at the first fretful sounds of his unhappiness, Margaret had entered his room and taken him out of his bed, out from under his blue-and-yellow quilt, and he had instinctively curled against her. And as she’d felt him trembling like a newborn kitten, she had whispered: “Everything’s going to be all right, little one. Your mommy is here.”

  In the instant that she had said mommy, he had lifted his head and held his hand out in a sudden desperate gesture, as if he had been groping for a miracle. He had looked around the room, continuing to hold his hand out, frantic to see and touch the thing he’d lost. And when he understood that it was not there, he threw himself against Ma
rgaret and wailed. Every night, for months, he had continued to wail.

  And in each of those nights, Margaret had held him and promised that she would find a means by which to take his tears away.

  On the day in May when she had run into the house and knelt in front of him, when she had opened her light spring coat and shown him what was huddled beneath it—a tiny black cocker spaniel puppy with a sky blue ribbon around its neck—Margaret had, at last, been able to fulfill her promise. The puppy went directly to TJ and settled into his lap. The little boy lowered his head, rested it against the puppy’s silky fur, and made a sound that was small and indistinct. Later, when Margaret had tried to describe it to Kati, she couldn’t define it. All she could say was that it had not been the sound of weeping.

  With the arrival of the puppy—whom Kati christened Inky—TJ began to change. He began to smile, and to play with his toys, and to cautiously reach out to Margaret.

  His weeping had stopped. It was then that Margaret first heard the plaintive sound of his singing. It had begun in the early hours of a Sunday evening, a short time after she had put TJ to bed. She was downstairs in her study. It was raining and the house was filled with the sound of water slipping under the eaves and tapping across the windowpanes. But then there was a momentary lull, a cessation in the noise coming from outside the house, and Margaret heard the strange sorrow-stricken sound that was coming from the room above—from TJ’s room.

  It was a song, almost whispered and unbearably sad, going in circles, without beginning or end. It was the sound of a mantra, an opiate for a hurt lodged in a place and a time that were refusing to be forgotten.

  Margaret went to the door of her study and listened. She heard the sound of TJ’s voice. It was eerily high, reedy and fragile. “Do I know my name?”

  He was singing in the lisping, uneven cadences of a three-year-old. “Yes I do. Yes, I do. My name is Justin. And my name is Fisher, too. Do I know my home? Yes I do. Yes I do.” There was fleeting hesitation. And then: “I live on Lima Street. Right at 822. Do I know my town? Yes I do. Yes I do. My town’s Sierra Madre, and it’s California, too. Do I know my parents?” Another hesitation. And then: “Yes I do. Yes, I do. One’s named Caroline. And one’s named Robert, too. Do I know my sisters? Yes, I do. Yes I do. I have a sister Julie. And a sister Lissa, too.”

  For a moment there was silence. Then the song began again. Margaret realized she was listening to the memories of a little boy who no longer existed. And for the first time, she comprehended the depth of the void into which her son had been thrown.

  *

  “You’ve taken to this like a duck to water,” Andy said. “Your mothering is as natural and pretty as flowers in springtime.” Andy was sitting in a wing chair near Margaret’s front window. He was a massively big man. He made both the chair in which he sat and the teacup he was holding look small enough to be toys.

  Margaret laughed. “You missed your calling. You should’ve been a poet. Or a Baptist preacher.” She turned her attention away from Andy, concentrating on keeping Inky at bay so that she could deal with the stuck zipper on TJ’s jacket.

  “I’m happy being what I am, your simple servant at the bar.” Andy winked at Margaret and grinned.

  Margaret nervously redoubled her efforts to open TJ’s jacket. She was uneasy with compliments and, to some extent, with men. When she’d been young, still in elementary school, she’d been keenly aware that her height, her wild red hair and round, pale face, and her serious nature were not qualities most boys found attractive. She’d been able to tolerate their distinterest because there were other things that interested her—her family and her circle of girlfriends.

  Then, in high school, there’d been a shy, awkward boy who had found her lovely and had read poetry to her; and for a while, Margaret saw herself through his eyes. Her hair was Titian, her skin was alabaster, and she walked with the height and grace of a goddess.

  After the accident, the boy had gone away. And Margaret became herself again, but more so. The accident had left her with a slight limp, with an odd, clipped gait. The fall from the top tier of the bleachers at the side of the empty football field had carried Margaret down through a maze of iron struts and supports; by the time she hit the ground, one of her legs had been mangled, and the boy—his face still pink with the frost of Margaret’s lipstick—was frantically buttoning his jeans and scurrying home. The custodian who heard the noise of Margaret’s crashing descent had called an ambulance. The following day was graduation and the bleachers were filled with caps and gowns and cheerful speeches. Margaret was already in the process of being forgotten.

  The boy and the accident saddened Margaret for a time, but they didn’t hobble her in any essential way. She’d never been a girl who was passionate about boys, or overly sensitive to her appearance. Her passions had always been books and words and the idea of motherhood.

  When her mother had bought a hope chest for Margaret’s sixteenth birthday—and, over the years, filled it with embroidered linens and filmy lingerie—Margaret later emptied it to make room for things that she herself had collected. Things that were more appropriate to her own dream: exquisite books of English nursery rhymes, a hand-carved wooden train from Germany with a red silk cord to pull it by, a little yellow-and-blue quilt made on a Pennsylvania farm, a silver crescent moon as big as a dinner plate and a constellation of shimmering stars, all fabricated from some gleaming pliant metal, hammered tissue-thin, by an artist in SoHo. These were things that Margaret wanted to give to her child when, someday, she became a mother.

  “I mean it, Margaret,” Andy was saying. “You look right at home with that puppy and that little boy.” He set aside his tea and opened his briefcase. “It’s a joy to see how well this has all turned out.”

  Margaret had managed to get TJ out of the jacket and she was holding him in her arms. The feel of his cheek against hers was as fresh and firm as a winter apple. “Say hello to Mr. Abbott,” she told TJ. “He’s the wonderful man who gave us to each other.” TJ hid his face in the soft place at the base of Margaret’s neck, and she kissed him and allowed him to scamper out of the living room with his puppy close at his heels.

  Margaret’s expression was eager as she sat in the chair across from Andy’s. “You’ve brought the final papers?”

  “Yup, I’ve got all your legal stuff.” Andy waited for a moment. “And there’s something extra.” He was holding a flat rectangular package the shape and size of a wall calendar. Its covering seemed to have been cut from a brown paper grocery bag. And it looked as if it had been wrapped hurriedly; the corners were uneven and the bits of tape holding them closed were at odd angles and chaotically spaced. As he handed the package to Margaret he said: “It arrived in the mail a few days after TJ had been brought to my office.”

  Margaret was immediately apprehensive. “Why didn’t you tell me about it before?”

  “I haven’t been keeping anything from you. My secretary was out on maternity leave. The girl who was filling in for her left it in a pile of mail on her desk. The box this packet was in didn’t get opened until a few days ago.”

  “Who sent it?”

  Andy shrugged. “Don’t know. There was no return address.”

  Margaret took a slow, nervous breath. Andy held up his hand, stopping her before she could speak. “There’s nothing to worry about,” he told her. “Yours is a legal, sealed, private adoption. No one, and I mean no one, not even the birth parents know, or ever can know, who you are or where to find you. You are that little boy’s mother. Just as if you’d given birth to him.”

  Margaret glanced down at the package in her lap. “How do you know this was meant for me?”

  “When I opened the box, the only items inside were that thing and a sheet of paper with the name Justin Fisher on it. He’s your son now. So that makes it your property.”

  Margaret moved to open the package, then pulled back. She was suddenly ambivalent about encountering whatever it was that lay ben
eath its crazily taped cover.

  “Don’t worry,” Andy told her. “You don’t have to open that thing. I can simply dispose of it for you.”

  “No. Wait. Let me think about this.” Margaret put the package on the table beside her chair. The uncertainty of what it might contain was making her apprehensive. But for some reason, she wasn’t comfortable with the idea of relinquishing it.

  “There’s going to be difficult moments like this for a while, Margaret. Putting together a family this way is complicated,” Andy said. “Just take things slowly, you’ll be fine.”

  “You’ve worked a miracle for me, Andy. I can’t tell you how grateful I am.”

  “I don’t know that I deserve credit for a miracle. This one was just plain coincidence.”

  Margaret suddenly sat up very straight, as if she needed to bring her full force to what she was telling him. “No, I don’t believe that.” She wanted Andy to feel as awed by her situation as she did. “Think of all the years that, for one reason or another, I couldn’t ever succeed at finding a child to adopt, and yet this child came to me so easily. It was no coincidence. It was meant to be. Someone or something was looking down and orchestrating all of it.”

  Andy’s smile was indulgent. “Margaret, most of the time, a cigar is just a cigar. And this one’s just a cigar. Trust me. All that happened was I answered my own phone because my secretary’s fill-in was late coming back from lunch … and TJ’s father was on the other end of the line. That’s all there is to it.”

  “But how did he know to call you? How did he know about you?”

  “He didn’t. He was taking shots in the dark,” Andy said. “If I hadn’t answered, he’d have gone on to the next person on his list. Apparently he’d called the state bar and asked for the names of attorneys who handle private adoptions. I got alphabetically lucky. Andrew Abbott. I was probably the first name that came up.”