by Lynne Hinton
*
I know it’s here somewhere.” Beatrice walked into the farthest room with Louise following close behind. “Take off your coat and come on in.”
They had stopped at Beatrice’s house after the celebration lunch because she wanted to give her friend something she had been keeping for months.
It was an article about a woman in Georgia who had planted and landscaped over three acres of shrubbery into a larger-than-life bonsai garden. The woman had turned her home into a retreat center, and the gardens were meant to be a part of the meditative atmosphere. Beatrice had cut it out when she first discovered it, thinking that Louise might like to read about it and even visit there sometime.
“It was from some gardening magazine I found in Charleston,” she said as she walked into the room.
She moved over to the desk that was near the center of the room and lifted piles of papers and sorted through stacks of mail. “When Dick and I went.” She searched through trays and flipped open notebooks. “Last fall, you remember?”
Louise didn’t answer. She stayed at the door, staring at the mess in this unseen room of Beatrice’s house. Her coat was in her arms.
“This is your office?” she asked with a disbelieving tone. She scanned the room. “You actually work in here?” she added.
“Yes. I do all my typing and organizing, all my church and club activities here, even my sewing.” And Beatrice pointed to the far side of the room, which was covered with scraps of patterns, pieces of material, and clothes strewn across a metal bar hung in the corner.
Louise was nervous about entering the room. She remained at the door. “This is unbelievable.” And she tried to take in everything that was in the room. She had never been in this part of the Witherspoons’ house, and it startled her to see such disorganization from somebody who always appeared so orderly.
“It’s here somewhere.” Beatrice was still sorting.
“You know, if you threw some of this mess away, you could find what you were looking for.” Louise stepped over a pile of newspapers and moved into the center of the room.
“Maybe I stuck it in a book.”
Louise bent down and rifled through some of the old magazines situated against the desk. “Did you realize these are from the 1980s?”
Beatrice wasn’t paying her any attention. “It was an old edition. I took it from a bathroom in a restaurant.” She was intent on finding the article. “La Chadiere, or something like that,” she said.
“That doesn’t sound like any gardening magazine I’ve ever heard of,” Louise replied.
“No, that was the name of the restaurant.” Beatrice dropped to her knees and searched under the desk. “French,” she added.
Louise nodded. “Right.” She put the magazines down on the floor. “Why do you have all this junk?”
Beatrice stopped her search and yelled, “Oh, leave me alone. I hear it all the time. I’m a pack rat. I hang on to things too long. Dick says it constantly.”
From her knees she yanked open the top drawer of the desk, frowned, then stuffed the envelopes and receipts down and shut it.
She opened the next one. “I’m just afraid that I’ll throw away something I might need one day.” She pulled out a stack of papers and flipped through them. “I know I saw this thing only last week.”
“It’s not important. Just take me home; I’ve got some things I’ve got to do.” Louise wiped the dust off her hands onto the front of her pants and started to put her coat on.
“No. I came here to find this story for you, and I’m going to find it.” Beatrice pulled herself up from her knees and started focusing on the papers on top of the desk.
Louise noticed the piles of brochures and pamphlets, the shelves filled with books and folders, the unsightly mounds of material, shaking her head. “The thing is, Bea, if you don’t know where anything is, how do you plan on putting your hands on it when you need it?”
Louise saw the chair that was rolled away from the desk. She moved over to it and emptied it of the box that was on it. Then she sat down and began to twirl around. “You should just get rid of all this. I mean, what you got here is a landfill in your house, a fire hazard.” She whirled all the way around in the chair.
“Aha!” Beatrice said as she turned around to face Louise, who now had her back to her; the chair not having made it all the way around the second time. When Louise turned to the front again, Beatrice was standing before her, holding pages from a magazine in her hand.
“I knew I would find it!” Then she held it out to the other woman. “See, aren’t you glad I don’t throw things away?” And she lifted up her chest triumphantly, as if she had been vindicated.
Louise took the article from her and began reading. Beatrice shifted her gaze toward the mirror on the wall behind them and began studying her appearance. She was proud.
Since the shave of her head the year before, her hair had grown back thicker and curlier than it had once been. And she liked the way she had ringlets around her ears and brow. She checked out both sides, with pleasure. She needed to lose a few pounds, but for the most part, she was pleased with how she looked.
Louise read a bit and then reported to her friend, “Bea, this isn’t bonsai. This is a labyrinth.”
Beatrice turned from the mirror to face Louise. “What do you mean?”
“A labyrinth. This woman landscaped a labyrinth.”
Beatrice still appeared confused. “It’s not pruning shrubs, like you do? That Japanese thing?”
Louise rolled her eyes. “No. This is a path. In the woods. Trees and long grasses. This doesn’t have anything to do with bonsai.” She stood up and slapped the papers on the desk.
“What are you talking about? A labyrinth?” Beatrice reached for the article to see for herself. “What is that?”
“It’s a path, something you walk around until you reach a certain point, in the middle.”
“Well, what would somebody turn their yard into something like that for?” she asked, trying to read over the other woman’s shoulder.
Louise picked up the article again and handed her the magazine pages. “To center oneself. To walk and meditate.”
Beatrice flipped through the pages, scanning the information as if she had not seen it before.
“Seems like it would make a person crazy to me. Walking around and around, getting all dizzy and disoriented. How does somebody pray in a maze? I thought this was about somebody who made a nice garden for people to visit.” Then she pulled open the drawer and placed the pages inside.
“Now, why on earth would you stick that back in there?” Louise sat watching in amazement.
“Oh, you’re right.” And Beatrice pulled the article out and set it on the stack of magazines next to the trash can. “I keep stuff I’m not interested in down here.”
Louise started to say something about the absurdity of this kind of housekeeping, but the phone rang before she could speak her mind.
Beatrice walked around the desk and picked up the receiver. Several papers fell off the desk, but she didn’t notice.
“It’s Dick,” Beatrice said.
“Tell him hey,” Louise said.
“Lou says hey.” And then, “He says hey back.”
There was talk of Margaret and her report, details about the lunch, what they were doing, and what Louise had said about her office. Then Louise quit paying attention. While her friend talked, Louise reached beside the desk and picked up the article she had started reading. She sat down again.
She was intrigued by the Georgia woman’s work to clear a patch of woods behind her house and create this large garden, this retreat site. Why would Beatrice have thought she would be interested in the story? She read while the other woman talked to her husband.
“How long will you be gone?” Beatrice asked.
Louise kept reading.
“Well, will you be home for dinner?” Beatrice inquired while she pushed at the sides of her hair.
Th
ere was a pause while he answered. Louise stopped and glanced up at her friend.
“Okay, then,” Beatrice said after a long while and hung up the phone.
There was silence as Beatrice began haphazardly straightening the magazines on the desk.
“You ready to go?” Louise asked.
“Oh, yeah, I have to take you home.” And Beatrice stood away from the desk, staring at the phone.
“Bea,” Louise called out, “you okay?”
Beatrice nodded silently.
“What was the phone call about?” Louise folded the article and stuck it in her pants pocket.
“Hmm?” Beatrice asked as if she hadn’t heard.
“The phone call. It seems like it upset you.”
Beatrice kept picking up magazines and flipping through them.
“Bea!” Louise said sharply. “What’s wrong? Is something the matter with Dick?”
The other woman turned away from the desk and stared at the mirror. “No, he’s fine,” she replied.
Louise waited for her to explain.
Beatrice realized that she would have to tell more of the story. She examined herself, thinking she was now a little flushed, and answered. “It’s his brother or his brother’s wife. I don’t know which.” Then she straightened her blouse and smoothed down her skirt with the palms of her hands. “They live near Winston-Salem.”
Louise didn’t know Dick’s family, but she thought she remembered hearing about a sibling who lived somewhere close by. When Bea and Dick had started dating, Bea had thought it was his sister who lived close by, learning only after their wedding that the woman was Dick’s sister-in-law. His brother, Louise thought she had heard, had recently been placed in a nursing home.
“Is he all right?” Louise asked.
“Oh, sure,” Beatrice responded. “Did you decide you wanted to keep that article?” She’d noticed her friend reading it while she was on the phone.
“Yeah. I’m doing a paper on Georgian labyrinths.” It was meant to be a joke.
Beatrice nodded without laughing. Her brow was crossed as if she was worried, and Louise couldn’t tell if she was confused by what she had just said or if she was still troubled by the phone conversation.
“Bea, what’s the matter? What’s the thing with Dick and his brother?”
Beatrice turned to face Louise, who was still sitting in the chair away from the desk. She could see her friend’s concern.
“I don’t know.” She began picking up papers from the floor. Then she added, “There’s some story.” Louise waited for more. “Some secret he won’t talk to me about.” Beatrice fixed her eyes beyond her friend. “Something that the brother did or his sister-in-law is doing. I don’t know.”
Beatrice tapped the papers on the desk to square them up. “He goes up there all the time and comes home all torn up, and he won’t talk about it.” She set the papers down. “He says his brother is getting worse and that’s all that I need to know.” She lowered her head. “But I know something else is going on.”
She raised her eyes to Louise. “I know he’s always been close to Jean, but I don’t understand what’s happened that he can’t tell me. After all, I’m his wife.” And then, as if she were embarrassed to say it, “What could be so bad that he can’t talk about it to me?”
Louise said nothing as she thought about all the secrets a person holds, all the things somebody says and does not say, the clues in a marriage or in a friendship that point to topics open for discussion and those that are sealed.
She thought about Roxie and wondered if she had ever talked to her husband about her suspicions of her best friend, about the night Louise had gotten drunk and kissed her, then run out of the boardinghouse, staying away for a week, how they had never spoken of the event.
She thought about her own secrets, her own hidden memories. She thought about her mother and the odd way she acted around certain men in the family, guarded and keen-eyed, the relatives Louise was not permitted to visit.
She recalled the stories she had heard from the other women in the mill, stories marked with large chunks of time that were not discussed or reportedly not remembered, stories of lives that appeared to have started at the age of eighteen, lives without childhoods or parents or memories. Lives with so many things not said that it was easier to pretend they never happened than it was to uncover them.
“Everybody’s got secrets, Bea,” she said softly.
“I don’t have secrets,” she replied. “I’ve never had secrets!” She walked away from the desk and sat down in the chair in the corner near the sewing area.
“Then consider yourself fortunate,” Louise responded. “They usually aren’t something you’re glad to have.”
Beatrice faced Louise. “What’s your secret?” she asked.
Louise’s appearance changed. She hesitated a moment, seeming to think about the question, then shifted to face her friend.
“Which secret you want to know about, Bea?” She was forthright, steady.
Beatrice went red and turned away, shaking her head.
“Yeah, I thought not,” Louise said.
There was a heavy silence as the weight of what was asked and then taken back settled upon the two women.
“All my life, I’ve never had a secret.” Beatrice rested against the chair. “My family would tell each other things at the dinner table before I got there, and then Daddy would make them hush before I ever heard the joke or the story.” She dropped her hands in her lap.
“My sisters and their friends, they used to giggle and talk real low to each other, and I’d try to be a part of the group, try to find out the things they said. The things that made them blush and laugh and seem to come alive, the whispers behind a shield of hands, the silly notes they guarded like they were money or read privately and then tore up into tiny little pieces and scattered them in the fireplace.”
She looked away. “Everybody always said I was too young or that I would tell.” She stopped briefly, then added thoughtfully, “That I talked too much.”
Louise almost laughed out loud to think of Beatrice as a little girl. It was funny to imagine the kind of child she must have been.
“And then I had my own friends, and I’d find out all these things that everybody else knew days or months earlier and that nobody had told me.”
Beatrice’s bottom lip began to tremble, and Louise suddenly realized the magnitude of what the other woman was telling her.
“I was always the last to know everything, always, always last.” Beatrice began to cry. “And then there was Robin and Jenny, like two thieves they were so tight. And I wanted to be more than a mother to them. I wanted to be their friend. But as soon as I would walk into the room where they were or get in the car or sit beside them at the table, they’d just clam up, just quit talking, like I was the enemy or something.”
She drew in quick breaths. The tears stood in her eyes and then fell. She reached in her pocket and pulled out a tissue.
“And now this.” She dabbed at her eyes. “Now I’m married to a man who has this”—she searched for the right description—“this terrible burden of a secret that he won’t tell me.” She looked at Louise. “Me, his own wife.” She slid her hands down the front of her skirt. “What kind of marriage is it that you can’t trust your spouse to tell them this thing that makes you so unhappy, so bothered?” Her voice was stretched, yearning. “Or is it me?” She dropped her face in her hands. “Is it that I’m such a terrible person that nobody trusts me enough to tell me anything?”
And with that it was as if her heart burst, as if years, decades, of sorrow poured across the dam, breaking through every confidence, every assurance, every defense she had ever used to make herself believe it hadn’t mattered. “Am I really that bad of a person?”
Louise sat still as her friend fell into the pit of her own dirty little secret, her own cave of vulnerability that she had hidden so well and so long that no one could have guessed it lay buried ben
eath the veil of ease. Beatrice had never appeared to be upset by what she hadn’t known. She had only displayed concern when she couldn’t fix what she knew. Louise watched in astonishment as her friend emptied out her sorrow. She’d had no idea that this woman, this bothersome, socializing, busybody woman, could be so completely and terribly alone.
Louise did not get up from her seat. She measured every word she wanted to say from this marked distance between them. She waited and then began.
“Beatrice Newgarden Witherspoon, you are one of the finest women I know. You are kind and well intentioned. You are brave and caring and loyal.” She stopped.
Beatrice kept her face in her hands, but she was no longer sobbing.
“I don’t know why other people haven’t told you their secrets. I could not begin to explain the actions of somebody else. I can hardly explain my own actions.” She shrugged her shoulders and sighed, but Beatrice was not watching. “Older sisters and daughters I can sort of understand. You were the enemy to your children and a pest to your siblings.” She rocked back in her chair without losing the intensity of her concentration on her friend’s great concern. “And sometimes when girls are young, they just tell their secrets to whoever happens to be there at the right time. It isn’t a matter of trust or who you like more; it’s just about convenience, who was there when it happened. Who was at home when you thought to call and tell somebody.”
Beatrice lifted her head. Her eyes were red and puffy.
“And I don’t know what to say about Dick. Maybe he’s worried that this secret will change how you think about him.”
Beatrice shook her head, but Louise resumed talking before she could say anything in response.
“Or maybe it’s not his secret to tell. Maybe his brother or his sister-in-law begged for his confidence, demanded he not tell anybody. And even though that might feel awful to you, even like betrayal, it isn’t. This secret and not telling it isn’t about you or your marriage. It’s about them.” She stopped and then continued. “And you’ve got to let it be. You’ve got to be the one who trusts him. He’ll tell you when it’s the right time for him to tell you.”
