The Last Secret

by Mary McGarry Morris

  “I had a choice, didn't I? Thanks to you, Kenny,” she added with such genuine tenderness that his quick retort confused her.

  “Well, Robin doesn't have a Kenny, now, does she?” he said.

  So another piece fits into place: Robin did have a Kenny, just not enough of him.

  Ken is complaining that their story is far more sensational than it needs to be and Oliver refuses to tone it down.

  “So did Bob Gendron get laid off, too?” she interrupts.

  Ken looks confused. There is the slightest flush at his throat, in the soft flesh she used to love to kiss, right under his jaw.

  “He works there, right? CraneCopley? You got him the job?”

  “Oh. That's right. No, I think he's still there. One of the lucky ones. So far, anyway.” So smooth, so natural, his commingling of deceit and truth, insignificant tributaries trickling into one vast river.

  “Because of you, Ken.” Because of the paper, she wants to add.

  “This has nothing to do with”—here, the slightest hesitation— “them.”

  Of course it does. One way or another, like all the lies so convoluted, yet densely linked, the original motive is lost, indiscernible. Does he think he can get from one side to the other without getting wet, without disturbing, not just surface water, but the muck and stones, the slimy swaying reeds? She has hit a nerve. Again. But in his mind, the fault is hers; another setback. Last night, for the first time in weeks, they slept in the same bed until morning. And now his glance tells her that once again she is endangering everything he's trying to make right between them. Tonight, he will be curt, shrouded in the wounded air that is so hard on the children. They want to know what's going on, but can't bear asking.

  She has told him that she is willing to try, but on her terms, however slowly, warily, that may go. Honesty has to underlie every word and deed, every waking moment. If only she could demand an honest accounting of his thoughts. Now, for instance, his eyes are cold, unreadable, only the slightest twitch of his lower lip betraying him. Torment. Pain. Grief, she thinks, startled, for a moment, almost pitying him for the irony of his criticism of Lyndell Crane. For what had Ken been thinking? Hadn't he also had everything a man could want? What more had he needed? she wonders on her way down to Oliver's office.

  Oliver's smile breaks into a yawn as she comes through the door.

  “Why do you do that?” she teases. “You always yawn when you see me.”

  “No I don't.”

  “Yes, you do. I'm always afraid you're bored before I've even opened my mouth.”

  His laughter ensures the pretense that their last conversation never took place. That he enjoys her company was apparent early in their relationship. There are still times, though, when she considers him the most disagreeable person she has ever known. But warts and all, she likes him, if only just for liking her so much. His enormous desk is covered with papers, but in such neat piles she is always struck by the careful order of his work compared to the disarray of his personal life.

  “Maybe it's a warning. But if so, you're the only one who notices.”

  It's true, and though it's taken a while, she can finally read most of Oliver's signals. He doesn't ask her to sit down. He never does. She says she knows how busy he is right now with the CraneCopley story, but she needs to know if he's had a chance to look at the Medical supplement layout yet. He hasn't. She tries to hide her disappointment. And her impatience. This constant motion has overtaken her life. Staying busy, keeping sane. She'll let him get back to work, she says, moving toward the door. But, she adds, she'd really like his opinion.

  “Okay.”

  “So you'll let me know, then?”

  “What's to know?” He holds up his hands. “Family. My first priority. After that's the paper.”

  “Thank you.” They're talking about two different things. Or maybe not. Conscious of his intense stare, she smiles brightly.

  I'm sorry to have to call you in like this, Mrs. Hammond, but I don't know what else to do. Drew and I have had countless meetings. But all to no avail.” As he speaks, Mr. Carteil arranges Drew's World History tests for Nora to see. Three D's, the essay questions unanswered. “And now he doesn't hand in the term paper. Doesn't even bother.”

  Red-faced, Drew looks down. His big sneakers scrape under the conference table.

  “I've given him every chance.” His white-haired teacher sighs. “You know I have, don't you, Drew?” he asks in exasperation.

  Drew clears his throat. His head hangs lower.

  “Answer Mr. Carteil,” she says.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then why? What is the problem?”

  Drew shrugs.

  “Something's wrong, isn't it? A good student like you doesn't just wake up one day and decide to quit trying. Does he?”

  Drew shakes his head.

  “Drew,” she warns, almost in question, his sullenness more shocking than the failing grade.

  “No, sir.”

  “Then what is it?” Mr. Carteil asks as gently as frustration allows. Demanding, but a teacher of extraordinary kindness, he is a legend at the high school. He is well past retirement age, but every year the school board unanimously approves the extension on his contract.

  “I don't know,” Drew mumbles, hunching his head into his shoulders.

  Nora watches guiltily. She should have sent him to Billington Academy where Ken and Oliver went, instead of insisting on a public school education, a more realistic world, her argument then. At least away at prep school he would be spared the turmoil of this more disturbing reality, his home life.

  “Well, if you don't know, Drew, who on earth does? This work is your responsibility. No one else's. I was very pleased when I saw your name on my class list. You were excellent in freshman history, the kind of student a teacher needs in his class. Not just interested, not just bright, but excited by the work. Thrilled to be learning.” The old man's shrewd eyes shift between mother and student. “Is it me, Drew? Maybe you'd be better off with another teacher. Mrs. Leeman's got a smaller class, maybe it'd be more to your pace. You—”

  “No,” Drew interrupts.

  “What, then?” he asks hopefully.

  “I'll just drop it, that's all.”

  “But it'll be an incomplete, it's so late in the term.”

  Drew nods miserably. Mr. Carteil sighs. Before they leave, he offers Drew one more chance. If he turns in the term paper and gets an A on it, Mr. Carteil will let him make up one of the tests.

  “Oh, Mr. Carteil, that's so kind of you.” She is touched by the old man's sensitivity.

  But the prospect seems to deflate Drew even more. Their ride home is painful. No matter what she says he stares out his side window. She tells him how much she loves him, what a good boy he's always been, what a wonderful son, and that she understands his unhappiness and blames herself.

  “It's not your fault,” he says dully.

  Uncertain how much he actually knows, she tries to be careful.

  “Sometimes even the happiest families have … difficulties, honey, and now … now, we're going through it.”

  “What?” Drew's head spins around. “A bad patch?” he says, stinging her with the old family joke: Ken's blithe dismissal of trouble, no matter its gravity, never more than that, just a bit of a bad patch.

  “All the turmoil, Drew. I've been so wrapped up in my own problems I'm afraid I haven't taken your feelings into account.” She drives even slower. “I guess I was hoping you didn't care. Or notice what was going on. But of course you did, and that was selfish of me.” Suddenly blurry-eyed, she has to pull over. “I'm sorry. Oh,” she says, fumbling in her purse for tissues. “I don't want to be doing this. Crying like this. It's not fair to you, and I'm so, so sorry.” She covers her face with her hands. This is exactly what she doesn't want, to give in to her own pain again. “You're such a good boy. You are, and I've just been such a mess lately.”

  “That's okay. It's okay, Mum.” He
puts his hand on her arm.

  “It's not okay.” She blows her nose and takes a deep breath. “Because we have to talk. That's the important thing. To be honest. To be able to tell one another the truth. I don't know what's going on with you. But that's my fault, not yours. Drew?” His struggle to contain himself is tearing her apart. His chest heaves in and out, his head bobs as he rubs his fist against his mouth. “Say it. Please. Please, baby,” she gasps, reaching for him. His arms and back are alarmingly bony as he leans toward her.

  “Mum,” he cries, his newly deep voice cracking. “Don't get divorced. Please?” he sobs, tears and phlegm leaking down his cheeks and neck.

  “No! No. Of course not,” she says, truly stunned, and for the first time realizing that in all her misery and anger she has never considered divorce. Not even as a threat.

  “Clay said you're going to.” He looks at her. She has forgotten those enormous tears, how as a little boy they would pour from his eyes. Ignoring her tissue, he wipes his face on his sleeves. “He said it'd probably take a while, but you would.”

  “Oh, really? And how would Clay know?” she says, trying to hide her old irritation with Clay. A hyper child who has grown into a near-manic adolescent, yet he and Drew have always been buddies.

  “He wants it to happen. He hates his father. He thinks Dad's great. He said we'd be stepbrothers.”

  She stops breathing. “What did you say?”

  “Nothing.”

  “That's why, isn't it? You and Clay, you hardly ever—”

  “I don't know.” He shrugs. “We're into different stuff now, that's all.”

  Always the better athlete, Clay makes every team he tries out for. Until now, that never seemed to matter. Drew enjoyed not having to compete and still being able to hang out with the jocks who liked his quirky humor. Always such a good boy. Such a fine young man. Kind and sensitive. She blames herself for his moodiness these last few weeks, his bleak refuge in the den every day, the computer for solace.

  “Your dad and I are trying to get through … to get past this. He's a wonderful man. You know that, right?” Her loyalty to Ken is all but destroyed, but the worst thing now is to turn him against his father.

  Drew barely nods. The mask slips back over his face. His mother's son, she thinks. Afraid to ask for help.

  “He is. He really is. And that makes it even more painful,” she tries to explain. “When something like this happens in a family, everyone's affected, not just Dad and me, but you and Chloe. You're going along just fine—or at least you think you are”—here, she regrets her mirthless little laugh—“and then all of a sudden the ground shifts and nothing feels safe anymore.”

  He is chewing his thumbnail. She's lost him. Damn, she should have let him talk. Selfish to go on like this, trying to make herself feel better. “Drew? Is that how it feels?”

  “I guess.”

  “I know. You're sick of this, aren't you?” Leaning, she kisses his damp, bristly cheek. “That's okay. We can talk later.” She starts the car and pulls into the slow-moving traffic. “Just don't keep your feelings all bottled up. Your pain,” she says, straining over the wheel to see around the corner. “And your anger.”

  “That's what Mrs. Gendron said.”

  “What?”

  “That I should talk to Dad, and if I couldn't, then I should feel free to call her.”

  She can barely grip the steering wheel. Uncomfortable as Drew is, the words spill out of him. His first inkling came late last summer. He had slept over at Clay's house, only Clay forgot to tell his mother he was there. Early the next morning, really early, like four thirty or five, he heard his father's voice. Thinking he'd come to pick him up, Drew started down the hallway just as his father and Mrs. Gendron came out of her bedroom together. Mr. Gendron wasn't home; away on a business trip, Drew assumed. Or maybe in rehab, never a secret in the Gendron household. After that, no one ever said anything. But from then on, Mrs. Gendron seemed nervous around him, uneasy, always asking, “What's wrong? What're you thinking about, Drew? You're worried about something, aren't you? I can tell.” Pestering him with questions, Drew recalls, as if she wanted it out in the open but needed him to do it.

  “There were a couple other times,” he says, but as much as Nora has wanted details, she doesn't want them from him, her son. “And then this one day I'm in the kitchen waiting for Clay. As usual,” Drew adds, and Nora glances at him. Like his mother, Clay is always late. “Mrs. Gendron was cooking and feeding Lyra, and he still wasn't there, so I said I better go. ‘Wait!’ she goes, and she shuts off the stove, then she sits down with me and Lyra. She said she wanted me to know that sometimes things happen between people that maybe no one wanted to happen, but then when they do, people have to try and help one another. And it was weird, the whole time I'm like, what the hell's she telling me this for? And Lyra, she keeps banging her Barbie doll on my arm, tryna get me to laugh, and it's like, all of a sudden I know, I know what she's talking about. ‘I better go,’ I said. And then she holds my face, like this,” he says, hands cupped at his cheeks. “And she says how she loves me like her own son, that's how close we've always been. Both families.”

  “What did you say?” She can barely get the words out.

  “Nothing. I was like … freaked. I took off I went home. And I never went back. It's all just … just so fucked up!” He punches the dashboard so hard it leaves a dent in the pale blue leather. “Why? Why's it have to be so fucked up?” he groans. “I don't get it! I just don't get it!”

  She drops Drew off at home and tells him she'll be right back. As she drives, she thinks of that day at the beach years ago. The two women, in memory so much younger then, their backs to the hot wind, kneeling, squatting on the square blue canvas, its corners weighted with smooth, flat sea rocks, while they passed out sandwiches to the three children. Robin's peanut butter and Fluff, marsh-mallow spread a delicacy forbidden in Nora's kitchen. Nora had packed plums, grapes, yogurt, individual bags of Goldfish crackers, organic lemonade pouches.

  A brilliant day. The dazzling heat that had driven them to the water's edge, undiminished by the steady wind from the land. They shouted to be heard over the crashing foam-curdled waves, the wind's whine. Voices swelled around them, up and down the beach, children laughing, screaming, mothers calling, each part of something for which she had no name but deeply felt, an inner stillness, a pure moment, a riotous communion on the edge, the very edge of the earth. And for one so seldom trusting happiness, it seemed a kind of rapture, as she watched Chloe, Drew, and Clay run into the surf, hurling themselves headfirst into the churning tide, then surfacing, staggering against one another, sand streaming down their backs and legs, wet hair plastered in dark clumps over their brows and ears as the tide surged in. Squinting under the straw weave of her hat brim, she dug her fingers in the coarse wet sand, the water seeping instantly into each channel as they plunged into the waves again and again. With Nora as sentinel, Robin leaned back on her elbows, her face tanning so easily compared with Nora's pale white skin. Then lifeguards in orange trunks began patrolling the beach, buoys in hand, blowing their whistles. The surf was too rough. Chloe and Clay came running out of the water, but Nora couldn't see Drew. The waves were higher, breaking closer together.

  “Where's Drew?” she screamed.

  “He was just with us!” Chloe shouted, looking back in fear.

  As Nora ran in, sand was being sucked out from under her feet. When she was chest deep, she saw the flail of white sticks, his skinny arms, fighting the wind-driven waves, struggling to get back in. He was eleven. Only eleven, she remembers thinking, a speck in the vast-ness, the deafening, watery tumult. Never a strong swimmer, she dove against the wave, pulling herself as best she could toward him, getting closer, fighting the current. He was trying, but she could see the terror on his face as the riptide carried him away. Her arms beat against the surge. Faster. Legs kicking. Trying to scream his name, only swallowing more water, then, feeling herself being borne
away. Her chest ached, she was tired. Salt stung her eyes. Something snagged her neck, the loop of an arm, and she fought back, thrashing to push free of whatever was dragging her away from her child.

  “It's all right! They've got him! They're bringing him in!” Robin screamed against her cheek. “Stay with me!”

  “No!” Nora tried again to pull away. Robin wasn't taking them back in, but out, even farther from the beach.

  “Don't fight me. I'll get us in,” Robin gasped, pleading. “Trust me!”

  And she did. On her back, with her face against Robin's slick, wet flesh, she let herself be dragged with the clawing tide until they were no longer swimming against it, but free enough of the current to float in on the incoming tide. Hands reached out, people entreating them to stand, as they sat in the shallow waves and coursing sand, panting and sobbing in each other's embrace.

  Another memory to be retrofitted. Held up to the light. Dissected. Four years ago. Had the affair begun? And if so, why did Robin save her?

  Even as she turns onto Dellmere Drive she is warning herself not to do this. Pull into a driveway, go home. The image of Robin Gendron's hands on her son's face keeps her from turning.

  A remarkable woman. Sweet. Caring. Gentle. Not a mean bone in her body, her own words about Robin. It was only natural for the two families to stay so close through the years, given Ken, Robin, and Bob's lifelong friendship. Nora had welcomed their easy warmth, their affection and gentle humor with one another. She was always the moodier one, more reserved, questioning other people's motives, though never theirs, because they were genuinely good people, especially Robin, quick to laugh and lend a hand. Until Bob's worsening alcoholism these last few years, the two couples had gone out together at least once or twice a month. One spring vacation the two families had spent the week in Disney World in adjoining suites. Other vacations, in the Caribbean. Belize. Long weekends in New York City, Quebec, Montreal. Ski trips in Vermont. Some, she suspected, Ken picked up the tab for. But it didn't matter. They were all so close. So close, she'd even thrown a baby shower for Robin, who burst into tears, with forty whooping women yelling surprise as she came through the door with her pasta machine, thinking she was there to teach Nora how to make fettuccine. Still sobbing minutes afterward, with everyone crowded around, she had to be consoled, hugged and kissed, assured that she most certainly did deserve all this trouble and attention. My Lord, who more than her, always caring, always giving.