“His princess? Oh, come on, Stephen, please. That's not even funny.”
“I know. I never did understand the attraction. The big poufy hair, oooh!” He cringes. “But a hound's a hound. Or so they say.”
“Stephen!” She looks at him. “I don't want to do that. I'm not going to start looking under every rock. I mean, after all, the children. He's their father. I'm trying to respect that. It's hard, but I have to.”
His mouth puckers. He is incapable of hiding his feelings. Part of the reason he was never a practicing lawyer, or heterosexual, he confided once.
“Such noble sentiment, my dear. Stay vigilant, though, and protect thyself.”
“I know, but—”
“No! No buts. Protection, that's the most important thing here. From this point on it's all about”—he rubs his fingers together—“who gets what.”
“Yes, and Ken and I will—”
“Ken's an ass. Start with that and the rest'll be easy.”
“Stephen,” she warns, looking toward the door: her children.
“Nora,” he says, in the same intonation. “This is more than a marriage on the rocks. It's not just you and Ken, it's Oliver and me, it's the paper.”
“Well, those are things Ken and I have to work out. I know it's complicated, and I appreciate Oliver's concern, but it's not going to be like that. Believe me.”
Stephen finishes his drink and sits back, his lean face grooved in shadows. He begins by saying that he doesn't want to hurt her. He's here because there are things she has to know, certain facts that Oliver is unable to articulate. Three years ago Ken asked his brother to buy out his share in the paper. He wanted to get a divorce and marry Robin, and he needed money to support the two families. Oliver refused, so Ken took the same offer to Stephen, who also turned him down. A few weeks later, Ken returned with another proposal. Or threat, as Oliver saw it. If they wouldn't buy him out, then he intended to file a lawsuit contesting their father's trust that prevented him from selling his share to anyone but his brother or cousin. Oliver laughed him out of the office and then called Robin Gendron to tell her in no uncertain terms what he thought of her. This caused a breach between the brothers for months. It was right around that time that Nora returned to work at the paper. A good move, Stephen says, because it forced the brothers to at least be civil to each other. And also because Oliver was counting on her presence to keep Ken on the straight and narrow. But Ken persisted in wanting to be bought out. It was Stephen who finally got them to agree that at the end of two years a sale would be negotiated. In the meantime, though, Ken had to do the right thing: a promise Oliver thought Ken had kept.
“What do you mean, a promise?” Nora asks. She feels short of breath.
“That he'd stay with you.”
Stephen's voice plays like a recording, deaf, blind, heedless.
“Oliver figured by that time he'd be over Robin, that it'd be just one more affair.”
“One more?”
“Oh, come on, Nora.” He leans closer, his sibilant whisper, little whips lashing her face. “You can't be serious.”
Stop it! she wants to scream. Why are you telling me this? It's too much. I can't do this anymore.
“Oh my God, you are, aren't you? I can't believe this. Some kind of detective! Where do I start? I mean, it'd be quicker telling who he didn't f—” He catches himself.
She stares as he lists the affairs, wondering how many times this practiced little riff's been recited at parties, all the friends, women at the paper, names she's never heard before. Bibbi Bond. “Annette even. One time she was here doing the kids' portraits and he came on to her. Kay, your friend. She finally had to sic Oliver on him. But what'd she expect? I mean, she let it go—”
“Don't.” She holds out her hands. “Please.”
“Well, probably won't make you feel any better, but that kind of crap's been over for a while now.”
Because through the years of Ken's forced union with Nora, he stayed faithful to Robin by not sleeping with other women. Actually, the ideal arrangement, Stephen says, for spineless Kenny who couldn't bear confrontations. His family was intact and he still had Robin, who had little choice except to wait it out. But it was becoming an increasingly expensive arrangement for Ken with Bob's chronic unemployment. At the end of the two years, Robin wanted out of limbo. She began putting pressure on him. Back he went to Oliver with the same proposal, still never mentioning the child. However, with profits at the paper slipping, his brother managed to put him off, for almost another year. Apparently, though, Robin had had enough. She didn't care about money or shares in the paper, and if Ken still couldn't bring himself to tell his wife, then she would.
“And then came the stroke, so what could Ken do, he had no choice but step up to the plate. Brilliant move, though, the detective.” He winks at her. “Because that's when Kenny's dark little world started spinning out of control. Finally, somebody had to do something.”
Everything makes sense now And nothing does. So much that never will. The phone rings. She's afraid to answer. Afraid of Eddie Hawkins, afraid of friends, neighbors, her own sister, who keeps leaving messages: she really wants to come visit, why won't Nora call, is something wrong? There is, isn't there? In her bathrobe for days, blinds drawn, sleeping while the children are in school, claiming she has the flu, she can barely go through the motions when they get home. Chloe steeps bay leaves in mugs of broth, carries up dry toast points. Her miasma ends this afternoon with Drew and Chloe, arguing. She runs downstairs to find him screaming at his sister. Over nothing, really. Chloe told him to stop complaining he was out of clean underwear and wash his own damn clothes. He punched the laundry room door, stands there now holding his hand. He can't stop crying. Chloe is hysterical. Get away, he warns them both. Leave him alone. Just leave him alone. She won't, she can't, she says, holding him.
An examined life, Father Gendron said. How could she have been so blind for so long? That her own children knew the truth about Lyra devastates her, not because they kept it from her. She understands their reluctance to see her hurt and, probably, even more compelling, their fear of breaking up the family. But what she can never forgive Ken for is the painful weight of their guilty burden, entangling them in his secret. It tears her apart now as Drew finally tells her how he found out.
“Ask your dad. Go ahead, ask him,” Clay growled in his ear, pummeling his own shame and rage into his childhood friend, who didn't believe him.
Days later, Drew confided in Chloe. She said he was crazy. Clay Gendron was sick, a liar, she declared, a sadistic asshole. Of course, it wasn't true. It couldn't be, she insisted. Whatever had happened between Dad and Mrs. Gendron (Chloe no longer calls her Robin) was bad enough, but there was no way Dad was Lyra's father. It had been the night Nora went out with Kay that Drew finally confronted Ken, with Chloe looking on in disbelief Ken refused to answer his son. He didn't admit or deny it.
“This is not a conversation I'm going to have with either of you. Now or ever again,” he said coldly before walking out of the room.
“Then it's true! It must be!” Chloe cried on her father's heels, all the way up the stairs. “It is, isn't it?”
The click of his bedroom door lock was all the answer she got, or needed.
“I can't believe this. I can't believe this is happening,” she sobbed on the landing. Her father never opened the door. Drew came up and calmed her down. It would be their secret. Their mother had been hurt enough.
On Saturday Nora is clearing out closets, a catharsis of almost manic energy. She can take care of everything, her children, herself, and doesn't need anyone. It's a relief to be getting rid of it, all the excess. And yet, she's quickly tiring. It's not the physical effort that's so draining, but this mind-racing intensity that makes her realize how close she is to the edge because there's nothing she can do to make things right, but, my God, she has to do something, has to keep moving, keep busy. Staggering under armloads of winter coats and jackets
, hers and the children's, she carries them out to the garage, piles them into the back of her car. This afternoon she will bring them to the dry cleaner. Next, she jams Ken's coats and jackets into two jumbo trash bags, drags them into a corner of the garage, along with the other bags of his wrinkled clothes. Vindictive and juvenile, but better than putting them curbside for trash pickup, which she had actually considered. So far, she has managed to avoid him at the paper. Thursday and Friday she called in sick.
Beyond that, she's done little else, except try to keep busy around the house while staying as close to Chloe and Drew as they'll allow. Pain has been their bond these last few months. At least now with the truth, they seem more themselves, still wounded, but softer somehow. Almost more real, as if they've returned from the land of betrayal with a deeper appreciation of each other.
Dinnertime: their bright voices and quick laughter, the music blasting from Chloe's iPod, like stuffing holes in a dam with newspaper, a flimsy effort, but right now all they can manage. The fragrance of duck sauce and garlicky chicken wings fills the warm kitchen. The two shopping bags on the counter contain enough food to feed three families, Nora declares as she removes the steaming hot containers. Now she is the permissive parent. If Chloe wants pipa tofu she should go ahead and order it, even though she is the only one who likes it. And Drew can get whatever he feels like and, for once, won't have to share with the rest of the family. Small triumph saying it, emphasis on family. Because that's who they are now. Stronger without him. Better. And who does she think she's fooling? Them. She has to.
“My Lord,” she says, prying off the lids. “Six appetizers. What were we thinking?”
“We weren't. That's the point, isn't it?” Chloe says, and with her quick glance at her brother, Nora knows she's trying to ignore his grunting as he gnaws teriyaki steak off the skewer.
Soothed by the familiarity of their hungry pleasure, Nora enjoys watching them eat. Sustenance. The comfort of simple rituals. What fine children, especially Chloe, who even as a baby seemed to know what came next, what needed to be done, even when Nora, in her overcautious, by-the-book mothering, didn't. She was always so forgiving and caring, especially with her sensitive little brother. Drew's misfortune, Nora thinks, is to be too much like herself, tentative, wary, afraid to take a chance, always waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“Here, Mom.” Chloe passes her the container of Szechuan shrimp. “But, careful, it's spicy.” She and her father love spicy food.
“I can handle it.” One bite and Nora's eyes water and her nose runs. She reaches for her water glass and Chloe tries to smile, has to look away.
Twenty minutes later Drew pushes back from the table with a groan and a soft belch. Chloe gets up, rinses her plate in the sink. Otherwise, she'll just keep on stuffing herself, she calls back over the running water. A small bone cracks as Nora bites into another chicken wing, not from hunger, just to feel normal again. Drew lines up the cookies, breaks them open, his father's way, in their cellophane wrappers. He is reading their fortunes to them when the doorbell rings.
Nora freezes. No. Please. Not Eddie Hawkins. Not now. Not here. Drew looks at her, but his concern springs from hope, like the expectation in Chloe's voice. Their father. They want him back. Just as Alice said, children will endure and forgive anything to be with their parents.
“I'll get it!” Chloe flies into the front hall, hurries back. “It's Mr. Gendron.” She grimaces, gesturing toward the shadows.
“Nora.” His doleful intonation holds her name in the dark hallway like a long-tolling bell. She turns on the overhead light. He's lost weight. He looks dingy, inconsequential, a thing too often and carelessly handled. Because his nose and eyes are so red, she assumes he's been drinking, until he speaks, and she realizes he's crying. He keeps wiping his eyes, but the pity she feels is for herself and her children.
“This is a mess. It's all a mess. Robin, she … she wants a divorce. At first I didn't believe her. She was always saying things like that, warnings so I wouldn't drink, so I'd stop. But now I know. It's true. It—”
“Bob. The study.” She follows him in, leaves the door open. Of course Chloe and Drew are listening. And why shouldn't they? Let them decide for themselves. They still don't know about all the other women, but sooner or later they will. She knows they shouldn't hate their father, and yet she wants them to, wants to be all that they have. Selfish as it is, in their pain she finds strength. And solace. And some slight triumph, however thin and cheaply veneered. They need her and love her, now more than ever. And their dear father, once so revered, deserves their anger and resentment, every scathing bit of it. But in the end, whose will be the bigger price to pay? The deeper loss? She gets up and closes the door.
Bob sits, knees wide, sobbing into his hands. His beige V-neck sweater is stained and baggy, his pant cuffs frayed. He wears old, dirty sneakers. The stitching on the right one is torn. Compared with Ken, he always looked messy. Robin used to joke that even new clothes looked secondhand on Bob. Nora always felt tolerated by him, easily dismissed and overlooked. Ken's wife and Robin's friend, but to him always the outsider. She had no history, didn't really get them. Together they could still be children while she was the menacing grownup, watching them trifle their lives away. Suddenly, she despises him, a snobbish, shallow weakling.
“I can't believe it. She's changing Lyra's birth certificate. She wants Ken's name on it.” He rubs his eyes. “The way she said it, like, now all the rest is details.”
“Which it probably is,” she says coldly. He's yet to say he's devastated, sad, disappointed, or even doubtful that he's not Lyra's father. She remembers Robin's complaining about his lack of enthusiasm. About the pregnancy, she wonders, or the child herself? Has he known all along? She can't bring herself to ask.
“It's all my fault. I know it is,” he weeps. “I just kept fucking everything up. Everything. She kept telling me, ‘I can't live like this,’ but, I don't know, I just couldn't get a handle on things. I tried, but then I'd … I'd just … and now … now it's all gone. Everything.” Face in his hands, he hunches over his knees and can't stop his wheezy sobbing.
“Don't,” she says, fighting tears now. “Don't blame yourself Please, Bob.” She throws up her hands. “They didn't care about us. And we just made it easier for them, that's all.”
He looks up. Odd, the way he peers at her, more bewildered than distraught, or even angry.
“It's not just Robin.” He chokes on her name.
“No. I know.” Sympathy stanched by his knee-jerk defense, she is amazed that he continues to make excuses for Robin. Pathetic. He expects her to blame Ken, not his dear wife.
“It's Ken. He's like my brother. I can't remember a time not knowing him. All my life … we were … we were inseparable.”
In her disbelief, she can only stare at him.
“What am I going to do, Nora?” he pleads. “I don't know what to do.”
She doesn't answer and instead pats his hand. For without Robin and Ken to love and resent, what will he do? How to justify anything now, sobriety, drunkenness? They've been his whole life, his two lode stars, brilliant but blinding in their complete attraction to one another. They've loved and coddled, and used him.
Eddie has been trying to see Robin for days. She won't answer the phone or come to the door, why? he pleads, rushing alongside her mother to the house.
“See!” He holds out a fistful of money. “I just want to help her, that's all. I gotta tell her what's going on. Before something happens.”
The old bitch flips open her cell phone, to call 911, she warns.
So he's back in the car. His whole world has collapsed. He knows he should leave, just go before it's too late, but that's the problem. Knows he should, but can't, because that's exactly what he needs: something to happen. It's this feeling, like she's stuck in his brain, and he can't get past it until she's out. It's always this way, only this time, worse. This time he's scared. Because he's getting old, because
his head's so messed up. It always hurts. He can't even eat. He's not thinking straight. Usually comes on fast, suddenly, the black rage and he strikes. And then it's over.
But this time he's consumed. This time he can't do what needs to be done and move on. Nothing's logical this time. The pieces don't fit. Hasn't slept in days. Maybe he's dying, or maybe he's already dead, and this is all hell is, fog. Confusion, he thinks, waiting at the corner, waiting, and, sure enough, she passes him. Again, he follows her along this same route. To the outskirts of town. Past the country club. Wrought-iron gates and high shrubs. Hidden driveways, one huge house after another. At the weathered sign, she turns. FairWinds. Up the long, bumpy road. But he parks down below on the street and waits. Two hours she's been in there, same as yesterday. He gets out, trudges up the rutted road, to a sheltering grove of hemlock trees. He brushes pine needles off the pitch-blackened granite bench, then sits down. He stares up at the brick mansion. Slate roofs, porticoes and balconies, French doors, stone urns gray with weeds, and he feels runty and insignificant, unwanted, never good enough, always scrambling after scraps, the little he's ever had, while she's in there, inside with him. Fucking Hammond and she wouldn't even let him touch her. Making him the fool. Taunting him. Daring him to. It's her fault. How many more chances does she deserve? One—he'll give her one.
His eyes open with the racing engine. Her silver minivan flashes by. Asleep for only a minute, and he's missed her. He runs down to his car. With every corner and bump the big box thumps against the back of the seat, reminding him what an ass she's making of him. But not anymore. No, why should he? When it's done, he'll leave. But maybe she'll listen, and he won't have to. He's tired. There she is. He drives so close behind he can see her face in the side mirror. Good, she's scared. She stops at the red light and he lets his bumper goose hers with the slightest tap. Again. When the light changes she turns suddenly, so does he.
The Last Secret Page 26
