Secret Lives

by Diane Chamberlain

  “I need to see you,” he said. “I feel like you're changing into a different person.”

  “I am changing, but not into a different person. For once, I feel like myself.”

  She got off the phone with Michael's question sounding in her ears: How serious is it? This relationship was a mass of impossibilities, most of which she was not ready to face.

  One afternoon, she let Ben up to her mother's old room to type a reference letter for a former student. She sat on the bed and watched him hunt and peck his way across the keyboard of her word processor. He was wearing a gray-and-white striped cotton shirt and his hair was damp from a shower. He looked beautiful, and she felt sure of what she was about to tell him.

  “Ben?”

  He pushed the print button and turned to face her.

  “I want to start taking the Pill again.”

  She watched his face as her words registered. “Does that make sense?” he asked. “It won't be effective for a couple of weeks, right? And you won't be here that much longer.”

  “Maybe I won't leave at the end of the summer.”

  He looked at her blankly for a moment. “Eden, you really need to think through what you're doing. You told me you were with Michael Carey to keep people from linking you with anyone else. You said you had to protect your public image. I'm about the riskiest person in the world for you to get hooked up with—you know that, don't you?”

  “Who's going to know what I'm doing as long as I'm out here in the boondocks?”

  He stood up and came over to the bed, put his hands on her shoulders. “I'm not going to argue with you. I'm not that anxious to get rid of you.” He reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out a wrapped condom. “Might as well use these up.

  She laughed. “You're carrying them around with you?”

  “I like to be prepared for anything.” He leaned over to kiss her but she held him away.

  “We can't make love here. Kyle and Lou are downstairs.” She remembered with a clarity that pained her the times she'd sneaked one boy or another into her bedroom in New York. Tex, usually. Bo on one occasion. They would do it on the floor to keep the bed from squeaking and waking up Kyle and Lou.

  Ben walked to the door and closed it quietly. “I can't tell you how many times I had to listen to the two of them going at it—those Colombian hotels had paper-thin walls.” He sat next to her and kissed her softly.

  “We have to be very quiet,” she said.

  “Like snowflakes,” he whispered, and he stood up to unbuckle his belt.

  At the breakfast table on the morning after the tramposo upset she asked Kyle for another notebook.

  “I'm begging you, Kyle, let me have it. I'm stuck in the screenplay because I don't know how Matt finally gets Kate to surrender.”

  Kyle carried his plate to the sink, then stood behind Lou's chair. He rested a gentle hand on his wife's shoulder, and Lou reached up to cover his fingers with hers.

  “What's your hurry?” he asked Eden.

  “I'm curious. Just let me read ahead a little, please?” He shook his head. “Sorry, honey. It'll be over soon enough. Don't rush it.”

  His words shook her. This was not a game. It was a real life she held in limbo inside her word processor, a real life that would end all too soon.

  “I'm sorry,” she said. “It's just that writing a screenplay still doesn't come naturally to me. I get nervous when I'm not sure where I'm going with it.”

  “You always were an excellent writer,” Lou said. “Even as a child.”

  “I never wrote anything as a child.”

  “You wrote papers in junior high and high school. You always brought home A's.”

  Eden laughed. “Your memory's inflated my grades over the years.”

  Lou looked up at Kyle with a question in her round blue eyes, and he nodded. “Come in the bedroom, dear,” Lou said. She wheeled herself down the hall with Eden and Kyle following.

  Kyle disappeared inside the walk-in closet of their bedroom and returned carrying a dusty cardboard box.

  “Your pack-rat uncle,” Lou said as she shifted from the chair to the bed. Eden sat next to her, and Kyle set the box on Eden's lap. She lifted the top. The first thing that met her eyes was yellowed typing paper: “The Pros and Cons of Legalizing Abortion,” by Eden S. Riley, January 7, 1970.

  “Oh, my God.” She laughed. “I'd forgotten I ever wrote this. She leafed through the stack of papers. History, science, book reports. Kyle had kept everything. And they were indeed all A's, except for the C's from her senior year.

  “I can't believe you saved all this stuff,” she said. At the bottom she found a stack of report cards held together with a cracked rubber band that broke when she removed it. She glanced through them. All A's and B's until her senior year. That year she'd even failed a couple of subjects, and the teachers' comments were consistent.

  “Eden needs to realize that her involvement in the Drama Club this year is hampering her academic performance,” Eden read aloud, her nose wrinkled.

  “They can eat their words now,” Lou said.

  “I loved reading your papers because it was the only way we had of knowing what was going on in your head,” Kyle said. “You never shared much with us.”

  “I didn't bring you two much pleasure,” she said quietly. She felt herself moving toward them with baby steps of intimacy.

  Kyle laughed. “What teenager does?”

  “I was testing you. I wanted to see how much obnoxious, despicable behavior you'd put up with before you got rid of me. I was always afraid you'd send me away.”

  Lou stared at her. “What did we ever do to give you an idea like that?”

  “Nothing. But everyone around me died or shipped me out. I figured it was just a matter of time until that happened with the two of you.”

  “I wish we could have reassured you somehow,” said Lou.

  “You did everything you could. You made enormous sacrifices for me. I know I appeared ungrateful at the time, but deep down I was so thankful I had both of you. It was just hard for me to tell you that.” She returned the report cards to the bottom of the box and looked at her uncle. “I feel as though I stole those years from you and gave you very little in return.”

  “Don't ever think that, honey,” Kyle said.

  Eden moved the box from her lap to the bed and stood up. “Well.” She smiled at both of them. “I just hope Cassie gets around to telling me she appreciates me before she's thirty-six.”

  The four of them went to New York for a few days early in July. This followed a painful discussion during which Eden persuaded Ben to let her pay for their train tickets and the hotel. Money was the sorest point between them, and she had to address the topic with great care.

  They got rooms with a connecting door at the Sheraton Centre. They watched the fireworks from a bench overlooking the East River, visited the Museum of Modern Art, and saw two shows on Broadway. Whenever they waited in line they played games—something Ben, Lou, and Kyle were obviously accustomed to doing. Ghost, Botticelli, Twenty Questions. The three of them were quick with each other, taking esoteric shortcuts through the games that left Eden dazed.

  The trip was fun, but Eden couldn't shake the feeling of dread she had at being in New York with Lou and Kyle again. From each point in the city she was acutely aware of how far they were from the intersection of Twenty-third and Park. It pulled at her from the seventeenth-story hotel window, and although the view was blocked by a mile of skyscrapers, in her mind's eye she could see that intersection clearly. She wondered if it had changed, if the streetlights still formed a spotlight in its center. She wondered how many other accidents had happened there.

  On their last night in New York, the four of them went to dinner in a small Italian restaurant in the Village, not far from where she had lived with Kyle and Lou as a teenager. They'd spent the day shopping, and by the time they were seated behind the red-and-white checkered tablecloth, they were hot and hungry. Eden and L
ou told the men what they wanted and left for the ladies' room.

  The rest room was cramped and dirty, with one narrow stall.

  “It's not wheelchair-accessible,” Lou said. “I'll need your help, Eden.”

  Eden supported Lou as she hopped from the chair to the toilet, where she struggled to lift her skirt and pull down her underpants. Eden's arms shook with the strain as she lowered Lou to the seat. She stepped outside the stall and held the door closed.

  “What do you do if you're someplace like this and don't have another woman around to help?” she asked.

  “Kyle comes in with me. We holler first to get the women out and apologize to anyone who walks in on us. But most people are very understanding.”

  Eden closed her eyes and leaned against the wall. She pictured the corner of Twenty-third and Park. Could Lou ever pass through that intersection without remembering?

  “I'm ready, dear.”

  She helped Lou back into her chair and turned it toward the sink just as a woman entered the rest room. Eden gave the stranger a quick smile while she waited for Lou to wash her hands. The woman stood in front of the closed bathroom door, making no movement toward the stall, and Eden assumed she was waiting for the sink. She watched the woman from the corner of her eye. Her greasy blond hair was hacked off chin-length. Her once white sweater was ratty and gray with a long mustard-colored stain down one arm. She wore gold polyester pants over doughy legs. There was something peculiar in the way she stood motionless, speechless. Something that made Eden's heart pick up its beat.

  “Excuse us,” Eden said as she grasped the handles on Lou's chair.

  “You ain't going nowhere till you give me your pocketbooks,” the woman said. Her eyes were big and brown, her stare unnatural and riveting.

  “We have to get back to our table,” Lou said. “I'm sure our husbands are wondering where we are by now.”

  The woman reached slowly, calmly, into her own purse and drew out a knife, a steak knife with a cheap plastic handle and a serrated edge.

  Lou made a sound of disgust and opened her purse. “How much do you need?”

  “The whole pocketbook.” The woman's teeth were brown and crooked. “Hand it over.”

  Eden thought of the contents of her own purse. Credit cards, driver's license, check-cashing cards, keys. All those things that were a nuisance to replace, and all those things that identified her as Eden Riley. This woman would think she'd struck gold. And then there were the pictures of Cassie, starting with the baby picture taken at the hospital.

  The blade of the knife caught the yellow light from above the sink, and Eden handed over her purse.

  “Money,” Lou said. “That's all you get from me.” Her voice was strong, but as she opened her wallet Eden saw her hands shake. It took her a few seconds to grasp the three bills and hand them over to the woman, who took them without protest.

  “Now why don't you give this young lady her purse back, dear,” Lou said. “Take the money but let her have the rest. I'm sure she has pictures of her family in there that are irreplaceable.”

  “It's all right, Lou.” Eden set her hand on Lou's shoulder. “Just let us out please.”

  “Stay back!” The woman held the knife in front of her menacingly, and Eden drew Lou's chair back as close to her as she could. Then the woman spun around, pushed the door open, and ran into the hall.

  Suddenly more furious than afraid, Eden pushed her way out of the room. She spotted the woman running down the long, dirty linoleum hallway toward the back door of the restaurant, the gold polyester pants straining over her bulbous rear end. “That woman stole my purse!” she screamed.

  A couple of workers darted from the kitchen and took off after the thief. Eden heard them laughing, saw their grins. It must have been a boring night for them.

  She went back into the rest room to find Lou shaking almost convulsively. “I'm a little dizzy,” Lou said.

  Eden wrung a paper towel out in cold water and laid it on the back of Lou's neck just as Ben pushed the door open. “What's going on? Are you two all right?”

  Eden explained what had happened, and Ben left to call the police. She knelt in front of Lou's chair. Her aunt's face was gray, her hands clammy and cold. “Put your head down, Lou,” she said.

  Lou obeyed and Eden put her arm around her, pressed her cheek against Lou's forehead. “You were so brave,” she whispered.

  Lou chuckled and lifted her head. “I'm an old fool, that's all. Let's get out of here. No air in here.”

  Two police officers met them outside the ladies' room, and the gleeful cooks turned Eden's purse over to her intact. She leaned against Ben's back to write them each a check for a hundred dollars, while Kyle pulled up a chair and sat down next to Lou.

  “It's fucking Eden Riley!” one of the cooks said as he looked from the check to Eden's face and back again.

  “Shhh.” Eden pressed her finger to her lips. “Our secret, okay?”

  The cooks walked away, shaking their heads and patting each other on the back, and Eden turned her attention back to Lou. From the distance she heard a siren, getting closer, louder, and she realized someone had called an ambulance. No. Her stomach churned.

  Lou heard it too, and there was panic in her eyes as she gripped Kyle's arm. “I'm all right,” she said. “Tell everyone just to leave me alone.”

  The siren wound down to a low moan as the ambulance stopped outside the restaurant. Eden felt dizzy herself. Nauseated. The dim light in this dirty hallway, the clatter from the kitchen, the questions and commotion from the police, made her head spin.

  Two uniformed paramedics, a young man and a younger woman, joined them in the hallway.

  “I don't need you,” Lou said, trying to wave them away. “False alarm.”

  The young woman ignored her. She wrapped the blood pressure cuff around Lou's arm and set her fingers on her wrist. Then she told the other paramedic to get a stretcher.

  “She should go to the hospital for observation,” she said to Kyle.

  “I'm fine,” Lou insisted, although her face was still chalky, her eyes glazed and a little wild.

  “I'll go with you, Lou,” Kyle said.

  Lou clutched his shirt in her fist. “No, please, Ky. I don't want to go to the hospital. Please, no ambulance.”

  “It's all right, hon.” Kyle squeezed Lou's hands. He looked up at the young woman. “No ambulance. I'll take her back to our hotel in a taxi. She'll be all right.”

  “You're taking responsibility?” the woman asked.

  “Yes,” Kyle said.

  “We'll drive you,” one of the police officers said.

  Eden leaned against the wall as she watched Kyle wheel Lou out into the hot evening air. Ben put his arm around her.

  “Come on,” he said. “They just put our food on the table.”

  “I can't eat. Could we please just go back to the hotel?”

  “That really shook you up.”

  “I'm sorry,” she said. “But I really want to leave.”

  Once they were outside, Ben slipped his arm around her waist. “I'm sure Lou's okay,” he said. “She looked as though she just needs a good night's—”

  “Eden Riley!”

  She looked up quickly as a man darted onto the sidewalk from out of nowhere and flashed a camera in their faces.

  “Thanks!” he called behind him as he took off down the street. She never even saw his face.

  “Damn.” She scowled.

  “What was that all about?” Ben asked.

  “I don't know,” she said. “I guess we'll find out when and if that picture ever sees the light of day.”

  The sound of screams and grating metal woke her. She bolted up, her own scream caught in her throat.

  Ben sat up and put his arms around her. “You're all right,” he said. “You're here with me.”

  She pressed her fingers to her eyes. “It seems so real.”

  “Was it the same dream you had that night in my cabin?”


  She nodded. “They'd stopped. But I guess it's being here in New York with Kyle and Lou. It brings it all back to me.” She looked toward the window and felt the odd electric pull of Twenty-third and Park again. “It's Lou's accident. I see it playing out in front of me in slow motion. And I feel so helpless.”

  “Why do you call it Lou's accident, as if you weren't with her?”

  She wanted to tell him the truth. “I wasn't with her. But I saw the whole thing. It was sickening.”

  “They told me you were in the car with her.”

  She shook her head.

  Ben was quiet. He slipped his fingers between hers, locked their hands together. “Maybe it would help if you told me about it.”

  “I can't.”

  “But look what you know about me. You know everything.”

  “Yes, but you're innocent. I'm guilty.”

  “Of what?”

  She didn't answer.

  “Whatever it is happened a long time ago.”

  “You won't be able to look at me the same way once you know.”

  “There's nothing you can tell me you did at eighteen that could change the way I feel about you now.”

  “I was nineteen.”

  He laughed. “Oh, that's different.”

  She had never told a soul, not even Wayne, what had happened that night, but she knew she was going to tell Ben. She would have to start way back, have to explain it all, or he'd only be able to see the ugliness in what she was about to say.

  She lay down next to him again, settled into his arms.

  “I lived for Kyle and Lou's visits when I was little,” she said. “They were like folk heroes around our house. Bigger than life. They dressed differently than anyone I knew, and talked and acted differently. They only made it to Lynch Hollow once or twice a year, so their visits were a major event. In between visits they'd send me wonderful gifts.” She told him about the huge rocking horse they'd sent her from South America, brightly painted as if it came off a carousel, with real horsehair as its mane and tail. “The only times I felt loved after my mother died were when they were around.