Keeping Secrets (39 page)

“How do you know how long Jesse will be away? He just went to the store.”

“No, he didn’t. I know where he went, and so do you.”

“How do you know?”

“I’ve followed him.”

Emma pulled back from Minor then and stared into his eyes.

“I was curious because I’ve wanted you from the first time I saw you, when you came to the door in this robe”—he looked to where he’d thrown it on the floor—“with the smell of sex all over you.” Emma leaned against his chest and closed her eyes. “That was August tenth—four months and ten days ago. It’s five days till Christmas, Emma. I’m a mighty patient man, but I’m ready for my Christmas present.” He tickled her ear with his tongue. “Won’t you be my Christmas present?”

Jesse was with Caroline this very minute, she rationalized. Doing this very thing. She ran her hand under Minor’s flannel shirt. His nipples hardened.

“Howdy, lady,” he whispered and kissed her gently. Then, in a while, not so gently.

She took the hand he’d offered her and led him into the bedroom. The room was cold, but neither of them felt the chill.

“Come to me, Emma.” He smiled, leaning back as she fell upon him. “Come on home.”

* * *

Winter rolled into spring. Along the highways the ice plant and acacia and mustard bloomed. Then in May the rains stopped. By the last week of June the hills were golden, edging toward brown, and dry. The threat of fire in the mountains was constant.

Emma and Minor saw each other almost every week, though never in the canyon again, always aboard his boat. While they bobbed happily in the ocean, Minor strummed his guitar and sang, “Lay, Lady, Lay.” They smoked grass and made love.

The drill went like this: the minute Jesse left for Caroline’s, one of them called the other. “All clear. Let’s go.”

Then came the day when Jesse forgot something and doubled back up the canyon road just as they were heading out. They met on the second wooden bridge, a sandwich with Emma in the middle.

Jesse got out of his truck.

“Where you headed?” he asked Emma. “I thought you were staying in.” Then he looked behind her at Minor, who waved.

Emma mumbled, “I need some things at the store. Got to get ready for the Fourth.”

“Hi, stranger,” Jesse called. “Haven’t seen you since you fell in our ditch. Been almost a year, hasn’t it?”

“I’ve been real busy,” Minor answered with his easy drawl. “You know how it is when you’re having a good time.” Then he reached out his van window and shook Jesse’s hand. They talked for a few minutes about the canyon waterlines, the potholes in the road that needed fixing.

“Well, we haven’t been very neighborly ourselves,” Jesse was saying. He turned back to Emma, who was leaning out the window of her car. “We ought to have Minor for dinner. How about next week?”

“Sure,” said Emma, swallowing hard. “Great.”

“Monday?”

Emma and Minor traded glances and answered in chorus. “Monday’s fine.”

“Okay.” Jesse smiled at both of them and headed back to his truck. “Let me pull off here and let you both by.” He waved as the two vehicles passed.

Emma trembled all the way down to the bottom of the road. At the foot of it, she signaled a left turn to Minor, down toward Los Gatos.

Jesse had found them out, she knew it. He was going to catch them and kill her.

Minor nodded and turned right, in the other direction, headed over the hill alone to Santa Cruz. When Emma pulled off the highway into Los Gatos, she looked into her rearview mirror. Jesse waved and smiled and kept going.

* * *

“Emma sure is a fine cook,” Minor said, helping himself to seconds of fried chicken and potato salad. “I thought I made some good chicken myself, but I take off my hat to you.” He tipped an imaginary one to Emma, then turned back to her husband. “You’re a lucky man, Jesse Tree.”

“Yes, I am.” Jesse smiled as he answered, slowly and deliberately, as if he meant what he was saying, but something else too.

Emma’s hands were clenched in her lap. She didn’t dare smoke, because she couldn’t hold a cigarette still.

I don’t know this man, she kept reminding herself. I don’t know a thing about him. She’d been chanting that thought like a rosary for the past two days.

“What part of the South are you from?” Jesse asked Minor as they pushed back from the table and retired to the living room.

“Georgia.”

“Emma lived in Georgia, too.”

“Really? Where?” He turned to Emma, his eyes big and green.

“Atlanta.” Don’t ask me where I went to school, Minor, she willed him. I can’t waltz through this charade. Keep it simple, please.

“You ever been to the South, Jesse?” Minor veered off as if he could read her mind.

“Nope. Never really wanted to.”

“Well, there’s some beautiful country. Great fishing and hunting. Funny people, wonderful sense of humor.”

Jesse concentrated on pouring glasses of cognac. “I guess I’d have a hard time finding much amusing.”

Minor pushed his imaginary hat back on the top of his head. “Well, I grant you there’s lots of assholes in the South. But you can’t lump them all together. Some of us are worse than others.” His big grin kept grinning.

Jesse had on what Emma called his bull look. Made him look twice as big and four times as scary. “It’s hard to know, isn’t it? I guess to me all Southerners look alike.”

Emma wanted to scream, Okay, you caught us. Now what are you going to do about it? She opened her mouth.

But before she could say anything, Minor, like a Southern gentleman avoiding an unpleasantry, changed the subject.

“You do that mighty handsome portrait over the fireplace?”

Jesse nodded. “A long time ago.”

“Beautiful woman.”

“My mother.”

“She looks a little like my wife, Kit.”

Emma sat up. Well, that was news to her.

“Your wife’s black?” Jesse asked, then his eyes narrowed, as if he was taking some new measure of this man sitting in his living room.

“No, but she’s part Spanish. Her skin has that same golden tint.”

Emma never asked questions about Kit, and Minor never mentioned her, except to say he was flying to LA or she was coming home.

Emma felt a little twitch of jealousy then, but that was silly— wasn’t it?

She and Minor had talked about it. Minor wasn’t interested in leaving his wife, and Emma didn’t know what the hell she was doing, she’d said, except enjoying him, enjoying sex again, as if Jesse’s need for her had made that part of her numb and Minor had warmed it up again. They were good friends—and lovers.

“Tell me, Emma,” Minor was saying now, drawing her back into the conversation. “I understand you teach at a junior college.”

She couldn’t seem to find her voice just then. She nodded.

“Great vacations, huh?” he filled in the space for her.

“Yes,” she managed to agree. “Especially this year.” Then, as if Minor didn’t know, she explained about her cooking, that after summer school she was taking the whole next school year off to apprentice in kitchens in Italy and France, that she hoped never to teach again.

“Maybe I’ll join her for a couple of months after Christmas,” Jesse said. “It’s been far too long since we’ve been in Europe.”

Emma stared at him, her mouth open. They’d
never
been to Europe—together. They’d never even been to New York. She hadn’t been able to get him off this goddamned hill, away from Skytop. What was this, a pissing contest?

“Emma’s been so busy with her friend Tony Boccia, we never go anywhere.”

Her mouth flopped open and shut.
She’d
been busy!
She
never wanted to go anywhere? She wanted to scream: What the fuck are you talking about?

Instead she smiled at Minor and said, “Jesse’s jealous of Tony because we’ve been testing recipes and I haven’t been cooking at home much.” She turned to Jesse. “But you know he’s gay, sugar.”

“Couldn’t prove it by me.” He turned to Minor. “I’ve never laid eyes on him. Could be Tarzan for all I know.”

“You’re going to be very embarrassed when you meet him, Jesse. I’ve been trying for ages to get you to come down and join us for lunch.”

“Let’s have him up here,” Jesse said, waving his cognac glass and spilling a little. Uh-oh, Emma thought. “Let’s see this
Tony
.” She blinked. Was he really jealous of her friend? Was she missing something?

“You ought to have a wife who spends all her time in LA kissing other men for a living,” said Minor. “
That’d
give you something to think about.” Then he explained about Kit’s acting.

“Doesn’t bother you?” Jesse swung his head in Minor’s direction.

“No more than it would bother Emma, I guess, for you to use life models.”

“I used to use nudes years ago, when I sketched and painted some,” Jesse said. “But not anymore.”

“What about that newel post?” Emma asked. “Didn’t you use a girl for that?”

He had indeed—used one. He’d forgotten.

“What was her name?” Emma was staring at him. Had she suspected something then? That was over a year ago.

“I can’t remember.” And he couldn’t.

Minor laughed. “See, that proves my point. Nudity in the name of art, doesn’t mean a thing, does it?”

And then Minor went on to admire Jesse’s furniture in the living room. They started talking about wood, which it seemed Minor knew quite a bit about, having enjoyed woodworking as a boy. The next thing Emma knew, Jesse was inviting Minor to visit him up at Skytop soon. Great, she thought. Then we can invite him and Kit over the next time she’s home, and we can all become great friends. Maybe
she
and Jesse could have an affair. Maybe we could
all
get into bed together. Maybe I’ll fall in love with
her
.

“Nice fellow,” Jesse said when Minor was gone. “We should have gotten to know him sooner.”

“Yes,” Emma said.

“Didn’t you like him?”

“Sure. Why?”

“You don’t sound very enthusiastic. I think he’d be someone you’d be curious about. Want to collect—as one of your specimens.”

Determined not to rise to the bait, she changed the subject. “That’s one dinner party down this week, another to go. You sure you want to do this on the Fourth?”

“Yes.” He seemed willing to move on to another subject, too, now that he’d fired his shot. “We’ll barbecue like we’ve always done.”

* * *

The day, no different from any other July day in California, was sunny and bright. Three couples gathered again—Maria and Clifton, she and Jesse, Rupert and, this year, Lowie.

“I can’t believe I missed last Fourth. No summer colds for me, ever again.” The three women were in the kitchen while their husbands were out in the lanai, stirring the coals.

“Can you just wish them away like that?” Emma asked.

“A woman can do anything she puts her mind to,” Lowie answered.

Maria and Emma exchanged looks. What did Lowie know about the last get-together when Caroline had been on Rupert’s arm?

“Ain’t that the truth?” Maria said with a smile.

Lowie laughed. “You’ve been so long with Clifton, you’re starting to talk black.”

“Well,
Emma
always does.” Maria defended herself. “I don’t hear you teasing her.”

“Nope. Emma talks Southern.”

“Sounds like the same thing to me.”

“Well, you may have a point there.” Then Lowie handed a bowl of her Waldorf salad to Emma to put into the refrigerator. “You know what, Emma, I think the only person here who doesn’t talk black is Jesse. He’s always sounded like a white man to me.”

“I know. He does, except when he’s playing. My stepmother, Rosalie, thinks he’s white when she’s talked to him on the phone.”

Lowie laughed. Her orange halo of hair wobbled. “You still playing that charade?”

“Sure am. It’s not hard, Lowie. My parents never visit.”

“But they call?”

“Mostly we write. But Rosalie calls every once in a while, and a couple of times when I wasn’t home she’s gotten Jesse. She’s never asked who he was.”

“Maybe she’s smarter than you think she is. You can never tell with these old gals. Maybe she’d just rather not know.”

“How’s your dad?” Maria asked.

“He’s doing fine. My friend who’s Daddy’s doctor was right. The medication fixed him right up. Rosalie’s been letting him out of the house again at night to play dominoes for almost six months. He walks home just like he used to.”

“I expect the exercise is good for him,” Lowie said.

“Yes, it’s good for him to get out,” Emma agreed. Then, as she said the words, she remembered again, as she had many times, Hattie smiling at her father in the airport. She’d gnawed on that smile a lot in the past year. No, it had to be her imagination. Her father was an old man. And Hattie was a colored woman. In West Cypress?

After dinner, Maria and Clifton left early for the drive back up to Berkeley. And true to form, as usual, Rupert wanted to stay for a while. Everything changes, Emma thought—Caroline and Jesse, Minor and me, Rupert and Lowie—and yet nothing. And, as always, I want everybody to go home.