Secret Brother (2 page)

1

Just like when I heard the terrible news about our parents and the news years later about Grandma Arnold, I didn't cry immediately. Something inside me wouldn't let me understand what I was being told. The words kept floating away like tiny bubbles caught in a breeze and bursting before I could bring them back. Nevertheless, I knew. Deep inside, where I went to find love and hope, where my best dreams were on shelves waiting to be plucked like books and opened during sleep, a cold, dark realization boiled and threatened to spill over and into every part of me. I fought it back, but it was oozing in everywhere. Despite my effort, I knew I would be soaked in the dark sadness in moments and be unable to deny it.

We had retreated to the lobby in silence, Grandpa resting his large right hand over the back of my neck and me clutching his shirt with my left hand. We needed to keep touching each other, comforting each other.

We sat on a pair of chairs facing the exam rooms. He held my hand and stared ahead; his face had never been more stone-cold. Somehow all the noise around us seemed to disappear. It was as if I had lost my hearing. We were waiting now to learn about Myra. She was having an X-ray. Would she die, too? Suddenly, my grandfather looked up. The doctor he had first spoken to was out in the hallway again, this time talking to a nurse. Grandpa rose and walked over to him. I couldn't imagine what he was asking, but whatever he said interested the doctor. Moments later, he was leading my grandfather back toward the exam rooms. I saw them disappear around a turn. Maybe Grandpa was finding out about Myra, I thought.

I certainly didn't move. I didn't know if I could even stand. My legs were still trembling. I was afraid to look at anyone, even though I could feel people staring at me. Had they heard about Willie? Were they waiting to see me crumple up in uncontrollable sobs? Some looked terrified themselves.

For some reason, I began to wonder what my friends were doing at that moment. Were they planning lunch, watching television, talking on the phone and giggling about silly things? What were Willie's teachers doing? Was anyone else anywhere thinking about him? How tense was the atmosphere around my grandfather's estate? Was anyone laughing or smiling? Were they all holding their breath, waiting for a phone call? Did someone call the hospital?

I looked at a little boy who was holding his mother's hand and had the thumb of his other hand in
his mouth while he bounced against her. Most people avoided looking at one another. A look might bring bad news. Everyone's eyes appeared shut down, as if they had turned to glass.

Finally, my grandfather came back around the corner, obviously having realized he had left me sitting there. He beckoned to me, and I hurried to join him. Maybe what we were told was untrue. Maybe Willie didn't die after all.

“They're putting a cast on Myra's left arm. It was broken, and she has three fractured ribs, a few bruises, and a slight concussion. It'll be a while,” he said.

Our concern was no surprise. Myra was part of our family now. Grandpa Arnold and Grandma Arnold's housekeeper of many, many years, Myra Potter became our nanny the day the terrible news arrived from Italy. She had also been a nanny for my mother and her younger brother, Uncle Bobby. A business associate of my grandpa had recommended Myra, who had been working for a Lord and Lady Willowsby in London. She came to America to work for my grandparents after Lady Willowsby died and Lord Willowsby moved to Cornwall to live with his son and daughter-in-law. Neither Grandpa nor I could imagine the house without Myra. She treated everything in it like her personal possessions and was, according to my grandmother, “more protective of it and your grandfather than I am.”

Myra was barely five feet four but had gray-black eyes that seemed to double in size when something annoyed or angered her. She had a habitually stern, lean
face on which smiles seemed to bubble up from some hidden place whenever she permitted them. I knew the maids my grandparents had were terrified of her, most not lasting more than six months; the grounds people, the gardeners, the pool man, and anyone who came onto the property to do any work made sure she was happy with what they were doing, even before my grandpa had a look at it.

“But what about Willie?” I asked now, hoping to hear a different answer.

He shook his head. His face was still ashen gray. When my grandfather was deeply upset about something, he seemed to close up every part of himself through which rage or emotion could escape. The steam built up inside him and made him look like he might explode. The only indication came in the way his hands and lips trembled slightly. Anyone who didn't know him well would probably not notice or would notice when it was already too late, especially if he was angry. And then, as Grandma Arnold used to say, “Pity the fool who got his engine started!”

Grandpa Arnold was always the biggest and strongest man ever in my eyes. He was six feet three and at least two hundred twenty pounds of mostly muscle. He owned one of the country's biggest trucking companies. He had been a truck driver himself, and because he hated the long days and weeks of separation from his family, he had put together his own company and built it to where it was today. It was even on the stock market now. I had no idea how rich my grandfather was, but to most people who knew us, he
seemed to be the richest man in the country. Wherever he went, people practically leaped out of their skin to please him.

He put his hand on my shoulder and then brought me into a hug. We stood while nurses and doctors went around us as if we weren't there, which made it feel more like a dream.

“Come on,” he said when he stopped hugging me. He took my hand and led me down the hallway to another room, where a nurse and a doctor were working around a very small boy. Despite the scary-looking equipment and the wires and tubes attached to him, the boy didn't even whimper. He didn't cry, and unlike any other child his age, he didn't call for his mother. He was lying there with his cerulean-blue eyes wide open but looking as glassy and frozen as the eyes of the worried people in the lobby. His pale face seemed to be fading into the milk-white pillow, making his flaxen hair more golden. I thought he looked like a fallen cherub, an angel who had floated onto the hospital bed and was still too stunned to speak.

“What happened to him?” I asked, sniffing back my tears.

“They say he was poisoned.”

“Poisoned?”

“With arsenic. They don't know if it was done deliberately or if he was eating something meant for rats.”

I grimaced. I was close to heaving up everything I had eaten all day as it was.

I looked up at my grandfather and saw something
different in his face. The terror, anger, and horrible sadness that had been there from the moment we had driven off to the hospital suddenly were gone, replaced with this look of awe and interest I had seen in him only occasionally since my parents' deaths and especially since Grandma Arnold's death. He always seemed impervious. It was as if he had a new limit to how deeply he would smile or laugh and how tightly he would hold on to the reins of his curiosity, especially about people. He did what he had to do for Willie and me, but I couldn't help feeling that he was moving about robotically most of the time and that we were very dependent on Myra to care for us.

I waited a moment to see what my grandfather wanted to do now. Why were we looking in on this little boy, anyway? How would this make what happened to Willie different? There was nothing that could make it any better.

“He was dumped off here,” my grandfather said, his eyes still fixed on the doctor's and nurse's actions around the boy.

“Dumped?”

He looked down at me. “Like the doctor told us when we first arrived, someone brought him to the hospital and left him without giving any names or telling what had happened. They said it all happened so quickly that no one could do anything about it.”

“But what does this have to do with Willie and Myra, Grandpa?” I asked.

He looked at me but didn't answer. He just looked
back at the boy and nodded as if he heard someone else speaking.

“Where is Willie?” I asked, sounding annoyed. Why didn't my grandfather take us to Willie's room instead of this little boy's room? Was he already too terrible to look at, his face distorted by death? I wanted so much to look at him, to touch him. Maybe if he knew I was there beside him, he would come back to life. I still believed in miracles.

“They're taking him to a place in the hospital where he'll be until the funeral director comes for him,” he said. Now his voice was thinner, his throat closing up. His lips and hands had that tremble again.

The word “funeral” brought an intense rush of heat to my face. I felt like a blowup of myself losing air quickly. My body seemed to be sinking in on me, collapsing.

“No,” I said, very softly at first, so softly that Grandpa Arnold didn't hear it. It was all taking a firmer grip on me. “No,” I repeated, much louder. He turned and looked down at me. He was still holding my hand. “No!” I screamed, squatting and pounding my hands against the sides of my body. “No! Willie can't be dead! No!” The nurse and the doctor stopped working on the little boy and looked at us.

Grandpa reached down and lifted me up. I realized immediately how silly that looked, a sixteen-year-old girl picked up like a child half her age. To him, it was just the natural thing to do, I guess. For a moment, that took my breath away.

“Shh,” Grandpa said, stroking my hair. He lowered me and then he turned with me, and we headed back to the lobby to wait for more news about Myra.

I slumped over in the chair, my head resting against my grandfather's shoulder. My emotional outburst had drained me of so much energy that I didn't think I'd be able to get up on my own when the nurse came to tell us Myra was ready and we could take her home.

I felt Grandpa's strong arm around my waist. He literally lifted me to my feet. Then he took my hand. The nurse, a woman who reminded me a little of my mother, put her hand on my shoulder and stroked my hair.

“I'm so sorry about your brother,” she said. “You have to be strong for everyone now,” she added.

Strong for everyone? What language was she speaking? How could I be strong for anyone now?

Tears were frozen in my eyes. I thought I probably looked as comatose as that little boy with the flaxen hair. We walked back toward the exam rooms, where the nurse led us to another exit. Myra was in a wheelchair. An attendant was waiting to wheel her out to Grandpa's car.

“She's under some pain sedation,” the nurse told Grandpa.

Myra looked terrible. Her eyes were mostly closed, there was a bad bruise on her left cheekbone, and her mouth hung open as if her jaw had been broken, too. The cast looked twice as big as her arm. Looking like this, a way I had never seen her, she
seemed much older to me and quite small. I wondered if she knew about Willie. As the attendant wheeled her out with the nurse accompanying them, I tugged on my grandfather's hand.

“Does she know about Willie?” I asked.

“Not yet. Wait,” he said. He rushed forward to help get her into the backseat.

The nurse gave my grandfather a prescription for Myra's pain medication. He took it and then nodded for me to get into the backseat with her.

“Don't let her fall over or anything, Clara Sue,” he said. “She's very unsteady.”

Myra groaned and opened her eyes more. “Where's Willie?” she asked me.

I didn't have to say anything. My tears did all the talking.

She uttered a horrible moan, and I put my arm around her and buried my forehead against her shoulder. Grandpa drove off silently. I lifted my head quickly and looked back at the hospital.

We're leaving Willie
, I thought.
We're leaving Willie
.

Myra cried softly in my arms as we rode back to Grandpa's estate. Everyone came out when we drove through the opened gate. Jimmy Wilson practically lunged at the car, and when Myra was helped out, he lifted her in his arms like a baby to carry her into the house. I could see that everyone had heard the news and had been crying. The person who would take it almost worse than me was our cook, Faith Richards. No one spoiled or loved Willie more than she did.

Myra was becoming more alert. “Put me down. I can walk!” she cried. “Don't be ridiculous.”

Jimmy paused in the doorway and let her down gently. She glared at him, trying to be angry about it, but anyone could see she was putting it on.

“Got your bed all ready, Myra,” My Faith said. My grandmother used to refer to her as “My Faith,” and Willie and I did, too.

“I don't need to go to bed.”

“You need to go to bed and rest,” Grandpa said sternly. “No back talk,” he added.

It was the first thing he had said since we left the hospital. Myra took one look at him and started to head to her room, which was next to My Faith's at the rear of the estate. Then she paused and looked at me. I knew she didn't want to be alone, and neither did I. I hurried to her side, and we walked through the wide hallway, past the kitchen and into the corridor that led to her and My Faith's rooms, all the while not looking at anyone. I was afraid that if I looked at any of them, I would burst into hysterical sobs.