Secrets 01 Secrets in the Attic (6 page)

"You didn't tell your mother about that?" I asked incredulously.
"No."
"Why not? Karen!"
"You don't understand how it is. I already explained how it is when I complain about anything. I was afraid she just would accuse me of lying because I didn't like him She would have said I dreamed the whole thing. I was afraid she would accuse me of making trouble for her and for us, and so I hoped it would never happen again."
"How can she not know herself, especially since he's doing something like that at night?"
"I guess I have to tell you, now that you've made me tell you this."
"What?"
"They don't sleep together anymore," she said. "Don't sleep together? What do you mean?"
"It's not brain surgery, Zipporah. They don't sleep in the same bed."
"Then . . . where does he sleep?" I asked, terrified that she was going to say he slept with her.
"At first, I think he just slept on the sofa in the living room. Lately, he's been sleeping in the apartment."
"Oh." That answer brought some relief. "I can't imagine my father leaving my mother at night and her not becoming very disturbed about it. Your mother hasn't said anything?"
"Not to me. Maybe she is happy about it. I can understand it if she is. I pretend I don't know. That's another reason it's so hard to talk to her about it all."
"You can't lock your door?"
"He's the only one with keys to doors other than the front door in this house."
"That night I saw you walking in the village, crying. Was it because of this?"
"Yes. I knew he would be coming to my room later. I was thinking of just walking forever, but I had no place to go, and it got cold."
"You could have come to my house."
"And then everyone would know, Zipporah. How would you like people to know that was happening to you?"
"Well, he should be arrested or something!"
"Oh, that would be just great. That would solve everything. The drugstore would go out of business, and we'd definitely be out on the street. Besides, how do you think people would treat me, look at me? I can tell you. Remember when we all learned that Paula Loomis's brother might have raped her? Remember how everyone treated Paula, stayed away from her? It was as if it was all her fault and she was dirty or something. It's why she dropped out and went to live with her aunt in New York City. Not that I really care what people here think of me," she said. "It's what would happen to my mother here. She would only blame me and hate me."
"Well, what are you going to do, Karen?"
"I don't know. Most nights, I lie here terrified and can't sleep. It upsets my stomach and gives me headaches."
"How many times has he come into your room?" "Enough."
"Did he do anything else?"
"What do you think?"
I shook my head. Dared I ask more, pursue, force her to give me the grisly details?
"I'll draw a picture for you. He comes in here with just his bathrobe on. He's naked beneath it."
"Oh," I said. Actually, it was more like a sigh of horror coming up out of my lungs. "I' m sorry," I said.
"Forget it. I don't want to talk about it. Don't ask me anything else. I'm getting sick again just telling you about it, and it's making my headache even worse."
"Doesn't your mother want to know why you're not feeling well?"
"She thinks it's just my time of the month. It's never been easy for me to have a period. She knows that, so she accepts that excuse."
I nodded. "Are you going to go to school tomorrow?"
"Probably."
A multitude of things ran through my mind, especially when I recalled my conversation with my mother. Karen could get pregnant. What should I do, say?
"And you still don't want to tell your mother about Harry and what he's doing?"
She looked away.
"Karen?"
"I said I was finished talking about it! I told you, it's making me sick to my stomach."
"Okay, okay. Do you want to know the homework assignments for tomorrow?"
I felt silly even mentioning it, but it was the fastest way to change the topic.
"Yeah, I'm dying to know," she said.
I looked down at my hands again.
"I wish I could help you," I said. "I really do. I wish there was something I could do."
"Well, there isn't, so stop thinking about it. Okay, what were the homework assignments for tomorrow?" she asked, and got up to get her notebook.
None of it seemed very important now, but I rattled it all off for her.
"I can help you with anything."
"I'll do it later," she said.
"You want to come over to do it? Ride your bike? Maybe you can come to dinner."
"No. My mother thinks I'm still not feeling well. I'll have to stay here tonight. Maybe tomorrow night," she added.
"Okay. Great."
I stood up and looked at her bedroom door.
"Why don't you put a chair up against it?" I suggested. "You know, brace it under the doorknob and . . ."
"Just go home, Zipporah," she said, and sighed as if I were a child "I'll see you on the bus in the morning."
"Right," I said. .I started out.
"Thanks for insisting on being my best friend," she said when I opened the door.
"You don't have to thank me."
"Okay, so I take it back," she said, and laughed.
Just like that, we were back to being who we were. It was as if we had both detoured through a nightmare and awoken together.
"Mindy Sages has a pimple the size of a pebble on the tip of her nose. You should see her. She walks around like this," I said, putting my hand over my face.
"She oughtta get one of those face masks that Arab women wear."
"Or just wear a bag over her head."
"Or wrap herself like the Invisible Man."
"Right. When you see her, you can ask her who's her friend."
We laughed. Mindy Sages was one of the zeros Karen had identified from day one. She was always very snobby, especially to us.
"I'll walk you to the door," she said, suddenly full of happy energy. She followed me down the stairs.
Just as we opened the front door and I stepped out, her mother drove in.
"If you're sick, Karen, why are you having friends over?" she demanded after she rolled down her window.
"She brought me the homework, Mother. Is that all right?"
"Oh," her mother said, and rolled her window up before driving the car into the garage.
"See what I mean?" Karen said. "She would have had a fit if I even mentioned going to your house tonight. We all have to play our parts here," she said. "This is the Pretend Central System, WPCS. See you," she said, and closed the door.
I felt as if she had died. Now I was the one who felt sick to her stomach. I couldn't look at her mother. Why didn't she have the same built-in sensitivity to Karen that my mother had to me? Why didn't she realize something terrible was happening in her own house to her own daughter? And then I had a more terrifying thought: What if she did, and she didn't care?
I hurried down the walk to start my trek home.
What would I do about all this now? If I didn't keep her secret, do what I promised, she might just kill herself as she had threatened to do. On the other hand, I hated not being able to help her. How easy it would be for me to go to my mother and tell her and get her to do something. My father was a lawyer. He could get Mr. Pearson put away, I thought. That was where he belonged.
But then, what if Karen was right, and things became impossible for her at school and in the community? All I would have succeeded in doing would be to drive her and her mother away. She'd hate me forever.
I was so frustrated and angry I wished Mr. Pearson was dead, and then I immediately felt guilty for wishing that on someone, even someone like him.
Another thing worried me. My mother was liable to look at me and know something terrible was wrong. She was already suspicious about Karen because of the things I had told her. How could I carry such a dark secret inside myself and not show it on my face? I would fail. I would let Karen down because I couldn't help it, and she would hate me anyway.
It all buzzed around in my head, and I didn't realize where I was walking or how long I had been walking. Suddenly, I heard a very loud horn and nearly jumped out of my skin at the metallic scream of automobile brakes. Mr. Bedick, who owned an egg farm down the road from us, was waving his fist angrily at me. He looked as if he had been standing on his head. That's how red his face was. I glanced down and saw that the bumper of his car was only inches from me.
"I'm sorry!" I cried. "I'm sorry."
I had stepped too far to the left and put myself right in his path.
"Your parents are going to hear about this," he threatened, and drove away.
"Great," I muttered. "I'm already in trouble."
I hurried home so I could get into my room and settle down before my parents got home. That was an impossible task. The moment I closed the door and sat there in the quiet of my own room, everything Karen had told me came rushing back. I saw the most horrible images and knew I would probably have my own nightmares about it now. She was right to warn me away, to tell me I'd be better off not being her best friend. I wasn't just sharing her pain and suffering.
Because we were so close, it was easy to imagine it happening to me, too.
How horrible, I thought, and imagined her lying there too terrified to raise her voice in protest, too terrified to tell her mother. She was trapped and at the mercy of someone who was . . . who was what? The story she told me about Mr. Pearson having conversations with his dead mother and now going into her old apartment to sleep was even more frightening in some ways. Did he see a ghost?
How would this all end? There had to be something we could do. I sat there feeling so helpless and trapped myself until my gaze fell on my bookcase, and a collection of short stories popped out at me. It really wasn't meant for me. It was Jesse's book, but it had gotten mixed up and put in my room. From time to time, I read some of it. The collection was called
Campfire Chills.
It was supposed to be a collection of scary stories told around a campfire. Most of them were silly to me, but there was one that sprang to mind as if it had been written on springs.
I jumped up and pulled the book off the shelf, turning to the story quickly and rereading it with the speed of someone looking for a word clue.
Yes, I thought. Why not? It was easy to substitute Mr. Pearson for the character in the story and easy to substitute Karen and myself for another. We would do the same thing. I practically lunged at my phone to call her.
Her mother answered.
"You were just here, weren't you?" she asked me. "Yes, Mrs. Pearson, but there was one important thing about the schoolwork I forgot to tell Karen."
"Oh," she said. "Just a moment."
I waited, knowing Karen would have to come down the stairs to talk to me unless her mother permitted her to pick up the phone in her and Mr. Pearson's bedroom. She apparently didn't, because it took a while for Karen to pick up.
"What?" she finally said.
"I have an idea, a solution to your problem," I said. "It could really work."
She was silent.
"And what would that be?" she finally asked.
"I have something for you to read tomorrow, and then we'll talk about it, okay?"
"I see. Yes, thanks for calling. I'll see you on the bus," she said, and hung up.
That's all right, I told myself. I wasn't upset at all at how abruptly she had ended our conversation. It didn't mean she was angry or upset at me for still talking and thinking about the things she had told me. It probably just meant her mother was standing close by and listening to our conversation.
I put the short story collection into my school bag so there would be no chance of my forgetting it in the morning.
She'll like this idea, I thought. After all, she was the one who called her home Pretend Central, wasn't she?
I felt relieved, excited. I fit the definition of a best friend, after all.
I could help her.

"I understand what you're suggesting," she told me on the bus after school. I had given her the book in the morning, and she had read the story during a study hall period. "I think it's dangerous."

She looked out the window. When I had awoken in the morning, it was the first thing that came into my mind, and the light of morning, the beginning of a new day, had a way of making exciting ideas a lot less exciting. It's as if the sunlight illuminates all the obstacles you missed in the darkness.

And as she said, the dangers.
"I know," I said in a loud whisper. "I'm sorry. I just hate seeing you upset and frightened and when this came to mind, I had to call you."
She spun around, her eyes narrow and cold.
"I didn't say I wouldn't do it. I just said it's dangerous. It might not be a bad idea."
She looked out again.
I could feel the blood rushing into my face. She would actually consider doing it? Of course, I would help in any way I could, but now that I had proposed it and she was actually considering it, fear and terror were like leeches on my body, sucking out my courage.
"Really?"
"We'll talk about it later. Can you come to my house tonight?"
"Absolutely," I said. "I'll come over right after dinner."
"Good," she said, and continued to look out the window. "Good," I heard her whisper.
What have I done? I suddenly wondered. Maybe I was giving her false hope. Maybe I was getting myself into deep trouble. If it all went wrong, my parents would be devastated. My brother would hate me, too. A part of me wanted to pull back, to say it was really just a silly idea, we couldn't do this, but another part of me was truly impressed that I had come up with something that might actually help Karen. I had to firm up my nerve, be brave. This was no time to be a child or even a teenager. What was happening to Karen wasn't meant to happen to children and teenagers. It wasn't meant to happen to anyone, but adults were better equipped to handle it than we were, I thought.
Whether we liked it or not, Mr. Pearson had seized us by the neck and ripped us out of our youth. We would still laugh, we would have fun, but there would always be that quiet moment, that look between us that reminded us where we had been.-Funny, I was already thinking in terms of we when it was all really happening to Karen and not to me. I am her real friend, her sister, after all, I thought.
She rose when the bus pulled in front of the stop in Sandburg.
"See you later," she said. She patted the short story collection. "I'll hold on to this and keep thinking about it and how we could apply it."
"Okay."
She started away and then paused and returned.
"When you come over, Zipporah, you have to be sure you don't look strangely at Harry or talk to him any differently from the way you did before. We mustn't give him even a hint that I told you anything, understand?"
"Yes"
"If it's too hard, just ignore him, pretend he's not there. That's what I do half the time."
"Okay," I said.
Now I was really nervous again. I wanted to suggest she just come to my house, but I knew why she wanted me at hers. We had to plan and think of ways to do what we had to do. It was as if we were looking over a prospective battlefield.
She flashed a smile and started away. I watched her get off the bus and walk in the direction of her house. The bus continued toward Church Road. I didn't realize that I was trembling until the bus stopped in front of my house and I rose to get off. My legs wobbled. I sucked in my breath and hurried down the aisle.
I couldn't remember if my mother was on the day shift or the night shift that day. I was so distracted by Karen's problems that I didn't listen when she had told me, so I entered the house quietly in case she was sleeping. My parents' bedroom door was open, and I could see she wasn't home yet. She probably was doing the late afternoon shift, which wouldn't end until eleven p.m. I checked the kitchen and, sure enough, found instructions for preparing my father's dinner. She had already made a meat loaf. I just had to warm it up along with the mashed potatoes and vegetables. I'd make my father and me a nice salad, too. There was still half of my father's favorite pie in the refrigerator, chocolate cream.
I looked forward to these dinners with just my father and me. I had been doing the dinner warm-ups and preparations ever since I was ten. Most of the time, Jesse was there, too, but sometimes he was at a practice or at an away game or even on a date. I know that these dinners with only the two of us brought my father and me closer. He would ask me questions about school, and he would even tell me about his legal work, why a case was interesting and what he intended to accomplish. It was at these special dinners when he would tell me more about his own youth.
What worried me tonight was whether or not he would see the turmoil inside me. He wasn't as good at reading my feelings and thoughts as my mother was, but when there were only the two of us, he could focus sharper attention on me and see right through any false face. If he had even an inkling of what Karen and I were planning, he would surely go through the roof. I had seen him when he was very angry because of something one of his law partners had 'done or something a judge had decided. He could swell up and look pretty intimidating. Fortunately for me, I could count on the fingers of one hand how many times in my life he had been more than just a little irritated at something I had done, and the same was true for Jesse. I could sense that he hated being angry at either of us more than we hated it.
That didn't mean he would let either of us get away with anything Jesse and I were certainly not spoiled. Our parents were firm and far from doting. Anything they gave us, they gave us after careful consideration, and we were always made to appreciate it. Nothing was to be taken for granted. My father, especially, was always keen on us understanding the value of a dollar, as he put it. That, he said, was the way his father had put it to him.
"Show me you're responsible, and I'll give you more responsibilities:" he always told us.
For most of our lives, it seemed, we were always proving ourselves to our parents.
I was already setting the table and getting everything ready for dinner when my father came home.
"Little Mama's at it again;" he sang to me when he stopped at the kitchen doorway. "Be right down."
The debate began to rage in me. One side of me said I should tell my father everything and ask him to keep it a secret but do what had to be done to protect Karen and her mother. The other side of me came roaring back, the voice screaming about how I would hurt my best friend so deeply even the other students at school would hate and distrust me. I would have to move away as well.
"So, how's it going?" Daddy asked, slipping into his chair.
"Good," I said, and quickly turned to the food. I could feel his eyes on me as I worked.
"Everything looks good," he said. "And I'm hungry. I had one of those working lunches where you don't know what you're eating after a while. I'm not sure I ate anything."
He started to eat.
"Everything okay?" he asked. I knew why he asked. I was being too quiet.
"Yes, Daddy. I have this test to study for, so I'm going over to Karen's after I clean up."
"Oh. How is Karen? Your mother mentioned she was having some sort of a health problem?"
"No, it's nothing," I said quickly. "She had a headache one day in school, that's all."
"Glad she's feeling better. She's a nice kid," he said. "When I was your age, I palled around with one guy most of the time, Bobby Mallen. We were inseparable."
"I never hear you talk about him."
"That's because when I went off to college, he went into the army, and we lost touch. I made other close friends, and I'm sure he did, too. It's natural. You go off in different directions. Not many people remain close friends with the friends they had in high school. That's true even with college friends, for that matter. Jobs, careers, travel, change it."
"That sounds sad to me," I said.
He shrugged.
"Sometimes it is sad. It's all part of . . ."
"Growing up. I know," I said, and he laughed.
"I wasn't going to say that. I was goifig to say something bigger, part of life. We zigzag through the years, turning this way and that. I went to one highschool reunion, but Bobby didn't show, and I had trouble even recognizing some of the other
classmates. One of these days, you'll read that novel by Thomas Wolfe,
You Can't Go Home Again."
"What's that mean?"
"You can't recover the past. It's something that is gone forever, despite albums and yearbooks and old letters. We're just not who we were, honey. It's foolish to try to be. Be comfortable with who you are now and later. But you're too young for any of this talk, so don't worry about it," he said, waving his hand as if the words and thoughts were annoying flies. "When you're my age . ."
"I'll forget Karen and all our days together?"
"You won't forget. It will just be different. Everything is so intense right now. Time has a way of making what you think is terrible now not so terrible and what you think is wonderful not so wonderful. There are things, Zipporah, older people can tell you but you just can't appreciate or even understand until you go through them yourself. Then you wish you could go back and do so much differently.
"Hey," he suddenly cried, "why are we being so heavy here? I want to talk about my new golf clubs. You should have seen me on the third hole at the Monster golf course last Sunday. I won ten bucks, too."
I laughed. It felt good. It felt like a cool breeze on a terribly hot and muggy afternoon.
How lucky I was to have parents like mine, I thought, and how horrible it was for Karen to be where she was. It made me even more determined to do what I could to help her.
My father went into his home office after dinner to finish up some work. He heard me shout to him that I was off to Karen's, and he called back not to be too late. I promised I wouldn't and left after putting my bundle of books and notebooks in the bike bag. At least, we had to make it look as if studying was what we were doing, I thought.
Everything Karen had told me had changed my whole view of her home and her mother and Harry Pearson. The house looked ominous to me as I pedaled up the driveway. Shadows seemed painted forever over the front. The tree branches were as still and luminescent as skeletons caught in the moonlight. I saw the lights were on in Karen's room. I was sure she had told her mother I was coming. It was already past seven, so Harry was probably home. Karen came to the door so quickly when I rang the bell I suspected she had been waiting on the stairway.
"They're eating," she said, nodding toward the dining room. "It's just Zipporah!" she shouted in that direction.
"Hi, Zipporah," I heard her mother call back. Harry said nothing. I was happy I didn't have to face him right off. We practically ran up the stairway to her room and closed the door. She plopped onto her bed. The book of short stories was open to the right one.
"Tell me exactly what you think is going to happen and what you were thinking we should do," she said.
I hadn't thought up any details. It was just the concept. I stared at her and shook my head.
"I don't really know exactly how we should do it." She looked disappointed.
"But when the character in the story believed the ghost was telling him to kill his brother-in-law, he went ahead without any hesitation," I added quickly. "People who believe in ghosts believe that ghosts see everything, know everything, I suppose, and when you told me how he talks to his mother and even seems to hear her talk to him, I thought of this story. Maybe he thinks he sees her ghost."
She nodded.
"It's a pretty nasty story. I'm surprised your parents let you read it."
"They don't know the book was in my room. It's Jesse's book, but it was moved with another carton of stuff."
"So you think if we can get Harry to believe his dead mother knows what he's done, that he's come in here, and that she disapproves, he'll be sorry and stop?"
I shrugged. "That was sort of my idea. What do you think?"
"I think it's worth a try. What's he going to do to me that he hasn't already?" she muttered. She picked up the book and turned the pages. "I really don't know what we should do specifically, either. It was just the idea that excited me," she said.
"Maybe it's stupid, after all."
"No, no. It was good thinking. To do anything like this, I think we have to get into the apartment."
"The apartment?"
"There are two ways to get into the apartment, through the door that leads from the kitchen and the outside door. It has a separate entrance. Both are locked, but I know where Harry keeps his keys. We'd have to get one, probably to the outside door, and have a copy made while he's at the drugstore, so we can go in and out anytime we want. We can do it Saturday," she said. "As soon as he and my mother leave for the store, I'll get the key. We should not have it made here at Heckman's Hardware, though. We should go at least to Monticello or Liberty."
"Perfect!" I cried. "Remember, I have to go see my grandmother in Liberty. I'll ask my parents to let you come along, and while they're visiting, we'll ask to take a walk and go to the hardware store there." "That's a very good idea."
"Once we get in there, what are we going to do to convince him that his mother knows and disapproves?"
She looked thoughtful.
"We have until Saturday or so to figure that out. We'll come up with something," she said. She looked at the book again. "In the story, the man's sister forged their mother's handwriting."
"The perfumed stationery really got him."
"We can't use anything like that. I told you Harry's mother had all these allergies. She didn't wear any perfume. Besides, a mere note in what looks like her handwriting wouldn't be enough. No, we've got to find a better way."
"What if when he came to your room, you were wearing his mother's nightgowns or something else of hers? He wouldn't know we got into the apartment, and he would be shocked enough to turn around and leave."
She looked at me and smiled.
"That's very good, Zipporah. I must be rubbing off on you. Maybe that would work." She looked at me hard. "Of course, if he did find out what we had done, found out you were part of this, you could get into very bad trouble, Zipporah. He might be so angry. Perhaps I should go into the apartment myself and get what I need."
"I'm not afraid. I want to help you," I said firmly. "No matter what."
"No matter what?"
"Bird Oath. We'll be friends forever and ever, and we swear to protect and help each other as much as we would ourselves," I recited, and added, "no matter what."
"Maybe we will be friends forever and ever," she said, as if the possibility had just occurred to her.
Daddy's wrong, I thought. We'll never make turns, take different paths, and forget each other. This would bind us in a way that could never be unraveled or untied. For us, there would always be a way home again, home to each other.
"Okay. Let's take it one step at a time, and then later we'll decide just how much I need you to do with me. Saturday, then, the key gets made."