The Last Secret (22 page)

She has to protect her family, fragile as it is right now. She can't call the police. What would she say, that an unwelcome ghost from her past keeps showing up? That she wants him gotten rid of? The only crime is the one he accuses her of. And how on earth can she defend herself after all this time? Far better to make it worth a con man's while by giving him what he really wants. Before, when she offered money he became enraged, so she needs to wend her way to that point. In an interview her surest tool was always empathy. And the unspoken suggestion of friendship.

“You're still here.” She tries to smile, but his grin is disturbing. Greasy somehow, exuding a film into the air between them.

“You sound surprised.” He picks up the paperweight. “Or disappointed, I'm not sure which.”

“It can be pretty dull around here. You're probably used to a lot more—”

“Oh, there's a lot here. A lot going on.” His mouth is less smile than slow, gum-chewing trap of his jaw. “You just have to know where to look.”

“Yes. Well, I suppose that's true anywhere, isn't it?”

He shrugs. “Pretty much.” He rubs his thumb over the convex glass, the knuckle whitening with pressure. “But you, you got your finger on the pulse, right?” With a gesture, the sweep of his hand reduces everything to insignificance. The deep red and blue Persian carpet, the antique console and alabaster lamps, Annette's oil paintings, props to authenticate her false life. “Can't get much more informed than a newspaper, right?”

“There's a lot we don't know.” Her desk drawer rattles as she jams her knees up into the bottom of it.

“Yeah?” He chuckles. “Well, that makes sense. I mean, who's gonna come running in with their own dirty, little secrets, right?”

Blackmail. She's relieved. At least they're headed in the same direction.
That
she can deal with. Her fifteen thousand and ten thousand more from Ken, who thinks it's to help poor, abandoned Carol pay her bills. “You'd be surprised, Eddie.” Forces herself to say the name, just
old acquaintances catching up, bridging the gap of lost time. “Sometimes people need to. They need to bare their souls. Getting it all out can be a great relief” Purgative, she almost adds.

“You think so.” Staring, he pushes his tongue through his gum, makes a little pop, then removes the green wad from his mouth, and sticks it up under her desk. “Well then, that makes everything a hell of a lot easier.” He's studying her. “See, one night I'm in this bar.” He grimaces. “Real skunky you know, not the kind of place I'd—”

“Expect to meet my husband?”

He grins. “Yeah. Exactly.”

“You didn't run into him, though, did you?” she says coolly so he'll know she's not quite the easy mark he thinks. “You followed him there. You wanted to meet him. No. What you wanted was for me to know you'd met him.”

“Actually? I was thinking of it. But the girlfriend, hey, I wasn't expecting that.”

Dullness descends. Mental jet lag, this odd detachment, like suddenly finding herself in another time zone. Trying to think straight, groping through fog. All his promises. The night of Oliver's stroke. More lies. He'd been with
her.

“You got yourself a situation, huh? You know”—again, his raspy chuckle—“I'm sitting there, watching, and I'm thinking, what the hell's your problem, buddy? Someone like Nora, and you're out skanking around? I don't get it.” He shakes his head. “You deserve better than that.”

His concern is loathsome. He's despicable, and so is she, lowering herself to his level. Once again. But this time she has no choice. Her hand shakes as she places the envelope on the desk.
My God, all this money.
It should be going to a better cause, Sojourn House, the food bank, anyone, but what does it even matter anymore? Ken and Robin are still together. Her life is a lie. Here. It's for him, she explains, keeping to her script. Knows her lines. Rote to sustain her until reason returns, and calm. She understands how difficult it's been for him all
these years, and how in need of help he must be. This way, it'll be a fresh start—

“A fresh start?” The paperweight lands with a chilling thump.

If he goes away and never comes back. But she's afraid to say it.

“So it's okay? It's all right? You don't give a shit about anyone, do you?” Squinting, he stares at her.

She coughs to fill the void in this bizarre dialogue. Again, slowly, tries to restate her offer. He needs help, which she is in a position to provide.

“So, that's it?” He shrugs.

“Whatever happened that night is—”

“What? Shit? Because shit happens, right? So, what do you care?”

“Of course, I care. I've never forgotten. I remember everything, every detail.”

He looks surprised, flattered. “Yeah. Me, too. I still dream about it. About you. Our song, remember?” He wets his lips in a kind of kiss, starts singing the words, then, seeing her cringe back in her chair, whispers, “It's just you were so young. So fresh and soft and—”

“Stop it! Please,” she whispers with a horrified glance at the door, praying the shadow underneath isn't Hilda's.

He laughs. “Smart, that's all I was gonna say. And classy. You still are.” He wiggles his fingers. “Different from her, the girlfriend. Quite a looker though, gotta give him that.”

“Here.” She touches the envelope.

“What's that?”

“Cash.”

He smiles. “How much?”

She writes on her
Chronicle
notepad and gives him the sheet:
$25,000.
“Should take care of it, I would think,” she says almost lightly, in case Hilda is listening.

“Take care of what?” he asks folding the paper into his pocket. “You finally gonna hire me? Give me a job?” He laughs. “To do what? Get rid of hubby?”

“This has nothing to do with him.”

“Really? You don't matter? He can go do whatever the hell he wants?” He leans over the desk, leering. “Oh! I get it.” He rubs his thumb and forefinger together. “The girlfriend. Yeah. Okay. Her name's Robin. Robin Gendron, right?” he says.

“That's not important. She doesn't matter.”

“Oh? Maybe you oughta tell hubby that.”

“I told you, this isn't about him.”

“Yeah, just between you and me, right? But then what?”

“I'm sure you'll find something, some other place to start over.” Sickened by its touch, she pushes the envelope closer. “Here. It's yours. Take it.”

Laughing, he waves it between them. “Gotcha! For all the pain and suffering. Cold, hard cash, just make sure the door don't hitcha in your ass on the way out, Eddie.”

“I really should get back to work now,” she says with a stern glance. That's all, she will later recall. A glance.

He gets up, but continues to stand over her. He keeps slapping the envelope on the edge of her desk. “Must be nice being rich. Buy anything you want, huh? Little problem comes your way, just stuff an envelope full of cash and close your eyes.”

The door closes softly. Quietly. She covers her mouth and sits there, trying not to gag.

Carol has called
back She wants to come out and stay with Nora. She needs to get away, she says. Nora was right. It's not good being alone, all this thinking, obsessing on the past. But whether Nora wants to hear it or not, every single thing she said the other day is true. And being older, she would know, certainly more than Nora. Everyone tried to talk to Mom, even the cousins. After Nora ran away she finally came to her senses, thank God. This time Nora refuses to argue with her sister. Her decision to work at the lake that summer was to get as far away as she could from her guilt every time she looked at her mother. And running away with Eddie Hawkins was in no way connected to Mr. Blanchard.

“Things're a little crazy here right now,” Nora tells her, doesn't say why. She'll get back to her in a few weeks. Hopefully, they can settle on a date then.

The worst sin
is vanity” her mother would say whenever she or Carol fretted over some personal problem. Self-absorption, because it got in the way of so much else, kindness, charity, love. And the truth. “If you're busy helping other people, then you don't have time for petty problems.”

If only she had her mother's strength. Never complaining. Trying hard to be a good teacher and conscientious mother, who put her daughters first, then her students, her only luxury, meeting her unmarried cousins in the city for lunch once a month. She keeps thinking how alone her mother must have felt when Nora's father died. Was it this same emptiness, she wonders, emptying the dryer in the laundry room. Her father died loving her mother, so at least she had that. Even without the physical presence the memory of love can be a source of strength, a comfort like prayer. Nora has a husband, but not his love, though he would probably deny that. Mired, Stephen said. She is an obligation. But Ken is a man of his word. He will do right by her. It's the way he was raised, the way his father managed all his affairs. Sadly, this is her assurance now, she thinks, folding the warm towels.

She is remembering her own father's funeral, all the outfits she tried on before choosing the red sailor dress, the brass buttons with anchors, white piping and blue stars on the square bib over her shoulders. “Aye, matey,” her father had saluted, the last time she wore it. She remembers being confused by her mother's reaction, shocked, grabbing her arm, hissing, because the Boston cousins were downstairs waiting with Carol, “What're you doing? Take it off! You look ridiculous!”

Stung, she tried to explain. “But Daddy likes me to wear this.”

“It's not appropriate. Take it off.”

“No!”

It was the first time her mother ever slapped her. She closes her eyes
against the memory of the next, years later. Still can't bear remembering. She's forgotten what she did end up wearing to the funeral but remembers the burning heat that day, the brilliant sunshine, and the eerie displacement, her sense of being caught in another dimension, a discordant reality as if the car she'd been in had come to a wrenching stop, though trees and houses and people continued to blur past the windows. Grief had exposed an acute sentience. Death had made her too alive, too receptive, every nerve quickening with sensation. She remembers the sting of holy water on her smarting cheek with the priest's blessing and the painfully horsey gulp of Carol's sobs during “Amazing Grace.” She still remembers the dissonant skirl of birds chirping as the family shuffled after the flag-draped casket out of the small, crowded church, her dizziness in the sudden blinding glare, then at the quiet gravesite her knees buckling with the wormy smell of hot dirt. And afterward the noisy, smoky gathering, the party they called a mercy meal, saying it under her breath,
mercy, mercy, mercy meal
, like a prayer, a plea, over and over through the knotty pinepaneled VFW hall, pausing by her father's poker buddies shocked by his sudden death, but seeking solace in the old stories, their beery, heads-back laughter with each tale told, then, finally, on to the old woman gesturing from a table, her father's testy aunt Louise, raising her fork of macaroni salad to ask what those little green flecks were, onions or celery, because she couldn't eat onions, they made her throw up, and why on earth did people have to put onions in everything anyway when all they did was agitate your insides and sour the mayonnaise. And how good that was to hear, what a relief for the young girl at the mercy meal to be snagged back among the living.

Life was tough, so you squared your shoulders and kept putting one foot in front of the other. Only high honors and Girls' State for Marina Trimble's daughters. Scholarships through school. Work hard, study hard, protect the little that's left. Her mother had been promoted to assistant English department head at the high school. Nora was sixteen, the late spring night when Mr. Blanchard came by the house to take her mother out to dinner. Everything about it was shocking to Nora. He seemed so young compared to her mother. The idea of her
mother's wanting to be with a man, even four years after her father's death, was reprehensible, as much a violation of her father's memory, as a threat. She couldn't stop thinking of the flesh of the most vital and sacred person in her life touching another man's, even just his hand brushing hers. Worse though, and equally as inappropriate as the red dress, was her mother's dating someone from Nora's delicately balanced universe, the shy new English teacher, who quoted Emily Dickinson, “Hope is the thing with feathers / That perches in the soul” while her own heart ached for his attention.

“He flirts with all the girls,” she told her mother the next morning. Actually, it was the girls who giggled about Mr. Blanchard's curly hair, long eyelashes, and quiet voice, the bolder among them clamoring for extra help. And then, when that didn't work, the lie, telling her mother that some senior girls were thinking of going to the principal because of things Mr. Blanchard had said to them. And done.

What things? her mother demanded, and Nora can still see the arch of her mother's long neck, feel her breath, caught, waiting. Things, Nora said, watching, gauging the impact of her words. You know, suggestive. It seemed minutes before her mother finally turned.

“I've been a teacher long enough to know the way a student's imagination can work.”

“It's not imagination,” Nora protested. “It's true. He's always bumping up against girls.”

“That can happen. Innocently enough. He's a very nice person, and, as a matter of fact, I'll probably go out with him again. A rumor's an ugly thing, Nora,” her mother said, her face reddening, whether with anger or doubt, but the quick tremble saying her daughter's name was lure enough to send Nora in for the kill.

“All right then, I'll tell you. He … he—”

“He what?”

“Rubbed against me. You know,” she said with a squeamish gesture, low, down there.

“When? What on earth are you talking about?”

“A couple weeks ago. I stayed after. My Emily Dickinson report, he said to. For extra help.”

“And?”

“It was awful,” she said, bursting into tears because without solid ground underfoot there was no turning back. It was a lie already too nasty to retrieve, too shameful to admit. “And even now, every time I think about it I don't know what to do. It's so embarrassing. It's humiliating. You can't say anything. Please. Promise me you won't.” Her mother's wounded eyes told her that this could not be the end of it. Mr. Blanchard would have to be confronted. He had violated not only his student's trust but hers as well, his fellow teacher, his department's assistant head, the lonely woman he'd taken to dinner and so desperately kissed in the car, in the late evening shadows with Nora watching from her bedroom window.