The Last Secret (24 page)

There is something on television now about 9/11. Black smoke pouring from the Twin Towers. All those poor people killed, it makes her cry. Every time she thinks of it, the husbands who never came home, the babies who'll never know their daddies. Even though she can't afford it, she sent a hundred dollars to the Republican Party. She doesn't like the war in Iraq, but Americans should stick together and support their president through these dangerous times, don't you think? she asks him. Everything ends with asking, caring what he thinks. Really? Don't you? she adds. Yes, he replies. Of course, he agrees, thinks so, if only just to continue watching her hypnotic mouth and the little pink dart of her tongue. George Bush, he's a good man in a crazy world, she insists as if arguing with an unseen presence. He's caught in a situation beyond his control. Some things just take time, that's all, time to work themselves out. Poor George, he reminds her of someone, she says, an old friend, decent, upbeat, misunderstood. Sighing, she stares at the flashing screen.

“Scattered!” she announces. “That's what my mother called me. All over the place. Because I told her about last night. Valerie.”

Valerie is the old crone she met in the supermarket. They were in the same checkout line, chatting easily, the way people do with Robin. “That looks good,” Robin remarked of the old woman's Lean Cuisine Oriental chicken and rice, moving along the black mat. The old woman said Robin should try it sometime. It was delicious and going to be her dinner that night. Naturally, Robin insisted she come home with her instead, for spaghetti and meatballs. Eddie arrived at the tail end of dinner, annoyed to find someone else there, invited, instead of him. Robin's eyes were red. She had already had three good cries, hearing about Valerie's husband's long and painful ordeal with cancer, then the funeral nobody came to, not even his own four children who weren't hers, though she'd helped raise the last one, a girl with a club
foot. Granted, he'd been a hard man to live with, demanding. “But for no one to come. To not even care how I'm doing,” Valerie said, shaking her head. “I'm not over it yet.”

“Well, we care,” Robin said, putting her arm over the stout woman's blocky shoulders. “We care very much, Valerie.”

And as much as he didn't want to, he found himself offered up to drive Valerie home. Everything about her repulsed him. The yellow tennis balls jammed onto the legs of her walker, the way her teeth clicked, the food stains on her pink nylon shirt, the unwashed sourness of her clothes. He enjoyed her glassy-eyed fear in the mirror when he wouldn't answer her. Why should he talk, she was lucky to be getting a ride home. In her rush to get out of his car, her grocery bag spilled open. Cans rolled along the slushy sidewalk in front of her building in the elderly housing project. She was still picking them up as he drove away. I'm sorry, he'll say if it comes up. Wish I'd known. She's lucky he didn't shove her stinking carcass out of his car, which bothers him that he's still driving it, that is. Shouldn't be so careless. He's had it too long. Mostly, he keeps it in a secluded spot behind the Monserrat, the seedy motel off the highway. Again last night the morose manager put a note under his door telling him to park out front. The back lot is for deliveries. He knows he should get another car, one that can't be traced, but he likes the heated seats and Bose speakers, now even the Céline Dion CD. One more hassle in a life of hassles. Eddie's getting tired of hassles.

They are watching
SpongeBob SquarePants.
When it's over Lyra has to go to bed, Robin says on her way into the kitchen.

“You mind your mother now,” he warns quietly, but the child ignores him. She and her mother share a private universe. Even her brother is excluded. Clay plays varsity basketball and tonight's an away game in Abbeyton. He wanted his mother to go, but she said it was too late for Lyra, who is still up. The boy isn't home much, but when he is he's sullen and rude. Yesterday Robin made him apologize when he muttered, “Yeah, right,” after Eddie talked about playing pro basketball in Greece years ago. Like his grandmother, the boy is a distraction. But a minor one as long as Eddie has plenty of money and the company of a beautiful woman.

With the barrage of popping comes the smell of hot buttery popcorn. He hasn't felt this content in years. From here he watches her moving around the kitchen. She removes the steaming bag from the microwave. She empties it into a large red and white striped bowl, then carries it into the family room. She sits back down and pats the other cushion for Lyra to climb onto so they can share the popcorn. Lyra giggles every time a squid hiccups. Robin laughs too and nuzzles the top of the child's head. Robin knows all the characters' names. As the credits roll mother and daughter sing the theme song.

Agitated, Eddie checks his watch. Almost nine. Yet another cartoon. Lyra eats her popcorn one kernel at a time. She wipes her nose on her sleeve. Jesus. Her snot is running green. Usually Robin lets her fall asleep down here, then carries her up to bed. Otherwise, she has to lie down with Lyra. A bad habit, Robin admits, but it's the only way she can fall asleep now. He asks how far away Abbeyton is. He'd like some time alone with her. Not too far, she says. Ten or twelve miles. This reminds her of something. She frowns. His brother, she says, did he call him yet? He looks at her. Blankly. A beat. Then remembers. The troubled brother in California, his dead wives. He can't remember his name, though, but it's different this time; he doesn't always have to be on guard. Her easy acceptance and infectious enthusiasm bring out the best in him. She is so positive about everyone and everything, as quick to laugh as she is moved to tears, that he can almost believe he has a brother. He did call, he says, but no one answered.

“Maybe he's in the hospital again,” she says.

“Maybe.” He slips his arm over the back of the couch, his fingertips so near her shoulder he can feel her heat.

“I don't know,” she sighs. “This is Bob's fourth rehab. The problem is, it's always about something else. First, was to keep his job. Then, because of me—my ultimatum: what's it gonna be, drinking or me? Catchy, huh? I like that.” She tilts her head from side to side in silent rhythm. “Maybe we could do that, an Al-Anon theme song. Anyway.” Sighing, she stares dismally at the television.

Now he remembers. Woody, the invented brother, short for Woodruff Yeah. Poor Woody, born that way, same as him, too intense.
Sensitive. He knows what people are thinking without them saying a word. Like right now, she wants to tell him something. He can feel it, something important. She has yet to discuss her affair with him. Every time he mentions running into her that night with Hammond, she goes silent. For all her openness, that is the one subject off limits.

Lyra sneezes and snuggles closer to her mother. Robin pulls a tattered plaid throw from the arm of the couch and covers her with it. Lyra coughs, a deep, tight cough. “You feel all right, baby?” Robin murmurs, laying her cheek against Lyra's brow.

“My head hurts,” Lyra whines, then lies down with her head in her mother's lap, her knees to her chin. She is asleep in minutes.

Smiling, Robin continues stroking her face, her love for this child so intense that he stirs with anger. If she cares too much, what will be left for him? Her kindness to others leaves him feeling bereft, deprived. He offers to carry Lyra upstairs. She's fine right here, Robin says, stroking her forehead.

“No!” he says, and Robin looks at him, startled. “She should be in her own bed. It's so late.”

“I know. You're right. It's me. I just love having her near,” she says, picking her up. The child's limbs dangle from her mother's arms and her head hangs back, limply. Lifeless, he thinks with a rush, watching her being carried away.

The phone rings. Robin's voice. He stands at the bottom of the stairs, but can't make out what she's saying. It's him. The boyfriend. Ken. He knows by her tone. Tender, intimate, a voice in the dark, in bed, fucking. His throat burns.

She returns, frowning. She thinks Lyra has a temperature but can't bear waking her up. Lyra hates taking medicine. She gags on everything, poor baby. Her voice quavers as she picks up a large plastic doll-house and carries it across the room. She walks carefully but the furniture inside rattles as she sets it down on the hearth.

“Or maybe it's me. I'm such a bad mother,” she sighs, looking back at the stairs.

“No you're not. She's probably not even sick. She looked fine to me.” He doesn't want her back down here.

“I don't know, it's just everything lately, it's all so … so messed up.” Face flushed, she takes a deep breath. “I just wish he wouldn't call me like that,” she whispers, then drops down in the opposite chair. “It gets me so upset.”

“Tell him not to. Tell him it's over, you're done. You don't need that,” he says angrily, remembering the first time he saw her. For days, he'd been telling himself he should be on his way. No sense pressing his luck, the car was a real liability, the license plate, anyway, but for some reason he couldn't seem to get going. He had begun following Hammond. His initial curiosity turning to fascination, an almost physical attraction, less to the man than to all that he is, all that he possesses, his own newspaper, an amazing house, someone like Nora. His car alone cost eighty-nine thousand dollars. One person shouldn't have all that, he thought, growing angrier as he tailed Hammond from the paper down a road to Robin's silver minivan idling by a snow-covered soccer field. From a distance he saw Hammond park behind her and climb into the minivan. Fifteen or twenty minutes later, Hammond got back into his own car, then followed her to the bar. Eddie ambled in after them and watched for a while from the corner. On his way to the men's room, he paused by their table and the minute she looked up, he knew. He understood why he'd come all this way and what he had to do. He could tell Hammond was annoyed, but he kept talking. Anything. Whatever came into his head. Just to see her smile and hear her voice. Funny how things work out, the connections.

“It's not that easy.” She shakes her head in a struggle not to cry. The corners of her sweet lips are wet. She rubs her nose with the back of her hand. “Every time, it's the same thing, how sorry he is, how much he misses us … and last night … how … he had this … this dream of himself and Lyra, and she was standing there with her arms out. And she was calling him, he said. ‘Daddy Daddy’ she kept calling, and he kept trying, but he couldn't get to her.”

Her husband, he realizes. Bob, not Hammond.

“He wants us to be a family again,” she says, drying her eyes with the hem of her shirt. “But we can't, and I don't know how to tell him.”

I'll take care of it, he wants to say. Leave it to me. I'll blow the
fucker's brains out. Make it look like suicide. An accident, whatever she wants. Push him over a cliff Easy, no problem. Whatever she needs, because what he needs, all he wants is right here. He gets up and squats in front of her. “Don't cry.” He touches the side of her face. “Everything's going to be all right. You'll see.”

She presses her hand over his. “Oh, Eddie. I shouldn't do this to you. Or to any of my friends, but you're all so sweet.”

He resents being lumped in with her many friends. Too many. Her phone rings constantly. How is she doing? What does she need? All she has to do is call, they assure her. What about Nora? he suddenly wants to ask. Women can be so vile. Wet and weeping. Does she ever care how Nora feels?

“I'm so blessed.” She pats the top of his head as if he were a child. “Sometimes it feels like I've known you forever.”

“Maybe we have,” he says, and she smiles.

“Don't you just wish you could wake up one morning and be twelve again?”

“No!” Those were the worst years, every moment scrutinized by counselors. One after another, shift after shift, whoever's case he happened to be that month. Crazy Eddie.
Why, why, why
, the constant question, when he hadn't even known the little girl. It wasn't as if he'd thought it through or anything. But suddenly, there she'd been, in the way. Sticky red grime melting down her fist and arm. Dirty face, holes in her sneakers, and ripped panties, what he remembers—and her blank stare up from the parched, rust-colored weeds.
Indian paintbrush
, that's what it said in the police report.
In the way
, they'd ask again,
now what does that mean, why, when all she was doing was walking along, eating the Cherry Freeze she'd just bought from the ice-cream truck, so how was she in the way?
He was sorry. How many times did he have to say it?
A hundred thousand times, and it still won't bring her back.
So stop asking then. Accept the fact. Even at twelve he knew that, knew it better than most. Some things just happen.
Let's see
, each new one would mutter, turning the page, fascinated, that's what they were, by him, especially the women.
To look at you … how could you … it doesn't make sense.
Well, there you go, wasn't that the whole point,
change what you can, and when you can't, know when to move on.
Let's see … in the way, you said. In your way? Blocking you?
No. She was there, just there, that's all.
You don't even care, do you, Eddie?

“The road not taken. You know that saying? I think of it all the time. Things I'd do different. Choices I'd make.”

“Like what?” he asks softly, yielding to another of her confidences.

The telephone rings. Glancing at the caller ID number, she gets up quickly. She answers it in the kitchen. He wanders over to the bookcase, pretending to read the titles. He takes down a book and opens it. The words are a blur. From around the corner her voice is breathless, expectant; not the husband, he can tell.

“I got it … I did … It's enough … Thank you. But that's not why I called … I know … I'm sorry … But I'm having a hard time … It's just, I … I know, but I miss you … I miss you so much … I know, but when … He could be like that forever … It's like I've stopped living …”

Suddenly, screaming from above. Running feet, the shrieking child on the staircase. “Mommy! Mommy!” she howls, then freezes, staring down at him in terror.