Family Secrets (67 page)

“She doesn’t want to go.”

“She’d have friends,” Melissa said. “She’d have things to do.”

“She only wants to be with the family.”

Hazel hadn’t wanted to sell her house. It was her own house, and she had been happy there with Herman and Richie. But the family told her she had to sell it, and Richie was a man now, and he said she had to sell it too. She let them tell her what to do but she didn’t like it. She missed her house. It was hers. She knew she was sick because she felt sick. Sometimes she was lightheaded, and sometimes her heart pounded too hard, and most of the time she had a headache. When she said she felt sick Mrs. Barkis said: “Oh, no, you’re not sick, dear. It’s all in your head. Positive Thinking, dear.”

Hazel didn’t like Mrs. Barkis. She was always talking about Positive Thinking and making faces behind Hazel’s back. Hazel knew. She’d say she had a headache and then Mrs. Barkis would wink and screw up her face and make all kinds of funny faces like she was in a TV cartoon and didn’t want anyone to miss what she was trying to show. It made Hazel so mad! But she didn’t say anything. She just sat there and wondered why none of the family seemed to love her any more. They never wanted to see her. At first, at the beginning of the summer, Hazel had started off to the other house to visit with her sisters, and she could see everybody disappearing off the screened porch. They just ran away from her. They thought she didn’t know. After a while the headaches got worse and she was too tired to walk to the other house. There wasn’t any reason if they didn’t want to see her.

Mrs. Barkis made her take walks. “Come on, dear,” she would say, grabbing Hazel’s arm as if she were a little kid. “We’ll take a little walk now. You’ll be surprised how much better you feel when you’re up and out. Nothing like exercise. Positive Thinking, dear.” The two of them, Hazel and that big fat woman with the blonde curls on top of her head and the two rouge spots on her cheeks, would walk slowly around the grounds. Mrs. Barkis would be huffing and puffing but Hazel would just be feeling dizzy. She couldn’t wait to sit down, and then when she finally sat down she would feel sad. The days were so long. She lost track of days, of weeks, of time. Why wasn’t Richie here? Was he at camp? No, Richie never went to camp. Where was he? A little boy shouldn’t be away from home.

Herman was gone. She knew he was gone, he was dead. That was one thing Hazel never forgot. If Herman were here he would save her. She wouldn’t have to stay with that nurse she hated who told her what to do and made fun of her behind her back. Hazel told Rosemary a million times that she didn’t like Mrs. Barkis, and Rosemary told her, “Oh, she’s not so bad.” How would Ro know? Nobody made faces behind her back and called her “dear” in that mean tone of voice.

Sometimes Hazel got away from her nurse. That was fun, like an adventure, like the things she used to do when she was young. She would wait until Mrs. Barkis was having her afternoon nap, which she had every day, and then she would sneak out of the bedroom and try to get downstairs without anyone catching her. Sometimes she fell. If she fell down she couldn’t get up by herself, but she didn’t want anyone to know she’d fallen down so she just waited until someone came along and then she’d ask them to help pick her up as if it was very natural. She liked it best if the maid found her because she wouldn’t yell at her. Rosemary yelled at her and asked why she’d gone out of her room without her nurse.

“She’s asleep,” Hazel would say.

Then Rosemary would yell at Mrs. Barkis, which was fun. There was so little fun in that house. Nobody had a good time. It was such a big place but most of the time Hazel couldn’t find anybody to talk to. They disappeared. But it was worse in Florida. In Florida she didn’t have anybody except Mrs. Barkis, whom she couldn’t stand. All day long Mrs. Barkis talked at her, even when Hazel didn’t say a word back. After a while Hazel just stopped listening. Mrs. Barkis talked about trips she had taken when she was younger, all kinds of trips, to all kinds of foreign countries, and Hazel wasn’t interested in that. She would have liked to talk about babies. She had the photos of her grandson, Harrison, in her purse, and she took them out all the time and looked at them, and tried to show them to Mrs. Barkis, just to be friendly.

“Oh, I saw those, dear,” Mrs. Barkis would say, shoving Hazel’s hand away. “Those are old pictures. He’s much older now.”

Older? How much older? How old was Harrison? Where was he? Was he all right? Would he know she was his grandma? Why couldn’t she remember how old he was? Why didn’t Richie give her new pictures?

“Where’s Richie?”

“You know he’s on his vacation, dear.”

Vacation from what?

Mrs. Barkis had hidden all Hazel’s pills but Hazel knew where they were. When they used to be in the medicine chest in the bathroom Hazel could take them by herself, but now she had to wait to take them until her nurse gave them to her. She didn’t like that no one trusted her. She could count. She could take her pills by herself. She knew they were dangerous if you took too many. They could kill you. She wasn’t stupid, even though everybody acted as if she was. She wouldn’t take a whole lot of pills that were dangerous and going to kill her. Why did everybody think she was stupid? That hurt. She was good and let Mrs. Barkis dole out her pills, but it hurt her feelings, just like all the other things everyone did to make her feel like she wasn’t in her right mind. The family had always thought she wasn’t as smart as they were, and that hurt, but when she married Herman everyone knew she was just as good as they were. Her Richie was smarter than anybody, going to all those schools and graduating with good marks. Hazel still had her puzzles, but now she looked up the answers in the back and wrote the words in the spaces in her shaky printing and left the puzzle books open on tables so everyone would see how smart she was. She’d gotten the idea of looking up the answers from Mrs. Barkis, who did it. It was a good idea. Hazel wondered why she’d never thought of it before.

She had been so lonely in Florida that all winter she had looked forward to coming to Windflower to be with the family, and then when she got there it wasn’t anything like she’d expected. Everybody acted different. Sometimes Hazel forgot that Papa wasn’t alive any more, and she would try to go over to The Big House, but then someone would always stop her. Then she’d remember he was gone. If he was here, he would make them all treat her nice, the way he used to when they were kids and the others tried to leave her out.

“Who lives in that house?” Hazel asked Melissa.

“Paris.”

“I want to see Paris.”

Paris came to see her. Hazel looked at her and thought how different she looked than what she’d expected. “You look older,” she said.

“I
am
older,” Paris said cheerfully.

“You look thirty,” Hazel said, disappointed. She had thought Paris would still be a baby. “I guess I look old, huh?”

“No,” Paris said, “you’re looking well.” Hazel knew she was lying. “A little thinner, that’s good.”

“She’s getting better all the time, aren’t you, dear?” Mrs. Barkis interrupted. “Positive Thinking, right, dear?”

“The doctor wants me thin,” Hazel said.

“I think that’s a good idea,” Paris said.

“Did you see the pictures of Harrison?” Hazel asked, fumbling through her pocketbook, which she always kept with her so she wouldn’t lose it.

“Oh, you showed them to her last year,” Mrs. Barkis said.

“I can’t find them,” Hazel said, and snapped shut her purse.

“So Richie must be in Denmark by now,” Paris said.

“Denmark?”

“Oh, and at the end of his trip he’s going on to Moscow,” Mrs. Barkis said. “I personally wouldn’t want to go to Moscow. I hear the food is just terrible there. A friend of mine went there recently on a tour and she said she couldn’t eat anything but the bread. Their black bread is simply delicious. But the meat was tough, she said, and you couldn’t get a vegetable unless it was canned, and then it wasn’t very good. Of course, in the Scandinavian countries he’d get all that wonderful smoked fish. My favorite is herring in mustard sauce.”

“Richie’s coming back in September,” Hazel said.

“Oh, that’s good,” Paris said.

“She
thinks
he’s coming back in September,” Mrs. Barkis said.

“I have a headache,” Hazel said.

“Oh, no you don’t,” said Mrs. Barkis. “It’s all in your mind, dear. Positive Thinking. You know, Paris, I was in Copenhagen myself once. It’s a most delightful city. They eat smorgasbord, you know, and drink aquavit. My goodness, I put on about twenty pounds when I was there. They have a bread there called limpa, which has just a taste of licorice. It’s delicious.” She went on and on and Hazel just stopped listening.

After a while Paris got up to go and Hazel wanted to go to the door with her so she could tell her a secret. They went to the door with Mrs. Barkis following them, still talking, and Hazel looked at her niece clear in the eyes, trying to see if she could understand, if she would believe her. “Pa …?”

“Yes?”

Hazel leaned close and whispered in Paris’ ear. “I can’t stand her.”

“I know.”

“I want to go home.”

“Secrets, secrets! What are you whispering about?” the nurse said. Hazel snapped her mouth shut and looked away. Oh, she didn’t like that nurse at all, she didn’t want her around, she didn’t see why they made her have her. It wasn’t fair.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Paris said, and went away toward her house. Hazel tried to go after her but she couldn’t keep up. She knew Paris wouldn’t come back to see her tomorrow; people always said they’d come back and then they didn’t.

And Paris didn’t come back.

Hazel didn’t remember how long she had been at Windflower this summer, if it had been weeks or months or days. Every day was so long, and she got confused. She wanted to go home. She was lonely in her apartment in Miami Beach and she didn’t have any friends, but at least she didn’t have to know that the family was trying to run away from her. She remembered how she used to chase after Rosemary when they both were young, when Ro used to go ice skating in the park and didn’t want to take her. But she got to go along anyway until Mama decided she was a big girl and should stay home with the grownups. Hazel missed Mama. She hadn’t seen her in years and years and hadn’t even thought about her much. Mama had been dead for a long time. Had Mama ever met Herman? Hazel tried to remember. She wondered if Mama had known she got married. She hoped so, because Mama would have been glad.

Everybody had somebody but her. She had Mrs. Barkis, but that was worse than nobody. Paris didn’t have anybody. Paris never got married, Hazel remembered that. She should have asked Paris when she was going to get married, but she’d forgotten to and now it was too late. Paris better get married before she was too old. Hazel didn’t understand anybody who didn’t want to get married. Somebody must have asked Paris—everybody got asked sometime. She just didn’t understand Paris at all. Even Mrs. Barkis had a husband once. If somebody wanted
her
…

Hazel told Rosemary she wanted to go home. Rosemary was glad and told Mrs. Barkis to pack.

“We’re going home now, dear,” Mrs. Barkis said to Hazel, just as if it wasn’t Hazel’s own idea. She made Hazel take a last walk with her around the grounds. “Don’t you want to have a last look, dear?”

No, Hazel didn’t want to have a last look. What was there to look at? It didn’t make her happy to look at the view, it made her sad. It made her remember when things were different.

“Was that pool always there?” Hazel asked.

“Well, I don’t know, dear.”

“Why do you call me dear?”

“What?”

“You always call me dear,” Hazel said. “But you don’t like me.”

Mrs. Barkis made a mean face and glared at her. What she looked like, Hazel thought, was a cookie lady. You made a big round face from a sugar cookie, and then you put two little raisins in for the eyes and a half a maraschino cherry for the mouth and you had a cookie lady. The cook used to make them for Richie when he was little. How he used to love them! He would always ask for cookie ladies. Hazel wondered if he remembered. She hardly ever got to see Richie any more. She would like to tell him to have somebody make cookie ladies for Harrison.

“She’s getting hostile,” Mrs. Barkis told Rosemary that evening when she thought Hazel wasn’t listening. “Hostile and paranoid. I’d call the doctor if I were you and get her some tranquilizers. She turned on me down at the swimming pool today for no reason, just turned on me.”

“What did she say?” Rosemary asked.

“I’d rather not say. I don’t want to upset you. It doesn’t matter. But when they start to get hostile and paranoid, the next step is they get depressed, and we wouldn’t want Mrs. Winsor getting all depressed now, would we?”

“You can certainly tell me what she said,” Rosemary said.

“Well,” Mrs. Barkis said in a grieved tone, “She said I didn’t like her. Now you know that’s not true. I wouldn’t stay with her if I didn’t like her. It certainly isn’t the money. I hardly get enough to get by on.”

“Why, you get a lot!” Rosemary said.

“Oh, it’s not easy, not easy at all. I’d just like a little gratitude. It’s not easy when you give everything for a person and then that person turns on you. It’s very upsetting. Why, I could get a dozen other jobs that pay more, and I wouldn’t have to work so hard either. You know I’m up and down five or six times a night with her, just making sure she gets to the bathroom all right, and in between I can hardly sleep for fear she might need me. I’d like to be able to put away something for my own old age, you know, but I just don’t see how I can with what I’m being paid now.”

“I’ll talk to the family,” Rosemary said coldly.

“Oh, I hated to ask you, really,” Mrs. Barkis said, “but I just had to. Inflation you know, dear.”

Ro doesn’t care about me, Hazel thought. She knows that woman doesn’t like me and she doesn’t care.

When they got back to Florida the doctor gave Hazel some pills he said would make her feel happier. They only made her sleepy. She could hardly drag herself around, and when Mrs. Barkis talked at her it was easier than ever to shut her out. Hazel knew that the nurse wanted her to take those pills so she wouldn’t be any trouble. She didn’t feel happy; she felt sad. The doctor shouldn’t have lied to her. She trusted him. If she could have taken a pill that made her feel happy she would have been glad to have it. There was nothing to be happy about any more.