Monday, Monday: A Novel (42 page)

“There’s something I have to tell you.” Shelly spoke slowly and plainly, her voice not quite her own. She wanted to set out the pieces of information in a systematic way that Madeline could take in. “It is not bad news. But it will be a shock to you.” She took a deep breath. “Carlotta is your half sister. She is my daughter. Wyatt Calvert is her father. Jack and Delia adopted her because they could not have children and because Wyatt and I were having an affair at the time. This was in the sixties.” She waited.

Madeline did not speak.

“Before I married your father, I told him everything.”

Madeline stood up and turned toward the door. Then she sat back down.

“Jack and Delia have told Carlotta everything tonight. She had wanted to look for her biological parents, and we couldn’t let her go through that, knowing what we knew.” The wind beat on the windows in powerful gusts. “Are you all right, honey?” She couldn’t see Madeline’s expression in the dark.

“No.”

“I know this is confusing.”

“I don’t understand any of it.”

“Tell me what you need to know.”

“What I need to know?” She was dazed.

“Yes.”

“I need to know why you’re telling me this now. Why haven’t I known it?”

“There are a lot of reasons, honey. Your father and I were going to tell you—we were planning to. But then after his death, I felt like you had been through too much. I felt like it would only be another adjustment that would be hard for you.”

“But I was sixteen then. What about the years before?”

“Understand, we couldn’t tell you without telling Carlotta.”

“And why couldn’t you tell Carlotta?”

“That question is so complicated. First of all, there wasn’t a time when it seemed like she would be better off knowing. There wasn’t a time when she said she wanted to know. And Wyatt has a family that doesn’t know any of this. You can imagine what effect this could have on them.”

“So I was sort of the last consideration?”

“It’s not like that.”

“
How
is it not like that? You couldn’t tell me because of Carlotta. You couldn’t tell her because of Wyatt and his family. And all that other stuff you said. I feel like I don’t know you. I have a sister you didn’t tell me about.”

“Please try to see how complicated this is. You’re making it sound very simple, and it’s not simple.”

“But all you had to do was ask me not to tell.”

“I know it seems that way, but when should I have done that? It would have been a burden for you when you were little—to have to carry a secret like that. And impossible during that period after your father’s death—you weren’t up to coping with this then. And then when you were older, the relationships had evolved into something else. There was no reason to bring all this out in the open. Carlotta wasn’t asking to know who her parents were, and the possible consequences for Wyatt’s family—”

“I don’t care about Wyatt’s family! What about
our
family?”

“Our family was fine, sweetie. There was no risk to our family.”

“You made Daddy lie to me.”

“He never lied to you. It was important to both of us never to lie to you.”

“Did Granny and Grampa know?”

“They knew everything at the time it happened.”

“So they knew, too?” She stood up and paced to the end of the room and back. “I feel like I’ve lived in a stage set all my life! Like you set everything up and let me playact my whole life!”

She walked out, stood in the hall, and didn’t know where to go. In the mirror, she saw herself—her skin the color of rusty ash. She wanted to leave the house, but the wind had imprisoned her here. She started up the stairs but felt dizzy and sat down halfway up. She didn’t know who to turn to. What had just happened? She thought she heard Delia in the kitchen, but she didn’t want to talk to Delia or Jack. They had deceived her the same as her mother had. The most painful thought was that her father had, too. He had known all along. She had told him she was jealous of Carlotta, and he had taken her to Devil’s Sinkhole to try to make her feel better. He could have just explained the truth to her instead. Why hadn’t he? If he had, he wouldn’t be dead.

She tried to think it through, asking herself if she honestly would have been better off knowing about Carlotta. At what age would she have wanted to know? Six? Seven? Seventeen? Twenty-seven? She was not sure. She was not sure of anything except that everyone had lied to her.

Her mother had followed her out of the parlor and now stood at the foot of the stairs, pleading with her. “I know you’re angry, but please, let’s keep talking.”

“I can’t imagine what we would say. I don’t even know if I can believe anything you say.”

“I haven’t lied to you, Madeline. There were things I didn’t tell you, but I wasn’t lying.”

“It’s all starting to make sense. The portrait. Who painted it?”

She heard the drop in her mother’s voice. “He did. Wyatt did.”

“So that was part of it? The portrait that’s been hanging in my home? Now I see why you wanted me to forgive Andy. His mistakes are nothing compared to yours.”

Pulling herself to her feet, she turned away from her mother and climbed the stairs and found Andy in the bedroom. He turned to her when she came in. The dirty cowboy hat was on the bedpost. “Even my pockets are full of dust!” he said. “Look at this!” He turned a pocket inside out.

“Where’s Nicholas?” she asked.

“He’s in the shower.”

“Mom and Wyatt Calvert had an affair in college and Carlotta is their child.”

“What?”

“They had an affair and Carlotta is their child.”

“You’re making this up.”

“No.” She didn’t know what response she wanted from Andy. Not comfort. “My husband is a cheater, and my mother is a liar. Some family.” She left the room, crossed the hall, and knocked on Carlotta’s door.

“Mom told me,” she said when Carlotta opened the door.

“Oh, Madeline, look how dusty you are! Come in. You can use my bathroom and rinse off.”

“No thanks.”

“I was just sitting here thinking about everything. Come in.”

Madeline went in but did not sit down. “It’s inconceivable,” she said. “I wonder if they would ever have told you if you hadn’t decided to look for them. Didn’t it ever occur to them that you might want to know who they were?”

“Honestly, I’m not sure I did want to know. I’ve been going over this all night, and I’m just now figuring it out. It would have been confusing to know this when I was younger. It’s confusing enough now.”

“Mom has basically lied to us her whole life,” Madeline said.

“Yes, and so have my parents. I’m still getting used to it. But if you think about it, what choice did they really have?”

“Honesty. That choice.”

“True,” Carlotta said. “But at a huge cost to Wyatt’s family.”

“Yes—the way it was handled makes perfect sense for Wyatt and his family, as long as you think his wife deserves to be lied to. But I feel conspired against. Why are you being so pious about it?”

Carlotta was taken by surprise. “I don’t mean to be pious. I resent some of this the same as you do. But it would have been strange for us to know we were sisters when we were little.”

“What about when we
weren’t
little? Mom could have told me the truth when I was grown! I would have understood.”

“And you would have kept it from me? And lied to me like our parents did?”

Madeline didn’t answer.

“And then I would be finding out just now that you had known all along,” Carlotta said. “And that wouldn’t seem right. And if you and I had both known, then whenever I was around Wyatt’s kids, I would have had to lie to them. It would have been hard to keep that secret—to know they were my half brother and sister and not tell them. The way it is, at least we’ve all been happy, and we all had good childhoods; the only people hurt by all this are our parents. It seems to me like this is their difficulty, not ours. They protected us from it, and I don’t think we should make them feel bad about that.”

“And I would agree with you,” Madeline said, “if I hadn’t spent so much time trying to figure out why my mother wanted to spend so much time with
you
.”

The words clanged in her ears even as she said them, but she didn’t try to retract them. She didn’t feel like herself, or even know who she was anymore. Even her memories seemed invalid.

“I see how that must have felt,” Carlotta said. She took a small step toward Madeline and started saying something about the importance of forgiveness. But Madeline walked out.

From the dim lighting at the top of the stairs, she looked down at the twinkling chandelier. Andy came out of the bedroom, but she rebuffed him. “Just take care of Nicholas; get him to sleep,” she told him.

She was out of options, even about where to stand or sit. She didn’t want to go to her mother’s empty room; her mother might come up, and she didn’t want to talk to her mother. She didn’t want to be with Andy or Carlotta. She couldn’t deal with Nicholas just now. She didn’t want to go downstairs and face her mother in the parlor or Jack and Delia in the kitchen.

She went to the small window that overlooked the driveway and stood with her hands clasped, staring at the panes as if she could actually see through all the dust.

50

“ONE KISS?”

Alone in the cabin, Wyatt listened to something knock around on the roof and watched a juniper branch wag back and forth outside the window. Dust like this was new to him. It was coming in under the door, seeping in around the window and collecting on the sill. He had the impression that if he stayed here for enough time, it would bury the cabin.

He was anxious to know how things were going for Shelly up at the house. When he felt he had waited long enough, he buttoned an extra shirt over the one he was wearing and tied a T-shirt around his face to breathe through. Leaning into the howling wind, he had to keep his eyes closed most of the way. He kept his bearings only by looking through a squint every so often to locate the brown glow of the light over the driveway. The house itself faded and reappeared in clouds of gusting dust.

Jack and Delia were in the kitchen watching the weather report with Ranger at their feet when Wyatt stumbled inside, shaking the dust off his clothes. He pulled the T-shirt down from his mouth, took off the extra button-down and hung it over the back of a chair. “What’s the report?”

“More dust,” Jack said.

“Blowing forty miles an hour and picking up,” Delia added.

“I mean on Shelly. Where is she?”

“Across the hall,” Jack said.

“Is Madeline with her?”

“No. They talked—very briefly, I might add—and Madeline went upstairs.”

“So it didn’t go well?”

“Apparently not. Shelly’s still in there. I have the impression nobody wants to see anybody.”

Wyatt drank a glass of water to wash out his throat and walked across to the parlor, where he found Shelly sitting alone in the dark. He sat across from her. Dust had begun to hiss at the windows, making a shushing sound.

“That bad?” he asked.

“Pretty bad.”

“Madeline’s upstairs?”

“Yes.”

“What about Carlotta?”

“Upstairs.”

“Have they talked?”

“I don’t know. I don’t see any point in going up there now. It’ll just set Madeline off. I’m going to stay here in case she comes back down and wants to talk.”

The abrasive
shhhh
at the window surged and faded. Wyatt wished he could ease Shelly’s mind, but they had outgrown false assurances long ago.

“You’re planning to leave tomorrow?” she asked him.

“Yes. For New York. To talk to Elaine.”

A banging sound came from the porch, and Wyatt got up to look out. In the muddy sheen of the porch light, he saw Jack hauling the wicker chairs in. A cushion blew over the railing.

They listened to Jack drag the chairs into the front hall, and heard Delia talk with him about latching shutters, then heard both of them go upstairs.

Wyatt closed the drapes to keep the dust out, but something began pounding against the house. When he looked out again, he saw the porch swing blowing sideways, the end of it beating the wall like a medieval flail. “It’s the swing hitting the house. I’ll be back in a minute.”

She followed him out of the parlor. It would be easier to face the wind than her thoughts of Madeline.

“What are you doing?” Wyatt asked her.

“Going out to help you.”

She stepped outside behind him. The wind nearly swept her off her feet. It seemed malign, volitional, but at least it was a physical force that she could fight against. It pelted her with blistering dust and sand and seemed to be trying to tear the hair out of her scalp. It threw leaves into her face and filled her lungs with dust as thick as smoke from a toxic fire. She yanked her collar up over her mouth. She could see nothing beyond the porch.

Steadying herself against the wall, she looked at Wyatt, the wind hitting him from the side and flattening his hair to his head. He took hold of her arm and together they made their way to the swing, where they wrestled with the hooks but couldn’t detach them from the chains. “I have an idea,” Shelly shouted. “Hang on to the swing for a second.”

Her hands on the wall for balance, she struggled her way inside and dragged out one of the wicker chairs Jack had piled in the hall. Wyatt flipped it onto its side and wedged it tightly under the swing, jamming the legs against the wall so nothing was free to blow. They were fighting their way back into the house when Shelly saw two orbs of light appear in the driveway.

“Was that a car?” she asked, pushing the door closed and then peering out from the window beside it. “Who would be driving up now?”

They waited, watching from the window. In a minute a man appeared out of the dust, staggering up the porch steps, his hand pressed hard on top of his cowboy hat to keep it from blowing off.

“It’s that veterinarian,” Wyatt said. “Carlotta’s friend.”

Shelly opened the door partway, trying to keep the wind out. The man grinned at her and stomped the dirt from his boots. “Is Madeline here?”