The Language of Secrets (17 page)

“Caro—” Barton’s voice was full of concern for Caroline.

She continued, refusing to be interrupted. “I got married
because Robert said we should do it, and because I was too weak and scared to see that I had any other options.”

“Caro,” Barton said again. “Don’t do this. It’s ancient history. It’s not important anymore.”

“Since when isn’t the truth important, Barton?”

“What’s not important is how you and Robert began. All that matters is how far you’ve come, that you’ve made a good life together.”

Caroline laughed. The sound was harsh and loud.

Robert threw down his napkin and walked out of the room.

Caroline’s attention was on Barton. Her eyes were wide and fiercely bright. “You want to know how far Robert and I have come? Not very far. I’m still doing things because Robert says I should do them. But now instead of just doing mindless things, I’ve graduated to unforgivable things.”

Robert reappeared in the dining room doorway, his attention fixed on Caroline.

“I’ve done the unforgivable because I’m weak and I’m stupid.” Caroline’s voice became louder, and then it became a shriek. “If I was stronger and smarter, Justin wouldn’t be gone now. I would never have allowed Robert to take him away from me!”

The color drained from Robert’s face.

Barton instinctively put a comforting hand on Caroline’s shoulder. “Some events are beyond our control, Caro. We can’t blame ourselves for the randomness of things that can happen to a child.”

Caroline turned on him with furious hostility. “It’s easy to feel blameless when you don’t actually
have
any children to be responsible for, isn’t it, Barton?”

“That’s not fair!” Lily’s response flew at Caroline like a bullet.

“You want fair?” Caroline shot back. “Go to Pomona.”

Lily looked at Caroline, then at Barton, puzzled.

“It’s the county fair,” Caroline said. “Pomona’s the only fair there is, Lily.”

Robert watched as Caroline sat back in her chair and closed her eyes. She looked depleted and tired. He saw that the rage had gone out of her. And he left the room.

Barton was offering Caroline a glass of water. She pushed it aside. “Barton, don’t even think about talking to me about God and his infinite love for me. The things that I’ve done are things that I’ll never be forgiven for. Never.”

“God’s love for us is limitless, Caro. It’s the reason he allowed Christ to die on the cross. To forgive us our sins.”

“No, you’re wrong.” Caroline’s voice was low and weary. “God put Christ on that cross to show us the truth about what we can expect from life. It’s God’s way of saying to us, ‘If I’d do this to my own son … what do you think I’m going to do to you?’”

Caroline didn’t wait for a reply. She shoved her chair away from the table and went upstairs.

As she lay down, she could feel something bunched beneath her. It was the half-finished costume she’d been constructing for Lissa—an outfit for a musical version of Goldilocks. As Caroline was dropping it onto the floor beside the bed, she heard the girls across the hall arguing. Then there was the sound of a door being slammed and a shout of “I hate you, you idiot! I’m going to tell!”

Caroline sat up, intending to go out into the hall and explain to her children that shouting and name-calling were ugly, uncivilized things to do. But she dropped back onto the bed, laughed at the irony of her message, and let the wine and her emotional exhaustion overtake her.

At some point, Caroline fell asleep and began to dream. She and Barton and Justin were on a stage, dressed as the Three Bears.
Their costumes were loose and fastened down the back with ties, like hospital gowns—everyone could see that they were naked inside of them. Barton’s was billowed and balloonlike, and because of that, he floated above the stage—above Caroline and Justin, not seeing them, gazing heavenward and humming the song “Blue Skies.” And in front of the stage, in the midst of the audience, Robert and Mitch were engaged in a brutal dance contest. The song was a cruelly sped-up version of “California Girls.” Their feet were bleeding and the auditorium was filled with the sound of their bones snapping and shattering. A Judge was loudly banging a coffin-shaped gavel and shouting: “Justice. Justice.” A bricked, ovenlike arch began to belch with flame and The Accused was being led toward it. Caroline struggled to see through the mask of her Bear costume, to see who it was that had been found guilty. But she could see nothing. She could only feel the heat of the flames.

And then she woke up. Someone was knocking on the bedroom door.

When Caroline opened the door, Barton was there, holding a bowl of ice cream. “All of us were worried about you,” he said. “I’ve been sent up with a peace offering.” Caroline took the ice cream and went back to the bed. Barton came and sat beside her. “I’m not exactly certain how we got so off track at dinner, Caro.”

“My fault. I had too much to drink. Drinking and grieving don’t mix.” Caroline tried to smooth the skirt of her dress; it was covered in a confusion of wrinkles. The fabric looked bunched and dull, so different from what it had been when she’d put it on before dinner—when she had wanted to look as fresh and pretty in lemon yellow as Lily did in summer white.

“What’s the story with you and Robert and Mitch? Why was there such tension when his name came up?” Barton’s question took Caroline by surprise.

He plowed ahead without waiting for an answer. “I know there’s a problem, but when I asked Robert all he would say is that you aren’t in contact with Mitch, that neither one of you has seen him in almost ten years.”

“We drifted apart, that’s all.” Caroline went into the bathroom and filled the air with deliberate clatter, rooting through drawers, rattling hairbrushes and lipsticks. It didn’t deter Barton. He simply raised his voice and said: “When was the last time you saw him?”

“Years ago,” Caroline answered. “That time when he was in town just before you left for New York. Remember? That day I came by the church. Your last day.”

“That’s not true.” Barton’s voice was louder than she had expected it to be. He was standing in the doorway of the bathroom. “I know that he was here, in this house, about a month after Justin’s death.”

Caroline felt as if she had been slapped. “How do you know that?”

“Mitch told me. I ran into him right after he’d gotten back from seeing you. His law firm has a branch office in Manhattan. We bump into each other every now and then. But the question is, Caro, why didn’t you tell Robert?”

“This is none of your business.”

“You and Robert and I have been friends for a long time. And you, Caro, you’re part of me. That makes everything that happens to you my business.”

Caroline studied Barton for a minute. She needed to know how much danger she was in; how much of the truth he suspected. She waited before she said: “Mitch did come here. But I sent him away. So, there wasn’t anything to say to Robert.”

“And that’s it? That’s all you’re going to allow me to know?”

“It’s all you need to know. Because even if I am part of you, Barton, I’m only a part, only Caroline. I’m not Lily. Lily would owe you more. I don’t.”

It wasn’t clear to Caroline whether it was irritation or hurt in his voice as he said: “Come downstairs soon. Robert and the girls are waiting to have ice cream with you.”

When Barton had gone, Caroline closed the door of the room she shared with Robert, and she thought about the last time she’d seen Mitch.

It had been on a day in late winter, shortly before noon, and Caroline had answered the door wearing a lavender-colored nightgown that had floated around her ankles like a cloud. Her hair was pulled back and tied at the nape of her neck with a lavender ribbon. The nightgowns and the tying back of her hair with matching ribbons had become a sort of uniform for her.

Justin had been gone for almost a month. Since returning from his funeral Caroline had not once left the house. She was pale, and her expression was dreamy and unfocused. She moved as if she were floating in fog. When she saw that it was Mitch who was at the door, it took her a long time to comprehend the reality of his being there.

“I didn’t know what to bring.” As Mitch said this, he was giving her a mass of hothouse violets, glittering with dew and resplendent in a cone of glossy white lace-edged paper.

The flowers were cold and heavy in her hand, like a fistful of jewels. She gazed at them and said, “Justin’s gone.”

“I know. That’s why I came.”

“To see Justin?” She looked around the room, perplexed.

“Caroline, what’s wrong with you? Are you here by yourself? Where’s Rob? Where are your girls?”

“In school, but they’ll be back later.” The violets slipped from
her hand. She watched them fall. “I’m a little not myself right now. I take pills sometimes. But I try not to when the girls are here.”

Mitch cupped her chin and gently forced her to look at him. “Somebody should be here to help you. Jesus God, Caroline, is there somebody I can call? … something I can do?”

“It’s not your fault, Mitch. You’re not the one …” She returned to gazing at the violets. When he had touched her face, she had felt the familiar shape of his hands; somewhere far off inside her, something had stirred, and then gone quiet again.

“Why did I have to hear it from Barton about your little boy dying? Why didn’t you let me know? Why didn’t Rob?”

“Because of what I did, Robert doesn’t like you anymore. He’ll never like you again.” She said it without emotion. “And he won’t ever like me again, either. He just doesn’t know it yet.” Then she leaned forward and collapsed into his arms—slowly, like a kite spiraling into soft green grass.

Mitch had carried her into her bedroom and stayed beside her as she slept. He had sat smoking cigarettes, looking toward the window and the oak tree in the backyard. Caroline had awakened just before the girls were due home from school, and she had said: “You have to go now, Mitch. You have to promise, please, never to come back. Because if you do, Robert will take this house down from around me and my girls. We’ll be alone. And we have no way to survive.”

Mitch had kept the promise she had asked of him. He had never come back to her. Caroline had taken root in the house on Lima Street. And life had gone on.

Now she was picking up the bowl of ice cream that Barton had brought and she was going downstairs—because her girls were there, waiting for her.

Twilight had deepened into darkness and coolness had finally
found its way into the summer air. The house had its windows flung wide and its doors standing open. Lamps were lit in every room. The feeling was expansive and joyous. Caroline’s outburst at dinner had been attributed to too much wine and too little sleep, and had been put aside.

Everyone was gathered in the living room. Julie and Lissa were holding candlesticks, and Robert a rolled-up newspaper. The Motown song “My Girl” was playing on the stereo. Robert and the girls were singing along to it, using the candlesticks and newspaper as their “microphones.” The three of them were serenading Caroline.

And Caroline was remembering other summer nights, when she’d lived the kind of hungry life she had never wanted her children to experience. A life in which she had haunted the sidewalks of neighborhoods that weren’t her own; where there were places that looked the way the house on Lima Street looked tonight, big and festive and full of light. Caroline had hidden under the bright, open windows of those houses and listened to the music emanating from them.

And in their melodies, she had heard the promise of safety and the sound of surety. It was what she was hoping, in this moment, each one of her children was hearing—the music of home.

“Is this my baby?” Margaret had barely been able to speak. He was the most beautiful child she’d ever seen. She had carefully taken him as he was being lowered into her arms, and the feeling had been delicious. She’d waited for him for a very long time. He hadn’t come to her until the day before her forty-fifth birthday.

When she brought her child home, it was through a snowfall as crisp and white as freshly ironed lace. It was February and she was thinking that she should have gotten the Christmas decorations from the attic and put them back up in honor of his arrival. Her son was a miracle; he should be coming into a house dressed for the season of miracles.

As she carried him, bundled in a blanket, toward her front door, she wondered what she looked like to people passing on the street. What would they think of this middle-aged woman with her unruly red hair, sloping shoulders, and limping gait, running toward a modest New England clapboard house as if she were running toward heaven? Would they know that she was not what she appeared to be; that she had been transformed; that this house
was now a home, a place where a mother was being born and a son would grow?

Before Margaret could reach the door, it was thrown open by Kati. Huge bouquets of helium balloons were tied to the legs of the dark wood table just inside the doorway, and Kati was singing: loudly and off-key, “Happy baby to you! Happy baby to you! Happy baby, dear Maggie. Happy baby to you!”

Kati was nineteen—adorably pretty, free-spirited and spontaneous. She was the daughter of an old friend. Margaret had hired her a year ago as a temporary assistant to run errands and type lecture notes until someone (someone whom Margaret assumed would be more serious-minded and scholarly) could be found. But Kati had proved to be a conscientious, enthusiastic, and completely competent employee. Within weeks, her status had become permanent.

“I tried to sing quiet,” Kati said. “I didn’t wake him up, did I?”

“No,” Margaret told her. “You sang very quietly. He’s still fast asleep.”

Kati lifted the edge of the blanket away from the child’s face. His skin was creamy white and his hair was the color of chocolate. She gave a quick, soft gasp—as if she had encountered an exquisite work of art. He stirred. For a moment, his eyes opened. They were green, with eyelashes that were dark and extravagantly long. He sleepily closed his eyes again. A tear that had been caught in his lashes slid free and Margaret gently wiped it away. “He was crying a little in the car,” she explained. “It’s hard to be so new in a whole new world.”