The Language of Secrets (30 page)

“Yeah, I’m here.”

“All I’m saying is, you turned out to be an incredibly good man. And maybe if you’d had a life different from the one you had, you wouldn’t be you. Maybe we have to go through the craziness we go through so we can be who we are right at this moment. Maybe that’s what destiny is. Maybe there’s a plan to all of it and maybe all of it isn’t about us. Maybe it’s about other people and the things we do for them. Maybe it’s something more amazing and more complicated than we can ever figure out.”

“Amy, I …” Justin wanted to stop her, to tell her what he’d decided.

“No. Wait. Let me finish.” Amy was quietly crying. “The other thing I wanted to say is that I really think there are times in life when a person can do the wrong thing for the right reasons. I think sometimes there can be a line between right and wrong that gets so fine that it disappears. We just have to trust it’s still there, and then do the best we can. That’s all any of us can do, Justin. The best we can.”

“I know,” Justin said. Then he told her: “Ames, I’ve made my decision.”

There was a long silence. “Don’t tell me now.” Amy’s voice was so soft it was almost disappearing. “Wait till you get here.”

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll wait.”

As Justin put the phone down, he was passing a cluster of freeway signs. He glanced at them and saw that the wait wouldn’t be a
long one. He was about forty miles from downtown Los Angeles, just going through Pomona. He was almost home.

But less than a half hour later, long before he reached Santa Monica, Justin left the freeway and drove north, toward the foothills, toward Sierra Madre, and Lima Street.

There was one last act he needed to perform before he could truly be finished with his past.

He drove along Sierra Madre Boulevard, toward its intersection with Lima Street, but once there, he didn’t turn in the direction of the wide-porched house that had haunted his life; he turned instead into the parking lot of a hardware store.

The interior of the store was dim and cool. On a table just inside the front door there was an old-fashioned electric fan and a plastic tray stacked high with watermelon slices. An elderly woman was hovering behind the cash register of a small gift department where dishes and tea towels and knickknacks filled the shelves. A short distance away, in the center of the store, narrow aisles were crowded with tools and chains and bolts.

Justin was the only customer in sight. He moved slowly through the quiet and the clutter, choosing carefully, spending long minutes studying the shape and feel of each of the items he would need.

At one point, he went to a rack lined with work boots and methodically removed one of the rawhide bootlaces. Later, he searched out a pair of heavy scissors and a white canvas drop cloth and then used the scissors to cut a two-foot-by-two-foot square from the canvas.

When he’d found everything he needed, he took his purchases to the wooden counter near the store’s rear entrance. He was waited on by a man wearing a plaid shirt, faded bib overalls, and a hand-carved name tag. According to the tag, the man’s name was
Silas. He studied the assortment of things that Justin had placed before him. There was a total of seven items; included among them was the single rawhide bootlace, the square of snow-white canvas, and a small glass bowl as shallow and fragile as a child’s cupped palm.

The man made no comment on the incongruity of Justin’s selections. All he said was: “Can’t buy the lace unless you buy the boots and you gotta pay for the whole drop cloth, not just that little-bitty piece of it.”

Justin put his credit card down. The man glanced at it and said: “You gonna be needing anything else?”

There was a refrigerator case at the end of the counter. Justin opened its glass door and among the cans of soda and juices, he found a slender bottle of springwater. He placed it beside his credit card. “Just this,” he said.

The trip from the hardware store to the cemetery took less than three minutes. Justin’s walk across the uneven graveyard grass took less than two.

As he stood in front of the modest burial site, and its three headstones, he was in the center of a circle of oaks. Above him, a vaulted canopy of dark branches was swaying on a warm summer breeze. And surrounding him, floating down through pale green leaves, were a thousand dancing shafts of sunlight.

When he went to the weathered headstone that displayed his name, he knelt in front of it. A small bundle, wrapped in white canvas and tied with a rawhide bootlace, was cradled in his hands. He put the bundle on the ground and opened it.

On the smooth surface of the canvas, he quietly arranged the items that it contained: a bottle of springwater; a sea sponge roughly the shape and size of an apricot; an elegant paintbrush with China bristles as black and soft as fur; a mason’s chisel, its
blade sharp, its shaft cool and silver-colored; and a maul, a thick-handled hammer with two and a half pounds of forged steel in its blunt malletlike head. To these things, Justin added an item that he had placed in his pocket to protect it from breaking, the shallow glass bowl.

Into the bowl, he poured some of the springwater. Then he dipped the sea sponge into the water and began to carefully wash away the veil of dust that covered the words “Thomas Justin Fisher” and the inscription “August 5, 1972–February 20, 1976.”

When the name and the dates were clean and clear, Justin took the chisel and fitted the slant of its blade against the carved edge of the number 6. And then he lifted the maul and began his work.

After he was finished, he reached for the elegant China-bristled paintbrush. He used it to sweep away the fine coating of stone dust that his labors had created—and to reveal what they had left behind: his name and his birth date.

“February 20, 1976” was gone.

His time on Lima Street had, at last, come to an end.

*

When Justin arrived home in Santa Monica, he got out of the car and walked toward the front door. He saw that it was open.

Zack was running across the wood floor toward him, on small bare feet.

Amy was there. Waiting.

Fog was rolling in from the ocean, filtering the light and making the interior of the house look both luminescent and obscure, like the essence of a delicate, beautiful memory.

It was Halloween. And the man who had arrived in Manhattan as a young priest thirty-five years ago was now the city’s bishop. He was in bed, asleep, with his wife at his side.

The bishop was dreaming of a long-ago October, and of its last day.

He was dreaming of a girl he had loved. And of the only time he had ever made love to her. He was dreaming of an enchanted afternoon in St. Justin’s Church.

In the dream, he was feeling as a newly crowned angel must feel when a rush of wind surrounds his wings and, for the first time, he is given the power of flight.

Heartfelt gratitude to Alice Tasman and Phyllis Grann—two women who are, in the truest sense of the word, amazing.

Unending thanks to Todd Black. Without his advice and encouragement this book would never have found its way.

Deepest appreciation to Josh Schechter for his unwavering faith, and to Jackeline Montalvo for her patience and guidance.

Love and awe to the sisters of my soul—Sarah, Gail, Mary Lu, Jan, Sandy, Loraine, and Marice—for their clear insights, wise counsel, and precious friendship.

And the fullness of my heart to Hank and Denise, the perfect parents, and to my elegantly eclectic family: Elizabeth, Stephen, Chris, Jerry, Lauren, Amy, Aaron, Noah, Joshua, Carrie, Clara … and Steve (who, a very long time ago, believed that I would someday be a writer).

The Language of Secrets
by Dianne Dixon is a complex novel about family secrets and the many ways that love can cloud our judgment. The following questions are intended to enhance your reading experience and to generate lively discussions among the members of your book group.

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1.
The Language of Secrets
opens with this quote from Thomas Moore: “The beast residing at the center of the labyrinth is also an angel.” How does this quote set the stage for what transpires in the novel? Why do you think the author chose it for the opening page?

2. What were your first impressions of Justin? What did you think might have happened between him and his family? Initially, did it seem unusual that he held on to memories of his childhood home so tightly?

3. Discuss Caroline. Do you believe that in spite of the fact Caroline was born in the 1940s and came of age in a time long before the women’s movement, she truly had no options, no way to escape the oppressive aspects of her life? Why was she unable to alter her situation?

4. Caroline’s background and her passionate belief in the importance of a two-parent family were key parts of who she was. If she had at some point decided to get a divorce, what impact do you think it would have had on her as a woman and as a mother? Would she have been stronger? Or more damaged?

5. Along these lines, consider the theme of powerlessness: Which other characters believed that they were trapped by their circumstances? What do they do (or not do) to improve their respective lives?

6. Why do you think Robert could never truly love Justin? Do you think that, long before it was revealed, on some level Robert had known the truth about Justin?

7. Barton and Mitch were very different men, but Caroline had feelings for both of them and the feelings lasted for a lifetime. What were the qualities in each man that attracted her to him? Who do you think Caroline truly loved—Mitch, Barton, or Robert? Why?

8. Talk about the marriages in
The Language of Secrets
. Given the betrayal and tragedy that colored their union, was it surprising that Caroline and Robert remained married? Justin and Amy’s relationship starts out strong but is battered by the mystery of Justin’s boyhood and the interference of Amy’s overbearing father, Don. In light of those things, did their marriage turn out the way you thought it would?

9. Consider how author Dianne Dixon constructed the narrative, by writing from the various characters’ perspectives and by allowing plot points to develop in a nonlinear fashion. How would the novel have been different if only one character told the story from his or her point of view, or if the events unfolded in chronological order?

10. What do you think the book’s title means, both literally and in the context of what happens in the novel? Was the Fisher family unique, or do all families have their own, individual, language of secrets?

11. Discuss Robert’s bombshell revelation to Caroline about what really happened on the Nevada camping trip. What did you think about what Robert did to his son, and to his wife? Can his actions be explained or excused in any way?

12. Did you have empathy for Caroline or for Robert? Or do you feel each of them got what they deserved? Do you think that in any way (big or small) Caroline was responsible for what Robert did to Justin?

13. What are some examples of the line between right and wrong being crossed in
The Language of Secrets?
Can doing the wrong thing (even if it’s for the right reasons) ever be justified?

14. After she sees the spiral-bound notebook that Caroline assembled, Margaret intuitively understands the truth—there was a monumental
difference in how each of Justin’s parents felt about him. If you were in Margaret’s shoes, once you discovered this important piece of information, what would you have done?

15. Even though he went to the Zelinski house intending to confess, why didn’t Justin reveal the details of what happened on his final night in that house? Given Justin’s quest to banish the secrets in his own life, what does it say about his character that he would voluntarily keep the secrets that existed in Stan’s life?

16. When you look at it as a legal issue, what do you think Justin’s culpability was in what happened in the breezeway of the Zelinski house? Is it different when you look at it as a moral issue?

17. When Julie and Lissa are leaving Lima Street for the last time, how do the impressions they have of their parents differ from the impressions you had of who Robert and Caroline were? Do you think it’s ever possible for a child to have an accurate understanding of a parent? Did Julie and Lissa’s conversation affect your perception of your own parents?

18. As Justin’s story unfolds, how did you feel about Amy’s attitude? Should she have been a more supportive and sympathetic wife? Or do you think she should have gone in the other direction and been more forceful in insisting that Justin let go of the past and focus on the family he has now?

19. Amy’s mother, Linda, tells Amy to accept her father the way he is. Do you agree with that point of view? Or is Amy right in expecting her father to step up and start showing his love in the ways that she wants and needs him to?

20. Of all the twists and turns in Justin’s story, which one surprised you the most?