Lilia's Secret (2 page)

It was 3 a.m. when Bill woke up. A pressure bore down on his chest and he tried to push it away but his arms flailed against empty air. The thing wasn't on top of him, it was inside, squeezing his heart.

Bill struggled to a sitting position. His hand shook as he reached up to his throat. Despite the complete darkness red blurs appeared all about him. He breathed in three times and started to count the pulsing under the pad of his index finger. There was a strong drumbeat, so not a heart attack then.

He talked himself down as if from a great height.

When he was breathing almost normally he thought about waking Carole. He could hear her quiet snoring on the other side of their king-size bed. When they'd bought the bed they'd tried to snuggle in the middle of it. But it was many years now since even their toes had touched.

She should have woken. Nothing like this had happened before. The least she could do after nearly forty years of marriage was to be there the one time he needed her.

Bill lay down again, clutching a pillow to his chest. For the rest of the night he was awake, listening to the quiet click of
the digital clock on his bedside, his eyes scanning the dark from one end of the room to the other.

The next morning he sat at the kitchen table buried behind the
Boston Globe
. Esperanza poured the juice she'd squeezed for him into a chilled glass.

‘
Gracias
,' he said, without looking at her. That was the extent of his Spanish. Carole did the talking. She and Esperanza would stand beside the sink, Esperanza rubbing the inside of a cup with a dishcloth, and Carole smoothing back her careful hair. Bill had no idea how they communicated because Carole didn't know much more Spanish than him, but there was always plenty of noise between them. Somehow Carole got the baked sole or chickpea chicken she wanted in the dining room of an evening.

He'd hardly touched his juice. Specks of orange floated like tiny boats on top. Two moved ever so slowly towards each other and collided. Bill imagined the sound they'd make if he were small enough to fit into their world: two great hulking container ships smashing together. He flinched.

‘What is it, Bill?' Carole asked, towering over him. She wore a tweed wool suit, which hugged her neat waist and hips. The skirt came to the top of her knees precisely. She'd let her hair go grey after years of dyeing it, but that's not what you noticed. It was perfectly in place, with its gentle wave away from her forehead. He thought it looked girlish.

She'd been the right girl for him when he'd needed a wife: tall, graceful and charming. She was still those things, but there was now a touch of steel, like a backbone through all her attributes. He couldn't say he felt exactly cheated – after all, most women her age had that same steeliness. But he did miss
the girlish adoration. In truth, he missed any attention at all. She was so caught up in her charities now, it was as if he was no more than a piece of furniture in her life – there, and possibly necessary, but no longer visible. Maybe not even ‘necessary'. He closed down that thought before it could take shape and let his glasses drop to his nose so he could look at her over them.

‘Nothing,' he said.

‘Not the retirement jitters?' She smiled down at him.

Yes, he thought, she does know. He opened his mouth to say it, but she bent over with a quick dry peck to his left cheek.

‘I'm off to the board meeting at the hospital. Enjoy your first day of freedom.' Her keys jangled on the way to the door. She always went out of the kitchen door. He was the only one to use the front doors.

‘Oh, Bill, they're far too grand,' Carole had said with her high laugh, as if she were explaining herself to a child.

The arched doors were ten feet tall and carved with lilies and roses. He'd paid $20,000 for them and nobody used them except him. So he was the only one awed by the exquisitely proportioned oval entrance lined with large Grecian urns, which led right down over the marble stairs. The stairs finished at the circular drive, and the circular drive sat in the centre of four and a half acres of garden. Bill couldn't have said what was in the garden, but it looked good. They had two gardeners to keep it that way, Hispanics as well. He didn't know who gave them their instructions. He supposed he would from now on. That's what retirement was, wasn't it? A chance to get reacquainted with what was going on in your own home.

He straightened the pages of the newspaper with a snap and the back of his hand brushed his glass. It fell slowly to the tiles and the orange liquid pooled in jagged patches among the broken shards. Bill's hands began to shake. Esperanza scooted over with a cloth, dustpan and broom. He laid the newspaper on the table and clamped his thighs together hard, watching her clean up. He wondered why he'd never felt appalled at this arrangement before.

‘
Gracias
,' he said, when she'd swept up the glass and swished her cloth over the now perfectly white tiles. She nodded in his direction, her eyes fixed on the floor.

Two weeks later Bill was in the bathroom, a large airy room. He sat on the toilet with the lid down and looked out over the treetops to where a strip of water glimmered. He had never sat there surveying all that was his without being filled with it. Today there was a film of grey over everything. He put his forehead against the glass and stayed like that, unable to move. The last two weeks had been like this – all ashy grey. He'd never known that colour until his retirement. He'd been known as ‘dynamic'. He'd ‘changed the way people did business in Boston', so the
Boston Globe
had reported after his retirement bash two weeks ago.

He couldn't remember that man.

Bill pushed back from the window and went to the basins. Carole's was nearest the door and his nearest the window. They rarely used the bathroom together these days, so there wasn't much need for the two basins set four feet apart. He stood in
front of Carole's. Staring at the mirror he thought his hair didn't seem silver anymore. It was grey, and flat; his face, jowly and lined. He stuck a finger in his stomach and it disappeared. You could hide so much more in a suit than you could in sweat pants.

Carole's tiny bottles of creams were lined up like little soldiers. He picked up a gold one shaped like a teardrop with a silver lid; his thumb was bigger than the whole thing. He unscrewed the lid and sniffed. It smelt like a rose. He bumped a glob of it into his palm and dipped the fingertips of his other hand into the mound of cream to dab it on his face. The bristles of his unshaved chin poked through like tiny pinpricks as he lathered on the cream. It dissolved and he stared at his face again. It hadn't changed the pouches under his eyes, or the way his skin dragged downwards.

Suddenly anxious and short of breath, he succumbed to the drag and sank to the ground, leaning against Carole's marble cupboard doors. They were cold against his back. He swung around and opened them. Inside were rows and rows of more tiny bottles and jars, a whole basket of lipsticks – there must have been fifty.

Bill took out the round wicker basket and set it on the black tiles. Each tile was edged by gold and he made sure the basket didn't touch the gold. He sat with his back to the cupboard and took the lipsticks out, one by one, lining them up on the floor as he counted. He put all the gold tubes on one black square and all the clear ones on another. The short dark ones went together and the others went on to another square, which he labelled miscellaneous. Sixty-three. He recounted them as he put them back, careful to mix them about as they went into the basket.

His breath came more easily now and he felt stronger than he had since that night he'd woken with what he supposed was a panic attack. He hadn't had one since, and he was determined not to again.

Down three levels to his den it was dark and heavy, just the way he liked it. Carole had done the decorating – he'd been too busy at the office – and she'd got it right. The dark green of the drapes picked up a thin green line in the striped wallpaper. The moose-head had to go though – he was more of a modern man now.

Bill switched on the lights and crossed to his desk. His fingertips tingled. He sat down and pulled open the three desk drawers in quick succession. In the first drawer he shoved things about, looking for something to count, but he found nothing. He sat drumming his fingers against the oak. It sounded like tiny, threatening thuds.

He missed being someone.

He felt the familiar pressure welling in his chest and he sucked air into his lungs and held it until the pressure ebbed. It worked; he was proud of himself. For a moment he was a boy again, his father patting him on the head. The tears started.

‘Don't think, do,' he said softly, and strode to the door. He would get some cookies. At the landing he heard a noise. He stopped and cocked his head. It came from the floor above, so he went up a few stairs, then a couple more. Somebody was crying. This wasn't the kind of thing he felt able to do much about. What would he do if one of the staff came by and saw him standing there, suspended? He went up to the next landing, where the noise was louder. His three grown-up daughters had their bedroom suites on this floor. Hilary and Laura would be at work and Angela should be at college. It
would be Angela. She didn't have the backbone to be where she should be most of the time.

He'd been watching television when she'd announced she'd been accepted into Business School at Harvard. She'd told Carole to turn off the television and Angela had stood in front of it, just as she'd done as a child when she wanted attention. Bill had suppressed his irritation, but joy took over when he heard her news. He hadn't even waited for Esperanza to respond to his call before he'd hurried into the kitchen to open a bottle of champagne to celebrate. It had been such a relief that she'd done what he'd wanted. Now she'd be OK. She had a brain, it was good she was going to use it. She could just have easily gone the other way, daydreaming her life away.

It turned out his relief had been premature. He knew how hard you had to work to do well at Harvard and she didn't seem to be doing much at all.

Bill rubbed his hand up and down the marble bannister. He could leave her crying. He'd probably end up snapping at her anyway. Her mother was better with her. He swivelled around, he'd call her mother. But … wasn't this what retirement should be about – finally having the time to be a dad? He turned and went up the last few stairs. If the door was closed he wouldn't invade her privacy. That was the deal he made. He trailed his hand along the bannister to her room. The door was ajar.

Bill had backbone. He stuck to his deals. He breathed in, pushed the door the rest of the way open and took a step into the room. Angela crouched on the bed, clawing at the bedspread, her mouth gaping open and dripping with saliva. He could see her eyes closed through the strands of her dark
hair. Bill froze. This thing on the bed was nothing he could be a father to. She stopped clawing and wrapped her arms around herself and rocked. He held his breath and took a silent step backwards. But what if she looked up and caught him trying to leave? Why hadn't he gone out today like he'd told her he would?

He took a few quick, shallow breaths and went over to her bed, sitting on the very edge, extending his hand, ready to pat her back. In that moment she stopped moaning. The silence was red and building. He held his hand frozen over her. Then she looked up at him and he gasped. Her wet soggy face was Angela's, but he still didn't recognise the woman looking at him. Their eyes locked and in hers an abyss of hopelessness and rage pulled at him. The moment passed and she dropped her head, her body sagging into the foetal position. He stood up and backed away. Outside her bedroom he thrust his hands into his pockets, balled his fists. He would not, would not, give in to his own panic.

Angela ate out that night. The next morning when they saw each other Bill was ready to smile widely as if nothing had happened. Angela took her plate of eggs from Esperanza and didn't look at him at all.