Secrecy

FORTUNE’S HAND

LEGACY OF SILENCE

HOMECOMING

SECRECY

PROMISES

THE CAROUSEL

DAYBREAK

WHISPERS

TREASURES

HARVEST

BLESSINGS

TAPESTRY THE

GOLDEN CUP

CRESCENT CITY

EDEN BURNING

RANDOM WINDS

EVERGREEN

A
door slammed so hard that the glass prisms on the hall light clashed in alarm. Someone very angry had either gone into a room or had left it. Then silence, thick and ominous, fell back. When the silence began to ring, Charlotte pulled the pillow around her ears.

They were arguing again. But they would get over it as they always did. After a while her mother, who was undoubtedly the one who had slammed the door, would quiet down. She wondered whether other people’s parents lived like this.

“Childish,” said Emmabrown, talking to her nephew the mailman at the front door. “Charlotte’s fourteen, and she has more sense in her little finger than her mother has in her whole body.”

Emmabrown—that being the name Charlotte herself had bestowed—was proud of her connection with the family; she had kept house for three generations of the Daweses, and liked to talk about their
affairs. Dad was her favorite. On the telephone while Charlotte eavesdropped, she grumbled and boasted to her friends.

“I knew Bill and Cliff when those two boys were learning to talk. Bill was the smart one, good natured, too, a real pleasure. So then he goes to Europe one summer for some studies, Lord knows why you have to go there to study, but anyway he did, and comes home three months later married to this Elena, she just twenty and he twenty-two. Kids, they were. The family wasn’t too happy about it, either, I can tell you. The one good thing was she’s no gold digger. She’s an orphan, left with a pile of money of her own. A real good-looker with a foreign accent—Italian—and a figure like a movie star. Pretty face too. Big eyes and big smile. You can see why he fell for her. She winds him around her little finger.”

Did she really? Well, maybe. Dad didn’t like to fight with people. Sometimes he didn’t even answer back, which made Mama more angry.
Mama
. People called their mothers
Mom
, but she wanted to be called Mama, with the accent on the end. Silly. Stubborn. In her private thoughts Charlotte called her
Elena
.

It was cold, even under the quilt. She could feel the October wind coming through the walls. No, she thought then, it’s not coming through the walls; the cold is inside me. It’s because I’m scared, although I should be used to all this, shouldn’t I?

Now there were voices in the hall, barely loud enough to be heard. Dad’s voice rumbled.

“What do I do that you don’t like?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? You like everything I do? I take it you like everything about me, then?”

Laughter. “No. Oh, no.”

Pause. “Oh, good God, Elena, will you open your mouth and say specifically what’s wrong today? Specifically?”

“A lot of things. Nothing. I don’t know.”

“You really don’t know anything, do you?”

“That’s true. I don’t know anything.”

“Well, if you didn’t spend all your days at the country club, you might know something. I joined for your sake, but I didn’t think you were going to make a second home of the place.”

“And what am I supposed to do with myself? Get elected to the Board of Education? And the Committee for the Environment? I’m not you, Bill. Those aren’t my thing. I wouldn’t fit.”

That was true. She wouldn’t fit. She not only looked different from most other girls’ mothers with their sweaters and moccasins and Jeeps, but she was different. That’s probably why she had no friends among the PTA ladies; they didn’t like her.

But their husbands do
, Charlotte thought, thinking, too, how people would be surprised if they knew how much their children noticed: glances, little greetings on a Saturday morning at the post office or at the school play.

They had gone into their room now, which was just across the hall, yet she was still able to hear. They were assuming that she was asleep.

“Get busy with worthwhile things, Elena, and you’ll be happier.”

“I’ll be happier when I get away from this town, this city, whatever you call it. Of all the places in America, I have to end up in New England in a dying factory town. Fifteen years in this town. ‘A country town,’ you said, and I imagined something with charm, something like Tuscany, with vineyards and old stone houses. Fifteen years in this place.”

“You’ve been living pretty darn well in this place.”

“The winter hasn’t even begun and I’m already freezing.”

Dad sighed. “Oh, what the hell do you want, Elena?”

“I want to go to Florida, to rent a place for a few months.”

“That’s ridiculous. Charlotte has school.”

“We can get tutors for her there. She’d learn more than she would here in school.”

“Ridiculous!”

“We’ll leave her here with Emmabrown. We could shorten our time to six weeks.”

“You know all the trouble we’ve been having with the business. Anyway, I wouldn’t leave her for six weeks, no matter what.”

“All right, Bill, I may just go by myself.”

“You do that.”

Dad’s anger had petered out, and he was tired. The door closed.

Maybe now I can sleep, Charlotte thought. Suddenly she remembered to put her hand on her heart
and feel whether it was beating faster. It was. It always did, whenever they fought.

Even the night before Uncle Cliff’s wedding, they had to fight. Even that day they had to spoil.

T
he chairs were set in rows, and there were flowers in tall holders where the bride and groom were to stand, so that it felt like being in church, or would have felt like it, if the two collies, Rob and Roy, hadn’t been there too. Somehow, Charlotte had known that Uncle Cliff would not want a solemn atmosphere, nor would Claudia, whom he was marrying. They were not what Charlotte called “fancy” people.

They suited this house, where Dad had grown up and had lived until he married and had built a new house for Elena, a modern one where things were orderly and shining. Here there were unexpected nooks, back stairs, porches, dog beds, untidy flowering plants on the windowsills, and raincoats on the clothes tree in the hall.

“The best house in town,” Emmabrown scoffed, “and he had to move out of it because she wanted something modern.”

Emmabrown, in black silk, sat now in the front row next to Charlotte. Elena was on Charlotte’s other side, while Dad, as best man, stood with the minister and Uncle Cliff, waiting for Claudia.

Elena’s neighbor inquired, “Who’s to be maid of honor?”

“No maid. Her son Ted.”

“Her son? That’s unusual.”

“Claudia is unconventional. But she’s very nice, and just right for Cliff.”

“She’s had a hard life, I hear.”

“Oh, terribly. Her husband was shot to death at his office. She came here from Chicago to make a fresh start. Change of scene, you know.”

Elena was in a satisfied mood this morning. She liked being at places when you dressed up and were admired. She liked big, sociable occasions. Her hands, with their beautiful rings, rested quietly on her dark green velvet skirt. Emmabrown was looking at the skirt, which ended several inches above Elena’s knees.

“Posture,” Elena whispered. “Do sit up straight, Charlotte. And when the ceremony is over, go into the guest bathroom and comb the back of your hair.” She smiled. “I know I’m nagging you, but it’s for your own good, so don’t be angry at me, darling.”

The smile and the
darling
gave Charlotte a soft feeling in her chest. Dad always told her she was soft, and she knew she was, soft like him. Affection sometimes brought tears to her eyes. Elena’s little nagging
could be affectionate, so this morning she didn’t mind it so much. She was even grateful for it.

Now somebody at the back of the room began the bridal march on the piano, and there on the arm of her tall, dark-haired son came Claudia, blond and a little overweight in baby blue. Her face is all upturned, Charlotte thought, a lovely face, with lips curved up at the corners; even her eyes seemed to tilt a bit in the corners, as though they could either laugh or cry at any moment.

Uncle Cliff looked very serious, the minister smiled, and Dad winked at Charlotte.

“Isn’t he handsome,” Charlotte whispered.

“Who is?” Elena whispered back.

“Ted, her son.”

“I thought you meant your father.”

She can’t be still angry at him, Charlotte thought, or she wouldn’t have said that.