Secret Language

“Monica Wood’s
Secret Language
is beautifully done—
her
language is gorgeous. She’s one of the few writers I know who can take a long, serious journey through a dark place and come out—convincingly—on the side of redemption.”

—D
AWN
R
AFFEL

“Unforgettable … A graceful and insightful literary debut, brimming with emotion and depth. With simple and subtle language, Wood captures the complex relationship between two sisters.”

—The Boston Phoenix

“Deft and delicate … I can think of no more impressive recent debut of a novelistic voice, one that speaks not to our minds, but to our hearts.”

—Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel

“Powerful … Wood tells the story of Faith and Connie Spaulding with such compelling honesty, this reader was lifted out of her seat and into the hearts of these sisters. I believed it all.”

—Maine in Print

“The prose is crisp and not a word is wasted. Wood has taken a long, deep look at life in our time and provided fresh insight into human nature.”

—Maine Sunday Telegram

“[Wood] has written pitch-perfect dialogue, rendered the sustaining rhythms and tones of family life, and demonstrated with understated wisdom and beautiful language some of the rules that govern the human heart.”

—Casco Bay Weekly

“Fiercely lyrical … [Wood] writes with sensitivity and intuitive insight about relationships coming apart and the walls people erect to keep others out.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Luminous … Monica Wood has brilliantly captured the human need to love, the heart’s desire to nurture, and the soul’s urge to sacrifice.”

—A
NDRE
D
UBUS
III
Author of
House of Sand and Fog

“[An] accomplished new novel … Wood’s command of voice holds a reader all the way through to the last page, where … she holds up a mirror and encourages us to recognize ourselves.”

—San Francisco Chronicle

“A thoroughly captivating book: warm and wise and beautifully written.”

—R
ICHARD
R
USSO
Author of
Straight Man

“One of the best novels I’ve read in the past year … A slender book that unfolds as gracefully as the petals of a rose … A small gem to be read, reread, and, yes, treasured.”

—The Roanoke Times

“Engaging … Wood skillfully works the competing threads of motivation into a tight, surprising knot of a story.… Wood’s generous vision is uplifting as well as entertaining.… Full of the best human longings.”

—The Maine Times

“A compelling and unusual tale that combines humor with tragedy, heartbreak with promise.”

—Booklist

“Recommended … At once bittersweet, funny, and moving.”

—Library Journal

For the longest time, Connie thinks the house in Connecticut is two houses. The one they used to live in with Grammy Spaulding had a pretty yard with giant white flowers growing next to the door, and window boxes with smaller flowers, pink, spilling over the lip. It had a shiny wooden floor in the upstairs bedroom where she and Faith used to skate in their socks. It had places to hide: big closets that smelled like cotton, and an open shape behind the stairs, not the cramped, creepy places of the house they’re in now. Connie hasn’t seen that other house since Grammy went away, and she longs for it, the snow filling in the windowsills, Grammy’s crooked finger tracing their names on the cold pane.

“What happened to that other house?” she asks Faith.

Connie is three. Faith is big; she’s five.

“What house?” Faith says. She is sitting on the dull floor, her legs splayed in front of her, reading a book with butterflies on the cover.

“That house where it snowed and had pink flowers.”

“We didn’t have a house like that. Flowers don’t grow in snow.”

“Oh,” Connie says. She waits a minute. “Where’s Grammy?”

Faith looks at her book, hard. “In heaven,” she says. “I told you.”

Connie knows Faith won’t talk to her anymore now that she has mentioned Grammy.

“Grammy took care of us when I was one,” Connie says, but Faith won’t answer. “I was one years old.”

The house is silent and too small. The other house was big.

“Fix my pants?” she asks Faith.

Faith puts down her book with the butterflies. Connie trails her
to the bathroom, yanking her rubber pants and wet panties down to her knees, walking bent over her bare feet.

“Did you go number one or number two?” Faith asks, stepping onto the toilet to reach the sink.

“Number one.”

Connie lies on the bathroom floor—her ruined pants next to her in a shameful heap—and watches Faith wet a washcloth. Faith’s hair has a snag in the back, but the rest of it is combed just right. Faith knows how to do everything. She steps off the toilet, one hand on the sink for balance. “Go like this,” she says, wiping Connie’s bottom. Connie does, then Faith wipes her again and dries her with a towel.

Connie stays on the floor while Faith gets clean panties. “Can I have powder?” she asks, hoping she doesn’t sound too much like a baby. Faith shakes some on. She puts Connie’s feet through the legs of the clean panties and pulls them up, then follows with the same pair of rubber pants. “All done,” she says, and goes out to find her book.

Connie’s rubber pants smell funny but she doesn’t care. She follows Faith, remembering that other house, the one Faith says they never lived in. But they did. Connie remembers everything, even the flower smell of Grammy’s lap, and the stories Grammy used to read over and over from grown-ups’ books, and her songs about animals. Billy says Grammy used to sing like a rusty hinge, but she didn’t. Billy and Delle sing all the time in bird voices, tall, mean, beautiful birds. Sometimes they sing their own names—Billy and Delle, Billy and Delle—up and down the scale. Connie wonders if everybody’s mother and father sing like that.

“Faith?”

“What.”

“Faith?”

Faith tips her head up. “
What
.”

“Look at me.”

“I’m looking.”

But she isn’t really, and her head tips down again into her book. Connie wishes she could read. She stares out the window over the
bumpy lawn. That other house had pink flowers, and snow. She knows it did.

Connie has trouble with time. She always has to stop and think a minute: how old is she now? Is that smell in the air winter coming, or spring? Faith always seems to know, though her life is the same as Connie’s: back and forth to theater towns all over. The same dingy food, the same noisy sidewalks, the same cramped suites in the same hotels, too cold or too hot. Nothing moves forward. Sometimes they go to school, sometimes not, though they always have books to read: big packets of books that Armand sends to them in every city. Armand is Billy and Delle’s lawyer, the only person they know who likes children.

The hotel they’re in now, where they are watching Billy and Delle run lines, is hot. Not because of the weather, which is cold, but because of the steam heat they can’t control. This is Cleveland, or Columbus—Connie keeps forgetting. Next comes New York, Broadway, weeks and weeks in the worst hotel of all, the noise of the city battering the windows and walls.

Connie can remember being here in Columbus or Cleveland once before, with a different show, when she was seven, or five. She remembers the lady downstairs who does nothing all day but suck on lollipops and smile politely and check people in. She likes Connie and Faith, brings them sandwiches when Billy and Delle don’t, tells them all about her romantic husband. Connie also remembers this sofa, its lurid orange flowers. Today it feels like wet sweaters. Faith is shifting next to her, lifting her sticky legs.

“Charmed,” Billy says from the exact center of the room, extending his hand. He is a count who can’t remember where he hid some important papers; Delle is the countess. Her amber eyes slide over.

“Enchanted,” she says. She rises from a chrome chair she retrieved from the kitchenette. In the play it’s a red velvet divan.