Secret Language (13 page)

After dinner the boys want to stroll down Broadway. Though it is nearly July, a chill has blown in from the river, out of season. The cab drops them off a few blocks shy of Times Square so they can walk the rest of the way to the hotel.

Ben sings “New York, New York” over and over as they stroll among the lighted theaters. The city has lit something in him; Faith can’t recall his ever singing out loud.

“Start spreadin’ the newwws,” he begins again.

“Shut up, Ben,” Chris says. “Mom, which one of these theaters did my grandparents act in?”

“They’re my grandparents too,” Ben says. He looks at Faith for confirmation.

For a bizarre instant Faith thinks they mean Joe Senior and Phoebe.

“Mom?”

“I don’t know,” Faith says. “Lots of them.”

“But which ones, specifically?”

“I don’t
know
, Chris.”

“We were young,” Connie says. “They all looked the same, really.”

The simple pleasure Faith felt at dinner is gone. Again she feels a certain dread dragging itself through her, vague as those shapes in the alley. The boys hurry ahead, gawking at posters and marquees and the pulsing throng of passers-by. With Ben and Chris out of earshot, Faith and Connie don’t talk much; the city swells up in a noisy battle around their silence. Their laughter already seems years away. Faith watches doorways for muggers, or worse. Connie is looking up and down the buildings, peering down cross streets. It takes a while for Faith to realize what Connie is doing; it comes to her when something—perhaps the smell of must and urine floating up from the subway, or the long-forgotten shape of a door or window—stings her unconscious. They stop at the same time.

“It’s gone,” Connie says, staring up at a new-looking building with a glass storefront. Faith catches their reflection among mannequins dressed as characters from the stage: Mame, Gypsy, King Arthur, Lady Macbeth. Faith and Connie could be characters themselves, remarkably alike, their tallish, angular silhouettes poised in the same surprise.

“Site of the old Prince Theater,” Connie reads underneath the neon proclaiming P
RINCE
C
OSTUME
C
OMPANY
. She turns to Faith, her eyes wide, amazed. “We stood right here. Exactly here, on this very spot.”

Faith looks down at the dirty sidewalk and imagines her white shoes, her pretty white dress, her braids, her parents’ cold hands on her shoulder, the heat of several cameras flashing at once.

Connie is watching her, her lips poised for a word, as if she means to explain where they are, as if she thinks Faith might not remember.

Armand is not much changed. He still has attentive blue eyes and a shiny, accommodating face. Round, slow-moving, bald as an oyster; a reassuring, unlawyerly presence. It surprises Faith how happy she feels to be near him. Although they have never been out of touch, she has seen him face to face only once since her wedding, when Ben was just a toddler. Armand had taken it into his head one fall to do a foliage tour and turned up on her doorstep. She showed him to the Fullers as if he were the generous, forthcoming, hidden part of herself.
See
? she wanted to say to them.
See
?

Here they are again, more than ten years later. Connie is standing near him, her hands clasped inside-out, the stance she used as a child.

Armand shakes the boys’ hands. “You won’t remember me,” he says to Ben, “but I remember you.” He beams at Faith. “He spent most of my visit varooming around the yard in some kind of homemade contraption.”

Chris laughs. “My father’s go-cart. It’s still in the basement. Dad can’t stand to get rid of anything with wheels.”

Armand’s office—deep chairs and oiled wooden surfaces—brings back a comfort Faith had nearly forgotten. It comes back in the piney scent of these high and heavy walls. She remembers a time in this very office, when she was six or seven years old. Standing near the window, she clutched the soft, brown drape as she watched the people darting across Columbus Circle, no bigger than cats from so grand a height. Behind her, in their musical voices, Billy and Delle listed a string of cities and dates for a tour. Their mood was giddy,
their gay laughter spilling into Armand’s office like something tipped from a bottle. They were happiest at the start of a tour, before the endless bus rides and ungrateful audiences began to take their toll. This time they were leaving Faith and Connie behind, with a series of dour babysitters in the Connecticut house whom Armand would oversee. As with everything else in her life, about this turn of events she was both glad and not. Her parents’ voices—staccato, tinged with hysteria—already seemed a distance away. While they wouldn’t allow Armand to take Faith and Connie himself—a single man, how would it look?—he would come out to Connecticut every Sunday, bearing gifts, smelling of this cozy office.

A middle-aged woman comes in with a tray of coffee and soda. “This is Louise,” Armand says. Louise smiles cheerily as she herds them all into a grouping of stuffed chairs arranged around a low table. The chairs are not the same ones Faith once sat so far, far into, but they feel the same. She tips her head back and hides between the wings.

Louise nevertheless catches Faith’s eye.

“Handsome boys.”

Armand nods, gracing one hand toward Chris. “This one is the picture of his grandfather.” Faith looks at her son. No, she thinks.
He looks like me
.

When Louise goes out, the door whispers closed behind her, and the air in Armand’s office changes from welcome to uncertainty. “I take it she’s not here yet,” Faith says.

Armand has to lean a little to see around the wings of the chair, and his eyes glitter over her. “An hour,” he says. “I thought it would give us time to talk things over. To get ready, if we need to.”

But Faith doesn’t talk; she hides in her chair while Connie and Armand talk. She said she would come, and here she is. Connie can’t expect any more than this.

Faith settles against the quilted back of the chair, shreds of memory filtering in and out. These memories have no context or story, they are just little puzzle pieces turned over at random: the deliberate penciled line of Delle’s eyebrows; the tiger’s-eye ring Billy wore on his little finger; the dimpled chrome trim of the refrigerator in the Connecticut house. From time to time she returns to Armand’s
office, almost surprised to see her grown sister here, wearing grownups’ clothes.

Armand is sifting through the contents of a manila folder which bears the name
Isadora James
. Faith is only half listening, but from the words that glint through her faraway thoughts she comes to understand that Armand has done some kind of check and Isadora James came up just fine.

Faith sits up, her reverie draining away.

“In any case,” Armand is saying, “I’d advise you all to view this with an open mind.” In his slow way, he strolls to his desk and tucks the folder into one of its many holds. Faith steals a glance at Connie, whose face is a soft glaze of appeasement, wonder. The boys stare at their sneakers to conceal a somewhat guilty look of expectation.

“Armand, what was Mom like?” Chris says suddenly.

All eyes turn to Faith. She freezes, watching a stripe of sunlight shiver across Connie’s lap as she turns.

“Oh my goodness,” Armand says. “Your mother and aunt were funny little girls. Very sweet and serious, even businesslike. Especially you, Faith.” Chris is hunched forward, listening. Ben flashes Faith a reassuring grin. “I remember bringing them dresses one time, during the tour of
Smythe and Smythe
, I believe. I had some business in San Francisco, which was where the show was playing. Two green dresses with little bows, exactly the same. Quite brave of me, I thought—what did I know about dressing up little girls?”

The boys are enthralled, their chins raised, hungry for more.

Armand fusses his hands in the air. “I managed to get the sizes right, more or less. The two of them disappeared into the bathroom with the boxes and came back in, Lord, a minute it seems to me now.” He shakes his head, chuckling. “Your aunt Connie came flouncing out like a princess bride, but your mother stepped right up and looked at me, I’ll never forget how suspicious you looked, Faith, you said, just as practical as you please, ‘Are these for us?’ ”

Ben and Chris look at each other and laugh, but before Armand can say anything else a shadow crosses his polished round face, as if he understands too late that he has told a sad story.

“They were blue,” Connie says. Her mouth is turned up, but she is not exactly smiling. “It was my favorite dress, wasn’t it, Faith?”

“Yes,” Faith says, and for the first time since they arrived in this office, their eyes meet. Connie’s irises have gone a hard, hard green. She is a woman with either nothing or everything to lose.

Armand ticks his fingers together. “You were good little girls.”

“Didn’t they ever do anything wrong?” Ben asks. He’s hunting—he wants the kind of story his father might tell on him, about broken windows, pilfered change.

Armand thinks a minute. “No,” he says. “They were good little girls.”

A brisk knock sounds on the door and Louise pokes her head in. “She’s here.”

Before Faith can get her bearings, before she can plan what she might do or say depending on what Isadora James might do or say, Billy Spaulding’s third daughter steps into the room. The recognition comes quick as a fall, and Faith is knocked nearly windless, her hands fly to her mouth. The boys stand up—their father’s old-fashioned manners. No one speaks.

She is short, fragile, birdlike, with a cloud of yellow hair. Her eyes are green. She is wearing a simple, sleeveless black shift that exposes her body type: sharp and angled, a smaller version of Faith and Connie. Her arms are long, bony as rakes. She takes a few steps into the room, an enormous satchel hooked over one arm, a stack of tiny bracelets tinkling down the other. “Oh,” she says. “You really came.”

No one seems able to move. Armand resorts to the rituals of polite company. “Miss James,” he says, “may I present Faith Fuller and Connie Spaulding. And these handsome fellows are Faith’s boys, Chris and Ben.” Faith can feel her sons’ wary eyes on her.

Isadora is welded to her spot on the rug, her eyes frozen open. “Oh my God,” she says. She turns her back, her narrow shoulders shaking.

Connie gets up. “It’s all right,” she says. She grips the back of her chair, her knuckles whitening. Faith can see that she’s a little dazed.

“Miss James,” Armand says kindly. “Let’s all sit down. This is a sensitive situation, we all realize that.”

Isadora turns, wipes her face with the flat of her hand. “I’m
sorry,” she says again. “I didn’t think seeing you would—oh, here we go.” She drives the heels of her hands across her cheeks.

Armand leads her into a large leather chair directly across from Faith. Her walk is noiseless on little flat shoes. She sits for a minute, wiping her eyes. Up close Faith sees less of a resemblance. Isadora’s full-lipped mouth is most unlike Billy’s, and the heart of her face—a gently pointed chin and rather broad brow—is not familiar. But these differences are little comfort: there
is
something, in her carriage, her silent walk. Her green irises are heavily flecked. And though the shape is wrong, her face in repose reminds Faith of Connie as a child.

“Well,” Isadora James says. “Here we all are.”

Her voice is husky and matches neither her slightness nor her blondeness. She sits with her toes pointed down, twisting them into the carpet. Her face is unsuspecting, earnest as a tourist’s, framed by a short tangle of curls. She digs into the satchel and hauls out her wallet. On the table she places her driver’s license, an ASCAP membership card, and a charge card for Bloomingdale’s.

“Just so you know I’m me,” she says.

Armand makes a pretense of examining the cards.

“I know you didn’t want to see me,” she says to Faith, talking very fast, “but really, I’m so glad to see
you
. I’m not kidding, this is the happiest day of my life.”

Faith stares at Isadora, looking for all their differences and cataloging them over and again, but there is no escaping the coloring, the precise angles of her elbows, the long, narrow hands, the green, flecked eyes.

“Paternity can be difficult to prove, Miss James,” Armand is saying. “And in this case I’m afraid it’s quite impossible.”

Isadora shakes her head vehemently. “Billy Spaulding was my father. My mother would never lie to me. I’ll do anything. You can even have my blood, O-positive, does that prove anything?”

“I’m afraid not,” Armand says.

She is quiet for a moment, then turns to Faith. “I’ve imagined what you must think of me,” she says. “That I was looking for money or something.”

Faith speaks then, her mouth barely moving: “Or something.”

Connie moves in quickly. “We wanted to give you a chance to speak your piece.”

Isadora looks at Faith a moment longer before responding. “But I don’t have a piece to speak.”

“You think Billy was your father,” Faith says. “That sounds like a mouthful to me.” She sounds meaner than she intends to.

Isadora waits, a long, solemn pause. Then: “My mother had cancer. She knew I had two sisters out there and didn’t want me to be alone. She even knew where you were. I found a whole scrapbook of clippings—not just about Billy, either. I have a clipping of your wedding announcement, Faith.”

Faith flinches: here is an invasion she did not expect. Had she been watched from afar somewhere, without knowing? Was Isadora’s mother some kind of guardian angel? All of a sudden a host of strangers seems connected to her life. What if she had met Isadora in the grocery store, or the bank, or Dr. Howe’s office? Would she have noticed the shallow earlobes, the pointy elbows? It’s too late now to ever not recognize her, too late for this fidgety young woman to be just a face on the street.

Isadora’s color is high, her hands flail; the chair groans around her as she speaks. “Please,” she says. “My mother was a sweet woman.” She smiles at the boys. “A dancer.”