Secret Language (31 page)

“Do you want anything?” Faith asks.

“No.” Connie looks at all they’ve unearthed and recognizes that she already has the only things she wants that are connected to Billy and Delle: Grammy Spaulding’s lace doily, and Isadora.

Faith curls her fingers over the lip of the trunk. “I kept them from my children all their lives,” she says. “Until Isadora showed up they never asked a single question.”

“They had Phoebe and Joe Senior. Why would it even occur to them to ask about Billy and Delle?”

Faith looks up. “They had a right to know where they came from.”

“They came from you, Faith. You and Joe. What more did they need to know?”

Connie waits, but Faith does not answer. Instead she is still, listening, waiting for more. Is this what it is to be sisters? Isadora never listens and Faith never talks—how can Connie figure out how it’s supposed to go?

“You brought them luck, Faith,” Connie says finally. “That’s what I think. You’ve got two lucky boys.” She falls silent herself now.

Faith smiles faintly, a thank you. “There’s no harm in the truth, I guess,” she says. She lifts the dog-eared remains of a written-over script from the depths of the trunk, yellow and sick-looking. “They
were good actors. They sang like angels. Maybe the other things they were will eventually fade away.”

They paw through more musty items—costumes and posters, even some pots of congealed greasepaint—until the trunk stands empty. Then they begin on the boxes. As Connie strips the tape from their tops, she remembers the vengeance with which she had once taped them shut, and her mother’s dreary trailer reappears: the heavy, autographed pictures that once hung on its dim walls, the trophies and framed awards, trinkets large and small whose significance has long been lost. One by one she removes them, placing them on the floor with the rest.

They are done, sitting amidst the wreckage of cloth and paper and glass and wood, the leftovers of a life. The trunk and boxes stand empty. Stripped of their contents, they are no more than harmless empty spaces.

“Look at this,” Faith says.

Connie looks up. Faith is holding a small marble box, the one that sat for years on Delle’s dresser, the little gift from Helen Hayes that they had swept into the trunk on their last day in the trailer. The lid is flipped up, Faith staring hard into it. Connie leans over, peers in, and finds, pinned to a tiny satin cushion, two faded but unmistakable locks of hair: Billy’s fine, golden blonde, and next to it Delle’s chestnut-colored curl.

“Oh!” Connie shrinks from it, as startled as if she had just seen her parents’ dead bodies.

Faith lowers the lid. “They thought they were so romantic.” Her voice is bitter, but she lays the box down carefully, as if it contained a living thing.

“What should we do with it?” Connie says.

“Pretend it’s not there.” Faith pushes it a few feet away, its delicate legs scratching painfully against the floor.

Connie eyes the box for a few minutes to make sure it can’t move, then she begins to riffle through some more photographs. At the edge of her vision she senses Faith moving once again through the piles, lingering over the ashes of their childhood; and at the center of her vision she sees herself, a little girl in a white dress with a terrible throbbing at her throat.

For a long while there is no sound but the occasional click of an object being moved from one place to another. It is so quiet, Connie can hear Faith’s breathing, and then the sudden change in it.

Faith’s skin has gone dust-white. In her hands is a sheaf of papers she has taken from a large brown envelope. Something about them looks official and dangerous.

“What is it?” Connie asks.

“It’s—” She takes a breath, and another. “It’s a court document. State of Connecticut.” Her lips form a thin line. “It’s about us.”

Faith holds out the papers, but Connie doesn’t move. Whatever it is, she knows it can’t be good. “Read it to me,” she says.

Faith reads it over silently. “It’s a petition,” she says. Connie can almost see through her skin, the delicate network of veins pulsing beneath the white. “It’s”—she is reading directly now—“a release of parental rights.” She doesn’t look up. Her eyes are huge with wonder, translucent as sea glass. “A bunch of forswears and whereases, but the gist of it is that Grammy Spaulding was planning to adopt us.”

Her heart thundering in her ears, Connie takes the document from Faith. “Faith Spaulding, age three years, seven months,” she reads. “Constance Spaulding, age twenty-six months.” She looks up. “It’s dated August.”

“Grammy died in October, two months later.”

Connie scans the second page, the third, unwilling to make the words mean what she knows they mean. The fourth page is decorated by the exuberant signatures of Billy and Delle Spaulding, the prim hand of Mary Elizabeth Spaulding, and another name, equally familiar.

“Faith,” Connie says. “The lawyer of record—”

“I saw it.”

“Why didn’t he tell us?”

“Would
you
? How would you tell two girls their parents tried to give them away?” Faith’s voice is worn out. “How on earth would you tell somebody that?”

“You wouldn’t,” Connie says. “Armand especially wouldn’t.” She tosses the papers into the middle of Billy and Delle’s things, half expecting them to ignite.

Faith is stone still, her hands loose and open in her lap. “I don’t know why I’m finding this so hard to believe.”

“All this—junk,” Connie says. Her throat is a bunched fist. She moves to the trunk to make sure it’s still empty. “That’s it,” she says, running her hand along the trunk’s smooth sides. “Here’s their whole life, and there’s only one snapshot and that sickening document to prove we were ever born.” She closes her eyes. “There’s nothing here. Nothing. No birth announcements, no baby booties, none of those cards we used to make for them …” When she opens her eyes Faith is staring at her, steadfast as a statue, listening. “Where
are
we?” Connie demands, her voice thickening. “Where are the report cards, the school pictures? There’s nothing here, not one stupid little kid treasure, not a goddamned stick man or paper doll, not one pot holder or paint-by-number, not one, couldn’t they have saved just one goddamned fucking
anything
from their own kid?” Faith is moving toward her now, crawling over the bumpy dross of Billy and Delle’s small, mean life, short cries escaping her lips. Connie’s own voice is rising, sailing, a tether thrown loose at her throat. “It’s all erased! It’s like I never even existed! There’s nothing here, Faith, nothing! Why didn’t you
help
me? Why didn’t you
help
me?”

Connie is shrieking now, crying, the room is tilting, her fingers are caught in the collar of Faith’s blouse. She can hear Faith calling to her, can see her mouth opening and closing, her hair flying out from the sides of her face, all of this a blur as she twines her fingers through Faith’s buttonholes and pulls hard, tries to shake her, make her answer in words she can understand, until she does understand, “It’s all right, it’s all right,” Faith is saying, and “Shhh, stop now, stop now,” the words forming like bubbles in the air, but Connie can’t stop, she’s pushing Faith away, fighting her sorry comfort, until she feels herself reeling forward, feels Faith pulling her in, her strength a shock, her body warm and enveloping, shuddering against her, holding on until Connie is finally still.

The house settles.

“Look at me,” Faith says quietly. Connie lifts her head. “I was just a little girl. I couldn’t save you any better than I could save myself.”

Connie nods, her face hot and wet. Faith’s blouse is torn at the
neck, exposing a delicate collarbone and its deep hollow, one more way they look alike. Faith loosens her hold and slides her hands down to Connie’s wrists, gathering them. “It’s not erased,” she says, “not for me, not as long as I can look at you.” Thin tears run down her cheeks. “You’re my proof, Connie. You were there. God knows they were miserable years, but imagine if we’d each been there alone.”

Connie looks away, her wrists warming where Faith holds them. “Sometimes I think we
were
there alone, nothing more to do with each other than two little hamsters in a cage.”

Faith drags her palms over her wet cheeks. “But Connie, imagine being
one
little hamster in a cage.”

All at once, the memory of a high-up room: a hotel room, with flimsy carpets and vinyl chairs and a strange city throbbing outside the windows. Connie tries to picture this room without Faith in it—Faith, slung over the couch reading a book, or standing by the window gazing into the street, or examining the directions for a toy from Armand. She sees herself alone with the avocado drapes, the pale food from the next-door restaurant, the paintings of daisies, the sounds in the hall. For a moment she longs to go all the way back there, to feel herself a child again with a sister who accompanied her, silent but steadfast, through the steely corridor of childhood; she longs to go back for the click of time it would take to thank Faith for existing. For bearing witness.

Exhausted, she slides into Faith’s lap, soothed by the gentle pressure of her sister’s cool hand on her forehead. “Faith,” she murmurs. “You’re my one decent memory.” Within her reach lies the marble box. She tucks it into her hand and brings it close, cuddling it like a doll to her chest.

It is a long time before she speaks again. The room has fallen utterly silent, their shadows have shortened with midday. She thinks she might have slept some, but her hand is still curled around the box, and Faith is still holding her.

Connie blinks in the sun streaking in at a new angle. “Faith, how old was Grammy?”

“I don’t know. About sixty, I’d guess. Sixty-five, maybe.”

“Can you imagine a sixty-five-year-old woman wanting to adopt two babies?”

“No.” Faith shifts position, stretching one leg out, the scent of laundry soap whiffing off the sleeve of her blouse. “I’m not even sure it was legal.”

“Probably Armand got around it somehow.”

“It might not have gone through anyway,” Faith says. “When all was said and done.”

“Maybe not.” Connie slides her finger over the sleek marble surface of the box, damp from her grip. “But she must have wanted us.” She turns her head, looks up into Faith’s green eyes. “She must have really, really wanted us.”

“That’s just what I was thinking,” Faith says. She shifts her leg again.

“Are you stiff?”

“It’s all right.”

“I’m sorry I tore your blouse.”

“It’s just a blouse.”

“We didn’t find anything for the baby.”

“No, we didn’t,” Faith says. “I guess I’ll have to give her something of mine.”

Connie has lain in Faith’s lap a long time by now, but she can’t bear to move. Their touching seems like the most natural thing in the world, less a touching than a fitting together, as though, stationed among the ruins of their parents’ life, they could be two parts of the same person.

It is mid-afternoon by the time they get into the car. Faith steers them out of town, into the country. The midsummer flowers that Faith would know all the names of fly by outside the open windows in a violent streak of color.

“Faith, what are you doing?”

Her profile is serene. “I’m helping you.”

Connie decides not to ask anything else. She settles back in her seat, content to trust that Faith is telling the truth. A few more miles churn behind them. The shell inlay of the marble box on the seat
between them shoots sunlight back through the windshield as the city disappears from view.

“Did you ever find the cat?” Faith asks.

Connie grimaces. “No. She’ll never forgive me, Faith.”

“She’ll forgive you,” Faith says. “What choice does she have?”

The rural scent of distant barns begins to waft through the windows. They pass Fuller Machine Company, a forlorn-looking outpost with its Sunday-empty lot. The trees come thicker on the side of the road. Faith slows the car and turns into a wide dirt path, deeply rutted, steaming with dust. She rolls up her window. “We’re almost there.”

The path winds around a dense ridge of trees, and they bump over it for another few minutes before it opens into a summer field dotted with orange flowers.

Faith stops the car and looks out the window for a few minutes. Connie follows her gaze beyond the field into a grim stand of evergreens.

“I’ve always liked this place,” Faith says. She opens the lid of the marble box and plucks the two locks of hair from the satin cushion. She works the hair into one thick piece, red and gold, then divides it. Connie takes her half gravely, as if she’s being given a medal. The hair feels raw, unseemly, in her hands. She can’t remember touching this hair when it was alive.

They get out of the car. The grass is upright and waving, families of flowers poking up in random clumps. The burdensome odor of new growth comes to Connie in a sultry gust of wind, with the loftier scent of new leaves and the roiling ocean somewhere beyond the farthest trees.

“Joe and I saw a snowy owl here once,” Faith says. “Right over there.” Connie looks toward a snag in the middle of the field. “Listen,” Faith says. Connie listens: a faint teeming of birds, high calls and warbles from deep within the trees. The hair pinched between her fingers begins to feel alive.

Faith lifts her tuft of hair. “It’ll end up in a bird’s nest,” she says. “It’s not exactly like throwing it away.” She scans the trees as if she can see each bird, each nest. The field unrolls from all sides, the far trees dissolved into a downy wash of green.

“Say goodbye,” Faith says gently. She backs into the breeze, tearing a few strands from the lock and letting go. Connie follows, walking next to her, shoulder to shoulder, strewing hair like petals in a wedding.

“Goodbye,” Connie whispers. The strands flare briefly, then disappear, into air, grass, trees, seasons, time.

They do not speak at all on the ride home, but their hands lie next to each other on the seat. The sun is low but the sky is still light, and will be for some time.

When Faith eases the car into Connie’s driveway, Connie doesn’t move, not wanting to abandon her sister’s company.