The Language of Secrets (12 page)

The bathroom held the scent of Robert’s shaving cream and of the oatmeal soap that Lissa and Julie had used when they had taken their baths earlier in the morning. On a row of yellow porcelain hooks there were damp towels, dangling and crooked. Caroline lifted her free hand, meaning to straighten them. But her gesture evaporated and there was a loud shattering bang. She had let the overflowing glass drop from her other hand and smash into the sink. The sound echoed for an instant. Then everything went quiet again, and Caroline took a bottle of Valium from the medicine cabinet and left the bathroom.

In the bedroom, the air was overheated and stale, but Caroline couldn’t seem to think of how to open the window. She fell onto the unmade bed and settled facedown.

Several of Robert’s hairs were caught in the stitching at the edge of the blanket. The sight of them made her dizzy and sick to her stomach. She rolled away, shook several pills from the Valium bottle, and swallowed them dry. She was looking toward the open door of the closet.

A rounded shape was huddled in the shadows on the floor, against the back wall. Before she got up from the bed, long before she reached into the closet and closed her hand around it, she knew what it was. It was Bunny, Justin’s favorite stuffed animal.

On the morning Robert had taken him away, Justin had been playing hide-and-seek with the girls. The closet was his favorite hiding place, and it had been from there that Robert had gathered him up and carried him out of the house for what was to be their first father-son adventure.

Robert’s anger over Caroline’s infidelity had run wild in the days immediately after Justin’s fall. But then abruptly—by what
seemed to be a supreme act of will—Robert had become calm, and solicitous of Caroline. He told her he didn’t want their marriage to end and he announced that he was, at last, going to spend time with Justin. He was taking him camping. Caroline’s happiness had been indescribable.

She had spent days packing supplies and camping gear while she explained to Justin about all the fun he and Daddy were about to have.

Robert, too, had been eager to make the trip a success; he had been so concerned with the details that the night before he and Justin were to leave, he woke Caroline out of a sound sleep to sign emergency medical forms. She had groggily, and happily, scrawled her name below Robert’s on the signature line; then they had made love.

Caroline picked Bunny up from the floor of the closet and held him close to her face. She inhaled Justin’s scent, and the guttural wail that had come out of her in the cemetery came out of her again.

In the backyard, Julie and Lissa were poised at the top of the slide that was attached to their swing set. They heard Caroline’s wail, looked up toward the bedroom window, and exchanged nervous glances.

Julie scrambled down the slide. “I don’t want to play here anymore. Let’s go to the park.”

Lissa looked toward the house, hesitating. “We’re not supposed to go to the park alone.”

Julie had already run out of the yard. Another keening wail was coming from the upstairs bedroom. Lissa leapt from the slide and dashed toward the open gate, running full tilt past the back door of the house. On the other side of the door, in the kitchen, Robert and his father were at the table.

Robert was methodically peeling the label from an empty beer
bottle, arranging the shreds in a tidy pyramid on the tabletop. Caroline’s muffled cries could clearly be heard coming from the bedroom above.

Robert’s father was holding the fallen carnation he’d retrieved from Justin’s graveside, slowly turning it between his thumb and forefinger. “Go see to your wife, Robert.”

Robert put the beer bottle down but didn’t get up from his chair. “I will. In a minute.”

His mother was at the stove. She was stirring a pot of soup with an old wooden spoon; its once-sturdy handle had been worn thin in the preparation of hundreds of meals, all of them now consumed and long forgotten. Another wailing scream came from the upstairs bedroom. The spoon clattered to the floor and snapped in two.

There was an edge of hysteria in Robert’s mother’s voice as she said: “Everything is breaking apart. Everything’s dying, and I can’t bear it.”

Robert’s father rounded his fingers over the wilted carnation and crushed it. “What the hell were you thinking, boy? What kind of idiot father takes a three-year-old on a goddamned camping trip?”

Robert’s answer was furiously quick. “You used to take Tom and me camping all the time!”

“Not when you were barely out of diapers,” the old man roared. “And not to goddamned Nevada. Not to the goddamned desert!”

“Why did you go so far away, Robert?” All of his mother’s artifice was gone. Her confusion was genuine. “I don’t understand. If you wanted to take him camping, all you had to do was drive up to Angeles Crest. The forest is right there. What would it have taken? Forty minutes, maybe less?”

These were questions Robert had been careful to answer already. He had explained every detail of the story, first in the telephone message he left for his brother, Tom, and then in the one he’d left for his parents. Tom had called back, making a point of speaking only to Caroline, sobbing as he conveyed his condolences, but asking very few questions. Robert’s parents had been a different matter. Their questions had been endless.

Now he could see that the questions would keep coming, that he would have to answer them again and again. He took his time collecting the beer bottle and its shredded label from the tabletop. After he had finished, he said: “Mom, I told you why I went to Nevada. An old fraternity brother of mine lives there now. He was taking his son camping. He and I hadn’t seen each other in years. We thought it would be fun for us and our kids to get together. You know, a nice father-son thing. I didn’t take Justin out there for him to get bitten by a snake, it just happened.”

“How does something like that ‘just happen’?” Flecks of the ruined carnation flew from his father’s fist as it hit the tabletop. “Why weren’t you keeping an eye on him? And why didn’t you get him to a hospital, for Christ’s sake?”

“I’ve
told
you. Don’t you fucking listen?” Robert said. “We were out in the middle of nowhere. By the time we found a hospital, it was too late.”

His mother wrapped her arms around him and whispered: “Oh, my poor Robert.” Her cloying closeness was smothering him.

“What are you talking about, woman? ‘Poor Robert’?” The old man was bellowing. “If ‘Poor Robert’ hadn’t bungled things from beginning to end, your grandson would be alive right now.”

“That’s right,” Robert shot back. “I’m the reason he’s gone. Me. All my doing.”

“Robert, no. It’s not your fault. It was an accident.” His mother
was groping for him again. He pushed her into a chair, then leaned in close. His voice was a furious whisper. “Shut up,” he said. “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

Robert walked away, then came back and briefly touched his mother’s shoulder in an awkward caress.

There was nothing more he could explain.

Justin had been the embodiment of Caroline’s infidelity and the living proof of Robert’s inability to keep her from it.

Robert believed he’d had no choice in what he’d done. He could not have imagined staying in this house with Justin in it; nor could he conceive of going away from Lima Street and losing his daughters. But, above all, he could never—ever—think of leaving Caroline.

Rum and Cokes in slender glasses. A champagne flute filled with fresh lemonade. A polished wooden bowl full of macadamia nuts. An assortment of French cheeses served on a length of cobalt blue tile. This had become their habit over the last four weeks—a ritual—as Amy and her parents gathered each evening to watch the sunset.

Amy was carrying the tray out onto the balcony; her father was already reaching for his rum and Coke. “The islands agree with you, kiddo. You look relaxed.”

“It’s Maui, Daddy. How could I not be?” Amy carried her lemonade to the balcony rail. The evening breeze was warm, and sweet with the smell of ginger and frangipani. To Amy, it had a visceral sensuality. It made her want to run free on the beach, and want to be touched. It made her want Justin.

She had come to Hawaii intending to leave in a week and had stayed for a month. At first she’d been too angry even to speak to Justin, angry enough to entertain the idea of never speaking to him again. Now she was missing him. She wanted to go back to their
life. But she’d been away so long that she was separated from Justin in every sense of the word.

“Hey, pumpkin,” her father was saying. “I got an idea I need to talk to you about.”

Amy took a swallow of lemonade. “An idea, Daddy? Or a done deal?” She was cranky, eager for this trip to end and give her the excuse she needed to call Justin and tell him she was coming home.

“I want to talk about this before your mother gets out here. Be a good girl. Sit.” Her father pulled an empty chair close to his. When Amy didn’t move, he narrowed his eyes and shaded them with his hand. “You’re being a brat, making me stare into the sun for no good reason.” The sun’s fading rays were as mild as a milk bath. She knew her father wasn’t suffering. But she understood what he expected—for her to do as she’d been told.

After an irritated silence, her father said: “I bought your mother a house here. It’s a surprise and I want you to help with the decorating and the furniture and all that other froufrou crap women need when they get a new place.”

“You bought a house on Maui? Why?”

“The other day we saw this ‘Open House’ sign and we went in, and I could tell right away she was crazy about it. So I figured, What the hell? This way, the whole family’s got a place we can come anytime we want. A great spot for Zack in the summer.”

“But why do we have to do this now?” Amy was stunned. She needed to get home. She had been gone too long. Justin was slipping away; she could feel it. “I … I thought we decided we were going home next week.”

“Little girl, I don’t know of any pressing reason you have to be back in L.A. Do you?” This wasn’t a question. It was an ultimatum. Her father didn’t wait for an answer. He simply took her hand, kissed it, and went into the house.

Amy sat for a minute, then glanced at the back of her hand, as if she expected to see a mark there. She could see nothing. The sun was going down. It was already getting dark.

*

In Hawaii, Amy and her parents usually frequented restaurants with elegant menus and staggering prices. But today, Amy and her mother and Zack were in a waterfront fish house in a spot they rarely visited, the village of Lahaina; it was far too egalitarian for Linda’s tastes. It was the sort of place where discount coupons were honored, where Hawaii was silk-screened onto peel-off tattoos and pineapple-shaped coffee mugs and “one size fits all” T-shirts. Linda had begun as a member of the tourist class, but she’d come into blossom as the wife of a jet-setter, and had adjusted her tastes accordingly.

She laughed as Zack banged on the tray of his high chair and howled with frustration. The floor beneath his perch was a litter of fallen Cheerios and soggy crackers. “Zack darling, you are expressing my sentiments exactly. That’s why you and I are getting out of here right now.” As she was saying this, Linda was reading a text message on her phone. “It seems the lovely Willow Chase is running late and won’t be here for another twenty minutes.”

Amy gathered up her purse and Zack’s diaper bag. “No. No way, Mother. She’s already kept us waiting almost an hour.” Amy, like Zack, was feeling tired and frayed.

Linda was still looking at the text. “She apologizes for asking us to meet her in this dump, but apparently it’s halfway between her office and her next appointment.” Linda glanced up and laughed. “Willow Chase. What a great name for a decorator. Want to bet she made it up?”

“Mother, Zack needs a nap. So please, just get your purse and
your blueprints and all the other stuff that’s spread all over this table, and let’s get out of here, okay?”

“Darling, I’m taking Zack out of here right now.” Linda took the diaper bag from Amy. “I’m late for the contractor. But I really do need those fabric swatches from Willow today. So be an angel and wait for her. Zack can come with me and nap at the house while I chat with Bob the Builder. Do you need money, Amykins? For a cab or whatever?” Linda scooped Zack out of the high chair, then dropped a sheaf of twenty-dollar bills on the table.

Amy shoved the money away, scattering it across the tabletop. “I’m not ‘Amykins.’ I was Amykins when I was six.”

“Darling, are we fighting? If we are, you’re going to have to give me some help getting up to speed, because I don’t know what we’re fighting about.”

“We’re fighting about the fact that you’re waltzing out of here and telling me to wait around for your decorator and take a cab home. You didn’t even bother to ask whether or not that works for me. All you wanted to know was how much cash it would take to get it done.”

Linda collected the money and quietly put it into Amy’s purse. “You still haven’t called Justin, have you?”

“No, Mother, I haven’t.” Amy was annoyed. Her reply had been loud—loud enough to make several people in the restaurant turn to look in her direction. “I thought we were going home this week. I was waiting till we got back, so I could talk to Justin in person. Then all this stuff with the new house came up. And boom, just like that, we’re staying. And we don’t even know for how long.”

“It’s not your house, pumpkin. There’s no reason you have to stay.”

“That’s a load of crap.” Amy had lowered her voice to a whisper, but the intensity in it was fierce.

“Amy, you’re misbehaving.” Linda settled Zack on her hip and gestured toward the roll of blueprints on the table. “Please get those and carry them to the car for me. I really need to get going.”

Her mother’s exit was subdued, elegant, accomplished with a graceful nod and a quick smile. Amy’s reaction was complicated: a blind intersection of emotion—a collision of frustration and envy. Linda had the capacity to stand back while others flailed and raged; she responded to outpourings of raw emotion with cool, distanced composure. Amy resented this. It made it seem as if her mother never cared enough about anything to fight over it. And Amy’s stay on Maui had left her spoiling for a fight.