The Secrets She Keeps (31 page)

I nodded. “That’s all anyone can ask for.”

“That’s all anyone can do.” He put his hand briefly on mine. “Callie, I promise you. I will personally make sure they’re as all right as possible.”

All right.
Couldn’t you just lay your head right down on those words and rest? I wanted those words for my own. No matter how much things changed or how time passed, every single earthly creature pursued the promise of
all right,
and I was no different. We sought it in the shelter of caves and underground hollows and in successful husbands and suburban neighborhoods with gates. We fought for it, and manipulated others to get it, and tried to buy it in our organic food and cars with every safety feature, and tried to fake it with tough exteriors, and camouflage, and false hopes. We could want a sense of shelter, real shelter, so badly that we could lose air until the panic of not having it was over, or we could ditch our lives in an instant. The desire for
all right
was perhaps the only thing we all—every human, every animal—truly had in common, even though the relentless drive for it could make us both stand against one another and seek out one another’s warm and flawed company. And yet, fleeing it, even briefly, also gave us the thrill of our lives.

Kit removed his hand from mine. He lifted that cup to his lips. “Damn,” he said. “Why didn’t you say something? This coffee is
awful
.”

—

Shaye’s rear end stuck out of the Ford Fusion Hybrid, and she was screeching. “Get out of there this minute!”

“I am not one of your misbehaving toddlers!”

“My misbehaving toddlers aren’t toddlers anymore!”

There was the push–pull of arms, and Shaye banged her head backing out. “Shit!” she yelled.

They both looked like toddlers, if you asked me. They reminded me of Amy and Melissa, fighting over a single garish-pink plastic pony.

“People!” I clapped my hands. “Quiet down, and listen up!” The girls’ classroom teachers flashed before my eyes, from Mrs. Benjamin to Mr. Clymer, all the way on up to Doug Longman, Ravenna High’s orchestra conductor. I wasn’t sure which one of them I’d stolen that line from. “What is going on here? You two should see yourselves!”

Clearly, Shaye had won. She held a key ring on her index finger and gave it a triumphant twirl. Her face blazed with righteousness. “She was just going to take off! First she’s too scared to get in the damn thing to learn, and then she’s heading out like nothing! Luckily, Tex started barking when he heard the car start.”

Tex lay on the porch, his chin on his paws. At the mention of his name, his ear twitched. He looked bored with the whole affair, actually, and maybe even a tad disgusted. How humans even managed in the world, well, it was beyond him.

“I got my courage up, is all! Have I suddenly turned into a baby? What would I do right now if you girls weren’t here? I’d be getting in the car I just bought and driving it, and neither of you would be the wiser.” She got out and slammed the door hard, and the car gave a terrified shiver. I hoped I was that strong when I was her age.

“Well, we’re here now.”

“Whoop-de-doo.”

It was sad, because she’d even dressed up for the trip. She had a red blouse on, tucked into tan slacks. I didn’t even know she had slacks, let alone a blouse. Her hair was loose from her braid, and I could see a bit of color painted onto her lips and brushed onto her cheekbones. Honestly, the lipstick broke my heart. I saw her teenage self then, those glimpses you got of people sometimes when the lonely adolescent crept out from the adult exterior. I could only imagine the way she and my mother must have fought. They seemed so different on the surface. My mother was girlish and self-centered, needful of attention, while Nash puttered along on her own merits, defying interference. Still, they were sisters. They had the same downturn of eyes and a stubborn streak. A determination flowed through their blood like defeat flows through the blood of some others. Nash could gaze out a window and I’d see my mother’s profile. Then again, Shaye could gaze out a window and I’d see mine.

“We are not here to thwart you,” I said. Nash looked up to the sky, then rolled her eyes at the heavens, which surely understood her better than we did. “We care about you. We don’t want anything to happen to you. Getting in a car and taking off who knows where—you’re not well. You haven’t driven in years. It’s dangerous.”

“Yeah!” Shaye said. It was a two-against-one
yeah
, a proven-right
yeah
. As a little sister, she’d had a lot of years to perfect it.

“And what’s going to happen? Tell me that. I’m going to
die
?”

She had us there. Shaye rubbed the back of her neck and sighed.

I looked up at the rambunctious clouds, which had lined up across the sky, ready to march. One slid over the sun, and shade slunk past, like the villain in a melodrama, before brightness returned. “Please,” Shaye said. “Just let us help you. My friend Janey? Her grandmother reunited with a man she knew in
high school
. They got married! They were both eighty-something. I saw the pictures. They were so cute! Janey even bought her a garter, but thankfully there were no pictures of that.”

“Cute?” Nash said.

“I’m sorry,” Shaye said. “I didn’t mean it like that. Just tell us where he lives. I mean, look at you. You’re all dressed up. We can go right now! What do we have to do here anyway, watch the deer and the antelope play?”

“This is not about Jack,” Nash said. She threw her hands in the air, huffed toward the house. She’d had enough of us.

“Come on, Nash,” Shaye called after her. In spite of everything, this was the story she was sticking with. Shaye was a romantic, which was probably what had gotten her into so much trouble.

“It wasn’t Jack who I loved,” Nash said, as the screen door slammed shut behind her.

“Come on, Veronica,” Ellen calls from the porch. “We’d better hurry. We’ve got to get changed! This might be the very night you meet the man of your dreams.” Ellen is a romantic, which is probably what’s gotten her into so much trouble.

“I’m through with that nonsense,” Veronica says, as the screen door slams shut behind her.

Nash collects her purse and a forgotten shopping bag of Veronica’s in the trunk. Veronica has bought so many new clothes over her six weeks that they’ll have to buy another suitcase before taking her to the airport. Nash is sad that Veronica is leaving. She doesn’t feel that way about everyone. Some, she’s glad to see go—after they drive away, the ranch fills back up with air and space. Others are quickly forgotten. She might remember their blond hair, a vague story about an inheritance. But every now and then there’s a woman like Veronica. A person Nash actually cares about, and who cares about her. Six weeks could feel like you were just getting started. At least, it feels like something real.

Veronica pops her head back outside. “My bag,” she says.

Nash holds it up.

“I think I’ll wear the green one. I should celebrate.”

“You may just meet the man of your dreams,” Nash teases.

“I’d be the man of my dreams’ worst nightmare,” Veronica says.

—

Boo has been set outside on the porch. Poor dogs, doomed to feel any human emotion a hundred times over; horses, too. Boo knows there’s excitement in the air, so he’s beside himself. He’s like a faulty Fourth of July rocket, spinning circles and making a high-pitched whine.

Helena, the maid, has cleaned everything, including the piano. The rugs have been rolled up, and the floors gleam and smell of polish. Without your shoes, you might fall and break an ankle. All the furniture has been pushed to the edge of the room. Cook has set up the large table where the couch used to be, and she’s draping the best cloth over it, the one with the crocheted edge. Next to it, Danny’s already unfolded the legs of the card table. He’s hauling out bottles from the bar, carrying six at a time, a lock of dark hair falling over his forehead from where it had been slicked back.

“We’ll need the glasses from the basement,” Nash tells him, though he knows that full well. Mostly she just wants him to turn her way, so that she can see what he knows about her and Jack.
If
he knows.

“Righto,” Danny says. But he looks the same as ever. His shirt is coming untucked, and he shoves one hand down his pants to make it right.

Nash looks the same, too; she studied herself in the bathroom mirror that morning. She doesn’t know what she expected from the night before, but her hair is still brown and her eyes are still gray, and her nose is still plain. She’s crossed over from here to there, regardless, and while this is shocking and shameful, there’s part of her that’s relieved. All the whispers and jokes and nudges and talk over the years—well, the mystery is over. At least her eyes aren’t completely shut anymore.

The band arrives, sets up. It’s their usual group, the Ned Night Trio, which comes in from Carson City. Ned works at Brumswick Drug, and Hank Pollard, the saxophone player, is a doorman at the Apache Hotel; Earl on bass rides fences for the Diamond S.

Nash retrieves Boo so that he won’t be underfoot as the equipment is set up. Out on the porch, she sees waves of heat rise from the pool. There is a plane overhead. It is close to their property, flying too low. Jesus, the sound. Nash claps her hands over her ears. Idiot pilots—she hates them. They have no idea what that does to the cattle and horses, who may even go off their food tonight after a scare like that.

Nash tucks Boo under her arm. As she heads upstairs to change out of her trousers, a burst of saxophone notes follow, trying to tell her something important in C’s and F sharps.

—

“You’ll get to go home,” Ellen says with longing. When she shifts her weight to cross one leg over the other, there is the shushing of taffeta against crinoline against nylon stockings. “I’m missing my babies so much. I’m worried little Bobby will forget who I am.”

“He’ll never forget who you are. When I was a baby? My mother took a voyage on the
Britannic,
before it sank in the First War. Believe me, I never forgot her. Heavens, no,” Hadley said. “Shame, too, because she was the sort to chase us with the soup ladle and then cry in bed at her own wrongdoing until we comforted her.” Hadley shimmers in blue, her skirt cinched at the waist, making her figure an hourglass.

“Home,” Veronica says. Her new green dress has gold trim around the accentuated bust, and she wears a coiled-braid hairpiece that makes her look like a movie star. “I don’t even know where that will be now after Gus.”

“You’ll miss the boring sod,” Hadley said.

Nash hands their drinks around. Lilly smiles and says thank you when Nash hands her a glass of champagne. A going-away party is always a celebration. Lilly pats the seat beside her. There is so much to do, but Nash sits anyway. She’ll have to greet the visitors who will be arriving at any moment, as Alice usually does. Jack plays host, too, though he hasn’t shown up yet.

“Oh, stop,” Veronica says. “You’ll make me sad.”

“You loved him,” Ellen says.

“I was supposed to love him. I should have loved him. But I didn’t love him. I care about him, as a person. I’m not totally heartless. Did I tell you how we met?”

“The taxi,” Ellen says.

“The taxi?” Lilly asks. She’s the only one who hasn’t heard this.

“I was in New York, visiting Nora, my mother. It was raining. I had shopping bags.”

“That, I can’t imagine,” Hadley says.

“Suddenly there was this handsome gentleman calling a taxi for me. The taxi pulls to the curb. I look at him, and he looks at me, and I say,
Going my way
?”

“You didn’t!” Lilly’s eyes are wide.

“I did! He was so gallant. He seemed impetuous and interesting. Not a half hour before, Nora had been harping at me again to find a husband before it was too late. I’d turned too many suitors away, she said. I liked being a single gal, living on my own. No one to answer to! It was glorious.”

“Glorious,” Ellen says. She doesn’t sound too sure.

“The fear for my future would keep her up at night, Mother told me. Over tea and sandwiches, she said I was
drying up
. Isn’t that awful? I still think about that. I looked over at this man, a man who just
appeared
—right outside Nora’s Upper East Side apartment! Like an
answer.
He seemed worldly. He had the most elegant overcoat….”

“You liked him because of his overcoat?” This is a part of the story they haven’t heard. Hadley strikes a match, lights her own damn cigarette.

“I did, actually! I saw him in his unusual chic coat, and he saw me hopelessly drenched in the rain, and that was that. We each married a person who never was. And then…”

“The overcoat was borrowed,” Hadley says.

“No, the overcoat wasn’t borrowed!” Veronica swats Hadley’s arm. “But I’d been blinded by it. I didn’t see the important thing that day. Because the taxi-hailing turned to opening doors to making breakfast to serving me eggs on a plate, and this turned to asking why I was troubled and fetching me a doctor for my headache. And why did I have one headache after another? Because he buttered my biscuits and fretted when I was out alone at night and took my arm when I crossed the street. He hung up my garments and rubbed my shoulders and felt my forehead for fever, and I paced like a tiger. He and Nora began to talk. They were
worried
. We should be thinking about
conceiving.
I picked at him unfairly. I was snappish and irritable.”