The Secrets She Keeps

by Jolie Moore

  The green and gold striped chairs made an L shape around the room. I took a seat a few down and across. Hung my hands between my knees. It took a long moment to realize he’d finished the snack and had taken on the same pose. I recognized my own posture in the man on the other side of the room. That we shared this fundamental similarity made me ache down to my very bones.

  Nari had made all the conversation when I’d met my birth mother, bridged the gaps. Here I was, alone with the very person I’d been searching for, and I was mute.

  “Can I buy you dinner?” I finally asked.

  “Sure thing.” His laugh was full and deep. “Guess this doughnut ain’t gonna cut it.”

  “Why don’t you follow me?” I asked, leading the way to the parking lot. Once in the safety of the green machine, I blew out a breath that sounded more like a shout. I took another few breaths, reminding myself that this is what I’d asked for. I’d sought this out. I’d had questions and these two people had answers my adoptive parents didn’t. If I wanted those answers, I needed to put the key in the ignition and get on with dinner. It took two tries to get the car started.

  Signaling early, I took a wide turn out of the clinic parking lot. The gleaming sheep in the center of his grill stayed steady in my rearview mirror. I racked my brain for something that wasn’t Japanese, vegan, or new-agey to eat. I signaled left and pulled into a little neighborhood bistro I’d been to with the clinic’s director when I’d started.

  We stood together in the vestibule awkwardly. Minutes that dragged like hours passed while we waited for a host.

  A slim woman weighed down with menus finally approached. “Seems like father-son night. You’re our third.” She gestured toward two other tables with older and younger men. I wanted to lean forward and correct her. Tell her about Matthew Tucker the Dartmouth professor who raised me, who’d dropped the phone, his hand unsteady with nerves, the last time I’d called home. But I didn’t say anything to stand up for my dad. I followed her and William to the next available table for two.

  Nari might frown upon it, but I asked for a glass of wine anyway. This was a lot to handle stone cold sober.

  I watched William study the menu with a frown. “Sorry about the food,” I said with a shrug meant to apologize for Los Angeles’ pretentiousness.

  “I’ve been in and out of California for thirty years. Same shit—excuse my French—different day.”

  He ordered the burger without the arugula and I got a Kurobuta pork chop.

  With no menus to shield us, I looked into his eyes. They were mine. The same ones I’d looked at for more than three decades. I was so used to looking at the keen eyes of Matthew and the mommy eyes of Joyce, that this kind of freaked me out.

  I guess if I’d had a chance to get used to it, like thirty years…. But ten minutes wasn’t enough.

  “Did you agree with Laura? That the two of you couldn’t raise me?”

  “You don’t beat around the bush,” he said before taking a big gulp of water. “I went along with what she wanted, because I wanted her.”

  “That’s not exactly how she tells it.”

  “We were young when we got together. I guess I wasn’t quite done sowing my oats.” He paused when the server brought our food. He asked for ketchup and a beer. I wasn’t the only one having a hard time.

  “How does an affair lead to adoption?”

  “When your pregnant wife walks in on you.”

  “Oh,” I sat back. Placed my knife and fork on the table.

  “I was twenty-five. I thought the grass was greener.”

  “Was it?”

  “No. That woman didn’t want me. She wanted revenge on her own husband, my Laura, something. But she didn’t want me. Time and again I put my marriage on the line for immediate gratification.”

  “You guys stayed together, though?” I was looking for where I fit in. Up until this point in the story, my very existence was a footnote in their drama.

  “It was off and on for years. Rocky. I was deployed more often than not and liked it that way. Wasn’t until a few years ago that I started to settle down. My buddies were my family, my best friends.”

  “Laura wasn’t that for you?” It made me sad. Matthew and Joyce were that for each other. I hoped for—no expected—a true friend and partner for my own long-term relationships.

  “She wasn’t the port in a storm. Took too long to realize that, I think. She didn’t ever get remarried.”

  “You did?”

  He nodded. “Met a nice lady in Carson City. We moved to be near her family.”

  “Did you have any other kids?”

  “Not that I know of. We didn’t last either.” His laugh was forced. “You? Laura said you’d come with your girlfriend. Was that her at the doctor’s office?”

  “Yes. No.”

  This time his laugh was genuine, unrestrained. “Which is it, son?”

  The term of endearment knocked me for a loop. But I think he meant it in the old-guy-young-guy way and not in the biological way.

  “We broke up yesterday.”

  He briefly shook his head. “Why?”

  “Irreconcilable differences.”

  “What couldn’t the two of you reconcile? She was real pretty.”

  I hesitated a long time before telling her secret. But I couldn’t see the harm in sharing it with him. He’d never see Nari again. “I found out she gave a baby up for adoption when she was in college.”

  William Coates sat back in his chair with that one. I’d felt that shock myself, and knew what he was thinking. “Did she say why?”

  “The baby’s father had died. Nari didn’t think she was in a position to raise her.”

  “It was a little girl.”

  “Did you know what I was?”

  “Of course. Laura had named you. When we signed the papers, you were Lucas Coates. Baby Boy Coates,” he murmured as if reliving a long ago memory.

  “Nari didn’t tell me about the baby she’d given up until long after she knew my feelings on adoption.”

  “Are you angry with us?” he asked.

  “Not so much angry as bewildered. I can’t fathom fathering a child, then letting him go.”

  “I couldn’t either,” he said. “Until I did it.”

  “Did you want to do it?”

  “Laura and I were in a bad place. She didn’t want to add a child to that mix.”

  “Why didn’t you take me and raise me on your own?”

  “Lucas,” he said with a heavy sigh. “This was long before the father’s rights era. I was on active duty. Central and South America were a mess. This was before all the base closures. Who knew where I’d be next? My brothers were all older. I’d never been around babies. Didn’t have the first clue about how I could go about it.”

  “And what about Laura?”

  His sigh was longer then. “It wasn’t only the issue. She was more…how do you say it now…fragile. This was before everyone and their brother had anti-anxiety meds and Zoloft ads on the TV. She’d spend days at a time in the bedroom. Not eating or taking a shower. Me being gone, being with other women. None of that helped, I don’t think.”

  “Was she institutionalized?”

  “Nothing as serious as that. She found someone she could talk to. She quit drinking. But I had a hard time forgiving her.”

  “You blamed her?”

  “She made me choose between you and her. In the end, I lost both of you.”

  I put down my fork. There was no way I could force anything past my clogged throat. My right leg bounced under the table. I laid my forearm on it to stop it. I looked across to see if he’d noticed I was holding back tears. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that his leg was jiggling as well. Great. Suppressing emotion in your leg was an inherited trait.

  “So you got any other prospects on the horizon?” he asked.

  “Prospects?”

  “Other girls you’re seeing,” he explained.

  I was taken aback by the
question. It was a perfectly normal thing for someone to ask a single guy. But I didn’t feel single. I shook my head. “No. Tried the bar scene, ended up with an eight hundred dollar bar tab.”

  “What?” William Coates laughed. I joined him, then told him the story of the club and the “i” girls.

  “Why were you in one of those places? I haven’t known you but a minute, but you don’t seem like a Hollywood scene kind of guy. Maybe Portland or Seattle, or even Brooklyn, but not L.A.”

  “I applied in the Pacific Northwest, but this offer came through first. I thought it would be a kind of adventure. Those other cities were a little too much like Vermont.”

  William eyed a busty waitress. “L.A. is easy on the eyes. I’ll have to admit at least that.”

  “There are a lot of beautiful people.”

  “You’ve gotta get out there. Forget this girl. She’s got to live with her demons, but you don’t.”

  Part of me thought he was right. The other part wanted to run back to Nari. But I wasn’t a big enough pussy to talk about my lingering feelings for her.

  Chapter 25

  Nari

  Daisy nearly tripped over the bags in the doorway, but she caught herself. For a woman who wore mostly flats, she never appeared quite solid on her feet. I’d read about a study from a few years ago, that said clumsy people could be “cured” with eight to ten weeks of physical therapy. But my best friend probably wasn’t up for a discussion on spatial awareness.

  “Did you have to put those bags right by the door?” Daisy asked after she righted herself.

  “I need your help,” I said, beckoning her in.

  But she didn’t come. Instead she knelt, her khaki covered knees not quite touching the floor and peered in the bags.

  “’Cause you needed a Coach bag, a bomber jacket, and a yellow silk dress. Well…the dress is nice.”

  “I’m buying a few new pieces that I was missing.”

  Daisy pointedly looked at the purse shelves along one wall. She stood and walked to the bags, fingering their little dust bags. “And you were missing a purse?”

  “I’m looking for something that will hold my eleven-inch MacBook and my wallet comfortably without being a laptop tote.”

  Daisy pushed her lips together and sideways. When she’d shot a porno flick at my apartment last year, she’d been so sorry that I was spared months of nagging and nitpicking from her. But I could see now that she was solidly out of the sex business, and totally legit, that she was ready with the unsolicited advice.

  “I know I haven’t mentioned it in a while…but maybe you should cut back on the shopping. I think having an entire bedroom as a closet is a bit, I don’t know, much.”

  “You’re just mad because I got rid of your bedroom,” I threw back. “You’re like that kid who came back from college and found a sewing room instead of a canopy bed and pop star posters.”

  “Cut the bullshit, Nari,” she said, turning away from the bags and facing me. “I know you shop to fill that bottomless hole. What happened now?” She made a sweeping gesture. “Everything seems fine as far as I can see.”

  “Do they?” I asked, looking hard at her.

  “Don’t they? You made me realize that I wasn’t teetering on the brink. I have a good job and a great boyfriend now.”

  I put down the blue jeans I was sorting. Skinny, straight, and flared fell back into a jumbled heap. “Well I don’t.”

  “Have what? Were you fired?”

  I wanted to thank her for that vote of confidence. “No. Lucas dumped me.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  Her question was expected. But I didn’t have a ready lie at my fingertips. I picked up the jeans again. Were Joe’s Jeans out? I threw them on the discard pile. True Religion was so 2007, they joined Joe’s on the floor.

  “Did you hear me? You seemed so serious about trying out a relationship with him. If he pursued you, why did he do a complete about face?”

  I debated the 7 For All Mankind. I could probably make the boot cut work at night. Tossed them on the keep pile. My upturned palms were blue. Damn, one of these was bleeding. A definite return reason. Poor dye lot, no doubt.

  The touch on my arm made me want to jump a mile high, flinch, shrink back. Daisy was not a touchy feely woman. It’s what I liked about her. Neither one of us had grown up in families you’d call affectionate. I wasn’t used to the feel of someone brushing against my skin. I craved it. It repelled me. It made me want to cry.

  “I did something he found unforgiveable,” I said.

  Her hand stayed firm on my arm. The other moved around my shoulders and guided me to the double bed in the center of the room.

  “What, he hates Burberry?” Daisy asked. Her attempt at levity fell flat.

  “Do you really want to know?”

  “Of course,” Daisy said innocently.

  “He said he couldn’t be with anyone who gave a child up for adoption,” I said, then stood, stalked across the room as fast as I could around the clothes and shoes and bags. Secrets I’d kept so long spilled out of me lately. I don’t know why but I couldn’t hold it all in any longer.

  “But what does that have to do with you?”

  My head started throbbing, my nose itching. Damn it. I was going to cry. I bit my bottom lip as hard as I could. The tears receded.

  “I can’t believe you call yourself my best friend,” I said, lashing out.

  “Whoa. I’m here. I’m always here. What am I missing, Nari?”

  “I was pregnant.”

  “When?”

  “Our senior year.”

  “Oh…. Oh!”

  Then, silence as she worked it out in her head. Daisy had always been like that. Silent when she was thinking. She’d have made a horrible doctor. Every patient would have been wondering if she were looking for an easy way to tell them they had five days to live.

  “All the time you were sick, tired. I thought you were grieving Andrew.”

  “I was sad. My husband had died. And I was pregnant too.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” she was trying to cover her hurt, muffle the whine in her voice. She was failing miserably at both.

  “Because I couldn’t decide what to do. Then doing nothing made the decision for me.”

  “That’s why you went to Korea?”

  I nodded.

  “Why?”

  “Because my mom thought it was the 1950s. She didn’t want anyone to know. I agreed with her. I kept it a secret.”

  “You gave the baby up for adoption?”

  I nodded again. Speaking was becoming increasingly difficult.

  “Where is he or she now?”

  “I don’t know,” I swallowed. Pushed past the golf ball-sized lump. “That’s not true. She’s probably in California.”

  “What did Andrew’s family think?”

  “I never told them. Well, I told Simon when he came to pick up the ring.”

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “What can you say? Giving up Minnie makes me unfit to be a girlfriend.”

  “Fuck Lucas. He’s caught up in his own bullshit.”

  “But…” I really, really like him, I wanted to whine.

  “What? You still like him.” After all these years together she could practically read my mind when I let her. “After he said that he can’t see you because you did this one thing. Made a decision when you were what—twenty—that he’s going to judge you for more than a decade later? If he can’t empathize, then he’d make a shitty boyfriend, and an even shittier doctor.”

  “He’s a great doctor,” I said.

  “Fine, Nari. Maybe he’s the greatest guy ever. But you’re in his blind spot.”

  “Maybe if I’d told him in the beginning,” I said. My friend was eyeing me like she’d never really known me. The guy I liked treated me like kryptonite. I was quickly making every single person around me miserable.

  “Beginning of what? Welcome to the Westside Clinic, her
e’s your office and crappy pressboard furniture, and oh, I gave a baby up for adoption. If that’s going to be an issue….”

  She had a point about the past. “So what do I do?” I asked about the future.

  “Get out there. Now that you know you can.”

  I’d been out there time and again over the last decade. I didn’t want out there. I wanted Lucas. But Daisy was right about one thing. That ship had sailed. I pushed up from the bed and added my new purse to the rack. In with new and out with the old.

  Chapter 26

  Lucas

  Nari was turning some papers over, looking…lost. The self-assured, almost cocky woman that I’d known had disappeared overnight. The one in flawless clothes, who never had a hair out of place, who handled her truck with the confidence of a commercial driver. That woman had cracked open, revealing this quieter, more contemplative one. She glanced up and gave a brief nod of acknowledgment.

  I held the multi-stickered color-coded manila file in front of me in lieu of a greeting.

  “This patient wants a woman doctor,” I said.

  “Drop it there,” she said, pointing one of the baskets on her desk.

  “Do you want to know why?” I asked, trying to prolong the conversation.

  “I’ll look at your notes.” Nari went back to her papers. I was dismissed, I guessed. But I didn’t want to be gone. Even I knew I was being a contrarian as I patted my palm with the file a couple of times, then put it where she’d indicated.

  “What’s that you’ve got there?” I asked. Nosey and intrusive weren’t sufficient to cover the impoliteness of the question.

  “Are we seriously going to do this?” she asked, laying a hand on top of the non-work looking papers. Guess she was handling something personal.

  I was bewildered by… everything. “Do what?”

  “Pretend to be friends.” She tilted her head in such a way that I was feeling pretty dense.

  “Aren’t we…friends at least?” I asked. Because I still wanted to be her friend. She was a woman who cared deeply. Who wouldn’t want a friend like that?