Blood Secrets

by Jones, Craig

  “I know that. But it’s easy to hide yourself away in a niche and pat yourself on the back and never try anything else for the simple reason you might fall flat on your face.”

  “Honey, not having a niche is what makes people miserable. Be thankful you’ve got one.”

  I kept quiet for a few minutes until I found another argument. “When you fell in love with Mom, what did it feel like?”

  “What do you mean?” He was wary of being sidetracked.

  “How did you feel?”

  “I was happy, of course. I guess I was flattered too, when I realized how she felt about me. There were a couple of others who wanted very much to be in my shoes. But I don’t see what—”

  “Then it’s natural to feel happy when you love someone?”

  “Certainly. What’s your point, Irene?”

  “Just this. When I first knew Frank I was miserable. Can you imagine why?”

  “Because he bowls and plays tennis better than you do.”

  “Don’t be cute. It was because for once in my life I was doing something I couldn’t do well—loving someone.”

  “What makes you think you can’t love well?”

  “Couldn’t. I think I’m learning.”

  “Well, then, what are you learning?”

  “That I’m not as terrific as I thought I was and . . . that I can be better than I am. That loving someone requires making allowances.”

  He frowned. “What kind of allowances?”

  “I didn’t know until a few weeks ago that both his parents are dead. When I found out, I was insulted he hadn’t told me, and I was so busy stewing in the insult that I didn’t stop to consider why he hadn’t talked about them. It was just too painful for him. I couldn’t understand it because I’ve never had that kind of pain. Frank’s been anything but sheltered and I’m tired of being sheltered. I’m sick of being so damned comfortable. I guess I’m sick of myself. I want to take those education courses and then teach for a while. I want to get out there and do something.”

  “Those who can’t do, teach.”

  “Stop it. You of all people know better than that. I’ve had plenty of professors who aren’t half the teacher you are.”

  “How would you know? You were never in a class of mine.”

  “I had friends who were.”

  He spread his fingers out on the arms of his chair. “I should know better than to try to change your mind. But let me exercise the ancient parental prerogative and give you some advice. I know I told you academic life was not reality—whatever that battered term means. And maybe it is a niche, but it’s one that gives you plenty of spare time, and time is freedom. If you teach in a high school, you’d better be prepared for some intellectual shrinkage and a drastic trimming of your ideals. And don’t think that your enthusiasm for your subject is going to spill out and saturate all your students. There are rewards, but they’re quite different from what you’re used to. I liked it the first few years, but then when you kids began to grow up, somehow it got stale. Maybe it’ll be different for you. At least you won’t be starting out as a parent.”

  “Maybe not.”

  “For God’s sake, you can at least wait for that! Don’t build your fence on all four sides.”

  “Do you think I’ll make a good mother?”

  “If your kids are like Frank, yes. God help you if you have just one who turns out as headstrong as you are.”

  I said good night by pressing his shoulder and kissing his hair. I knew he was disappointed, but that the disappointment would pass. As I climbed the stairs to my old room, I was confident that he, like myself, would be more than pleased with everything I did.

  It was true Frank opposed my leaving the Ph.D. program and joining the masses in the small auditorium of the Education Building. Dr. Denning, the chairman of the English Department, greeted my decision with absolute repugnance. I had to pedal very softly with him for two reasons. During the past four years he had assumed a regard for me that was as paternal as it was academic. And in addition to hitting him with this decision of mine, I had to ask him to use his influence in getting the Education Department to allow me to take their three sequence courses all in one term. At first, he countered by offering me an instructor’s position for the spring term and practically promised me a job after I got my degree. When he saw I would not be swayed, he granted my request, but not before telling me that given the odds, my leaving the program would most likely be “terminal.” As I put on my coat to leave, he stood up and, actually misty-eyed, offered his hand; he assured me his door was always open if I ever needed him.

  Naturally, I was hungry for encouragement, yet I was not going to stumble over the disappointment of my father, Dr. Denning, or even Frank. Emotionally, I felt like a pioneer heading west; if the going got rough I could always turn back.

  Denning carried through, and I got the three education courses concurrently. I also got a dose of boredom more excruciating than I had expected. There was nothing “entertaining” in the reading or in the papers I had to write. By the third week I was keeping a countdown calendar aimed at the end of the term. Three weeks before finals, I got the notice that my student-teaching assignment for the spring was in Elkton, thirty miles from campus. I hadn’t looked forward to living away from Frank for even one term, but fortunately Elkton was close enough for me to commute.

  That spring term went smoothly enough to convince me I had made the right decision. My supervising teacher was impressed enough with my scholastic record to give me her senior class—her “plum,” as she called it—instead of one of her sophomore classes. The class and I took to each other beautifully, and my “shrunken expectations” were revitalized when I discovered how enthusiastic and verbal many of the kids were. I worked them as hard as I worked myself, and the results were gratifying. I came home every evening bubbling with stories and anecdotes about my day. Even Frank began to concede that my decision had been a good one, that this change was what I needed.

  “Since you’re adapting so well to change,” he said, “when are we going to make the big one?”

  “Which is?”

  “Change of name. From Rutledge to Mattison.”

  “What comes with it?”

  “Oh, nothing much. Just a man who can’t live without you.”

  “In that case, I accept. I never could resist a worthy cause.”

  “Bitch.” He grinned.

  Before the wedding, we moved out of the apartment and into a house trailer. It was owned by a student in the History Department, who offered to let us live in it rent-free while he went off to study in Mexico. I was thrilled about the move, regarding it as another installment in the continuing adventure of changing my life. Since Frank had next to no furniture, there was very little to pack for making such a move. The first day after being set free for the summer, I decided I would take over the packing and organizing; Frank was preoccupied with the upcoming meeting where he would have to defend his thesis and with the preparation of materials and reading lists for the summer classes he would be teaching.

  He was off at the library when I began the chore of packing boxes and crates and labeling them. My adrenaline was running high, so high that by mid-afternoon everything was squared away and ready to go, everything but the bed and the contents of Frank’s desk. I took a break with a cup of coffee and a few cigarettes and debated with myself whether or not I should go ahead and clean out the desk. Frank was extremely well organized, so there wouldn’t be any problem transferring his material. It was simple: each drawer would be assigned to a separate box. Still, I hesitated. The desk was Frank’s only private turf in the apartment, and I had never invaded it. I sat looking at it for quite a while, until I convinced myself it was silly to put him through the task while I had time on my hands.

  Everything in the f
our side drawers was neatly filed in folders and big envelopes and clearly labeled. The top middle drawer contained personal items. Although I promised myself not to look through anything as I packed, I broke the promise almost immediately when I saw the paper with my name and “statistics” on it—the exact information about me that he had recited our first night together. He had obviously had a connection with someone in the registrar’s office. I smiled at the fact that he had gone to the trouble of checking up on me. Had I really appeared that forbidding?

  The next thing I came across was a yellowed newspaper clipping that included a picture of Frank and five other scholarship winners in his high school. I stood there staring at it because it was so poignant: compared to the others, Frank was conspicuously ill-dressed. Instead of a sport coat he wore a snowflake-patterned sweater far too small for him; the sleeves ended a good four inches from the wrists, that remaining space taken up by a clashing checkered shirt. My God, I thought, he really was that poor. Looking at him in that outfit, I immediately flashed back to my high school senior prom. No dress in Cedar Run or in any of the neighboring towns was good enough for me. I had made my mother drive over a hundred miles to go shopping for something better. Even when I settled on something better, it was the style I wanted but not exactly the color and I complained about it right up to the minute my date rang our doorbell.

  I took a large envelope and put the clipping in it so it wouldn’t yellow or wrinkle any more than it had. Someday, I thought, if our children ever complained about what they didn’t have, I could pull the clipping out and show them how far their father had come on next to nothing.

  I removed the last layer of memorabilia—some concert and play programs from university productions—and found one remaining item in the corner of the drawer. It was a photograph of Frank and a girl, taken when he was probably fifteen or sixteen, both of them dressed raggedly and sitting under a tree. The girl’s face was turned and smiling up at Frank. She was a pretty thing, but her sagging shoulders coupled with her low brow line gave the impression she was somewhat “slow.” In striking contrast to the girl’s smile was the smoldering expression on Frank’s face: his jaw was clenched so hard it looked as if it had been wired shut, and his eyes were two slits behind his eyeglasses. I had never seen him look at anyone in that way; I knew if I had been the one holding the camera to take that picture, Frank’s face would have withered me on the spot.

  I had finished filling the box for this drawerful, and I laid the picture down on top of everything else. A couple of times later in the afternoon, I stopped to glance at it again, although that face was already imprinted on my mind. It was not just an angry face. It was livid.

  I was in the shower when Frank came home. By the time I dried off, combed my hair and got dressed, he was loading up the car with the boxes.

  “What’s the rush?” I said. “Don’t you want to go have dinner first?”

  “I want to do this now before I eat and get drowsy.”

  He had worked so quickly that by the time we were ready to go, I only had to carry one shopping bag down to the car. When we arrived at the trailer, he did the unloading while I cleaned the toilet and washbowl. As we were tossing around suggestions about where to go for dinner, I happened to glance at the box that had the top desk drawer things in it.

  “Hey, what happened to that picture that was sitting on top of this stuff?”

  “What picture?”

  “The one of you and a girl. It was right here on top of everything.”

  “Maybe it slipped down in. Come on, let’s get going.”

  “Just a minute.” I lifted everything from the box, but the picture was gone. “Oh, damn it! Didn’t you see it, Frank? It was right on top.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “It was you and this girl; you were sitting under a tree. I found it in your top desk drawer while I was packing.”

  “We’ll find it later. And if we don’t, it’s not important.”

  “It certainly is important if you kept it all these years.”

  “No, it’s not, really.”

  “Who is she?”

  “Just a girl I knew once.”

  “A girlfriend?”

  “Not in that way.”

  “She looked—well, a little retarded. Was she?”

  “Mildly, yes.”

  “And you looked like you were going to bite someone’s head off. Who took the picture?”

  “I don’t remember. Some relative or neighbor. Now will you come on—I’m starving.”

  The next day I went through all the boxes I had packed, looking for that picture. But I never found it. And Frank was blandly unconcerned over its disappearance.

  At the time, it didn’t occur to me to think anything of it. . . .

  We were married in July in the Cedar Run Presbyterian Church. Frank had his hair cut for the wedding although I told him not to do it on my account. But he insisted, knowing it would please my parents. It did. My father must have mentioned a hundred times what “an improvement” it was. Frank merely smiled and said nothing.

  The day of the wedding and the day before it were eventful, to say the least. Since Frank had no really close friends, he had asked Bernie Golden, another graduate instructor in history, to be his best man. During the rehearsal, Bernie walked around telling everyone, “I don’t know how Frank got her. He ought to write a book about it. Send his secret in to Playboy.” My annoyance with him was fast approaching verbalization, but every now and then Frank would squeeze my hand and whisper, “Patience. You can afford it.”

  I had had a real debate with myself over asking Gloria to be my maid of honor. It was Frank who talked me into making the offer. Her acceptance was pointedly unenthusiastic, but I chose to write it off as a cover-up. When she arrived in Cedar Run, she had given up her subtle sullenness and replaced it with a look of stoic resignation. And so between Gloria and Bernie and my father (whose disappointment in me I felt was still potent), there was enough friction in the air to keep me on edge.

  But there was more.

  Frank and I had come close to having several arguments over his refusal to invite any of his family to the wedding. His only guests would be two professors and their wives and nine students.

  “I don’t see why you can’t invite a few of your brothers and sisters.”

  “I know you don’t see why,” he said. “But take my word for it, it’s better this way.”

  “Imagine how strange it’s going to look in the church with your side almost empty.”

  “I know how it’s going to look, honey, and I’m sorry. But I’ll be more comfortable this way.”

  “Do you really hate them that much?”

  The blood rushed to his face. “I just don’t have anything in common with them.”

  “What does that matter for one afternoon?”

  “It matters a great deal. To me.”

  “I can’t understand this hostility of yours.”

  “Irene, considering the family you come from, I know it’s hard for you to understand. It would kill something in you to give your family up. But it’ll kill something in me if I don’t give mine up. Starting now.”

  “But why? Why does it have to be so absolute?”

  “All right,” he said stiffly, “I’ll tell you. My sister Doris ran off with a married man fourteen years ago. When I left to go to college, his wife and kids were still waiting to hear from him. My brother Tom was a traveling salesman until he lost his license because of so many drunk-driving charges. Now he’s a night custodian so he can drink on the job and get away from his wife. Jack’s decided to follow in my father’s footsteps. He drives a delivery truck and his wife has a baby almost every year. Terry’s serving a prison term in Pennsylvania for manslaughter. He had a fight with his girlfriend one night and ra
n down a man at a crosswalk. Marian and her husband left town right after they were married and haven’t been heard from since. Bill and Mike are as close as brothers can be—they both share Mike’s wife.” He was breathing like an exhausted runner. “They’re not going to touch me. They’re not going to touch us. Irene, what you come from and what I come from are worlds apart. The only way for it to work is to make one world between us. We keep your family and we drop mine.”

  More than his words, it was the look of repugnance and fear on his face that convinced me not to press any further. It was his family and up to him to deal with them as he saw fit. Wanda Hoople had escaped from her family and had forgone a high school diploma to do it. Frank certainly had the same right to escape at the age of twenty-six.

  The evening before the wedding, we had our rehearsal, followed by a dinner for the wedding party. My spirits were dampened by my father’s and Gloria’s reserve; they went through the rehearsal matter-of-factly, totally bland-faced. Whatever bolstering I got came from my mother’s smiling enthusiasm and Frank’s caressing eyes.

  My father and I were halfway down the aisle in the final run-through when I saw Frank’s face go white and rigid. We continued on, but Frank kept looking past us to the rear of the church. The minister cleared his throat, then spoke Frank’s name. Frank recovered himself, but when he stepped up to me I could see his eyes were wild, his hands trembling. The second we were finished I turned around and saw a man and woman sitting in the last pew. Frank didn’t move. He kept his back to them and muttered, “God damn her, God damn her!”

  “Frank! Who is it?”

  “Vivian,” he gritted.

  “Who’s Vivian?”

  “My sister. She found out. I knew she would, I knew she would!”

  “So she found out, so what? Come on, you’d better introduce me.” He wouldn’t budge. “Frank, what’s the matter with you?”