Blood Secrets

by Jones, Craig

  “Regina, get out of here before I slap you.” A ridiculous threat. She towered five and a half inches over me. “I will handle this my way.”

  “You’d better.”

  The next day, I called school and said I was sick, but I left the house just as if I were going to work. I had three hours before I was to meet Vivian. I went to two shopping malls and browsed through the stores, rehearsing what I was going to say to her. The more I rehearsed, the more my courage began to waver, and I felt nauseous. I knew I would have to have a drink before Vivian, but I needed more than that.

  I went into a phone booth and called California.

  “Irene!” said Gloria. “Is anything wrong?”

  “No. Why should something be wrong?”

  “You’ve never called at seven-thirty in the morning.”

  “I’m sorry. I forgot all about the time difference. How is everyone?”

  Brian had taken up scuba diving and was in the throes of his first romance. Ray needed glasses and was having fits over having to wear them. The twins, Amy and Amanda, were already taking a gymnastics class. And Gloria and Pat were planning a whole month in Europe. All good news. Predictable good news. When they first married, I had thought it wouldn’t last a year. Now they were going to Europe for a month. Second honeymoon. Away from the kids. It wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I wanted something to be wrong that I could help put right. I wanted to say, “Look, Gloria, it’s not all that bad, look at it this way” or “I think you should do this, now get hold of yourself.”

  “Where in Europe?” I asked.

  As she went through the itinerary I began to cry. We had never been to Europe. We had never been anyplace without Regina.

  “. . . and the college extended my leave of absence, but I don’t think I’ll be going back. Believe it or not, I’ve gotten to like it here at home. Say, aren’t you supposed to be at school? . . . Irene? Hello?”

  “I’ve got a cold.”

  “You sound like you’ve been crying.”

  “I think I’m getting an allergy. Anyway, I was bored and I wanted to catch up on you and Pat.”

  “One day away from the job and you’re bored? You are a model of the work ethic. Anything new there?”

  “Nothing much. Regina has a boyfriend and she’s head over heels. That’s about it. I have to run out on some errands now. I’ll give you a call in a couple of weeks.”

  “No, it’s my turn.”

  I got to the restaurant half an hour early and ordered a double Scotch. Gloria’s words stuck with me: Believe it or not, I’ve gotten to like it here at home. At the same time they depressed me, they made me determined to be straightforward with Vivian.

  Age had been good to her: she arrived looking exactly as she had ten years before. What was more astonishing was the resemblance between her and Regina. Assessing her dignified posture and her self-assured, long-legged stride, I thought how good it might be for Regina to use this woman as an example.

  “Hello, Vivian. I’m glad you could come on such short notice.”

  “You made it sound urgent. No one’s sick, I hope.”

  “No, nothing like that. But I do need to talk to you. And I’d like to keep this just between us.”

  “That goes without saying.” She eyed my drink. “I thought you were a teetotaler. Now where did I get that idea?”

  I wondered if this was a digging reference to the grass I had been smoking that night she came to the house to see Regina. She settled back into the booth and ordered a martini.

  “I don’t know exactly how to begin,” I said. “I don’t know what to ask. I guess I’d like you to just start talking about Frank.”

  “What in particular?”

  “I’d like to hear what the rest of you think of him.”

  “We don’t all think exactly alike. Naturally, we’ve all been hurt by him, the way he cut us off. Let me ask you something. Has he cut you off too?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not sure. But he is alienating Regina. Lately, he’s been so . . .”

  “Possessive.”

  It wasn’t a question; it was a statement. I felt a chill.

  “Yes, possessive. In the most unreasonable way. Nothing I say seems to penetrate. He was always a reasonable man.” She pursed her lips and lowered her eyes. “Wasn’t he?”

  “If he is a reasonable man, then that makes the rest of us look pretty awful—it means his reasons for cutting us off are valid. I really don’t prefer to look at it that way.”

  “Vivian, what are his reasons for hating—for avoiding all of you?”

  “Hate is the right word. Frank’s always been good at hating.”

  I hate people who just breed.

  “But what are the exact reasons? Does it have anything to do with his sister Regina?”

  “Has he told you anything about her?”

  “That horrible story about the lye—the one you told me—and how she was retarded and wanted him to run away with her.”

  “Run away with her?” Her eyes widened. “Run away with her? She wanted him to leave her alone.”

  I knew then I should leave, that I had a sufficient glimpse of the entire picture. But I didn’t move. “What do you mean—leave her alone?”

  “Regina was slow, but she was sharp enough to sense something peculiar in Frank’s attention. He watched her like a hawk night and day. He used to want to stay home from school to be with her. She never made any friends because she could never get away from him. Finally, I guess she couldn’t stand it anymore.”

  “That’s not enough to make a girl drink lye.”

  “I suppose not.” She hailed the waitress and ordered another drink for each of us. Through the window I could see it was beginning to snow heavily, the wind whipping the flakes into a gauzelike curtain that obscured the highway. I wanted to jump into that wind and whiteness, have it shake me up and set me down on some new, firm ground.

  “Then what would make her do it?” I said.

  Vivian looked into her drink. “Something she never spoke of. She didn’t even leave a note.”

  “What couldn’t she speak of?”

  She shrugged. “None of us ever saw anything. But after her death, Frank never looked any of us in the eye. And he couldn’t wait to get out of town and off to college. I would like to think he hates us because he hates himself. That’s what I would like to think.”

  “Where were your parents while all this was going on?”

  “Irene, being poor is a full-time job. My father had to worry about getting food on the table and clothes on our backs. That was his main concern and everything else was just frills. He and my mother didn’t have time to investigate every mood one of us had. Some things they did see they probably had to turn their backs on and hope for the best.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply . . . I know a little of what you’re talking about.”

  “Do you?”

  “Regina—my Regina—has always been outside my grasp. And now she’s turning on Frank . . .”

  “Turning?”

  “She doesn’t want anything to do with him. And I’m getting to the point where I can’t blame her. I don’t know what to do anymore.”

  “Are you thinking of leaving him?”

  “I’m trying not to think of it.”

  “Have you thought of getting him professional help?”

  “He’s already agreed to see an analyst.”

  “Then why don’t you wait awhile and see how that works out? Besides, if you left and took Regina with you, it might set him off.”

  “Set him off?”

  “I’ve seen his temper. If you need a little moral support now and then, you know where to reach me.”

  “Thank you, Vivian. I app
reciate it.”

  She asked me questions about school and I told her I had just about reached the end of my rope there too.

  “What’s wrong with this country,” she said, “is that there’s no allegiance anymore, particularly to the family.”

  “I guess you’re right.”

  “I know I’m right.”

  We said good-bye in the parking lot, with the blizzard blowing all around us. She repeated her offer of being available if I needed her again.

  “I wish you had told me years ago what you told me today.”

  “Do you think you would have listened?”

  “I might have.”

  “I doubt it. Besides, I don’t know if I would have told you. Quite selfishly, I wanted Frank to be happy. Maybe that was wrong. There’s no way of predicting how things are going to turn out. Take this car, for instance.” She swiped the snow on the trunk of her black Lincoln. “Thirty years ago, not a single person in Ridgeway would have dreamed that a Mattison could own a car like this. Now I’ve got three lumberyards and the same people who used to spit at me are kissing my ass. We’ve had offers to join the country club, bridge clubs, every kind of organization in town. But we don’t belong to anything. We belong to our family. And we take care of our own. If you’re patient with Frank, maybe it’ll all work out for the best.”

  “Maybe.”

  I had two hours before the time I normally arrived home. Traffic was at a crawl. I did not want to kill the time by driving around. Fortunately, the radio announced that all schools were closing early.

  Heading for home, I was a little heartened by Vivian’s optimism. Virgil’s car was parked out front and that made me feel better too. But as I came in the back door, I was greeted by Regina’s shouts from the recreation room.

  “Get out! Get out of here!”

  I heard Frank’s voice, low and firm, then Virgil’s: “Mr. Mattison, I don’t know why you have it in for me. If you want me to leave—”

  “No!” said Regina. “If you leave I’m going with you and I’m not coming back.” Frank mumbled something and she shot back with: “Just try it and see!”

  I stood still, my purse and my keys still in my hand. Frank came up the steps. He looked exhausted as usual, and he gave a start when he saw me. Whatever there was in my face, it made him lower his eyes.

  “I have had it with you,” I whispered, choking with rage. “Maybe you think I was joking when I said I would leave you. I’m not joking. I’m telling you right now, I don’t want you to say another word to that boy. Whatever room he’s in, you make sure you’re not there. And I don’t want you alone with Regina.”

  “Irene!”

  “You heard me. When you see that doctor on Tuesday, you’d better be ready to level with him. I’m giving you exactly three months. If you don’t start making some changes during that time, I’m going to see a lawyer.”

  His jaw tightened and I could see his eyes misting. But I was not going to buckle under any tears. I went upstairs, closed the bedroom door, and sat down to watch the blizzard. It seemed appropriate that there was chaos outside too.

  Frank kept the appointment and every one after it. Around me, he walked on eggs and avoided all direct eye contact. A hard silence settled between us. I found myself in some amorphous emotional territory where revulsion mingled with pity. During the day, pity dominated as I weighed the facts of his unfortunate childhood: poverty, passive neglect on the part of his parents, small-town and small-minded social exclusion, and finally the emotional trauma he must have suffered over his attraction to his sister and her reactionary suicide. But at night in bed with him, I huddled close to the edge and my thoughts ran from facts to suspicion. Why had he chosen the name Regina for our daughter without telling me the source of it, if not because of some dark allegiance to his sister? Had he consciously intended our daughter as a replacement for his sister from the very beginning? Were all those accounts he gave me of his brothers and sisters really true or had they been a ruse to gain my support in keeping away the only people who knew his secret aberration and might suspect a repetition of it? Why was he so relieved when I lost the baby—because its presence would only accentuate his strange devotion to Regina? These questions would run through my mind as I stared at the philodendron outlined against the street-lighted window shade. I clearly remembered the night we had fought over the other one and how he had regretted its being the source of our fight. Now he was seeing an analyst to try to get rid of some other source that would keep us apart. One minute, I knew I had to stand by him so long as he was willing to fight this horrible thing in him; but the next minute, I wondered if any success on his part would truly erase my revulsion, which might survive on memory alone.

  For two months, silence reigned. Frank’s and mine were rooted in embarrassment, but Regina’s silence had a smugness to it, as though she had accomplished some private kind of victory. During meals, while Frank and I sat clenched and barely ate, she took second helpings and prolonged the ordeal by eating slowly, all the while looking perfectly content with her silence. Occasionally, when I found it intolerable to just sit there, I would ask some question about school or her friends. Sensing the desperation and awkwardness of my gesture, she would reply as briefly as possible and usually with a smirk. I could not help resenting this posture of hers, especially when I would catch a glimpse of Frank. At the table he never looked at her, and that was when I pitied him the most. There was shame and apology in his face, so obvious I was certain Regina must see it too. I had to keep reminding myself that she knew nothing of the other Regina and therefore could not fathom the anguish her father was going through.

  At the end of February I took another day off from work, for a dental appointment. Early in the afternoon, after I returned home, the phone rang. It was the dean of girls at Old Central. She explained that due to the growing rate of truancy and forged excuses, it was now school policy to check with the parents after the fifth absence in the semester. Regina, she said, already had six, and the semester had just begun. I assured her there was some mistake, that Regina had not missed even one day of school. She then gave me the dates of absence, verified by all Regina’s teachers. I said I would check with Regina and get back to her. When I hung up, I was angry, but I was also relieved that the call had not come through to Frank. This matter would have to be settled privately between Regina and me.

  “I want to know where you’ve been on the days you haven’t gone to school.”

  “You sound funny.” She giggled. One side of my mouth was still numb from the dentist’s Novocaine.

  “Never mind how I sound. Answer my question.”

  “Just hanging around.”

  “Hanging around where?”

  “I went downtown a few times. Once I went to a movie.”

  “You were with Virgil, weren’t you?”

  “Once.”

  “Don’t lie to me. He’s the only reason you’d skip school for.” She sighed and rolled her eyes. “And you forged my name on those notes you took in, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, I forged your name.”

  “And that doesn’t bother you?”

  “So I took a few days off; what difference does it make? I’ll get the same grades I always get.”

  “That’s not the point. The point is you lied.”

  “They make you lie, them and their stupid notes.”

  “I’m not going round and round with you about this. When I call the dean, I’m going to tell her the truth.”

  “Oh, stop playing the teacher. I’ll get two weeks’ detention!”

  The fact that she expected me to lie for her came as no surprise. “Well, you can tell your father and hope he’ll get you off the hook—in school, at least.” The scowl on her face assured me she had got the point. “You take your detention and we’ll keep this
between us. And no more cutting, or the next call the dean makes might be to your father.”

  That night, she was far from imperious at the dinner table. She sulked and ate little.

  A week later, I had to give one of the teachers a ride home to the south end of town. He lived two blocks from the restaurant where I had had my meeting with Vivian. After I dropped him off, I pulled up to a stoplight right next to the restaurant. The right-of-way traffic was coming off the expressway ramp. I looked at the restaurant, recalling that day with Vivian, and I felt vaguely guilty because I hadn’t talked to her since. By now, she probably thought I had simply used her to get the information I wanted. And I had.

  I turned my attention back to the traffic just in time to see a familiar-looking car shooting down the ramp, racing to make the light. When it passed through the intersection I saw Virgil driving. Regina was sitting next to him.

  At home, I waited an hour and a half for him to drop her off. Frank was upstairs in his study, so as soon as she came through the door, I led her into the kitchen.

  “Did you serve your detention today?”

  She knew something was up and wisely chose not to lie. “All right, what do you want me to tell you?”

  “Where did you and Virgil go today?”

  A tiny flicker of fear crossed her face before she was able to compose herself. “Go?”

  “Yes, go, as in travel. Where did you go?”

  “We went for a ride.”

  “The question was where.”

  She looked me over carefully and I could almost see the wheels turning in an attempt to guess exactly how much I knew.

  “We went for a ride in the country.”

  “Apparently you don’t remember what we talked about last week. Apparently you wouldn’t mind getting another two weeks of detention.”

  “They didn’t give me detention.”

  “Regina . . .”

  “That’s the truth.”

  “Why didn’t they give it to you?”