Blood Secrets

by Jones, Craig

  She answered on the first ring. “Vivian? It’s Irene.”

  “Can you talk?”

  “Yes. What is it?”

  “Frank was just here.”

  “What!”

  “I called you just as soon as he left. Irene, I think he’s dangerous.”

  “What did he do? What did he say?”

  “He was raving. What little I could make out was about Regina. He said I had turned her against him and turned you against him. You didn’t tell him about the talk we had, did you?”

  “Not a word, I swear.”

  “I didn’t think so. But he really lit into me. I was afraid he was going to hit me.”

  “What else did he say?”

  “It was all a jumble. He kept mixing up the two Reginas and saying how nothing was his fault. That’s what he kept saying: ‘It’s not my fault.’ ”

  “Oh, God!”

  “I just wanted to warn you. But you can’t tell him I called you. For my sake.”

  “No, of course not. Vivian, what am I going to do?”

  “You’re going to be careful. Don’t do anything to rile him up or make him suspicious. You might have to have him committed for a while . . . you know? . . . Irene? Hello?”

  “Yes, I’m here.”

  “Just be careful, will you?”

  “Yes. And thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me. I’m sorry it’s turned out this way. If you need any help, you know where to reach me.”

  I sat there in the booth, just trying to breathe. When I was able to think, I got the operator and told her to make my next call collect.

  “Gloria, it’s Irene.”

  “Well, we’re back to the early morning calls.” She chuckled.

  “Gloria, I need you here. Can you come today?”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Everything!” I began to cry. “Everything you thought would be wrong nineteen years ago. God, you must have been looking into a crystal ball.”

  “Take it easy. Tell me what it is.”

  “Frank. He’s sick, so sick, and there’s nothing I can do! I’m going to have to have him committed or else I’ll kill him!”

  “Stop that. What are you talking about?”

  “First his sister, now his daughter. He’s in love with Regina and he got himself a gun.”

  “What!”

  “Please, can you come? I need you here.”

  “Do you know what you’re saying?”

  “I know I sound hysterical—I am hysterical—but it’s the truth.”

  “All right, honey, take it easy. Do you think you can hang on until tomorrow? I could come tomorrow.”

  “Yes, as long as I know you’re coming.”

  “All right, then. I’ll call you as soon as I get a flight.”

  “Leave the message for me here at school.” I gave her the number.

  “I’ll call the airlines right now. You’re sure you’ll be all right tonight?”

  “Yes. Just come.”

  I got through the day on that single expectation. After school, I checked my mailbox in the main office and found Gloria’s message. Her plane would arrive the following afternoon at five.

  At dinner, Frank didn’t touch a thing. He sipped on some wine and stared at the table. But he did not appear passively lost in thought; on the contrary, he had the look of someone who has just made up his mind.

  “Virgil’s picking me up in half an hour,” Regina announced casually. “We’re going to the movies.”

  “You’re not going anywhere,” said Frank.

  She ignored this and started eating her pie. I waited. When the pie was gone, she picked up her plate and carried it to the kitchen, then came back through on her way upstairs.

  “You heard what I said.” His voice was hard enough to make her stop and turn to me.

  “Are you going to let him start in on me again?”

  “You step one foot out that door,” he told her, “and I’ll call the police. I don’t want to do that to you, but I will if you force me.”

  “Then do it.” But there was little conviction in her voice.

  “I will.”

  Again she looked at me, but I turned away. If I just get through tonight, I thought, Gloria will be here tomorrow. Regina ran upstairs.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Sorry for what?”

  “I know what I’m doing, Irene.” When his hand touched mine, it was like a jolt and I pulled back from it.

  If you know what you’re doing, then you’re hopeless! If you know what you’re doing, then you know you’re driving me crazy!

  “Irene, listen to me.”

  “I’m tired of listening to you. I’m tired of looking at you. Leave me alone tonight.”

  I went up to talk to Regina. Her door was closed, but I could hear her talking on the phone. She said, “Please, please,” just before I knocked. She told me to wait a minute, then lowered her voice. When she hung up, I went in.

  “Was that Virgil?”

  “No. Betty Riley.” One of her friends.

  “I hope you haven’t said anything to her about . . . us.”

  “I haven’t.”

  “Regina, I want you to do what your father says. Just for tonight. He’s more upset than usual.”

  She looked afraid. “What about tomorrow night and the night after? He’ll find an excuse whenever he wants.”

  “I know, but I’m thinking of a way. . . .” What—to have him committed? Arrested? “I want you to stay away from Virgil for a few days while I decide what to do about your father.”

  “All right, a few days.”

  Frank hid in his study. Downstairs, I tried watching television, but my mind was on Gloria. Regina sat with me, next to the phone, and chewed on her fingernails.

  “Expecting Virgil to call?”

  “Yes. If I can’t see him I can at least talk to him.”

  When it rang she picked it up. “It’s for you,” she said, and handed it to me.

  “Irene, it’s Vivian. Don’t talk, just listen. I’ve been thinking over what Frank said today and I’m worried about Regina. The way he kept mixing up the two of them . . . My hands have been cold all day. I don’t trust him.”

  “I know, I know.”

  “Look, I have a plan. Let me bring Regina up here for a few days, maybe until the end of the week, while you figure out what you’re going to do. Frank would never think of looking for her here.”

  “But how?”

  “I can pick her up in front of her school tomorrow afternoon. You can call the school and tell them she won’t be in the rest of the week.”

  “What about my parents? I could send her there.”

  “You mean they know about all this?”

  “No, I couldn’t tell them.”

  “Well, you’d have to tell them, because I’m sure that’s the first place he’d go looking for her.”

  “You’re right. But your place is such a risk. If he ever found out . . .”

  “Isn’t there a bigger risk having her there? Irene, you didn’t see him as I did today. Believe me, if you had . . . Please, let me do this one thing for you, and for her.”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s the name of the school and what time does she get out?”

  “Old Central on Pershing Avenue. Three o’clock.”

  “I’ll be out front. You remember my car—the black Lincoln. I’ll have on a green coat.”

  “Okay. Maybe someday I’ll be able to repay you.”

  “Don’t worry about that. I’ll be there at three o’clock sharp. When I get back here with her, I’ll ring you once and hang up to let you kno
w everything’s all right.”

  “About what time will that be?”

  “Let’s see, it’s seventy-five miles, so it’ll be an hour and a half, approximately. About four-thirty.”

  I was to pick Gloria up at the airport at five. “Make it six-thirty.”

  “Fine. One ring.” She hung up.

  “Come into the kitchen.” Regina followed me in and sat down at the table. “Listen carefully. You’ve heard me mention your Aunt Vivian before. That was her on the phone. You’re going to stay with her for a few days up in Ridgeway. While you’re gone, I’ll have a chance to think what I’m going to do about your father. She’s going to pick you up in front of school tomorrow, but you’re to tell no one where you’re going, none of your friends or that Miss McPhee, no one.”

  “Not even Virgil?”

  “You’d better not. If your father questions him, at least he won’t have to lie.”

  “Do I really have to go?”

  “Yes. For my sake as well as yours. You can take your school books with you. But remember, not a word to anyone about this.”

  Later, when I went upstairs to bed, I passed by Regina’s door and heard her talking on the phone again. I couldn’t make out the words, but I distinctly heard her giggle and then laugh shrilly. It made me feel uneasy, and I almost opened the door. But I moved on to the bathroom, thinking maybe she really didn’t fathom the seriousness of the situation. And maybe it was better she didn’t. After all, she was still a child.

  The next morning, I drove her to her school before I went to mine.

  “Remember, don’t say anything to anyone. She’ll be here at three. Black Lincoln, green coat. I’ll call the school tomorrow and tell them you won’t be in for the rest of the week.”

  “Come in with me now and tell them.”

  “I can’t. I’ll be late.”

  “It’ll just take a minute. If you do it in person, they won’t be suspicious.”

  “Suspicious of what?”

  “I’ve got a record now for skipping. If you call them up they might not believe it’s you. They might send a truant officer around.”

  Despite the inconvenience, I was impressed by her concern for details. If a truant officer did come to the house while Frank was there, it could be disastrous.

  We went together to the main office, where I spoke to the secretary in charge of attendance. Just as I was explaining that Regina was going out of town, I was aware of a pink blouse next to me. In it was Miss McPhee. When I turned to her, she was looking at Regina sympathetically. Something in me resented that look, for it implied she knew exactly what was going on. We exchanged a quick greeting, then Regina walked with me to the front exit.

  “Listen,” I said, “if that Miss McPhee calls you in today to ask where you’re going, don’t tell her anything.”

  “She won’t call me in.”

  “If she does.”

  “I won’t tell her.”

  I bluffed my way through the day by giving the kids surprise compositions to write. I concentrated on how I was going to tell Gloria about Frank, and how I was going to tell Frank about Regina’s absence.

  A little after five, Gloria got off the plane, looking as beautiful as ever: tanned, sleek and self-possessed. I felt first a pang of jealousy, then a seething rage at how my life had been turned around. Years ago, anyone with eyes and minimal intelligence would have predicted that her marriage with Pat was doomed to end shortly or drag on miserably. But here she was, four children later and her marriage still intact, being summoned to witness the bitter closing rites of mine.

  I stood at the chain-link fence outside the terminal and watched her come down the stair ramp and walk across the runway. You cheated on your husband and are living happily ever after. Your husband wanted you to have children. You want to stay at home. Your husband has no secrets. You’re living in never-never land and I’m living in hell! To regain myself I had to turn away and walk into the terminal. In my attempt to squelch that unwarranted bitterness, I let my memory run back nineteen years to the one warning which had many voices—Gloria’s, my father’s, Dr. Denning’s and, the night of the wedding party dinner, Vivian’s. But I had ignored all the warnings, dismissed all the clues; all that courage and optimism on my part had been nothing more than romantic arrogance. Besides Frank, there was no one to blame but myself.

  When she came through the door into the terminal, her face fell at the sight of mine. I knew very well what I had come to look like the past few months—the half moons under my eyes, the ashen complexion, the absence of animation in my face—but seeing her reaction to it made me feel like a crone who has had a floodlight turned on her. By the time she reached me and put her arms around me, my throat had swollen so, I couldn’t speak. I clung to her, silently, while we waited for her luggage, and I held on all the way to the car. I gave her the keys and asked her to drive. We held the silence throughout the ride. When we got to the house, I made drinks, stiff ones, and sat her down in the living room. “Frank won’t be home until six-thirty. We’ll have time to talk first.” I sat next to the phone, and part of me waited for Vivian’s signal. “I can’t mince words, Gloria, or give you a long preface. I want you to think back to when I first met Frank. I want you to remember anything specific you didn’t like about him. Something he might have said or something you might have seen that I didn’t.” She cocked her head questioningly. “I’m sorry to put you on the spot, but I want you to be honest with me.”

  “You know I will be.”

  “I didn’t listen to you then; I didn’t listen to anyone. But I’m ready to listen now.”

  “We went over this a long time ago. You know my reaction to Frank was more a reaction to losing you. You were my mentor, my mother, a hundred things, and he was a threat.”

  “But if it had been a different man, would you have felt what you felt toward him?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe. If you had fallen as hard as you did for Frank.”

  “But aside from me, what was there about him you didn’t like?”

  She lit a cigarette and looked through the smoke she exhaled. “I guess his magnanimity. The way he was always polite to me, almost unctuous, when I insulted him and treated him like shit. I thought he was either a saint or a sap or a phony, and I certainly didn’t want to believe he was a saint. But then, maybe he was just smart. Maybe he figured treating me nicely was going to win him extra points with you. If that was the case, he was right.”

  “Yes, he was right. And I wonder now how many other things he counted on. What I wonder most is why he wanted me.”

  “Certainly you know by now.”

  “No, I don’t. For years I thought I did. I thought I did.” I knew I had to say it then or else I would never be able to say it. I had to look her in the eye and say it. “He wants Regina the way he had his sister! He wants to sleep with her. It’s all he thinks about!”

  At first, nothing in her face registered what I had said. Her eyes drifted to her drink and back to me. “How do you know?”

  “It’s so obvious, it’s pathetic, the way he hovers over her, the way he hates her boyfriend. He’s been spying on the boy, practically tracking down his family tree, hoping he can find something—God knows what—to use against him. He’s a spectacle and he’s gotten to the point where he’s not even trying to cover it up anymore.” I poured it all out. The beginnings of his surveillance, the immediate antagonism he displayed toward Virgil, and finally Vivian’s story, which he had hidden from me all these years. “I keep telling myself this doesn’t happen to people like us, you can’t live with someone this long without knowing him. But I don’t know him! Suppose we had had a son instead of Regina? Would this thing have stayed buried or would he have wanted me to keep having children until he got a daughter?”

  “Irene, you don’t thi
nk this was planned, do you?”

  “He named her Regina, didn’t he? And oh, so casually, as if the name just popped into his head. He never said a word about that sister. And why has he kept his family away from us? I’m telling you, I don’t know what to do. One day I think this is something that has nothing to do with his love for me, that it’s a sickness and he’s fighting it. Then the next day he pulls the same old tricks and I think no, he wants to follow this perversion to the end and he’s planned it that way and there’s nothing I can do except let him go crazy and get him into an institution. But at the same time I can’t take a chance on what he might do to Regina. Or to Virgil. I’m caught. And I’m tired. I’m so goddam tired, I’m almost numb.”

  “How much has he admitted to?”

  “He’s seeing an analyst.”

  “Has it helped?”

  “Not that I can see. You can’t reverse a lifetime in just three months. But something has been touched off in him. He drove up to Vivian’s yesterday and babbled about Regina and his sister. But he kept mixing them up. It’s the first time he’s been back home in over twenty years. I cannot believe it’s a good sign.”

  “Has he been violent with you?”

  “No, never. Just the opposite. He keeps asking me to be patient.”

  “And obviously you have been. Why haven’t you left him before this? Why haven’t you tried a separation?”

  “I would have to take Regina with me and that could be the very thing that would make him snap. And . . . I can’t section myself off. That’s the problem. I still love him. Sometimes it absolutely repulses me to think it, to admit to it. But if this thing of his is something people can have and get over, then I can’t just run out on him. I love him and want to help him, but the thought of him laying a finger on Regina . . . I think I could kill him if he did it.”

  “Maybe you could send Regina away. To a private school in another town.”