Keeping Secrets

by Sarah Shankman

  Emma paused a moment, and Jesse thought for just an instant that he could look straight through those blue eyes, out the back of her head, and see mist-covered hills and that motel sign.

  “Helen was my mother’s name. That’s why I stopped there, I think. Well, I know it was.”

  Jesse paged back to something she’d said about an hour ago. “I thought your mother’s name was Rosalie.”

  “My stepmother. My real mother was Helen. And she was from right near Helen, Georgia. From Tallulah Falls, just south of Rabun Gap. But I never went there.”

  “Your real mother—”

  Emma shook her head. “We don’t have time for that now.” But then added, as if Jesse would know what she was talking about, “I finally wrote for her death certificate.”

  “Whose?”

  “My mother Helen’s. My father still won’t talk about her much; I guess really he doesn’t remember. But I would,” she added fiercely. “Don’t you think if you really love somebody you remember everything, the rest of your life?”

  Jesse didn’t have time to nod or shake his head as she raced on.

  “But anyway, just that spring I had sent off to Baltimore, and the certificate says she was born in Tallulah Falls on Independence Day in 1906.”

  Did she always talk like this? He knew she couldn’t be drunk. One cognac and three ginger ales couldn’t do the trick.

  “After that,” she said, making another leap, “after I got over Herman, I packed up and went to New York.”

  “And you found yourself, the person you were looking to bump into in New York?”

  Well, no, not quite. For a while she had loved the city, loved Europe the two summers she’d been, had felt that she’d walked before, perhaps in a past life, the streets of London and lanes of southern France, and that she was only rediscovering the pâté, the bread, the wine. The food itself reawakened in her a hunger for something she couldn’t quite put her tongue or finger on. That’s when she’d begun taking cooking seriously, attended night classes at a Manhattan culinary school—though she wasn’t sure to what purpose. She’d visited northern California and felt an attraction so strong she’d moved out there. She loved California, but still she was restless. To this day, nothing, no one, neither career nor lover, had ever filled her up. Though, as if cooking were the literal answer to her hunger, she was most content in her kitchen, playing with food.

  Which reminded her, she had completely blown it. She was never going to get this meal together. Thirty-five people at a wedding day after tomorrow were going to starve.

  She said as much to Jesse, who replied, “Hell, let ’em eat cake.”

  But she was gathering her things about her now. She picked up her satchel full of papers off the floor where hours ago she’d left it.

  “No. It’s late.” She looked at her watch. “I’ve really got to go.” She stood.

  “Your head?”

  “It’s fine.”

  “It’s not that late,” he said. And then panic rose in Jesse’s breast. He was afraid if he didn’t move quickly this woman was going to walk forever out that door, for his smack to her head had only slowed her down. And for the first and only time in his life, he didn’t think he could stand that.

  * * *

  Within five minutes of watching Jesse carry Emma inside, Clifton had said, “Got to shove off, old man.”

  Then, leaving Los Gatos behind, he had headed north, the long way up the windswept coast. He could still see the look that passed between Emma and Jesse as he settled her on a sofa, a look bright as neon. He could project it out onto the highway now as if it were burned on his retina, a scarlet road sign pointing toward home. Standing in the chill at a pay phone overlooking the Pacific, he crossed his fingers as the silver coins he dropped sounded—bong, bong.

  Maria said, “I’ll wait an hour. Then I’ll put your coffee on.”

  Clifton grinned. There’s nothing finer in this world, he thought, stepping back into his battered Karmann-Ghia. He tuned in KJAZ on the radio. Ray Charles and Betty Carter were singing together, “Baby, it’s cold outside.” There’s nothing finer in the whole wide world, he thought, watching the red sun drop off toward China, than heading home to your baby’s arms.

  * * *

  “Here, let me walk you to your car.” They stepped outside. Each took a deep breath.

  “God, it smells good out here.”

  Jesse agreed. “After all that smoke.”

  And then an awkwardness fell upon them along with the twilight. It was different outside with no drinks to hold, no straws to twiddle, no props.

  Emma ran her eyes up Jesse’s jeaned legs, up the starched white shirt, out across the broad shoulders that made him look even bigger than he was.

  I like this man, she thought.

  Come, now, Emma. Like is not what you feel when you spot someone across a room. And all this time you’ve been running your mouth, like is not what you’ve been thinking about.

  * * *

  She’s wearing no rings, no jewelry except a cameo locket on a golden chain. Has she ever? Despite what she says about being bored by men, how tightly has she been wrapped with another?

  Can I count her ribs through her slenderness with my tongue? If I do, what kinds of sounds will she make? When she’s played in the proper key, does she hum with a Southern accent? Is she too much of a lady, or does she scream when she comes?

  * * *

  Up close, what does he smell like? Did all black men have that musky scent that rubs off, like David, her only black lover? Sometimes, after she’d left David in his closetlike apartment on New York’s Upper West Side, she’d sniff the oil his skin left on her hands, her arms. She’s sit on the subway breathing in his aroma and get turned on all over again. There was a lot about David to get turned on to. Not that they’d had much to say to each other; in fact, as with many other men, she’d wanted to put her hand over his mouth. Hush, she’d wanted to whisper. Just make me happy for a bit with all those clever tricks you know so well.

  But she wanted to hear this Jesse Tree’s tales.

  Like the one he’d told her about spending childhood summers in Sacramento in a stepfather’s whorehouse. About sketching a whore named Loubella with gigantic breasts. She could listen to him all night, it was foreign, fascinating stuff, if she could only get past the thrumming in her thighs that was reverberating in her head.

  She looked down at his wide beautiful hands. She’d seen his work once in a show and many times pictured in magazines. What other clever things could those hands do?

  * * *

  I’d like to tell her how much I want to reach out and cup her butt. I’d like to sketch it, too, sculpt it in rosewood. Sculpt it with my warm self.

  * * *

  I don’t want to go home alone to my big bed. Tonight I want to be held and loved.

  And then I’ll add his name to the list in the little notebook in my bottom dresser drawer, the list of men I have known—in the biblical sense.

  Though she could no longer put faces to some of the names, there were several who had established respectable tenure. But then the time would always come when she would push them away, usually because she was bored, but sometimes because she felt she was suffocating, for they wanted to confine her within some small vision that felt to her like the city limits of West Cypress. Only once or twice since Will had she met someone she’d thought was the one, and then, ah, then something in her had set up a panic, a scenario of betrayal and abandonment. Then her touch had become as sticky as wasp’s saliva, and, of course, the men had run. She’d never know whether she would have tired of them or not.

  She could see his name now in her back-slanted script, perhaps the most famous of them all, except for that gray-haired novelist in New York. She could see the words in the purple ink she saved for the little notebook: Jesse Tree.

  He touched her elbow and she jumped.

  “I said, ‘Why don’t you come with me for a ride up the mountain?�
� There’s something I’d like you to see.”

  I bet I’ve seen it before, thought Emma.

  Which just goes to show you how wrong she could be.

  * * *

  Like Louisiana’s Highway 80 of Emma’s childhood, California 17 had a well-earned reputation for murder and mayhem as it snaked its way from Los Gatos up and over the summit of the Santa Cruz Mountains.

  Jesse was an expert driver, but still Emma flinched at every curve. She looked out into the rapidly darkening twilight. In a moment it would be pitch-dark. “You live along here?”

  “Off there.” Jesse pointed to a marker on their right that read Canyon Road. “Been up that way?”

  “Probably. I’ve done lots of exploring, driving around. I love these mountains. I wouldn’t mind living up here or over there in Santa Cruz by the ocean, but I think the drive would make me crazy. They say it’s getting worse all the time.”

  “It’s not so bad from here. It’s worth it to get away from everything.”

  “I know. But I guess Los Gatos is far enough away for me.”

  “Nice place to visit. But I wouldn’t want to live there.”

  Emma laughed. “I can just see you in New York.”

  “Never. I like being a hermit up here in my little house on my little hill.”

  “You’ve always lived alone?”

  “For the most part.”

  So what did that mean?

  They whipped around one curve, then another, on up the mountains. There wasn’t much traffic. Now the road was really dark. And then a finger of fear tapped Emma lightly on the shoulder. Where was she going with this stranger, even if he had a name that was known, up this highway that led to little roads, that led to paths, that led to lonely woods, that led to who knew where?

  His old Morgan’s tires whooshed on the snakelike pavement. He could secretly be a murderer or one of those men you read about in the paper who spirits a person away, locks her in a little room and holds her captive from the world for months or years or eternity. And what more perfect hideaway than these mountains. Who would know?

  The mountains did have a reputation. They had been home to bandits and robbers in the Old West. Now there were rumors of armed helicopters landing at Scott’s Valley smuggling in bales of pungent Mexican grass, tales of hitchhiking coeds from UC Santa Cruz found headless in shallow graves. People hid out here in remote cabins, safe at the ends of deeply rutted roads, odd, strange folk who didn’t fit in below in the valley.

  They were slowing. Jesse turned at a sign that said Summit Road.

  “It’s only a little way now.”

  “What are we going to see?” She hoped her voice sounded calm.

  She could open the door and jump. But jump to where in this lonely darkness?

  Suddenly Jesse threw an arm across her, swerved, and slammed on the brakes.

  She screamed. Her heart leaped out into the road, where it joined a bounding fawn, his white undertail flashing now as he melted back into the darkness.

  For a minute the car was still. There was no sound. Neither of them was breathing.

  Then Jesse put a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you or to hurt you—again.”

  She relaxed back into the leather seat.

  “Lots of animals up here,” he said then, pulling the car back onto the road. “Possum, raccoons, rabbits, some say cougars, but I think that’s a myth.”

  “Do you hunt?”

  “Nope. Don’t believe in it.”

  Good, she thought.

  The headlights swept a half-hidden sign then, and they turned off to the right.

  “What did the sign say?”

  “‘Skytop.’”

  “What’s that?”

  “Hold on a couple seconds and I’ll show you.”

  They drove only a few more yards now, off onto a rutted drive. The low little car bounced along, moving at a crawl that seemed to be as much vertical as lateral, and then its headlights swept onto a large log structure. Jesse stopped the car and turned off the ignition. He reached under the seat and pulled out a large flashlight with which he pointed.

  “My baby,” he said.

  * * *

  Jesse leaned over and gave her a hand up onto the wide-planked porch.

  “Be careful. Nothing here’s as substantial as it seems.”

  That was for sure. Emma skirted a large gap in the flooring that suddenly appeared, a rabbit hole that led to God knows where. And then a flash of déjà vu hit her—Herman opening the door to his secret forest house.

  “Just hold my hand. I’ve been here a million times before.” The pine-finished front room was ballroom-sized, two stories high. A stone fireplace big enough for a couple of steers dominated the back wall. Along another ran a gallery at second-story height. A series of evenly spaced doors opened off the gallery. “Bedrooms,” Jesse said.

  “What was this?”

  “A lodge, a hotel of sorts. It’s been abandoned now for a long time. But once this was the spot in the mountains. People used to drive down all the way from San Francisco, over from Santa Cruz, to dance and drink and gamble till the small hours, and then they’d stay in a room upstairs for the night.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I’ve never been more serious in my life.”

  “How come I never heard of this place?”

  Jesse shrugged. “Why would you? All that’s been over now for almost forty years.”

  “A saloon?” Emma imagined spangled dancing girls, swinging doors, silver revolvers flashing from holsters laced against hard cowboy thighs.

  “‘Speakeasy’ would be a better word. Come the end of Prohibition and the beginning of the Depression, it fell on hard times. But it sure saw its share of good ones.”

  Emma crossed over and ran her fingers along the dust-shrouded rosewood bar. The mirror behind it was splotched and blackened in spots but still intact.

  “How do you know all this?”

  “Bart, my neighbor, brought me up here. His family’s lived in the mountains for three generations.”

  “Who owns it now?”

  “I do. I just bought it—am about to start fixing it up. When it’s finished, I’ll run it again as an inn.

  “Like the Awahnee in Yosemite?”

  “Sure. Smaller, of course, more intimate. But…” He paused and Emma knew that he was seeing his dream in his head. “It would be more than that, too.”

  And then Emma’s own fantasy raised its hand. “Would it have a restaurant?”

  “Sure, and a gallery.” He swept one arm wide, along with the flashlight, and Emma saw the acres of space.

  “For your work.”

  He shrugged. “And others’.”

  “An art gallery in the woods.” Emma walked right into Jesse’s dream. “With all this height, the work could be hung one above another like in Gertrude Stein’s living room. Huge paintings that can’t be hung anyplace else. For openings, there’ll be chamber music, giant potted palms. It’ll be like the Plaza. A Sunday afternoon saloon salon.”

  Jesse laughed. “And after they’re drunk on culture and champagne, they can spend the night. Here.” He took her hand. “There’s another wing. I’ll show you.”

  He pulled her with him in a rush to show it all, through a cavernous kitchen, a pantry, a storeroom, down a hall and up a flight of half-broken stairs. There were ten more rooms opening off a narrow hall. Some still had beds that now looked like nests.

  “Do you think people sneak in to sleep here sometimes?” Emma whispered in the dark.

  “Probably not now. But who’s to know?”

  Emma’s imagination took another leap. She shivered. It could harbor criminals, robbers, bandits. It could.

  “Follow me,” Jesse was saying now, leading the way back down the stairs. “I’ll go ahead and catch you if you fall.”

  He took her hand again. Oh! She’d been so swept away by Jesse’s dream that she’d forgotten for a time about t
he actual physical man. But now the electricity that had for hours in the Claremont House kept her sitting on the edge of her chair traveled up through her fingers, down her arm, warmed her breast.

  She clutched his hand tighter.

  He turned, and the glow of the flashlight illuminated her face.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  She looked into his eyes and then she had to look away. For she was drawn into them, into him, like a moth. And he knew that in an instant. She could see recognition of his power in the corners of his eyes, his mouth. He knew that he could pull her back the other way, lead her into one of those little rooms, and have his way, her way, their way.

  “Sure,” she said, “just a little out of breath.”

  Their steps were loud as they made their way back down the stairway.

  Then they were again in the living room, Jesse’s flashlight once more lighting the hearth, the fireplace.

  But there, just there, leaning against that wall, what was that?

  Emma took his wrist and redirected the light.

  “Look!”

  Jesse said nothing, but held the torch steady.

  Emma moved forward from his side. “It’s a painting.”

  “Yes.”

  “God, it’s so beautiful. She’s so beautiful.”

  The strong golden light fell upon a woman’s face that stared right back into her own. The seashell skin was like porcelain, all of the naked flesh from her forehead right down to her feet. There was a hint of Botticelli about her, the translucent drape, the long swinging rope of silver hair.

  “She’s breathtaking.”

  “Umm,” Jesse murmured.

  “Is that your work?”

  He nodded yes. “I used to work in oils when I was young.”

  “But why did you hang it here? Someone will steal it.”

  He laughed a little. “It’s not hung. It’s painted on the wall.”

  Emma turned and looked at him. His eyes were still on the woman.

  “Then you can’t ever take her away.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  Emma looked around the dilapidated room. “Lot of work here.”