No Perfect Secret

by Weger, Jackie

  “Mrs Nesmith is your mother?”

  “My mother-in-law.” Anna’s mind felt as cold as a chill winter wind.

  “Her blood pressure is a bit high. We’ve given her a mild sedative. We’ll run a complete battery tomorrow. Wouldn’t do any good tonight. She’s very upset.”

  Anna looked the doctor in the eye. “So am I.” It took Anna only five succinct minutes to give the psychiatrist Clara-Alice’s background and the events of the evening.

  “Yikes,” said the doctor, softly. She contemplated Anna with empathy. “What about you? It seems you’ve been riding an emotional rollercoaster.”

  Tears burned Anna’s eyes. “I feel guilty because Clara-Alice crossed a boundary, and others were there to see it happen. On the other hand, it’s a relief that I don’t have to make excuses why I don’t want her in my home ever again.”

  Dr Neal smiled. “Ah, Nietzsche’s conundrum, amor fati...”

  Anna blinked in surprise. “That’s it exactly—a celebration of fate. Whichever way fate take us—good or bad, celebrate it. Thank you for getting it.”

  “Just to clue you in, I wouldn’t be very good at my job if I didn’t.”

  Anna held out Clara-Alice’s purse. “Would you see that my mother-in-law get this, please?”

  “Normally, I’d tell you to keep it—give it to her later, but under the circumstances—sure. I’ll give to the floor nurse, have her bag it. You know I’ll need to talk to her son for more background before we make a complete diagnosis.”

  Anna flushed. “You’ll have to talk to Helen Callaway or Frank Caburn about Kevin. He isn’t...he isn’t around.”

  Dr Neal was seeing layer upon layer of emotional pain in Anna’s face. She became pensive. “You’ve been carrying a really big load, for a real long time, haven’t you?”

  Anna could only nod. It was a struggle to speak in the face of such warm compassion.

  Dr Neal handed her a card. “What’s your first name?”

  “Anna.”

  “If it ever gets too much, Anna, call me. Any time, day or night. People get in trouble when they pretend a strength they don’t have, or their strength is exhausted.” She touched Anna on the shoulder. “Call me, okay?”

  “I will.” Thoughts tired and diffuse, Anna made for the emergency desk to ask about Frank Caburn. Before she reached it, she spied Helen Callaway and another man emerging from a cubicle down the wide hall. She went to meet them.

  Helen made the introductions. Albert Phipps was tall, and thin and reeked with the odor of tobacco. His face was anidian and his ears were what Anna’s mother would have named an unfortunate aberration. Yet, his smile was warm, if apprehensive, and his handshake firm.

  “Frank told me you were super intelligent, but he didn’t mention how lovely.” Anna murmured thank you as Phipps took her elbow and guided her back into the cubicle he and Helen had just vacated. It was a kitchenette of sorts, with a small table and chairs. “Please sit down. One of the nurses made coffee for us, so if you’d like a cup?”

  “No thank you.”

  “Helen filled me in on the unfortunate events at your home.”

  “How is Mr Caburn?”

  “He’s fine. The...um...scissors chipped a bone in his shoulder blade. The surgeon removed the fragment under local anesthesia. I’m told the muscle damage will heal on its own. I believe they’re taping it up now.”

  The worry about Frank Caburn that had consumed Anna began to trickle away like sand through a sieve. Phipps was still talking, his voice a soothing cadence. She came alert when he mentioned Kevin.

  “We’ve kept something back from you. I’m convinced now that we shouldn’t have.”

  Anna swallowed. “You mean about the... The other woman?”

  Phipps exhaled. “It’s far more serious than that, I’m afraid. You see, Nesmith had a heart attack. He just keeled over in de Gaulle airport as he was walking to board his flight.”

  Anna shook her head trying to make sense of Phipps words. She repeated them. “A heart attack.”

  “Yes. I’m told it was massive. Instant, really.”

  A red mist fell over Anna. “Are you saying Kevin is dead?”

  Phipps glanced at Helen. She was glowering at him.

  “You’re lying,” Anna said. “Kevin just turned forty in August. He—”

  Helen moved to sit in a chair next to Anna. She put her hand on Anna’s.

  “That’s the reason for the investigation, Anna. Kevin was carrying highly sensitive documents. He’d flown from Riyadh to Munich to Paris. On the face of it, a healthy forty-year-old man having a myocardial infarct just didn’t sit right.”

  A kaleidoscope of images and thoughts whirred in Anna’s brain. Meeting Kevin for the first time on the Air France flight to Washington, their first kiss, the first time they’d made love, having coffee in small dark cafés, dinners of cheeseburgers and pizzas, buying fresh peaches at the Eastern Market, tossing pennies into the Reflecting Pool, visiting all the museums, sunbathing on the beach at Cabo San Lucas. Her brain shut down. All sound and oxygen in the small room was sucked out. She couldn’t breathe. Nausea overtook her, and she dropped her head onto her folded arms on the table. Hours, or days or weeks later, when she lifted her head, Helen and Phipps were gone. Dr Neal was sitting next to her.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said gently. “You’ll get through this. We’ll do it together.”

  ~~~~

  An hour later Anna emerged from the hospital into a chill misty night. Cold weather, cold fate, she thought as she stood a few moments in the dim lights to fill her lungs with the fresh cold air. Somehow, with Dr Neal’s help, she had managed to get through the myriad awful emotions sucking at the very core of her being.

  “Talk to me, Anna,” Dr Neal had said, “while I make us some of my magic elixir that keeps me sane.” So while Dr Neal heated cups of milk in the tiny microwave, added sugar and vanilla and cinnamon, Anna had talked, hesitantly at first, but a flood emerged as the moments wore on.

  “The first thing that concerns me, is how this will affect Clara-Alice.”

  “What a liar you are,” said Dr Neal with a smile that took away the sting of her words. She put a cup of her concoction on the table in front of Anna. “Drink.”

  “Oh, this is nice.” Anna said after a tentative sip.

  “My mother’s recipe for all that’s wrong in the world. Let’s not talk about Clara right now.”

  “She likes to be called Clara-Alice.”

  Dr Neal Shook her head. “Your mother-in-law’s name is Clara Etheridge Nesmith. Etheridge is her mother’s maiden name. Alice is a narcissistic affectation. I suspect she asked you to call her that when you first met. She made up a whole new persona for the new woman in her son’s life.”

  “But, Kevin never said a word.”

  “We’ll get to that another time. Besides that, how this affects Clara is Clara’s responsibility. I’m here to make certain you do not carry the freight for another ever again. It’s enough that you carry your own. Now let’s move on. Tell me about your anger.”

  Anna took a moment to digest that. “My anger? I’m not angry right now. I’m numb. I’m sad.”

  “Oh, Anna, those are pretty dress up words for anger, and a lovely excuse not to acknowledge it.”

  Anna took another sip of the warm, flavored milk. “I guess... Perhaps I am angry. But it doesn’t seem right.”

  “Why not?”

  Anna bit her lip. “Because Kevin is dead.”

  “I didn’t know that death negates anger.”

  Anna bowed her head. “I guess it doesn’t. I just wish he were alive so that I could... God! I want to slap him! He was having an affair. He betrayed us. Not just me, but everything we were working towards.” For four or five minutes Anna ranted and spewed, taking in just enough breath to manage a voice. When finally she inhaled and stopped, Dr Neal was smiling.

  “Well done, Anna.”

  “Oh, I’m so embarrassed.”


  “Not with me,” said Dr Neal. “Never with me. How are you feeling now?”

  “I’m not sure, I feel as if I should have known—”

  Dr Neal met Anna’s eyes. “Absolutely. You should’ve just opened Kevin’s skull and looked right in to see what he was thinking and doing. And if you couldn’t manage that—why—just ask Wikipedia.”

  Anna managed a smile.

  “We can’t know what another is doing unless we actually observe them doing it. We can’t know their motivation unless they tell us. If a toddler runs into a street and the parent runs after the toddler, we know the motivation—the toddler’s safety. Other than events like that, Anna, motivation is complicated. We don’t know. Kevin didn’t tell you, did he?”

  “No.”

  “Well—we’re making progress. Again, how are you feeling?”

  “I—I feel free. But I feel guilty for—”

  “Oh, no—you’re not going there. You have a right to your anger. You are free—from two people who were pulling you down. Let’s not put guilt into the equation and muck it up. I’ll settle for ‘free’ tonight. Do you think you could come in next Wednesday? In the afternoon, around three?”

  “I don’t know. I have my job. It’s not exactly a good time to be taking days off. All the finances are my responsibility now.”

  “Take a family leave of absence. That’s a doctor’s order. And, Anna—we’ll have more to talk about. Mr Phipps told me the investigation in ongoing. There are details he wants to share with you. I suggested to him later is better. You’ve had enough shocks to your psyche for the time being. I hope that’s okay with you. If not, I’ll give him a call.”

  “I’m okay with that, Dr Neal. I need some time to absorb everything anyway.”

  Dr Neal walked her to the door with a parting, “Drive safe.”

  Anna looked up at the sky. No stars, no moon. It was above freezing now, warm enough for rain. Miserable weather. Still, the mist felt good on her face as she walked into the parking lot. A few yards from her car she saw a figure in its shadow. She stopped, began turning around, ready to run and find a hospital security guard.

  “Anna! It’s just me.” The vapor lights barely illuminated his long, lanky body leaning against her car.

  Anna walked more slowly, taking him in. A hospital gown flapped around his jeans. His left arm was in a cotton sling; a hospital blanket draped his shoulders and he was clutching it tight at his neck.

  “Geez, you scared the heck speck out of me. What are you doing out here?”

  “Waiting for you. I need a ride. My car is at your house.”

  She used the remote to unlock the doors. “Get in, then. You look frozen.”

  “That’s the truth. I feel like a popsicle.” He moaned a bit as he settled in the passenger seat and buckled the seatbelt.

  When Anna started the motor I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas came on the radio. She listened a few seconds, then switched it off.

  “That bad?” Caburn asked.

  “I’m depleted.”

  Caburn thought: Even wearing a pensive expression she was so beautiful it stopped his heart. Kevin Nesmith had been an unmitigated fool. “Everything I can think of to say is a cliché,” he said.

  “That’s okay. It’s just my head is full of stuff I don’t need there, and I’m trying to figure out how to be sorrowful for Kevin, when all I feel is sorry for me.”

  And what could’ve been. She waited for an ambulance, siren dying, before she pulled out into the roadway and headed home.

  Caburn shifted the sling and leaned onto the headrest and closed his eyes. Anna glanced at him briefly and then back at the road. “I feel bad for what happened to you at my house.”

  “Not your fault. Hell, I didn’t even know I’d been stabbed. It didn’t even hurt until the doctor stuck his damned finger in the hole.” He shuddered. “Then the sadistic s.o.b. started sticking needles in it. I had to lay there and take it.”

  In spite of herself, Anna smiled. “That was probably the anesthetic.”

  “It felt like Louisiana Hot Sauce.”

  Anna wondered about the psyche of warrior men who showed no fear at facing a bullet, but cringed at the sight of a tiny needle.

  “Just when I thought it was all over and done with, here comes this nurse, an Arnold Schwarzenegger look-a-like with the personality of a cobra. She made me drop my drawers and shot me up on one side with antibiotics and the other side with tetanus.”

  He went quiet. Anna gave her attention over to driving. There was very little traffic, even for a Saturday night. Washington was all about politics, power and money. It was not a party town, which surprised many tourists. At four-thirty every weekday thousands of civil servants emerged from government offices to clog the streets and Beltway to their homes in the suburbs. Politicians and lobbyists did their deals behind closed doors and were all gone to their native states. With Christmas only a week hence, there wasn’t even a single embassy limo parked near the restaurants, where there was still some small activity.

  She stopped for a traffic signal. Caburn was soundly asleep, snoring softly. The hospital blanket lay open to reveal wiry golden hair on his chest. His hair was longer now than when she’d first met him and curling around his ears and on the back of his neck. Even asleep, with his mouth hanging half open, he was one gloriously sexy man. She was free to think that without guilt hugging her bones now. She felt an explosion of guilt anyway. She didn’t even know if the man liked her. But! Supposing he did, would she have the nerve to do something about it?

  As Anna turned onto her street she realized that for the first time in years she was approaching her house without tension lining her stomach. In the past she never knew what she would have to cope with once she unlocked her front door. Whether Clara-Alice would be in a good mood or bad; or if Kevin was spoiling for an argument because she forgot to pick up his dry cleaning, or hadn’t made the bed before she left for work; or she served him roast beef when he was hungry for pork chops. Oh. She had allowed her husband to pick at her like a vulture picked at road kill. Keeping silent, keeping the peace made it seem as if she had gone out of her way to invite it. If nothing else, the session with Dr Neal had her thinking, seeing her life in a different light.

  She pulled up next to Caburn’s car and nudged him awake.

  “Thanks,” he said groggily, and after a bit of fumbling, unbuckled his seat belt and exited her car, trailing the hospital blanket like a matador cape. Anna drove on to park in front of her house.

  It was strange to enter her home empty of Clara-Alice and Kevin. Silence greeted her from every corner. She flipped lights on as she went from foyer to living room, dining room and kitchen. The familiarity of furnishings in so much quiet was unsettling. While she filled and plugged in the teakettle, her eyes filled with tears. Oh, stop! She told herself. Self-pity won’t get you anywhere.

  The brass doorknocker sounded so loud and sharp in the quiet, she jumped. She opened the door to Caburn. He was shivering and hugging the blanket. “My leather jacket is hanging on the back of a chair in your kitchen. My car keys are in the pocket.”

  Anna’s mind flashed to Helen, on the phone, Caburn’s jacket across her lap.

  Anna stepped back to let him in. He followed her into the kitchen. “Helen took your jacket with her. If she didn’t leave it at the hospital, it’s probably still in her car.”

  He sat at the kitchen table muttering imprecations. Anna kept her back to him as she put water to boil for pasta. A frisson of excitement replaced her angst. “I’m having tea and comfort food.”

  “I’m starving. I can’t remember eating anything since breakfast. What does a gourmet cook for comfort food?”

  “What my mother always cooked. Mac and cheese with tomato and mayo sandwiches on toasted bread. Lots of pepper.”

  “Bless your mother!”

  Anna’s hands stilled for a moment. “I wish she were here to tell me what to do, how to act...”

  He watched
her back, so straight, the perfect shoulders, the way her slacks fit her slender hips, her hair a bit mussed, but lovely all the same. “You act just fine, Anna. Be yourself, be natural. There’s no book on stuff like this.”

  “I feel like I ought to be grieving, but instead I just feel relief. I don’t have to go through a divorce, I don’t have to argue about a settlement. I don’t know. I’m just all jumbled up.” She put a cup of tea in front of him, and sipped on hers as she cooked.

  “You mind if I lace that with some scotch?”

  “You can’t have any alcohol. You’re full of antibiotics and pain meds.”

  “Just a dribble?” he asked hopefully.

  “I’d like to think you have some common sense, Frank.”

  “Since you put it that way, forget I asked.”

  She served the macaroni and cheese piping hot, the sandwiches on the side with crunchy sweet pickles, and Diet Cokes.

  “My mother was widowed at thirty-one,” Anna said, unwilling to let go of the topic. “Three years younger than I am now and then she had me to raise. She was always happy. I don’t know how she managed that.”

  “Did she remarry?”

  “No. She had a long-time boyfriend. He never slept over, at least while I was home. I asked her if she was going to marry him. I never will forget how she laughed. She said men have a thing about thermostats. It was so wonderful not to argue over the settings, so no, she wasn’t going to open up that can worms ever again. I didn’t understand what she meant then, but boy! I sure do now.”

  “So, what do you have in mind to do?”

  They looked at each other for a long time—probably only seconds, but that can be a long time.

  “Buy a dog,” Anna said.

  “A dog is good.”

  He scooped up the last bit of cheese with an edge of toast and popped it in his mouth. “From the bottom of my heart, this farm boy thanks you for comfort food. May I use your phone to call a taxi?”

  “You’re welcome. No problem—help yourself to the wall phone—right there,” she pointed to the back wall. “Where do you want the taxi to take you?”