Secret Language

by Monica Wood

  “I don’t know.” He looks perplexed. “Stupid, I guess.”

  It still surprises her that he found Brenda, that it’s possible for a human being to surrender to love more than once. To again wander through the slow motion of turning toward and turning away, shaping out of words let go and words taken back a language you could both understand. Hadn’t that always been the difference between them? Joe would surrender again—and again, a believer.

  He starts to leave, then turns back. “Don’t you ever miss me?”

  She knows he expects no answer. Yes, she could say, but the specter of the road that had been their marriage—steep and dangerous, full of switchbacks—freezes the word in her throat. After the divorce, their house seemed empty and forbidding, and she recognized all at once how little of it had ever been hers, how heavily she had borrowed from Joe’s life. He had taken little away—his clothes, his gadgets in the basement, a couple of pieces of furniture—but even with the boys still in it, the house had an echoey quality, the sound of moving day. She resorted to an old comfort, a superstition she’d devised as a child: in every new room of every new place on the road she would walk the whole of the floor in a crabbed, deliberate way, imprinting every square inch with the soles of her feet. It would take a long time, and a lot of concentration not to lose her place. Then she would hide something—a button, a penny, a marble—in a secret place, to be left there forever or until some lonely person found it. Even now it pleases her to think of the trail of treasures in places she has long forgotten. She repeated her childhood ritual in this house after Joe left, walking every inch—the space behind the stereo speaker, the narrow corridor between the bed and the dresser, each stair from side to side. But she hid no treasures here; her children were her treasures, and if she hid no others perhaps they would belong to this house forever.

  “If you change your mind,” Joe says, “you know where we are.” He turns again and finishes his leaving.

  She watches them drive away, the snow so dry it kicks up like flour behind the tires. Her sons’ dark and light heads bob against the back windshield.

  The day endures. She reads, naps, walks the house. Finally she returns to her birds and stays there a long time. Her fingertips turn numb and bloodless, but she persists, in the waning sunlight, her second attempt in the day, holding out her gift to the ignorant birds. By now the turkeys at the Fullers’ have long since been cut, the white and dark meat doled out. She can almost see it, the aftermath, the decimated pies, wishbones drying on the stove, the sound of voices sparking out from various parts of the house.

  This is Joe’s year to say the Thanksgiving grace. She pictures him standing at the table, his simple words of thanks, his good-natured voice. She sees the assemblage that she once tried to believe was hers, bowing their heads in some tacit and immutable notion of themselves as a linked body. In years past she would open her eyes, raise her head, and peer over the fragrant abundance at the ring of good faces, as if to separate herself from their version of love.

  An easy loneliness settles in: gossamer, weblike, so familiar it is almost a comfort. And nostalgia, too, a peculiar longing for the holidays of her childhood, stripped of ceremony or decoration, just she and her sister left behind again, a desk clerk or babysitter for company, and always a small diversion: a hot turkey sandwich from the room-service girl, or a long-distance phone call, just for them, from Armand. A far cry from the Fullers’ picturesque holidays, but at least she had always known, more or less, what to expect. At the Fullers’ she never knew what extravagance was coming next.

  “Faith?”

  Birds explode from the feeders as Faith jumps, the seeds spilling from her hand and disappearing into the white ground. At the edge of the house stands a man, a stranger.

  “Sorry,” he says. “I’m Stewart. Connie’s friend?”

  Connie and Isadora come up behind him. Dressed for cold weather, Isadora looks a little bigger. Stray hairs trail out from under her hat in a filmy veil.

  “What are you doing home?” Connie asks.

  “I live here.” I was just thinking about you, she wants to say.

  Isadora takes four long strides and plants a kiss on Faith’s cold cheek. “I was dying to see where you lived, Faith. I asked Connie to bring me over here.”

  They stand in a loose cluster, looking at her, something breathless and happy about them, as if they’ve been drinking, or running fast. Isadora notices Faith’s one bare hand. “What are you doing?”

  “Feeding the birds.” She thrusts her hands into her pockets. “Looking at them.”

  “Faith’s a birdwatcher,” Connie says, her voice big and hearty.

  “Me too,” Isadora says. She is beaming; they are all beaming.

  “Really?” Faith says.

  “I’ve watched birds for years.” Isadora regards the creatures in question, who are already returning to the feeders. “You have quite a bunch.”

  “What are they?” Stewart asks. The birds flit back and forth again, not bothered by the presence of a crowd. Faith waits, out of habit and politeness, for Isadora to answer first. The wait is long and then awkward, until it becomes clear to Faith that Isadora doesn’t know a thing about birds.

  “The little striped ones are pine siskins,” Faith tells Stewart. “And the ones with the black caps are chickadees.” She points out a nuthatch near the fence and a cluster of house finches on the far feeder. “If you wait long enough you might see a couple of woodpeckers at the suet bell.”

  They’re all smiling as if under direction, especially Connie, who seems ready to burst out of her clothes.

  “They’re pretty,” Isadora says. “I saw a big blue heron once, right in Central Park.”

  “You’re kidding,” Connie says. She sounds amazed, as if Isadora were reporting on a recent trip to the moon.

  Faith pushes her frozen hand deeper into her pocket. “You probably mean a great blue.” She meets Connie’s eye briefly.

  “I thought you were at Phoebe’s,” Connie says.

  “I came back early.” She feels her face go red and with some relief understands herself to be a bad liar. “Actually, I didn’t get over there.”

  “You didn’t?” Connie says. They’re all shivering, standing in the snow of Faith’s back yard as daylight fails them by seconds. “You mean not at all?”

  “I didn’t feel like it.”

  “You didn’t get any turkey?” Stewart says.

  “I didn’t want any.”

  Stewart’s long arms float out from his sides. “And here we were, eating like the three little pigs!” He holds his hand out to Connie. “Give me your keys. I’m going right back there for some food.”

  Faith takes a step. “Oh, no, please—”

  “Don’t even say it,” Stewart says. “We had a veritable food orgy over there, and there’s plenty left.”

  Isadora laughs. “We cooked enough for ten.”

  “Really, I don’t want anything,” Faith says, but Stewart runs off, with Isadora and Connie yelling after him not to forget the pies, the wine, the cranberry sauce.

  “We had a ball,” Isadora says. “I wish we’d known you were here.”

  Faith makes a noncommittal sound.

  “My mother used to feed the birds,” Isadora says, gazing at the feeders.

  “Isadora lived near Prospect Park in Brooklyn,” Connie says. “Remember that park, Faith? Armand took us there once. Remember the beatniks?”

  “No.”

  “Playing the bongos? You don’t remember? You were scared of their beards.”

  Isadora is nodding. Apparently she has heard this story already today. “No, really. I don’t remember that,” Faith says.

  “Anyway,” Isadora says, “Prospect Park is loaded with birds. Spring and fall, my mother would go crazy. She had feeders everywhere.” She sweeps the scope of Faith’s yard with one hand. “Just like this. Of course our yard was smaller.”

  Connie and Isadora are fading into the dusk, thei
r smiles luminous, similarly shaped. Billy and Delle used to fade that way at the end of each act, and for a long time Faith suspected they possessed the ability to literally disappear. It was one of the many things she never confided to Connie out of the fear it might be true.

  “Is anyone else cold?” Connie says.

  “Oh. Sorry. Come in,” Faith tells them, and they follow her into the house. She doesn’t quite know what to do with them. In the warm hall she flexes her frozen fingers, stamps her feet, stalling.

  “Oh, I love dogs,” Isadora says, scooching down and peppering Sammy’s face with kisses. “Aren’t you a sweet old boy.”

  Faith hangs up their coats while they stand in the hall, not talking. Isadora wanders over to a calendar, which features for November a color photograph of a willow ptarmigan.

  “My mother had one of those in the yard one day,” Isadora says.

  Faith smiles awkwardly. “That would be an amazing sight.”

  “Oh, it was. Fat and pretty.” Isadora measures its breadth with her hands; she’s off by half a foot or so, but the bird materializes anyway, its white feathers fluffed out, protecting itself. Faith half believes Isadora could have seen such a thing.

  She invites them into the living room, but when she retreats into the kitchen to put some water on, Isadora follows her, and Connie follows Isadora. Isadora pulls out one of the kitchen chairs and straddles it, her arms folded over its back. Connie stands, her hands in her pockets. Faith feels their eyes on her as she fills the kettle and turns on the gas.

  “I’ve been trying to get the chickadees to eat out of my hand,” she says. She turns to look at them, to see if she has really confessed this.

  “I didn’t know birds did that,” Connie says.

  “Oh, yes,” Isadora says, the soul of authority. “They’re much tamer than people think.”

  Faith stares at the kettle, the watched pot. Suddenly Stewart is clamoring at the front door and Isadora skips out to let him in.

  Connie appears at Faith’s side now, one hand tentatively perched on her shoulder. “You don’t mind that we came?”

  “No,” Faith says. “I don’t mind.” She doesn’t, somehow; she’s glad of the company, and recognizes that it has been a long, dark day.

  Stewart comes in, the cold evening wafting off his clothes as he sets a stack of foil-covered plates on the kitchen table.

  “ ‘Over the river and through the woods,’ ” he sings, and Connie and Isadora join in: “ ‘To Grandmother’s house we go …’ ” Faith can barely hear Connie, but her mouth is moving. “ ‘… The horse knows the way to carry the sleigh, da dum da dum dee doe …’ ”

  Connie unfurls the turkey wrappings. “Remember that song, Faith?”

  “We could only come up with the first three lines,” Stewart says. “And a loose approximation of the melody, as you probably noticed.”

  “I know it ends with ‘Hooray for the pumpkin pie,’ ” Connie says, her forehead furrowed with remembering. “Grammy Spaulding used to sing it. Faith, how did it go after ‘carry the sleigh’?”

  “You don’t remember Grammy,” Faith says. Isadora’s small fibs have made her ill-disposed to large ones.

  “Yes I do.”

  This is an old argument, their only one. It began ludicrously long ago, in some grade school in California where Connie was asked to write an essay about an unforgettable person. “Connie, you were two years old.”

  “I remember that far,” Connie says. “I can’t help it.” She turns to Stewart. “It’s ‘Hooray for the something/something something/and hooray for the pumpkin pie.’ Isn’t that it?”

  “Connie, you were two.” Faith sounds more agitated than she means to, and the three of them regard her uneasily.

  Connie begins to open the other wrappings, revealing pies, cranberry sauce, stuffing. “She used to go to bed with her hair in a braid,” she says. “This thin white braid down over one shoulder.”

  It is quiet, gravelike. Somehow they have all gotten into chairs and are seated around the table, listening to Connie. The festive remnants on the table remind Faith of pictures of airplane crashes, bright bits of clothing flung over the evil ground.

  “Don’t you remember the braid?”

  “No,” Faith says.

  “You’re the one who used to talk about her when we were little,” Connie insists. “You’re the one who told me she was in heaven.”

  Faith strains to remember, tries until her head hurts, but it’s no use. She remembers a million things, but not that. “I don’t see how you can remember her, that’s all,” she murmurs.

  Connie lowers her eyes. “I don’t see how you can’t.”

  Faith has changed the temper of the room and she’s sorry, but she can’t help herself. Quite unexpectedly, she feels protective of her grandmother’s ghost, unwilling to let her be resurrected into Connie’s new, painted-over family.

  “I don’t remember any further back than my first day of school,” Stewart says. “I got to be the crayon boy, my first job.” He divides the remaining cranberry sauce into four portions with an earnestness that Faith finds touching. The kitchen lights are on, and she wonders what this gathering might look like to someone passing silent in the snow.

  “I fell off a table when I was one,” Isadora says. “I remember that.”

  Faith accepts some food from Stewart with a polite smile. “It doesn’t matter. We did have a nice grandmother, by all accounts. Armand adored her.”

  “He used to call her our guardian angel,” Connie says.

  “He did?”

  “Armand told me that,” Connie says quickly. “I don’t remember it myself.”

  “Did Billy adore her too?” Isadora asks. She’s cutting into one of the pies, but her body is stiff with listening.

  “Oh my God, he worshiped her,” Connie says. “He dedicated all his shows to her.” Faith stops eating, stunned, as Connie studiously avoids her eyes.

  “I love that,” Isadora says. “I bet he carried something around with him, you know how people do, a brooch or a hair ribbon or something.” She stretches out her thin hand to show a gold ring. “This was my mother’s.”

  Faith watches as Connie examines the ring, taking Isadora’s hand in hers. “Did you notice the lace doily on my bedside table?” Connie asks.

  “I didn’t happen to,” Isadora says.

  “It’s Grammy Spaulding’s. I got it from Billy.”

  This is not exactly a lie, Faith thinks, but it is certainly not the truth.

  Isadora sighs deeply. “Oh, I love that. I bet she made it for him when he was just a baby.”

  Connie pauses. “Think how long he carried it around. Think how old it is.”

  Faith is staring full at Connie now, but Connie won’t budge. Instead it is Stewart who catches her eye, an ironic smile quivering on his lips. Faith acknowledges his message gratefully, relieved that she is not the only one here who understands how badly Connie is bending the truth.

  “Memory is a magnificent thing,” he says, one eyebrow arched.

  Isadora nods vigorously. “We’re nothing without it.” She reaches down to pet Sammy, who has taken up residence at her feet. “I pity animals, really. They don’t seem to remember past their last breath.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Faith says. “The birds come back every year. They nest in the same trees, feed in the same yards, leave again when it’s time. They remember better than we do.”

  “So,” Isadora says. “What about you, Faith?” She places a hunk of pie on her plate with the rest of her food and begins to eat it all at more or less the same time, which gives Faith’s stomach a turn. “What do you remember about Billy?”

  “I’m sorry, Isadora,” Faith says gently. “I have no stories for you.”

  She hears the slamming door of Joe’s truck outside, a sound she would recognize anywhere.

  “That’s okay,” Isadora says. “He’s not important anymore.” She waves her fork. “We’re the important ones.�
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  “He was a wonderful actor,” Connie says.

  “It’s true,” Faith says, mostly to herself. “They both were.” She turns to Isadora. “They could make you cry.”

  Footsteps thunder on the street, the walk, the front steps. Joe and the boys appear, a burst of clean cold. They’re a magnificent sight, the unadorned truth marching through the door, as real as the weather they bring in with them.

  “Hey, it’s Isadora,” Chris says.

  Isadora trots over and gives everyone a hug, including Joe. “I take it you’re the third sister,” he says, grinning.

  “You guessed it,” she says, and suddenly everyone is talking at once. To Faith it sounds like a language she has long studied but never spoken.

  “Did you have fun?” Faith asks the boys.

  Ben holds his stomach and groans.

  “He ate a whole pie,” Chris says. “He was disgusting.”

  “Did not,” Ben protests. “Mom, I didn’t.”

  “Do you guys know the words to ‘Over the River and Through the Woods’?” Stewart asks.

  Chris frowns. “Say what?”

  “It’s a Thanksgiving song,” Isadora says.

  “We’re not very musical,” Chris tells her. “You should hear us at Christmas.”

  Joe laughs. “My mother has Von Trapp delusions. We indulge her the best we can.”

  “I have a guitar,” Ben says, as if that might redeem them.

  “Well, bring it on out,” Stewart says.

  Isadora produces a well-worn bottleneck and a guitar pick. “We’ll just make it up as we go along.”

  As Ben goes after the guitar, everyone else assembles in the living room. Joe moves to join them as if he has all night. Faith doesn’t ask about Brenda.

  “Why did you tell her those things?” Faith whispers to Connie as they sit down.

  “What things?”

  “Connie.” In the background she can hear Isadora telling Joe and the boys about the dinner at Connie’s, the visit to Faith’s back yard, even the story about the willow ptarmigan.

  “He left her mother high and dry,” Connie says. “Why not let her think he could be decent once in a while?”