Our Little Secret

by Roz Nay

  “People my age?” Mom opened the latch of the gate, forcing Saskia to step back.

  “No, I just meant that … well, it’s like with my mum. She’s fifty-one next year and she was finding—”

  “Fifty-one?” Mom reeled like she’d just been slapped.

  “Come on, Saskia.” HP steered her away. “Mrs. Petitjean, we should get going.” They walked a few steps before picking up to a jog again.

  “Come by for tea!” Mom shouted. She turned and we went inside. “Goodness me.”

  “I thought you’d like her positive mental approach.”

  Mom steadied herself against the kitchen counter. “Where in heaven’s name did he find her? And why didn’t you tell me?”

  “He met her at a party.”

  “Well, he can unmeet her, thank you very much.” Mom shuddered. “Why is she talking about birds, and what is with that accent?”

  “She’s Australian.”

  “Well, she can push off back to the outback and leave us all in peace. Are they dating? Angela, tell me they’re not dating. Why aren’t you more outraged?”

  I took a sip of my coffee, enjoying the warmth.

  “We could set up a cheese wire from the streetlamp to the porch for when they run back,” I suggested. “Take Saskia out at the neck.”

  “Angela! There’s no need to be ridiculous.” Then she joined in. “Why don’t you spike her vitaminwater and bundle her onto a plane? Who’d notice a passed-out Australian? All that country does is drink.”

  I laughed out loud, the first real laugh in a long time. “HP seems to like her,” I said.

  “Why? She’s so…” She squared a box in the air with her hands. “… symmetrical.”

  I didn’t say anything, but it was the first time in my life I’d ever shared an opinion with my mother. Finally we were starting to align.

  Meanwhile, my father was harder to deal with. How many kids do you have, Novak? What, the subject’s off-limits? I only bring it up because you don’t seem desperate or competitive enough for parenthood. There aren’t enough signs that you’re living vicariously. The older my father became, the wider and deeper a sense of failure he carried, and the older I became the more I realized my purpose in life was to fix it for him. My grades had come in from Oxford substandard and it was all he could talk about all summer. Opportunity-wasted this and the-trouble-I-went-to that—there wasn’t a room I could walk into at home without an ensuing chorus of bleating disappointment.

  He even came down to the basement to tell me how inadequate I was. He stood on the other side of my room, tapping his foot on the cement floor while he tried to get a glimpse of me through my wall of wine crates.

  “Are you working on fresh college applications?” he called out. “You need to get your transcript in if you have any plans to start your sophomore year.”

  I turned the page of my Sylvia Plath novel. “I have a college lined up already.”

  Through the crack I could see him throw his hands to his temples and massage away the day’s freshest headache.

  “Quit stressing out, Dad. I’ve got it all taken care of.”

  “Is it Harvard, Angela? Is it Yale? Is it—oh, I don’t know—Stanford?”

  He knew exactly who’d offered me a place; it was just that online colleges didn’t rate on his academic snobometer.

  “Let her go where she wants, David,” called Mom from the top of the basement stairs. “You’re so controlling. Isn’t he? Why the fixation, David? It’s not like you’ve led the way with a dazzling career path.”

  Dad rubbed his head harder.

  “I’ll graduate college. It’ll all be fine.”

  I knew that was like pulling a grenade pin inside his brain, but I didn’t care. He followed me to the blackest corners of the house to hint at his intellectual frustrations, but he never spelled any of them out exactly, just skirted around their edges. The best way I’d found to deal with my father in battle was to pretend I didn’t understand his point.

  While he fretted and paced, I’d enrolled in some generic online university—I couldn’t care less about which institution I attended: it wasn’t like I was going to frame my degree and hang it on the wall. I had a new plan: I wanted to be an archivist, and with the course credits I already had from Oxford, I could take an accelerated program. From one quiet, dank work space to another, and the only company I wanted was books and computers. I’d take literature and library studies and once in the archives of complex systems, I would organize documents into an order that made sense. I’d be doing everyone a favor. Archivists hold history in their hands—they write the endings of all the stories—just think how much everything relies on the input of data these days. The world is littered with unsatisfying closures; it was time somebody took back the helm.

  * * *

  “You were angry,” Novak cuts in. The sun is setting outside, streaking the table with burnt orange. “You wanted to be in charge because, in reality, you had control over nothing.”

  “There’s something comforting about facts,” I concede.

  “I like facts, too, Angela.” He pats Freddy’s letters again, which remain on the table between us. “When people commit their thoughts to paper, it makes things so much easier for us.” His eyes burn holes into mine.

  “What else have you touched in my room?”

  “Oh, we’re just getting started.”

  I shake my head. “Some things are private, you know. Besides, maybe you shouldn’t get your fingerprints all over those.”

  His laugh is measured as he peels his hands from Freddy’s top envelope. “What a team player. Don’t worry—they already have my prints on file. If this is a whodunit”—I can smell the sour coffee on his breath—“I’m pretty sure they know it wasn’t me.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Novak’s writing with his head down, leaving me alone with my thoughts. The truth is I didn’t escape seeing Saskia a few more times through that summer. I waited in line behind her at the grocery store, listening to her brag to the sad-eyed cashier about the year she’d just spent in Europe. It was bloody awesome, she said before she caught sight of me. Oh, Little John, good on ya! Wasn’t Oxford so beaut? You were there—you know. In July she pulled over in HP’s truck to offer me a ride when she saw me walking along the street alone. I had headphones in and didn’t acknowledge she’d stopped. And then, maybe a week later, she made a point of veering toward me at the movie theater when I was standing in the doorway looking at the posters.

  “Are you watching this one, LJ? You can sit with us.” She was holding hands with HP as she said it, even though it looked like he was trying to let go.

  “I’m not … I’m just looking.”

  “Sure, darl? The offer’s there.”

  She was like a child wandering out of a burning building with no concept whatsoever that she’d lit the match.

  * * *

  Mom hovered two steps behind me most of the summer. One evening as I sat quietly on the porch, she came out of the house holding an empty mason jar. She’d labeled it, and the lid was open.

  “Darling.” She patted my knee, and her nails dented my flesh. “I’ve been having a think. I’ve found this jar and, according to research, whatever you put in here comes true.” Her eyes were watery.

  “What research?” I took the jar and rotated it slowly. Across the label she’d written MANIFESTATIONS in swirly cursive.

  “Well, the girls at my music class if I’m honest, but darling, I’ve looked it up on the World Wide Web and all of it’s true. You take little pieces of paper, write down your hopes and dreams, and pop them into the jar.”

  I put both fists to my chin, leaning on my knees.

  “Whatever you put out into the universe is an energy that changes everything.” Her voice rose like an evangelist on TV. “It’s manifest destiny.”

  I snorted.

  “It can’t hurt to try, can it? I mean”—she took the jar back and hugged it to her chest—“we’ve
all had a miserable summer. But it’s time to forgive and forget—you know?—and get life back on track now. Isn’t it, my beautiful girl? Come on, look alive.” She slapped my knee with a rousing palm. “You have so much going for you, and nobody likes a droopy drawers.”

  I kept the jar for a couple of weeks, scribbling all of my nineteen-year-old angst onto paper scraps and dropping them into the glass, the thickness of which only magnified my vitriol when held up to the light. After that, I threw the jar out in the trash. Nothing was coming true. At least, that’s what I thought then; but here, now, it’s frightening to think that maybe Mom’s witchy voodoo might have worked, albeit more slowly than she thought. Saskia’s vanished, hasn’t she? It’s kind of terrible, although deep down, in a part of me I’ll never let anyone see, I also don’t mind if she doesn’t come back. That sounds bad, I know. But people can’t always control their thoughts; they just control what they do about them. Saskia came in like a hurricane that summer, ripping whole dwellings apart, and maybe Mom was right. The energy you put out into the world does change everything.

  * * *

  Novak looks up. “When did you next see Saskia? Did she spend the entire summer in Cove?”

  “I’ll tell you everything,” I say. “Just put your pen down and listen carefully.”

  * * *

  About a month later, in September, HP left a voice mail on my cell, the first message I’d received from him since getting back from Oxford.

  “There’s a party at Fu Bar tonight.” He’d called at 5:30 p.m. Thanks for the afterthought. “Everyone will be there. Saskia’s visa ran out, so it’s a goodbye thing. Later.” His tone was curt.

  “God bless the department of immigration,” said Mom when I told her.

  “I don’t know why he thinks I’d show up to her goodbye party.” I picked at the label of a bottle of beer I’d opened. Mom eyed me, hoping I’d fetch a glass.

  “But you must go. Darling, it’d be good for you. Go out for the evening, kick up your heels. You’ve been holed up here in this cave for months; it’s not good to spend so much time alone. Come, I’ll help you pick out an outfit.”

  “Nothing fits.”

  “Well, you’re thin right now. You need to eat a bit more.” She tried to tuck my hair behind my ear, but I pulled away. “You look striking with those high cheekbones of yours. And now HP is going to be on his own…”

  “I guess Ezra will be there. I could just talk to him all night.”

  “That’d be all right, wouldn’t it?” Her forehead creased and her smile seemed quivery. I let her pick out clothes for me while I sat on my makeshift bed sipping a beer. She pulled out black leggings and a striped black top from the piles on the basement floor. The top hung loose off one shoulder.

  “Beautiful as ever,” Mom said once I put them on. “Now let’s find you some footwear.”

  Fu Bar hadn’t changed, apart from the replacement of the jukebox with a state-of-the-art stereo system that now made it impossible to hear what anyone was ordering. I was late getting there and the place was packed, mostly with faces I recognized from grades below me. As I grabbed a beer, I spotted HP, Saskia, and Ezra at a circle booth in the back and wove through the crowd toward them. HP wore a tank top, his shoulders freckled and dark. Between him and Ezra sat Saskia, smiling, all of her teeth shining too brightly. Every now and then, she sipped at a clear liquid in a smudged glass.

  Ezra spied me and waved as I approached. “Little John! Get over here, stranger.” He bumped the other two along the curved vinyl bench to make room for me beside him. I squeezed in. From my seat, I could see Saskia’s hand on HP’s thigh.

  “It’s good you came,” HP shouted over the music. “I’ll be right back.”

  I watched him move through the throng, laughing with people, slapping them on the back. After a second or two, I slid out of the booth and headed through the swinging doors to the bathroom corridor. I sipped my beer and waited.

  He walked out of the men’s room wiping his hands on the back pockets of his jeans. “Hey.” He stopped short of the door. “You waiting for me?”

  “I just need to say that I never slept with anybody in the world but you, I never wanted to, I never even kissed…” He put up his hand to stop me and I petered out. We stood there, both of us with our arms crossed. In the end he leaned his back against the wall and we stayed there like that, watching people come and go from the bathrooms.

  “Listen, I asked you to come because I hope we can we end this cold war.” I frowned, and he added, “Yes, I know you’re not Russian. I’m being what-do-you-call-it.”

  “Figurative.”

  “I’ve missed you, LJ.”

  “Bullshit.”

  He sighed. “Are you leaving town? For college?”

  “Nope. Studying online.”

  “I got a permanent job coaching at the high school. Like, year-round. It’s pretty sick. I start in a week or so.” His jaw muscle clenched and unclenched. “I’m dropping the carpentry but my dad says I can pick up my apprenticeship whenever I want.”

  “That’s good.”

  “What were you doing with Freddy that night in Oxford?”

  I think of the tepid champagne on the stone balcony, the wriggly pudginess of Freddy’s hips. “Nothing.”

  “Okay.” He exhaled, like the whole muddle could finally be over.

  “Is Saskia leaving forever?” The last word rose into a squeak.

  “I guess.” He looked down at his feet. “Why don’t you like her?”

  “HP, she’s so … vanilla.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Ezra’s head appeared through the doorway. “We’re saying goodbye.” He glanced quickly from my face to HP’s. “You should come out here, bro.”

  HP frowned like he wanted to say more to me, but instead we pushed through the doors to hear Saskia’s tinny accent. “I’ve made so many friends, you’s all have been heaps kind.”

  She said it like this—koind. The people around her had hoisted her up to her feet; she stood on the bench cushion with her bony knees poking out of beach-bleached shorts. Her blue-elephant tattoo shimmered.

  “I wish I could take you fellas back with me to ’Straya.” The first syllable of her country had vanished and the last one bounced. The pod of leering guys in the booth cheered and raised their beer bottles. “Look, I want to say a special thank-you to Hamish…”

  Everyone looked around, confused.

  “To HP…” More cheers. “For putting me up all summer! Here’s to you, Haym.”

  I thought I might vomit into the neck of my beer bottle. To my left, HP raised his hand and blushed.

  “And while I’m up here, I just wanted to give you this.” She arched forward toward HP, an envelope in her outstretched hand. Someone took it and started passing it back to HP. “Fair dinkum. See what you think.”

  While he opened the envelope, Saskia did this strange little curtsy of excitement. He pulled out an airline ticket, Qantas, the rigid white of it stark in the air.

  “Jesus, Sask.” HP scratched his head. “How’d you…”

  “Call it an investment,” she said, and she winked at me. At me.

  The room erupted into whoops and hollers, with all the boys shaking HP at the shoulder like he’d just won a competition. He stood there staring at Saskia, who remained marooned in the booth. She battled her way over the back of the bench toward him.

  “There goes your job at the high school,” I said to HP as Saskia arrived beside us.

  “Look, you don’t have to use the ticket now … or at all. I can get a refund.” Her eyelashes looked longer with her head lowered.

  “No, it’s super generous and nice of you, Sask, it’s just, I—”

  “HP has a life here,” I said. “He’s—”

  HP interrupted. “Actually, it’s just I never thought I’d travel. I’d always kind of ruled it out.”

  Apparently, England didn’t count.

  He looked at
Saskia, his face open and shocked. She beamed at him. I stood watching them, feeling loss creep over me, slick like oil.

  I didn’t say goodbye to anybody that night, although Saskia stopped me at the door—she must have been tracking my exit.

  “I hope we can be friends.” Her entire face lit up like the sun.

  I looked straight into her eyes. “Why don’t you ever say what you mean?”

  She’d been sipping through her straw and coughed a little. There was a rearranging of goodwill features. “Angela. For starters, I’m not trying to—”

  “You bought him a flight to Sydney!” My mouth felt flinty, like granite.

  “He’s coming back, but…” The possibility hung pointlessly at the end of her sentence.

  “But not without you,” I said.

  “Haym really cares about you.” There was such an earnest arc to her eyebrows. It made me want to set them on fire.

  “It’s a problem, isn’t it? Don’t worry; there’ll be plenty of time and space on the other side of the planet for you to reshape him.”

  I walked away from her, straight home, without turning back once to see the look on her face.

  * * *

  Novak rubs his hands together. “It can’t have been easy.”

  “Which part?”

  “Competing with an all-expenses-paid trip to a different hemisphere. I can see why you don’t like her.”

  “I don’t compete with her. She’s dull and predictable.”

  He scratches his jaw. “So when did HP head down under?”

  “The next month. It was kind of a flurry. I didn’t even see him again before he left.”

  “Did you hear from him after? Was he as good a pen pal as Freddy?”

  He’s being ironic. Novak thinks he’s driving this story. He thinks he’s ten steps ahead of me.

  “We Skyped a couple of times, but Saskia was always right there in the background, butting in. They stayed at her parents’ place in Manly Beach and from what I could tell did nothing but surf and watch sunrises. I stalked her on Facebook. She wrote poems about water and light and posted them on her wall. Her security settings are childlike.”