This Secret Thing

by Whalen, Marybeth Mayhew

  As Violet drew closer, Polly had to resist the urge to rush forward and take the girl into her arms, to tell her all the things she needed to know, to warn her and to encourage her, to promise that though she’d been absent from her life for far too long, now she was here. That she would never leave her again. This was her granddaughter. Her flesh and blood. But she didn’t want to overwhelm the girl. So she kept her arms crossed in front of her. It looked like she was hugging herself, when really she was imagining the day when it would be comfortable, natural, to hug this child she did not know, but knew very well just the same.

  Violet

  She stepped out of her stepmother’s car to see the older woman—her grandmother, she supposed—standing on the porch beside that pumpkin, watching her. She blinked at the woman a few times, then turned away. She craned her head back inside the car to look over the headrest at her two half siblings strapped into their car seats in the back. “Bye, you guys,” she said, feeling a sadness as she said it, a finality that didn’t make sense. It wasn’t the last time she was ever going to see them.

  The baby waved her chubby fist in the air in a gesture that was half wave, half fist bump. Violet took it as a sign of solidarity, a baby way of saying, “You got this, girl.” She thanked her stepmother’s profile for the ride, then grabbed her bag and walked away. Behind her she heard the car shift into reverse and speed away. With her stepmother gone, there was no escaping. She wanted to turn around, chase the car down the street hollering, “Wait! Don’t go.”

  She kept walking toward the stranger waiting for her on the porch. The woman crossed her arms and squinted into the sunlight as Violet slowly closed the distance between them with faltering steps. She couldn’t believe this was her life now, that this was reality. She glanced over her right shoulder at Micah’s house, wondering if by some miracle he was watching this scene unfold, wishing she’d spot him in his driveway. She wanted a witness to this moment, and he was her best bet due to proximity. Not out of real interest. She knew better than that.

  She climbed the few steps to where her grandmother stood and dropped her bag at her grandmother’s feet, right in front of the pumpkin. The two of them silently blinked at each other a few times. Finally, Violet extended her hand. “I’m Violet,” she said.

  Her grandmother gripped her hand and, when the smile bloomed on the older woman’s face, Violet saw it was her mother’s smile, as plain as day, like a magic trick. If it was possible to reach out and grab hold of a smile, Violet would have, just to take hold of something that was familiar. Instead she only smiled back.

  The woman let go of her hand and said, “You have her smile.”

  “Whose?” Violet asked.

  “Norah’s,” she said. She corrected herself. “Your mother’s.”

  Violet rolled her eyes. “Hardly,” she said.

  She’d grown accustomed to deflecting any comparison to her mother. Her mother was beautiful. Violet was not. She had accepted this long ago. Any comparisons between them were just something people made out of obligation. But Violet did not have whatever beauty her mother, and apparently her grandmother as well, possessed. She was different from her mother and from her grandmother. She hoped Polly would not be too disappointed that her granddaughter hadn’t inherited the family beauty gene.

  “I’m Polly,” her grandmother said. Violet had wondered what to call this woman. One of her friends called her grandmother Nana, and one called hers Mimi, and one called hers Honey. But none of those names would fit the still young, still quite beautiful, not at all grandmotherly-looking woman who stood in front of her. Violet supposed that Polly would do just fine.

  “Nice to meet you,” Violet said, and wondered if she should hug her grandmother. Didn’t grandmothers like hugging? But Polly didn’t look like the hugging type. So she gestured to the front door, which stood slightly ajar. Her mother would not like that. She always yelled “Close the door! Flies are going to get in!” whenever Violet left it open. “Do you want to go inside?” she asked, inviting Polly in, taking ownership of her house even if Polly had apparently already been inside. Violet wondered who had let her in. She pictured that detective from the other day, his foot propped up on their pumpkin possessively. It had probably been him, brandishing the keys like he owned the place.

  Polly nodded and motioned for Violet to go in ahead of her.

  “Those police didn’t clean up after themselves very well, even though that detective promised they did. The kitchen and living area are OK, but your mother’s room—and yours, I’m afraid—are a mess,” Polly said from behind her. “I wanted to tidy up while I waited for you. But I’m not sure where some things go. I figured you could tell me?”

  The question hung in the air as Violet took in the scene. She could tell that the police had tried to put things right after the search, but in spite of their efforts, everything felt off-center, as if the whole house had been picked up by a giant and shaken. They hadn’t made it the way it was before. Violet supposed no one ever could.

  She felt her grandmother’s hand rest cautiously on her shoulder. “Want to show me where everything goes?” Polly asked. Her voice shook slightly as she spoke, and as their eyes met, Violet saw fear in her face, fear that matched her own. Neither of them, she could tell, knew what to do next. The realization brought her a strange sort of comfort. If no one knew what to do, she thought, then nothing you did could be wrong.

  She forced herself to smile, if for no other reason than to put her grandmother at ease. “I’m not sure if I know where everything goes,” she said, shrugging her shoulders as if it didn’t matter. But it did. When her mom came home, she wanted everything to be just right for her. She wanted her mother to be happy when she saw how well Violet had managed in her absence.

  “I bet you know more than you think you do,” Polly said. “You live here, after all.” Polly walked farther into the house, calling over her shoulder to Violet. “C’mon, we’ll figure it out together.” Violet nodded, picked up the bag she’d hastily packed under that cop’s big nose, and let her brand-new grandmother lead the way.

  She stepped into her room and stopped short. The cops had been thorough in their search, tossing things aside as they dug for evidence. Though downstairs it appeared they’d at least attempted to put things back, they’d left her room in disarray. Her dresser drawers yawned open like so many mouths vomiting cotton, denim, and rayon blends. The items on top of her desk and dresser had been rifled through as well. Someone had even opened the expensive mascara her mom had bought her. Violet jammed the wand in and out of the tube a few times, then examined the brush. Bits of dried mascara flecked from it. She tossed it into her empty trash can that had been full before the police arrived, the contents probably carted off in some evidence bag. As if her mother would carelessly toss whatever they were looking for into her daughter’s waste bin.

  She cringed as she recalled throwing away a letter she’d written—but never intended to send—to Micah Berg the same night her mom had brought that pumpkin home. It had been a horrible admission that was part letter, part poem, in which, inspired by the pumpkin, she had compared Micah to a jack-o’-lantern, how his carved smile didn’t really reveal the light she saw inside him, that if she could carve the right expression on his face, she would. She’d revealed what she knew about that night, what she’d seen from her window, how she understood what no one else did.

  She stood over her trash can, now empty save the ruined mascara, feeling sick at the thought of a cop extracting that letter from her wastebasket and reading it. She should’ve destroyed it, taken a match to it and watched it burn. What if a cop read it and figured out what she was talking about, went to the Berg house, and handed it over to Micah saying, “I think you’d better read this”?

  At that moment she heard the sound of Micah’s basketball, the familiar rhythm of bounce, bounce, bounce, then the silence as the ball traveled through the air. Then the thunk of it hitting the rim and bouncing down, or the s
woosh of it sinking into the net. She’d missed that sound when she was away, missed the nearness of him.

  But this time the familiar sound was interrupted by another sound: a man’s deep, resounding laugh. The laughter pulled her to the window to investigate who had joined Micah, worried that perhaps her fear had come true and a cop was there with him, her letter in his hand, the laughter about her. Her heart thumping with fear, Violet squinted through the blinds. Ever since that night last spring, he had played basketball alone, except for his dog Chipper watching from a safe distance, out of the path of stray balls. Once a ball had beaned poor Chipper on the head, and the way Micah had reacted, fawning all over the dog, had made her heart swell inside her chest, made her love him all the more. He was not the person people said he was. Violet knew this better than anyone.

  Downstairs, Polly rattled and banged dishes in the kitchen as she attempted to make dinner. “I stopped at the grocery store,” she’d said in that too-eager way adults use when they’re trying to get a kid to be excited over something that’s not exciting at all. “I’m making your mom’s favorite dinner.” Polly had thought about that for a moment. “I mean it used to be her favorite.” She’d glanced around the kitchen, looking uncertain and maybe a little frightened. Violet had left her to it and made the excuse that she needed to unpack, before fleeing to her room. Violet had her own fears; she couldn’t help her new grandmother with hers.

  She cranked open her window and watched as Micah’s dad—the source of the laughter—took a turn with the basketball. The fall breeze, slightly cooler since September had surrendered to October, carried their voices to her. “Watch and learn, Son,” Micah’s father called out, then proceeded to sink a jump shot. He whooped at his accomplishment. Micah clapped and Chipper barked. Violet had to turn away. Despite what Micah had faced in the past year, he still had not one but two parents at home, a dad who played basketball with him, a dog. Violet had none of those things.

  As if in protest to her dismissal of him, her grandmother’s dog, Barney, like the purple dinosaur, barked. Violet smiled in spite of herself. She sniffed the air and detected the smell of meat frying. Her mother never ate fried foods. She rarely ate meat. Violet was curious to see what used to be her mother’s favorite food, because Polly’s hunch was correct: it was no longer her favorite. Violet’s stomach rumbled in response. Whether it was her mother’s favorite or not, whatever was cooking smelled good. Maybe, she thought as she turned away from the window and headed back downstairs to investigate, it could be her favorite now.

  Casey

  Eli slid into the driver’s side of the car, looking grim as he reached over to stow a grocery bag on the floorboard of the back seat. Casey heard the satisfying clink of bottles hitting each other. She could already taste the beer. She hadn’t had a drink since she left college two weeks ago, and she missed it. Missed the helpful oblivion of getting drunk. It was funny how drinking had led to what had happened, and it was drinking that helped her forget what had happened. She could not separate the two, so she didn’t try. She just went with it, depending on the liquid to slide down her throat, enter her bloodstream, and bring the freedom she craved.

  “Thanks,” she said to Eli, who started the car and didn’t answer her. When he turned to look over his shoulder as he backed out of the parking place, his eyes grazed over her, looking at her but refusing to see her. She could tell he was angry but didn’t want to say so, because who knew if this would be the only time they would see each other while she was home. No sense starting a fight, better to go along. She knew him so well she could read his mind.

  “Can we go back to your place and drink this?” she asked, trying to reassure him that he was not just the procurer of her alcohol, but her drinking partner as well. She was not just using him. She wasn’t. That Eli had a fake ID and she didn’t had nothing to do with it. There had been a time he wouldn’t have hesitated to get them beer, to drink it with her. But then they had broken up, and it seemed he wasn’t anxious to go right back to the way things were. In that moment, Casey wanted nothing more. She wanted to pretend just for an afternoon that she was someone different, someone she used to be. She glanced at his profile, his face serious, his eyes intense, as he watched the road.

  “Please?” she asked, making her voice sound playful. She rested her hand on his knee, partly out of habit and partly as a gesture of reassurance. “Your mom’s at work, right?” Eli’s mom worked a lot, and his parents were divorced, so they had often had his house to themselves. She missed those afternoons from senior year, the cold ones when they had snuggled on his couch and caught a buzz while watching old movies, and the warm ones where they had donned bathing suits and sat on his back patio catching rays and dreaming of their future.

  He moved his knee away from her touch. “Not sure that’s a good idea,” he said.

  She pouted even though he wasn’t looking at her. Both of them were silent for a few minutes as she debated her options. Push too hard, and she could push him away. A thought dawned on her: What if he’d met someone since they had broken up? She thought about the girls from high school who’d stayed behind to attend community college, still rattling around town doing the same old things while everyone else had gone off to the hallowed halls of higher learning or whatever. Casey wouldn’t put it past one of them to make the moves on Eli after their breakup. She wondered who it could be.

  Better to play hard to get, to prove that no matter how desperate those other girls were, she wasn’t. Suddenly she found herself wanting nothing more than to spend the afternoon with Eli. “Fine, then, I guess just take me back to my car,” she said, willing her voice to sound nonchalant, denying what she felt inside. She was getting frightfully good at that.

  Eli shrugged and, at the next light, turned in the opposite direction of his house. She felt her heart sink but willed herself to keep her chin up, like her mother often said.

  They were silent all the way back to where they’d left her car, in the parking lot of the restaurant where they’d met. The lunch had started off nicely, the conversation flowing naturally, like the old friends they were attempting to be. She’d relaxed completely by the time their food had arrived, and she could tell he had, too. She’d been so relaxed that once they’d eaten and the check had arrived (which he had insisted on paying for despite her protests), she’d blurted out that they should get some beer, keep the party going. The funny thing was, though his face had fallen when she said it, he’d done it.

  He pulled into the parking space next to her car but didn’t cut the engine. He turned to her and gestured to the bag behind her seat. “You can just take that,” he said.

  She felt tears prick her eyes. She had done this. She had ended things. What had she expected to happen? “OK,” she said. “If you’re sure.”

  She saw his jaw muscle jump under the skin. He nodded once, then turned back to look at her. “It was good to see you. Good luck at school.” In his eyes was the weakness he had always had for her, laid bare. She saw kindness and pain surging inside him, the effort he was making to let her go. It was cruel to ask for anything from him if she herself didn’t know what she wanted.

  Still, she leaned across the seat and kissed his cheek, right in the spot where his jaw muscle had jumped. “Good luck to you, too, Eli,” she said against his skin. And it was manipulation, pure and simple. She shouldn’t do it, yet she couldn’t stop herself. She moved away, slid back to her spot, and moved to lift the beer into her lap from the back seat. Right on cue, she felt his hand shoot out to halt her.

  “You’re right,” he said to her. “My mom’s not home.” She could smell it on him, the longing. “I mean, we could go back there. If you’re serious.”

  “As a heart attack,” she said, and grinned like she was kidding around, like this was all no big deal, when it was a very big deal, for more reasons than she was willing to admit. She exhaled as he put the car in reverse, then shifted into drive and pressed on the gas. She watched as her car
grew smaller in the rearview mirror, disappearing as they left it behind.

  Violet

  She was outside, presumably to watch Barney pee so her grandmother could clean up from dinner. The dog had whined at the door, and when Violet had offered to be the one to take him out, Polly had looked so relieved that Violet felt guilty about her ulterior motive. Really she was just hoping that Micah Berg would take Chipper out at the same time, and the dogs would run over to check each other out, leaving their caretakers no choice but to follow. It would be like a scene from a movie, a meet cute, though technically she had met Micah before. She didn’t count the other brief encounters. She was hoping for more, a real conversation instead of merely acknowledging the other’s existence.

  She kept her eyes on Barney as she tried to imagine what they might talk about. She glanced across the street, hoping Chipper would bolt from the house. But the Berg house remained quiet and still. Violet grew bored with watching Barney walk and sniff, walk and sniff.

  “Just pee already,” she said to the dog, but he ignored her.

  She’d begged her mom for a dog the year she was twelve, saved her allowance and birthday money, scoured Craigslist listings, researched veterinarians. Her campaign had fallen on deaf ears, though. She could still hear her mother’s voice saying, “It’s a lot of work, Vi.” Standing outside when she should be inside studying for a test, she now saw her mother’s point.