This Secret Thing

by Whalen, Marybeth Mayhew

  “Sure,” was all Bess said in response. “Of course.”

  After Violet left, she and Casey blinked at each other, like What now?

  The answer came in the form of Polly breezing back in, looking less worse for wear. She’d even managed to put on a smile, albeit a weak one. When Bess handed her a glass of wine, the smile widened, the dog at her heels. Bess had forgotten all about him. He sniffed Bess, and she scratched his head. “Hey, boy,” she said to him. She hoped she’d remembered correctly that he was a boy. Polly opened the back door to let him out.

  Casey saw the moment as her opportunity to take her leave. “I’m just gonna go check on Violet,” she said as she backed out of the kitchen.

  “Don’t get your feelings hurt,” Polly called after her, “if she doesn’t talk much. Didn’t say a word on the ride home.”

  Casey disappeared up the stairs, and Bess poured herself a glass of wine. “I’m sure that was hard on her,” she said.

  Polly let the dog in and went straight to her glass, taking a large gulp. “I’ll say.”

  “Hard on you, too,” Bess said, taking her own, more judicious sip.

  Polly shrugged. “Norah’s just so damn stubborn. Wouldn’t cave about that damn list even to her own daughter. She says it’s for the best—and maybe it is; who knows what she’s gotten herself mixed up in—but to sit there in front of her daughter and tell her she won’t do what needs to be done so she can come home. I mean, even if just to her face, just to comfort her somewhat. It just . . .” Polly shrugged and sank into one of the bar stools lined up along the island.

  “I remember how stubborn she is.” Bess laughed, trying to lighten the mood, to distract her.

  Polly looked at her quizzically, like she was just remembering that they’d once been good friends. “How long has it been since you . . .” She faltered in trying to find a good way to say that Norah and Bess’s friendship had come to an end.

  Bess took another, larger sip of wine. Maybe she and Polly would just sit there and get good and drunk. “How long has it been since we parted ways?” Bess asked, filling in Polly’s blank.

  Polly smiled. “Yeah.”

  “Well, when did Iron Man Three come out?” Bess asked.

  Polly wrinkled her brow. “Iron Man?”

  “We went to see it. That was the last thing we ever did together.”

  Polly gave her a bemused smile. “That’s kind of specific.”

  “Well, we both felt pretty strongly about Robert Downey Jr.” Bess smiled like it was nothing, but in truth that night stood out against all the others she’d ever had with Norah. She remembered it with clarity: the movie, the conversation, the way things unfolded from there.

  “Did something happen? That night? I mean, for it to be the last night . . . ,” Polly asked.

  Bess shook her head. “Nothing specific,” she lied. She didn’t know Polly well enough to go into detail. And even if she knew Polly better, she wouldn’t go into what she and Norah had talked about that night. “We just sort of drifted apart after that. She started pulling away. I let her, figured she was busy. I figured she’d come back around. But she never did.” Bess shrugged. “She just never did.”

  “She lets people go,” Polly said, sounding sad.

  Bess nodded, thinking how easy it had seemed for Norah, how hard it had been for Bess. She stood up to fetch them both more wine. It was going down easy. She felt the head rush that came from drinking too much, too fast. She welcomed it.

  Her movement disturbed the dog. He got up and followed her, sniffing around her feet hopefully. “No wine for you, buddy,” she said to him. “What’s his name again?” she asked Polly, grateful for the subject change. She didn’t want to reminisce about Norah anymore.

  “Barney,” Polly said.

  “Hey, Barney,” Bess said to the dog. “Where’d you get him?” He didn’t look like any certain breed, though he could’ve had some Labrador retriever in him.

  “He’s a rescue. I used to volunteer for a rescue society. He was the last puppy left in a litter. He just cried and cried when they all left him behind. I caved and took him home.”

  “Did he come with the name?”

  “No, I named him that,” said Polly. She took another sip and smiled to herself. “He’s named after Barney Rubble. Remember The Flintstones?”

  Bess took a sip, too, then smiled as well, like they were playing the copycat game the girls used to play. “Big Flintstones fan, are you?” she asked.

  Polly shook her head, but her smile didn’t fade. “I brought him home and sat down on the couch holding him, just thinking, What have I done? I clicked on the TV just to distract myself. And The Flintstones were on. And there were Fred and Barney on the screen. And for some reason it was like I was noticing Barney for the first time. Like Fred always gets the attention. He’s the bigmouth, the blowhard. And Barney is just the sidekick, right?”

  Bess realized that Polly expected an answer. “Right,” she said.

  “And I thought about how”—Polly shook her head—“never mind.”

  “No!” Bess protested. “You have to tell me!”

  Polly rolled her eyes, looking for all the world like Violet. “OK, but it’s going to sound stupid.”

  “I don’t care,” Bess said.

  “So I thought, OK, yes, Barney is a caveman. But he’s a caveman with a heart. He’s not like Fred. He tries to do the right thing. He tries to talk sense to Fred. He thinks about Betty and Wilma. He knows he’s a caveman, but he doesn’t have to act like one. It was this kind of—I don’t know—revelation for me.” She fell silent, thinking about what Bess didn’t know.

  “So there are some good cavemen out there in the world, is what you’re saying,” Bess piped up.

  Polly lifted her glass as if in toast. “At least I thought so that day.”

  Bess lifted hers as well. “To the Barneys of the world,” she said. “And to those of us who like to believe they do exist.”

  “To the only Barney I know,” Polly said. At their feet, the dog heard Polly say his name and lifted his head, sniffing the air for something that wasn’t there, but certain that it was coming.

  Casey

  She didn’t knock before entering Violet’s room. She should’ve, but she didn’t. She didn’t know why except that something told her not to. The element of surprise worked to her advantage. She saw Violet on her bed, messing with a doll. She’d caught Violet, doing what, she did not know. But the shocked and guilty look on the younger girl’s face told Casey that Violet was up to something. Violet put the doll down.

  “People are supposed to knock,” she said, scolding Casey.

  Casey recognized the tactic: find the wrong someone else had done in order to take the spotlight off yourself. She herself had used it before. But what had Violet been up to with that doll? Casey studied the thing, now tossed aside, its cold china eyes staring blankly at the wall beside Violet’s bed. It wore an old-fashioned bridal dress, layers of stiff lace and fabric, a high collar. The doll was entirely white, save the two blue eyes and the round pink circles painted on its cheeks.

  The same feeling that had told Casey to walk on in told her not to press Violet about the doll. She had just come from seeing her mom in jail, after all. Maybe the doll had been some sort of sentimental gift from her mom or a prized family heirloom. Casey looked from the doll to Violet and back again, thinking about the irony of a bride doll belonging to a prostitute. But of course, Norah Ramsey hadn’t been accused of prostitution; she’d been accused of running a prostitution ring. She’d arranged the services, put her administrative skills and business acumen to use. Nothing Casey had seen in the news asserted that she’d performed the services herself. Casey tried to imagine the same woman who had once cut up apples for their snack and slathered sunscreen on their shoulders going to bed with a stranger for money. She couldn’t. And what if she had? Casey had gone to bed with a stranger and hadn’t gotten a thing out of it except a scary encounter when
she tried to leave afterward. She shuddered at the recall.

  “Polly says when you shiver like that, it means someone just walked over your grave,” Violet said.

  Casey squinted at Violet. “That’s bizarre, Violet.”

  Violet looked down, embarrassed. “Well, it’s what Polly says.”

  Casey was sorry for what she’d said. She was older than Violet. The kid looked up to her. “Sorry,” she apologized. “I’ve just never heard that before.”

  Violet shrugged. “Neither had I. Polly says lots of things I’ve never heard before.” She cocked her head. “So if it wasn’t someone walking over your grave,” she countered, “what was it?”

  “What was what?” Casey asked.

  “What made you shiver? It’s not like it’s cold in here.” Violet watched her, her gaze like a laser cutting through Casey’s resolve to keep it all inside. Casey tried to dodge the question, wanting to tell Violet that everything was fine. To lie. Again. But the same thing that had led her to walk into this room unannounced now told her that she should be honest with the kid, that now was finally the time to tell someone what was going on, and that, surprisingly, Violet was the person she should tell.

  “Did you find anything the other day? When you went with Micah?” She would ease into it, give herself a way out of the conversation if she chickened out.

  “No,” Violet answered. A funny expression crossed her face when she said it, one that told Casey that if she wanted to distract Violet, she could by probing for what Violet wasn’t telling. Casey wasn’t the only one keeping secrets in this room. But Violet’s secrets were hers to tell when she was ready.

  “Too bad,” Casey said, still hedging, still circling around what she needed to say.

  “It was for Micah,” Violet replied with a shrug. “Not me.” Violet tried to sound nonchalant, but Casey wasn’t buying it.

  “How’d it go with you two?”

  “It was fine,” Violet said. “He’s nice. Not like you think.”

  “That’s good,” Casey said. She moved over to Violet’s desk and pulled the chair out. She perched on the edge, took a deep breath, then went for it. “I shouldn’t have blown you off the other day. When you asked me to go with you guys.”

  Violet sat up a little more. “No,” she agreed. “You shouldn’t have. Micah’s not a bad guy. There’s stuff you don’t know. Stuff only Micah and I know.”

  Casey narrowed her eyes, tempted again to go down a different conversational path, one also about secrets, but not hers. It would be so easy, and yet, it was not what she needed to do. She’d scared herself the other day with the cop; she’d gone too far. The only way to keep from doing it again was to talk about it, to tell someone the truth. And poor Violet had drawn the short straw.

  “There’s stuff you don’t know, too,” she said. “Stuff about me.”

  Violet’s hazel eyes widened, turned greener than Casey had ever seen. Casey looked at the girl as if seeing her for the first time. Was it possible that in a few short weeks Violet had changed enough that it was visible, even to her? Casey had always thought of Violet as a child, but she saw now that she wasn’t anymore. She had to repress a sudden urge to wrap her arms around the girl, shelter her from harm. The same kind of harm that had been done to her. But maybe, in telling Violet what she was about to tell her, she would be doing just that. In knowledge, she thought, there is power. In relationship, there is strength.

  “I slept with the guy I had lunch with.”

  Violet sucked in air. “You cheated on Eli?”

  “This isn’t about Eli,” Casey said. She had to stop herself from laughing at the absurdity of this having anything to do with Eli. Granted, Eli would be hurt if he knew—and she supposed he probably had a right to know, since she once loved him and probably, deep down, still did. But this was more than her and Eli. More than her and that cop. It was about what was broken inside of her. And who broke it. Russell Aldridge.

  “I did it because I was trying to convince myself I was OK. That what happened to me didn’t matter.”

  Violet’s words were a whisper. “What happened to you?”

  Casey felt her body start to shake, but this time, instead of an outward shudder, it was a tremor inside her, building like an earthquake.

  “I came home,” she said. She forced herself to look at Violet, who nodded in agreement. She knew Casey had come home. She’d gone on a walk with Casey the day she had arrived, the day Violet’s mother had been arrested. That seemed like a long time ago now, but really it had been a matter of weeks.

  The dean had called Casey again today, urging her to return to school, pleading with her to file a statement alongside the other girl, the one Russell Aldridge had also assaulted, the one who’d upset her so much the night before, she’d fled. Perhaps this was the real reason that Casey was talking about it now, because she knew it was time to stop fleeing. She’d run home. She’d run into Eli’s arms. She’d run into a stranger’s arms. She’d even run here, to this house, to avoid telling her mother. But no matter how much she ran, it kept catching up to her.

  So now here she was, blurting the truth out to a fifteen-year-old kid. Casey didn’t know if this was fair to Violet, but she couldn’t stop now that she’d started. She had to unburden herself, finally. And besides, Violet was the toughest kid she knew. She could still picture Violet announcing that it was probably best she leave their house after Nicole was such a bitch to her. She’d handled that. She could likely handle this.

  “I left school after a girl told me that she knew that I’d been assaulted by a guy we both knew. He assaulted her, too. And she wanted us to go and report what had happened to the school officials. She wanted to make it public. She didn’t want him to do it to anyone else. She wanted us to stop him from hurting anyone else. She wanted . . .”

  Inside of her, the shaking intensified. Her jaw began to quiver as she went on, making it hard to talk, but she forced herself to keep going. “She still wants justice. But I hadn’t allowed myself to think of what had happened in that way. I didn’t think of it as a crime. I’d been telling myself it was my fault. I dressed too slutty that night. I agreed to go alone with him to his apartment to get more beer. I told myself that going with him like that was the same as consent. I’d been drinking too much. I’d brought it on myself. And when it was happening, I froze. I didn’t fight back. I let it happen. So I told myself it wasn’t really an assault. I convinced myself it was no big deal. Just something that happened—that happens to a lot of girls in college who are stupid. Then they learn, and then they get smarter. I tried that the other day, with that guy. I tried to be smarter, to be in control.” She inhaled deeply, needing the oxygen.

  As she did, Violet’s voice was quiet but clear. “And were you in control?”

  Casey felt hot tears leaking from the corners of her eyes. She shook her head. “I’m starting to think there’s no way to control it. For anyone.”

  “My mom tried,” Violet said with a sigh. “And it didn’t work for her.”

  The two of them looked at each other, and for a few seconds, neither of them said a word.

  Violet broke the silence. “Maybe the other girl has the right idea. Maybe justice is control.”

  Casey slowly blinked. She’d considered this. It was certainly better than what she’d tried already. Hearing Violet say it out loud made it feel real, close. Possible. “I think—”

  Violet threw up a hand to stop Casey, hearing an angry, unfamiliar male voice erupt from downstairs. “You’d have respected me like a good wife!”

  Polly

  She’d been so distracted by her conversation with Bess, so delighted to have someone to talk to after that disconcerting meeting with Norah, that she hadn’t locked the door behind Barney when she let him back in. Calvin just opened the door with the turn of a knob, strolling in like he lived there, with that shit-eating grin on his face and a gun in his hand. Barney, the dumb-ass dog, got up and went to greet Calvin, his long-los
t master. With his free hand, Calvin reached down and scratched Barney’s ears as Barney wagged his tail. The traitor.

  “Calvin, what are you doing here?” She yelled as if she were startled, but really it was so that Bess would hear her. Bess had just stepped into the bathroom, so Polly didn’t know if he realized anyone else was there. She hoped Bess heard her yell, hoped she knew not to show her face. She hoped it also alerted the two girls upstairs, and that they were smart enough to sense the danger and stay out of sight. She would handle this herself. She would keep everyone safe as best she could.

  “I got tired of waiting for you to come home,” he said.

  She thought of lying, but she figured if he was there, he knew the rest. She had banked on him never finding out she had a daughter. She wished she knew how he had found out, but she wasn’t going to ask and anger him further.

  “I had to come here,” was all she said in response.

  “Not with our money you didn’t,” he countered.

  “You were spending it without my per—” No. Permission would be the wrong word choice. That would set him off. “Without my consent.” She swallowed. “It’s my money, too. We should be discussing where it’s going.”

  “Then you should’ve stuck around and discussed it,” he sneered, punctuating the sentence by jabbing the air with the gun, like dotting an exclamation point.

  “I had to leave in a hurry. I was needed here.”

  He looked around at the setting, the sheer domesticity of it. The flowers on the table, the dinner heating in the oven. The plates on the counter. The two glasses of wine. Two. He knew someone else was here. “Where’s your friend?” He gestured to the wine, drawing a line in the air between the two wineglasses. “Is it a male friend, or a female one?” He sniffed the air as if to discern perfume or cologne in the air.