Tell Me a Secret

by Holly Cupala

  “Yeah. I mean, that’s what her bones and stuff look like.”

  “Her? You know it’s a girl?” I nodded. She pulled out the chair next to me then paused, like she wasn’t quite sure if she could invade my space. There was still the weirdness there, turkey or not.

  “Is that her face?”

  I nodded. “You can’t really tell, though, what she’s going to look like. But you can kind of see where her nose is, and her forehead. And that black hole there? That’s her stomach.” It felt strange to be explaining this, this map of Lexi.

  “How many weeks is she?”

  “Well, this was a couple of months ago, when she was eighteen weeks. She’s almost twenty-four now.”

  “Twenty-four,” she echoed.

  “How come you and James don’t have a kid?” I asked.

  “We do.” One of the tellers swished past and poked me on the arm, probably wanting me to cover so she could go out for a latte.

  “Well of course, DaShawn is your kid…but I mean…don’t you want to have your own?” There was more to this story. Maybe James didn’t want any more, or they thought it would be bad for DaShawn, or worse, they couldn’t.

  The pause stretched out. “Yes, I would love to have my own.”

  “Hey, Rand,” the teller interjected, “do you think you could come help me find a couple of files?” She was giving me the Shut up, I’m saving your ass look, the one I had seen on Xanda’s face a million times. I looked at Shelley for anger, but all I saw was sadness.

  “Are you some kind of an idiot?” the teller hissed when we got to the filing wall. “Or do you just have a death wish?” The other teller, at the counter with a customer, peeked over her shoulder.

  “What did I say?”

  “You mean you don’t know? Oh, you’re not that stupid, then.”

  “Know what?”

  “Shelley had a miscarriage a month ago—I guess that was before you came. But I’m not about to let you set her off…”

  But I was no longer listening. I was thinking of Nik and Micah James. It was so easy. You’re pregnant, then you’re not. What would I do if I lost Lexi, too?

  “Oh, my God,” I gulped. “I’m sorry.” Lexi shifted, my popped-out belly a reminder that I had what Shelley wanted. Deep down she probably thought I didn’t deserve it. Suddenly her behavior—questions, suspicion, disapproval—all made sense.

  The teller waved her hand impatiently. “You’d better watch yourself next time.”

  The thought of losing Lexi wouldn’t leave my mind as she danced all afternoon in a postlunch sugar high. She had gone from the size of a tennis ball to the size of a soda-pop can in a little over a month, taking me to a new and uncharted level of exhaustion. It was even more tiring to keep avoiding Shelley when the space we all worked in wasn’t much bigger than a hospital room. After throwing myself into shredding and filing for an hour, I was falling asleep in my peppermint tea.

  The next time Shelley lumbered past, I said her name and she stopped. “Can I talk with you?”

  She turned around, leveling me with her gaze. “Do you want to come into my office?”

  It came out all in a tripped-up rush, not the steady, matter-of-fact question I’d rehearsed in my head. “That’s okay, I just wanted to ask if I could leave early today.”

  And even though she nodded, I had the feeling anything I said would be wrong.

  My thoughts were reeling as I drove away from First Washington Credit Union. Practically everyone I knew had had a miscarriage. Shelley lost a baby. Nik lost a baby—two, even. Micah James and another, earlier one.

  Faith manages, they’d both said…

  I nearly rear-ended the car in front of me.

  It didn’t seem possible coming face-to-face with her, with Shelley. No, with Nik. Even though I knew she lived in the Northwest, the coincidence was just too unbelievable.

  I tried to reconcile what I knew of Nik with what I knew of Shelley, who had seemed to hate me from day one. A miscarriage…that was something else entirely. If she had been pregnant—someone who had wanted a baby for so long; if she had lost it and had to keep coming to work as if nothing had happened; if she had been forced to hire me, someone who had a baby coming but shouldn’t….

  It all made sense.

  Things happen for reasons we don’t know, Nik would say, and I could hear Shelley saying the words, too. But she didn’t know the married college student online was a seventeen-year-old high-school student in real life. I couldn’t imagine what snippet of wisdom she might come up with for that. Being discovered would be like peeling back one more layer in my quest to be like Xanda: the rebel, the sinner, and now the liar.

  Then there was Lexi. It was still possible to leave all of this behind with her and just…escape. I had money saved from my job at the bank, and there was still my portfolio. There was Boston. There was L.A. There was…somewhere.

  Street after street whizzed past the car and my unfocused eyes. A silver Prius nearly sideswiped me, honking its shrill, eco-snobby horn.

  “I couldn’t even see you in the rain, moron,” I murmured to myself, just now looking up to see that I was crossing Broadway, now 12th, now 24th.

  Unconsciously, I was driving home, where my mom would be the last person I wanted to see.

  I took a left on Madison to the only warm, dry place I could think of to be alone. The church would be empty, the staff gone, and the montage troupe not due for another hour and a half. The stained glass would be lit by the twilight, where the fragments of color formed a kind of hidden picture.

  If I searched long enough, I might even find Xanda there.

  Twenty-seven

  A few minutes later, I pulled into the church parking lot, empty except for a cluster of construction trucks and my dad’s Ranger.

  It seemed forbidden, running into Dad without my mom watching over us, as if he were somehow to blame for this present disaster. I parked the car.

  I heard Dad before I saw him. The hundred-year-old doors led into a brick building as dry and freezing on the inside as it was wet and freezing on the outside. Dad’s laughter drifted into the foyer. I didn’t realize it was him laughing until I peeked into the sanctuary. Dad was onstage with two guys I’d never seen before—young construction guys, definitely not from church. I knew this because just as I slipped into the back row, a set wall fell backward and one of the guys belted out a Xanda-style expletive.

  Dad laughed. Mom would be horrified. I was fascinated.

  This was a Dad I hadn’t seen since Xanda died. The one who (a) relaxed, (b) laughed, and (c) laughed when someone else found a new and creative expression of the F-bomb. I half expected Andre to turn a corner.

  One of the guys went around to the other side of the fallen wall and helped heave it upright while another bolted it in place. The rolling base my dad had designed would transform the stage from living room to battlefield in seconds, a skill he may very well have picked up at home.

  Then a girl stepped out of the wings, wearing a tool belt, paint-splattered jeans, and boots exactly like the guys’. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-two, the same age my sister would be, and was hauling a spool of electrical wire across the stage. My dad smiled and patted her on the shoulder like he’d never done to me.

  In the darkness of the last pew, I sat for what must have been an hour, watching them build the sets, joking about clients and current events, totally unaware of me. I was transfixed by the Dad I remembered from my childhood. Watching him onstage with this girl was like watching what my life could have been like, if I could trace back far enough and start over.

  She picked up baby Jesus from the manger and tossed him to Dad like a football. He held the baby for a moment before setting him back carefully and wagging his finger in mock warning: “Don’t mess with Jesus.”

  I watched him while the sun sank behind the stained glass, until they started packing up to leave. I realized I would have to flee before he saw the car parked outside. And b
efore Mom showed up.

  Dad must have had the same thought, because he visibly transformed from this new, secret personality back to the Dad I knew, melting layer by layer before Mom could melt him herself. His shoulders slumped. He seemed distracted as the crew packed up, checking his watch and looking every few seconds toward the back door. The crew headed for the rear exit, slapping Dad on the back while one of them said, “See you in a few.” Dad smiled casually but looked around once the last of his workers slipped out—and directly at me, though I was still masked by the glare of the stage lights. He looked defeated, utterly broken.

  Sneaking didn’t generally fall into a pregnant girl’s skill set, but I managed it—no ordinary feat, considering the creaky, century-old floorboards and doors swinging with the weight of a hundred years. That is, until my heel clipped the edge of the door, the clunk of wood on wood echoing in the dark empty space with the hollow finality of a gavel.

  Dad spun around and peered into the darkness, his lips pressing into a thin line. “Who’s there?”

  “It’s just me, Dad.” It felt strange to be alone with him, inside these hallowed walls and windows.

  I gave him a wave and turned to go.

  “Wait, Rand?” Dad called, crossing part of the distance. “Is your mom with you?”

  “No,” I said, looking over my shoulder to the darkened foyer. “I left work early and came here. Mom will probably come soon to start setting up for the rehearsal.”

  Dad was still walking toward me, slowly, as if I were some strange, unpredictable animal. I certainly felt like one these days, with new things happening to my body every day.

  “How is…how are you? How is the baby?” he asked, still moving toward me in the most careful manner.

  “Fine,” I said, instinctively putting my hand across my front. “Kicking right now.”

  “Wow, kicking. I remember when your mother was pregnant with Xa—” He stopped, redirected, like he had hit the invisible wall. “When she was pregnant with you. You used to kick a lot, especially at night. Is it a…do you know what it is? I mean, have you thought of a name? I’m sure your mom…”

  “Wait a second,” I interrupted. No one told him? Of course he didn’t know. I hadn’t told anyone but Nik.

  He shrugged, bumping up against the nearest pew. Then he chuckled, like it was no big deal. “No one tells me anything about these things.”

  “I haven’t told anyone.”

  I closed the gap more, rifling through my sketchbook in search of the ultrasound picture. The shapes and shadows bending around Lexi would give us a tiny window into her dark, soft, safe existence. “Well, I have a picture somewhere…” I thumbed through the pages.

  In seconds, the gap between us completely closed. Strange, but he seemed a lot taller close up—as tall as he had seemed when I was a little girl. He smelled like sawdust and wood glue from the set building, with a hint of soap. His skin looked older, drier than I remembered from those little-girl days. He watched me the same way I watched him—like he hadn’t seen me for years, and he was taking all of me in for the first time. I was taller, too. My face more long, less round. The pregnancy. My hands stumbled with the strangeness of his sudden interest.

  I fumbled through the sketchbook, turning page after page of drawings. I watched his face for a sign of recognition—that he would understand the secrets poured out of my heart and onto the page. But I saw only awe as he drank in the lines of my drawings like he was drinking in pieces of my life.

  I passed a portrait of Xanda, and his hand darted out to stop me. The picture I stole from Dylan slid out of its place. His gaze stayed on the page for a moment more. “Where did you get that?”

  “Someone who knew her,” I mumbled.

  Then he let go, and I flipped ahead and found the ultrasound picture taped in place. The first thing out of his mouth was, “Wow.” It lingered in the air with hushed reverence. “Wow,” he said again.

  “Yeah.” I was smiling in spite of myself. No one but me had a clue about how amazing she really was. And even more secret, what a gift she was from Xanda. “That’s Lexi.”

  For a second, his face went white. “Lexi? Her name is Lexi? Like, Alexandra?”

  “Yes.”

  The name hung between us, sucking the air out of our lungs. My dad reached out a finger to trace the contours of her face, the lightness of her bones. His touch was as soft as smoke. “What do you think?”

  He reached her heart and drew around the four chambers. “I think she’s beautiful.” He put his hand on my shoulder. His skin snagged my red fuzzy sweater, the one I’d found in Xanda’s things. The icy air cracked open between us, and all of a sudden it seemed like he was rushing to fill it. Especially when his eyes started getting red and his voice caught as he took a deep breath and said, “Miranda, I’m really sorry about all of this happening.”

  I wasn’t sure I was ready for this. Having Dad’s hand on my shoulder, on Xanda’s sweater, asking about Lexi, was almost too much.

  We both jumped when the sound echoed through the sanctuary. It was my mother’s voice, saying, “Oh. My goodness.”

  Because she reserved God for the really important things.

  Twenty-eight

  “What,” my mom hissed, “is going on here?” She looked over her shoulder—always looking to see who might be watching the family sins. I slammed my sketchbook shut.

  We both started to answer her simultaneously. Guilty, though I couldn’t even pinpoint what we were guilty of.

  Talking. Connecting. Speaking the dreaded name of our family’s worst blasphemy. Xanda or Lexi: it didn’t matter which.

  “Hill—,” began my dad.

  “Don’t ‘Hill’ me. You know exactly what this is about, Chuck.”

  She only called him Chuck when she was really ticked, to remind him of the vast chasm between them. Chuck was a trailer-park name, she joked when she was in a better mood. She definitely wasn’t joking now.

  “I saw those…those workers driving out of here,” she said, as if she couldn’t even find a name for the scum of the earth Dad employed. “That girl. Did you have them working here, at the church? Around our daughter?”

  My dad listened in silence. A stone wall, expressionless.

  “And you,” my mom said, turning to me, “how long have you been here? I thought you were working. Don’t tell me you’re skipping work now, too.”

  “I—”

  Her face had tightened. Eyes narrowed. Teeth clenched. The same expression I remembered from the night Xanda died. “Chuck, did you have those guys around her? Is that what’s been going on behind my back? Have you been letting her hang around with those men?”

  “Mom,” I started, “I was not hanging around—”

  “You stay out of it.” She looked down at my belly, which suddenly felt naked and stretched beyond capacity. “This has nothing to do with you.”

  It had everything to do with me and the vortex Xanda had left behind.

  Lexi lurched, enough to make me stagger and reach for the back of a pew. Dad winced. I remembered the sound of Lexi’s heart beating on the Doppler, my own beat thundering in the background with a heavy thud. Now my blood was racing around her at what must be a frightening pace.

  “It has everything to do with her!” my dad suddenly roared. It stopped my mom in her tracks, loud enough to echo in the sanctuary like a lion let loose from a cage.

  “Don’t raise your voice in this building,” said my mother with a look of disgust, as if his words were not even worth a response.

  It must have been the aftereffects of hanging out with his construction buddies, cutting loose with whatever came into his head. Or maybe it was seeing Lexi’s picture, knowing of her shape and her name, seeing Xanda’s sweater on me, and being in a sacred place that gave Dad some mystical sense of strength. Otherwise, I couldn’t explain why, after all of these years of shouldering the blame for Xanda’s death, he would transform from a distant figure to a wall of defiance in
one singular moment. Whatever it was, it froze all of us in place, as if God had come down from the heavens and smacked us upside the head.

  “I said, leave her alone.” In one powerful movement, he filled the space between Mom and me, making both of us step back from the field of energy suddenly, terrifyingly surrounding him.

  My mom opened her mouth, but nothing came out. We all stood there suspended, waiting for him to say more, or for something else to snap. For a window to crack open, or maybe for the gates of hell to swing wide.

  When nothing came, Mom laughed nervously, pushing past him as she swept toward the stage. “People will be showing up soon, Charles. You’d better get the rest of these tools cleaned up.”

  I was still petrified, standing behind my dad as his shape transformed from the enormous wall of power back to the crumbling wall of shame. All that was left of his rebellion were two clenched fists.

  But I was in shock. In shock that my dad—my own, invisible dad—had stood up for me, however briefly. I was floating up, up, up, past the glass and into the dark sky, like the white bird in my drawing. The part of me still in the church could hear Dad snatching his tools and disappearing out the back door while Mom looked over her script for the one thousandth time.

  “Mandy!” My mom snapped. “Are you listening to me?”

  “What?” I whispered, returning to my body with a shiver.

  “Collate these new pages for me while I get things ready onstage.” When I hesitated, she barked, “Get moving! People are going to be here any minute and it would be nice to have some help here.”

  That’s right. I had to bring myself down to earth before the saints came marching in. We were all saints or sinners in my mother’s mind. I’d swapped titles in one swift meeting of sperm and egg.

  But what about my mom? They’ve been lying to you all along, Dylan had said.

  If pregnant girls were sinners, what were liars called?