The Secrets We Keep

by Stephanie Butland

  “I see,” she had said, and he had felt as though there could be an end of it, just as, a few moments ago, there had been a moment for Kate.

  But he had kept talking, finding truth as the words came out, as though saying them was the only way to discover what he meant. “I couldn’t bear the thought of that. I thought, what if those people were like us? What if it took them five years to have a baby? And now the baby is dying. I couldn’t stand there.”

  Elizabeth nods. “I can understand that.”

  “And then, afterward, everyone was angry, and I could see why, but I felt—I felt disconnected from it. From all of you.”

  “Did you ever think that you might die? Because that was what I thought.” She had said this before, at the time, but then it had been an accusation, and Michael had had to defend himself against it. As a statement of fact now, it was different, harder to hear.

  “I don’t think so,” he had said, wishing for more words, better words. “I was just…lost. In the moment. Not thinking about anything. And that’s a strange feeling. Hard to shake.” He corrects himself, striving for some sort of accuracy. “It’s been hard for me to shake, I think.” Now Kate seems like a part of his recovery, the thing that’s brought him back to his wife.

  Elizabeth had nodded, and her body, taut as a rower’s in the last strokes of a race, had relaxed and sunk toward his. “Have you shaken it now?”

  “Yes,” Michael had said, pulling her to him with arms full of everything he couldn’t find words for. “I have.” And he had been almost completely certain that it was true.

  Now

  Elizabeth is neither awake nor asleep. She’s lying in a clean white bed in a clean white room and, tempted as she is to think of herself as dead, she’s fairly sure that heaven would smell better than disinfectant, and hell worse. Also, her head is banging, and she can feel the stiffness in her hand where she thinks a drip must be. Her stomach aches. She thinks someone might be sitting next to her. Keeping her eyes closed, she feels around her memory for clues, gently, so as not to make the headache roar. She finds: sleeping pills, whiskey, birthday; Mike, Kate, baby. She feels like a fool. She feels like a failure.

  Dear Mel,

  If you are reading this, then the worst has happened and I’ve done the thing I promised that I would never do. I’ve left you alone in the world. You probably don’t remember. The two of us were sitting in the back of that social worker’s car, and they were driving us to Uncle Al and Auntie Brenda’s farm, and neither of us had really grasped that Mum was gone, but I think it was starting to sink in because you were crying. Not sobbing, but a sort of ongoing low-level snivel that was a much more truthful reflection of what the two of us were feeling, and what we would keep feeling for a long time. Motherlessness was a shock at first, but the worst of it has been that it never stops. At my wedding, I remember watching Mike’s mother struggling down the sand in her heels and that hat, and how we looked at each other and tried not to laugh, but I think we were also trying not to cry because it’s hard to have a wedding without a mother. It’s hard to have a baby, or not have a baby, without a mother. It’s hard to be here now, grieving and fuming, broken beyond all mending, without a mother.

  And although we had no idea, on the day we sat in the back of that car, with the windows open but still the faint smell of other children’s carsickness, of quite how it was going to be, I think my nine-year-old self had some sort of sense of it. So I took your hand and I told you I would never, ever leave you. And you looked at me and said, I know, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world, as though the fact that our mother had just been wiped off the face of the earth thanks to a blown-out back tire hadn’t altered your world view a bit.

  I’m writing this two days before my birthday, four days before yours. I’m writing it when everything is dark and frightening and I find myself wishing for a central reservation hurtling toward me, cold English water pulling me down. I keep thinking of how much I wish I could talk to Mike again, how, although we all understand that death is final, you don’t completely get how final until it’s too late.

  Just after we got married, Mike made us write down everything we wanted to happen after our deaths: what happened to our bodies, who got what of our possessions, funeral songs, all that sort of thing. (Do you remember you wanted “The Birdie Song” for Mum? Because we all used to dance around to it when it came on the radio, and so you were sure it was her favorite song. I wish they’d listened to you. It would have been so much more fitting than anything about that horrible funeral. Although we did get “All Things Bright and Beautiful.” I remember you leaning over to me during the eulogy and asking who the vicar was talking about.) After we’d done it, I kept thinking I would write a letter to him, that he could open after I died. I thought it would be comforting. Now I really wish we’d both done it, for each other.

  So, here I am, writing to you, to say I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’m not here anymore. Whether you’re reading this when you’re thirty-two or when you’re eighty, I promised to look after you, and if you’re reading this, I’ve broken that promise.

  As I write this, you’re the one who’s been doing most of the looking after. But I hope that it balanced out somewhere between me writing this and the rest of my life. I hope I got to be strong and helpful again, although at the moment…

  Kate hasn’t slept much. She gives up and gets up at 6:00 a.m. and sits downstairs in the darkness, wondering how often she will be here when Kayla is born. She thinks about how everyone says she’ll be really tired, but she can’t imagine how she’ll ever be more tired than she is now. Her body is starting to resist any sort of movement, wanting stillness and rest, but at the same time unable to find comfort, full of aches and twinges that make nights feel like marathons run.

  And Kate’s heart is unquiet. It carries the memory of Elizabeth two weeks ago, her pain and her fear. She keeps thinking about the conversation that she’d had with her mother, on the night they returned from seeing her and showing her the photographs. Kate had been distraught, and Richenda quiet, until Kate had said, “She had no right to speak to me like that,” and waited for her mother’s unstinting agreement. Instead, Richenda had sat down next to her, and said, “Kate, that woman has done nothing wrong. Even if they were unhappily married, she did nothing wrong. And she’s done nothing to you. She trusted her husband and he betrayed that trust—”

  “But—”

  “But nothing, Kate. All of the times he was with you, he had told his wife he was somewhere else, or let her think that he was. She clearly had no idea what was going on—”

  “But isn’t that her fault?”

  “Well, if trusting someone who loves you is a fault, then yes, I suppose it is.”

  Kate had made to get up, uncomfortable in almost every way it was possible to be uncomfortable, but Richenda had said, “I haven’t finished.” Kate had rearranged cushions behind her as she waited.

  Richenda’s mind had gone back to Rufus’s first affair, in France, when they were newly married, his second while she was pregnant with Kate. She has thought that there have been several women since; she suspects that Rufus is lining the next one up now, but part of her clings to the lack of any real evidence. The new shirts, the late showers; it’s all circumstantial, when it comes down to it. And she had to admit that the fear of being alone had kept her here: the possibility that life with Rufus might not quite be the most difficult way to live. She had thought of how her fiftieth birthday wasn’t too many years away and had known that she’d waited too long to leave him. Perhaps, she had thought as her daughter waited for her to speak, if she had known then how much it would still hurt now, she would have done things differently.

  “Can you imagine, just for a moment, how it must feel for Elizabeth, who had no idea her husband was unfaithful to her, no idea that he had fathered a child, and no way to understand it because she can’t ask him?”<
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  It’s on the tip of Kate’s tongue to say yes, she can understand perfectly well, because she is in the same position, but the wiser self that she will one day be intervenes and keeps her silent.

  Richenda had said, “Elizabeth was unkind to you, and she said things that she shouldn’t have. But Elizabeth is suffering in a way that neither you nor I can understand. If you want people to extend compassion and understanding to you—and you are probably going to need them to, if your life with your baby is going to be something good—then you need to think about doing the same for other people.” And Kate had said nothing, and gone to bed, and tried to pick the seeds her mother had sown out of her heart.

  But now, in the dark morning, it seems that she didn’t get them all. She wonders what Elizabeth is doing, whether she is awake too.

  Rufus clatters down the stairs, and when Kate says, “Morning, Dad,” he jumps. Jumps again when he looks over to her, still unused to the unexpected body below the face he’s adored ever since he watched it take its first scrunchy blink, more than nineteen years ago. He makes himself smile.

  “Tea?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Toast? Or maybe some coal?”

  “Very funny, Dad.”

  They sit, by unspoken consent, in the half dark. Kate balances her plate on her bump, and Rufus says, without thinking, “Your mother used to do that when she was expecting you.” Kate thinks, Two references to pregnancy in one morning. Maybe we’re getting somewhere.

  She asks, “Are you disappointed, Dad?” and although in her head it was a strong, matter-of-fact, it’s-time-we-addressed-this question, when it comes out, it’s spoken by a little girl.

  And perhaps that’s why Rufus can answer it. “I’m disappointed for you, Kate,” he says. “I hoped for so much for you, and although I know you think that you can manage it all still, and perhaps you will, it won’t be the same. It won’t be as—as carefree. It will be harder than you think it is, whether the baby is ill or not, and I don’t want that for you. I want you to have a wonderful life, not…” He pauses while he tries to think of a better phrase than “saddled with a baby,” and in that space, Kate hauls herself up and over to him and sits next to him.

  “She’s kicking,” she says, and she takes her father’s unwilling hand and puts it on the place, and he can’t help but smile. “And I know, Dad, that this isn’t what you wanted, and it’s not exactly what I planned either, but it’s what I’ve got, so I’m going to do my best with it.”

  Rufus thinks of all that he wants to say. About how watching Richenda love Kate had been the best thing that he’d ever seen, as well as the thing that had made him feel most superfluous. About how, although it looks as if he cannot bear the thought of this baby, what he really cannot bear is the thought of his daughter being trapped, unhappy, unable to move, in the way that he and Richenda have been. But he takes a good look at Kate, who is looking down at her own body in wonder, her hand following the baby as it moves. Her filled-out face reminds him of her at six, with pigtails and a bike she fell off more than she ever rode, although it didn’t stop her trying.

  And he says nothing, until Kate turns to him and says, “Dad, will you go through my questions for the midwife with me, and see if there’s anything I’ve missed?”

  And he says, “Yes, Kate, of course I will.”

  • • •

  Elizabeth’s world starts to fade. The hospital smell gets fainter and the rattle of voices around her stops, a tambourine put down on the floor. She feels a breath sigh out of her, and she is empty, then she is filled again with nothingness.

  For the first time since Mike died, Elizabeth remembers what peaceful is like. She has the feeling she gets when she steps off the plane and sees the blue of an Australian sky. She tries to breathe without making a noise. She thinks she must be sleeping. Then she smells limes, hot fresh sweat. In her head, she asks, Mike, is that you?

  Hello, he says.

  She knows that it isn’t him, of course it isn’t. But it also sort of is, for as long as she keeps her eyes closed.

  I’m so sorry, maybe-dream-Mike says. So sorry.

  I know, her heart says. I know you are. But I don’t know why you did it. We were happy, weren’t we? We were good. I go over it and over it and I can’t see why you did it. We loved each other.

  The air moves as it does when someone shrugs, shifting the smells around. Elizabeth breathes in more limes. Mike’s voice again: I don’t know why I did it either, except she seemed to need me.

  She keeps her eyes closed. She knows that she mustn’t try to look at him; she mustn’t try to touch where she is sure he is. If she does, he’ll vanish, like her shadow when she switches out the light. I needed you, she thinks.

  I know, Mike says. I can see that now. It’s as though there’s a cobweb thread between them. His voice comes again. You were always so capable, so strong. Even about the baby, you could cope in a way that I couldn’t.

  Did you really think that? Elizabeth asks. It broke my heart. Breaks my heart. When it isn’t breaking over you.

  Mike is getting quieter. I think I needed someone to help, he says. You didn’t seem to need me, Elizabeth.

  In this peaceful place she smiles. If you were alive, I’d kill you for saying that, Mike. Shagging teenagers isn’t helping anyone. And anyway, I was only capable because you were there. You were my stepping stones, and you’ve gone. You could see when I was sad before I did, and you found a way to distract me from the sadness. You came to collect me from work when it was raining. When we were running, you matched your pace to mine, even though you could have gone faster. Sometimes, I was sad, and just the sound of you at the door was enough to make me happy. I can’t go on without you. I’ll drown. I’m drowning. Right now.

  You can do this, Mike says, and Elizabeth can hear him breathing. She wants him to touch her. The tears are starting, the noise of the hospital coming back. He says, I promise you, Elizabeth, you can do this.

  I wish you’d tell me what happened that night, she says. Her hands are gripping the blanket now, and so there’s a pain where a needle goes into the back of her hand and she’s stretching the skin around it, but it’s not so much the pain as the sense of returning that makes her flinch. She tries to push the feeling of her body away, but her throat is adamant in its dryness, her headache pressing in. And there are tears, tears.

  “Mike,” she says out loud.

  “Mel,” comes the reply, as gruff as her own. “Welcome back, Sis.”

  And then there are people in the room, and painkillers, and questions, and Elizabeth cries when she understands what she’s done, or nearly done. She tries to explain that all she was trying to do was sleep through her birthday, but the words don’t seem to make sense to anyone except her. And then sleep comes again.

  • • •

  The next time Elizabeth wakes, she feels better. Andy is by her bed this time.

  “Hello,” he says. “You’ve been asleep for a long time, but you’re fine, Elizabeth.”

  “Hello,” she says, and then she lies quietly for a while. Then: “I thought I was talking to Mike. It wasn’t a dream.” Her lips feel gummy, her throat furred. She struggles to sit up. Her head hurts but her mind feels clearer, a stirred pond allowed to settle. Andy hands her water, which is warmish with a metal tang. She doesn’t mind.

  “I’m so sorry about all this, Elizabeth,” Andy says. “I should have seen the signs. I should have done more. I didn’t know you were so—”

  She closes her eyes. “I was trying to sleep through my birthday.”

  “Well, maybe,” he says, “but you’ve had such a terrible time, Elizabeth, and I could have done more. We all could have done more.”

  “Well,” Mel says, coming in with water, a bag of chocolate limes, magazines, a newspaper, “I think we could all agree that Mike could have done less.”
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  Andy looks at her. Elizabeth tries out a laugh, just a small one. “There’s no need for a doctor face, Andy,” she says. “I’m OK.” And as she says it, it sounds true.

  “Well, you look like shit, Sister,” Mel says.

  “I feel like I’ve got a dozen hangovers.”

  “That’s understandable,” Andy says.

  “You deserve them.”

  “I know. I’m going to pull myself together. I promise.”

  “Good,” Andy says. Mel doesn’t say anything until he leaves.

  Then: “I went back to get some sleep. Andy made me. And I found your suicide note.”

  Elizabeth says, for what feels like the fiftieth time and she still has the psychiatric assessment to go, “I only wanted to sleep through my birthday. That was all. I didn’t leave a note.”

  Mel says, “Well, I found that letter you were writing me, that not-suicide note in which you wrote to me as though you were dead and I was alive.”

  “It wasn’t—” Elizabeth feels all the disadvantage of the pajama-clad against the dressed, and gives up.

  “Whatever it was,” Mel says, “we need to stop thinking about dying all the time. Mike’s dead. You’re not. That needs to be our starting point now.”

  “Yes,” Elizabeth says. “Yes.” She wonders, if she put a little greenhouse in the sunniest corner of the garden, whether limes would grow.

  • • •

  Richenda and Kate are leaving the hospital when they meet Patricia coming in. “Oh, I was just about to call you,” Kate says, although actually she’d all but forgotten her promise, as she was so busy promising God or Mike or whoever it is who looks after these things that if Kayla is all right she’ll be the best mother, the best person, she can be. To compensate for the almost-forgetting, she launches into a word-for-word recitation of her consultation, telling Patricia about the tests that the baby will have when she is five days old, the likelihood of her being all right, all of the things that can be done to help her if she isn’t. Richenda, watching the conversation, can’t help feeling that for a woman who’s knitting enough baby blankets to fill a Red Cross helicopter, Patricia doesn’t seem to be paying a lot of attention.