by Meg O'Brien
“So you were with her throughout her labor?”
“Yes.”
Ben is silent a moment. “What did Jeffrey think of all that?” he asks finally.
“He never knew. He was away when it happened, and Marti swore me to secrecy afterward.”
“Still…wives usually tell their husbands things they keep secret from others, don’t they?”
“Not in this case.”
He doesn’t push, and I don’t have to tell him how little I trusted my husband, even that early in our marriage.
“One thing I don’t get,” he says, shaking his head. “How could she have covered up her pregnancy? Wasn’t she well known by then?”
“Yes, but Marti was always very thin. She was able to hide the fact that she was pregnant, she told me, for the first six months. After that, she took a sabbatical from work and went off to some cabin in the woods.”
“A cabin in the woods? Sounds kind of rough.”
“Marti was used to difficult conditions. She was also very strong.”
“Where was this cabin?”
“I think she said in Maine. A friend loaned it to her.”
“Where was the baby born?”
“Right here in Monterey.”
“At Community Hospital?”
“Yes.”
The waitress sets our plates before us, and Ben toys with the hot turkey sandwich, mushing it around on his plate. “Another thing I don’t get, then, is how she managed to keep the birth of this child a secret for so many years. Especially if she had it in as public a place as CHOMP.”
CHOMP, the Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula, is high-profile because it’s the initial hospital visiting celebrities go to for care.
“First of all,” I say, “she never went anywhere for prenatal care. Marti was into alternative methods of healing, and she knew her body really well. Also, when she went in to deliver the baby, she went through emergency. And paid cash.”
“Cash? That must have set her back a lot.”
“I helped her,” I say, shrugging.
“Ah. That explains it.”
He tastes the sandwich and makes a face. I knew he wouldn’t like it; Ben loves turkey like a Pilgrim, but hates gravy with too much pepper in it. Besides, they’d made it with toast. He prefers mushy white bread.
“Still,” he says, “with computers being what they are, or were even in the eighties, you’d think there would have been a record of the birth.”
“There was a record. For a Maria Gonzalez, from Salinas. You know how many Gonzalezes there are in Salinas? Marti told them she was here in Carmel working as my maid when she went into labor.”
“And she passed? As Hispanic?”
“She had brown hair, brown eyes, and she was dark from all the years of working as a photojournalist below the equator. Plus, she spoke the language. She passed.”
The truth is, most busy doctors and hospitals don’t really look at people as people, anyway. Especially when they’re named Gonzalez and have no insurance.
“I confirmed that she was my housekeeper,” I say, “and the closest thing she had to family.”
“And, of course, since she—or you—paid cash, no one asked too many questions.”
“Right. We figured this would be better than if she went to the county hospital. She’d have had a harder time disappearing into the system there, given the way the government keeps an eye on things. And she might not have had as good care.”
“Your wiles continually astound me.” Ben shakes his head, turning his attention to a hot, chunky slice of garlic bread.
“Send it back,” I say.
“Huh?”
“Send the turkey san back. Tell them the gravy’s too heavy on the pepper and you don’t like it on toast. They’ll give you something else.”
“Nah, I don’t want to bother them.”
“They’re good about those things here, they’ll fix you whatever you want.”
He pushes the plate away. “I’m not really hungry, anyway.”
“We should have gone to the Bully III.”
He gives me a look. But truth be told, I’m not hungry, either. When the waitress comes by again and asks how things are, we tell her they’re pretty good. She takes our plates away and brings us another round of drinks, which suits me just fine.
After dinner we walk south along Sixth Street till we come to the park with the sculpture of an elderly man and woman sitting on a bench side by side, like an old married couple. He wears wingtips, she an old-style hat. The sculpture was donated to the city by an art gallery, after much dissension as to whether or not it was good enough to be put there. Which goes under the heading Only in Carmel.
“You know what pisses me off about them?” I say.
Ben looks at me with obvious surprise. “These old people? What?”
“They look perpetually happy. Nobody’s perpetually happy.”
“Well, maybe they give us something to aim for,” he says, defending the bronze duo.
“Hmmph.”
“You know what you are?” he says. “A curmudgeon. A thirty-eight-year-old curmudgeon.”
“Gee, thanks. I love being compared to William F. Buckley and Andy Rooney.”
He puts an arm around my shoulders and pulls me down to a bench across from the old couple. There he nuzzles my neck.
“Careful now,” I say. “What will people think?”
“It’s dark here. Besides, nobody’s looking. They’re all satiated from their own dinner and wine, and they’re heading back to their inns to make love by a nice cozy fire.”
“Sounds like a plan to me. Are you finished interrogating me yet?”
His lips slide up to mine. “I guess I could think of a few more fine points to explore.”
“Well, get on with it, then, young fella. I’m aging pretty fast.”
“Feeling better?” Ben asks as we begin walking again, along Ocean Avenue. Most of the shops are closed, but brightly lit restaurants line the block. At one count, probably not the latest, there were eighty-seven restaurants in the square mile of Carmel Village, and more than a hundred art galleries.
“Better?” I ask. “Could you clarify?”
“Than you were when you were sitting at home alone, thinking.”
“Oh, that. Sure. You’ve wined and dined me like all get out. Why wouldn’t I feel better? Like a fattened calf, in fact.”
“Funny, you don’t look like a fattened calf.”
“Yeah? Then why do I feel like some ax is about to fall?”
“I never can fool you, can I?” my lover says.
“Just remember that. So, what is it?”
“I didn’t quite tell you everything.”
“I never for a moment thought you did. Okay…so what is it?”
“Mauro and Hillars. They want to talk to you again.”
“Oh, God.” I groan, holding out my wrists as if for handcuffs. “What a way to end a day.”
He contains a smile, but I see it toying with his lips. “Not now. I just wanted you to know that they mentioned it. Said they’d be in touch with you.”
“Ben, what the hell is going on? Why the Secret Service?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t give me that.”
“Abby, I swear, they won’t tell any of us what they’re doing here. Between you and me, it’s driving me nuts. I thought maybe when they talked to you again, you might get some clue.”
“Ah, I see. And share it with you?”
We resume walking, and he takes my hand and tucks it into his pocket. “I thought you might. We do share a few good things, don’t we?”
“A few.” Halfway down the block I pause, adding, “We’re gonna share a whole lot more if you don’t stop doing what you’re doing to my fingers.”
“It’s my new interviewing technique,” Ben says.
“Well, guess what? It’s working.”
For the first time in the five months we’ve been to
gether, Ben comes home with me. And, of course, it’s the one time Jeffrey decides to return early from a trip.
We are under a nice warm comforter in my bedroom—the one only I sleep in now, though Jeffrey still shares the closets. A fire is crackling, and the French doors to the bedroom deck are open a few inches so we can hear the waves beating on the shore. There is soft music playing.
Even so, I hear my husband’s footsteps on the stairs. No way to miss them, after all these years.
Ben and I are both naked, and our clothes are strewn all over the floor, so there’s no time to grab something, throw it on and pretend we’re having a council meeting. Though I hear there are Carmel council members who have done just that, over the years.
As Jeffrey walks in, I sit up, pulling the sheets to my neck and playing for time. “You’re home early,” I complain loudly, hoping to put the blame on him for catching us.
He takes in the scene with one glance.
“Well, if I’d known you were entertaining, I’d have called ahead,” he says mildly. Despite his attempt at indifference, I could swear his graying George Clooney hair is bristling—like a lion’s when he finds a strange male in his lair.
Ben, for his part, struggles to maintain his dignity—a losing battle, given that he’s lying naked next to another man’s wife. I can hear the wheels rolling: Do I get out of bed and run into the bathroom while they duke it out, or do I grab my clothes and make a fast departure out the door?
Ben hates confrontation of the personal kind. Give him a gun and a perp, and he’s a whole other guy.
“Stay where you are, Ben,” I say firmly. “It’s not as if this is something new for Jeffrey, after all.”
I feel him sliding down under the sheets inch by inch.
“Hello, Ben,” Jeffrey says. “How’s the bid for promotion going? I hear you’re up for chief.”
The threat to expose us is obvious. Whether Jeffrey will carry it out while I’ve got him and the bimbo as collateral is doubtful. Still, he must swagger a bit.
“It’s going fine,” Ben says in a conversational voice that makes me proud. He has apparently decided to pretend he’s standing in our living room, dressed in a tux. “How are things with you, Jeffrey?”
“Fine, fine.” Jeffrey heads for his walk-in closet. “Well, you two go on with what you were doing. I just came back for clean shirts.”
Ben and I look at each other. Jeffrey gets his shirts. He stops at the bureau for cuff links and takes his time finding them. Ben and I are motionless in the bed, sheets to our necks, barely breathing.
“I’ll be off now,” Jeffrey says a hundred years later, making his way to the door. He stops only momentarily on the landing as Murphy growls again. We hear his footsteps going down the stairs, then his car leaving.
Ben groans and throws the comforter over his face. His voice comes muffled from under the pillowy down. “If he tells anyone, I’m a goner.”
I crawl under the covers and reach for him. “Well, then, young fella, I say we make hay while the sun shines. Let’s see, what have we here…”
5
Marti is buried in a small Catholic cemetery south of Carmel, along the road to Big Sur. The burial site is on an old Spanish estate, and I have learned through Ben that the owner, Lydia Greyson, came forward to offer it. She would be honored, she said, to have Marti laid to rest along with her own ancestors. In addition, she pledged that Marti’s grave would be well protected from curiosity seekers, behind the high adobe walls of the estate.
Who this woman is, or why she has offered a family burial plot to Marti, I don’t know. I can only suppose she must know Marti’s brother, Ned, or at least have talked to him, as he would have had to agree to the arrangements.
A long line of black cars and limos winds southward along the twisting road. There are places where one can drive only fifteen miles per hour in the best of weather, and the best of weather has not graced us today. Fog creeps in on great big elephant feet, clomping up from the sea and over the road, where it smothers the hills.
Jeffrey drives our black Mercedes, and we sit quietly beside each other, steeped in our individual thoughts. Ahead of us, in a limo, is Ned, whom I’ve never really met, despite the few times I saw him years ago with Marti. When we were in high school, Ned was away in college, and when we went to Joseph and Mary, the most he ever did was show up on visiting Sunday once or twice.
With Ned are two women veiled in black. One seemed slightly familiar at the church, in the way she carried herself, but there was no way of knowing who she might be. Family, surely, to be veiled that way. This surprises me, as I had thought all of Marti’s other relatives had passed away.
Behind us are limos filled with local residents, some of whom want only to be part of history. A great many, however, genuinely came to offer their respects to Marti. This show of affection stuns me. Even though I have always known how much my friend was loved, she has reached many more people with her photographs and stories than I’d realized. In the church, the words Shining Bright were whispered often among the pews.
Bringing up the rear of the cortege are local and international reporters. Everyone who could possibly commandeer a limo or car has become part of this today, including famous anchors like Jane Pauley, Tom Brokaw, Katie Couric. Our local congressman was at the church, as well as more than one senator, and I wonder briefly what Marti would say about this fuss. Would she be gratified? Or embarrassed? My guess is a little of both.
“Hmm? What?” Jeffrey says.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You made a noise.”
“I was smiling.”
“No, you made a noise.” His voice is cool, though his hands tighten on the steering wheel. “A snort, unless I miss my guess.”
“Well, if anyone knows my snort, it would be you, Jeffrey.”
“Not only am I far too familiar with it, but I’m rather certain I know what you’re snorting at now, as well.”
“No doubt you are.”
“You think this is all too much, all this attention paid to Marti.”
I look at him. “And you? What do you think, Jeffrey?”
“That you are far too cynical. It’s your worst failing.”
After a moment of silence I can’t help it. I snort. “Well, at least we know it’s not your worst failing, Jeffrey.”
My husband stands beside me, his arm linked through mine supportively as photographers snap more photos of us than of Marti’s grave. “I told you they didn’t split,” I hear one of them say, not bothering to keep her voice down, while another murmurs, “She looks like she’s holding up better than him.”
It’s true that Jeffrey doesn’t look well. His eyes are strained, his face gaunt. I would feel sorry for him, but I’m guessing that exercise, not illness, is at fault for this. Most of Jeffrey’s life energy is sucked dry these days by his frenetic attempts to stay young and firm for the bimbo. The old platitude does hold true: After a certain age one must choose between the face or the ass. The fact that I’ve added a few pounds as ballast helps to plump out any wrinkles that might threaten to emerge as I move closer to forty, while Jeffrey lifts the weights, runs the miles and hurtles recklessly toward the sea of romance and early cardiac arrest.
On the other side of the coffin from us are the two women in black with veils over their faces, and Marti’s brother, Ned. His face is somber, though his mouth twists in what might be rancor at the priest’s words: “To you, oh Lord, we commend the spirit of this woman of utmost virtue and unfailing faith. We ask your angels to carry her swiftly to that High Place where you reside, to guide and keep her throughout her journey home…”
My eyes meet Ned’s, and I am shocked by the look of hatred he sends me. Within moments I shiver and am forced to look away. I can still feel those cold dark eyes on me, however, and the emotion behind them. Searching my mind, I can think of no reason for it, and after another moment I give a mental shrug and go back to listening to the priest. He
is saying the prayers of the dead, and the two women next to Ned are making the sign of the cross. As the service ends, one steps forward to toss a handful of dirt onto the lowered coffin. She draws the black veil from her face and looks directly at me. I am shocked to see the now-aged but unmistakable face of Sister Helen.
It has been twenty years, but not a day has gone by in the look that passes between us. I am still the novice, she the angry and disappointed sponsor of my and Marti’s ill-fated gift of our lives to God.
The other woman draws her veil back, as well—a stranger with short, steel-gray hair. No one I have ever met before. Sister Helen turns her gaze from me and speaks softly to her companion, who nods and walks slowly back toward the line of waiting black cars. Sister Helen moves toward me.
“Good morning, Abby,” she says, the gravelly voice still strong and just as intimidating. She is in civilian dress, a black suit, stockings and shoes, which further surprises me. Years ago she swore never to stop wearing her habit.
The look she gives me is one I remember, though—stern and unyielding. I feel I’ve done something wrong and, as if in a time warp, I look down quickly to see if I’ve got my white postulant’s collar on backward, or if my black oxfords have come untied from too much racing along the halls.
Is there a run in my black hose? Did I spill gravy down my front?
The glint in Sister Helen’s eyes tells me she knows exactly what I’m thinking and is enjoying every moment of my discomfort.
“A sad day,” she says.
“Yes,” I agree. “A very sad day. I’m surprised to see you here, Sister. How are you? How have you been?”
She doesn’t answer but continues to appraise me. An awkward silence ensues.
“Did you, uh…did you and Marti keep in touch all these years?” I try.
“We spoke now and then,” she says noncommittally.
I wonder why Marti never mentioned being in contact with Sister Helen.
“Are you still in Santa Rosa?” I ask. “At Mary Star of the Sea?”
“Hardly.”
Her tone is bitter, and I don’t know what to make of that.
“You’ve retired?”
“I suppose one might say that.”