Secret for a Song

by Secret for a Song (epub)

  I shook my head so he took a seat, stretching his legs out in front of him, holding the curved neck of the cane in his lap with both hands. We stared at each other. I still wasn’t sure if I was seeing things.

  “Tell me it’s not true.” His voice was soft, almost childlike. “If you say it’s not true I’ll believe you.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut, but then forced myself to open them and look at him again. “I wish I could.”

  “Why?” His mouth barely moved. It was like he was a statue, like maybe his brain was having trouble coming to terms with this new reality too. It was like having woken up after the sweetest dream to look around at your life. You realize just how flat the colors really are in this world, just how much effort it actually takes to be happy. You realize you’re not as lucky as you’d thought after all.

  I shook my head, opened my mouth. But nothing came out. Why did I do it? Because I’d felt like I’d belonged, like I said at the TIDD group. But to be completely honest, it was so much more than that.

  Falling in love with Drew? It was like peeling off cold, wet socks and putting your feet on a warm floor. It was like waking up, thinking you had to go to school or work, and realizing it was the weekend. Why would you ever go back to the way you were? Why would you willingly stuff your feet back into those limp, wretched socks?

  It was because he made me feel things. Drew made me feel like there were parts of me worth saving. That maybe there might be people out there who’d love me for being me.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Did you...” His voice sounded like it might crack, so he paused for a moment before continuing. “Linda Adams said she thought you joined the group because you wanted to be identified as a patient, as someone who had an illness that was serious and worthy of attention. She said that’s just part of your...your other disease.” He took a deep breath. “Is that true? Was that...was that all it was?”

  “That’s what it was at first.” I clenched my fists in my lap, pressed my fingernails into my flesh, felt them sink in. “I did like that you guys thought I was sick. When I got sick that day at Zee’s house?” I thought back to the fever, the vomiting, how Drew had brought me home and sat with me. “That’s what I lived for every day, Drew. That’s the sort of thing I’ve spent my entire childhood and my little sliver of adulthood chasing.”

  He closed his eyes and nodded, a resigned sort of acceptance on his face.

  “But then,” I continued, watching him, willing him to open his eyes, to see the truth on my face now. “But then, I fell in love with you. I fell in love with you, and that’s the truth. I know you don’t have any reason to believe me, but I swear I’m being honest. You’re the reason I came out of this—this fucking shell I live in and began to engage with the world. I began to care about something other than my own pathetic existence.” I got up off the bed and rummaged in my nightstand drawer till I found the syringe, from which I’d tossed the needle a few days ago. “See this?” I stepped closer to him, holding it up. “This was my best friend till I met you, till I fell in love with you. It’s how I made those abscesses on my chest.”

  He reached out and took the syringe, staring at it as if he couldn’t believe someone would do that to herself. And really, who the hell does? Who besides me? “You did those to yourself?”

  “Yes. And I ingested Tylenol, which is why I was at the hospital that day you came to see me. I did it because I wanted attention. I like being sick. I like the attention it gets me because I don’t feel anything else I do or say or am warrants that kind of attention. I’ve been making myself sick since I was seven years old. That’s the kind of person I am, Drew, and because of you I actually stopped doing it for a little while and began to live my life.” I dropped to my knees in front of him and took his hands, the body of the syringe pressed between our skins. “I wanted to tell you the truth. Last night. I wanted to, but then you asked me to move in with you and it was as if, in that moment, I got to be the star of a movie, of a perfect fairy tale with a real-life prince charming. I made a mistake by not telling you then. But I was going to tell you this morning. Before we got texted to go to the hospital. I swear I was.”

  He ran his hand over my face, over the plane of my cheek, the bridge of my nose, traveled the slope of my lips. It was like he was memorizing me. I thought he might be crying, but I couldn’t tell for certain because my own eyes were full of tears blurring my vision.

  He leaned down and kissed me then, and I tasted tears. Everyone’s tears taste the same, because they’re made of the same stuff—salt and water. But I swear I could taste Drew’s tears as different from mine. His were sadder, sweeter.

  When he pulled back, he whispered, “I love you. But I can’t forgive you.”

  I sank back, hugged my knees. I nodded.

  He left, playing his own final caesura.

  Chapter Forty Nine

  I’m not sure how long I sat there, with my back against my bed. Drew leaving had caused time to pause. He was the conductor, and he wasn’t there to tell time it could resume again.

  At some point I turned on the playlist he’d made for me, because it was the next best thing to having him there. I wasn’t ready to lose him forever; maybe his music could be a bridge from now to that point. I closed my eyes and focused on the notes, until it felt like I was suspended in a ball made of nothing but sound, swirling around and above and beneath and even in me. Until I came to be made of it, came to be nothing but a collection of musical notes.

  I felt somebody in my room and opened my eyes, which felt curiously swollen. I put my hand up to them and felt tears, which was bizarre, because I hadn’t even realized I was still crying. What time was it? The person next to me moved. I followed the silk pants-clad legs up to a thin torso and then to my mother’s face, looking down at me.

  “May I turn the music down?” she asked, gesturing to my computer.

  I nodded.

  When she could talk without having to shout, she sat at the foot of my bed, her legs hanging to my left. We were almost, but not quite, touching.

  “I’m sorry about Drew,” she said. “He looked fairly upset when he left.”

  Fairly upset. Two words to sum up the destruction of trust, of a relationship, of everything I’d had to look forward to every day. I said nothing.

  “I’m sorry, too, for sending your grandmother away.”

  My breathing quickened and then slowed down. It was somehow startling and soothing to hear her say this now, after all these years, out of nowhere. I nodded once, to show I was listening.

  “There are some things you could be told, I suppose, now that you’re old enough to process them.” She took a breath. “Your grandfather, my father, sexually abused me from the time I was six until I turned twelve. I suppose, at that point, I got too old for him.” A mirthless laugh. My gut churned; I was sure I was going to be sick. But she continued. “I hated living in that house with them, in England. Even now, when I think back to it, it feels like my entire childhood was nothing but a series of gray days where I sat by the window waiting for a chance to escape. That chance was your father. It’s why I fled with him to the States when I was twenty. We got married because I got pregnant with you—the pregnancy was calculated, on my part. I can admit that now, to myself and to you. It was one of the best mistakes I made, though I’m only beginning to realize that.”

  I stared at her, stunned. Then, pulling myself to my feet, sat on the bed next to her. I smelled tea rose perfume, but though I strained for it, I didn’t smell alcohol. “Did Grandma know about the abuse?”

  She stared straight ahead, the lines at the corners of her eyes deepening. “I told her. I finally plucked up the courage when I was nine, and told her what I’d been enduring nearly every night for three years by then. And she didn’t believe me.”

  I couldn’t imagine being sexually violated by my own father. Having Dr. Daniels be a pervert and come on to me was sickening enough, disgusting enough. Pe
rhaps, now that my mother was divulging something so very difficult, I should’ve hugged her. Or patted her shoulder, or held her hand. Any of a dozen things to show I was sorry that had happened to her.

  But I didn’t have it in me. I didn’t. So I just listened.

  “My father died suddenly when I was about seven months pregnant with you. I didn’t go to his funeral, but I went to help my mother pack up and sell the house. We never spoke of what he’d done, not since that day when I was nine. So when she asked if she could come take care of you, I agreed. I was terrified of having a child of my own when the reality of being pregnant sank in. I was even more terrified when I found out you were a girl. I had terrible visions of your father doing to you what my father did to me. I thought I’d kill him if he ever tried it, but you never know. Maybe I’d be afraid of being homeless, out on the street. I hadn’t finished my college education. I couldn’t support a child. Anyway, when she offered, I said yes, mostly because I was used to saying yes to her. So she came to live with us.”

  I tried not to think of my life if my father had turned out to be a pedophile instead of just absent. “So why’d you send her away?”

  My mother sighed, a deep, deep sound, which seemed to come from the center of her soul rather than from her lungs. “When you turned six, I began to have nightmares. About people hurting you, hurting me, or hurting the both of us together. They became so bad I couldn’t sleep. Your father convinced me to go see a counselor.” She shook her head, and a strand escaped from her perfect chignon. She appeared to not notice. “The counselor thought I was expressing my fears about what might happen to you, that I was projecting what had happened to me at your age. The abuse was beginning to resurface in my mind. I’d worked so hard to bury it, Saylor. I’d married your father to get away. I’d got pregnant so he’d have to stay with me. And then, when I realized I didn’t love him and I wasn’t particularly suited to being a mother, I started drinking. I thought I was a master at keeping the demons at bay, but I wasn’t. I was a failure.”

  She blinked rapidly. I thought she might cry, but her eyes were dry. “I didn’t want to work hard in therapy, like the counselor suggested. I decided I’d done enough of that. So I told your father we had to send your grandmother away. He didn’t know about my past—still doesn’t—but he agreed. He and my parents had never much liked one another. They always blamed him for stealing me away.”

  I felt the stirring of anger and hurt in my chest, just like I always did when the subject of my grandmother being sent away came up. “Didn’t you...didn’t you even think how it would affect me? After she’d been my constant companion for six years?”

  My mother looked down at her pants, began to iron out a small wrinkle with her thumbnail. “Of course I thought about it. I agonized about it. But when it happened—we got into a big fight while you were at school one day. I wanted to give her time to tell you, but she was spiteful. She decided to punish me by punishing you. She was gone before you came home from school that afternoon.”

  “Yeah. I remember.” I’d come home and headed to the kitchen to look for my grandmother. She was usually in there, setting aside an after-school snack for me. But the kitchen was empty. My mother was at the breakfast nook, her head in one hand, staring into her tea cup that was probably full of liquor. I blew right past her and went upstairs to look in my grandmother’s room.

  It was empty, too, the nightstand drawers open, as was one door of the armoire. Her saris and cardigans and shoes were gone. The bed was neatly made; my mother hadn’t gotten around to stripping it yet. The only indication that my grandmother had ever been there was a single tortoiseshell hair clip. I used to wonder if that had been her signal to me, a sort of goodbye in the only way she could say goodbye without being intercepted by my mother. But now I wondered if that was true. Maybe she’d just forgotten it and left it behind. Or maybe she’d decided she didn’t want it after all.

  “Why are you telling me this now?” I asked. I tried to calm the anger. “Why now, after all these years, when I’ve asked a thousand times before?”

  “I’m making some changes,” my mother said, looking right into my eyes. The brown that usually vacillated between hard, unyielding stone or frosty, smooth glass was now warm, more alive than I’d ever seen her eyes look. “I’m learning a lot in my state-mandated alcohol counseling sessions. I’ve made mistakes, Saylor, I’m not denying that. But no one says you have to wallow in your mistakes.” We stared at each other for a long minute. “And if we’re being honest, we have to look at every truth. I think your Munchausen has been just as destructive to our lives as my drinking. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  I was instantly angry, my hackles raised, my back up like a feral cat about to start a fight. But then the fight went out of me, like air out of a balloon. What was the point in lying? Hadn’t I lost just about everything there was to lose to my disease? My voice came out a whisper, the weight of it too much to bear. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’ve made life so difficult.”

  My mother didn’t rush to reassure me, and for that I was thankful. When I fell silent, she said, “You can turn your life around at any point you want. Tomorrow’s going to come, whether you decide to change or not. It’s up to you whether you want tomorrow to be the first day of your fresh start.”

  “Dad wants to send me to North Carolina.” The words hurtled out of my mouth before I knew I was thinking them. I wasn’t sure what I expected from my mother—indignation? Anger? For her to tell me she’d talk to my dad, make him see that wasn’t the way to go?

  But she shrugged, something I’d never seen her do. A shrug, to me, belonged to someone who was okay with not knowing, who was okay, even, with ambiguity. My mother, queen of controlling everything, didn’t shrug. Not usually.

  “Maybe that’s not such a bad idea,” she said. “Maybe you could get a fresh beginning there. Leave behind all the baggage. Make some new friends.” She gestured to the syringe Drew had left behind on the desk chair. “Get some new hobbies.”

  I lay down, staring up at the ceiling. “Everything’s happening so fast,” I muttered. “Everything’s changing.”

  “Well,” my mother said. “Maybe it’s about time.”

  Chapter Fifty

  One month later

  Dr. Stone sat back, clasped his hands in his lap and nodded. “Your mother sounds like she’s coping remarkably well, all things considered.”

  The great thing about shrinks was that they never took anything personally. After I told Dr. Stone what had happened, what I’d done and how I’d avoided his phone calls, he hadn’t said anything. He hadn’t looked disappointed in me, or angry. We’d talked it through. I’d tried to understand my motivations, why I lied. Why I felt like there was nothing to love about me if I wasn’t sick. I still didn’t understand it, of course. That would probably take years. But I’d begun the process. Unlike all the other times I’d been in therapy, this time I really wanted to learn. I wanted to change.

  I played with the fringe of the pillow I was hugging. “Yeah, she is. She’s doing really well with her alcohol counseling stuff. She’s different now, like, more sure of herself or something. It’s hard to explain.” I shrugged. “But it’s good. She convinced me to go to some Al-Anon meetings. They help.”

  “They can be extremely helpful when you’re trying to understand an alcoholic parent’s motives. I’m sorry you’ve had to deal with that.” With anyone else, I might’ve suspected a bullshit motive behind that statement. But I knew Dr. Stone was one hundred percent genuine.

  I shrugged again, my face flaming. I was still coming to grips with the whole “survivor of an alcoholic parent” thing. As if many of us didn’t survive. I hadn’t actually thought of it like that before. Maybe many of us don’t.

  “And how are you coping with not being able to see Drew any longer?”

  His name was like a pebble stuck in my diaphragm. Every time someone said it, the pebble buried into my flesh a little deeper, making it harder t
o breathe for the pain. “I’m doing a little better. It still hurts, but I think this will help.” I pointed to the envelope beside me.

  Dr. Stone nodded, a kind smile on his face. “Consequences. They’re painful, but in the long term they teach us a lot. And you’re trying to make amends with that, in a way. That’s good. It’s forward motion.”

  I smoothed my hand over the envelope, felt its sharp edge. Inside was a USB stick, and on that USB stick was an app I’d had a program developer write for me. It had cost ten thousand dollars to hire his team to do it because it was such a specialized, customized thing. My parents hadn’t got the bill yet, but luckily, I’d be far away in North Carolina when it came. And by then, I had a feeling my father would have other things on his mind—like all the mistresses he juggled on his business trips. That was part of the reason my parents were separating. My mother had known for years, but only now did she feel like she deserved better.

  The app was something Drew could use when the FA began to really catch up with him. He could control his phone by voice, so he didn’t have to use his hands for things like texting or listening to music. I’d even had them add in a cutting edge voice-commanded music-mixing component, so he could create playlists and even record his own songs or mixes on it. It was like a small, traveling music studio he could take with him wherever he went. There were other features like calling 911 on command. I’d had them research the best disability and music apps on the market and combine them into something I hoped Drew would be able to use. My plan was to drop it off in his mailbox at his apartment.

  I felt this desperate urge to have Drew accept this, as if it were a talisman of sorts. In the past month, Pierce had passed away—I’d seen his obituary in the paper. It made me think of the TIDD group, of Pierce saying it was a game of Russian roulette. Who would be next? It couldn’t be Drew. It couldn’t.