The Secrets Sisters Keep

by Abby Drake

  “They’re drinking coffee.”

  “They need to stop. They need to go.”

  “They will, sooner or later. In the meantime, I want to ask you something.” She paused. “About my mother.”

  He yanked the huge trash bag from the barrel he’d been stuffing and tied the flaps into a knot. “I’d think there were more urgent things to talk about right now. Like where on earth Edward is and when—if—he is coming home.”

  “David Goldsmith said my parents never divorced because of you. I didn’t know divorce had ever been an issue. I didn’t even know that you knew them.”

  He set down the bag with a heavy, old person’s sigh. “I knew your mother. She came to the theater to watch rehearsals.”

  He could have said the sky was green and the lawn, purple. “My mother? My mother went to your rehearsals?” She’d known Mazie enjoyed an occasional night out at the theater. But rehearsals? “When?”

  “You expect me to remember? I don’t know. Maybe when she was in the city shopping. Or waiting to meet your father. He had business in the city, didn’t he?”

  Ellie didn’t think she should mention the time Babe had seen Father at the Algonquin. “But why would my mother want to leave my father?” And what did you have to do with it? She began picking post-helicopter debris from the lawn and dropping it into another receptacle. Cleaning up helped her feel nonchalant, as if the questions she was asking weren’t really important.

  “Maybe she became enamored with the theater life. People used to think it was glamorous.” He pulled another trash bag from a container and stared into the discarded rubble. “Broadway hardly gets that kind of respect anymore. On opening nights, women came in furs and jewels; men in suits, sometimes tails.” He snorted. “Now they show up in jeans and T-shirts, eating pizza while they stand in queue. It’s disgusting.”

  Ellie wanted to ask about his previous lovers and if any had disappeared like Uncle Edward. But this wasn’t the time or the place and Henry was edgy already. “What about my mother? Did she go to opening nights? Did she wear furs and jewels?” She’d rarely seen Mazie Dalton in anything but a spray-starched housedress, the quintessential housewife—Amanda had been right about that.

  “I don’t remember what your mother wore or what her theater-going habits were.” Snap, snap, went the flaps of the plastic bag.

  “But David specifically said you were the reason she didn’t get a divorce. I wonder what he meant?”

  “Mr. Goldsmith is wrong. If I were you, I’d leave it alone. Talking about the past will upset your uncle.”

  At least he had referred to Edward in the future, he’s-still-alive tense.

  Hoisting the two bags, his knobby knees buckling, Henry waddled off, leaving Ellie with the rest of the rubbish and too many unanswered questions.

  Carleen was heading back to Edward’s when she heard hurried footsteps approaching from behind.

  “Heather? Honey?” a man’s voice called out.

  She turned and saw a forty-something-year-old man running toward her. She stopped. “I don’t know who you are, but I’m not Heather.”

  He slowed his pace, then halted when he reached her. “Oh, Christ, you’re Carleen.”

  She laughed. “I’m not quite as scary as you make that sound.”

  He shook his head. “No. No, it’s that my daughter looks so much like you. The hair. The height. Everything.”

  “You’re Amanda’s husband. It’s been a long time.” She vaguely remembered the lanky Ivy Leaguer who’d tagged after her sister, who had been busily picking out china and crystal. He did not resemble the same nerd.

  He shook her hand. “Jonathan Delaney. Guilty as charged.”

  His choice of the word guilty did not seem malicious.

  “It’s odd, isn’t it?” Carleen asked. “You have a daughter who looks like me. I have two daughters, one of whom often reminds me of my sister, Ellie. Sometimes they’re both like Babe. I’ve never figured out how exactly that works.” He was attractive now and seemed to have an easy manner. She wondered how he stood being married to Amanda.

  “So,” he asked, “you escaped the party?”

  “I had an errand. What about you?”

  “I’ve been hunting for Edward. I just returned the boat I stole from the neighbors. My vehicle is still there, but Amanda has the keys.”

  Carleen supposed there were more details to that story, but she decided to forgo the question. “I take it you didn’t find my wayward uncle?”

  “No. I was hoping he’d shown up at the house by now.”

  “Not as far as I know.” They walked together casually, as if they’d spent lots of time with each other all these years. “What’s he like now?”

  “Edward?” Jonathan laughed an unassuming laugh. “I like the old goat. I’ve never been sure if the feeling’s mutual, though he’s mellowed over the years.”

  “Mellowed? How so?”

  “Well, he speaks to me now.”

  It was Carleen’s turn to laugh. “Uncle Edward always was hard to read. Which also accounts for why he invited me this weekend.”

  “Have you been in touch with anyone in the family since . . . since you left?”

  She shook her head. “Not really. I always knew Edward was keeping track of me, though. He sends a card every year on my birthday. I send him one on his. But no,” she said, “I’ve had no contact with my sisters.”

  “Man,” he said, “that’s so stupid.”

  “It works both ways. I haven’t called or written to them.”

  “Why would you want to? The way they treated you?”

  Carleen smiled and did not know what to say. She’d never expected that someone might have felt compassion for her side of the story. Imagine that. You’ve come a very long way, baby, she thought to herself. First, she’d had the courage to find Ray, who hadn’t booted her out on her ass. Now Amanda’s husband was being kind to her. And to think neither of the men knew the whole truth.

  As they turned into the driveway, Carleen felt a little lighter, a little happier for the first time since she’d arrived.

  Amanda stood at the window in her bedroom looking down at the driveway, hoping to see the party guests depart, one by one, sayonara and good riddance. They would have plenty to talk about on their trip back to the city—forget the court jesters and dunking booths, they’d had a goddamn helicopter and goddamn paparazzi and a boatload of juice about one of Edward’s nieces, not Carleen for a change.

  Carleen, Amanda thought as she leaned against the drape. How was it possible Carleen had turned out so normal?

  A ninth-grade algebra teacher, for God’s sake.

  A wife. A mother. A woman with a husband who probably did not cheat on her.

  And a wardrobe that didn’t speak to a quarter of a million in debt.

  Amanda closed her eyes and knew she shouldn’t have been surprised. Carleen, after all, had always managed to come out on top, like with men, and with the fact that Carleen’s boyfriend, Earl, had been Amanda’s boyfriend first.

  “You?” Carleen had laughed. “With a guy on a motorcycle? Man, I have to check this out.”

  Earl had been Amanda’s bad-boy. It was the summer of her first year of college and she’d met him at the traffic light in the center of Lake Kasteel. Yes, at a traffic light. She had taken Edward’s Triumph Spitfire into town to pick up a few groceries. Instead, she picked up Earl, or Earl picked up her, after he pulled up alongside her on his rumbling Harley and they exchanged smiles and then conversation and by the time the light turned green he had her phone number.

  They went out a few times; he took her virginity. A girl doesn’t easily forget the guy who did that, especially when she’d wanted so badly for it to happen.

  Amanda sighed and looked back to the driveway, to the place where Earl had arrived early one night and Carleen—who’d still been in high school—entertained him while Amanda finished dressing.

  By the time she was ready, Earl had gone, Carle
en on the back of his bike.

  Amanda had never kissed him or touched him again.

  The worst part had been Carleen’s cavalier attitude, as if she was entitled and Amanda was not.

  Amanda was thinking those things, remembering it all, just as who came into view in the driveway below but her husband, walking with—No!—Carleen.

  Amanda blinked. Surely this was a dream. Just one more scene in the recent nightmare her life had become.

  But after the blink they were still there. What was worse, they were talking. And laughing. Goddamn laughing!

  Panic.

  Adrenaline.

  Something took over.

  Amanda flew from her room and down the stairs without sliding into her Cole Haan ballet flats. She ripped open the front door.

  “Stop right there!” she screeched in a biting C-sharp.

  They stopped.

  They looked.

  They smirked. Or maybe it was only Jonathan who smirked.

  “Amanda, what are you doing?” he asked. “Why aren’t you at the party?”

  Her hands went to her hips where they squared off with her waist. “I might ask you both the same thing. But you seem to be having a party of your own. Really, Carleen, aren’t you a little old to be stealing boyfriends? Oh, wait, that’s not my boyfriend. That’s my husband.”

  “Amanda,” Jonathan said, “don’t embarrass yourself. I ran into Carleen on the road. She looks like Heather, doesn’t she?”

  “No,” she said. “Where is the rental car?”

  Jonathan sighed. “You have the keys. I returned the boat but couldn’t drive back. That’s when I met Carleen, who was out walking.”

  She huffed. She puffed.

  “By the way,” Jonathan added, “I rowed down as far as the falls. I didn’t find Edward or the boat. Not that you asked.”

  “Of course you didn’t find him. He’s on the island. The boys saw him there. According to Chandler. And I tend to believe him.”

  “What?” Carleen interrupted. “Edward’s back?”

  Amanda waved her off, as if she were a distraction. “He’s on that stupid island of his, being obstinate. Chandler claims Edward said if the boys told anyone they’d found him, he’d cut all of us out of his will. Which I’m fairly certain would be illegal.”

  “Maybe I should try and reason with him,” Jonathan said.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. He doesn’t want that. He thinks he’s being funny, all this cloak-and-dagger nonsense. Well, I say let him have his way. At some point, he’ll show up. Edward Dalton rarely missed a party in his life.”

  She took Jonathan by the arm and spoke directly to her sister. “Now if you’ll excuse us, I’d like to return to the guests with my husband. Next time, if you want a man, I suggest you bring your own.” Tugging him closer to her, Amanda padded across the driveway and onto the lawn, not caring that her shoes were still upstairs in her room.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Ellie watched Myrna Goldsmith smiling and chatting with a group of ladies that included Nola, the former costume designer, and Harriet, a makeup artist who’d once lived with Toni Parker, a frequent guest at Lake Kasteel who had scandalously vanished in Paris years ago. Harriet now held the ladies’ attention by declaring that today’s actors lacked dignity when they appeared onstage au natural, which, Ellie knew, simply meant without face makeup. In the theater, clothes did not matter; makeup did.

  Myrna seemed to be having a nice time.

  Keeping her distance as she stood by the dessert table, which now held several blends and flavors of coffee, Ellie watched with interest. Myrna, after all, was the same age Mazie Dalton would have been. The two had gone to the same public school when they’d been girls, then had met again through Uncle Edward. “Isn’t that a wonderful coincidence?” Mazie had remarked one night, and Father had grunted, then returned to his newspaper and pipe.

  Ellie supposed Myrna Goldsmith had known Mazie Dalton better than Mazie’s own daughters had. She probably remembered what kinds of sweaters Mazie had worn and the snacks she liked to eat and if she liked Elvis better than Buddy Holly.

  Those were the kinds of questions Ellie pondered from time to time, not because they mattered but because she didn’t know the answers. It was easier to think about her mother’s likes and dislikes than to look at women like Myrna Goldsmith and wonder if Mazie would have resembled her now, if her hair would be silver, too, or if she would have kept it blonde; if she would have similar brown spots on the backs of translucent hands.

  Ellie did, however, have a few things that once belonged to Mazie, things Mazie had left at Edward’s when she and Father had stayed the night during holidays and special celebrations, or when they brought the girls at the beginning of the summer and picked them up on Labor Day.

  They were simple things: a hairbrush, a can of Arrid spray deodorant, a box of Jean Naté dusting powder. A toothbrush and a tube of Pepsodent. And, of course, her mother’s facial soap that had come from France, had been made of lavender and cream and was “hand-milled,” her mother once explained.

  When her parents were at Edward’s, they slept in the room where Ellie slept (still slept), and Ellie bunked in with Babe. Amanda hadn’t wanted Ellie (or any of them) in her room, and Ellie didn’t like Carleen very much, though she never told the others.

  One night after the fire, when everything had been lost, Ellie left her husband and the city and went to Edward’s to be with her family. That’s when she found the things in the dresser drawer. It wasn’t much, just a small pile of drugstore stuff, except for the soap. It wasn’t much, but her mother had touched every single thing there, smelled the things, used them. And they had touched her. Her hair, her face, her mouth.

  Edward had some pictures of Ellie’s father when the two brothers had been boys, laughing, fighting, playing tennis. But Mazie had been an only child of an older couple who had both lived well into their seventies, then died. Any memorabilia they’d had of their daughter had been stored in the attic of the farmhouse in Poughkeepsie. Stored, then turned to ashes.

  The night Ellie found the things, she gathered them and went to bed, cradling the only proof of Mazie’s existence in her arms. In the morning, she placed them in the small brass box where she kept her honeymoon cash and the travel brochures about the places she’d once dreamed of going—Cairo, Luxor, Aswan; the temples, the pyramids, the Nile.

  She set the box in the back of her wardrobe and never showed it to Carleen or to Amanda. The night before Babe left for California, Ellie took her into her room.

  “I have a few things that were Mother’s,” she whispered to Babe, not that she had to whisper, because Amanda was out courting Jonathan and Carleen was, well, Carleen was gone. “Would you like her hairbrush?”

  Babe touched the bristles, held the brush to her cheek, raised it up as if to pull it through her hair. Then she stopped and set it back in the box. “No,” she said. “You should keep it here, Ellie. Keep it home, where it belongs.”

  Ellie supposed that was when she, too, had begun to think of Edward’s house as home, as if it was too difficult to imagine their own home was gone forever, that nothing was left.

  Nola laughed a bawdy laugh now, jarring Ellie from her memories. Edward had often said the woman belonged outside the theater, standing on the red-light district street corner, back before Broadway had been cleaned up.

  Edward, Ellie thought again. He would have enjoyed the party. He would have liked the energy of his former cronies.

  Then she thought about her mother again and wondered why she’d never talked to Edward about either of her parents, as if, like their belongings, they simply had never existed.

  “The Randalls are leaving,” Heather said to Ellie, who was still mesmerized by the nattering (“chin-wagging,” Edward would have called it if he had graced them with his presence) women. “Shotgun forgot which car is theirs.”

  Ellie closed her eyes. “The Randalls. Let’s see, they still live in Manh
attan, so it’s probably a rental. I don’t think they own a car.” She opened her eyes. “Tell him to look for a small black Mercedes. I think that’s what the places in the city usually rent out for the day.”

  “Oh, no!” Heather replied. “Do you have any idea how many small black Mercedes are in the parking area and lined up and down the street?”

  Ellie laughed and cupped her hand on Heather’s shoulder. “It’s okay, dear. I’ll come with you, and we’ll figure it out.” She was relieved to have a break, even more relieved that at least one couple was finally going home. Soon the family would be the only ones left. The family and Henry, of course, who perhaps had been closer to her parents than she had imagined. Soon it would be just them, to figure out what, if anything, they should do next about Edward.

  Babe and Ray were near Edward’s boathouse, so that’s where they went to talk. Except for a sleeping bag sprawled in the corner and a duffel that was capped with two motorcycle helmets, the place looked as she remembered.

  Babe’s stomach ached, as if a baby was still growing there.

  She moved a dusty sheet from the rattan sofa and brushed off the striped canvas cushion. “It looks as if they don’t use the boathouse anymore.”

  “Places are quiet when no kids are around.”

  She sat and folded her hands on her lap. She didn’t think Ray had made the comment about kids because of the child—their child. Nonetheless, she started to cry.

  “Babe.” He sat down next to her and put his arm around her shoulder.

  Slowly, she leaned into him. It was natural, instinctive, to settle into the place she once had known so well, though it now seemed bigger, more muscular. She could have stayed there weeping forever. . . .

  Except that was childish.

  Drying her eyes, she sat up straight. “I’m sorry. I had no right to do that. Good thing I’m not an actress or you might think I was playing a role.”