Scrapbook of Secrets

by Mollie Cox Bryan

  A nurse came into the room.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked, while checking Bea’s IV.

  “I’ve been better, ” Beatrice said, felling a sudden wave of weariness. “I think I need another nap.”

  What is wrong with people? Is there any love left in the world? How could her husband pile up her scrapbooks on the pavement the day after she died? It took Beatrice months to even think about going through her husband’s things when he passed away—and, in truth, she still kept a few things. His pipe still sat on the dresser with a chunk of that tobacco that she loved to smell. His camel hair scarf and three silk ties hung on the back of her closet door. Then there were the books, which she would never get rid of—they would have to pull Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass from her cold dead hands—if she was lucky enough to die with the book in her hands, remembering the sound of Ed’s voice reading Whitman’s words to her:

  “‘A woman waits for me—she contains all, nothing is lacking,’” he would whisper to her in the wee hours of the morning after he had just delivered a baby or performed an emergency appendectomy. He would wake her gently and they would make love until they both were spent. He would lie next to her, snoring and murmuring.

  About a year after he had died, he came to her. He sat on the edge of her bed and told her that she needed to get rid of his clothes, that the living needed them. And so the very next day, she boxed up the bulk of it and gave it to Goodwill.

  It didn’t frighten her to see her husband’s ghost—for she always believed in the possibility—one doesn’t study physics, then quantum physics, for a whole life, without seeing the possibilities of life after death—and the possibility that there is more to the world than what people think they see and feel. Besides, it gave her hope that she’d join him when the time came. She also felt a great comfort, knowing he was still around. It would help, of course, if he would come to her when she wanted him. Instead, he showed up at the damnedest times.

  Once, she was on the toilet. He knew she didn’t like him being anywhere around when she was using the bathroom. Gas pains ripped through so badly that she thought she might die—and there he stood next to the sink.

  “Don’t worry, Bea. It’s not your destiny to die in the bathroom on the toilet.”

  “Well,” she told him, “thank God for that. Now, get the hell out of here, Ed.”

  Ah, well, maybe she was crazy. Maybe he was a figment of her imagination. But even if he were, she knew it didn’t matter. Imagination was a powerful thing. Sometimes she wondered if half the world wasn’t based on it. Where was the line between imagination and so-called reality?

  Now, this knife-in-the-neck business concerned her. Who would do such a thing? And what would have happened if it had not been lodged just exactly where it was? She could have died—or worse, been paralyzed, at the mercy of the likes of Vera and Sheila, a pair of midlife fools, if ever there were two. Sheila and her damn scrapbooks; and Vera and her damn dancing school, flitting around town like a diva, made up like a hussy half the time. It never mattered what Bea told her daughter. Vera had always had her own mind—if it could be called that. Her daughter was so different from her that it was hard to believe that she carried her in her womb. Didn’t give a lick about the beauty of mathematics and could care less about chemistry, let alone physics. She wanted to dance.

  Beatrice smiled. Oh, but to watch her dance. Her daughter inherited her father’s long limbs and the grace—Bea just figured it was a gift from the universe. It was like watching an angel move across the stage. She would never understand why Vera insisted on coming back to Cumberland Creek to open the dance school, rather than staying in New York. But she was sure that Bill was at the root of it. Boring old Bill, who was steady and stood by her daughter, and that was a good thing. But she never saw a spark between him and Vera. Curious.

  But she did see an enormous amount of tenderness between them, at times. She always knew that Bill loved Vera, but Vera never behaved like a woman in love, even from the very start. Never even took his last name—Ledford. Was dance the only thing that Vera loved?

  Damn, her neck hurt. Suddenly a shot of pain rippled through Bea and woke her from her revelry. Had she been sleeping or just thinking?

  She hit the button for the nurse. She could do with a little more morphine. Yes, she could.

  Chapter 8

  Vera was pleased that she could make her Monday ten o’clock class with the preschoolers. It was one that she cherished. Half of them probably would not make it until they were eight or nine years old—when the real work started. They would get bored or get involved with other things—mostly soccer, one of Bill’s great loves.

  He helped send a lot of juvenile offenders to soccer teams instead of detention facilities depending on how bad the crime: “A good soccer coach can work wonders.”

  “Well, so can a good dance teacher,” Vera usually retorted. True, he had sent some children her way—one girl in particular, Renee D’Amico, who was a dream student now dancing in Annie Get Your Gun on Broadway.

  Usually, dance was a good thing in a child’s life. Only one dancer, ever, in Vera’s twenty-plus years of teaching was lost to anorexia. When someone mentioned Wendy, Vera’s heart still sank and that was fifteen years ago.

  Now Vera was more educated about body image and she made sure there were no snide remarks about weight at her studio. Not only that, but she endeavored to have pictures and posters around of dancers with less than “perfect” bodies.

  She turned the thermostat on and the lights, sat at her desk, and saw the red light blinking. “Oh, bother, phone calls to return.”

  She pushed the button reluctantly. “Ms. Vera? This is Maggie Rae Dasher. My three-year-old daughter also wants to take ballet. I thought we might stop by tomorrow,” the voice, so quiet it was almost a whisper, said.

  Three years old! Vera wanted to bite her tongue. No three-year-old should begin dancing unless they were truly exceptional. She did have a group of age threes coming in today. The class started out having eight members. Slowly the others drifted off when they realized that ballet was not all tutus and sparkles. But the businesswoman in her thought: Okay, I’ll take your money. And she did.

  “Wait a minute,” Vera said out loud, her heart lurching. “Was that Maggie Rae?”

  She pushed the button again. “Ms. Vera? This is Maggie Rae Dasher. My three-year-old daughter also wants to take ballet. I thought we might stop by tomorrow,”

  It was! She looked at the date on the phone. It was three days ago, the night before that Maggie shot herself. Eight o’clock at night. Vera’s heart raced. Why would a woman who was planning to kill herself call and make an appointment for her child to sign up for dance class?

  Just then, the phone rang.

  “Hello,” she answered.

  “Hey, Vera, it’s Sheila. How are you?”

  “I’m fine, I’m sure. And you?”

  “Very good. I had a great run this morning.”

  “Oh, you old fool.”

  Sheila laughed. “And I stopped by to see your mom.”

  “And?”

  “She was sleeping. The nurse said I just missed you.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Are you coming to the crop on Saturday?”

  “Yes, I’ll be there,” Vera said, looking at her pink fingernails. “Who else? The usual crowd?”

  “Yes, and Annie.”

  “She’d like to start a scrapbook for her second son, I think.”

  “The second-child syndrome?”

  Sheila laughed. “I believe so. Oh, guess what I’ve been doing,” she said with a more serious tone.

  “I couldn’t imagine.”

  “Picking up Maggie Rae’s trash again.”

  “What?”

  “Yes. More boxes of scrapbooks, letters, postcards, and photos.”

  “Good Lord,” Vera said, feeling a sinking in her stomach.

  “I need to go. I was getting a head count for next S
aturday. Don’t dance too hard today, Miss Twinkle Toes.”

  “Fat chance of that happening,” she muttered. “Bye.”

  In the door walked two of the little girls in her first dance class and their mothers.

  “Hi, Miss Vera!” they squealed, delighted to see her and to be in the studio.

  “Hello!”

  Once again, Vera was swept into her students’ world: a place where ballerinas were beautiful fairy princesses, all sparkles and feathers and grins. This was the magic class, the magic age. They believed they could do anything—and she wanted them to think that. If only she could crawl into their fresh little skins, and believe hard enough, maybe, just maybe, she could end up with a child of her own.

  A child of her own.

  Just then, the door flung open. A harried, small woman peeked her head in the door.

  “Ms. Matthews?” the woman said softly.

  “That’s me,” Vera said; then she turned her head.

  “Girls, let’s go sit in a circle.”

  She turned back to face the woman. “Yes?”

  “I—I am sorry. Someone told me you were a redhead. I was a little confused,” she said.

  “Oh, a redhead? That was last week” Vera said, and laughed.

  The woman smiled politely. “I am sorry. It looks like you’re busy. I’ll stop back.” She turned and walked way so quickly that Vera did not get a chance to ask her name. As she glanced out the plate glass window, all she saw was Harv, the mailman, and she could not help but roll her eyes. Everybody knew he read all of the magazines before he delivered them, and some folks thought he even opened letters and resealed them. Damn Harv, she thought, has thirty years with the post office under his belt and can do whatever he wants. But then again, he and his brother, Leo, had always been like that, ever since she could remember.

  Chapter 9

  “Hey, Annie, I’ve been meaning to ask you, what’s all that crap in the back of the van?” Mike said, coming out of the shower with a towel wrapped around him.

  Annie was lying on the couch, after just putting the boys to bed. Friday night and all she could think about was zoning out in front of the television and sleep. “The boxes?”

  “Yes, what the hell?” he said, sitting on the couch next to her.

  “Well, let me finish the story before you make any harsh judgments.”

  “Okay. Jeez, the plot thickens,” he said, grinning, water beads clinging to his face.

  “The other night when I went out to the hospital, I drove Vera and Sheila home. They were a bit tipsy.”

  He chuckled. “Now, I bet that was something to see.”

  “And remember that Maggie Rae had just died early that morning?”

  His smile vanished.

  “We saw those boxes on the curb—”

  “And you took them?” he said as his eyes widened.

  “Well, no.... I didn’t. I just drove the getaway car,” she said, grinning.

  “Annie!”

  “Oh, I know. It was sort of a perfectly madcap and evil thing for us to do,” she said, looking away from him and fidgeting with the remote.

  “And?”

  “It was all sitting there for a reason, Mike. Her husband was cleaning out already. Getting rid of her stuff. She wasn’t even dead twenty-four hours. I mean, what kind of an asshole does that?”

  Mike leaned back on the couch. “That house is awfully small. Maybe he just couldn’t stand looking at all the scrapbook crap. It takes up so much space.”

  “Yeah, well. It feels to me like he’s dancing on her grave.”

  “Oh, c’mon. He’s probably in shock. His wife shot herself. Can you imagine? And who knows what kind of hell she was putting the family through if she was sick enough to shoot herself.”

  “Have you ever seen this guy?”

  “No.”

  “Me neither. But I’ve only seen her a few times,” she said, getting up from the couch. “I can go for a beer. Do you want one?”

  “Sure,” Mike said, following her into the kitchen.

  Annie pulled out two light beers from the fridge and opened them both.

  “So what you’re telling me is that I have a dead woman’s scrapbooks in my van,” Mike said after taking a swig of beer. “And that you stole the stuff from the curb—er, no, you were just the driver of the getaway car.”

  “It’s not stealing if it’s trash, Mike.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Oh, well, pretty sure,” she said, grinning at him. Then looking at him furtively, she teased, “You know, if you play your cards right, you could make love to a thief tonight.”

  She wrapped her arms around him and leaned her head back. She could smell the soap on him, the fresh smell of the floral shampoo, and his own scent beneath all of it—a subtle saltiness.

  “Hmm, well, now. Don’t think I’ve ever done that before,” he said before kissing her.

  “Nice,” she breathed.

  “Mommy!” came a scream from the boy’s room.

  “Not so nice ... ,” she whispered.

  “You deal with that, and I’ll meet you in the bedroom,” Mike said, grabbing her beer.

  She went into the room to deal with Ben, his brother already asleep.

  “Kiss,” he said, but she knew the trick. He wanted a kiss; but once she got close enough to him, he’d latch onto her and wouldn’t let go. She’d have to rock him to sleep.

  “I already kissed you, Ben. How many kisses does one boy need?”

  “Lots,” he said, and grinned at her.

  An hour later, he was asleep in her arms as she sat in the rocking chair. As she carefully placed him back in his bed, he stirred a little. God, please don’t let this child wake up again tonight.

  She left the room and shut the door halfway behind her. Would Mike even be awake? She opened the bedroom door. And there he was, with a huge grin on his face, completely naked. Both beers had been drained.

  Afterward, Annie lay in her bed and listened to Mike snore. She wondered if she would ever feel like the sexual person she used to be. Almost every time she used to have sex, it resulted in orgasm. These days, it didn’t. She didn’t know what the problem was—was it exhaustion? Was it the fact that her boys were sleeping in the next room?

  She closed her eyes and thought of the goods in her van. Maybe Mike was right. Maybe the women were making too much of it. Maybe it was too painful for a new widower to look at. Maybe the scrapbooks and all the ephemera just took up too much space in that little house.

  But a sinking feeling crept in her stomach. It was the same kind of feeling that she used to have when she was tracking a story. A knowing that there was more to it. Like the time that chef fired his sous chef for no apparent reason and then turned up dead—she followed that story and helped track down one of the biggest cocaine rings in Bethesda. What a story.

  She also reported on the dogfights they were having in a rural part of Maryland—she tracked that bunch of criminals through one meeting with a woman at a bar. Something just hadn’t seemed quite right to her.

  And something wasn’t quite right here.

  But this was Cumberland Creek—and there was a lot about it that she thought wasn’t quite right. But maybe it was just different from what she was used to. Maybe.

  The next day, Saturday, Annie awoke with a start when she realized how still it was in the house. Was everything okay? Mike wasn’t next to her, and it was way too quiet. She sat up and placed her feet on the floor. Then she heard the television noise that she hated so much. She cracked her bedroom door open and saw her husband and boys watching cartoons together, with empty cereal bowls and sippy cups scattered around the living-room floor. Was that coffee she smelled? She almost hated to open the door, but the coffee beckoned.

  “Mommy!” came the screams from her boys as she made her way to the kitchen.

  They ran to her and wrapped their arms around her—almost knocking her down.

  “Daddy not let us wake you,
” Sam said, with knitted brows.

  “Good Daddy,” she said, and smiled. “Oh, I need some coffee. It smells so good.”

  “Good morning,” Mike said, slipping his arms around her as she poured coffee. He felt warm and strong. His breath played against her neck.

  “Good morning,” she said, turning around and kissing him.

  “I have to go into the office for a few hours, Annie,” he told her. “But I promise I’ll be back in time for you to go to the crop tonight.”

  “Okay, well, you better get your shower. I’m on,” she said, smiling.

  She knew her day would be filled with messes and squabbles, and that she would be dead tired by the time she was able to get to Sheila’s, but just the thought of getting together tonight with a group of women gave her a little shred of light.

  “Mommy, play trucks?”

  “No. Cards.”

  “Wait, boys, let me have some coffee and something to eat. And if it doesn’t rain, we’ll go to the park.”

  “Yay!”

  Later they tumbled out of the van and began running before it seemed that their feet had even hit the ground. Annie explained to them what part of the playground they were allowed to play on—“Don’t go past the swing sets. Do you understand?”

  She sat down on a bench and watched the boys play on the swings. Another woman sat down beside her. She pulled out bags of snacks and drinks, which made Annie feel a little unprepared. She made eye contact with her and smiled, then looked away. Her heart skipped a beat. Damn, if this woman doesn’t look like Maggie Rae. Annie glanced at the children, who were filing onto the playground. Yes, she thought, they were Maggie Rae’s children.

  “Excuse me, do I know you?” Annie managed to say.

  “No, I’m sorry. I don’t think so.” The woman smiled. Her eyes were swollen and puffy. “I’m just in town for the funeral, and things.”

  “Maggie Rae?”

  The woman nodded her head and looked away, toward the children.

  “My sister,” she said hoarsely. “I’m Tina Sue.”

  “Oh,” Annie said, drawing in a breath. “I didn’t know her well, but I am so sorry.”