Family Secrets

by Nancy Thayer

  “I’ve made a list for you.” Mrs. Derek broke into Julia’s reverie. She handed Julia a sheet. “American University. George Washington University. Georgetown. I want you to read about those in your college books.”

  “Okay. Thanks.” Julia took the paper and rose.

  “Hang on—not so fast. We’ve got to make another appointment, and I want to see your worksheet for your applications. Also, I need your extracurricular activities form updated.”

  “All right.”

  “Julia.” Mrs. Derek’s normally sweet voice turned sharp. “Listen to me. You’re not focusing. This is a crucial time in your life. This is it; this is the crunch. You’ve got to do the best academic work you can this semester. Colleges pay the most attention to the first semester of your senior year. You need to analyze your strengths and weaknesses and goals and put them into a clear presentation for your applications. Your entire future rests on decisions you make now. Gressex has given you an excellent foundation. You have the whole world before you. Stop fading away into those dreamy moods of yours! Julia, you’ve got so much going for you! Don’t let it slip through your fingers!”

  “All right, Mrs. Derek. Thank you.”

  By the time Julia escaped from the office, it had happened to her again: she was trembling, and she couldn’t get her breath. Gasping, she raced back to her dorm and the telephone. She’d call Sam. She’d talk to Sam. She always felt better when she was connected to him.

  Sam Weyborn had grown up three houses down from the Randalls in a quiet, tree-lined neighborhood within easy commuting distance of Boston. The homes were beautiful and the yards spacious, but children were scarce. Sam was two years older than Chase but played with him because there were no other boys close by.

  During her childhood, Julia had been their shadow—or had tried to be. Two years younger than Chase, four years younger than Sam, she was treated with impatience and scorn by her brother and with amused tolerance by Sam. “Get your own friend!” Chase would yell at Julia when she tried to tag along, but there were no girls within walking distance. If they had a babysitter who could drive, she’d sometimes take Julia over to a friend’s house, but arrangements were complicated. So many parents had their children’s schedules booked up with lessons—music, horseback riding, swimming, tennis, skiing, skating.

  The summers were the worst. Each summer the Randalls tried to find a new, fun, babysitter for their children, and some years they were luckier than others. Julia hated to whine about having no one to play with, because it upset her mother so much.

  “Oh, what can I do?” Diane would agonize, nearly tearing her hair out. Almost frenzied, she’d pull Julia up on her lap. “Look, sweetie, look at this photo album. I was a full-time mother for the first eight years of Chase’s life, the first six years of yours. If I don’t concentrate on my work now, I’ll lose it all! Look, look at this picture. I made you that birthday cake myself! It took me a whole day. No, more than that—two whole days if you count all the time it took to buy the ingredients. I made it from scratch. Isn’t it beautiful?”

  “It’s beautiful, Mama.”

  “Do you remember it?”

  “Yes, Mama. It was chocolate.”

  “It was strawberry! So it would be pink! Your favorite color. Oh, I went to all that trouble and you don’t even remember. Julia, what I’m trying to prove is that I love you, you’re my darling girl, but I can’t stay home to take care of you all day anymore. See, when women grow up they work just like men, they make things, they have important jobs. Look, tomorrow I’ll take you to my studio with me. How about that?”

  That was even worse. Julia knew her mother was trying to give her a treat when she brought her to Arabesque, just as her father was whenever he took her in to show her around his lab. Both places were boring, in much the same way. They were full of machinery that smelled like hot metal and tiny bright glass stuff that was breakable and could not be touched. Both her parents retreated into a private world when they worked, leaving Julia with a box of beads to string or a pad and Crayolas. She felt compelled to be still and silent.

  At last, when Julia was eight, they came to a brilliant solution. While Chase went off to baseball camp, Julia was sent to stay with her grandparents in McLean, Virginia, for one month, then over to Kansas City to stay with her Aunt Susan’s family for another month. That was bliss. Her grandparents doted on her. They took her into the Smithsonian to see the historical costumes and drank lemonade on the Mall; they took her shopping and let her buy her choice of dolls and doll clothes. Here Julia could have her beloved Barbie, who had been banned, with much pontification and drama, from Diane’s house. Here Julia could buy Barbie the most glittering, frothy clothes, pretending that the little doll was the princess of a magic kingdom.

  This past summer when Diane and Julia flew down to help Jean pack up the house after Grandfather’s death, it had of course been Diane who had discovered the hatbox at the back of the guest-bedroom closet.

  “What is this?” Diane had asked. She’d pulled the perky doll out upside down, pinching the arched feet between thumb and finger, as far away from her as her arm would extend, as if the doll would bite. Looking at Jean, she’d said, “Mom. Don’t tell me.”

  “I plead guilty,” Jean had confessed, sitting on the bed. She took Barbie and smoothed down her skirt. “Such a pretty doll.”

  “A sexist male fantasy,” Diane had complained. “You know how I feel about it! I didn’t want Julia growing up thinking this was what real women’s bodies look like!”

  “Lighten up, Mom,” Julia had suggested. “Barbie’s not my role model. Do you see me trying to dress like that?”

  Diane swept her eyes over her daughter’s clothes, which had been selected from the finest thrift shops in Boston. “Point taken,” she admitted and had dropped the subject.

  Julia had placed Barbie back in the hatbox with all her tiny gaudy clothes and carried it down to the pile of things to be taken to the Salvation Army. Some little girl was in for a treat.

  It was also at her grandmother’s that Julia had learned to cook. During the hot summer days, her grandparents’ big house drowsed in the sun, humming gently from its window air conditioners, its rooms and hallways shadowy from the curtains and shades drawn against the brilliant light. Jean woke early. And no matter at what hour Julia trained herself to stir, by the time she’d dressed and scurried down to the kitchen, her grandmother was already there, drinking coffee and reading the paper. Together they prepared the breakfast tray. Up in Julia’s bed, snuggled in pillows, they ate and talked and planned the day’s menu, fitting it to the predicted weather and the day’s events. After dressing, they’d prepare anything they could for dinner ahead of time so that they wouldn’t have to cook in the severely hot afternoons. They shopped, stopping off at specialty stores for the freshest fish, the plumpest vegetables, lettuces glittering with diamonds of water, glistening summer fruits.

  There was all the time in the world to cook. It wasn’t so much that Jean taught Julia to cook elaborate foods, although there was some of that, but that she taught her to cook everything with care. Jean could make even cinnamon toast look and taste like a delicacy. Julia learned how to make pie crust and pâtés, jellied soups and soufflés, jams and preserves, meringues like snowdrifts. Jean’s kitchen was roomy, comfortable, old-fashioned, and full of peonies and irises from her garden. An entire farmyard of cute ducks, dogs, cows, and cats populated the curtains, dish towels, hot pads, and bowls.

  The next month, when Julia went out to her aunt’s house, she’d show off her newest recipes. Aunt Susan was always glad when Julia came to help cook for her husband and four sons. It amazed Julia that Susan and Diane were from the same family. They were entirely different. Susan and her family lived in a lakefront house outside Kansas City. The entire family was addicted to sports, and Susan was also a nurse, so their house was always a hurricane of people running in and out the door, grabbing bags of chips to eat on the way to some game or
meet. Aunt Susan’s house was noisy. Compared to Diane’s house, it was messy, and in the summer, even dirty, as everyone tracked in mud and dust and tossed down wet swimsuits, ropes, balls, bats, gloves, cleated shoes, sweatshirts, baseball caps, T-shirts. Aunt Susan didn’t mind. She was a hearty, easygoing, joyful woman whose part-time job gave her a balanced perspective: compared to what she saw in the hospital, her home was bursting with healthy, beautiful life.

  When Susan worked, her arrival home in the late afternoons was a celebration. “God, Julia, that smells good, you are an angel!” she’d exclaim, passing through the kitchen, grabbing a Diet Coke and an apple. “Come in and tell me how your day went.”

  Julia would trail down the hall to the huge master bedroom with its windows full of lake and sky. Susan would collapse on the bed, quickly joined by the dog, the cat, and whatever sons happened to be around.

  “Mom! Mom!” the boys would clamor. “Look at this!” They’d present her with a garter snake, a skinned knee, a tangled fishing line, or a clump of hair matted with bubble gum. Susan would reach out, clever hands soothing, sorting, somehow talking to everyone at the same time. “Ooh!” she’d call out. “Joey, your elbow’s in my side!”

  Julia couldn’t remember ever sprawling like that with her mother. Her parents’ bedroom was their inner sanctum, which Chase and Julia could enter, but only after knocking. Her mother’s life was more formal, Aunt Susan’s more gregarious, and neither one was right or better, Julia told herself. When she grew up, she might want a sanctuary like her mother’s—but she’d definitely want to be a mother like Aunt Susan.

  This past summer after the funeral, Aunt Susan had stayed on for a couple of days to help Jean, Diane, and Julia sort through the house. Late one night Julia couldn’t sleep. Softly she tiptoed down the staircase, trying not to awaken anyone, heading for the den and some comforting late-night television. Hearing laughter but seeing no light, she padded into the living room. Aunt Susan and her mother were on the screened porch, giggling like girls.

  “God, I haven’t done this in ages!” Diane said, coughing. “Oh, yum. I love nicotine.”

  “Once every now and then won’t kill us,” Susan said.

  “Once every funeral,” Diane pronounced. This struck them both as hilarious. Julia realized that they were tipsy. She turned to leave, then heard her name. Edging into the room, she leaned against an armchair to listen.

  “Julia’s becoming a beauty.”

  “You think so? I hope so. I can’t judge my children. Especially in the clothes they wear these days.”

  “God. Think of what you wore at their age.”

  “Yes, but I wanted to be artistic. Julia just dresses like her friends. She doesn’t want to be anything special.”

  “She’s young.”

  “I know. But still. I wish she had—a dream. A passion.”

  “Diane, give the girl a break. Her grades are great, and she’s in everything—chorus, softball, school clubs—”

  “Yes, everything interests her and nothing fascinates her. At her age, I—”

  “She’s not you, Diane. Hey, you don’t expect Chase to follow in your footsteps, do you? I know I don’t expect that of my boys.”

  “Hm. Well, you’re right. But they are boys. I mean, it’s different when you have a daughter.”

  “I don’t know, Diane. Look at us. I mean, you throw up at the sight of blood and I’m a nurse. You design jewelry and I can’t remember to put my earrings on. Mother wasn’t a nurse or an artist. For that matter, look at our brothers. Bert’s in the navy and Art’s a pothead pacifist.”

  “I know. I know. I know all that. Still. Honestly, Susie, sometimes Julia just breaks my heart. I’ve spent my life trying to be a good role model for her, to show her women can do everything men can do. I’ve sent her to the best schools. She could be a doctor or a lawyer or an artist or a diplomat! And do you know what she likes to do? Cook! God, where did I go wrong?”

  “You didn’t go wrong. She’s a wonderful young woman. And you’re right—she could be anything she wants to be. Maybe she wants to be a chef.”

  “Oh, Susie, she’s so bright, so capable, so energetic. I don’t want her stuck in a restaurant chopping garlic. I want her life to be wonderful. I want her life to be beautiful and blessed. And I’ll fight for that.”

  Julia had tiptoed back upstairs, unable to listen to any more. Lying on her bed in her grandmother’s house, she started to wish she were an innocent little girl again, until the hum of the air-conditioning floated her off into the solace of sleep.

  Even though she spent most of her childhood summers visiting relatives, Julia still found herself alone a lot, especially after school and on weekends. When she was ten, Sam went away to boarding school, and Chase went away when she was twelve. She had a wonderful room with every kind of artistic toy and intellectual game, but she was lonely. She talked on the phone to her girlfriends. She watched television. Sometimes the housekeeper would drive her to meet friends at the mall. She couldn’t wait until she was old enough to go away to boarding school.

  She’d applied to, and been admitted to, a number of schools, including the one where Chase went. She chose Gressex not because Sam was there but simply to please her parents. Gressex was the most prestigious, the most difficult. That Sam went there made it seem a friendly place to her, a place where she could be happy.

  She’d been at Gressex for three weeks, and she’d made some friends, and she had just been walking across campus with her roommate Sonja one sunny September morning when she and Sam passed each other going to classes.

  “Hey, Julia!” Sam had called out.

  At the sight of him, her heart leaped.

  “Hi, Sam,” Julia had called back, tilting her head sideways, smiling, clasping her books to her chest to keep her heart from jumping out.

  “You know him?” Sonja asked. “God, he’s dreamy.”

  “He’s my brother’s best friend. I’ve known him forever.” Fourteen-year-old Julia kept her voice casual as she secretly absorbed the shock of what she was feeling.

  She was in love with Sam! Perhaps she had been all her life.

  She knew he was going with someone, a turquoise-eyed blonde named Buffy. They’d been going out for months, and everyone knew they were serious. Buffy was as smart as she was beautiful, and like Sam she excelled in science. They were the only two students in the Advanced Placement chemistry and physics tutorials.

  Many times that first year at Gressex, during her sixth period when she had no classes, Julia would sneak up to the sagging second-floor balcony of the student center. If she pressed her nose against the window, she could just see across the grassy quadrangle into the first floor of the science building where Mr. Weinberg, Sam, and Buffy moved together in such a tight knot that Julia couldn’t tell whose body was whose. If the light was right, the sun would glance off a vial, microscope lens, or specimen plate so that teacher and students appeared to be conspirators in a fiery magic. Then Julia would be pierced with envy and desire.

  She suffered even more after Sam graduated and went to Wesleyan. She tried going out with other boys, but they weren’t the same. They weren’t Sam. When she saw Sam over Thanksgiving or Christmas or the summer, the punch in her stomach told her she hadn’t stopped loving him, and so she began to dream and plot.

  First, she tried to share Sam’s interest in science. She took every science course the school required for graduation, but no matter how hard she studied, she couldn’t get it. Biology, chemistry, physics, all were labyrinthine, confusing, endless.

  When her parents saw her grades, they counseled her to give up on science. “It’s not for everyone,” her father told her, kindly. “To be honest, Julia, I’m beginning to believe it takes a certain kind of defective mind to really understand the sciences.”

  “A nitpicking kind of mind,” her mother added, throwing a teasing look at her husband. “Julia, what were you loading up on all these sciences for anyway? Honey, look at
all you can do. Look at your ease in languages. That’s where you should put your time. Why, you could be—an ambassador!”

  Julia didn’t want to be an ambassador. She was sure her facility with languages wasn’t deep. It was only that she’d had a head start from two years with her French au pair. That her parents were so damned understanding, trying to encourage her to think well of herself, made her feel even more rotten.

  This summer, just before her last year at Gressex, the crunch year, the Randalls rented a large house on Martha’s Vineyard for a month. Chase, a sophomore in college, was given the apartment over the garage. He and his friends usually joined the rest of the family for evening meals and often they came over to watch TV or use the VCR, but for the most part they partied and slept above the garage. Julia and her friends were given a wing on the second floor. They swam, tanned themselves on the beach, biked into town, watched videos, painted their nails, analyzed their clothes, all the while waiting for the college guys to amble in. The high-school boys they met on the beach seemed like babies compared to Chase and his friends—but the college girls who showed up for parties were so slick and sophisticated they filled Julia’s friends with despair.