The Language of Secrets
Page 9
Ari glanced at Justin. “Okay. I’m thinking maybe that’s enough chitchat. Talk to me about what’s been going on.”
Justin followed as Ari walked over to a shuttered lifeguard tower. They sat at its base, both of them looking out at the ocean. “When we talked the last time,” Ari said, “you’d seen a red-haired woman. At your hotel. And you had the feeling she was, or perhaps represented, TJ’s mother.” Ari waited. It was obvious that he was trying to gauge Justin’s reaction. “You told me it rattled you, because you could recognize his mother, but you couldn’t remember who TJ was.”
“That’s not exactly true,” Justin said.
“What part of it don’t I have right?” Ari asked.
“You have it all straight. That’s what I told you. But I don’t think it’s true that I don’t know who TJ is.” Justin was enveloped in cold, but he knew it had nothing to do with the temperature on the beach. It was emanating from some internal place, somewhere lifeless and bereft.
“Tell me what you mean,” Ari said. “Why isn’t it true that you don’t know who TJ is?”
“Because when I saw the woman in the hotel, it wasn’t the same as remembering someone I had known from the outside, the way I would remember a friend or a neighbor or something like that,” Justin said. “It was a feeling of knowing her from the inside, from a place that was intimate. I knew her as if I had been a part of her. I knew how she smelled … fresh, like lilacs. And how her hands felt … that they were soft and cushy and the palms were this pale pink color. The tops of her hands were smooth and rounded, like pillows. And I could feel how warm the place was at the base of her neck where it went down to her shoulder. I could feel the warmth of it on my cheek. And I know the vibration of her voice.”
“The vibration of her voice?” Ari spoke softly, the way he would have spoken if Justin had been asleep and he hadn’t wanted to wake him.
“I could feel it on my ear. The vibration.” Justin leaned back against the wood of the lifeguard tower. It was cool, slightly damp, and veined with sand. He closed his eyes and listened for the vibration of that soft murmuring voice. He couldn’t make out what it was saying, but he could feel himself being caressed by a gentle hand. He was nestled in a place of perfect safety. Slowly, he began to hear the words hiding in the whispers—simple and comforting, like the feel of a string of wooden beads worn smooth by touch and time. “Oh how I love my TJ. Oh how I love my baby.”
Justin lingered for a moment in this strange place—the place where he was so lovingly held in the arms of a red-haired mother. After a while, the sensation slipped away. But the knowledge it left was inescapable. “I don’t know who I really saw at the hotel,” he told Ari. “But I know who I thought I saw.”
“Who?” Ari’s voice was almost inaudible above the breaking of the waves.
“I thought I saw my mother. A mother I didn’t know I had. Until now.”
“And how do you know it now?”
“I just do. I know it. I know her. I know how it felt to be held in her lap.” Justin turned to look at Ari. “I know that I loved her.”
“Justin, when you called me from the hotel, in your message you said that when you saw the red-haired woman you knew who TJ’s mother was.”
“Right.”
“So what are you telling me now?”
Another chill passed over Justin. “I’m telling you I was TJ and that the woman was my mother.”
“But if you began as Justin Fisher,” Ari said, “the Justin Fisher who grew up on Lima Street, whose parents were Caroline and Robert, and you’re here now and you’re Justin Fisher, then where’s TJ?”
“I’m not sure where he is,” Justin said. “But I know he’s looking for me.”
*
After his meeting with Ari, Justin had decided not to go to work. He’d headed up the coast and turned inland. He’d spent hours driving in the hills above the little town of Ojai, trying to piece together the mystery of TJ and the red-haired woman.
And now he was coming into a house that seemed unnervingly quiet. It was almost six, around the time when Amy and Zack should be in the kitchen—Zack in his high chair, Amy feeding him his dinner while silly kid songs were blaring from the sound system. Instead, there was silence.
Last night, Justin had slept on the sofa, and he’d left the house before Amy had come downstairs this morning. He’d wanted to avoid the ongoing fight about the Hawaii trip.
It was only now, as he was walking into an empty kitchen, that he came to an odd realization. He’d had not a single thought of Amy or Zack for the entire day. He had forgotten them, and now it was as if they’d disappeared.
Justin was suddenly desperate to find Amy. Her name came out of him in a hoarse shout. As he ran into the living room, she was coming in from the patio, holding a teddy bear and a tiny pair of sneakers. Seeing her filled him with an incredible sense of relief. “Amy,” he said. “You’re here.”
“Not for long. Daddy’s having a car pick him and my mother up and then they’re coming for us. They’ll be here any minute, and I still don’t have all of Zack’s things packed.” Amy’s tone was careful and controlled.
“What? Why are you packing?”
“Hawaii. It’s my father’s birthday, remember? The plane leaves in two hours. Do you want me to throw some things in a bag for you?” Amy quickly went up the stairs.
Justin followed her and pulled her to a stop just outside their bedroom door. “But I told you. I can’t do it. I can’t go. Not until we get things worked out, until I can talk to you and explain.”
Amy stared him down. “It’s my father’s birthday. Nothing you can say will make me believe we have to spoil it for him. You’re being a prick, Justin.” She wrenched free of his grasp. “My first choice is for you to come with us. But either way, Zack and I are going.”
She moved toward the bedroom. Justin blocked her path. “We need to work this out, Amy. This thing with your father, it’s got to change.”
“Justin, either get packed or get out of my way.” She shoved past him. In the same instant, the doorbell rang.
As he stood in the bedroom doorway, Justin watched Amy go out onto the balcony and lean over it. Then he saw her blow a kiss. And he heard her call down to the waiting limousine: “I’ll be right there, Daddy!”
Caroline and Robert
822 LIMA STREET, FEBRUARY 25, 1976
*
It was just after ten-thirty in the morning and already it was over. Caroline was back in the house on Lima Street.
They had left less than an hour and a half ago, the six of them, in Robert’s Toyota, rolling out of the driveway under a blue sky ribboned with snow-white clouds. Robert was at the wheel, Caroline beside him, and Julie and Lissa in the backseat, wedged between Robert’s parents. To anyone giving them a quick glance, they would have looked like a family beginning a casual morning outing—heading, perhaps, to a late breakfast or to a shopping mall. But upon closer inspection, the Fishers presented a strange tableau.
Lissa and Julie were pressed tightly together—unnaturally still, with the look of spellbound children caught in a dark fairy tale. Their matching navy blue coats were immaculate. Their hair was perfectly smooth. Their eyes were downcast, unfallen tears suspended on their lashes.
Robert’s mother had an air of disarray, as if she had dressed in a panic, or a fury. Her face was parchment white against the somber dark of her clothes. Her eyes were only half-open, swollen and red-rimmed. Every few moments, she would glance at Robert’s father and he would look up and hold her gaze, as if he’d been waiting for her to turn in his direction, as if he was on the verge of saying something. But then he would seem to lose his nerve and look down at his hands. They were resting on his knees, roving the fabric of his trouser legs in tight, trembling circles.
After a while, he would look up again, toward the front seat, where Robert and Caroline were.
Robert was gripping the steering wheel with a peculiar ferocity. His expression was closed and marble
-hard. Caroline’s expression, on the other hand, was as undefended as an open wound. She had the look of someone who was seeing indescribable horror.
When Robert had stopped the car at their destination, he came around to the passenger door and opened it. Caroline sat motionless. She left him no option but to lift her out of her seat.
Robert was forced to move her across the gravel parking lot in the same way he might have moved a lifeless mannequin—by holding her around the waist and raising her slightly off the ground.
Robert’s parents and the girls followed as Robert maneuvered Caroline through a haphazard arrangement of low headstones and modest grave markers. Their progress was slow. The ground was an uneven mottle of frostbitten grass and cold, hard-packed earth.
As Robert and Caroline finally came to the far edge of the cemetery and Caroline saw the tiny casket waiting to be lowered into the ground, a wail came out of her so guttural and raw that it sounded as if it had been uttered by a wild animal. At the sound of Caroline’s scream, Robert’s mother shrieked and collapsed against his father.
“What’s wrong with Mommy and Grandma?” Lissa whispered.
Julie looked toward Justin’s coffin. It was silver-colored and little, blanketed with a spray of red carnations. “It’s because Justin is dead,” she said. “And now he has to be in that box and stay in the ground forever and never come home with us again.”
Lissa grabbed Julie’s hand, squeezing hard enough to make it hurt. “That’s a lie,” Lissa shouted. “Justin is an angel now and angels don’t stay in the ground. They go to heaven and they live there forever.” Lissa glared at Julie. “Say it. Justin isn’t dead. He’s an alive angel. Say it!”
“Justin’s an angel,” Julie said.
“Angels are just like people.” Lissa was crying now. “They need their families to love them. So we’re never going to forget Justin. We’re going to love him always.”
“We’re going to love him always,” Julie whispered. “I promise.”
And then the blank-faced minister standing on the other side of the open grave said the Lord’s Prayer and made the sign of the cross and commended Justin’s soul to God.
Robert lifted Caroline into his arms and carried her back toward the car. His mother followed them. His father retrieved a carnation that had fallen from Justin’s coffin. None of the adults noticed Julie trailing after Lissa. Lissa was walking toward the minister.
“I brought this for my brother, so he could have a friend.” Lissa took a small frog from her pocket. “When Justin gets to heaven, could you ask God to give it to him, please?”
The girls then turned and ran past the coffin, fixing their gazes high, not wanting to see the darkness at the bottom of their brother’s open grave. Justin’s funeral was over.
Now Caroline, Robert, the girls, and Robert’s parents were back on Lima Street.
Upstairs in the bathroom, Caroline was still in her coat, standing at the sink, holding a glass under the open faucet. Water was cascading over the sides of the glass. The cuff of her coat sleeve was soaked, the wool sagging, heavy and cold against her wrist.
The bathroom held the scent of Robert’s shaving cream and of the oatmeal soap that Lissa and Julie had used when they had taken their baths earlier in the morning. On a row of yellow porcelain hooks there were damp towels, dangling and crooked. Caroline lifted her free hand, meaning to straighten them. But her gesture evaporated and there was a loud shattering bang. She had let the overflowing glass drop from her other hand and smash into the sink. The sound echoed for an instant. Then everything went quiet again, and Caroline took a bottle of Valium from the medicine cabinet and left the bathroom.
In the bedroom, the air was overheated and stale, but Caroline couldn’t seem to think of how to open the window. She fell onto the unmade bed and settled facedown.
Several of Robert’s hairs were caught in the stitching at the edge of the blanket. The sight of them made her dizzy and sick to her stomach. She rolled away, shook several pills from the Valium bottle, and swallowed them dry. She was looking toward the open door of the closet.
A rounded shape was huddled in the shadows on the floor, against the back wall. Before she got up from the bed, long before she reached into the closet and closed her hand around it, she knew what it was. It was Bunny, Justin’s favorite stuffed animal.
On the morning Robert had taken him away, Justin had been playing hide-and-seek with the girls. The closet was his favorite hiding place, and it had been from there that Robert had gathered him up and carried him out of the house for what was to be their first father-son adventure.
Robert’s anger over Caroline’s infidelity had run wild in the days immediately after Justin’s fall. But then abruptly—by what seemed to be a supreme act of will—Robert had become calm, and solicitous of Caroline. He told her he didn’t want their marriage to end and he announced that he was, at last, going to spend time with Justin. He was taking him camping. Caroline’s happiness had been indescribable.
She had spent days packing supplies and camping gear while she explained to Justin about all the fun he and Daddy were about to have.
Robert, too, had been eager to make the trip a success; he had been so concerned with the details that the night before he and Justin were to leave, he woke Caroline out of a sound sleep to sign emergency medical forms. She had groggily, and happily, scrawled her name below Robert’s on the signature line; then they had made love.
Caroline picked Bunny up from the floor of the closet and held him close to her face. She inhaled Justin’s scent, and the guttural wail that had come out of her in the cemetery came out of her again.
In the backyard, Julie and Lissa were poised at the top of the slide that was attached to their swing set. They heard Caroline’s wail, looked up toward the bedroom window, and exchanged nervous glances.
Julie scrambled down the slide. “I don’t want to play here anymore. Let’s go to the park.”
Lissa looked toward the house, hesitating. “We’re not supposed to go to the park alone.”
Julie had already run out of the yard. Another keening wail was coming from the upstairs bedroom. Lissa leapt from the slide and dashed toward the open gate, running full tilt past the back door of the house. On the other side of the door, in the kitchen, Robert and his father were at the table.
Robert was methodically peeling the label from an empty beer bottle, arranging the shreds in a tidy pyramid on the tabletop. Caroline’s muffled cries could clearly be heard coming from the bedroom above.
Robert’s father was holding the fallen carnation he’d retrieved from Justin’s graveside, slowly turning it between his thumb and forefinger. “Go see to your wife, Robert.”
Robert put the beer bottle down but didn’t get up from his chair. “I will. In a minute.”
His mother was at the stove. She was stirring a pot of soup with an old wooden spoon; its once-sturdy handle had been worn thin in the preparation of hundreds of meals, all of them now consumed and long forgotten. Another wailing scream came from the upstairs bedroom. The spoon clattered to the floor and snapped in two.
There was an edge of hysteria in Robert’s mother’s voice as she said: “Everything is breaking apart. Everything’s dying, and I can’t bear it.”
Robert’s father rounded his fingers over the wilted carnation and crushed it. “What the hell were you thinking, boy? What kind of idiot father takes a three-year-old on a goddamned camping trip?”
Robert’s answer was furiously quick. “You used to take Tom and me camping all the time!”
“Not when you were barely out of diapers,” the old man roared. “And not to goddamned Nevada. Not to the goddamned desert!”
“Why did you go so far away, Robert?” All of his mother’s artifice was gone. Her confusion was genuine. “I don’t understand. If you wanted to take him camping, all you had to do was drive up to Angeles Crest. The forest is right there. What would it have taken? Forty minutes, maybe less?”
Now he could see that the questions would keep coming, that he would have to answer them again and again. He took his time collecting the beer bottle and its shredded label from the tabletop. After he had finished, he said: “Mom, I told you why I went to Nevada. An old fraternity brother of mine lives there now. He was taking his son camping. He and I hadn’t seen each other in years. We thought it would be fun for us and our kids to get together. You know, a nice father-son thing. I didn’t take Justin out there for him to get bitten by a snake, it just happened.”
“How does something like that ‘just happen’?” Flecks of the ruined carnation flew from his father’s fist as it hit the tabletop. “Why weren’t you keeping an eye on him? And why didn’t you get him to a hospital, for Christ’s sake?”
“I’ve told you. Don’t you fucking listen?” Robert said. “We were out in the middle of nowhere. By the time we found a hospital, it was too late.”
His mother wrapped her arms around him and whispered: “Oh, my poor Robert.” Her cloying closeness was smothering him.
“What are you talking about, woman? ‘Poor Robert’?” The old man was bellowing. “If ‘Poor Robert’ hadn’t bungled things from beginning to end, your grandson would be alive right now.”
“That’s right,” Robert shot back. “I’m the reason he’s gone. Me. All my doing.”
“Robert, no. It’s not your fault. It was an accident.” His mother was groping for him again. He pushed her into a chair, then leaned in close. His voice was a furious whisper. “Shut up,” he said. “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
Robert walked away, then came back and briefly touched his mother’s shoulder in an awkward caress.