The Language of Secrets

by Dianne Dixon

  When Justin had first been taken from Caroline, the pain of his loss had been unbearable. She had been drowned in guilt and driven to the brink of suicide. As years passed, the pain and guilt never abated. But in slow increments they were forced into a less visible shape by the needs of her two remaining children, and by the momentum of daily life. By skinned knees and sleepovers and braces and first dates. By the death of her mother, and the birth of grandchildren. By a mammogram and a biopsy and the loss of part of what had always defined Caroline as a woman.

  In the initial days and weeks after Justin was gone, the desire to have him back had consumed Caroline. Her constant thoughts were of the pictures and the birth certificate she’d mailed to the Connecticut law firm where Robert said he had left Justin; she had been convinced they would make it clear that her son had been stolen from her. She had hoped they would prompt his adoptive family to return him.

  When there had been no response, Caroline placed frantic phone calls. It was then that she discovered that the law, and its record keepers, had sealed her son away from her forever. And so she began to mother him in the only way she could: by imagining the beauty and safety in which he was growing up each day; by believing that the level of passion with which he’d been banished from Lima Street was being met and surpassed by the passion with which he was being cherished somewhere in New England.

  And now after almost thirty years of losses and births and deaths and imaginings, Caroline had tamed her sorrow just enough to keep it from annihilating her.

  Another cheer went up from her girls and from her grandchildren, and she heard Robert calling out: “Caroline, this one’s for you!” He was at the far end of the table, holding a champagne glass and rising from his chair. Caroline saw that he was slightly shorter than he had once been. It was as if, with the burden of the years they had spent together, his body had become compressed. He was thicker and slower now, more substantial, his movements slightly arthritic. He was a grandfather. His hair was white. And his face was deeply lined from endless days spent gazing toward the sunlit glitter of the sea. It was only his smile that remained unaltered. It was still one that would have fit well on a good-natured Santa Barbara fraternity boy who wore baggy surfer trunks and flip-flops.

  “To you, my sweetheart,” Robert was saying. “A great mother and the most beautiful grandmother I’ve ever seen. Without you, none of us would be here today.” His voice was tender as he said, “We made it. In spite of everything. We built a life. We built this family. No matter what we may have done wrong, it came out all right. In the end, it came out good.”

  Caroline looked away from Robert, toward the house—toward the place Justin had once, so briefly, belonged—and she knew that what Robert was saying was the truth, and that it was a lie. They had done well by Julie and Lissa and had done the unspeakable to Justin. In the end, it hadn’t come out all right. In the end, it was a pool of light surrounded by an ocean of darkness. And Caroline knew there was a debt still owed on that inequity, she sensed that somewhere there was a final punishment still waiting for her, and for Robert.

  When she glanced back toward the party, she saw radiant sunlight sparkling on the leaves of the oak tree, and Robert playing horseshoes with Graham and Fletcher. Lissa had Ethan in her lap, their heads bowed over an open book. Julie was sitting on the grass, her long legs tucked under her, laughing at something Harrison had just said. There was a happiness there that was dazzling. The beauty of it momentarily took Caroline’s breath away.

  *

  After Lissa and Harrison and the boys had left, Caroline and Robert remained under the oak tree, listening to Julie’s news about her love life and her career. Then Robert went upstairs. And now Caroline and Julie were alone together in the kitchen, cleaning up the aftermath of the party.

  What had begun as an amiable mother-daughter chat was rapidly becoming an argument. “Mom, please,” Julie was saying, “I’m sick of talking about this.”

  Caroline threw a handful of silverware into a drawer and slammed the drawer shut. “Well, we are going to talk about it, because it’s important.” She sounded snappish and quarrelsome. “It’s important to me.”

  “Mom, why the hell are you obsessing about what’s going to happen to this house after you and Dad are dead? It’s depressing and completely pointless.” Julie grabbed the tea towel she’d been using as a makeshift apron and yanked it out of her waistband. She tossed it onto the kitchen table and scooped up her purse. “It’s not like you’re sick and going to die anytime soon, so what’s—”

  Caroline snatched Julie’s purse away from her. “You don’t know when it could happen!”

  She banged the purse back onto the table. Then in a movement that was more restrained, she quietly repositioned it. She was thinking about the flight she and Robert would be taking to San Francisco in the morning. The September 11 attacks were still vivid in her mind and all she could see was the image of airplanes exploding into the World Trade Center. Caroline was terribly afraid. She sat at the table and put her head in her hands. “No one knows when they’re going to die,” she said.

  After a while, she sensed Julie’s presence beside her and she heard her say: “Okay. You’re right. But we still don’t need to talk about you and Dad leaving the house to me. I couldn’t care less. Honestly. I don’t want it after you and Dad are gone.”

  Julie’s voice was uncharacteristically soft. Caroline knew she was doing her best to be kind, but the words had cut through Caroline like the blades of a chain saw. She looked at Julie, bewildered. “How can you not care about this house? This is the place where you were born, where you grew up.”

  “And it was a nice place to grow up in. But that’s the whole point of being a kid and then becoming an adult. You grow up. You move on.”

  Caroline still couldn’t comprehend what Julie was saying. “Move on to what?” she asked. “You’re almost forty. It’s time to think about settling down.”

  Julie’s reaction was explosive. “Give it a rest!” She saw the startled look in Caroline’s eyes and lowered her voice. “Mom, I don’t need a house. I’ve got a condo. I’m head of publicity for a major movie studio. I’ve got a kick-ass life that I love. I have no interest in getting married and settling down. I’m not you. I’m not Lissa. I’m not ever going to want a yard for the kids and lots of storage for their old worn-out teddy bears and finger paintings and notes from the tooth fairy. I’d go fucking nuts living like that.” Before Caroline could say anything, Julie stopped her. “Sorry. I’d go frigging nuts, okay?”

  “What about security?” Caroline asked. “If you’re not going to get married, what about security? For later, for when you’re older?”

  “I can take care of myself. Hasn’t that ever occurred to you?” Julie picked up her purse. It was clear that she was impatient; she wanted to leave. “Now, please, let’s just table this whole discussion for a while. We don’t have to decide about the house tonight.”

  “Yes, we do! We have to settle this now.” Caroline’s statement had an unstoppable determination to it. The house on Lima Street was the most valuable thing she had ever possessed. It was home: the place she had devoted her life to finding and keeping for her children. It was her triumph and her legacy. She had battled and sacrificed for it. And she was desperate to know that it would ultimately have meaning. “If you don’t take this house,” she said, “what will become of it?”

  “I guess Lissa and I would sell it. After you and Dad are gone.”

  “But what about all the memories that are here?”

  Julie shrugged. “We’ll still have the memories.”

  The offhandedness of Julie’s attitude left Caroline stunned.

  She got up and went to the open kitchen door and gazed out at the darkened backyard. For several moments, she saw nothing. Then in the space of a heartbeat, she saw, glimmering in the shadows, the seasons of her life. She saw Robert, at twenty-two, on a summer day, at work on a newly cut surfboard. He was turning tow
ard the house, toward her as she stood at the back door. He was glowing with happiness. She saw herself, years later, sitting alone in dew-wet grass on a moonlit October night, thinking about how perfect a cream-colored dress in the back of her closet might look if she were to walk into the lobby of an elegant hotel in it. She saw all three of her children, in springtime, running past the open back door, waving bubble wands and surrounded by clouds of drifting, rainbowed iridescence—Justin, a wobbly-legged toddler, trailing behind his sisters. She saw Barton, in a time after Justin was gone, playing a game of tag with Robert and the girls and she heard Julie saying: “Mommy never plays games anymore.” She saw the backyard empty, as it must have looked to Mitch as he sat upstairs, beside her bed, waiting for her to wake up and to get on with her life. And again she saw Barton. In a time after the girls had grown. He was wearing the robes of a priest, marrying Lissa to Harrison. And Caroline was thanking him for having come all the way from New York to perform the ceremony, and he was saying to her, softly, “Caro, how could I not have come? I’ve always loved your children as if they were my own.” And then she saw herself and Robert, surrounded by their daughters and their grandchildren. Robert, grown old and raising his glass to her, saying: “… it came out all right. In the end, it came out good.”

  As Robert’s image faded and the backyard was reclaimed by darkness, Caroline closed the kitchen door. She turned and looked at Julie. And, finally, she saw her.

  She saw her pinning up her blue-black hair into a loose crown of curls—causing two of the buttons on her silk shirt to come open, revealing the laced edge of an exquisite piece of parrot green lingerie. She watched as Julie slipped into the plum-colored stiletto-heeled Italian boots that she’d shed earlier in the day, before going outside for Robert’s party. She noticed that one of Julie’s ankles bore the tiny tattoo of a bumblebee and that the other was encircled by a thin gold chain flecked with diamonds.

  Caroline saw how exotic Julie was, and how out of place she looked in this worn wood-floored kitchen into which Caroline had always fit so well. Caroline understood that the conversation between them was over. She gathered up Julie’s purse and gave it to her. Then she took Julie’s hands in hers and said: “Good-bye, sweetheart. Thank you for a lovely day.” It was all she could manage. That place in her soul—the tight, confined space where pain is stored—was too full.

  After Julie had gone, as Caroline left the kitchen, she checked the sliding bolt at the top of the basement door to be sure that it was locked. She climbed the stairs and passed the broad, flat-crowned newel post at the top of the landing. She went past the closed door of the upstairs room that still had Winnie-the-Pooh patterns on its walls. She moved toward the bedroom where Robert was asleep, turned on his side, one hand under his head and the other resting on her pillow—as if he were saving a place for her. As Caroline was traveling the length of the house on Lima Street, she was hearing Julie’s voice: “I can take care of myself. Hasn’t that ever occurred to you?”

  Her bold, strong-willed daughter had instinctively known from childhood something that had never occurred to Caroline—that she could indeed take care of herself; that there were options in the world other than being weak and dependent and corralled by fear. Julie’s words had shown that Caroline had spent a lifetime searching for something with which she’d already been cursed. Caroline had thought home was a thing that could be created, and shaped into happiness. But now she understood that home couldn’t be invented or amended. It was a fact. Established and fixed for all time.

  Home was the place in which you were rooted by your beginnings, into which you were locked by your earliest consciousness. It marked and branded you. And if it was a broken, desolate place—the sort of place in which Caroline had begun—it would leave you hungry and dangerous, and punished, for the rest of your life.

  *

  “Mitch? You saw Mitch? Here? In San Francisco?” Caroline was thunderstruck by what Robert had just said. She sat on the bench at the end of their hotel bed in a single rapid movement, as if the wind had been knocked out of her. “Where? Where did you see him?”

  “At the airport, this morning, after we’d landed. When I was in the men’s room.” Robert splashed cologne into his palm, then brushed his hand across his face and neck.

  “Did you talk to him?”

  “Briefly.” Robert picked up the cummerbund of his tuxedo and put it on.

  “What did you say?” Caroline felt as if she was choking.

  “Nothing that he didn’t already know.” Robert went into the bathroom.

  Caroline followed him; a terrible anxiety was building in her. “Robert, I need to know what you said.”

  Robert was checking his cuff links now. He didn’t look at Caroline when he replied, “Leave it alone, all right? It’s not important.”

  “Then why did you tell me you saw him?” Caroline grabbed his arm. She needed him to pay attention. She needed to see if her secrets were still safe. “I want to know what you said.”

  In an old familiar gesture, Robert rested his hands on her shoulders. “Come on, Caroline, we’ve got better things to do than this. There’re hundreds of people filling up a ballroom downstairs, all here for a big overcooked chicken dinner in honor of the Independent Insurance Agent of the Year.” Robert ran his hands down the sleeves of Caroline’s cream-colored lace dress. “And they’re also waiting to get a look at the incredibly beautiful woman that the Agent of the Year is married to.”

  This was the moment in which Caroline could back away from the explosion that was waiting to happen. All she needed to do was to let this thing about Mitch go; let it find its way into the same stale silence where so much of her marriage had gone. But Caroline knew it had the potential to do too much damage.

  She was already hammering another question at Robert. “If you seeing Mitch wasn’t important, then why did you tell me about it? Just to upset me?” Robert’s hand was once again on her shoulder; she brushed it away. She was deliberately ignoring his offer of a truce, and he reacted as she knew he would.

  There was menace in his voice as he said: “What’s for you to be upset about? I saw Mitch. In an airport restroom. For half a second. He’s somebody I knew a lifetime ago and somebody I’ll probably never see again. That’s all there is to it.”

  Robert slammed out of the bathroom and Caroline ran after him. “Did you tell him I was here, too?”

  Robert picked up his tuxedo jacket from the bed. “I didn’t think it was necessary to inform the man who used to bugger my weak-willed wife that she was within easy reach.”

  Caroline flinched. Robert instantly dropped the jacket and tried to pull her toward him. “Caroline, I’m so sorry.” She batted his hand away. He looked sick with regret. “I shouldn’t have said that.” He reached for her again. “Please. Let it go. Mitch is history. We survived him. And we survived everything that he caused. We got through it. There’s no reason to dig it up again.”

  There was a part of Caroline that wanted to agree with him, that yearned to avoid opening their dog-eared catalog of recriminations. But unlike other times when they’d argued about Mitch, and about what had happened on that October day over thirty years ago, this time Mitch himself had taken part in a conversation. Caroline had to know what had been discussed. She needed to reassure herself that certain details of that day still remained obscure.

  “Tell me what you said, Robert.” Caroline’s statement had the undercurrent of a threat.

  Robert gave her a look that begged her to reconsider. “We’ve been together a long time,” he told her. “We’re in the homestretch now. We’ve already lived the biggest chunk of our lives, and whatever time we’ve got left, let’s not waste it beating each other up for things that can’t be changed. I’m sorry about that ‘weak-willed wife’ crack. I didn’t mean it. Jesus, Caroline, you know I love you. I’ve always loved you. You and the girls, and now Lissa’s kids. That’s my world, that’s my reason for getting up every day. And I know that y
ou’ve loved me. You wouldn’t still be here after all these years if you didn’t.”

  “Robert, I need to know!” Caroline was screaming at him with such ferocity that the last of her words came out choked and rasping. “What did you say to Mitch? What did you tell him?”

  “It’s not important!” Now Robert, too, was shouting. He walked away from her and went to the window.

  “It’s important to me!” Caroline pushed between him and the window. They were less than an inch apart. She could see the pulsing of a vein on his neck; she could feel the heat of his breath on her face.

  “Why? Why is it so important?” Robert was furious. “What did you want me to tell him? That I’ve spent my life obsessed with the two of you? Eating my guts out over what you did to me three decades ago? That I spent every night, all those years, lying beside you and yearning for you to screw me with even an ounce of the enthusiasm that you had when you screwed him?”

  “Shut up, Robert!” Caroline’s voice was wild and shrill, but her words were lost in Robert’s roaring shout: “Because if that’s what you were hoping for, Caroline, you didn’t get it. I didn’t paint you as the beach nymph still pining for her playboy lover. I told him the truth. That you were exactly like the rest of us, sweetheart. Old and ordinary. I said you were a middle-class matron happily married to an insurance salesman. I told him you were a grandmother. And that for thirty years, every single time I banged you, you came so hard, you passed out.”

  There was a bitter vindictiveness in Robert’s voice that Caroline had never heard before. It startled her. “How can you be so hateful?”

  “Because I’m sick of this,” he said. “I’m sick of you dragging this crap around with you endlessly. Endlessly, endlessly!”