by Lynne Hinton
She believed, in fact, that it had happened to her and that every time she had been frozen in the piece of somebody’s film, beginning more than sixty years ago, when she was only a baby, a tiny edge of her spirit had been pulled away, separate and lost. By now, she thought, there must not be very much left of my soul since there are too many albums and boxes of photographs even to count.
She thought of all the occasions when her picture was taken, happy times like the births of her children, the parties and the holiday gatherings, the graduations, the anniversaries, the milestones met and passed, generation to generation. She remembered the celebrations, the ready-made smiles and steady poses she had learned and perfected over the years.
She thought about the way she felt when someone pointed the camera in her direction. And as she sat at her kitchen table, her eyes focused on the picture of a mother and her babies, a cat in Africa that was probably dead and gone now, she raised her shoulders, folded her hands in her lap, tilted her head at a slight angle, lifted the corners of her mouth, and said out loud, “Smile.”
She blinked her eyes as if there had been a flash of light, lowered herself, and leaned back in her chair. “There must be hardly any soul left,” she said to a picture of a lioness and to nobody else in the room. She sat without speaking again, the image of herself frozen at the kitchen table, and remembered the event from the night before, how she had cornered her husband just after supper.
She had fixed pork chops in the large iron skillet that had been her mother’s and the small English peas that Dick preferred. She tossed a salad and made sure the tea was cold and sweet before she poured it into the glasses and called him from the garage to get ready to eat.
She had cooked and prepared the table with hardly any thought of what she would discuss with him after they ate, and even though she was fixing her husband’s favorite meal, it was not a part of a scheme or ploy to manipulate him into sharing information. She was simply doing what she enjoyed, delighting someone she loved with pleasure.
There had been uncomplicated conversation during the meal, talk of the weather and who had died, keeping him busy at the funeral home he ran, how Dick was thinking about buying a new golf club he had seen advertised in a magazine, and how her mashed potatoes were whipped especially light.
She had purchased a new dress at a winter sale at the mall, and while Dick ate a piece of the banana cream pie she had made over the weekend, she left her dessert and went to the bedroom, put on the new article of clothing, and modeled for him in the kitchen.
He had her turn around and step to the sink, then walk over to him so that he could feel the material; and he smiled at his wife and claimed that she appeared younger and thinner than she ever had and that if it was up to him, he’d marry her all over again as long as she wore that dress. Then he tilted his head back, exposing the front part of his neck, and Beatrice leaned down and kissed him just below his Adam’s apple. In her mind, he had said exactly the right thing.
She returned to the bedroom and changed into what she had been wearing before, walked into the kitchen, and cleaned up the dinner dishes. Dick moved into the den and turned on the television while she finished her chores.
After nearly an hour she turned on the dishwasher, covered the pie with clear plastic wrap, put it in the refrigerator, and stood at the kitchen table, finally ready to ask the question.
She walked into the den and turned off the television. “I want to know,” she said to him as he sat in his chair reading the paper, only minutes after the start of his favorite game show, “I want to know what is going on with your brother and his wife.”
She had considered and honored what Louise had said to her. For days she had pondered the necessity of keeping certain secrets. She had agreed with her friend and had made a decision that she had no right to ask that her husband betray his family member’s confidence and tell his wife what wasn’t hers to know. She tried not to think of herself as being jealous of his sister-in-law.
She had not pestered him when he returned from the last trip to Winston. She did not snoop in his pockets or check the mileage on his car. She didn’t needle him or inquire about the visit; she had remained steadfast and detached for more than eleven days. But then another day passed, and on the eleventh night of silence, the eleventh night of hearing nothing, knowing nothing, discussing nothing, she could not take it any longer.
“I want to know what is going on with your brother and his wife,” she repeated when he did not put down his paper.
She stood just in front of the television, no more words spoken, and the sudden absence of any other noise in the room made her question and her questioning feel even more dramatic.
Dick folded the newspaper across his lap and studied his wife as she stood above him.
She was determined, her lips pursed in two tight lines, her eyes filled with an uneasy confidence, her chin high, her shoulders steady; and she just stood there, not quite close but near enough that she would not be turned away.
He took off his reading glasses and placed them on the small table next to his chair. He rolled his chin in his hand, still without saying a word. There was a long, drawn-out pause as she waited and as he thought of how to begin, how to speak to his wife’s confusion and how to answer her question.
“O. T. and Jean are the only family members I have left,” he said as if she didn’t know it. “Nobody’s heard from my brother Jolly in years. Mama passed ten years ago, and Daddy, well, you remember that story about him getting killed in that tractor accident.”
Beatrice remained as she was, standing in front of Dick as he finally spoke of the truth. She already knew the strength of the relationship between Dick and his brother, even between Dick and his brother’s wife, at first having mistaken her for his sister.
Dick began telling the story slowly and with great thought. He did it as if he had been waiting for her to ask, each word a stone on a path or a fingerprint at the scene, a clue to the mystery behind his silence.
“O. T. was more than just my brother. He was my best friend.” Dick pulled his hand away from his face, settling in his chair. He set the story loose.
“He was the one who taught me how to pull and string tobacco and how to rewire the ignition system on the old Buick. He showed me how to fish and hunt, taught me everything I know about farming and money.” Dick paused. “O. T. was the one who was always there for me.” He thought about how much stronger his relationship was with his oldest brother than it was with the middle one.
Dick went on without prompting from his wife. “O. T. was—is,” he corrected himself, “a good man, a really good man.”
Beatrice nodded. She had liked her brother-in-law from the first time they met. She knew that Dick adored him.
“He fell in love and married Jean and brought her back to the farm when I was just a little boy.” He recalled how it was when the young couple moved in with them. “Jean wasn’t very old herself, and I don’t think Mama ever liked her, but me and Jolly did.” Dick thought about his other brother and how he seemed especially smitten with the oldest son’s young bride.
“O. T. went off to the war like all the men did. My brother Jolly didn’t go because of something, I can’t remember now, and, well, I was too young. We stayed on the farm and worked, and O. T. wrote us letters from all the places where he fought, and Jean would read them to me. She was like a big sister, but she worked as hard as any of us boys did.” Dick smiled, thinking about how strong and capable the young woman was.
“A couple of years later, O. T. came home. They stayed with us for a while, and then they built their own place; and they seemed happy.”
He paused, remembering the days from his past when family was everything to him. “I thought they were happy,” he added.
“Years went by and finally Jean got pregnant. She really wanted a baby. They had been trying for a long time. O. T. seemed pleased.” He thought about how his brother had called him with the news. Dick had been
out of town, gone to a training session to be a funeral director. He remembered being surprised that O. T. had found out where he was staying.
He remembered how later they made a nursery, how O. T. built all the furniture and how they painted it yellow since they didn’t know if it was a boy or a girl.
“Just before it was time something happened.” Dick’s voice cracked. “The baby died.” He cleared his throat. “Before the little girl was born, she died inside Jean.”
Beatrice was surprised to see the tear in her husband’s eye.
He went on. “And it was bad for a while, harder on them than anybody imagined.”
Beatrice dropped her head at this point, seeming a little sorry that she had demanded her husband speak of his family’s private pain.
“People just didn’t talk about babies dying back then. It was considered a private matter, and nobody ever asked any questions about that sort of thing.” Dick continued to tell the story unhaltingly, as if it had been his idea to share it in the first place.
“O. T. mentioned it a time or two when we’d be together, that he worried because he wasn’t sure Jean had dealt with the passing. He said she still kept the baby clothes and wouldn’t talk about trying to have another child, that she had become withdrawn and didn’t seem to care about anything.” Dick paused, remembering the conversations.
“But then he’d soon change the subject and we’d talk about other things and I never thought much about it. I just assumed they would figure out how to put the past behind them and go on with their lives, the way all of us did in those days. I just assumed it was all going to be all right.”
Beatrice slid her hands into the pockets of her sweatpants. She moved from side to side, steadying herself in her stance, feeling pity for her husband, who had never understood the quiet ways some people suffer.
“I guess it was much worse than anybody knew.” He faced his wife like he thought she might answer. “Looking back now, I think maybe I should have been there for him more. I should have paid more attention to things, helped him and Jean out.”
Beatrice did not respond.
“What I’m trying to say is that the marriage and the war and the baby, it was all a lot harder on Jean.” Dick scratched his cheek and then rubbed his fingers across his eyes. “And O. T.,” he added, “than anybody knew.”
His brother had quit calling during that year after the death and he was never at home. Dick remembered how he thought something was wrong, something had changed, but he had never mentioned it. “I guess it just never got dealt with.”
Beatrice nodded in sympathy.
“Anyway, he’s not doing so well these days.” Dick held out his right hand in front of him and appeared to study it, turning it from the front to the back.
Beatrice understood that her brother-in-law’s condition had worsened in the last few months, but she wasn’t following Dick’s line of thinking. She didn’t see the connection between the baby’s death that happened decades ago and his present deteriorating health.
“And Jean, well, she’s just having trouble with some things right now,” Dick continued.
Beatrice didn’t ask for an explanation since she assumed her husband still had more story to tell.
Dick hesitated at this point, then faced his wife. “There’s a young woman who’s been visiting him at the nursing home.” Dick put his hand down on the arm of the chair. “A young woman Jean doesn’t know.”
Beatrice raised an eyebrow. Things weren’t becoming clear, she thought, but at least they were becoming more interesting.
“Jean says the woman claims to be his daughter.” Dick stopped and picked up his glasses. He folded them and stuck them in his shirt pocket.
Beatrice considered the shock of such news for a woman. She wondered how it must have been for Jean to discover such a thing about her husband.
“O. T., of course, doesn’t recognize the woman, so he can’t answer any questions, and Jean, well, she’s just trying to figure things out.” He remembered the phone call he had gotten when she first told him the news. “So, she asked me a month or so ago to help her sort through the legal situation now that this woman has shown up.”
Beatrice dropped her eyes away from her husband. In the time of her silence, while respecting her husband’s privacy, she had imagined all sorts of situations. She thought there could be financial concerns, that Jean couldn’t pay the bills, that O. T. had spent all their money in one of his periods of confusion before he was institutionalized. She imagined that Jean was having family troubles or her own health problems or even that she was lonely and Dick was comforting her.
Beatrice had never considered that her husband, brother to a hero, was forced to face the disappointing knowledge that the person he had adored and worshiped for so long was not the immortal entity that he had set him up to be. O. T. was just a man, and he had made a mistake twenty years ago or more and fathered a child outside of his marriage. Beatrice wondered who was taking the news the hardest, O. T.’s wife or his brother.
She knelt down in front of her husband and lay her head in his lap. She tried to imagine what Jean was feeling, the betrayal of so long ago suddenly forced to the surface. She thought about O. T., a man confined to a bed in a strange place, confused and unforgiven, unable to explain what had happened. She thought about the young woman, boldly appearing at the doorstep of a father she had never known. She considered Dick and how he troubled himself into thinking he could have altered history, that he believed if he had been more of a brother to O. T., then perhaps he wouldn’t have turned to somebody else, somebody who got pregnant. Finally, Beatrice began to understand the weight of knowing more than a person wanted to know.
She sat that way, kneeling before her husband, her arms wrapped around his waist, while dusk faded into darkness. She stayed in that position for almost an hour, just holding him, just thanking him for letting her know what had happened.
Before she finally stretched her legs and got up, before they changed the subject and talked of simpler things, before the lamp with the automatic switch turned on and gave light to the dark room, she wanted to tell her husband that what had happened to his brother really wasn’t such a big deal, that it was Jean’s problem and that he had no reason to be ashamed or embarrassed about it, that he couldn’t have kept his brother from making the choices he made. She wanted to say that he had no reason to feel as if he couldn’t talk about what had occurred, that people make mistakes and that O. T. was just like everybody else.
She wanted to say that Jean would work things out for herself, that she could manage this unfortunate situation on her own. But she didn’t. Because sitting there near him, watching him sort through the disappointment and surprise of a brother’s frailty, watching him struggle with how to help his sister-in-law, watching him think he was somehow responsible, she now understood that secrets are held for all sorts of reasons. A person doesn’t always know why they can’t speak of certain things.
They did not talk about it again that night. They completed a few tasks, read, paid a couple of bills, and finally separated to their bathrooms. They changed for bed, turned off the light, got into bed, and said good-night.
When they lay in the bed, Beatrice backed herself into her husband and, reaching behind her, pulled his arm around her, falling asleep with the gentle and regular puffs of his breath warming her neck.
When she got up to take her walk in the morning, he was still asleep, so she didn’t wake him. She left the bed, the room, and the house quietly, and when she returned, he was gone. To his office, she supposed but considered that perhaps he had taken off to check on Jean.
“A secret’s a funny thing,” Beatrice said to herself as she sat at the table thinking about O. T. and Jean and the past that had revisited them. “A person can run away from lots of things, but the truth will always chase you down.”
She sat for a minute and thought about calling Louise and telling her what she had learned. She wondered if she
should talk to Margaret or maybe even Charlotte, but then she remembered how it was finally to hear and possess a secret, how long she had waited to have one of her own.
And now, suddenly, she realized that keeping a secret was harder than she had imagined, weightier, like a long and heavy board balanced across her shoulders. It was easier to carry than guilt or anger, but it was still, by itself, a difficult thing to maintain.
She remembered her talk with her friend and how Louise had told her that having secrets was usually not a good thing and that she should think of herself as lucky that she didn’t have any. She remembered how the words had stung like a woman evicted from her home having to hear somebody complain about housework.
It had seemed condescending and patronizing, and it had angered Beatrice. But now, now that she had a secret, now that she understood her husband’s need for silence and the lumbering nature of carrying a brother’s burden, now that he had shared with her the real reason for his distraction and the sudden need to be gone, she realized that a secret was not such a lovely thing to have.
She was content, in a way, now that she knew, relieved that she didn’t have to guess about it anymore, pleased that Dick had trusted her enough to tell her. But now knowing that Jean was having to face more than just her husband’s imminent death and that Dick was having to deal with his hero’s past mistakes, Beatrice wasn’t sure that knowing the secret made her feel any better.
She reached out for Jessie’s postcard again and placed it on the table before her. With her right index finger, she outlined the lioness and the cubs and the tree. Using small, delicate movements like an artist, she painted herself into the photograph of a mother and her babies, a family of creatures from God’s own hand, and pondered the weight of betrayal and the sudden outing of truth.
“I guess having a secret is a bit like having your picture taken,” Beatrice said out loud as if somebody was listening, “every one you keep or tell steals a little of your soul.”
She put the card on top of the pile of mail, got up from the table, and slowly, like a woman suddenly grown old and wise, went back to the bathroom to take a shower.