The Last Secret

by Mary McGarry Morris

  “That's okay.” The reporter closes his notebook. Sojourn House is part of a larger story, he explains. Probably just a sentence or two will even get in.

  A rare look of disappointment clouds the priest's face. “Well, maybe one of the guests would talk to you. Get their perspective. You know, to give you a better feel for the place. Alice. Don't you think?” he asks Nora.

  Nora doesn't know what to say. The whole point of Sojourn House is anonymity for the women seeking protection here. Not only is Alice one of their newer guests, but the poor thing can barely make eye contact, much less speak to anyone.

  “Yeah, well, maybe if there's a follow-up. Sometimes that happens. You know,” the reporter says to Nora as if she will understand, being in the same business, after all. Actually, she has nothing to do with news stories anymore. Thanks to her brother-in-law, editing special supplements is what she does now. Reporting was her first job after college. She worked for a small paper on the south shore before being hired by the Chronicle. Two years later, she and Ken, the publisher's son, were married. After Chloe's birth she retired, not returning until Drew started middle school. Ken didn't want her to go back to work. In fact, it caused one of their worst disagreements. They certainly didn't need the money, but the children did need her at home, Ken insisted; a weak argument now that they were older, especially since she could schedule the job around their activities. He finally understood that she needed to work. There was only so much to be done around the house. She'd never been particularly domestic, anyway, didn't enjoy crafts like her friend Robin, and she wanted more than just volunteer work, which, like her status as Ken Hammond's wife, still seems more derivative of his success than hers. Tennis and golf weren't fulfilling the way they were for so many of their friends. Even Robin had stopped playing. Only because of the baby, Lyra, Ken pointed out.

  Robin and Bob Gendron's second child was a shock, born when both parents were in their forties. The two families don't see as much of each other as they once did, but Nora still values her friendship with Robin, secretly envying her looks, joie de vivre, and unflagging energy. Even her unexpected pregnancy seemed a lark. Lately though, life seems to be taking its toll. Poor Robin has her hands full now between Bob's chronic drinking and trying to keep up with a small child and a teenager.

  It was Oliver who finally talked his brother into Nora's return to the paper. They needed a supplements editor, and who better? She was smart, unflappable, well respected, and most important, could be trusted. Loyalty matters to Oliver, sometimes to a fault. When it comes to running the paper, Oliver usually prevails.

  “This could be such a boost,” the young priest says after the magazine reporters leave. Something in his tone irritates her. What? His eagerness, his delight in the attention? Let him have his moment, she reminds herself uneasily. Ken's words; he can't understand her need to always bring people back down to earth. Solid ground. Reality, where life should be lived. The safest place, for her, anyway. Happiness so often trails a long shadow: another of her mother's bracing maxims. She knows Ken's right. He's been after her for years to “stop and smell the roses instead of being such a slave to the clock and other people's rules.” And she has been trying, but lately he only seems annoyed. Last Friday, seeing his agitation after a meeting with Oliver, she suggested they hop in the car and drive to New York for the weekend the way they used to. Find a nice hotel room, then wander around the city for two days, just the two of them. “C'mon!” she teased, flipping him the car keys. They landed on the floor. “Why?” he asked with such bewilderment that she felt foolish.

  Father Grewley's telephone rings. “Hello!” he answers, beaming at Nora. The calls have been coming in all day, well-wishers, new people wanting to jump aboard. “Wonderful! He is? Yes, of course. We'd be honored! Oh … well, actually, they just left.” Congressman Linzer's office, he says, hanging up. He laughs. “His assistant said they're going to try and get the reporters back. See if they need coverage of the congressman looking the place over.”

  “God, he's such a publicity hound!”

  “But useful to the cause,” Father Grewley laughs.

  Like herself, she thinks. A cog. Like the volunteers in the dining room setting the dinner tables. Meat loaf, mashed potatoes, and gravy tonight, the priest announces with the clatter of plates and flatware. He invites her to stay and eat with him and the “guests.” Alice would love spending more time with her, he says. Nora's been such a good mentor to her. She wishes she could, she says, squirming. Actually, she can't stand eating here. She'll do anything to help Father Grewley and these unfortunate women. She painted the kitchen walls and helped clean out the verminous cellar, but the thought of actually sitting down and sharing a meal here makes her queasy. Another unsettling truth about herself that demands compensation, longer hours, harder work, and more money.

  e's already passed two shelters. The best one is on the other side of the city. Fastidious in appearance, he puts a high price on quality. The irony of his rattish slither close to the buildings isn't lost on him as he tries to avoid the downpour from the roof edges. Crossing the street, he runs. The rain pelts him in blinding sheets. He ducks into a brightly lit drugstore. His shoes squish loudly on his way to the back. His wet clothes are plastered to his trim frame. He aches with humiliation. He can't get into his room. In addition to back rent, the landlady says he owes her $440. The computer's a piece of junk, and she wants her money back. The woman's a bald-faced liar, claiming it's stolen, because her nephew traced the serial numbers. There are no serial numbers. He removed them before he sold it to her. It was working fine until she let her kids play with it. People are always trying to take advantage. Disrespect. There's only so much he can take.

  The clerk limps up the aisle. Everyone's got something, some flaw, their price for living. Headaches are his. Some days he can't even get out of bed. A bad hip people can see; a headache, they think he's lying. She wears a red smock. With her silvery hair she looks good in red. Not many do. Seldom wears it himself He prefers pale blues, greens. And black. He favors black. Put him in a black suit, starched pink shirt, and stand back.

  “Can I help you, sir?” She wants him to see the cell phone in her hand.

  He's been back here too long. She's uneasy; two convenience store holdups in this area in the last three weeks. He should put her mind at ease, tell her there's too many people in here. Plus the pharmacist up there, peering down from his catwalk. Convenience stores are easier, especially late at night. But he gets off on her edginess. A form of respect. He hates being overlooked, hates to be stared past. Empty people miss the subtleties.

  “Trying to find a magazine, that's all.” Really, refuge from the rain.

  “Which one? There aren't many we don't have.”

  “Newsweek.” He could care.

  “Here you go.” Hands it over. Sending him on his way.

  “Hmm, let's see. Maybe this isn't the one,” he stalls, turning pages.

  “You're getting it all wet.”

  “You're the one that gave it to me,” he growls, stares hard, until she leaves.

  Nobody's fool, that's for sure. Not after all he's been through, but right now, at this very moment, he finds himself on the high end of chance. Pure luck, that's what this is, her picture in this magazine, picked at random, in this drugstore the rain drove him into. He grins. A different last name. He's long ago forgotten the other one. But the face jumps out at him. How many Noras look like that? Strong, thin features, full mouth, deep-set eyes from what he can see. Hard to tell. He studies the picture. He'd almost forgotten. Young and soft, mostly what he remembers. He chuckles. A priest standing next to her. Family owns a newspaper. She wants to give back. They all do nowadays, the rich bitches. Well, give some to him, then. Yeah. Least she can do. Share with those less fortunate. Proud bastard like himself, two nights on a train station bench. Talk about democracy, country's so busy worrying about minorities it's lost sight of real citizens, people like himself His great
-grandfather helped build the transcontinental railroad, two uncles fought in Korea, one met Jack Dempsey once, something like that. Details get fuzzy. Static in the airwaves, voices fading in and out. That's his thing, sensitivities, knowing what's on someone's mind before they say it. So when they do, it's confusing because he's already heard it, feels like that, anyway. The shelter is the last place on earth he wants to go. Sleeping on a cot with drunks and crazies. He folds his arms to hide his shaking hands. His medicine's in his padlocked room. He tucks the magazine down the back of his pants and runs outside into the gale-driven rain. Long way, but his mind's on other things. Opportunity. His future.

  Wet hair drips into his eyes. The puddle at his feet is from his clothes. He can't even use the bathroom until he's been evaluated. He sits in the waiting room. The intake counselor is on break. He angles his head to see past the flashing lights that come with the headache. This one's bad. Tension. Stress. Closes his eyes, waits for his name to be called. Eddie Krippendort. The counselor's questions confuse him. Yeah, you try thinking straight when the top of your head's gonna blow, he tells him.

  Once, when he was little, his mother smashed the side of his head in, that's what happened. That's how he always tells it. She hated him, but it wasn't his fault, he just shouldn't've been born, she said. Lydia Krippendort, insisting she wasn't his mother, when he knew better. But he let her have her illusions, crazy woman that she was. One day she gave him away. Just like that, to a perfect stranger on a busy street. They locked her up. End of story.

  “How old're you, Eddie?”

  “Fifty, sixty.” He laughs. “Whatever works.”

  “Any booze, drugs, on you?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Been here before?”

  “Once.”

  “When?”

  “Year ago? I forget.”

  “You on disability?”

  “No.” Nothing preventing him from getting a job, one doctor wrote. Sociopathic tendencies. Reading upside down, among his many talents. Set fire that night to the back of the doctor's office.

  “You work?”

  “When I can.”

  “What do you do?”

  “Whatever.”

  “What was your last job?”

  “Vice president of Microsoft.”

  “Come on, Eddie. I just gotta fill in the blank, that's all I'm doing.”

  “Sparkle Car Wash on Marquand.”

  “When?”

  “December.”

  “How long?”

  “One fucking day.”

  Looks over his smudged glasses. What? Like he's offended?

  “You know what it feels like, swabbing the back of a car, freezing cold water running down your arms and legs?” He wants to work, hates being broke. When he was younger he always had nice clothes and a car. Things are harder now. Lost a little off his fastball. He doesn't say this, doesn't tell how tired he gets. The headaches come too often. The medicine dulls the edges at least, when he can afford it. The intake counselor is bored, tired, whatever. He could care, Eddie sees. Heard it all so why the hell should he? Over and over, day after day, from the stiffs, the maimed souls, the walking wounded. Losers. Worst of all's being lumped in with them.

  “And my headaches, that was the thing.” With the cold, they start up again.

  “You got a record?”

  “Yeah.” He laughs. A record. Perfect. That's it exactly. Half a lifetime gone, he'll tell her. And now it's payback time. Time to give back. To the needy. The truly deserving. God's battered children, all the ones who weren't born into the lucky sperm club.

  He sits on the edge of the cot, unlacing his wet shoes. He puts on the clothes they gave him, threadbare pants and a ripped T-shirt, until his own are dry. He stretches out on the cot and opens the magazine. Now, with her face, it's coming back, her laugh, the sweet trust of her touch. Before what happened. It wasn't just the drunk, but him, too, going off the deep end. Lucky for her she ran. It might've been her. And now, lucky for him.

  Like these pants, time has frayed the seams. Beginnings and endings run together. Even the women, he can't remember. Some, he didn't even like their smell. The headaches do that, heighten his senses. Smell, for instance, and hearing. Certain sounds are startling. Terrifying. He used to love the sound of a train, relentless in all its rackety force, or the drone of a low-flying plane, thrilling him with the possibility of its crashing before his eyes. The same with the quick gasp of a woman's voice. Now it's all dread. Steel sky lowering, walls pushing close.

  The next morning is the social worker. Lisa goes over yesterday's form, gives him a list of jobs. The shelter has contacts with businesses needing help.

  “Anything there look interesting?”

  Three hundred pounds, anyway. He's disgusted by the flap of flesh that melds her chin to her neck. He is repelled by voraciousness, people who gorge themselves, drink too much, especially this one, silver bracelets jangling on thick, spotted wrists, the low V of her neckline crimping the freckled fat of her breasts, sausage into its casing, flaunting her flesh, why? For these miserable souls? He pictures her primping in the morning, leaning close to the mirror, swiveling on that red lipstick, all the while getting wet, thinking of the lucky stiff she'll turn on today. The air thins. Harder to breathe. Her fat cells, she sucks it all in. Pig. Disgusting pig.

  “The dishwashing job's cool. Bannerman's, the steak house, they feed their help good.” She swallows hard; he imagines her snuffling food off the soiled plates coming into the kitchen to be washed.

  “’Fraid I'm overqualified.”

  “So's everybody, but it's a stepping-stone. That's what we're doing here. Inch by inch.”

  “The rubber tree plant,” he chuckles. But, of course, she doesn't get it. “Tell you what. Give me the address. I'm heading east soon. A business opportunity.” He stands up when she hands him the address she's just written on the shelter letterhead. “This'll be my grubstake,” he says, folding the paper into his pocket.

  “Yeah, you'll like their steak. I've eaten there before. And the Delmonico potatoes, they're to die for.”

  “You know what a grubstake is?”

  “No. My favorite's the porterhouse. Oooh, and prime rib.”

  “You like to travel?”

  “Nah. Airplane seats.” Shaking her head, she spreads her hands to indicate girth. As if he hasn't noticed.

  “What about by car? You can get places that way, right?”

  “I guess.”

  “Best way to travel. Take your time. Stop when you want. I used to do that, drive for a living.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. One time I drove this old couple, LA. to Boston. Took our time.” He shrugs. “Stop when you feel like it. Grand Canyon. Vegas. Eat your way across.”

  “Sounds like fun.”

  “Yeah. Go where you want, see what you want to see.”

  en minutes late. When she turns the corner, the car skids. She slows down. This storm isn't supposed to intensify until later, but the dark roads are already slick. Hard to see with the snow falling so fast, sheets of big wet flakes across her headlights. She was supposed to meet Ken in his office at five. Something's wrong, she can feel it. Of the two of them, Ken's always been the more upbeat, but lately he seems depressed, almost remote at times, like a man besieged, hounded, but by what? Work? His family?

  A couple of nights ago, Chloe and Drew had been teasing each other all through dinner. She could sense Ken's edginess, but she was enjoying their good-natured banter. The pleasure they found in each other's company, even their occasional annoyance with one another, seemed a joyful contrast to her own teenage years, the sameness of such silent, weary meals that the scrape of a fork against her mother's teeth could set her heart beating faster. “Geeky” Chloe had called her brother's plaid shirt. Drew glared at her a moment, then caught himself as he so often must lately. He laughed and said her tight, low-rise jeans were “slutty.”

  “That's it, you're done! Lea
ve the table, goddamnit!” Ken roared.

  “He was just kidding,” Nora said, shocked as Drew stomped upstairs, then slammed his door.

  “He didn't mean anything,” Chloe snapped at her father, and with that, Ken threw down his napkin and stormed into his study, holing up there for the rest of the evening.

  So unlike Ken. He is a chronic optimist, according to gloomy Oliver, which is precisely why the brothers work so well together. Oliver loves the newspaper, but has little patience and less affection for most people. Ken finds tedious the details of running the paper, but he loves people, making him the perfect spokesman for the Chronicle. It is Ken who sits on the boards of banks and charities, Ken who cuts ribbons and, from years of groundbreaking ceremonies, has his own display of silver shovels hanging on their garage wall. “Our poster boy,” Oliver sniped recently after Ken's picture ran in the paper three days in a row. Uncharacteristically, Ken called him on it, and Oliver's response was a shrug and a snide look. Ken was deeply offended. That alone is cause for alarm. For years the brothers have played off one another's foibles, with Ken rarely letting Oliver cloud his sunny aura. But in these last few days they're barely speaking to one another. At yesterday's editorial staff meeting each sat stonily at opposite ends of the table. It fell to their cousin Stephen to initiate discussion of various topics, which became uncomfortable at times, with Ken the easy target of Stephen's sarcasm.

  Once again last night Ken didn't come to bed. He said he'd fallen asleep watching television. This morning when she asked what was wrong, was he still upset with his brother, he turned quickly in the doorway and said it was a lot more complicated than just Oliver. He was backing out of the garage when he called and asked her to meet him tonight at five so they could talk.

  “Come on back in. We can talk here,” she said, watching his car inch down the driveway, cold sweat rising on her back. They hadn't made love in weeks. Months, really, since there was any real passion between them. Maybe longer. Just middle-age doldrums, her friend Robin said once, assuring her that every couple goes through it, which Nora was relieved to hear. Ken was always the better lover, but for a while now, she's felt his impatience, his eagerness to get it over with, so he could read, watch television, brush his teeth, anything. He blames his back yet somehow manages to play racquetball twice a week. Saturday night after a wonderful dinner out and two bottles of wine with Bibbi and Hank Bond, she locked their bedroom door, telling him how she'd spent the entire evening aching for him, for every inch, every part of him. He wouldn't have to move a muscle, just lie down, she'd take care of every single thing, she promised as she unbuckled his belt. He muttered something. What? He was tired. Well, that's why, she laughed, her tongue in his ear as she unzipped his fly. He moved her hand away. He'd better go down and take some Maalox, his stomach was killing him.