The only light is on upstairs, but she keeps ringing the bell.
“Nora!” Kay says, throwing open the door, still putting on her robe. “What're you doing here? Shouldn't you be packing?”
“I've been meaning to call you. All your messages … it's just been … crazy!” And suddenly she's in Kay's arms, sobbing. She can barely speak.
“Poor kid. Oh, you poor kid. Here. C'mere. Come sit down.”
Kay leads her into the small den. The love seat creaks under them.
“What's wrong?” Kay asks, and Nora can only shake her head. “Tell me. Just say it.”
“It's Ken,” Nora cries.
“What? What about him?” Kay looks stricken.
“He's been having an affair. With Robin,” she gasps, and Kay sighs. Instead of shock there is only relief in Kay's eyes. “You knew. You did, didn't you?”
“I did. Yes.” Kay's arm stiffens against her shoulder.
“How long have you known?”
“I'm not sure.”
“Who told you?”
“I don't remember. Someone in the office, I think.”
With that, Nora sits forward. “And you never told me. You never said anything.”
“Well, I … God, Nora. I mean, at first I didn't want to believe it. And then I … I couldn't bear the thought of hurting you.”
“But I am hurt. You have no idea how hurt I am. The pain I'm in.”
“Oh, Nora, I—”
“But the worst of it's knowing that you were in on it, too.” She jumps up, heading for the door.
“No! No, Nora!” Kay follows her, barefoot, into the cold, down the walk. Kay grabs her arm and holds on, almost pinning her back against the car. “I never saw them together. Never once! But I told Ken. I told him what a shithead he was. How disgusting I thought it all was. And you know what he said to me? Do you want to know?”
She already does: that he loved Robin and couldn't help himself.
“He said I should tell you, then. If I really believed it was true, if I was that disgusted, then maybe I should do something about it.”
“So why didn't you?” Her voice sounds small, far away.
“Because … because some things are just … just too hard. And I wasn't about to do his dirty work. That would've made it too easy for him.”
“But you did. Everyone did. It was all so easy for him. Don't you see?”
“I know, and I know why you're saying it, Nora. Because if you put all the blame on him, then you'll hate him. You'll hate him too much for anything to be salvaged. But don't push me away. Or anyone else. I'm sure I'm not the only one, the only one who … who tried. This is when you need your friends, Nora. Now more than ever.”
A relationship. Clearly more than an affair. More than sex. A relationship, a union of emotional depth. Humiliation, Kay obviously thinks. But no—it's the utter rejection. She's always loved Ken, loved him exactly as he was, and for being everything she was not. He had brought security into her life and a lightness of being she'd never known. Before Ken she'd always felt alone. With him at her side she didn't have to be so guarded anymore. She could let down her defenses, breathe, laugh at herself He made her feel complete, but now what is she? What's left? As she drives, pressure builds in her skull. She wants to save her marriage, doesn't she? Yes. She just doesn't want to be with him. Doesn't want to go home. Doesn't want to go to Anguilla. Even thinking of him makes her skin crawl. Kay's right—she doesn't want to hate him, but she needs to do something, hurt him. Hit him. Over and over again. Not even for the pain he'd feel, but to release this ache in her chest. In her throat, her brain. Just to be able to think clearly again. Or maybe not to think. A sudden jerk of the wheel, accelerator to the floor, and this out-of-control life stops hurting. But Chloe and Drew. Her children. They haven't done anything wrong. She blinks, forces her eyes onto the narrow, winding road.
St. Paul's serves the poorer neighborhoods of Franklin. Father Grewley started Sojourn House five years ago in an abandoned tenement. At first the bulk of the work, cooking and cleaning up, was done by the young priest himself and a few parishioners. Recently, Sojourn House has been relocated in an unused school building, whose twenty-odd rooms serve as clinic, counseling rooms, offices, resource center, and temporary shelter for the abused women and their children needing to get their lives back on track. With enough publicity and the right connections, Sojourn House has become a very chic charity, supported by local businesses and industry. Among their fund-raising events are wine-tasting parties, art auctions, golf tournaments, the highlights of Franklin's social season. Because of all the media attention some people think she actually works at Sojourn House. Congressman Linzer's office has sent her a framed commendation. From the White House has come another, unframed; and everywhere she goes people take time to congratulate her.
“I think that's wonderful, feeding those poor souls,” said the supermarket checkout lady.
“Thank you.”
“There should be more people like you in this world, Mrs. Hammond,” whispered the reference librarian.
“Thank you.”
“You're all so kind. We're all so good, so kind and good. Thank you, thank you thank you, thank you! Thank you?” she shouts as the car jolts over the potholes that mark the change of neighborhoods, past crowded tenements. “For fucking what?” she yells, laughing. With the slightest acceleration the car flies along the dirty snow-banked streets, past the three-deckers and their first-floor pizza places and pawn shops, still brightly lit. Here, even the barber shops stay open late, sanctuaries where men can linger instead of going home to pain and failure. For the first time in her life, she understands. She turns up the radio until throbbing music fills the car.
“A relationship!” she cries over the drumbeat. “Oh my God, my God. Oh my God!” she moans. She's never been a good enough mother, or good enough wife, or good enough lover, or good enough daughter, or good enough sister, or good enough friend. Never good enough. No matter where she goes, what she does, always an alone-ness, that breathless, uncontainable need to flee, her flesh crawling with this same revulsion and panic. “Don't,” she warned Ken when he first laid his hand on her stomach, beneath tightly grasped sheets of her dark, dark bedroom, needing time, that was all, time to take a deep breath, to relax, to dare feel anything, with even his breath at her flesh unbearable.
“Close your eyes and make believe I'm somebody else,” he whispered once. Somebody exciting. Somebody who's crazy about you … Eddie's face she saw. And no matter how hard she tried to make it Ken's face, it was still Eddie, with every gasp, full of him, his voice, touch, smell, so heavy with yearning she could barely keep her eyes open, even in the hard light of day, nights later, cringing in the glare of the hot pink and green light flaring over the man's sagging back as he sank across her legs, pinning her against the seat, with Eddie, running around to her side, police coming, train coming. Coming. “Wake up, honey.” Ken was shaking her. “Wake up, you're having a bad dream, that's all.”
In front of the small rectory, she turns off the engine, wets her finger, and rubs away smeared eyeliner. The minute she steps into the brisk night air, heels scraping the gritty brick walk, she can think clearly again. She rings the doorbell, takes deep breaths as she waits, noting the scroll of newspaper frozen into the front lawn, and she knows why she's come here so late at night to deliver three paltry checks she's already held for days and as easily could have mailed. She needs help.
The door squeals open and the slight young priest with round, rimless glasses and thinning hair smiles out at her. “Mrs. Hammond! Nora. What a surprise.” He wears a baggy blue sweater over his black pants. And soft leather Indian moccasins, beaded like a child's.
“I have these checks,” she says, fumbling them from her briefcase. One flutters to the floor and she and the priest almost bump heads as they bend to get it. “They came to the paper. Ken and I are leaving tomorrow.”
“Oh. Thank you. But you didn't have to c
ome out so late. I could have—”
“No!” she interrupts. “I wanted to. Besides, I … I was out, I mean, out this way anyway.” With her faltering voice he peers over his glasses.
“Well, come on in, then. Come inside.” He steps back. From the parlor doorway to the right comes the violet wash from a television screen and voices, then laughter. “Father Connelly and I were just watching a movie,” he explains.
She sees the old priest's stocking feet draw back as if to stand up. “I can't, but thanks. I'm running late,” she calls as she starts back down the steps.
“You have a good trip now,” Father Grewley calls, waving the checks.
Thank God. Thank God, she thinks, shocked at how close she came again to losing it. Her face flushes at the thought of pouring out her misery to the wide-eyed young priest. He's heard more than his share of troubles in his ministry, but not from Nora Hammond. She is supposed to be strong. Control is the key. She has to take charge of her pain and confusion and wrestle it into manageable shape. No one else can do that for her. The first time she went to pieces at home, Ken suggested a counselor. He has the name and telephone number of a good one. But she can't. Not now. Not yet. It would be like trying to tweeze out dirt and grit from an oozing wound.
“So, what do we do? What do you want? What're our choices?” he said, trying to hide his annoyance, when she refused. “Or do we just keep on like this?”
It isn't the smooth passage that he expected. He doesn't know what he wants except for her to move step by step through some mad formula that begins with betrayal and debasement, and hopefully, logically, if the proper methods are utilized, will end with … with what? Happiness? Coexistence? He has no idea how many choices she has. So many, she can barely keep them straight. There is murder and suicide and slashing and nervous breakdowns and arson and anonymous letters, the gouging with her own ragged nails of Robin Gendron's flawless glowing cheeks from her darkly lashed blue eyes to her delicate dimpled chin.
She turns down Fairway Road, past the club, up the slight rise, then the long, winding driveway to FairWinds, Oliver's home. She drives slowly, careful to keep to the middle. Once covered with white marble chips so that on a moonlit night the driveway meandered along the dark hillside like a pale river, now it is rutted and stone-humped. The Hammonds built this three-story brick manor with its oak-paneled hallways and high-ceilinged rooms at the turn of the century. It was here that Ken brought her to meet his parents and Oliver, newly married and quickly divorced, who had temporarily moved back to Fair-Winds. At first glance she thought Oliver was Ken's uncle, like their mother, calling him Kenny. Ten years older than Ken, he still seems more avuncular than brotherly. Oliver lives here alone, the lovely old living room, its deep windows overlooking the town, now, for all intents and purposes, his bedroom. It contains no bed, but a huge leather recliner that adjusts into twelve different positions (all but the missionary, Ken likes to joke) and Oliver's clothes, the few he has. She hopes Annette Roseman isn't visiting, though she's only run into her here a few times. For years the remote, elegant woman has been Oliver's companion. Annette and her disabled son live in town with her mother, who was one of old Mrs. Hammond's housekeepers. No one knows if Annette has ever been married or who the father of her son is, though few suspect Oliver. The boy, a young man now, is too dark, his features favoring his mother's race. Ken said Annette's baby was born in New York City when she was in college. Her return to Franklin coincided with Oliver's return to FairWinds. Annette is a highly regarded portrait artist, whose commissions run into the thousands.
Nora parks under the portico. She looks to make sure the front room light is on before she climbs the wide granite steps. It takes four rings of the bell before Oliver finally appears behind the etched door glass.
“What is it?” he says, running his fingers through his unruly hair. His baggy eyes are heavy with sleep. Though his tie is still on, his white shirt is unbuttoned to the waist and his unbuckled belt dangles from his rumpled suit pants. Apologizing, she follows him through the drafty, unlit foyer into the spacious living room. On the narrow credenza to the left of the door are stacked laundry boxes, torn open whenever he needs a fresh shirt. Under the credenza, on the plank base between two ornately carved mahogany pedestals, sags a large green trash bag filled with soiled shirts. The smell is always the same here, stale: stale clothes, stale furnishings, stale flesh. The only light in the long room comes from the pitted brass floor lamp next to Oliver's chair. Its pleated silk shade is yellow with cigar smoke. Ashes salt its base. Oliver's cast-off black socks lie strewn in front of his chair like a tidal deposit of seaweed.
“The layouts. I should have just left them on your desk!” she shouts over the classical music. “I didn't realize how late it was.”
“It's all right. It's okay,” he sighs, sinking his huge body down into his chair. With a touch of a button, the back tilts, the seat glides forward, and the padded footrest lifts his bare feet. He aims his remote at the old stereo system, lowering the volume. His chair rises from a sea of dropped newspapers and books, musical CDs, coffee cups, three black wingtip shoes, and across the marble coffee table his suit coat, carefully folded. In this cavernous house, this corner is all he needs anymore. Upstairs, his childhood bedroom contains all the books and games of his youth. She is overcome now with a companionable sadness. This is what becomes of the unloved. Bare feet. Musty clutter. Fatigue that seeps from the pores into cloth, plaster, wood.
“What time are you leaving?”
“It's a seven thirty flight. We're getting picked up at five. We land in San Juan at ten thir—”
“So, show me what you've got,” he interrupts. It is a habit both brothers share, asking a question, then growing bored with the answer. Ken's suggests a certain boyish distraction, while Oliver only seems rude. At first, it took her a long time to warm up to Oliver. But now his brusqueness is also his saving grace. Always to the point, he never leads anyone on.
“I thought a piece by each of the hospital's board members. Pictures of the newest units, labs, whatever.” She stands over him, handing down the sample layouts. “I thought something from a nurse, say, and a lab technician, a housekeeper, EMT, all the different viewpoints on—”
“Kenny's doing good, huh?” He looks up over the smudged half glasses perched on the tip of his nose.
“What do you mean?” she says sharply.
“Just that.” He shrugs. “We had lunch. He seemed a hell of a lot more engaged, I thought. That's all.” He shuffles through the papers. “He had me worried there for a while.”
“How's that?” She passes him more sheets.
“Oh, I don't know. For a while there he just wasn't tuned in, you know?”
“What do you think was wrong?”
“Ah, who the hell knows. Probably the same cobwebs, same treadmill we all get stuck on.” He glances up, frowning, rolling his hand. “Where's the ads? You gonna run this on love or something?”
“They're just mock-ups.” She gives him four more. “I mean, nobody's even gone out yet.”
He looks over her proposed ads, nodding, muttering. “Cheap bastards,” he says when he comes to the companies he doubts will buy space. He reaches beside his chair and brings up a bottle of scotch and a glass, cloudy with amber rings. He fills the glass, sips it warm, no ice. He asks about her dates for getting the supplement in on time, then raises his glass. “It's your ball. Run with it.”
“You sure now?” She's not surprised. The trick is to answer Oliver's questions before he asks them, then tunes you out.
“Sure I'm sure.” He reaches down for another glass and pours it half full. “Bon voyage!”
“Bon voyage!” The long burning drink makes her eyes water and her nose run.
Oliver is telling her about today's phone call, complaining about the recent Chronicle photo of state senator Bob Gallewski. In it, Gallewski, with tumbler in hand, looked dazed, thick-featured, open-mouthed, and if not intoxicated, certainly
slow-witted. His campaign manager, Abby Rust, is demanding they run a better one. “‘But, Abby’ I said, ‘if I do that, next thing I'll be running photo retractions on the bake-sale ladies and the Eagle Scouts.’” At the thought of it, Oliver laughs, refills his glass. “Before and after editions.”
“You've got to admit it's a dirty trick,” Nora says as she moves about, kicking socks into a pile, lining up shoes by the door, stacking weeks of newspapers and magazines. “It's like another kind of power you have over someone.” She hangs his suit coat over the back of a chair. “One nobody can really call you on, it's so insidious.”
“As conscience of the people.” He hoists his glass. “However self-appointed.” Then takes a drink.
“What if it was me? Suppose Ken and I were in a messy divorce, what would you do?” She is stacking his CDs on the cluttered table next to him.
“What I usually do in domestic matters.” His eyes lift slowly to hers. “Nothing. Nothing at all.”
“Ollie,” she begins, then catches herself He despises conversations like this. Get too personal and he'll walk away. The hell with it. She can't keep up the façade. This pretense of a normal life is destroying her. It takes too much energy. More than she needs to talk, she wants Oliver's help, though hasn't the slightest idea what form that might take. Not financial and certainly not emotional, for that is beyond Oliver's ken. What she wants is to stop hurting.
“You knew all about it, didn't you?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. Don't—”
“For a couple years now. All right?”
She shakes her head, not knowing whether to laugh or cry, though seems to be doing both. “A couple years. Great! That's just great. I guess everyone knew, huh? Probably even Chloe and Drew. Everyone but me. But I guess that's how an affair works, doesn't it? Excuse me, a relationship. That's what he calls it. Not an affair, no, that would be too, too, what? Cheap? Trashy? Low class? God knows, Ken's not that, is he?”
The Last Secret Page 6