The Last Secret

by Mary McGarry Morris

  “He's going to be all right. They just told me.” Annette drags a chair closer to face them. Nora hands her a tissue. “I'm sorry,” she says, blowing her nose. “I was fine and then they told me, and then I just lost it. I'm so relieved. He's talking. Still a little funny but at least some things you can understand.” She needs to get right back to him.

  Hugging her, they assure her they'll continue waiting, but the minute she's out of sight Stephen erupts.

  “How about that little walk-on? The bitch.”

  “Stephen! She's relieved. Imagine what she's just been through.”

  “Goddamn drama queen. If she loves him so damn much, then why not marry him? That's what I'd like to know.”

  “It's Oliver. He's just … he's perfectly content, he's never going to change anything in his life.”

  “Is that what you think?” His head draws back and his eyes narrow with caustic amusement. “Do you really?”

  It is Annette who is perfectly content with her life, Stephen declares. She enjoys the prestige of being Oliver Hammond's social companion without having to endure him as a husband. She's got a boyfriend in Boston. “Her young stud,” Stephen sputters. “Oh, I know, she's just, quote, mentoring him, but in Jamaica for two weeks? I mean, come on, what's that all about?”

  “Maybe it was some kind of, you know, artist colony thing.”

  “Yeah, right. Well, Delia Lord stayed in the same hotel and nobody was doing any painting that she could see.”

  “Delia Lord! She's vicious, you know that,” Nora whispers, relieved for the moment to be caught in one of Stephen's acid riffs.

  “Big boobs and tons of money, though. And she likes you,” he whispers back, making her laugh. He has more female friends than anyone she knows, man or woman, or even Ken. That any of them confide in Stephen always amazes her. His sustenance is the folly of others. Only his cousins escape his gossip, except when he discusses them with Nora. And she's no fool; she knows how swiftly eviscerated she would be if Ken were to leave her. From time to time even Donald suffers the sting of Stephen's venom. His weight is a problem between them. They used to play racquetball, tennis, and ski together until surgery following an almost fatal automobile accident left Donald with chronic back pain.

  “Nora!”

  They jump up guiltily. Giddy with relief, neither one had seen Ken enter. The beauty of Stephen has always been, as Kay once so perfectly observed, his very contagious streak of “junior-highness.”

  The three of them join Annette at Oliver's bedside. Gray-faced and propped against pillows, every time he tries to speak the wrong words come out. He has just asked Ken for his “fender.”

  “Sure,” Ken says, looking around with a pained smile. “Let's see. Fender. Where's the fender? I don't see it.”

  Annette searches through the toiletry items in the drawer of the raised tray table. She holds up a disposable razor and Oliver turns away. Then, she opens the narrow locker door next to the bathroom. Stephen raises his eyebrows at Nora. A man of limited patience in the best of circumstances, Oliver is becoming more agitated.

  “Fender,” he repeats. “There.”

  “Where?” Ken asks.

  Oliver looks down at his frozen right arm, his clawed hand. “Fuck!” he says, and no one speaks. They have never heard him utter such a word. “The times! Go … see … the the the … the times!” He strains forward with a despairing groan. Drool seeps from the corner of his crooked mouth. The right side of his deeply wrinkled face is slack and the eye droops.

  “New York? The Times?” Annette asks.

  Looking around, Nora realizes what he wants. The fender. The finder. His BlackBerry on the nightstand.

  He grunts and shakes his head as she tries to give it to him. He wants Ken to take it. “On!” he directs, watching closely, anxiously, until Ken gets it going. “Day! Day!”

  “Which day? Today? Today's Thursday,” Ken says.

  “No!” Oliver lifts his left hand. “More. One. The one.”

  “The next day?” Annette asks. “Tomorrow?” She sighs with fatigue.

  “Morning!” Oliver says.

  A look of helplessness befalls Ken with the realization of what this means, what Oliver needs, what he is asking. Ordering: Ken to take over for him.

  “Ed. board, ten thirty. Jannerby at one,” Ken reads, scrolling through Oliver's schedule. “Hugh Delaney … Chris Ramiriz.” An annoyed, put-upon child, he looks up and rolls his eyes with a heavy sigh, like Drew whenever he's asked to clean his room or set the table. This, Nora knows, is the very last thing on earth Ken wants to be doing right now. “Hell,” he says with a dismissive flip of his hand. “Every one of these can wait, Oll. You'll be up and at 'em in no time, you'll see.” Grinning, Ken pats his unmoving arm.

  “No!” Oliver erupts in spittle-foaming, thick-tongued protest. “You! You do the … the flings!” His left arm thrashes into the bed rail. “You!”

  “All right! I'll do the flings!” Ken says, but when no one smiles or speaks in the strained silence, he looks back sheepishly, leaning close so Oliver can see the BlackBerry “Here. Okay, the ed. board, now what's up with that? Who knows? Who should I call? Who's best, Goldman?”

  Oliver nods and Ken points to the next item on the small bright screen. Annette slips from the room in search of coffee, somehow more dispirited, Nora thinks, than relieved. Even though he's not supposed to be using his cell phone in this part of the hospital, Stephen is checking his messages. Watching the two brothers struggle to communicate, Nora is touched, encouraged by Ken's tenderness. He would never abandon his brother. Or her. Certainly never his children. He can be careless and immature but is incapable of deliberate cruelty. They've turned a corner somehow. These deepening responsibilities will make him a stronger, better man, she thinks, while a part of her, albeit a shrinking part, rattles the bars, demanding to know if she's this desperate, that even her brother-in-law's stroke must be turned to her own advantage?

  I know,” Ken agrees when they get home. Of course he should have called her when he knew he was running late. “But after the meeting with Bailey I ran into this guy. An energy consultant. He's been everywhere. The last year mostly in Iraq. Interesting, his take on the whole thing. The worst thing we can do right now, he said, is pull out. That's what the sheiks want—”

  “Sheiks? You mean mullahs? Sorry,” she adds with his quick glance. “You're probably right.” One of the biggest surprises in therapy was Ken's admission of often feeling undermined by her easy criticism and “steely” self-assurance. Steely? More like Swiss cheese, thanks to you, she wanted to say, but didn't. Couldn't, not from this high wire, anyway, though she has been trying to be more positive. Supportive, even when the effort chafes.

  According to the consultant, there's a deeply entrenched Iraqi underground. It's all about money. Politics and religion are just smoke screens, Ken declares, because oil is everyone's bottom line. Sunnis, Shiites, whoever controls the oil flow can bring the free world to its knees.

  “Which is why we're there,” Nora says, again too quickly, though not snidely, she hopes. She and Ken are so often at odds politically that they long ago declared these kinds of discussions off-limits. Some beliefs, though, are knee-jerk, hard to contain. “What's our smoke screen? Democracy?”

  “I wish you could've heard this guy. He makes a lot of sense.” Ken climbs into bed and turns off the light. He is usually the more accommodating one during these discussions, while she will push and jab, keeping the scuffle going to make her point. But now with so much passion dulled, it's hard to get inflamed over world events. Even this brief exchange drains her. There are two Noras, the one who reacted deeply to injustice and cruelty, and this new one with barely enough energy to face her own problems. Now, everything seems fragile. Superficial. So different from what she once believed. And took for granted. She hardly knows who she is most days, much less who lies beside her in bed, this man, husband and stranger. It's like discovering that the tranquil path she
has traveled for years has been, and always will be, loaded with land mines. But she has to keep moving. She wants her husband back. Even if it can never be the same. Seeing Oliver tonight makes her realize how uncertain the future is. For all of them.

  “Poor Ollie,” she says, gropingly through the dark, a poking cane in search of familiar terrain. “It broke my heart seeing him like that, trying to talk.”

  “I know, but let's not overreact,” Ken sighs. “It's probably only temporary. You'll see. These things always seem worse in the beginning.”

  She's not so sure, but his boyish optimism floods her with warmth. More than anything, she needs to hope again. She wants to be held. She slides her hand close, fingertips aching for his. He yawns, turns on his side, curling away from her. She doesn't blame him. So far, she has rejected his every plea for forgiveness.

  “Stephen was beside himself,” she says through the darkness, needing to talk, at least. Even more than physical intimacy she feels the loss of this, their emotional intimacy. The easy rhythm that is the closeness of best friends, together almost twenty years.

  “Just more of Stephen watching out for Stephen,” Ken says, and she turns her head on the pillow.

  “That's an odd thing to say. Stephen and Ollie, they're almost as close as you two are.”

  “He doesn't know his place, that's all.” Face against the pillow, his voice is drowsily muffled.

  “What do you mean?” she asks too quickly, recalling Stephen's chiding him.

  “Nothing really. I don't know, I'm just tired, I guess.”

  So here it comes, 'round again, with the button pushed, this cycle of racing thoughts. Suspicion. Every word and detail probed for meaning. He resents her distrust, but it's not her fault. He did this, foisted this paranoia on her, destroyed her peace of mind. Robbed her of trust. Biting her lip, she stares up at the half circle of light reflected on the ceiling from the floodlight mounted in the peak of the eave above their window. On timers, this first of the four will go off at twelve, another at twelve thirty, the next at one, then one thirty, an orchestration of vigilance to convince intruders that, inside, someone is up, awake, and very methodically on the half hour dousing each light on a long trek to bed. They only arm the security system when they go away on vacation. Installing it was Ken's idea. He'd grown up with one at Fair-Winds. As children, his parents had themselves been traumatized by reports of the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, then years later, in the fifties, by the abduction and murder of little Bobby Greenlease. And look, Nora thinks, the very worst thing that can happen to a family has come from within.

  “Long day, huh?”

  He yawns again. “Long meeting. And Bailey, he never shuts up.”

  “Maybe you can sleep a little later in the morning.” Saying it primes the old tenderness and concern.

  “Not with Ollie's list, I can't.”

  “Anything I can help with?” She squeezes the back of his neck, the rigid muscle in his shoulder, and suddenly remembers a day last summer: she and Robin at the club, stretched out on the bright yellow chaise lounges by the kiddy pool, laughing as Lyra splashed them, then Ken joining them, hot and dusty, just off the course, and surprisingly irritable, complaining about his lousy game, his sore back, and Robin hopped up and began kneading his shoulders, while he leaned forward on the edge of the chaise, groaning with pleasure. And naïve Nora, stupid Nora, looking on, grinning foolishly, not suspicious in the least; pleased, in fact. Delighted. Such dear friends, weren't they all? Their children, as close as cousins. And how like a sister Robin seemed, the exuberant, approving sister she'd never had in caustic Carol. Don't feel like cooking, call up Robin and Bob, and they'd all meet at Ginzu, to watch the Japanese chef catching eggs in his toque and juggling knives while he prepared their dinner on the flaming stovetop, with Clay's and Drew's wisecracks making everyone laugh while Chloe fussed over Lyra, always braiding her hair, teaching her new songs. And deep down, Nora's juvenile pleasure in being the envied object of the most popular girl's attention. If you were going to invite the Gendrons, you had to invite the Hammonds, everyone knew that. Such fun couples, so close they finish each other's sentences. And all the while … all the while … no, can't think like this as she inches closer, slowly, so he won't know she's doing it. His rejection would destroy her.

  “I'll be all right.” Silence. “But thanks,” he adds in a drifting, ragged voice.

  “So where'd you run into that guy? The other one.” Don't fall asleep. Talk to me. Please, the way we used to. About anything. For hours into the night. Fill this emptiness, this stark aloneness. This secret well.

  “Hmm?”

  “The energy guy, where'd you run into him?” Her knee grazes his leg, and she feels him tense up.

  “At this place. I forget the name. Dive, really. God, after Bailey, all I wanted was one beer in silence.”

  “What's his name? The energy guy.”

  “Ed.”

  “Ed what?”

  “Hawkins. I think that's what he said.”

  “What did he want?” She can't move. Or breathe.

  “Just to talk. He's only been back a couple weeks … well … anyway—” His voice fades, and her fingernails gouge her arms.

  scape. Work, the last outpost of control. Safe at her desk since early morning, hours before Hilda, she is outlining articles for the Holiday supplement. Won't come out until November. Far enough away to keep her mind off Eddie Hawkins and not knowing anymore which is more real, that night in the desert or her memory of it. If hers is the only valid version, then what is his? The truth, or a lie? Only one can be right. And yet, however it happened, that is exactly the way she has always remembered it. Something violent happened in that car, a crime that stands as its own immutable reality, however inaccessible now with the passage of time. So in the end, the relative truth of both their versions may be the one undeniable fact here. One victim, two killers.

  Eddie's meeting with Ken has dissolved any hope she had of getting past this. No matter how delusional or cunning he is, the force of his twisted tale taints everything. What else is false? Has it all been her own chimeric creation, the good wife, good family, her own decency? Because I'm so weak and scared, this poison seeps into my life, and there's no stopping it without destroying everything. My poor mother, even she had to suffer. My God, here I go again. I can't think straight. She's told Hilda that if he comes again, she'll see him. And this time she'll be ready.

  She forces herself to thumb through previous supplements. This year instead of one or two cooking pages they will publish a booklet-sized insert of holiday recipes from local cooks. Hilda has spent the last few days calling and e-mailing local clubs and church groups, requesting recipes. The response is surprising, if not a little overwhelming. It suddenly occurs to Nora that all the recipes will have to be tested. In the past it was easy finding staff willing to try out the eight or ten they ran, but now there'll be twenty or twenty-five. And who will do that? She makes a quick note to discuss it with Hilda who loves to cook. It would mean overtime, and, of course, the paper would reimburse her for ingredients. Check Xmas supp $ with O. she scribbles on another note, sticks both Post-its to her monitor.

  Her own attention to detail along with the brilliance of Oliver's overview has made them an effective team. But now with Ken in charge, things are already different. He means well and he is certainly trying to do his best to run the paper in his brother's absence, but his casual approach makes her uneasy. “No big deal”: Ken's mantra. If he said it once at the last editorial meeting he said it easily a dozen times. She was probably being overly sensitive, but couldn't help noticing the bemused glances and raised eyebrows around the table whenever he spoke. Everything has always been a big deal to Oliver. No detail escapes his scrutiny. Typos infuriate him, but factual errors are completely unacceptable. Having to run corrections enrages him. He likens it to hanging one's dirty underpants out on the line for everyone to see. An overstatement, she knows. Honest mistakes come with
the pressure of getting a story written for deadline-driven editors, but Oliver's old-fashioned ethics are the bedrock of the paper's integrity. Because he involves himself in every department and in all the big local stories, reporters don't even try to do favors, quashing or burying stories, or tweaking facts to make someone look, usually not even better, but less offensive. Until his stroke he was still complaining about Ken trying to soft-pedal the CraneCopley scandal. Oliver has his own prejudices and failings, but truth has always been sacred to him. His private life might be untidy, his domestic situation bewildering, but no one can question his professional probity. And now, how ironic, how cruel, after a lifetime devoted to the precision of language, to be deprived of it, she thinks, seeing her message button flash red.

  “Yes,” Hilda answers, guardedly, as if to a question, though none has been asked. “There's someone here. Mr. Hawkins.”

  “Yes. Send him in.”

  His suit is linty and rumpled. His shirt is wrinkled. The door closes in a draft of stale clothes and sweaty cologne. She's strangely relieved. He's here. The storm having hit is not the gale she feared. Just ordinary, as if it's already spun itself out. A fading turbulence. He seems older, and weary. It was a week and a half ago that Ken mentioned meeting him. Every day since she glances back over her shoulder before getting into her car, steels herself when the phone rings. Last night Drew and Chloe were studying for midterms. Around ten o'clock they decided to order pizza. The doorbell rang a while later, startling Nora from a deep sleep. Certain it was him she jumped out of bed and flew down the hallway. All she could see over the railing was Chloe and, in the doorway, a shadowy man.

  “Get away from him! Don't let him in!” With her screams, Drew ran in from the kitchen and Ken burst out of the bedroom.

  “Mom!” Chloe shouted, holding out the pizza box. “It's pizza, that's all. It's just pizza.”

  Ken led her back to bed. “See,” he teased, opening the closet door and then lifting the bed skirt. “No bogeyman.”