He swears he hasn't been seeing Robin. He was only with her the night of Oliver's stroke because of Bob's accident. Bob had been on his way home when he hit a patch of ice, going too fast. His car skidded into a private school van stopped at a red light. There were eight children inside. Thank God, no one was seriously hurt, mostly just bruises, but a real wakeup call. Bob wasn't drunk, but he'd been drinking earlier, so he panicked and didn't stop. A witness wrote down his plate number. By the time the police came to the house, Bob's brothers were already driving him to the usual rehab hospital in New Hampshire. A glass of cabernet and a bad reaction to a sleeping medication, or so the brothers claimed. Robin called Ken, begging him to keep it out of the paper. His job at CraneCopley was in jeopardy as it was. The reporter Ken spoke to omitted the incident from the Chronicle's police log.
“Poor guy,” Ken said. “It was the least I could do.”
“No,” she couldn't help saying. “The least you could do is stay away from his wife.”
She doesn't believe his lies, but what she needs is to believe in him. Whether a shift in the wind or galvanic realignment, something is different. Something has changed. He seems, if not happier, certainly calmer. Of course, Nora can't help wondering if it's Bob's absence that buoys his spirits, but in any event, the effect on the children has been immediate and gratifying. Once again, Chloe and her dad are buddies. Drew's bitterness and anger seem to be easing. Tonight at dinner Chloe told them that her girlfriend Luz's little sister wants to ask Drew to the Sophomore Spring Mixer.
“But don't worry,” Chloe said when Drew groaned. “I told her you already have a girlfriend.”
“Who? Who'd you say?” Drew asked, and Nora tensed, expecting an outburst.
“You know. Aimée,” Chloe said, pursing her lips for full Gallic effect.
“Jhell-ee-no,” Drew said, his exaggerated pronunciation making them laugh.
Aimée Gelineau was an old family joke, a kindergarten classmate Drew had declared his love for, then wept when her family returned to Quebec. Even at such a young age he'd been heartbroken. She wishes he had a real Aimée Gelineau in his life, at least one person to be close to. Tonight is the first time in weeks she's heard him laugh.
othing is as soothing as the sound of Robin's voice. Eddie can listen for hours. Nothing gets her down. Not the chaos of Lyra's toys all over the floor or the chicken bones in greasy napkins and the half-filled takeout boxes still on the coffee table, not even the collection agency call. Another maxed-out credit card, she explains, hanging up, one more mess of Bob's left behind. It's so hard now, having to watch every penny, buying store brands when, before, she'd just grab whatever she wanted off the shelf, not having a clue what anything cost. Of course, she can't just blame him, she sees that now, how spoiled they both were, taking everything for granted. That's the problem growing up with money: hard times came and they just kept on spending; it's so confusing, such a helpless feeling, not having control anymore of the most basic things in life, which is why she always reads the price tags to Lyra. She may be only three, but Robin wants her to know the value of things and not feel entitled. And having to scrape by makes Robin appreciate life even more. She wakes up every morning, knowing what a gift each new day is. It really is.
Yes, and for him, too. Especially now that he's flush. He's never had this much money in his pocket. Tonight, he brought dinner over: KFC. The simplest things delight her.
The past is like a dream, she is saying, and once a dream is over, it's gone, right? What's important is living in the moment. This, the right here and now, she declares with such intensity that as he sinks into her blue gaze he knows he'd do anything for her, anything. It's taken her years to see this, she says. Her mother worries that she may be over-medicated. Instead of just drifting along on Prozac and Xanax, she should be talking to someone, a counselor. The very suspicious Mrs. Shawcross called her daughter a little while ago with the name of a therapist her hairdresser recommended.
“She says I'm just existing, not dealing with anything, but that's okay. As long as my children are happy and I'm here with them, what more do I need?”
“What's she want you to do?” he asks, uneasily.
“Oh, just love my husband,” she says with a forced lilt. Her daughter sits at her feet, watching television.
“What else?”
“Live happily ever after.” She sighs.
“Yeah?”
“It's kinda way past that now.”
He met her mother a few days ago when he stopped by with two boxes of cookies. He had remembered Robin's saying money was so tight right now with Bob in the hospital and no more sick time, that she could barely afford treats for the children.
“Aren't you sweet!” Robin said, patting his cheek through the doorway.
Suddenly Mrs. Shawcross appeared, her narrowed eyes cued to the distrust in his.
He and Robin were quick friends. Two old souls, she likes to say. His head spins listening, trying to keep up. He blinks. Sparks in her voice, veering from topic to topic. His heart races. Images flash into mind, churning thoughts, twisted metal and broken glass, goose feathers red with blood, the black arch of a penciled eyebrow. No way, he keeps thinking. Not this time.
Trusting, she holds nothing back. Her truth is childlike in its raw purity. Not like nervous Nora, all that money and still can't have what she wants. She doesn't stand a chance. No wonder, he thinks, hating the two men. Robin is talking about her husband's drinking. This time when he gets out he'll stay sober, swears he will. Still thinks he can, she says with a sigh.
“He doesn't deserve you,” he snaps, resenting her concern for the weak bastard.
“It's not just him. Poor Bob, he doesn't want to hear it, and I can't say it.”
“What? Say what?” His fidgety fingers twist and turn.
She stares at him. “It's such a mess.”
“So do something about it.” Hard to hide his impatience. Just an old friend, she said when he asked who Hammond was, the guy in the bar that night.
“I know. I have to. I know that.” She looks down a moment, troubled.
“Can I help? What can I do?”
“No. Same thing, it's me.” She sighs. “Just gotta get my act together, that's all.”
Lyra changes the channel and they sit quietly for a while, watching another cartoon. Robin seems lost in thought. She often does this, the half smile, staring as if she is suddenly somewhere else, or wants to be. She has three cats and loves to go barefoot. The largest, the gray and white cat, jumps onto the couch and settles between them, purring. Cat hair floats through the air, and he holds his breath, trying not to move. The slightest disturbance, an opening door, sets it adrift. When he leaves, his clothes are covered. The tail flips back and forth, whipping up more hair. He picks a strand from his mouth. Cats don't like him, he says.
“Here.” She takes his hand and places it on the cat's back. The purring stops.
“Smoky!” Lyra cries, startled as the cat springs past her head and runs from the room.
“He's scared because you are,” Robin chides with a pouty look. “He can tell.”
He never had a pet, it was all he could do taking care of himself, he snaps back. He feels accused. Judged. He takes deep breaths. Can barely look at her for fear of losing it. He should leave, but doesn't. Can't. His scalp shrinks on his skull. The frantic cartoon voices pitch higher, shriller, faster. He can't think straight. Can't stand being turned on like this.
“Not having a mother, I can't imagine it.” Her eyes fill up, blind to his agitation.
“Your mother, she doesn't like me.”
“It's not you,” she says, with a shrug, and leans closer. “It's me. My judgment. Or lack thereof,” she laughs.
“Meaning me, right?”
“No!” She laughs. “Eddie! Why would you say that?” She touches his arm. “Eddie?”
“I can tell, that's all.”
What began as rejection ends the way it must, whenever
the quest is meaningful. It is an obsession and he accepts it as such, not a flaw or illness to be defeated with padlocks and pills, but a strength. All he seeks in this jangled universe are connections. While others lose their way, puzzling over randomness, he easily recognizes patterns, linkages, preordained paths only the few, the gifted, ever find. Through perseverance.
Robin thinks their meeting happenstance. Serendipitous, she declares again. Her blonde hair is pulled loosely back. Stray wisps frame her face. Like a teenager with her turned-up nose and legs tucked under her. An athletic teenager. She is running again and works out every morning in her friend's home gym. Her slender fingers sift absently through her daughter's fine, pale hair. Lyra wears silky pink Cinderella pajamas and sits on the floor in front of her mother. The child is beautiful. She was there when he found her mother. On the playground. Easy enough. Everyone in town knows Robin Gendron. He watched from the car a few times, watched her hang from the monkey bars to make the little girl laugh. Even in the bitter cold she wore sandals and a bulky sweater, no coat. She dresses Lyra the same way. Skirts, bare legs, that day, a thin red cotton jacket. They're never cold. And never apart, she tells him. Clay is another matter. Sports or out with friends, her son is seldom here. It bothers her, but she tries to understand. It's his age, rebellion, part of growing up. He won't listen to anyone. Bob's no help. Clay can't stand his father's drinking. In a way, it's almost like not having one, a father he respects, anyway. That's when she wishes he doesn't come back. Bob, she means. He barely speaks to Lyra. Her sweet baby girl.
There is something on television now about 9/11. Black smoke pouring from the Twin Towers. All those poor people killed, it makes her cry. Every time she thinks of it, the husbands who never came home, the babies who'll never know their daddies. Even though she can't afford it, she sent a hundred dollars to the Republican Party. She doesn't like the war in Iraq, but Americans should stick together and support their president through these dangerous times, don't you think? she asks him. Everything ends with asking, caring what he thinks. Really? Don't you? she adds. Yes, he replies. Of course, he agrees, thinks so, if only just to continue watching her hypnotic mouth and the little pink dart of her tongue. George Bush, he's a good man in a crazy world, she insists as if arguing with an unseen presence. He's caught in a situation beyond his control. Some things just take time, that's all, time to work themselves out. Poor George, he reminds her of someone, she says, an old friend, decent, upbeat, misunderstood. Sighing, she stares at the flashing screen.
“Scattered!” she announces. “That's what my mother called me. All over the place. Because I told her about last night. Valerie.”
Valerie is the old crone she met in the supermarket. They were in the same checkout line, chatting easily, the way people do with Robin. “That looks good,” Robin remarked of the old woman's Lean Cuisine Oriental chicken and rice, moving along the black mat. The old woman said Robin should try it sometime. It was delicious and going to be her dinner that night. Naturally, Robin insisted she come home with her instead, for spaghetti and meatballs. Eddie arrived at the tail end of dinner, annoyed to find someone else there, invited, instead of him. Robin's eyes were red. She had already had three good cries, hearing about Valerie's husband's long and painful ordeal with cancer, then the funeral nobody came to, not even his own four children who weren't hers, though she'd helped raise the last one, a girl with a club foot. Granted, he'd been a hard man to live with, demanding. “But for no one to come. To not even care how I'm doing,” Valerie said, shaking her head. “I'm not over it yet.”
“Well, we care,” Robin said, putting her arm over the stout woman's blocky shoulders. “We care very much, Valerie.”
And as much as he didn't want to, he found himself offered up to drive Valerie home. Everything about her repulsed him. The yellow tennis balls jammed onto the legs of her walker, the way her teeth clicked, the food stains on her pink nylon shirt, the unwashed sourness of her clothes. He enjoyed her glassy-eyed fear in the mirror when he wouldn't answer her. Why should he talk, she was lucky to be getting a ride home. In her rush to get out of his car, her grocery bag spilled open. Cans rolled along the slushy sidewalk in front of her building in the elderly housing project. She was still picking them up as he drove away. I'm sorry, he'll say if it comes up. Wish I'd known. She's lucky he didn't shove her stinking carcass out of his car, which bothers him that he's still driving it, that is. Shouldn't be so careless. He's had it too long. Mostly, he keeps it in a secluded spot behind the Monserrat, the seedy motel off the highway. Again last night the morose manager put a note under his door telling him to park out front. The back lot is for deliveries. He knows he should get another car, one that can't be traced, but he likes the heated seats and Bose speakers, now even the Céline Dion CD. One more hassle in a life of hassles. Eddie's getting tired of hassles.
They are watching SpongeBob SquarePants. When it's over Lyra has to go to bed, Robin says on her way into the kitchen.
“You mind your mother now,” he warns quietly, but the child ignores him. She and her mother share a private universe. Even her brother is excluded. Clay plays varsity basketball and tonight's an away game in Abbeyton. He wanted his mother to go, but she said it was too late for Lyra, who is still up. The boy isn't home much, but when he is he's sullen and rude. Yesterday Robin made him apologize when he muttered, “Yeah, right,” after Eddie talked about playing pro basketball in Greece years ago. Like his grandmother, the boy is a distraction. But a minor one as long as Eddie has plenty of money and the company of a beautiful woman.
With the barrage of popping comes the smell of hot buttery popcorn. He hasn't felt this content in years. From here he watches her moving around the kitchen. She removes the steaming bag from the microwave. She empties it into a large red and white striped bowl, then carries it into the family room. She sits back down and pats the other cushion for Lyra to climb onto so they can share the popcorn. Lyra giggles every time a squid hiccups. Robin laughs too and nuzzles the top of the child's head. Robin knows all the characters' names. As the credits roll mother and daughter sing the theme song.
Agitated, Eddie checks his watch. Almost nine. Yet another cartoon. Lyra eats her popcorn one kernel at a time. She wipes her nose on her sleeve. Jesus. Her snot is running green. Usually Robin lets her fall asleep down here, then carries her up to bed. Otherwise, she has to lie down with Lyra. A bad habit, Robin admits, but it's the only way she can fall asleep now. He asks how far away Abbeyton is. He'd like some time alone with her. Not too far, she says. Ten or twelve miles. This reminds her of something. She frowns. His brother, she says, did he call him yet? He looks at her. Blankly. A beat. Then remembers. The troubled brother in California, his dead wives. He can't remember his name, though, but it's different this time; he doesn't always have to be on guard. Her easy acceptance and infectious enthusiasm bring out the best in him. She is so positive about everyone and everything, as quick to laugh as she is moved to tears, that he can almost believe he has a brother. He did call, he says, but no one answered.
“Maybe he's in the hospital again,” she says.
“Maybe.” He slips his arm over the back of the couch, his fingertips so near her shoulder he can feel her heat.
“I don't know,” she sighs. “This is Bob's fourth rehab. The problem is, it's always about something else. First, was to keep his job. Then, because of me—my ultimatum: what's it gonna be, drinking or me? Catchy, huh? I like that.” She tilts her head from side to side in silent rhythm. “Maybe we could do that, an Al-Anon theme song. Anyway.” Sighing, she stares dismally at the television.
Now he remembers. Woody, the invented brother, short for Woodruff Yeah. Poor Woody, born that way, same as him, too intense. Sensitive. He knows what people are thinking without them saying a word. Like right now, she wants to tell him something. He can feel it, something important. She has yet to discuss her affair with him. Every time he mentions running into her that night with Hammond, she goes silent. For a
ll her openness, that is the one subject off limits.
Lyra sneezes and snuggles closer to her mother. Robin pulls a tattered plaid throw from the arm of the couch and covers her with it. Lyra coughs, a deep, tight cough. “You feel all right, baby?” Robin murmurs, laying her cheek against Lyra's brow.
“My head hurts,” Lyra whines, then lies down with her head in her mother's lap, her knees to her chin. She is asleep in minutes.
Smiling, Robin continues stroking her face, her love for this child so intense that he stirs with anger. If she cares too much, what will be left for him? Her kindness to others leaves him feeling bereft, deprived. He offers to carry Lyra upstairs. She's fine right here, Robin says, stroking her forehead.
“No!” he says, and Robin looks at him, startled. “She should be in her own bed. It's so late.”
“I know. You're right. It's me. I just love having her near,” she says, picking her up. The child's limbs dangle from her mother's arms and her head hangs back, limply. Lifeless, he thinks with a rush, watching her being carried away.
The phone rings. Robin's voice. He stands at the bottom of the stairs, but can't make out what she's saying. It's him. The boyfriend. Ken. He knows by her tone. Tender, intimate, a voice in the dark, in bed, fucking. His throat burns.
She returns, frowning. She thinks Lyra has a temperature but can't bear waking her up. Lyra hates taking medicine. She gags on everything, poor baby. Her voice quavers as she picks up a large plastic doll-house and carries it across the room. She walks carefully but the furniture inside rattles as she sets it down on the hearth.
“Or maybe it's me. I'm such a bad mother,” she sighs, looking back at the stairs.
The Last Secret Page 17