SECRET Revealed

by L. Marie Adeline

  Inside my little apartment, I stripped on the way to the bathroom, turned on the shower, stepped in and let the hot water hit my skin. I stayed like that for a long time, forehead against the tiles, not able to feel my tears. I must have scalded my skin a little because when I finally got out, it hurt to dry off. As I was throwing my hair in a towel, my phone rang in the next room.

  Maybe it was Will and this was all a big misunderstanding and he was on his way over because while unloading the Cassie’s sign, all he could think about was how much he loved me. Or it was Jesse checking up on me while a beautiful girl lay napping next to him. When call display showed it was Matilda, I felt relief before I even heard the sound of her calm voice.

  “Cassie, you’ve been on my mind all day. How are you doing?”

  I told her everything, recounting what Will had said last night, today and what he had decided going forward. Matilda sighed deeply. There was a longer than usual pause before she began to speak.

  “This is not an indictment of Will, Cassie, but some men still don’t believe that a woman’s sexual appetite can be as important to satisfy as theirs. Or they don’t believe a woman’s sex life can or should be as varied, complex and interesting. Which baffles me, because, I mean, who are these men having sex with?”

  I wasn’t in the mood for sexual politics or a long discussion about Will’s chauvinism or the dreaded double standard.

  “I get all that, Matilda. But the thing is, my heart’s just busted,” I said, letting more tears flow. “I love him. And he doesn’t love me anymore.”

  She let me blubber for a few moments.

  “I wouldn’t be too sure of that.”

  “Then what do I do?”

  “Nothing. And I sure hope you didn’t apologize, because you’ve done nothing wrong. Your sexual history is your business. Your stint in S.E.C.R.E.T. would have benefited him. It’s his loss, Cassie.”

  “So I do nothing?”

  “Well, do what I always suggest you do when you’re in pain. Get on with living your life as best you can. And remember he’s just a man, a human being. Don’t let this stall your great progress. Get on with things. See what happens. Live your life.”

  “I don’t know what to do with myself right now.”

  “The Committee could use your help.”

  I had quit S.E.C.R.E.T. a month ago when I chose to pursue a relationship with Will. And though I had been happy to leave, a part of me missed the camaraderie, the sheer fun I had with those women, let alone the men. But another part of me was mad at S.E.C.R.E.T.; I hadn’t yet reconciled my past in the organization with my present dilemma.

  I stalled. “There’s a new candidate?”

  “Not yet,” she said, “but I met someone intriguing at the charity event last night.”

  “Who?”

  “I haven’t approached her yet. But Jesse’s rejoined, so I’m sure that—”

  “Jesse’s back in S.E.C.R.E.T.?” Why did this slightly sicken me?

  “Yes, he is.”

  “When did that happen? I thought he quit too.”

  “He did. But then he was also feeling at loose ends after you two ended it, and he decided to come back to a place that gave him comfort and distraction and a little joy. S.E.C.R.E.T. helped you get over lost love, didn’t it?”

  “It did.”

  “And it can help you again, if you let it. Besides, this is our last go-around. I’m afraid we’ve run out of money, and after our next candidate S.E.C.R.E.T. must shut its doors.”

  I glanced around my tiny attic apartment in the Spinster Hotel and at Dixie now lazily pawing dust motes in the sun.

  “I don’t have much to give,” I said.

  “Think about it,” Matilda advised. “Meanwhile, don’t quit a good job over a bad relationship. Never give any man that much power. There are opportunities buried in all this heartbreak. You just have to look for them.”

  SOLANGE

  I had spent that lazy Sunday morning with the papers, sipping coffee in bed while Gus lay splayed at my feet, playing video games, something I never let him do on my TV. I even joined him for a round of Wii Tennis.

  “You’re holding the thing wrong,” he said, adjusting my paddle. “But that’s okay. Everybody does it different.”

  What can I say? We lost track of time, something I don’t normally do, so when noon rolled around I found myself tearing through my closet, plucking shoes and blouses and throwing them on my bed in a big colorful pile. I was late! Again!

  The news network had scheduled our billboard photos that afternoon, citing that appointment as the only one the fancy new photographer had available. I was bitter about having to work on a Sunday, even though posing for pictures was hardly the most difficult part of my job. Luckily the shoot was in the Warehouse District where Julius lived, so I planned to drop off Gus on the way. Julius offered to keep him overnight and take him to school the next day, something I usually balked at. But this time I let him do a little extra. Why not? I told myself. He wants to. Let him.

  In the weeks that followed that sexy afternoon with the handyman, I’d slacked off more than I had my whole life. Now and again I’d get lost in a daydream, but the kind that happened to my whole body, not just in my head. I also caught myself strutting, walking the halls and edit suites at the TV station like there was a pulsing, sexy soundtrack playing in my head. My heels clacked, my hips swayed. I felt a new sense of rhythm taking root in my body, a feeling I remembered from my singing days in college.

  I found myself in elevators, alone, holding on to the rail behind me, singing to myself, rocking slightly while I flashed back to the tub, the water, the steam, the sweaty wineglass, the suds dripping down Dominic’s arms and thighs, my arms and thighs. Good lord. I’d had good sex, and I was to have more sex, any time now, an idea that filled me with tingly anticipation. Best part? I didn’t have to work for it. I didn’t have to primp and flirt; I didn’t have to endure agonizing dates or jeopardize my public reputation; and I didn’t have to court rejection. Most important, I didn’t have to introduce anyone new to my son. This was just for me, the Formidable Solange Faraday—

  “Mom! You’re gonna be late.” It was Gus puncturing another daydream.

  “Almost ready, baby!” I said, taking a fistful of blouses out of my closet and throwing them on the bed.

  The Warehouse District was one of my favorite neighborhoods in New Orleans. I’d always thought that after Gus went off to college (assuming he didn’t go to Loyola or Tulane), I’d sell the house and move into some kind of cool loft, but Julius beat me to it. Four years ago, he renovated a twenty-five-hundred-square-foot space on the fourth floor of an old rope factory. At first I was worried that there was no yard or green space where Gus could play. Then I worried about big windows with old sashes, the kind that can come crashing down on a curious child’s little body. But I got over my fears when I saw what Julius had built in that wide-open space: an indoor jungle gym with climbing ropes and mats. Plus the place was big enough that Gus could actually learn how to cycle upright on a bike, indoors. After conquering circles on the floor of his dad’s loft, Gus felt confident enough to take to the bike paths in the park. I was grateful Julius had done the hard part of running behind the bike at a clip before launching him. My job was now to walk behind him clutching my sweater, yelling at him to be careful.

  I surveyed the pile of clothes on my bed. Jewel tones and bright colors look best on camera, so my closet looked like a storage locker for UN flags. I had to come up with six looks for the staged and awkward group shot of the network’s four anchors, Jeff, Tad, Bill Rink, the weather guy (and resident asshole), Marsha Lang, and me.

  Marsha was the network’s star, and also my mentor and friend. As the first female African-American news anchor in New Orleans, she had won a Peabody for her editorials on Anita Hill’s testimony in the Clarence Thomas hearings. But she was well into her sixties now, and claimed to be hearing the clock tick on her career. But far from treati
ng me like her competition, she took me under her wing and considered me her successor.

  Every year I wore a black skirt and black heels, from which I had no less than eleven pairs to choose, all varying heights and toe curves, some rounded, some pointed, each with a purpose. The four-inch stilettos were for when I anchored at the glass-bottomed weekend desk, the three-inch platforms for my stand-ups in front of official buildings, and the two-inch heels with the rounded toes for running after indicted members of city council or the Louisiana state legislature.

  “Mom!” Gus said again.

  “Listen, guy, I know!” I yelled back. “Why don’t you come help me pick out my clothes for work pictures?”

  Why was he so worried about my being late? He was an anxious kid. Was it because of the divorce? Julius said he had been like that as a kid, which I found a little comforting. But one of Gus’s teachers once said he was a “too-serious little boy,” to which I replied, “What does that even mean? Maybe that’s just his character.”

  But that fear of being a “bad mother” was always there, hovering in the wings of motherhood, a show everyone watched and felt entitled to comment on.

  Gus poked his head into my room. “You said noon and it’s, like, quarter to.”

  The last time Julius took him for a haircut, the barber had cut it too short. It was just starting to grow out and was still unsure of what it wanted to be. An afro? Something more stylized, as his crowd became more sophisticated, more attuned to pop culture and all its awful, wonderful influences? I’d leave that to Julius to sort out.

  “What do you think?” I asked, holding up the red blouse with the bow next to the low-cut gold one.

  “Um, the red, I think.”

  “But I wore red last year.”

  “Then the gold,” he said, his words edged with his dad’s impatience.

  “I’ll bring all of them,” I said, throwing a dozen tops into a zippered wardrobe bag, followed by a few pairs of black shoes.

  “I’ll carry it down,” he said.

  “It’s heavy.”

  “It’s fine,” he said, hefting it over his shoulder.

  Damn, the back of my ten-year-old boy’s neck could still make my heart hurt, it was so vulnerable, so thin and bony. I imagined it coiled with muscle, strong enough to hold not just a wardrobe bag, but a head full of the thoughts and worries typical of the average young black man in this city. But those worries were nothing compared to his parents’, I thought. Nothing.

  When I pulled up in front of Julius’s loft, Gus sprang out of my car, yelling over his shoulder, “Bye, Mom.” Used to be I covered his somber face in a thousand kisses before letting him go. But he was beginning to push back, and I had to let him. He wasn’t a tickle-monster anymore, and I couldn’t remember the last time he absently grabbed my hand in the street. Contemplating my boy growing up could put me in a day-long funk, so I shook it off and sped away.

  The photographer’s loft was only two blocks away, but you could tell from its tinted windows and Art Deco–styled double doors that this building was a next-level posh conversion. This was the first time the network had veered from using its regular commercial photographer. They’d hired a guy named Erik Bando, an award-winning portrait photographer who also worked for National Geographic. Marsha and I had Googled his photos a week before the shoot and we were both impressed. She thought it was a sign that the affiliate was upping its game; we were currently third in the local ratings.

  “Not sure how edgy photos will fix our ratings,” I said.

  “Ours is not to question why,” she replied. “Ours is only to pose and smile.”

  A cool, blond assistant with big, red glasses greeted me in the lobby of the photographer’s building and took my wardrobe bag from my hands.

  “I’m sorry I’m late,” I said.

  “Oh, don’t worry, you have all day,” she said, punching the elevator button.

  I looked at her. “Really? I thought I was scheduled for three hours.”

  “Well, I mean, you can … take your time.”

  Okay then. On the ride up, she was quiet, staring straight ahead.

  At the top, the doors slid open to a spectacular studio, twice the size of Julius’s. This was at least five thousand square feet of exposed brick and wide plank floors. Most of the walls were painted white, with small partitions carving out thematic spaces like a maze, some areas with wide, low-slung couches, some with large colorful backdrops suspended from the ceiling and unspooling to the floor. I could hear a buzz of activity in the brightly lit corner where a green-screen backdrop lay near the wall-to-wall windows. Along the outside walls were photos of bleakly beautiful landscapes, and of the awful things war does to places and people, shot after riveting shot, and a few stunning nature panoramas that no doubt required death-defying feats to capture.

  The same blond now directed my attention away from the pictures to an empty director’s chair next to where another makeup artist seemed to be fussing with Marsha’s foundation. I took the vacant seat.

  “Afternoon, my dear,” Marsha said without looking up from her smart phone. “Have you heard? Apparently Madonna has been outfitted with a set of ‘grillz.’ Also she is learning how to ‘booty pop,’ whatever the hell that is.”

  Marsha proffered a screenshot of the pop star’s gold mouth accessory.

  “I see. Well … now that it’s big with middle-aged white women, at least Gus isn’t going to want one.”

  She smiled, placing her glasses on her face.

  “Well, I’m off,” she said, pushing up from her chair. “See you tomorrow.”

  “Wait! I thought … aren’t we getting our pictures done together? Where’s Jeff and Tad? Where the hell’s Rink?”

  “Came and went. The beauty of Photoshop. We don’t have to pose together to look like one big happy news family.”

  “Aren’t we?”

  “Sure,” she said with a wink.

  “Have you seen Erik’s work on that back wall?” I said. “Take a look on the way out. Astounding images.”

  “I know. But have you see Erik?” Marsha muttered, nodding towards where a powerfully built man, easily six foot four inches tall, stood talking to his blond assistant.

  “Um. That didn’t come up in our Google searches,” I whispered, noting his wavy brown hair, almost the same color as his skin. From across the room, you could also see his rock-climber forearms flinching as he carefully polished a large, round lens.

  “Born in Kenya. Dad was a half-Japanese, half-Swiss diplomat; mom was some kind of African princess. Big scandal. Grew up in Paris,” Marsha whispered, peering at him over the top of her glasses. “Never married. Placed fifth in the ’98 Olympics. Biathlon. That is the sport where you ski, my dear, with a fucking gun. He represented Switzerland.”

  “How did you find all that out?”

  “He spent the better part of last winter documenting border skirmishes in Northern Afghanistan. Those pictures on the wall? They were nominated for a Pulitzer. He speaks Farsi. Oh, and he’s a Leo.”

  “Bet he never guessed you’re a journalist.”

  “God, if I were twenty years younger. Hell, ten.”

  “Marsha! Are you objectifying this man?”

  “I am.”

  “But that’s against everything you stand for.”

  “Yes. Right up against everything I stand for,” she said, softly cackling. Then she turned to me. “Do you know what happens, Solange, to your sense of propriety after you turn sixty?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Neither do I, and I do not care to know. Well, good night then. And try the canapés. They’re delicious.”

  The blond assistant slid a glass of champagne into my hand. “Here you go. To relax you.”

  “No thanks,” I said, carefully placing the glass back on the makeup table. “I’m already relaxed.”

  Marsha looked at the champagne and then at me. “Oh, I could weep,” she said before kissing me on the cheek good-bye
. She turned on her heel and made her exit.

  “Let me introduce you to Erik,” said the blond assistant, leading me by the elbow across the room, the remaining assistants giving the impression of seas parting as I entered Erik’s orbit.

  “Erik, this is Solange Faraday. The weekend anchor.”

  He was directing a gaffer high up on a ladder, the muscles in his arms tensing, his voice commanding and deep.

  “To the left and down. I want the spotlight right … there … where the screen creases on the floor.”

  “If this isn’t a good time—” I said to him.

  “Nonsense,” he said, turning to face me, looking me up and down. “It’s an honor to meet you.”

  Good lord, my breath actually caught in my lungs. Up close he was like an African/​Asian/​Nordic god, and though I hated the term exotic, I couldn’t think of another way to describe his almond-shaped, gray-flecked eyes, his thick wavy brown hair, his crooked, bratty smile, his brown skin, which looked partly genetic and partly the result of some death-defying adventure that took him way too close to the sun. He was closer to my age than I’d thought at first, something I found a huge relief, though I don’t know why it mattered. When did I start doing that? Comparing men’s ages with mine? After I turned forty? After I stopped feeling noticed by anyone under forty?

  “Hello. Um, so … where can I change?” I asked, turning into a schoolgirl. Next to this man, I felt almost petite, delicate even. Pull yourself together, Solange! You’ve done important, dangerous reportage too.

  “Use my bedroom.” He pointed to a door flush with a large white wall.

  “You live here?” I asked, surprised.

  “I sleep here,” he corrected. He was smiling again, showing one chipped front tooth, the kind of offhand flaw I’d always found terribly sexy. I felt my face heat up.