Public Secrets

by Nora Roberts

  passing the bottle back and forth. On the dented portable record player, Roy Orbison had been soaring with “Only the Lonely.” Johnno’s confession had come out with drunken weeping and wild threats of suicide.

  “I’m nothing, and I’ll never be nothing else. Living like a bleeding pig.” He’d guzzled whiskey. “My old man stinking up the room and Mum whining and nagging and never doing nothing to make it change. My sister’s working the streets and my little brother’s been arrested twice this month.”

  “It’s up to us to get out of it,” Brian said with boozy philosophy. With his eyes half closed he listened to Orbison. He wanted to sing like that, with that otherworldly melancholy. “We’ve got to make a difference for ourselves, Johnno. And we will.”

  “Difference. I can’t make it any different. Not unless I kill myself. Maybe I will. Maybe I’ll just do it and be done with it.”

  “What the bloody hell are you talking about?” Brian searched in their crumpled pack of Pall Malls and found one.

  “I’m queer.” Johnno dropped his head on his folded arms and wept.

  “Queer?” Brian paused with the match an inch from the tip of the cigarette. “Come on, Johnno. Don’t be daft.”

  “I said I’m queer.” His voice rose as he lifted his tear-stained, desperate face to Brian. “I like boys. I’m a freaking, flaming fag.”

  Though he was shaken, the drink was enough of a cushion to make him open-minded. “You sure?”

  “Why the bloody hell would I say it if I wasn’t sure? The only reason I could make it with Alice Ridgeway was because I was thinking of her brother.”

  Now that was disgusting, Brian thought, but kept his feelings to himself. They’d been friends for more than six years, had stood up for each other, lied for each other, had shared dreams and secrets. Brian struck another match, lit the cigarette, and pondered.

  “Well, I suppose if you’re made that way, then you’re made that way. Nothing to slit your wrists over.”

  “You’re not queer.”

  “No.” He fervently hoped not—and vowed to spend the next few weeks proving it to himself with every girl he could charm into spreading her legs. No, he wasn’t queer, he assured himself. The sexual acrobatics he’d experienced with Jane Palmer should have been a good indication of his preferences. Thinking of her, he hardened and shifted his legs. It wasn’t the time to get horny, but to think of Johnno’s problem.

  “Lots of people are queer,” he said. “Like literary people and artists and such. We’re musicians, so you could think of it as part of your creative soul.”

  “That’s shit,” Johnno mumbled, but wiped his dripping nose.

  “Maybe, but it’s better than slitting your wrists. I’d have to find a new partner.”

  With a ghost of a smile, Johnno picked up the bottle again. “Are we still partners, then?”

  “Sure.” Brian passed the cigarette. “As long as I don’t start making you hot and bothered.”

  And that had been the end of it.

  When Johnno took a lover, he took him discreetly, and never discussed it. His sexual preference was common knowledge within the band, but for his own privacy, and at Pete’s insistence, he cultivated an image of a heterosexual stud. For the most part, it amused him.

  There were regrets, though he hated to acknowledge them. It came to him now, as he bounced Emma on his lap, that he would never have a child of his own.

  And with frustration, he was forced to admit, as he watched Brian slip an arm around Bev, that the one man he truly loved would never be his lover.

  Chapter Five

  EMMA WAS DAZZLED by New York. After a late breakfast where Brian indulged her with strawberry jam and sugary pastries, she was left in Bev’s hands. It didn’t worry her, not this time. Her da was going to be on the telly that night, and he’d promised that she could go to the place where the telly pictures were made and watch.

  In the meantime, she and Bev drove around the city in the big white car. She giggled at the blond wig and big round sunglasses Bev wore. Though Bev didn’t smile much at first, Emma’s excitement soon distracted her. Emma liked watching the people rush along the sidewalks, jostling each other, streaming across intersections while horns blared. There were women in short skirts and high heels, their bouffant hairdos as steady as carved stones. There were others in denim and sandals, with their manes of hair hanging straight as rain down their backs. On the corners there were vendors selling hot dogs and soft drinks and ice cream which the pedestrians snapped up as the temperature soared outside the cool cocoon of the limo. There was a nervy aggression to the traffic that Emma didn’t understand but enjoyed.

  Unruffled, and proper in his tan uniform and stiff-brimmed hat, the driver pulled to the curb. He didn’t think much of music himself, unless it was Frank Sinatra or Rosemary Clooney, but he was sure his two teenagers would go wild when he brought them home autographs at the end of his two-day job.

  “Here we are, ma’am.”

  “Oh.” A little dazed, Bev stared out the window.

  “The Empire State Building,” he explained with a gesture toward the doors. “Would you like me to pick you up in an hour?”

  “An hour, yes.” Bev took Emma’s hand firmly in hers when the driver opened the door. “Come on, Emma. Devastation’s not going to the top alone.”

  There was a long, winding line, with wailing babies and whining children. They started at the end, two bodyguards silently falling in behind, and were soon swallowed up. A group of French students filed in seconds later, all carrying Macy’s shopping bags and talking in their fast, flowing language. Amid the mix of perfume, sweat, and wet diapers, Emma caught the dreamy aroma of pot. No one else seemed to notice or care. They were shuffled onto an elevator.

  Long, stuffy minutes later, they were led off to wait again. She didn’t mind. As long as her hand was firmly caught in Bev’s, she could crane her neck and look at all the people. Bald heads, floppy hats, scraggly beards. When her neck got tired, she switched to shoes. Rope sandals, shiny wing tips, snowy white sneakers, and black pumps. Some people shuffled their feet, others tapped, a few shifted from side to side, but hardly a one was still.

  When she grew tired of that, she just listened to the voices. She heard a group of girls arguing nearby. As teenagers, they had Emma’s immediate envy.

  “Stevie Nimmons is the cutest,” one of the girls insisted. “He’s got big brown eyes and that groovy moustache.”

  “Brian McAvoy,” another corrected. “He’s really fab.” To prove her point, she took a photo, cut from a fan magazine, out of her madras purse. A communal sigh went up as the girls crowded around it. “Every time I look at it, I just about die.”

  They squealed, were glared at, then muffled giggles with their hands.

  Both pleased and baffled, Emma looked up at Bev. “Those girls are talking about Da.”

  “Ssh.” Bev was amused enough to want to relay the story to Brian, but she was also aware that she was wearing the wig and sunglasses for a reason. “I know they are, but we have to keep who we are a secret.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ll explain later,” she said, relieved when their turn at the elevators arrived.

  Emma’s eyes widened when her ears popped as they had on the airplane. For a moment she was terrified that she would be sick again. She bit her lip, closed her eyes, and wished desperately for her da.

  She wished she hadn’t come. She wished she’d brought Charlie for comfort. And she prayed, as fervently as a three-year-old could, that she wouldn’t lose her wonderful breakfast all over her shiny new shoes.

  Then the doors opened, and the dreadful swaying motion stopped. Everyone was laughing and talking and crowding out. Obeying Bev’s tug on her hand, she kept close to her while still fighting the nausea.

  There was a big stand with shelves of bright souvenirs, and wide, wide windows where she could see the sky and the spread of buildings that was Manhattan. Dumbfounded, she stood still whi
le people swarmed around them. Sickness passed into wonder.

  “It’s something to see, isn’t it, Emma?”

  “Is it the world?”

  Though she was as amazed as Emma, she laughed. “No. Only a small part of it. Come on then, let’s go out.”

  The wind barreled over them, sending Emma’s skirts flying up as she staggered back. But the sensation excited rather than frightened as Bev, laughing again, plucked her up.

  “We’re on top of the world, Emma.”

  As they looked over the high wall, Emma felt her stomach do playful little leaps and bounces. It was all spread out below, the crisscross of streets in the canyons made by the buildings, the tiny cars and buses that looked like toys. Everything ran so straight and true.

  When Bev put a coin in a box, she looked through the telescope, but she preferred her own view, through her own eyes.

  “Can we live here?”

  Bev fiddled with the telescope until she focused on the Statue of Liberty. “Here, in New York?”

  “Here. On top.”

  “No one lives here, Emma.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s a tourist attraction,” she answered absently. “And one of the wonders of the world, I think. You can’t live in a wonder.”

  But Emma looked out over the high wall and thought that she could.

  THE TELEVISION STUDIO didn’t impress Emma. It didn’t look as pretty or as big as it did onscreen. The people were ordinary. She did like the cameras, though. They were big and bulky, and the people behind them seemed important. She wondered if looking through one of the cameras was like looking through the telescope on the Empire Sute Building.

  Before she could ask Bev, a skinny man began talking in a loud voice. It was the oddest American accent she’d heard yet. She couldn’t understand half of what he said, but she caught the word “Devastation.” Then came the explosion of screams.

  After the first shock, Emma stopped cringing into Bev’s skirts and leaned out. Though she didn’t understand the screaming, she realized it wasn’t a bad sound. It was a good, young noise that bulleted off the walls and slammed off the ceilings. It made her grin, though Bev’s hand trembled lightly in hers.

  She liked the way her father moved across the stage, prancing and strutting as his voice, strong and clear, merged with Johnno’s, then Stevie’s. His hair glowed gold under the bright lights. She was a child, and easily recognized magic.

  As long as she lived she would hold this picture in her mind, and her heart, of four young men standing onstage, drenched in light, in luck, and in music.

  THREE THOUSAND MILES away, Jane sat in her new flat. There was a pint of Gilbey’s and an ounce of Colombian Gold on the table beside her. She’d lit candles, dozens of them, using those and the drugs to mellow her mood. Brian’s clear tenor played on her stereo.

  She’d moved into Chelsea with the money she’d taken from Brian. There were young people there, musicians and poets and artists, and the ones who followed them. She thought she would find another Brian in Chelsea. An idealist with a beautiful face and clever hands.

  She could pop off to the pubs whenever she liked, listen to the music, pick out a likely companion for the night.

  She had a six-room flat with shiny new furniture in every room. Her closets bulged with clothes from fashionable boutiques. On her finger was a fat diamond ring she’d bought the week before when she’d been feeling blue. She was already bored with it.

  She had thought that one hundred thousand pounds was all the money in the world. She ran one hand down the silk robe she wore, pleased, very pleased with its sinuous feel. She’d soon discovered that large amounts were as easily spent as small ones. She still had enough to last her awhile, but it hadn’t taken long for her to realize she’d sold Emma cheap.

  He’d have paid twice as much, she thought as she nursed her gin. More than twice, no matter how much the bastard Pete had frowned and muttered. Brian had wanted Emma. He had a soft spot for children. She’d known it, but, she thought in disgust, hadn’t been clever enough to exploit it.

  A lousy twenty-five thousand a year. How was she supposed to live on that, she wondered.

  A little bleary with gin, she rolled a sloppy joint.

  She still took in a John now and then, but that was as much for the company as the extra cash. She’d had no idea she would miss Emma. As the weeks passed the concept of motherhood took on new, emotional meanings.

  She’d given birth. She’d changed nasty nappies. She’d spent her hard-earned money on food and clothes. Now the little brat probably didn’t remember she existed.

  She’d hire a solicitor. She’d hire the best with Brian’s money. There was justice in that. There wasn’t a court in the country that wouldn’t see that a child belonged with her mother. She’d get Emma back. Or better, she’d get twice as much money.

  Once she’d bled them a bit, Brian and his snotty new wife wouldn’t forget her. No one would forget her, not the stinking press, not the stupid public, or her own little brat.

  With this thought dangling in her mind, she brought out her cache of Methedrine and prepared to go flying.

  Chapter Six

  EMMA COULDN’T WAIT much longer. There was a nasty sleet falling outside, but she continued to press her face against the window to try to sec through it.

  They would be coming soon. Johnno had said so. She was wise enough to know that if she asked him how soon again he’d snarl at her. But she couldn’t wait. After her nose grew cold, she stepped back to dance from one foot to another. Her da was coming home, with Bev, and her new baby brother. Darren. Her brother’s name was Darren. She tried the name out to herself in a whisper. Just the sound of it made her smile.

  Nothing in her life had ever been so huge, so important as having a brother. He would be her own, and he would need her to tend to him, to look out for him. She’d been practicing for weeks and weeks on the dolls that now filled her room.

  She knew you had to hold their heads ever so carefully, or they fell way back and broke off. Sometimes babies woke in the middle of the night, crying for milk. She wouldn’t mind, Emma thought. She rubbed her own flat chest and wondered if Darren would find milk there.

  They hadn’t let her go to the hospital to see him. That had upset her so that for the first time since she had come to her new home, Emma had hidden in a closet. She was still angry about it, but she knew it mattered very little to adults if children were angry.

  Weary of standing, she sat on the window seat to pet Charlie and wait.

  She tried to think of other things. Her time in America. Humming to herself, Emma let herself picture all the things she’d seen. There had been the big silver arch in St. Louis. There had been the lake in Chicago that had seemed as big as the ocean to her. And Hollywood. She’d liked the big white sign, and remembering it, tried to picture all the letters.

  Her father had played at a huge theater there right outside. They had called it a bowl. She had thought that strange, but it had been run to listen to the cheers and screams rising on the open air.

  She’d celebrated her birthday, her third birthday, in Hollywood. Everyone had come to eat the white cake with the little silver balls on top.

  They had gotten into a plane almost every day. And every day it had scared her, but she’d been able to battle back the sickness. There had been a lot of people with them. Roadies her father called them. Which seemed silly since they were so often in the air, and not on any road at all.

  She’d liked the hotels best, with room service and new beds almost every night. She’d liked looking out the window at new places and new people every morning.

  With a yawn, she settled back with the dog snuggled under her arm.

  When they went to a hotel again, Darren could go with them. Everyone would love him.

  Watching the sleet made her sleepy. And she thought of Christmas. It had been the first she’d ever had with a stocking hanging from the mantel with her name on it
. Under the tree they had decorated had been stacks and stacks of presents. Toys and games and dolls in pretty dresses. They’d all played Snakes and Ladders in the afternoon. Even Stevie. He’d pretended to cheat to make her laugh, then had taken her on a screaming piggyback ride through the house.