Secret Lives

by Diane Chamberlain

  “Sure, silly. Aunt Lou rides in a wheelchair.”

  “Great, that's right. You have a good memory.” She pointed Cassie in the direction of the bathroom. “Come on, let's get dressed and go down to breakfast.”

  The table in the kitchen was set for four and laden with pancakes and blueberries, fresh-squeezed orange juice, and wedges of cantaloupe. Cassie had seen Lou and Kyle only three times in her life—two brief visits in New York and once last year in California. Eden imagined that the visit last year could be the only one clear in Cassie's memory. Cassie had been distressed by Lou's missing leg, which she'd searched for under the furniture and in the closets, making Eden extremely uncomfortable, although Lou herself seemed amused.

  Once Cassie was born, the obligatory visits with Lou and Kyle became more tolerable. Cassie provided the entertainment, something for the four adults to focus on other than the strain that existed between them. Now at the breakfast table Eden knew this would be the case once again. The tension that had filled the house since she'd learned Kyle was her father floated high above them, too high to be much of a threat. It lost its charge with Cassie in the room. Eden felt it up there, a good, safe distance above her.

  Cassie seemed to have adjusted easily to the overnight upheaval in her life. She was her usual, unshy self, fully aware of her ability to charm. She relished being the center of attention, and Lou and Kyle made an appreciative audience. She babbled about her month in Pennsylvania, April and Lindy, the swimming pool, and Stuart, the plump gray kitten. She was an expressive child, her face a mirror for her words, and Eden watched her from a new perspective—one born of a month's deprivation.

  Lou leaned close to Eden. “She's going to be an actress for sure."

  Eden felt deflated by the idea. Wearing the mask was not the life she would choose for her daughter.

  Cassie looked up at the shelf above the sink. “What's that?” she asked, her eyes so huge that the whites showed all around the nearly black irises.

  Eden looked up to see a ceramic plate in the shape of a flounder.

  “It's a serving plate for fish,” Lou said.

  “Why, it's exquisite,” Cassie said and they all laughed. She was definitely on this morning.

  “I was hoping that you and I could go fishing one day while you're here,” Kyle said.

  Eden had a sudden memory of Kyle taking her fishing. She must have been no more than Cassie's age, and she remembered sitting with him on the bank of the Shenandoah, the fishing line damp and taut beneath her fingers.

  “Today?” Cassie asked.

  “That's up to your mother.” Kyle looked at Eden.

  Eden had wanted Cassie to herself today, but they would have plenty of time together over the next few weeks. “That would be fine,” she said.

  “Hooray!” Cassie raised herself to her knees to dig deeper into her cantaloupe.

  “How do you feel about worms?” Kyle asked.

  “Oh, worms, yummy, I love them.” She giggled ridiculously.

  “That's good,” Kyle said. “If we don't catch any fish we can eat the worms for supper.”

  Cassie rolled her eyes. “Silly.

  Kyle took Cassie out to the shed to find a pole she could manage, and with her daughter's departure Eden felt the tension drop from the ceiling to her shoulders.

  “He used to take you fishing,” Lou said. “Do you remember?”

  Eden stood up and began clearing the table. “No. Not really.”

  Lou set her napkin on the table. “How long are you going to stay angry with us?”

  Eden turned from the sink to look at her aunt. “You ask that question as though it's something I have control over, as though I can choose my emotions.”

  “It's eating away at Kyle,” Lou said quietly.

  “He seems fine to me.” Eden faced the sink again and turned on the faucet full force. The hot water spiked against the frying pan in the sink, blocking out any other sound in the room, anything Lou might have left to say. From the corner of her eye Eden watched Lou stack the plates on the edge of the table and then slowly wheel her chair toward the door. And only when the handles of the chair had disappeared into the living room did she turn the water off. Suds filled the sink to the rim; the hot water burned her hands and wrists. She pressed one soapy fist to her mouth. Damn. She was not handling this well. She was acting like an adolescent, like herself at seventeen.

  Only she'd been tougher as a teenager. A puny little scene like this would never have been enough to make her cry.

  There were catfish for dinner that night, breaded and pan-fried and, at Cassie's insistence, served on the flounder platter.

  “Uncle Kyle caught the big ones and I caught the little one,” Cassie said. Eden had never seen Cassie eat fish and she watched as her daughter struggled gamely to get some of it down. She managed two mouthfuls before requesting a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

  Cassie had come home exhausted after her morning with Kyle. Her shorts were wet, her arms and cheeks were streaked with dirt, and a layer of black grime was embedded beneath her fingernails. She smelled of fish and worms, earth and river. Smells that filled the tiny upstairs bathroom as Eden ran water for her bath, that hung in the air an hour later when she cleaned the tub. Smells of Eden's own childhood that she couldn't shake, that left her with a painful mixture of comfort and yearning. But the smell she longed to remember most was missing. The cavern. She couldn't remember, couldn't even begin to conjure up the texture and scent of the air in the cave.

  Now as she slipped a bone out of the catfish on her plate she looked at Kyle. “How did the cave smell?” she asked.

  Kyle raised his eyes from his plate. “Like a tomb,” he said bluntly, closing the subject with the tone of his voice, and she knew all at once that he was angry with her too.

  The following day she and Cassie returned from a matinee at the Coolbrook theater to find Ben sitting at the kitchen table. She wasn't surprised to see him there. They had spoken the night before and decided that at some point today he would come over. Yet after two days of not seeing him her immediate reaction was visceral—a rush of adrenaline, a fire low in her gut—as if he were an alluring stranger she'd caught a glimpse of on the street. She smiled at her response, at the satisfying knowledge that this stranger was hers.

  He was drinking apple juice and reading the newspaper, and he didn't stand when they walked in. Instead he stayed in the chair, at Cassie's level, and Eden thought how smart he was, how accustomed to a child.

  “Cassie, this is a friend of mine, Ben,” Eden said.

  Cassie leaned hard against Eden's leg, looking at Ben from beneath a furrowed brow. She'd acted this way when she first met Michael, too, sizing him up, holding back. She'd never really warmed to Michael.

  “I heard there was a kitten over here and I wanted to meet it,” Ben said.

  Cassie eyed him suspiciously.

  “Does it belong to you, Eden?” Ben asked, his gray eyes innocent.

  “It's mine,” Cassie said.

  “Can I see it?”

  Cassie ran off in the direction of the living room and Ben smiled up at Eden. “She's great,” he said.

  Eden leaned over to kiss him. “I miss you.”

  Cassie returned with the kitten cuddled in her arms. She handed it to Ben, the guard in her eyes lifting a little. “Is it a boy or a girl?” Ben asked.

  “A boy. His name is Stuart.”

  “Stuart?” Ben's eyes were amused. “He looks very well cared for.”

  “He is.” Cassie told him about Stuart's diet and how she cleaned the poop out of his litter box every day. Stuart stretched out his fat little body, his rear paws on Ben's thigh, his front paws kneading the shirt above Ben's ribs. Eden was jealous of the cat.

  Cassie edged nearer to Ben until she was close enough to scratch Stuart's head. She was on a roll now, telling Ben about the vitamins cats require, how to prevent fur balls, the merits of various forms of flea control products. Eden had no id
ea Cassie knew about such things. Ben asked questions and listened closely to her answers. He didn't tease, didn't talk down to her, and Cassie swelled with pride at being taken seriously by this man who had an insatiable curiosity about cat care.

  Ben kept his visit short, but the next afternoon he invited Eden and Cassie up to his cabin, and it was then that he won Cassie over completely. Cassie was awestruck by the dollhouse. “It's for me?” she said, her eyes wide. She had to be wondering why this stranger would give her something so resplendent. She walked in a circle around the yellow and blue Victorian house where it rested on the table. “It's exquisite,” she breathed. Ben, hearing her use this word for the first time, laughed with pleasure.

  They took her to the dollhouse store in Belhurst to buy dolls for the house. She selected a tiny woman in a housedress, a clean-cut man with a briefcase, and two little blond girls. Eden gave her the money to pay the cashier, and she and Ben waited at the door while Cassie made her purchase.

  “Do you think she sees that mother doll as me or Pam?” she asked.

  “She probably just sees it as a mother doll.”

  As they walked back to the truck Ben took Eden's hand. Cassie plowed between them, grabbing their hands and pulling them apart. “Don't hold his hand, Mommy,” she said.

  “Why not?” Eden asked. “I like holding his hand.”

  “‘Cause he's not Daddy. You're only allowed to hold Daddy's hand.” She watched Eden carefully for another few steps and when she was satisfied her mother was not going to take Ben's hand again, she ran on ahead of them, rubber-soled heels flashing behind her. Ben looked at Eden with raised eyebrows.

  “I'd better have a talk with her,” Eden said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “You'd better if you ever want to hold my hand again.”

  “That's not all I want to hold.”

  He groaned. “Don't talk dirty to me when you can't follow through.” He put his arm around her but dropped it quickly. “Are we ever going to make love again?”

  “God, I hope so.”

  That was the only drawback to having Cassie with her: there was no place, no time to be alone with Ben.

  Eden began checking into day care for Cassie for the fall. Maggie DeMarco, Sara Jane Miller's younger daughter, ran a small program out of her home. Eden and Cassie spent an afternoon with Maggie and her little girls, and Cassie was thrilled beyond measure at being around other children. She used to prefer the company of adults, but Eden could see the difference the month with April and Lindy had made. Eden herself felt comfortable with Maggie, who treated her like any other mother. She seemed neither impressed nor intimidated at having Eden Riley in her house. Maggie had that lazy, almost bored smile that Eden remembered from their meeting at Sara Jane's apartment. She looked like a woman whose nerves never frayed.

  “You know,” Maggie said over a glass of iced tea, “that time at my mother's was not the first time we've met. You and I were buddies when we were little, before your mother died. I don't remember it, but that's what my mother says.”

  Eden was stunned. “I didn't think I had any playmates at all back then.”

  Maggie shrugged. “I couldn't swear to it, but Mama claims it's true.”

  Eden signed Cassie up to start day care in September. Maggie said she'd be happy to take her for the rest of the summer, but Eden wasn't ready to give Cassie up just yet.

  Besides, Cassie was being well entertained at home. She helped Lou bake cookies and pies, and Kyle set up a little music stand she could use as an easel right next to Lou's easel. Cassie loved slapping the paint on her “canvas,” although her short attention span hardly allowed for the production of great art.

  In the evenings she sat on Kyle's lap while he read her The Lazy Lizard or Soup for Seven, and Eden watched them, feeling once more that eerie nostalgia. Surely he'd once read to her that way, with her nestled in his arms, his bearded cheek resting against her temple. She could very nearly remember it.

  She took Cassie to the site on a couple of mornings, and Ben buried arrowheads for her to dig up. He'd treat her discoveries with great sobriety, pretending to chart them and telling her about the people who'd made them thousands of years ago. What Cassie understood of his explanations Eden wasn't sure. But she'd listen with complete attention and take great care with her little artifacts.

  By the end of that week Eden and Ben could hold hands without protest from Cassie. Cassie liked Ben, but liking Ben came with a little confusion and guilt. She would occasionally parrot things Eden had said to her, suddenly, out of context. Once she looked up from a book Kyle was reading her to say, “It's perfectly okay that I like Ben,” and Kyle, masking his surprise, said, “Sure it is, honey. You can like anyone you want.”

  One night Ben bought a giant bubble wand, and he and Cassie spent most of the evening blowing huge iridescent bubbles that floated and bounced on the hot air of the cabin. Eden sat on the bed, watching Ben create bubbles the size of beach balls, then bubbles inside bubbles. Cassie giggled and screamed and begged for more. Suddenly she ran up to Ben where he sat on the sofa. She set her hands on his knees and looked him squarely in the eye.

  “My daddy is always going to be my daddy,” she said, letting him know that all this fun could never change that fact.

  “Oh, yes,” Ben said, his face very serious. “He absolutely is."

  When Cassie finally tired of chasing bubbles, Eden laid her down on the bed, on top of the blue-and-white quilt, and joined Ben on the sofa.

  “She's an extremely precocious kid,” Ben said.

  “Is that an insult or a compliment?”

  “In this case, a compliment. I wish Bliss had more of Cassie's spunk. Cassie's very sure of herself. I can't imagine anyone ever hurting her and her not telling. Have you talked to her about it? Good touching and bad touching and all that?”

  “Yes. She has a book about it, though it's in Santa Monica. I don't know how often you have to reinforce that kind of message. I don't want to make her paranoid.”

  “I think you can't reinforce it enough, but then my whole perspective on the subject is skewed. Sharon and I talked to Bliss any number of times, but apparently we screwed up somewhere along the way. We told her if anyone hurt her to come to us, never to keep it a secret no matter what that person told her. And still she didn't tell. I think it was because she was so convinced it was me. If I told her to keep it a secret, of course she would. If you can't trust your own dad, who can you trust?”

  He would have moments like these from time to time, when Eden could feel him sinking, when his arm around her shoulders felt like lead. But they were becoming less frequent, less extreme, and she knew having Cassie around gave him more pleasure than pain.

  She and Ben spent little time these days with Kyle and Lou. The pleasure the four of them had experienced together only a few weeks earlier—the tramposo, the easy conversations—had died a sudden death. Eden knew she was the only person who could lift the pall that had settled over Lynch Hollow, but she had no intention of doing so. She was content to let Cassie take responsibility for lightening the mood.

  She missed the sexual side of her relationship with Ben more than she would have guessed. For over a year she had not cared about sex and had had no difficulty turning it down when it was offered to her, but that was before she met Ben, before her body had grown accustomed to the solid feel of him next to her in his narrow bed. She was all right when she wasn't around him, but seeing him without being able to hold him felt like a cruel sort of punishment. She didn't feel free to show him physical affection in front of Cassie, and he agreed it would be premature. One evening when he was leaving the house at Lynch Hollow, he took Eden in his arms to kiss her but pulled away abruptly when Cassie walked in the room.

  “‘Bye,” he said instead of a kiss and, with a doleful smile on his forbidden lips, walked out the door.

  Lou, who had witnessed the scene and must have read the frustration in Eden's face, said, “Now you have the tiniest
sense of how your mother felt.”

  “What do you mean?” Eden asked.

  “Being in love with someone you can't touch.”

  Eden scowled. “Stop it, Lou. There's no comparison.”

  But that night she lay in bed feeling renewed sympathy for her mother. Kate had loved a man as deeply as a woman could. She'd had him just once, and then suffered the pain of knowing she could never have him again.

  The following day Kyle suggested they visit the caverns in Luray. She had been intending to go to the caverns since the day she arrived, but as she got Cassie ready for the forty-minute drive she felt apprehensive and knew why she'd been putting off the trip. She had not been in a cave since the day of her mother's death. No matter how lightly she had spoken of the cavern while working on the screenplay, she could not deny her uneasiness at the thought of stepping inside a limestone cave.

  Lou said she wanted to stay home to paint, but as Eden climbed down the never-ending steps into the caverns she knew that Lou had not mentioned the real reason for not coming along: the caverns were not equipped for a wheelchair.

  Once down in the bowels of the cavern, surrounded on all sides by curtains of stalactites and the cool, damp air, Eden felt trapped. The air seemed thin; she found herself breathing faster to pull in more oxygen. Her heart pounded against her ribs. Their guide was giving them his well-rehearsed talk about the cauliflower-shaped quartz deposits, the one hundred and twenty years it took for an inch of calcite to form on the stalactites, the blind albino shrimp that lived in the quiet pools of the caverns. How long had he said this tour would last? She craned her neck to see the way out of this massive cave.

  “I can't see, Mommy,” Cassie whined from somewhere in the region of Eden's hipbone.

  “Come here, Cass.” Ben bent down and picked Cassie up. He lifted her neatly onto his shoulders and she wrapped her hands around his forehead to hang on.

  They moved into the next cave, Eden forcing one foot in front of the next. Though the air was cool, she felt perspiration dampen the hair at her temples.