Best Kept Secret (10 page)

Some part of me knew she was right, but I couldn’t get away from the idea of tracking him down. I just wanted to talk with him.
I wanted to understand why he went away. Was I so horrible a baby that once he found out Jess was on the way, he couldn’t fathom another one like me? He was the only one who could answer my questions; my mother didn’t like to talk about him.

One afternoon while Jess was napping, I snuck into our mother’s room to look for any information I could find about the man who had fathered us. My mother’s room was strictly off-limits when she wasn’t home, so stepping inside was as thrilling as it was terrifying. I half expected flashing lights and a siren to sound when I passed over the threshold, but there was only the sun slicing through the Venetian blinds, casting thin shards of light onto her plush beige carpet. The walls were painted a dark red—conducive, she said, to good luck and restful sleep. Her dresser was tall and black with six wide drawers I was certain would contain some hint of my father’s existence.

I opened the bottom drawer where I knew my mother kept our birth certificates and report cards. Digging through a file marked “private,” it didn’t take long to find a yellowed scrap of paper with his name and a phone number. Why she had kept it, I wasn’t sure. Maybe she planned to wait until we were older to help us find him. I didn’t have that kind of patience.

“Jacob Miller,” I breathed, rubbing the piece of paper between my fingers. “Dad.”

I quickly copied the information into the notebook I’d brought with me and slipped the scrap back where it belonged. A glance at the clock told me I had two hours until my mom was due home—plenty of time to make the call.

I walked over to the side of my mom’s bed where the phone was. I sat down, careful not to disturb the perfect edges of her poppy red, silk-brocade comforter. I felt my heartbeat pounding in my head, so I took a few deep breaths to try to calm down before picking up the receiver and dialing.
He might not be home,
I told myself.
He might not even be at this number.

I punched in the number slowly, holding each button down a tad longer than was necessary. It rang three times before a man picked up. “Hello?” he said. His voice was soft, quieter than I had imagined it would be.

I couldn’t speak. I swallowed once, then twice, trying to moisten the insides of my mouth.

“Hello?” he said again.

“Is this Jacob Miller?” I finally managed to creak. I cleared my throat.

“Yes, who’s this?”

“I . . . um, it’s Cadence. I live in Seattle. With Sharon Mitchell?”

He didn’t answer for a minute, and I didn’t know what else to say. I opened the single drawer on my mother’s nightstand, then slammed it shut. Her lamp wobbled.

“Can I help you with something?” he finally asked. His tone was guarded.

“No, no,” I said. “I just thought . . . well, you know. That I might get to know you a little.”

He exhaled softly. “Oh, Cadence. I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Oh,” I said, probably a little too loudly. “Okay.”

“I’m just not set up for this kind of thing. You understand.”

What kind of “thing” was talking to your daughter?
I wanted to ask. But instead, I coughed and said, “Sure. I understand.”

“Take care,” he said, and I heard the dial tone in my ear before I could say good-bye.

I stared at the receiver before setting it back in its cradle. My father wasn’t interested in knowing me. The muscles in my throat thickened, and tears pricked the back of my eyes. I smoothed my mother’s comforter and went back to the bedroom I shared with Jessica, tossing my notebook to the floor. She was awake then, and sitting on the edge of her bed. Her usually smooth, straight brown hair was mussed from sleep. “Are you okay?” she asked.

I threw myself onto my bed, facedown in my pillow, and didn’t
answer. I didn’t want to tell her what I’d done. The ache I felt was like a boulder on my chest. Before the call I at least had the fantasy of my father. I could imagine him showing up unexpectedly, unable to stay away from me a moment longer. Now there was no doubt—I knew exactly what kind of man he was.

“Fine then, don’t talk to me,” Jess said, then went downstairs to watch TV. A while later, the bedroom door opened and my mother flipped on the light.

“What’s going on?” my mother asked. “Jess says you’re sulking.”

“I’m not sulking,” I said to the wall. “I’m just tired.”

“She said you called your father today.”

“What?” I flipped over and looked at her. She was still in the light blue scrubs she wore to work and her long brown hair was as smooth as when she left the house that morning.

My mother nodded. “She said she listened at the door while you called him from my room.”

“She’s so nosy!” I said, spitting out the words. “She needs to learn to mind her own business.”

“Come on, now. Don’t be mad at her. I would have seen it on the phone bill anyway.”

I started to cry. “He didn’t want to talk to me.”

She came over and sat next to me on the bed. “And this surprises you? I’ve told you a hundred times he wasn’t cut out to be a father. Outside of giving me you two girls, he was the worst decision I ever made.” She pushed the hair back from her face, tucking it behind her ears.

“I just thought . . .” I blubbered. “I thought if he heard my voice . . .” I trailed off, unable to go on through my tears.

“You thought if he heard your voice he’d suddenly want to get to know you? An orchestra would swell in the background and he’d miraculously realize what he’s missing?”

I nodded, sobbing and wiping my eyes with the back of my hand.

My mother sighed. “That’s not the way life works, Cadence. People are going to let you down. I’m sorry you’re hurt, but it’s an important lesson to learn. You’ll get over it. I did.” She patted my leg. “Now, why don’t you come downstairs and have dinner with us? I brought home Chinese.”

That was the end of the discussion. She didn’t want to know what he had said, or how it had made me feel. I heard countless versions of this same lecture from my mother over the years.
Buck up, Cadence. Push forward. Don’t let anyone see you upset.

“If you’re unhappy,” my mother told me if I bemoaned the circumstances of my life, “it’s up to you to do something to change it. The only thing complaining will get you is an invitation to leave the room.”

“But
Mom
. . .” I’d begin. All I wanted was a little sympathy. I wanted the kind of mother who at least once in a while would pull me into her soft embrace, feed me homemade chocolate-chip cookies, and assure me everything would be okay. I didn’t think that was too much to ask.

What I had was the kind of mother who worked sixty hours a week and held up her hand to cut me off midwhine. “Uh-uh-uh,” she said. “No buts about it. If you want to succeed, you need to figure out what needs to change and change it. I’m happy to listen to whatever solutions you come up with.”

“Everything’s so
easy
for Jess,” I told her at the beginning of my sophomore year in high school. It was a Saturday and my mother and I were sitting together in our living room. “It’s not fair. She’s only a freshman and she’s already a cheerleader. Everyone just automatically
likes
her.”

“That’s because she makes an effort,” my mother said, looking up from the magazine in her lap. “She reaches out to people. It’s not her fault you have trouble making friends.”

“I didn’t
say
it was her fault.”

She cocked her head, raised her eyebrows, and gave me a pointed
stare. “Please watch your tone with me, young lady. And jealousy doesn’t become you.”

“I’m
not
jealous.” I sighed, crossed my arms over my chest, and flopped back against the couch. That wasn’t true, and my mother knew it. Just the week before, I’d been grounded for mixing a dollop of Bengay into my sister’s moisturizer, wanting her to think she had some strange muscular disease that caused her pretty face to go numb.

“You can’t just sit back and wait for things to happen for you, Cadence,” my mother said. “You have to make them happen.”

I didn’t know how to explain that I didn’t feel like I fit in with the other kids in my class; how every conversation I tried to start felt stilted and forced. It was as though everyone else had been given a handbook on how to be cool except for me.

“I don’t know what else I can do,” I said. “I’m not into sports and I’m too fat to be a cheerleader.”

“You are not fat. You’re voluptuous, like my mother.” She looked thoughtful for a moment, then lifted a single finger into the air. “I know. You should join the school paper. You like to write. It would look great on your college applications, too.”

I did join the paper, and while at first it was only to get my mother off my back about taking charge of my life, I soon found I was good at writing profile pieces on the new biology teacher or articles exposing the astronomical calorie content in our cafeteria’s lunch menu. Becoming the editor of my high school paper didn’t help me win any popularity contests, but it did give me a reason to talk with people who used to ignore me. After a while, given an appropriate subject, I learned how to fake conversation despite any insecurity I felt. My mother was right about college, too—along with my 4.0 grade point average, my work on the paper won me a full-ride journalism scholarship to the University of Washington. And once I was there, I did what I always strove to do—I tried to make my mother proud.

*   *   *

Charlie is unbuckled and racing toward my sister’s front door before I manage to turn off the engine. He looks back at me and waves before disappearing through the entryway. I love how he pushes the door open, knowing he is welcome, knowing he is safe.

I step out of my car, and Jess pokes her dark head out of the kitchen window on the side of her house. She and her husband, Derek, chose this broken-down Craftsman-style home in the north Seattle Wallingford neighborhood for its early twentieth-century charm, figuring they could fix it up and flip it for a quick and painless profit. Two months into living there during renovations, Jess found out she was pregnant with the twins and fell permanently in love with the slightly sloping original hardwoods, the coved ceilings, and built-in, beveled-glass cabinets. Derek, her partner not only in life but in their successful real-estate brokerage firm, soon gave in to her desire to stay. Not that he had much of a choice in the matter. Saying no to Jess was like saying no to breathing. You really didn’t have the option.

“Hey!” she hollers. She may be a tiny thing, but the girl has got a set of lungs on her. They served her well in her cheerleading days.

“Hey,” I say, and wave back at her. “The munchkin has already invaded.”

“I know. He’s hugging my legs as we speak.”

I smile. Such an affectionate boy, my Charlie. Possibly having something to do with the amount of hugs and kisses I smothered him with from the moment he was born.

“Get your butt in here,” Jess commands. “Natalie is playing with the twins downstairs.” She pulls back inside. I smile again, thinking how lucky Jess is to have Natalie, a thirteen-year-old neighbor girl who is thrilled to be paid a mere six dollars an hour for her babysitting services.

Within minutes, Jess and I are sitting at her kitchen table. Two steaming mugs of coffee, creamy with half-and-half, sit before us. My sister is what I would look like if I lost fifty pounds and shrunk three
inches: the dream of willowy and petite versus the reality of short and substantial. She is one of those sleek, Gap-ad-type mothers who appear to have a personal makeup artist dwelling in their bathrooms, who arrive at their children’s preschool in hip, chunky black boots and immaculate flat-front khakis, looking like they’ve just been to the spa for a massage. She is the kind of mother who always baffled me. The kind of mother I always wanted to be.

Natalie and all three boys are in the basement-turned-recreation-room, a space built specifically with well-padded surfaces and filled with countless toys. Charlie loves being the big boy, teaching, leading, and telling his younger cousins what to do. He’ll be busy for an hour, at least, especially with Natalie there to help sort out any conflict. Part of me wants to not let him leave me. I want to snatch him up, hold him in my lap, squeeze him, smell him, and kiss his soft cheeks. The other part is happy for this momentary reprieve; my encounter with Alice has drained me. Wrapping both my hands around the warmth of my coffee mug, I exhale deeply, lift my chin toward the ceiling, and close my eyes.

“That bad?” my sister inquires.

“Yes.” I hold my position. Avoiding eye contact with her is the best way to keep her from seeing what is going on with me.

“How’d it go with Alice?” She will not let it be.

I shrug, lower my chin, and open my eyes, only to see her take an enormous bite of the lemon-cream cheese Danish she set out with the coffee. She says something else, but it comes out muffled—along with a few crumbs of pastry—as she tries to chew.

“Nice manners. Mom would be proud.”

Her mouth still full, she widens her blue eyes, purses her lips, then flips me off.

“Ooo, nice manicure, too!”

Jess finishes chewing, takes a sip of her coffee, and admires her nails. “Thanks. I just got them done last night.” She holds up the Danish. “You should have one of these.”

I eye one—the biggest, of course—thick and gooey with bright yellow and creamy white sweetness. I sigh. “No, I shouldn’t. My ass is spreading like butter just looking at them.”

She pushes the plate toward me. “You had to give up booze, for Christ’s sake. Have a damn Danish.”

She has a point. I grab the one I want and take a small bite, letting it melt on my tongue. I fully intend to eat only half of it. Two minutes later, I’ve devoured the entire thing. “Mmm. God, I hate you,” I say.

Jess pulls her chin into her neck, perfectly plucked eyebrows raised. “What did I do?”

“You won the genetic lottery. You never exercise, eat like a horse, and don’t gain an ounce. You suck.”

“Whatever. You have multiple orgasms.”