Secret Lives (19 page)

“I don't see why.”

“You want to know what ended my marriage and
you have a right to know before we…before things go any further
between us."

She shook her head. “I've thought about it,
Ben. I don't see why I need to know anything at all about your
past, except what you'd like to tell me. I'm the one who should be
talking seriously to you. You have to realize that I live in a
different world, and I'll be returning to it at the end of the
summer.” She had a sudden image of Michael and Nina in her living
room in Santa Monica, talking loudly, pushing her, pulling her, and
felt a distinct wave of nausea. “Whatever happens between us this
summer will have to end.”

She couldn't read his face. Then he gave a
little nod, a small smile. “Okay. But if you change your mind,
about wanting to know, or”—a broader smile now—”about wanting it to
end when the summer's over, let me know.”

He leaned forward for one small, quick kiss.
Then he got into the truck and pulled her hand in through the
window. “Tell Lou she better not drink any more of that brandy. And
tell her I love her.” He cupped all ten of his fingers around her
hand. “It's supposed to rain again tomorrow. Would you like to do
something? Take a drive? Go to some used-book stores?”

She was suddenly aware of danger, hanging
like a scent in the air, mixing with the honeysuckle. Her cavalier
speech about leaving at the end of summer might have convinced him
but not herself. She shook her head quickly. “No thanks," she said.
"I've got to work on the screenplay.”

Lou was alone in the bedroom when Eden poked
her head in the door. “I just wanted to make sure you're all
right.”

“Come in, dear.” Lou patted the edge of the
bed. Her color was back. She was propped up by two pillows and she
held a hardcover book in her lap. Her hair was loose and hung thick
and straight over the shoulders of her pale yellow nightgown. Out
of its bun, her hair gave her the appearance of a wise old
sage.

Eden sat down on the bed. “You look much
better.”

Lou took her hand. “I feel like such an old
fool when I do things like that. Forgetting to lock the wheelchair.
You'd think after all these years it'd be second nature. It's my
brain that's the problem, Eden, not my leg.”

Eden held Lou's hand as Ben had just held
hers, her fingers cupping Lou's protectively. “I know you're trying
to ease my guilt about your leg. But you can't. My guilt is here to
stay. I'll take it to the grave with me.”

Lou stared at her. She can't believe I'm
talking about it, Eden thought. “Ben said to tell you he loves
you,” she added. “And I do too.”

Kyle suddenly stepped into the room and Eden
looked up to see his surprise at finding her there, holding Lou's
hand. “I'm interrupting something,” he said.

“We were just having a little chat,” Lou
said. Her blue eyes had misted over and she blinked to clear them.
She smiled at Eden and squeezed her hand.

Kyle stood near the bed, his hands on his
hips. “I haven't heard Ben laugh that much in years,” he said.

Lou nodded. “And I don't think I've ever seen
that look on your face before, Eden.”

“What look?” she asked.

“That hungry look.” Kyle answered for his
wife, and he and Lou both laughed.

Eden felt the color in her cheeks. “Was it
that obvious?”

“Yes, but it's also obvious Ben shares your
feelings,” Lou said.

Kyle let out a great sigh. “I don't want
anything to do with wrecking whatever's making the two of you
happy. You're both adults. I'm not going to say another word about
Ben to you."

She was surprised that his words brought her
no relief. She felt a little deserted.

Kyle looked down at his wife. “How’re you
doing?”

“I'm fine.” Lou sounded very sure of
herself.

Kyle leaned over and set his hands on Lou's
shoulders. He bent low to kiss her lips, and Eden got to her feet.
She'd seen affection between her aunt and uncle before, but it had
never jarred her in quite this way. This last week had forced her
to see Kyle as something other than the solid, simple-hearted man
she had always assumed him to be. He was something else, your
uncle. He had at one time been an impassioned lover. Perhaps he
still was.

She knew by the way Lou looked at him when he
pulled away from her that they were still lovers—that tonight Lou
would find solace from the evening's trials in his embrace.

–
19–

The next morning was rainy, as promised. Ben
looked at his watch. Seven-thirty. Seven-thirty on a Saturday
morning. He remembered Saturday mornings long ago, getting up to
find Bliss parked in front of the television, a bowl of cereal in
her lap, watching cartoons. Why hadn't he thought of that before?
She might be the only person up this early.

He reached for the phone and set it next to
him on the bed. He took a minute to think this through because he
suddenly felt his chances of having her answer were very good. She
would answer and...what if he spoke to her? He could just say he
loved her, he hadn't forgotten her. She had to be confused about
his disappearance. How had they explained it to her? He could
say…But that would be the end, wouldn't it, if he spoke to her?
What would they do to him? Jail again? Maybe just a warning? It
would be worth a warning. He dialed the number. His pulse throbbed
somewhere in his gut.

Someone answered and he sat up in the bed. He
heard a metallic click, the static of a tape beginning to play.

The number you have reached has been changed
to an unlisted number.

He called again to be certain he'd heard
correctly. He had.

He lay down. He was completely cut off from
her now. The final blow. It hadn't been much—calling a number,
imagining she was in the next room when Sharon answered—but it was
all he had. And now he didn't even have that.

If anyone had asked him during the last five
years what was most important to him, he would not have had to stop
and search for an answer. Nothing—not his career, not his
reputation, not his friends, and although he would have balked at
having to admit it, not even his marriage—could compare to his
attachment to Bliss. He himself had wondered if he was too
attached. If anything happened to her he was not certain how he
would cope with the loss.

The pleasure he took in Bliss had come as a
surprise. He and Sharon had both been absorbed by their careers
when they first married, and he'd been comfortable with that
arrangement. When Sharon suggested a baby he'd felt indifferent to
the idea.

“I have to travel too much,” he told her.

“I understand that,” Sharon had said. “And I
won't expect you to do half the work. You can be one of those
daddies who come home on weekends to do all the fun stuff while I
wipe runny noses and teach manners.”

So they went into childbearing with that
agreement, but something changed. He was first aware of the shift
in his feelings during Sharon's pregnancy. Every time he returned
from a trip, her body had changed again. Her emotions peaked and
plummeted, and he felt guilty that he was not with her during the
low times and left out when she described feeling the baby move in
her belly late at night. He knew she was careful about telling him
these things. She had made a bargain with him that she wanted to
honor. Still, she was overjoyed when he decided to leave the field
for a while and teach so he could be closer to home. He took the
job at the university just before Bliss was born.

If anything, the bargain they had struck with
one another was the antithesis of what actually happened. With his
schedule at the university Ben had more time at home with Bliss
than Sharon did. (Yes, they brought this out during the trial,
pointing out to the jury just how much time alone he had with his
daughter, how he had deliberately arranged his work so as to have
that time with her.) Sharon took on more work for herself at the
private high school where she taught, as her comfort grew with
Ben's ability to care for Bliss. (She blamed herself later. “Did I
push you into it, Ben? I mean, maybe you had those leanings, but if
I had been there more often you never would have acted on them.”)
It was usually Ben who took off work when Bliss was sick. It was
Ben who cooked for her, fed her, bathed her. (“Indeed,” the
prosecuting attorney had said, “your wife was absent from the home
much of the time and your little girl was all the company you had.
She, in essence, took your wife's place, did she not?”)

He was a lousy disciplinarian. Everything
Bliss did struck him as endearing. When he did reprimand her he
could barely keep the smile off his lips. And she knew. It
infuriated Sharon. “She'll be running wild by the time she's a
teenager if you let her get away with everything now,” she'd said.
But he saw no point in getting on Bliss's case over every little
thing she did wrong. Save the lectures for the big stuff. The fact
was, she never required much discipline around him. She'd often
throw tantrums for Sharon, who would turn her over her knee for a
spanking, a practice he found barbaric. This was all drawn out of
him and Sharon during the trial. Picked apart. How he treated Bliss
more like an adult than a child. That was ludicrous, he said. He
took care of her, protected her. He just refused to talk down to
her. Sometimes the lawyers tried to turn this whole thing into a
war between him and Sharon. It was not that. He was not angry with
Sharon, only hurt that she wouldn't believe him. He defended her
when his own attorney tried to paint the picture of her as an
absent, ineffectual mother. And Sharon never, not once, said an
incriminating thing about him. But in the courtroom both her words
and his were twisted and distorted to the extent that they began to
see each other as enemies. Even if he had been cleared he didn't
think their marriage could have survived the beating it took in
that courtroom.

Ben began dialing the phone again. This phone
had become his lifeline in the last six months. His brother
answered on the second ring.

“Did I wake you?” Ben asked.

“Not completely,” Sam said. “What's up?”

“Did Sharon have her number changed?”

“Yeah. Jeff insisted. Are you the one who's
been calling?”

“Occasionally. Not enough for him to get
steamed about.”

“He gets steamed pretty easily when you're
the topic of conversation. Real self-righteous asshole.”

“I know you're saying that to make me feel
good, but it doesn't work. My daughter's living with him, remember?
I'd like to think he's half decent.”

Sam laughed. “Yeah, okay, I'll give him that.
He's half decent.”

“Listen, I want to tell you something but you
have to keep it quiet. Is Jen right there?”

“No. She's gardening.”

“I'm seeing…well, sort of seeing, Eden
Riley.”

“What? What do you mean, sort of seeing? Is
she visiting Kyle? Does she know any—?”

Ben smiled. “Slow down. She's visiting Kyle
for the summer because she wants to do a film about her mother and
needs to do some research. So I've seen her a few times.”

“Define 'seen'?”

“Gone out with. Talked with. Kissed.”

“Shit, Ben, you dog!” Sam laughed. “Eden
Riley! What about her boyfriend, what's-his-name, that guy she was
giving it to in her last movie?”

“I don't think she's particularly enamored by
him. Besides, this is just a brief, summer sort of thing.” He had
to keep reminding himself of that.

“Does she know about Bliss?”

“She knows there's a problem. She doesn't
know what, and she doesn't seem to care.”

“The woman's made for you. Is she as prissy
as her image?”

“No, I wouldn't call her prissy at all.” He
remembered the hungry pressure of her hips against his last night,
and his penis sprang to life beneath the sheet. He laughed. “She's
having an effect on me.”

“Well, hallelujah. Go for it, bro. Just…I
mean, I hate to inject a serious note here, but don't get screwed,
okay? For my sake if not for yours? I don't think I can handle any
more of your traumas.”

“Not a word to anyone, Sam. Not even
Jen.”

He felt courageous after talking to Sam. So
much so that he called Eden to ask her if she'd changed her mind
about doing something today. He wanted to drive to Belhurst to buy
dollhouse furniture for Kim Parrish's birthday. She'd love to go,
Eden said, and for some reason he wasn't surprised at her change of
heart. She'd been up for hours, she said, and had made a good start
on the screenplay. But Kyle had just handed her another notebook
and she wanted to read for a while. Would eleven be too late?

Eleven would be fine.

He got out of bed, put on his shorts and
running shoes, and left his cabin for a good long run in the
rain.

–
20–

March 7, 1945

Last week Matt's mother developed pneumonia
and Tuesday she died. Matt blames himself because he thinks he
should have gotten her to the hospital sooner, but the doctor told
him it wouldn't have made any difference.

He asked me to come to his house last night
to help him straighten up. There was not much to do but I think he
just didn't want to be there alone when he went through his mama's
things.

His mama had taken to reading magazines as
she lay in bed, so I sat on the sofa in the living room trying to
read Life, but feeling real nervous at being in the house of a dead
woman. Matt was in her room sorting through her things, but I
couldn't go in her room at all.

After a while he came into the living room
and sat next to me on the sofa and I knew he'd been crying. Matt
cries very easily. “I'd like you to have this,” he said, pressing
something into my hand. It was an oval-shaped pendant, painted
white with a purple flower in the middle. It's the most beautiful
thing I ever saw. “She wore it a lot and it always reminded me of
you, because it's just one flower, all by itself.” He lifted it
from my hand and fastened it around my neck and he was close enough
that I could see the dark stubble from the last time he shaved.
Then he suddenly leaned down to kiss me on the lips and I quickly
turned my head away.