Secret Lives (20 page)

“
Kate?” he said.

“
Don't do that.” I knew I needed to
explain my reaction to him, so I told him that I care about him,
that I even love him in a way. But I am not in love with him. I'm
not prudish, I said. I don't believe you have to be married to make
love, but I do believe you should at least be in love with the
person.

I told all this to Matt and he said, “I only
wanted to kiss you."

“
But if we kissed you might think I was
in love with you.”

“
Well, you've made it very clear you're
not.”

He looked sad and I felt terrible. I thought
Matt and I understood each other, that we were friends with neither
of us expecting more than that.

“
I'll walk you home,” he said.

“
I can go by myself,” I said. I wanted to
get out of that house. It had suddenly changed everything. Before I
set foot in it we were good friends, free to say anything to each
other, but now we couldn't look each other in the eye. I turned to
the door and suddenly he put his arms around me from
behind.

“
Kate.” He kissed my neck through my
hair. “Please don't leave me here alone.”

I held perfectly still and after a while he
let go of me, walked into his mother's room and closed the door
behind him. I left his house and ran back to the cavern, crying all
the way. Once I got there it took me a long, long time to catch my
breath.

Today I feel terrible. I woke up sick to my
stomach and I know it is because I hurt Matt. I should have hugged
him and comforted him, but I was afraid he would start trying to
kiss me again. Why did he have to try to get so close to me? He's
ruined our friendship. I wish Kyle were here to talk to about this
because I'm just not sure what to do.

March 12, 1945

Matt hasn't come to the cavern since before
his mama died. Next to Kyle, he is my dearest (and only) friend and
I have failed him terribly. I know he only wanted my comfort the
other night at his house, that he wasn't about to pressure me for
more, but I am so afraid of being close to another human being that
I had to get away from him. I keep thinking of what that night must
have been like for him, feeling left by his mother and turned away
by me.

Matt needs a better friend than I can be. He
deserves a better friend. Maybe I shouldn't let him come here
anymore. I should force him to go out and mix with other
people.

March 13, 1945

Matt came to the cavern last night, just as
I was writing in my journal. He walked in, sat down in the rocker,
and said: “Everything's got to be on your terms, Kate, doesn't
it?”

“
I don't know what you mean,” I
said.

He shook his head. “Never mind.”

I wanted to apologize, to tell him how much
I care about him and how sorry I am for hurting him. I tried to
find the right words but couldn't, so finally I handed him this
journal, opened to what I wrote yesterday, and let him read it.
There's no better way I could think of to let him know how I
feel.

I felt naked as he read it, more than I did
the night of the Christmas party when I opened my coat in his
car.

When he looked up, his eyes were wet. “I'm
not going to beg you to love me, Kate. But please don't tell me I
can't come here anymore. Let that be my choice.”

So we sat, and he read and I wrote, just
like nothing ever happened.

June 2, 1945

I graduated today and at the ceremony, Sara
Jane announced she is marrying Tommy Miller in July. I wrote as
gentle a letter as I could to Kyle.

August 14, 1945

Today the Japanese surrendered and we got
word Kyle is coming home!

August 21, 1945

I have bound up ten of the stories I typed
over this long year with a cover so it looks almost like a book for
Kyle to read. Only two days til he gets back. I also have the
arrowheads in a box to show him. I'm so excited that I can't sleep
at all and can barely eat enough to stay alive. Susanna and I are
buying all his favorite food, Matt bought him some new shirts, and
Daddy bought champagne!

August 23, 1945

I am so confused. Susanna and Daddy and Kyle
and Matt are all in the house celebrating Kyle's return and I am
here in the cave by myself. I feel more like crying than writing
and actually, I am doing both.

Kyle came home just a few hours ago, around
dusk. He was earlier than we expected and I was writing in the
cave, trying to keep busy to steady my nerves while I was waiting
for him. Suddenly I saw him silhouetted against the entrance to the
great room. He was still in uniform, tall and beautiful, and I felt
actual pain on the inside of my arms which I knew would only stop
once I wrapped them around him.

I jumped up and ran to him but he put his
arms out to stop my hug.

“
Damn it, Kate,” he said. “What the hell
are you still doing in this cave?”

I stopped in my tracks to try to make out
his expression but it was too dark. I thought he must be joking, so
I reached out my arms for him again and this time he grabbed my
arm.

“
You promised me you'd leave it,” he
said.

“
But I like to write here,” I said. I was
feeling guilty.

“
God, what is wrong with you? This is
crazy, Kate. Do you hear me? It's crazy! You're eighteen God damn
years old. You're a woman, for Christ's sake.” He picked up the
book of stories I'd bound for him and threw them across the cave
into the darkness. “Screw your writing!” he said.

He grabbed my shoulders then and for a terrible moment I
thought he was going to kill me, that maybe his military training
had gone haywire and he
couldn't stop killing and hurting. “I'm not the
enemy,” I said, scared as I've ever been in my life.

He let go of me so suddenly I nearly fell.
“I expected you to grow up this year,” he said, and then he turned
and left the cavern.

I waited, thinking he would calm down and
come back. When he didn't I crept through the dark forest to the
house, just close enough to see the four of them in the kitchen. I
wondered where Daddy and Susanna thought I was. I could see Kyle's
face clearly and he looks years older. We are both eighteen for
this month, but he is a man now. His chin has grown square and
solid and his face has nothing of a child left in it. I felt about
ten years old, standing there watching them. Finally I walked back
to the cave.

For the first time I can understand how a
person can feel empty enough to kill themselves. I pity my poor
mama and her sister for feeling this way so long.

August 24, 1945

I waited until the house was dark before I
went back last night. I considered spending the night in the cave
but I couldn't bear to be that far from Kyle, whether he wanted me
away from him or not. Everything was quiet as I tiptoed through the
kitchen and hallway, and when I reached our bedroom I discovered
Kyle was not in his bed. I went out in the parlor and there he was,
sleeping under a blanket on the sofa. I watched him for a minute
and then went to my own bed for a good cry.

I finally fell asleep and when I woke up it
was still dark out and Kyle was sitting on the edge of my bed,
holding my hand. When he saw my eyes were open he said, “I worry
about you, Katie. I'm sorry for the way I acted last night, but
what's made this last year bearable for me was thinking that you
were out and living a normal life like other girls your age. When I
saw you in that cave, I just…” He shook his head. “There's a world
out there, Kate. I have to get you away from here somehow.”

I felt like a burden to him. I sat up and
leaned against the wall. “You don't need to worry about me. I'm
content just as I am.”

He looked like he didn't believe me and
shifted on the bed so his back was against the wall too. He needs
some new pajamas. Those he was wearing are way too small for him
now.

“
Why are you sleeping in the parlor?” I
asked.

“
We can't sleep in the same room anymore.
Guys my age don't share a room with a sister. It's not
natural.”

“
That's crazy,” I said. “We've done it
all these years just fine.”

“
No, it's not right. It's not done. I'll
just stay on the sofa.”

I decided not to argue with him just then. I
figured in a few days he'd be back to his old self and in a more
normal state of mind. We talked awhile longer and then suddenly he
said, “Kate, do you realize I'm out a lot sooner than I'm supposed
to be?”

“
Well, the war's over,” I said.

“
Yes, but you don't just come home the
day after the war's over. I've been discharged. What they call a
medical discharge.”

My heart just about stopped beating. “Are
you hurt?” I asked.

He was rubbing my hand hard and slow, like
he was trying to work a cramp out of my fingers. “What I'm going to
tell you stays between you and me, right? You won't tell anyone?
Not even Matt?”

“
No,” I whispered.

“
They discharged me because I had a
breakdown.” He lowered his eyes and I didn't really understand what
he was saying, but I knew it shamed him.

“
What do you mean?”

“
You have no idea what it's like, Kate. I
killed people. The first time it was hard and then it got easier.
You start thinking it's either them or me and damned if it's going
to be me. It scares me, how easy it got. I started having
nightmares, about things I was seeing in the jungle, or sometimes
about Mama the night she…you know. The dreams got so bad they
finally sent me to the hospital, but I wasn't much better there.
Finally the army just figured a loon like me wasn't much use to
them and sent me home.”

“
I'm glad they did,” I said. “And you're
not a loon.”

“
I'm still afraid to go to sleep at
night,” he said.

I sat away from him. “Is that why you don't
want to sleep in here? Are you afraid you'll wake me with a
nightmare?”

He smiled, the first smile I've seen out of
him since he got home. “No. We're not sleeping in the same room
anymore and that's the last word on the subject.” Then his smile
was gone again. “The whole time I was in the hospital I thought of
you. All these doctors were trying to get me to talk to them and
looking at me like I was crazy and I was thinking there was only
one person in the world I could really tell anything to and who
would care about me whether I was crazy or not. I missed you so
much, Katie. I don't ever want to be that far away from you
again.”

“
Well, you're home now,” I said. “You're
safe. No place safer than Lynch Hollow.”

He went back to sleep in the parlor, against
my wishes, and this morning at breakfast he was smiling. He said it
was the first good night's sleep he'd had in months.

Eden found Kyle in the springhouse. She stood
quietly in the doorway for a moment, watching him. He sat with his
back to her, his head bowed under the circle of light from a desk
lamp, and she knew he was painting the tiny identification numbers
on fragments of pottery. Marked fragments covered the surfaces of
the three long wooden tables that nearly filled the tiny stone
springhouse.

“Kyle?”

The old wooden chair creaked as he turned to
face her. “Come in.” He motioned to a chair on the other side of
the nearest table.

She sat down. It was cool in the room, but
not so cool that she needed to hug her arms against her chest, as
she did now. He turned back to the desk and she watched his steady
hand as he finished painting the numbers on a fragment. The lamp
lit the silver frames of the glasses he wore for close-up work. She
waited until he looked up at her before she spoke.

“I didn't know about your discharge from the
army, Kyle.”

“No, not many people do.” He put down his
brush and pushed his chair a few inches from the desk. “I finally
told Matt about it a couple of weeks after I got back. Matt had a
way of making you feel sane even if you weren't. You could tell him
the craziest thing you'd ever done and he'd act like you were
talking about the weather. And I've told Lou, of course. But I
don't think there's anyone else who knows.”

“Do you want me to leave it out of the
film?”

Kyle laughed. “It's the kind of thing you're
ashamed of at eighteen, not sixty-four. I don't care who knows now,
but back then, I thought I was going crazy—that I'd inherited some
of my mother's loony genes.” He took off his glasses. “You know, on
the one hand I was angry with Kate for not leaving the cave. On the
other hand, I was jealous of her. Right then, I wanted to hide
away, not have to face what was going on in the world. But I was
supposed to be sane and stable. Kate could get away with holing
herself up in a cave. I couldn't.” He smiled at her and then
suddenly sat up straighter, his eyes at her throat. When he spoke
again his voice was soft. “I haven't seen that in a very long
time.”

Her fingers felt the pendant at her throat.
“It's the first time I've worn it.” She'd put it on just an hour
ago, when she'd read about her father giving it to her mother.

Kyle shuddered a little, picked up his
paintbrush again. “A little bit of a shock, seeing you in that. You
look so much like Kate to begin with.”

Eden lifted one of the larger pieces of
pottery from the table in front of her and felt the smooth surface
with her thumb. “Kyle,” she said. “I'd be more than happy to help
out with…I'm not sure how to say this. Please don't take offense.
But I'd like to help with the site. Financially, I mean."

He held the clay fragment closer to the light
and slipped on his glasses. “Thank you, honey, but that's not the
way I want this site to survive.”