The Language of Secrets (20 page)

“He was having this great time, helping me get the decorations up for the party,” Kati was saying. “Then when you didn’t come home at your usual time, he started getting antsy. He went all hyper and started asking me every two minutes, ‘Where’s Mommy? Where’s Mommy?’”

Kati came and sat close to Margaret. “And then when it started to rain really hard and get dark, he just took off; he was up the stairs and in his room so fast that I couldn’t even stop him. Then it started to happen … y’know, like he always does when he’s scared … that creepy song, over and over. I kept begging him to look at me and stay here with me and not go to that weird place he goes.” Kati’s eyes filled with tears. “But I couldn’t help him. Why can’t we stop him from going away like that, Maggie?”

Margaret kept one arm around TJ and reached for Kati with the other. “Oh Kati-bug, we do it every day. We’ve been doing it all along,” she whispered. “Remember how, at first, it used to happen all the time? Now things are so much better. This hasn’t happened for months and months.”

TJ’s breathing began to slow and his body became more pliant. Margaret lifted him into her lap and he rested his head in the curve at the base of her neck. “We’re going to keep this little boy so safe,” Margaret said. “And we are going to love him so much.”

Kati smoothed TJ’s hair, letting it fall across her fingertips as she finished Margaret’s thought: “… so much that, someday, he
won’t need to run away and hide in a place that’s not there. A place where nobody wants him.”

Margaret carried TJ toward the door. It was time to go downstairs. There were birthday wishes to be made, and candles to be lit, and a piano, whose size was five, to be played.

Ultimately, the birthday party had been a great success. TJ had opened to it in stages, like a flower to the morning sun. And, at the unveiling of his piano, he was overjoyed. He ran toward it, shouting: “Look, Mommy! Look! It’s just my size!”

When he positioned himself on the floor with his legs splayed on either side of the piano and danced his fingers across the keys, filling the house with swirling, disjointed music, Margaret slipped her arm around Kati’s waist and asked: “So what do you think, Kati-bug? Are we looking at a budding Beethoven?”

“I don’t know … I think maybe he looks more like that little guy in
Peanuts
. Charlie Brown’s pal, Schroeder.”

Margaret’s laugh was spontaneous and loud enough to catch TJ’s attention. He looked up from the piano, curious. “Why are you laughing so loud?”

“Because I’m very, very happy,” Margaret said.

TJ held her gaze. His eyes were lit with joy. “Me, too, Mommy. I’m very, very happy, too.”

Later, after Margaret had put TJ to bed, she stood for a while in the doorway of his room. There was a tightening in her throat as she saw, curled at the foot of the bed, the dog, keeping watch over her little boy, and, shimmering above them in midair, suspended from the ceiling on satin ribbons, a crescent moon and constellation of silver stars.

Margaret arrived downstairs to discover Kati gathering up crepe paper and balloons. Kati was apologetic: “Maggie, I don’t want you to think I forgot to get TJ a gift. It’s just that next to that
incredibly cool piano, my present might have been a little bit of a comedown. So I left it in the kitchen. Do you think you could give it to him for me, tomorrow, when you give him the roller skates?”

“Oh no, the skates! I forgot them at school. They’re still in my office.” Margaret was already crossing the room, preparing to take her purse and raincoat from the chair near the door. “Can you stay awhile longer, Kati? Just till I get back?”

“Maggie, I don’t think this is a good idea.” Kati followed Margaret to the door. “Listen to that rain, Maggie. It’s really coming down out there.”

“I’m just going to Middletown and back.” Margaret was rummaging in her purse for her keys. “I’ll creep along, I swear. But I have to go get his skates. I promised him we’d have pancakes tomorrow and then go to the rink so he can try roller-skating for the very first time, on his brand-new birthday skates.”

Kati saw that the car keys were dangling from an outside pocket on Margaret’s purse; she took them and held on to them. “So do it on some other day. What’s the big deal about tomorrow?”

“Don’t you know that you can’t break a promise to a little boy on his birthday? It’s against the law.” Margaret put her hand out for the keys.

Kati ignored her and continued to hold on to them. “What law?”

“The law that says the number of promises kept to us when we’re children is directly proportionate to the number of promises we keep as adults,” Margaret said. “And, someday, I want my son to hold the world record for promises kept.” Margaret took the keys from Kati and headed out the door. “I’ll be right back. I promise.”

Kati went to the door and called, “Maggie!”

All Kati could see of Margaret was a blur as she was running
toward the car through the downpour. The drumming of the rain was making it sound as if Margaret were already far away.

“Yes, Kati?”

“Did your parents keep all their promises to you?” The rain was thundering now, falling between them like a curtain. Margaret’s voice floated back to Kati out of the darkness. “Every last one of them, Kati-bug. They kept every last one of them.”

*

Margaret had made it to her office without incident. She had quickly retrieved TJ’s skates and then gotten back on the road. But now the storm was swiftly building in intensity and she was having difficulty seeing the lines on the highway and the signs at the side of it. The rain was sheeting, and the wind was hammering at the car like a battering ram. The noise was wild and fierce, and Margaret was worrying about TJ. She was praying that he wouldn’t awaken in this terrible storm and find his mother gone. What had seemed like a lighthearted impulse—the dash through the night for roller skates—was now beginning to feel like a dangerous miscalculation.

The light from her headlights was penetrating only a few feet into the downpour before being swallowed by it. Margaret was in virtual darkness. The car felt as if it were hurtling through space like a rocket. She started to put her hand on the radio, then put it back on the steering wheel. There was no need to listen to the weather report. She was a native New Englander. She knew what was happening.

The storm that had been building for days was unfurling into something much more—a lashing Atlantic gale, bringing down torrential rain.

Margaret was tensed over the steering wheel, trying to catch glimpses of the road through the waves of water rushing across the windshield. Suddenly, the dim uncertain light cast by the car’s headlights flicked across something massive that was blocking the road ahead. Margaret slammed her foot onto the brake; as she did, she felt the brakes lock. The car began a slow, whirling skid. She knew she was going to die.

She hadn’t seen the jackknifed truck in time. And in the split second that was left to her before her death, a rushing kaleidoscope of images came, blossoming and clicking and shifting …

Her Irish mother, young and so very pretty, leading Margaret through the spring wildflowers blooming in the vacant lot behind their house on Grand Street.

The voluptuous feel of the Italian sun and a tiny handmade leather sketchbook, its pages thick and ivory-colored, its binding as sensuous and soft as the parted lips of a sleeping lover.

A sea of young faces looking up at her, listening to her, admiring her.

The scent of a fresh lime and the sound of Beethoven.

A hand slipping under her sweater and along the curve of her breast and the boy, to whom the hand belongs, gasping with pleasure.

Roller skates.

Lightning above the Arizona desert opening up a blazing fissure in the night sky.

The fetid smell of her grandfather’s breath.

Astronauts and a circus elephant and Shakespeare and the feel of uncooked pie dough and Richard Nixon and spiders.

The sound of the rain. And screaming brakes.

And TJ’s face. And TJ’s face. And TJ’s face.

At the moment of impact, Margaret saw the image of a young
woman standing on a patch of dormant winter grass. Her hair was the color of chocolate. She was utterly still. Her gaze was so direct that it seemed it was demanding that Margaret look into the core of her, recognize what had been stolen from her.

Margaret screamed. But her screams were consumed by the shrieks of tearing metal and shattering glass. The roadway went bright for a moment with an explosion of white-hot sparks.

Then the rain and the darkness rushed in as a soul rushed away. And it was finished.

Cool morning fog was drifting in from the ocean. A solitary runner was crossing the pale sand at the water’s edge, leaving a trail of evenly spaced footprints, uniform and perfect, like a line of stitches on buff-colored suede. The sight of the woman’s silent passage momentarily calmed Amy. Then she heard her mother’s voice come at her again: “We’re all guilty of something, pumpkin.”

Amy quickly left the balcony and hurried to close the bedroom door. She didn’t want Rosa or Zack to overhear this irritating, wrangling phone call.

“Mother,” she said. “I am not going to apologize for coming home to take care of my husband instead of hanging around in Hawaii. This is crazy.” She could hear that her mother was opening and closing cabinets, probably preparing breakfast. “Mother, are you even paying attention to what we’re talking about?”

“Darling, I am the one who called you. Of course I’m paying attention.”

“Then explain something. If Daddy loves me as much as he says he does, why can’t he act like a normal father? Why can’t he just let the whole Hawaii thing slide?”

“And why can’t you get eggs at the dry cleaner’s?”

“What?”

“Eggs can be what you want, and what you need, Amy. And you can go to the dry cleaner every day for the rest of your life expecting to find them, but all you’re going to get is dry cleaning. It doesn’t make the dry cleaner a bad guy … You’re asking him to give you something he doesn’t have. If you want eggs, pumpkin, go to the grocery store. Then grow up and stop whining about your dry cleaner … start appreciating how well-pressed your clothes are.”

“I don’t need this from you, Mother.”

“Oh, I think you do.” Her mother’s tone was icy. “Don’t forget who’s buttered a lot of your bread, Amy. Start with that house you’re living in and go all the way back to your first pair of custom-made baby shoes.”

“Daddy’s the one who’s wrong, not me,” Amy insisted.

“Someday,” her mother said, “your son will be grown and it will be clear that although you gave it your best shot, you failed to be the perfect parent. And you’ll need Zack to absolve you of that by loving you and being kind to you in spite of it. And if he refuses you that absolution, he’ll have turned out to be a shallow, selfish waste of time.”

“It’s more complicated than that,” Amy said.

“No, it’s not complicated. All I’m asking you to do is something nice for someone you love. Amy, give your father a gift that will mean the world to him, and won’t cost you a damn thing.”

She knew her mother was right; she needed to say only two words—
I’m sorry
—and her father would go back to the way things had always been. But she also knew there was nothing that would ever make Justin go back. And the truth was, she didn’t want him to. She had no desire for a husband docile enough to
spend his life as part of another man’s entourage. Amy had always been attracted to tough guys—men who, not unlike her father, had a taste for combat.

“Mother,” she said, “I have to go now.” Then she hung up. She had no more time to deal with her mother, or her father. She needed to be in Ari’s office, with Justin.

*

Justin and Ari had been waiting for over half an hour. Both of them were on edge.

Justin was at the table near the window, where Ari’s assistant had set out coffee and muffins. Like everything else in the room, there was a geometric precision to the arrangement: the muffin basket, a triangle of webbed chrome; the plates and cups, square-shaped and made of thin jade-green glass.

“Do you think he’s found anything?” Justin asked.

Ari was leafing through a travel magazine. “There’s no use speculating. It’s best to just wait and hear what he has to say when he gets here.”

“I feel like I’ve spent my life waiting for this to happen. You’re my shrink, and that’s the best you can come up with?
Just wait?”

Ari got up and handed Justin a muffin. “Okay. Then how about this? Sit down. Eat some breakfast.”

Justin dropped the muffin back onto the table and walked away. “I don’t want any breakfast.” He glanced at his watch. “And where the hell is Amy?”

There was a noise on the other side of the office door. Justin looked up, alert and anxious.

But it wasn’t the person he was hoping for; it was Ari’s assistant, Emily. She flashed him a sympathetic smile and quickly slipped a folder onto Ari’s desk.

Just as Emily was leaving, Amy rushed in, flushed and frantic. “I’m late. I’m so sorry. Traffic was …” She glanced from Justin to Ari. “Oh God, I didn’t miss it, did I? He hasn’t been here and left already, has he?”

“Relax, Ames,” Justin told her. “We haven’t seen him yet.”

“Don’t worry. Everything’s fine.” Ari gave Amy a reassuring nod. “He called a little while ago and—”

There was a brisk knock on the door. At the sound of it, Justin looked startled, as if he’d been surprised by the very thing he’d been waiting for all morning. The door was being opened by a man in his late twenties—Latino, and tall, at least six inches over six feet. He was wearing a black designer workout suit and immaculate white sneakers. In one hand he carried a phone, in the other an expensive titanium attaché case. “Apologies for the delay,” he said. “Something on another case popped. I had to jump on it right away.”

He crossed the room in two swift strides and shook hands with Ari. “Good to see you again, Doc.” He chuckled. “Glad there’s no dismemberment and decapitation involved in this one.” He turned to Justin and Amy and explained: “The doc and I worked for the same defense attorney on a big nasty-ass murder case a couple of years ago.” He smiled and his teeth were dazzlingly bright against the creamy brown of his skin. “I’m Gabriel Gonzales, your private investigator.” He glanced at Amy. “You’re staring,” he told her. “Don’t worry about it. Everybody always expects I’m going to be older, shorter, and a lot less Mexican.” Then his easy grin vanished as he looked at Justin. “So, are you ready?”