The Language of Secrets (3 page)

Justin moved his attention to Don. Don’s transformation had not been as complete as Linda’s. The international travel and the staggering amount of money he’d made had improved Don’s table manners and given him a more refined wardrobe. But in spite of those surface enhancements, he had never lost the menace—or the feral instincts—of a street punk.

Don turned abruptly and fixed Justin with a quizzical look, as if he had somehow read Justin’s thoughts. The intensity of the look made Justin fumble his hold on his wineglass. Don laughed and said: “You’re a little jumpy, kid.”

Then he got up and went to the alcove bar in the living room and cracked the seal on a bottle of expensive bourbon. His movements were aggressively proprietary: the deliberate opening of the sealed bottle, the careless tossing of ice cubes into a crystal tumbler, the overly generous pouring of the drink.

All of it annoyed Justin, and he sensed that Don knew it and took pleasure in it.

“Come outside, kid. Keep me company.” Don strolled out onto the patio without waiting for Justin to reply. Amy gave Justin a little shove as she and Linda began to gather up the dinner plates. “Go visit with Daddy. Please, sweetie. For me?”

Justin shook his head. “Sorry. I’m not up to a one-on-one with your father tonight, Ames.”

Amy’s wineglass was still on the table. She slid it toward Justin and whispered, “Just five minutes, please.” The glass was almost full. After Amy was gone, Justin drained it. Then he went outside and waited for his father-in-law’s opening gambit.

Don was stretched out in one of the lounge chairs, sipping his drink. He was gazing at the night ocean, listening to the breaking
waves. After a few minutes, he said: “So this weird crap with your family, it’s quite a story. Amy tells me you found out both your parents are dead … that you went to see one of your sisters and she freaked out … and that when you were scoping out your parents’ graves, you came across one for yourself. She also mentioned you’ve been moody and fucking hard to live with.”

“I don’t know what else I can tell you, Don. That’s pretty much it.” Justin’s reply had a quiet “Don’t fuck with me” quality to it.

“Yeah? Well, maybe that’s it and maybe it isn’t. Smells to me like you’re trying to cover something up.”

Justin moved across the patio and angrily planted himself in Don’s line of sight. “You’re way off base.”

Don shifted his gaze so that he was again looking toward the sea. He continued as if Justin hadn’t spoken. “If you are covering something up, I don’t give a crap. I don’t give a crap about your family, your past, or anything you did before you married my daughter.” His eyes were expressionless. His voice was low. “All I’m saying is there’s no need for fairy tales and bullshit. Whatever the truth is, fine, so be it. End of story. You got a good life going for yourself, kid. Don’t fuck it up.”

“Thanks for the input, Don.” Justin started back toward the house. He knew that if he didn’t get some distance between himself and this arrogant asshole, he was going to hit him—hard enough to split his face open.

Don sat up and turned toward Justin. “Listen to me, kid,” he said. “I’m trying to help you out. What I’m saying is, you’re back in L.A. It isn’t London or anyplace like it. In this town, who you are is who you are at this moment. Nobody gives a fuck about what anybody did in their past. As long as you’re good-looking, or you make movies, or you can throw a basketball, or you have a talk show, or even if you’re nothing but an ugly prick who’s just plain
fucking rich, this town’ll roll over for you faster than a fat whore taking a slide on ice.”

Justin grabbed the empty bourbon glass from Don’s hand and motioned toward the house. “It’s cold. Let’s go in.”

Again, Don went on as if Justin hadn’t spoken. “I bought you this place as a wedding present so that when you and my daughter moved back to California you’d be set up with the right address. You both got looks. You both got style. You both got me and my money behind you every step of the way. And in this town, pal, life doesn’t get any better than that.”

Before Justin could speak, Don waved him off. “I know. You have a good job and you’re on it with everything you got. You’re a good provider. All I’m saying is … as long as I’m around, you’re working with a net. No shame in that. The only thing a man has to be ashamed of is not doing what it takes to keep his family safe and happy. Nothing comes before that, nothing. So whatever you’re trying to hide with all the smoke and mirrors about sisters who don’t know who you are and headstones that say you’ve been dead for thirty years, forget about it. Shut it down. It’s history. And nobody in California gives a shit about history.”

Justin knew it was true. He was in a place that didn’t care about things that were dead and buried. But he sensed that what had been unearthed by his return to California wasn’t dead, and that it wouldn’t allow itself to stay buried.

The screen door banged open and Caroline came running out of the house. “That was a married people’s kiss!” She was barefoot, dressed in a T-shirt and shorts.

Robert was halfway across the wide porch and heading toward the steps. He wore a three-piece suit and had a garment bag in one hand and his briefcase in the other. “What?” He stopped and turned to look at her.

“It was an eleven years in, romance at room temperature kind of thing. I’ve had mosquito bites take longer.” She went to him, pressed her lips against his, then slowly pulled away. His mouth tasted like coffee and toothpaste. “I hate it that we kiss like married people.” The October morning sun was warm on her body and a flutter of desire was making Caroline want to pull Robert back into the house.

“But we are married people. I like being married people.” His kiss was quick, companionable. “The kitchen faucet’s leaking,” he said. “I’ll take care of it when I get back.”

The flutter of desire faded, and Caroline turned her attention
to cleaning up the drifts of sand that Lissa and Julie had brought back from the park across the street. They had used it to make a beach for their Barbie dolls.

Robert was at the curb now, tossing his things into the trunk of the car. He waved to her. “I’ll call you from Fresno. Love you!”

She returned a perfunctory wave. Irritation and disappointment were already filling the space desire had so unexpectedly opened and then abandoned. She moved the sole of her foot across the little beach her girls had made. Lissa and Julie were three and four, just a year apart, and when Caroline had been their age, she had loved playing in the sand. She’d gone to the beach every day. To a real ocean beach. A fabulous postcard coastline that glittered like a jewel, its air sharp with the smell of sea salt and warm tar and eucalyptus. The beach in Santa Barbara.

Santa Barbara was where Caroline had met Robert. She’d been just seventeen, excited about her first day at college, and she had run into the path of an oncoming bicycle, Robert and Barton’s.

Robert, a blond fraternity boy in surfer trunks and flip-flops, was steering; Barton was perched on the handlebars. Both of them fell as Robert swerved to avoid hitting Caroline. When they got to their feet, Robert was smiling. Barton was serious and self-conscious; blushing to the roots of his coppery hair; seeming too tall as he scrambled to pick up the books Caroline had dropped. When he handed them to her, he gave a quick bow of his head—shy and reverential—the gentle gesture of a gentle soul.

It was Robert and Caroline who had become a couple. But it was Barton who had been the one to hold and console Caroline each time she and Robert swore they were breaking up. And it had been Barton to whom she had gone when she failed chemistry and when one of her roommates had died in a skiing accident and
when, after weeks of waiting, Caroline’s period had failed to arrive and she’d begun to be sick to her stomach every morning.

It was Barton that Caroline was thinking about now as she was sweeping the last of the sand from the front porch. A station wagon was passing the house; the female driver was dressed as a witch—a reminder that Halloween was tomorrow, and that Barton was leaving for New York on November 1. Caroline’s impulse was to go inside and call him, to say one final good-bye. But just then, Lissa and Julie burst out of the house, bristling with indignation.

Julie was trying to wrestle a tiny Smurf doll away from Lissa. “Mommy,” she was saying. “We were going to play Smurfs and I choosed Smurfette first! Tell Lissa I get to be Smurfette.”

Lissa threw herself at Caroline’s legs, clinging tight and insisting: “No. It’s my turn!”

Caroline gathered her up and did a little waltz around the porch, tickling her cheeks with butterfly kisses. “I have a good idea … There are
dozens
of Smurfs. Why don’t you both be a Smurfette?”

Julie shook her head and sighed, clearly exasperated by Caroline’s ignorance. “Mommy, that won’t work.”

Lissa leaned close, her breath damp and warm on Caroline’s cheek. “In the Smurfs there’s only one girl.” She whispered this, as if trying to shield Caroline from embarrassment. Then her chin began to quiver and her eyes filled with tears. “And that’s no fair,” she said.

Caroline breathed in her child’s sweet scent—baby shampoo and crayons and vanilla. “No, honey. It isn’t fair. It isn’t fair at all.”

As she said this, Caroline wondered how it was that young children, unconscious of the workings of politics or theology, had such clear awareness of the concept of fairness. It was a sensitivity
so keen, it reduced them to tears when they discovered that absolute justice was unavailable. Caroline wondered if, in the mysterious place from which children had so recently come, there was a realm where the human spirit existed in a perfect balance between right and wrong. “What a sweet thing it must be,” Caroline murmured into Lissa’s ear, “that place of complete fairness.”

Lissa laid her head on Caroline’s shoulder and sighed softly, as if in benediction, or resignation.

Caroline remembered how strongly she had once felt about the issue of fairness. She had begun crying out for it when she’d been about the same age as Lissa and Julie were now. But when little Caroline would weep that something was “no fair,” her mother would simply shrug and say: “You want fair? Go to Pomona.”

And the idea of Pomona had become a talisman for Caroline. For years she had imagined it as an Eden, a place of perfect justice. But the summer she was eleven, she and her mother took a road trip and Caroline discovered the truth. Pomona was nothing more than the site of the Los Angeles County Fair. Her imagined paradise had turned out to be a low-slung, gritty place, more desert than garden, more blight than beauty. Caroline had looked up at her thin, dry, tightly wound mother and had hated her. Her mother had taken away the purity of Pomona and left in its place a brawling carnival soaked in spilled beer and the piss of prizewinning pigs.

“You know what, girls?” Caroline said. “Mommy can’t fix it that there’s only one Smurfette in the whole world. But Mommy can fix s’mores. Lots and lots of s’mores. Hundreds and millions and gazillions of s’mores!”

During the next hour, her children’s delighted laughter was all Caroline heard. Then the phone rang.

For a moment, she wasn’t certain that anyone was at the other
end of the line; there was only the indistinct background noise of a restaurant, or perhaps a cocktail lounge. She was about to hang up, when she heard his voice.

“Ah. Sweet Caroline” was all he said. And she instantly knew who it was. She had never forgotten the sound of him: rolling velvet, edged with filaments of diamond dust. Seduction traveling with the promise of things both beautiful and cutting.

“Mitch.” Simply saying his name created an electricity in Caroline, a sensation that felt like fireworks and brandy.

Caroline didn’t notice that Julie was trying to boost Lissa high enough to reach an open jar of caramel sauce on the kitchen counter. Both girls tottered and fell. The jar broke. Caramel sauce splattered across the floor. The dog yelped. Lissa shrieked. And Julie shouted “You dummy-head!” at the top of her lungs. Caroline wedged the receiver between her shoulder and cheek and dropped to her knees, checking to see if either of the girls had been hurt.

“Sweet Caroline, have I called at a bad time?” Mitch sounded faintly amused. His tone embarrassed Caroline. She could picture him, immaculate and cool, phoning from a chic eatery or an elegant bar—some fastidious region where there were no sticky kitchen floors or little girls screaming “dummy-head.”

“Mitch, I didn’t turn out like the women I’m sure you hang around with now. I’m a mom with two kids and a dog. My life is noisy, okay? I don’t spend my time quietly clawing my way up the ladder at some big law firm and then basking in silky silence while I get my nails done and my legs waxed.”

“Hmmm. I remember a lot about those legs. But I don’t remember much silence.” He paused, waiting for Caroline to respond.

She wanted to erase how envious she’d just sounded of the
kind of sleek, accomplished women who were a part of his life. She wanted to come back at him with something light and witty. But she was too distracted—worried about the broken glass and the fact that the girls weren’t wearing shoes.

Mitch chuckled. “Ah, but that was a long time ago. When we were all young and beautiful. You, of course, were especially beautiful in the buff. But I digress. The purpose of this call is to ask if you and my old buddy Rob might want to have dinner with me tomorrow night.”

“What? You’re not in Chicago? You’re here?” Caroline took a towel out of the sink and wiped at the mess on the floor. Her face had flushed the moment she’d realized he was in town. All it had taken was the thought of seeing him.

“Yup, for two days. Doing a deposition in a major criminal case. Very high-profile. Big article in this month’s
Newsweek
. I’m in L.A., at the Baldwin. You know, we should call Barton, too. Get the whole gang together. The last time the four of us were in the same place at the same time was at your wedding, Sweet C. We’re overdue. So what do you say? Eight-thirty tomorrow night? Here at the hotel. My treat. Champagne, caviar, and lots of French crap with truffles on it.”