Secret Lives (50 page)

“Ben, I'm so sorry.”

“So am I.”

She took a step closer to the pit.

“Look, Eden.” He stood up. “This is the one
place where I can lose myself and I don't have to think about
anything. This goddamned hole in the ground is it, okay? The least
you can do is let me work here in peace.”

She turned and walked back across the field
and into the woods. She stopped at the entrance to the cavern and
set her hands on the cool surface of the huge boulder Kyle had
rolled into place. She looked up at the dark triangular opening
above the boulder and shuddered. Her mother's world had been inside
this cave. Her life and her death. The journal was almost finished.
Everything was coming to an end.

January 5, 1956

I love the word “sacrifice.” I love the hard
and soft sound of it, the hard and soft meaning. Making it is the
hard part, feeling good afterwards is the soft. Motherhood is like
that, always having to put Eden's needs ahead of my own. I haven't
had time to write more than a word or two since she was born, but
I'm not complaining. The reward is great, because she is truly a
beautiful, flowering little child. I like knowing that I'm
absolutely necessary to someone else.

For Christmas, Kyle and Lou sent Eden a
wonderful rocking horse carved from wood and painted a shiny gold
with real horsehair for its mane and tail. Eden is seven months old
now and not yet too impressed with any of her gifts, but I held her
on the horse and Susanna took pictures we can send to Kyle.

He and Lou sent pictures of Machu Picchu and
the other incredible archaeological sites in Peru. I'm a little
envious of their work, but I know I could never go someplace like
that. Even little trips to Coolbrook terrify me these days. It
scares me sometimes. I cannot raise a child in a cave.

May 22, 1956

Kyle and Lou just left to return to Peru
after a wonderful three-week visit. Kyle had a hard time tearing
himself away from Eden. He adores her. I've tried hard over the
past year to let him feel as though he knows her. I've sent
pictures each week, and letters describing every new tooth, every
cute little thing she does. Some men—most, I guess—would be bored
by this. But Kyle writes back asking for more. He doesn't want Eden
to feel like a stranger to him.

I offered them my big bedroom and double bed
on the second floor but they refused to put me out. Instead they
slept in my old room, the one Kyle and I used to share.

We spent much of their visit in the cavern
where I've moved my typewriter again now that the weather's warmer.
I see a difference in the way Kyle acts with Eden in the house,
where Daddy and Susanna are around, and in the cave, where he is
free to act more like a father than an uncle. Eden says da-da-da-da
all the time—it is about all she can say so far—and I loved hearing
her say that to Kyle. It made him nervous though. “Say Uncle Kyle,
Eden,” he'd say to her, and Eden would respond “Da-da-da-da.”

She took her first steps right into his
arms. For months now, she's been walking by holding on to my hands.
I was walking her around the cave one day when Kyle crouched down
and said, “Come to me, Eden,” and stretched out his arms. I let go
of her hands and she staggered over to him, giggling all the way.
That led Kyle to believe that she will never learn a thing unless
he's around. He's taken to telling me how to raise her now, which
amuses me and makes Lou roll her eyes.

They brought me a copy of one of my books,
Child of the North Star, that had been translated into Spanish! I
knew my books were in other languages, but I had never actually
seen one. It was amazing, and what is even more amazing is that
Kyle and Lou can read it.

A few nights before they left, they gave me
a dance lesson in the cave. They'd brought a Victrola and some
records with them and first Lou put on some Spanish music and
danced by herself. She studied dance when she was in her teens and
twenties. She is a very good and very sexy dancer. She wore a black
top and skirt and she danced around the cave looking like she
should be in the movies, kicking her leg up next to her head and
letting it down real slowly, her head tossed back and one arm
cutting through the air. Then she danced with Kyle, and I have to
admit they look wonderful together.

I just watched them at first while Eden fell
asleep in my arms. Then I took Eden back to the house and by the
time I'd returned to the cave, Kyle had poured us each a glass of
wine and said it was time for my lesson. First, Lou showed me the
woman's steps, and then I tried to dance with Kyle. I don't know if
it was the wine or just my natural poor coordination, but I could
not master the steps and we got to laughing so hard we couldn't
hear the music. Then Lou got behind me so she could guide me and we
were both dancing with Kyle, me pressed between them, and suddenly
none of us were laughing. I felt Lou's breasts warm against my
back, one of her hands light on my waist, guiding me. Kyle held
both of us against him with his arm. He's grown a beard and I liked
the way it felt against my forehead. At first we followed the
steps, and then we shifted into a tight circle, arms around each
other and swaying to the music, rather drunkenly, I suppose. It had
been so long since I felt the touch of adult human beings. I didn't
want to breathe or speak for fear of breaking the spell. I felt
enormous desire for the first time in a long time and I'm certain
they felt it as well. But I knew none of us would give in to it. It
seemed an unspoken rule between us, that we would enjoy this moment
but carry it no further. So it seemed safe to rub my brother's back
as we stood there, and he must have felt safe as well, because he
rested his hand on the side of my breast and nuzzled my forehead
with his lips. My body was so full of life. I felt drawn even to
Lou, and I let my imagination dream for just a moment of the three
of us undressing one another, making love on the cold floor of the
cavern. I don't know how long we stood there like that, aware only
of touching and being touched. The needle of the Victrola had been
at the end of the record for many minutes by the time Kyle chuckled
and said, “Lord, are we drunk.”

Lou lifted her head to kiss him. “We're
smashed all right,” she said.

“
I think we're stuck like this forever,”
I said, pleased by the thought. “If any one of us lets go, the
other two will topple over.”

“
We'll have to move as a unit back to the
house,” Kyle slurred, and that brought me to my senses. We would
have to go back to the house, back to our separate rooms. I knew I
would lie awake with that longing in my body, knowing that sometime
during the night Kyle would leave his bed and join Lou in hers. He
would make love to her in the bed that used to be mine.

I pulled myself gently from the circle. “I'd
better get back to look in on Eden,” I said. That brought Lou and
Kyle back to life and within seconds we had the Victrola turned
off, the glasses picked up, and were heading through the dark
forest to the house.

April 10, 1957

Eden is nearly two. She has loads of energy
and it is a scramble to keep up with her. She will sit still for a
picture book, though. Last night I was thinking about an old
picture book Daddy used to read to Kyle and me when we were little.
I went down to our old room and hunted in the bottom drawer of
Kyle's dresser where the books Daddy used to hide for us are still
kept. I found the book, but I couldn't get the drawer back in, so I
pulled it all the way out and peered inside the dresser. Wedged
into the back of the dresser I saw a long white box. I pulled it
out, opened it and nearly screamed when I saw what was inside. My
hair! The hair Mama lopped off for some misdeed I can't even recall
now. I'd never thought about it or wondered what had become of it.
Obviously Kyle had saved it. He'd tied a blue ribbon around one end
and found this box somewhere. I sat and stared at the hair for a
long time. It is blond, a dozen shades blonder than my hair is now,
though not quite as blond as Eden's. The texture too is somewhere
between my daughter's and my own. I wonder if Kyle remembers he
squirreled this away. I managed to get it back in place in the
dresser. I took the book I'd found into the parlor and settled down
to read it to Eden, but my mind was in Peru. After I put Eden to
bed I wrote Kyle a long letter. I didn't mention the hair. I don't
want to embarrass him. I just wanted to feel close to him.

I try hard not to wish things were
different. When the fantasy of being with Kyle tries to come into
my mind, I push it out. On the back of my ledge in the cavern, I
have dozens of stories I wrote long ago in which I imagined being
with him, being his lover. Sometimes still I let those fantasies
blossom to full flower. I think of Kyle being with Eden and me
every day, working here by my side, sleeping with me at night. But
thinking about it makes reality unendurable. So I try to put those
thoughts aside and attend to the business of being a mother, a
writer, an archaeologist. And a sister. That should be a full
enough life for anyone.

Eden was making Cassie's bed in the morning
when she noticed the long white box resting on the little dresser
by the door. She knew what was in it immediately, although the box
was larger than she had imagined it to be from the journal. Kyle
must have set it there when he came up to kiss Cassie good night
the night before.

She finished making the bed while Cassie
struggled to dress herself. Then she slowly, deliberately walked
over to the dresser and lifted the top from the box. She gasped as
the shiny gold tresses sprang free. She had expected something
less, a few locks, perhaps, a hundred strands tied with ribbon. But
the box overflowed with glittery blond hair.

She held the end tied with blue ribbon and
lifted the hair from the box. “Look, Cassie,” she said. The hair
was at least a foot and a half long and nearly too thick to get her
hand around. Kyle must have scraped every strand from the kitchen
floor on that morning fifty years ago.

“What's that?” Cassie looked up from the
floor where she was fighting with her sandals.

“Your grandmother's hair. It was cut off when
she was thirteen. Isn't it beautiful?”

“My grandma in the picture?”

“That's right. Grandma Riley.”

Cassie stood up and touched the hair, softly,
the way she would stroke her kitten. “It's exquisite,” she said,
and then sat down to resume dressing.

Eden set the hair back in the box, but first
she checked the ribbon to make sure it was still holding. It was.
The ribbon was tied in a series of double knots that would last
forever, the meticulous handiwork of a devoted fourteen-year-old
boy.

–
44–

She was standing in the kitchen watching the
rain spike against the driveway when the car pulled up in front of
the house. The rain was so fierce she couldn't tell the color or
make. Lou and Kyle were out for the afternoon and Eden hoped one of
their older friends had not driven through this storm for a
visit.

A man got out of the car, his face obscured
by a large black umbrella, and it wasn't until she opened the
kitchen door that she recognized Sam Alexander.

“Come in, Sam,” she said, as if she'd been
expecting him. In a way she had. She'd thought he might call to
tell her exactly what he thought of her now.

Sam left his umbrella on the porch and
stepped into the kitchen, shaking off the rain. “Incredible storm,”
he said. His blue shirt was damp, but every hair was still in
place.

“This is my daughter, Cassie,” Eden said as
Cassie emerged from the living room.

Sam reached his hand toward Cassie as though
the little girl were an adult. Cassie took a step backward and gave
him that hooded look she reserved for strangers.

“Cassie, Sam is Ben's brother.”

“No he's not,” Cassie said. “Ben's too old to
have a brother.”

Sam smiled and Cassie grinned back, pleased
that she'd amused him. “Ben builded me a dollhouse,” she said.

“Yes, I know.”

“Do you want to see it?” Cassie asked.

“I'll take a look at it before I go, Cassie.”
Sam looked at Eden. “But right now, I'd like to talk with your
mother.”

Eden sent Cassie back to the living room and
Sam sat down at the table. He refused her offer of something to
drink. She sat across from him. “You're angry with me,” she
said.

He took off his gold-rimmed glasses and began
cleaning them with his handkerchief, his green eyes never leaving
Eden's face. “I'm way beyond anger, Eden. Anger's what I felt when
Ben told me the two of you split up. What I felt after I read your
quote in the paper was closer to rage. Closer to disgust.”

“I know,” she said. “I'm not proud of
it.”

“Then why the hell did you do it?”

“Circumstances,” she said weakly. “Nothing I
can really defend.”

He slipped his glasses into his shirt pocket.
“You kick a man when he's down, Eden, you'd better be able to
defend it.”

She leaned forward. “Sam, I'm worried about
him. He has that Valium you prescribed. I know in the past he's
thought of killing himself.”

Sam frowned. “He's always denied feeling
suicidal.”

“He told me he considered it at one
time.”

Sam stared at her. “God, if he ever…” He
closed his eyes and covered his face with his hands, and Eden hurt
for him.

She leaned forward, touched his arm.
“Sam?”

He slowly lowered his hands to the table and
she wasn't surprised at the tears in his eyes. “This has gone too
far,” he said. “It's gone on too long. He's suffered more than…” He
looked up at her, his eyes piercing. “Eden, I know for a fact that
Ben is innocent.”

“How can anyone besides Ben know that?”

“Because I'm a psychiatrist. I understand
human behavior. He didn't ever hurt your little girl, did he?”