The Secrets She Keeps (32 page)

“You’re always snappish and irritable,” Hadley says.

“More snappish, let me tell you, Miss Playwright. The slow, sad scuff of his shoes down the hall, the sound of his breathing next to me in the bed, this heavy breathing, a snoring on the exhale…” Veronica demonstrates.

Ellen giggles.

“I am a horrible person. I didn’t deserve him.”

“You’re not,” Hadley says firmly. “He didn’t let
you
breathe. It sounds ghastly.”

“We went to a party, and there was a young thing, a lovely frail girl, who laughed at his jokes and batted her eyelashes at him. I watched it all across the room. He brought her a drink and picked up the cocktail napkin she dropped, and I asked our hostess who she was. Genevieve Morley, the younger sister of Arthur Morley, the decorator.”

“Jealousy and revenge,” Lilly guesses. She raises her eyebrows at Nash, and Nash nods conspiratorially.

“Not at all!” Veronica says. “I was hoping they might meet again! When I began planning a dinner where they might be seated next to each other, I knew our marriage was over. I couldn’t tell him for months. His eyes were so sweet when he slept on the pillow.”

Hadley snores, same as Veronica had, and they all laugh.

“After I finally told him I wanted a divorce, he and Nora set up an appointment for me with a psychiatrist. I was afraid they might commit me. I overheard them talking.”

“You never told us this before,” Hadley says.

“Oh, Veronica.” Ellen looks stunned.

“That’s awful,” Lilly says.

“I fled to the apartment in San Francisco that my father left me and then here. Home? I’ve only lived in that place for three weeks.”

“Be glad you’re not telling this story to some doctor in McLean,” Hadley said. “You could be in there still.”

“You were brave to leave,” Ellen says.

“Brave,” Veronica says, and sighs.

“You were,” Hadley says.

“I never loved Stuart, either,” Lilly says.

The front door is open, so Nash can tell that cars are arriving. These will be the guests from the Flying W and Washoe Pines, but Nash wants to hear this.

“Never?” Ellen asks.

“I didn’t even really like him. I don’t know how it happened. He says I flirted with him. At this party. I went with my friend Eve. It was at Lyle Johnson’s house. The producer? He gave me the role in
The Changelings
.”

“Eddie adored
The Changelings
. For weeks after, he’d jump out from behind the furniture, screaming,
Nevermore
! It scared me half to death.” Ellen sips her champagne.

“Joseph couldn’t sleep after watching it,” Hadley says. “He said it disturbed his dreams.”

“You flirted with him?” Nash asks. She can’t imagine it. Being that bold or that foolhardy.

“No! At least, not that I remember. He was strangely attractive. Very much so! But he seemed old to me. Like the way you imagine fathers. Not mine, but the kind of fathers with cigars and libraries, who give ponies for birthdays.”

“The kind of fathers with mistresses and henchmen, maybe,” Hadley says.

“I said it was what he
seemed
like. At first.”

“My father gave crisp bills in an envelope and forbade smoking in his home,” Veronica says, and searches for her own cigarettes. “But the mistresses…”

“Crisp bills,” Ellen sighs.

Lilly adjusts her weight in the chair. “He kept giving me drinks. It all seemed to be a wrong turn I couldn’t back out of. He kissed me, and I was…I don’t know how to describe it. I was
repelled
.”

“So you married him,” Hadley says.

“I can’t explain it. He turned up again, at the after-party of
His Last Wish
. Our friend Jeannie had a part. And the same thing happened. He took me outside, and he kissed me, and I was horrified at myself, and yet it seemed beyond my control to stop it. I am still horrified. His thick sausage fingers and big stomach…” She shudders. “He just had this
grip
on my arm. It made me feel safe.”

“A grip like that can be used against you, if it can be used for you,” Hadley says.

“Who would ever do something so inexplicable and stupid?” Lilly says. “Me. I’m the only one.”

Veronica stands and smooths her skirt. She briefly takes Lilly’s hand. “No,” she says. It’s one word, but it’s enough.

There it is again. How often Nash has seen it—the critical pieces of every couple’s plotline, present from the very start. But this isn’t the time to ponder the hidden desires that can cause more harm than an out-of-control car you don’t see coming. The party is starting. And why hasn’t it occurred to her before now that this gathering is a huge and noisy invitation to Stuart Marcel? He’s the type of man who’d think this gathering mocks him. It’s always best to walk softly and keep quiet around people like that, and there’s nothing quiet about what’s happening now. Nash thinks about the gravel in Lilly’s palms after she was shoved and the crisscross of red scrapes on the back of her legs. She thinks of Lilly’s thin arm in a cast after it was twisted and cracked.

The bass player begins to
thumb-thumb-do-do-thumb,
and Dolly Leeds and her gals come inside, laughing and talking. One of them trips on the door ledge, tipsy already, and another clings to the arm of a spare—you can always spot a spare, with his dapper suit and gaze that looks like a compliment. Still, Nash is relieved to see the matronly Dolly, who’s been handling men and women and love, with all its mess and pain and fallout, for years. Dolly’s wranglers follow behind—cowboys and bull riders and desert men, men who know how to handle a man with a temper. Stuart Marcel would be outnumbered here. She wishes Lilly had never walked into the room where she met him. She wishes Lilly had never placed her mouth against his thick, despicable lips. It is so much harder to undo than to do. Lilly and Beanie deserve so much better.

Here is Bertha Gray now, from Washoe Pines. There is a swirl of dresses and it all begins. Plates and glasses clink against plates and glasses, and the saxophone player, Hank Pollard, surely sweats more heavily than he does carrying monogrammed trunks to the highest floors and down the longest hallways of the Apache. He plays every moment between love and heartbreak, and people start to dance, and Nash pretends she is Alice. She shakes Dolly Leeds’s solid hand and brings her a plate of eggs pickled in beet juice, browned-butter mushrooms, and a slice of tarred Swiss premium ham. She wonders again where Jack is, and it’s a good thing she isn’t Alice right this minute or his job would be in jeopardy. She wants to keep loving him, but he makes it so darn hard.

Someone has tucked a primrose into Veronica’s coiled braid. She dances with Ted from Washoe Pines, who has found her in the crowd again. Ted is more handsome than smart, but he once saved all the horses when the stable caught fire that bad year of drought. Veronica catches Nash’s eye and winks. Nash is glad Veronica’s having fun on her last night, but her frustration at Jack grows to concern. He’s never late for these parties. He’s always right on time, playing host at the door, slapping backs and kissing the hands of the matrons. Hadley lingers at the food table; she has found the Berne’s Gold Label chocolates that Alice has Cook order for special occasions, and she’s also snitching the greengage plums packed in sugar-sweetened brandy. Hadley licks the sticky liquid off one finger and points out the delicacy to Harold Ferrill, also from the Pines. Like all the wranglers there, though, Harold would no doubt rather have a pork sandwich and a whiskey.

There is a shortage of men, and the ladies from the Flying W dance together in a circle, bumping into everyone else, causing Bertha to spill her drink. Napkins appear, and so do apologies, but the dancing continues and the noise gets louder. Nash checks on Lilly, who is still in that chair, but before Nash can ask if Lilly needs anything, Ellen appears in front of them. She is in high spirits, and she takes both of their hands and urges Nash and Lilly toward the piano. Lilly protests but then gives in, and the three of them sway as Ned leans over his flying hands on that keyboard and sings about moonlight.

Lewis, a new dude wrangler at the Flying W, cuts in. He whisks Ellen away, while she holds one hand out to Nash and Lilly as if she is drowning and they should save her. They won’t save her, as clearly she is thrilled.

“Ellen’s found a boy,” Lilly shouts above the noise. She sets her hand on Beanie. She looks tired. “I need to sit.”

“We’ll go sit,” Nash says.

But as they head for the sofa, Jack finally appears. He smiles at both of them, but there is something wrong. He is still in his denim pants and his work shirt. He bows to Lilly. “Excuse me, ma’am,” he says. He drawls with all his usual sweet charm, but the verve and lightness are gone. He grips Nash’s elbow and ushers her away. He’s clearly upset. He doesn’t even realize he’s hurting her.

All day long, Nash has been waiting to see Jack again after their night together. She’s imagined this reunion a thousand ways. Their eyes might meet; he’d notice the dress Veronica had insisted she wear, a red satin beauty with soft, round shoulders and a nipped waist and a bust they took in using safety pins. He’d secretly try to kiss her. He’d look at her with the same gaze he’s given Lilly. Nash knows better, she does, but she even imagined being his girl now. None of those things are happening, though. He rushes her through the crowd, smiling and greeting people along the way, heading the both of them toward the bar, where Danny opens another bottle of champagne. The cork pops like a gun blast, and Jack flinches.

“Whiskey,” he says to Danny.

“What the hell happened to you?” Danny says. He pours. He hands Jack the drink.

“The truck,” Jack says. He isn’t smiling anymore. “The bastard shot out the truck.”

Nash’s stomach drops. It’s a sudden, sick thud.

“I was in Carson City. We needed some fly spray and I wanted to get an ice boot for Maggie, ’cause she’s been limping. I park in front of H and J’s, and I’m in there, and there’s this
pow-pow-pow
outside, and I know what that sound is. I know good and well what that sound is. We go runnin’ out, Al Johns and me, and this car’s squealing away, and my tires are all shot out. There’s a bullet hole right in the windshield, driver’s side. Glass everywhere! We gotta call the sheriff, wait for him to come. Al Johns let me borrow one of his pickups. Jesus. Alice is gonna kill me. The truck’s a damn mess.”

“
Alice
is going to kill you? Christ, Jack. Sounds like someone else might get you first,” Danny says. “A gun, Jack. When a man gets a gun involved…”

Nash is shocked into silence. Her body is iron, weighted to the ground.

“It’s just a warning. I know a warning when I see one. Okay,” he says. He puts both his hands up, palms out, warding off. “Okay, I got it.”

“The sheriff—” Nash says.

“Couldn’t do a damn thing. Bet you anything, the fucker and his sidekick hopped on their little plane over at Lansing Field. Probably already in Los Angeles by now.”

The sense of safety Nash felt here at Tamarosa, surrounded by their own people—it’s gone. She looks out over the room. A terror presses down, as Ellen leans in and kisses that cowboy right on the mouth, and as Veronica lifts a glass of champagne and toasts her imminent freedom.

Nash excuses herself. The din of the party falls back as she heads upstairs. Boo scratches at her bedroom door, where he is being held captive. He’s made marks. He’s never done this before. Mother would die. Nash edges inside so the little dog doesn’t make a run for it. She doesn’t take the time to scold him, even though the door is deeply gouged in manic, knee-high scratches. Instead, she hurries to retrieve a scrap of paper, used as a bookmark now in
Sense and Sensibility.
On it is the number her mother gave her the last time they spoke, the number at Gloria’s friend’s apartment, where they’re staying. It was all a little unclear, what was happening with Gloria. A boy, a broken heart—who knew. Some new drama fit for the big screen at the Granada.

Nash shuts Boo back in and crosses the hall to her mother’s room. The photo of her father stares at her from the nightstand, and the room still smells like the rose-scented toilet water Alice uses. Downstairs, there is a loud round of applause as the trio ends a set. Nash dials, and her heart beats hard while the phone only rings and rings and rings. It feels like such failure to be making this call at all, though that is no longer important.

It is less important than she even knows right then, because that evening George Greatstone will pick up a phone, too. He won’t get through, either; not at first. Marcel is probably on a plane or fucking some girl or taking a crap. He’ll want to hear this, though, so Greatstone will try again the next day, when he’ll finally find Stu poolside at his spread in L.A. The connection is awful at that godforsaken jungle hotel. All Greatstone will hear is the buzz of a bloodsucking mosquito near his ear and the crackle of the word
cunt
.

The phone rang and rang and rang. I was sleeping hard, and the real-life sound folded into my dream. In it, a phone was ringing, but I didn’t want to answer right then, because Hugo had returned. He was there, large and healthy, and he was so overjoyed to be home that he did a fast and furious lap around the living room, causing the rugs to slide around, just like he always used to. He got in his
let’s play
stance, with his front paws together, his head low to the ground, and his butt high. He barked, and I clapped my hands twice, like I always did. I said,
Gonna get you
, the same thing I’d say to the kids when they were small, words that kicked off a game of chase.