The Last Secret (20 page)

“I knew this would happen. These weird pains he's been getting. Like tingling in his arms and legs. And here.” Stephen touches his neck, the carotid artery. “I told him, do something. Don't just sit there. But he's a mess. The man's a mess. An absolute mess. He and his brother, they just stay mired.”

Mired? Her marriage, is that what he means? But this isn't the time to lash back. With distress, Stephen's emotional volatility rages. He and Oliver are not only first cousins born weeks apart, but they were raised almost as brothers. Stephen's mother and Oliver's mother were identical twins who did everything together until Stephen's mother died of a burst appendix when he was twelve. With his own father long divorced and remarried, Stephen was brought up by his aunt
Addie and uncle James, Oliver and Ken's parents. When he was seventeen he had a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized for months. After years of therapy and, more recently, antidepressants and a long relationship with unflappable Donald, he is far more stable and happy.

“If anything happens to him,” Stephen declares, shaking his fist. “I don't know. I don't know what I'll do.”

“Oh, Stephen, I know.” She holds his hand in hers. As exasperating as she has found his snarly pettiness through the years, it is impossible to stay mad for long. She has grown deeply fond of him in spite of his early coldness to her, all part of his unbreachable loyalty to family. His first allegiance was to Robin, “Kenny's little friend,” he used to call her. Being that much older, Stephen had known Robin since she was a child. But Nora and Stephen quickly found common ground, the death of a parent in their early adolescence. “But we mustn't think like that,” she says to soothe him now as he fears the loss of one of his two closest living relatives. “The EMTs got him here right away. And there's so much more they can do now.”

“I blame myself,” Stephen says with a gasp, covering his mouth for a moment to compose himself. “Why didn't I do something? Why did I just let it happen?” His ragged whisper echoes past confidences. His beautiful mother's sudden death occurred when he was away at summer camp. He hadn't wanted to go, but his mother made him. Boys' activities, the rough-and-tumble of life in a tent, frogs, bugs, latrines, he needed more of that, she felt, all the things he detested. Make him stronger, toughen him up, especially with his uninterested father on the opposite coast. Stephen would always regret not standing his ground, refusing to go. If only he'd been there, he might have come to her aid, alerted someone, saved her in time. His obsessive caution is a joke in the family, though understandable.

“You didn't let it happen. It's not your fault. You know Oliver. He's—”

“Intractable!” Stephen cries, and two elderly women look up, startled. “But so what? When you see the ship going down, you don't just stand there, do you? No! You damn well do something! You save the people you love!”

Yes, and a chill goes through her. You do. No matter what it takes, or how.

Stephen's cell phone is ringing. It's Donald. Stephen moves nearer the door to tell him what has happened and where he is. Stephen's voice rises. “Let someone else cover! This is where you're needed!”

Flipping open her own phone, Nora walks out to the alcove lined with vending machines. This time, Chloe answers. No, she doesn't know where her father is. She just got in from SAT tutoring and heard her mother's message on the machine. She asks how Uncle Oliver is, grows quiet when Nora says she's not really sure. It sounds like a stroke, though no one's actually said the word yet.

“A stroke,” Chloe repeats, and Nora hears the fear in her voice. “But he's going to be all right, isn't he?” she asks, like her father, needing the positive spin, even if it means being lied to. A cheerful outlook is its own strength, Ken said once when Nora complained about his lack of concern, or at least the appearance of it, during the delivery drivers' strike at the paper when Ken had been quoted as saying the stoppage was more about union politics than wages and worker dissatisfaction.

“That's bullshit,” Nora said.

“Which makes the world go round and round and round,” he laughed, his silken humor and silken life unmarred by want or pain. Until me, she thinks. Is that it? Am I the slub, the chosen flaw? Robin may have married within their circle, but he would choose a woman totally different. An outsider.

“I don't know. If it's a massive enough bleed, there could be paralysis. Or it could even be fatal,” she says, hating herself She's not even sure what she's talking about, but
she's
here, Ken's not, and Chloe should know that. “Could you call around, Chloe, try and find Dad? Tell him something's happened to his brother.” The unspoken message: His brother. In time of need your father's nowhere to be found. Cruel to do to her, but the child should see. In betraying their mother he betrays them all.

“Where? Who? I don't know who to call.”

“Everyone. Wherever you think he might be.”

“But haven't you?”

“Some places. Maybe you can … maybe you can call some others.”

“Okay.” Chloe's voice is small, uneasy with the mission.

“What's Drew doing?” In her rush out of the house she forgot to tell him exactly where she was going, only that Uncle Oliver was sick.

“Watching television.”

“He's supposed to be working on his term paper.”

“I'll make him turn it off. But Mom … do I have to call the Gendrons?”

Nora listens to her daughter's breathing. “Why? You think he's there?”

In the silence, she can feel Chloe's cringe. “I don't know.”

“No. That's fine. I'm sure we'll find him. Sooner or later.”

Nora and Stephen huddle in the corner. This is as far away as they can get from the coughing. Holding his head, the haggard young man opposite them leans over his knees and moans, then is wracked by a barrage of violent sneezes. Stephen covers his nose and mouth.

“This is ridiculous,” he says behind his hand. “Imagine subjecting healthy people to this.”

“You can wait outside, if you want. I'll come get you,” she says.

“Where the hell's Kenny?”

“I told you. I've been calling. I know there was a meeting with Al Bailey, the new school superintendent, and then—”

He looks at his watch. “Nine thirty at night, what kind of meeting's that?” he says so snidely that she has to take a deep breath.

“I don't know, Stephen. Do you?”

“I thought it was over. Isn't it? What the hell's he thinking?” he asks when she doesn't answer right away.

“He's trying. We both are. It's … it's hard.”

“Just so you know, I talked to him. I did. I told him he was an ass, an absolute fool, putting everything on the line like that. And for what? She's a disaster. Everything she touches turns to shit. And that's from someone who likes her, you know that. But you don't—”

Along with everyone else in the waiting room, they both look up as Annette rushes through the swinging double doors. Even with the profusion
of tears running down her smooth brown cheeks, she looks stunning, regal in her flowing red caftan.

“Oh my God,” Stephen gasps, and Nora throws her arms around him. To protect him from the news they both fear.

“He's going to be all right. They just told me.” Annette drags a chair closer to face them. Nora hands her a tissue. “I'm sorry,” she says, blowing her nose. “I was fine and then they told me, and then I just lost it. I'm so relieved. He's talking. Still a little funny but at least some things you can understand.” She needs to get right back to him.

Hugging her, they assure her they'll continue waiting, but the minute she's out of sight Stephen erupts.

“How about that little walk-on? The bitch.”

“Stephen! She's relieved. Imagine what she's just been through.”

“Goddamn drama queen. If she loves him so damn much, then why not marry him? That's what I'd like to know.”

“It's Oliver. He's just … he's perfectly content, he's never going to change anything in his life.”

“Is that what you think?” His head draws back and his eyes narrow with caustic amusement. “Do you really?”

It is Annette who is perfectly content with her life, Stephen declares. She enjoys the prestige of being Oliver Hammond's social companion without having to endure him as a husband. She's got a boyfriend in Boston. “Her young stud,” Stephen sputters. “Oh, I know, she's just, quote,
mentoring
him, but in Jamaica for two weeks? I mean, come on, what's that all about?”

“Maybe it was some kind of, you know, artist colony thing.”

“Yeah, right. Well, Delia Lord stayed in the same hotel and nobody was doing any painting that she could see.”

“Delia Lord! She's vicious, you know that,” Nora whispers, relieved for the moment to be caught in one of Stephen's acid riffs.

“Big boobs and tons of money, though. And she likes you,” he whispers back, making her laugh. He has more female friends than anyone she knows, man or woman, or even Ken. That any of them confide in Stephen always amazes her. His sustenance is the folly of others. Only
his cousins escape his gossip, except when he discusses them with Nora. And she's no fool; she knows how swiftly eviscerated she would be if Ken were to leave her. From time to time even Donald suffers the sting of Stephen's venom. His weight is a problem between them. They used to play racquetball, tennis, and ski together until surgery following an almost fatal automobile accident left Donald with chronic back pain.

“Nora!”

They jump up guiltily. Giddy with relief, neither one had seen Ken enter. The beauty of Stephen has always been, as Kay once so perfectly observed, his very contagious streak of “junior-highness.”

The three of them join Annette at Oliver's bedside. Gray-faced and propped against pillows, every time he tries to speak the wrong words come out. He has just asked Ken for his “fender.”

“Sure,” Ken says, looking around with a pained smile. “Let's see. Fender. Where's the fender? I don't see it.”

Annette searches through the toiletry items in the drawer of the raised tray table. She holds up a disposable razor and Oliver turns away. Then, she opens the narrow locker door next to the bathroom. Stephen raises his eyebrows at Nora. A man of limited patience in the best of circumstances, Oliver is becoming more agitated.

“Fender,” he repeats. “There.”

“Where?” Ken asks.

Oliver looks down at his frozen right arm, his clawed hand. “Fuck!” he says, and no one speaks. They have never heard him utter such a word. “The times! Go … see … the the the … the times!” He strains forward with a despairing groan. Drool seeps from the corner of his crooked mouth. The right side of his deeply wrinkled face is slack and the eye droops.

“New York? The
Times?”
Annette asks.

Looking around, Nora realizes what he wants. The fender. The
finder.
His BlackBerry on the nightstand.

He grunts and shakes his head as she tries to give it to him. He wants Ken to take it. “On!” he directs, watching closely, anxiously, until Ken gets it going. “Day! Day!”

“Which day? Today? Today's Thursday,” Ken says.

“No!” Oliver lifts his left hand. “More. One. The one.”

“The next day?” Annette asks. “Tomorrow?” She sighs with fatigue.

“Morning!” Oliver says.

A look of helplessness befalls Ken with the realization of what this means, what Oliver needs, what he is asking. Ordering: Ken to take over for him.

“Ed. board, ten thirty. Jannerby at one,” Ken reads, scrolling through Oliver's schedule. “Hugh Delaney … Chris Ramiriz.” An annoyed, put-upon child, he looks up and rolls his eyes with a heavy sigh, like Drew whenever he's asked to clean his room or set the table. This, Nora knows, is the very last thing on earth Ken wants to be doing right now. “Hell,” he says with a dismissive flip of his hand. “Every one of these can wait, Oll. You'll be up and at 'em in no time, you'll see.” Grinning, Ken pats his unmoving arm.

“No!” Oliver erupts in spittle-foaming, thick-tongued protest. “You! You do the … the flings!” His left arm thrashes into the bed rail. “You!”

“All right! I'll do the flings!” Ken says, but when no one smiles or speaks in the strained silence, he looks back sheepishly, leaning close so Oliver can see the BlackBerry “Here. Okay, the ed. board, now what's up with that? Who knows? Who should I call? Who's best, Goldman?”

Oliver nods and Ken points to the next item on the small bright screen. Annette slips from the room in search of coffee, somehow more dispirited, Nora thinks, than relieved. Even though he's not supposed to be using his cell phone in this part of the hospital, Stephen is checking his messages. Watching the two brothers struggle to communicate, Nora is touched, encouraged by Ken's tenderness. He would never abandon his brother. Or her. Certainly never his children. He can be careless and immature but is incapable of deliberate cruelty. They've turned a corner somehow. These deepening responsibilities will make him a stronger, better man, she thinks, while a part of her, albeit a shrinking part, rattles the bars, demanding to know if she's this desperate, that even her brother-in-law's stroke must be turned to her own advantage?

I know,”
Ken agrees when they get home. Of course he should have called her when he knew he was running late. “But after the meeting with Bailey I ran into this guy. An energy consultant. He's been everywhere. The last year mostly in Iraq. Interesting, his take on the whole thing. The worst thing we can do right now, he said, is pull out. That's what the sheiks want—”