Keeping Secrets (37 page)

“Yes, it is.” Emma smiled. “Susan’s always gone out of her way.”

* * *

Jake insisted on making the drive to the airport, though Rosalie thought he ought to stay home and rest. “Let him go,” Emma said. Later, when Jake was out of hearing, she whispered, “I don’t think he ought to be home alone.” There was that, but she knew he felt it was his duty to wave her off.

The airport was crowded. Businessmen clutched briefcases, sample cases, under the arms of their pale-blue-and-tan rumpled ice-cream suits. Running in and out of the crowd were a passel of black children all dressed up in their Sunday best. The little girls’ patent-leather shoes squeaked on the shiny floor.

“Would you look at that?” Rosalie whispered behind her hand.

“What?” asked Emma.

“All those Nigras flying—with money from their welfare checks.”

Emma didn’t answer. But in her mind’s eye she saw winged blacks filling the skies like crows—or black angels.

She focused on the group of black people clustered by the gate. There must have been twenty of them, laughing and talking, all standing close together as if they didn’t want to say goodbye. Then one of the women, a round short woman in late middle age, nodded at her. Emma smiled tentatively and nodded back.

She turned Rosalie’s shoulder in the direction of the woman. “Do you know her?”

“Who?”

Emma didn’t want to point.

Suddenly Jake beside them said, “I do.”

“Why, so do I,” said Rosalie. “That’s Hattie, the woman I told you came to the house. Jake, you remember Hattie, don’t you?”

“Yes, I said I do.” He smiled at Hattie across the room.

Rosalie was distracted by the announcement of incoming planes. But Emma caught the sweet look that passed between the black woman named Hattie and her father. It made her catch her breath. She took Jake’s hand in hers.

Hattie was coming toward them; now she was only about three feet away. “These here’s my grands. My daughter Viola’s kids.” Then she turned and caught a tall black man by the shoulder. “This is my oldest, Marcus. He’s on his way back to San Jose, California.” San Jose was just north of Los Gatos, where Emma lived.

Marcus, a handsome man in a yellow polo shirt and tan khaki slacks, reached over and extended his hand to Emma, who shook it. Behind her she could feel Rosalie’s discomfort. Men and women didn’t shake hands in West Cypress, and certainly not black and white. But this was almost California. Once she stepped foot on the plane, West Cypress would be gone.

“I remember you,” Marcus smiled. “You were the little girl with the chocolate.”

“Yes.” Emma laughed and she could see her own hand, small again, slipping two Hershey bars into Marcus’s grocery sack. Then her memory flipped back a couple more days. It was his hand now reaching out to stop her from slipping down the muddy canal bank. A few months later, he was waltzing with her in a dream. She’d never forgotten that dream, the Green Skeleton, the boogeyman of her childhood, releasing her into this man’s arms. Except then he had been a little boy.

* * *

“So you got away, too,” Marcus said as they settled into their seats on the plane.

“Yep, I made it out alive. And never looked back.”

“You were home visiting?”

Emma told Marcus about her daddy.

“I’m sorry to hear that. The doctor said he’s going to be okay?”

“Yes, he’ll be his old self again soon, I’m afraid.” They both laughed. “A gin and tonic,” she said then to the waiting stewardess.

“Make it two.”

Marcus insisted that the drinks be his treat.

“I owe you at least one for those candy bars.” He winked. “To West Cypress,” he toasted her. Their plastic glasses bumped silently.

“To getting out and coming back and getting out again.”

* * *

Jesse greeted her at the airport with a big hug.

“Did you miss me?” she whispered into his ear.

“You bet,” he said. “I almost starved to death.”

“Is that the only reason?” She poked him in the ribs.

“Nooo. That’s not all I missed. But you’ll have to wait till we get home for that.”

She smiled, but inside she stiffened a little. Relax, relax, she reminded herself. Everything’s going to be different.

“You’ve eaten?” he asked as they were about to pass Los Gatos on the highway. “Last chance. You want a hot dog or something?”

“No. I ate on the plane.”

“You smell like you did a little drinking too.”

“More than a little. I think I’m still a little drunk.”

Jesse raised an eyebrow. “Can’t let you go anywhere. Well, I’ve got some leftovers in the refrigerator. If you’re hungry later we can fix you up with something.”

“You cooked?”

“Of course I cooked.”

* * *

Oh, it was good to see the canyon again. She loved this little mountain road, the wooden bridges, the death-defying curves up the final hill.

“And the windows are almost finished? Great!”

“Yep. It’s been going well—beginning to see daylight. I’ve even been sleeping up there.” He paused. “I had a phone installed.”

“Where?”

“At Skytop.”

“Really? Why?”

“I just told you. I’ve been up there so much, and I’ve been thinking about what you said about being isolated.”

“But you never even answer the phone.” Emma didn’t know why she was being so contrary, but something was niggling at her.

“Don’t you get tired of driving up when you need me?”

“I’ve been doing it for almost four years.”

“Well, now you don’t have to anymore.”

The bottled salad dressing was the first thing she saw when she opened the refrigerator door.

“Jesse,” she called, “who’s been here?”

“What do you mean?” He was in the bedroom.

“There’s Roquefort dressing in our fridge.” Jesse hated Roquefort cheese.

There was just a pause, a two-beat hesitation. She felt him taking a deep breath.

But his voice was ever so natural as he answered, “I had some friends over.”

“Friends?”

“Rupert. You know.”

No, she didn’t know at all. Rupert had been here twenty, thirty times before. He’d never asked for Roquefort.

And then she did know, had already known in her heart, in a place where a door had begun to open with a warning creak. Caroline and Jesse must have had quite a love feast in her absence.

“Are you getting something to eat or are you coming to bed?” Jesse asked.

She couldn’t go into their bedroom yet. “I need to call Rosalie and let her know I got back okay,” she said.

Emma looked around her kitchen, where nothing was different—the same old cabinets, the same testy electric range—but suddenly everything had changed.

15

Months rolled by. Summer slid into fall, the rains began, and Emma closed her eyes to Jesse’s affair with Caroline. If she didn’t admit that she knew, she wouldn’t have to deal with it. And since she wasn’t sure she
really
wanted him, but wasn’t willing to let go, either, since she couldn’t decide whether or not to get off the pot, she pretended to be deaf, dumb and blind, and she coasted.

There were some rewards. In the place of the intimacy of their early days there was a sort of calm. Jesse seemed kinder, more solicitous, less fractious. Well, he was getting what he wanted, she guessed—whatever that was.

Sometimes she stood off and looked at her teaching, her cooking, her long tight body, and she thought, Let Jesse go, why not? You’ll be exactly where you were before him, just a little further along. And wouldn’t it be delicious, to take a good deep breath without feeling that he was worrying at you about that thing he had so long referred to as your secret part?

As in: “There’s a secret part of you, Emma, that’s self-possessed and far away. You don’t really need anyone. You think you do, for a while, but you don’t. It’s like you popped out whole, Aphrodite from Zeus’s forehead, but you did it all by yourself.”

“You make me sound like some kind of machine, an automaton. I’m not like that.”

But she was, Jesse thought, sort of. For what she did, without knowing it, was use people up.

He’d watched the phenomenon again and again. At first, if someone appealed to her, Emma would turn to him with her unique warming focus—like a magnifying glass in the sun—asking questions, paying a kind of attention that was as flattering as it was unusual. It was as if the object of her attention were a new dish Emma wanted to taste. But once she’d rolled it around in her mouth, chewed on it until she had discerned the ingredients, well, then her curiosity was slaked, and she was ready to move on. However, the someone would by that time consider himself or herself (gender was not an issue here) a friend, certainly more than an acquaintance.

“That’s what you did with Bernie,” he’d told her.

“How do you know?”

“Because I listen when you’ve talked about the men in your past.”

“You asked me!”

“That’s not the point. The point is that you tossed them all away—like used tissues.”

“Not all. There were survivors, a few who lived to tell the tale.” She thought of long-ago Will. But then, too, hadn’t he suspected something like what Jesse was saying, something that scared him so that he moved on? Then she mugged a mouth like the devouring shark her husband accused her of being. “You’re full of shit, Jesse.”

But perhaps there was a bit of truth in his words—an idea that, when she thought about it, made her more than a little uncomfortable.

* * *

It was early December, and getting out of the canyon on weekends was impossible, the roads clogged with flatlanders driving to the mountains to cut their own Christmas trees.

“You better start early if you’re going to get across the highway,” Emma said.

“That’s what I’m doing.” Jesse was pulling on a flannel shirt, a jacket. “I just need to run up to Skytop first. I left some measurements.”

“Where did you say you were going to be all day?” She asked it lightly, as if she were inquiring about the weather.

“Place in Oakland I want to check out, has Victorian salvage.” Just as lightly he asked, “Sure you don’t want to go?”

How polite we are, she thought, in our conspiracy not to stumble over the body of Caroline which might as well be lying on the rug here between us.

“No, thanks. I don’t think so.” There was a time, oh, there
was
a time, when she would have pulled on a jacket and jumped into the truck, happy as Elmer to be taking a ride. “Today I’m going to run down to Boccia’s. Tony’s talking about doing a cookbook and wants me to help him test some recipes.”

“Great,” Jesse said. She knew he wasn’t listening to her. His mind was already on his first destination, Caroline’s apartment in Palo Alto.

“Have a good time.” She waved him out the door. “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

He turned on the heel of his boot and gave her a look.

Emma smiled brightly and blew him a kiss.

* * *

She hated being late. Jesse was just out the door, and once again the washing machine had exploded. The chipmunks thought it was a larder, had filled it with nuts. Now water had backed up and blown out the hoses.

Where was Jesse when she needed him? By now, screwing his little sweet patootie.

But on the other hand, if she lived alone, there’d
never
be anyone to help.

And then on the third hand, she said to herself, stripping off her pants, soaked from the washing machine, and struggling into another pair, why don’t you just shut the hell up?

She grabbed her bag loaded with cookbooks and raced out the door.

At the end of the canyon road she could see the line of traffic to the highway ahead. From the valley side were station wagons full of children with expectant faces. Big green firs on wheels rolled down from the hilltop. Damn! She was never going to get out.

Finally someone waved her and the van behind her into line. She should have called Tony Boccia: “Christmas trees are clogging the road, and my washing machine was full of nuts.” She looked at her watch. She’d never make it.

Then she glanced into her rearview mirror. The man in the van behind her waved. Who the hell was that?

She crept forward a foot.

Bump. Bump.
Her tires made a funny sound. Probably a broken Christmas-tree branch.

The van behind her tooted. She glared into the rearview mirror. “I’m doing the best I can, you bastard.”

He honked again.
Okay. Okay.
She rolled forward another foot.
Bump. Bump.

Then a tall man with long white-blond hair was leaning down looking into her face. Her heart leaped. Will! No, no, she’d made this same mistake before. But where, when?

“You know you’ve got a flat?” By God, listen to that. He was Southern! When he smiled, a gap showed between his two front teeth. “And now I get to return the favor,” he said. “Three, four months ago your husband pulled me out of the ditch.”