Secrecy (12 page)

Miller rose. “I should like to confer with my clients, Your Honor.” He sat down again and, with a somewhat dubious expression, regarded Cliff. “Well?”

“A hefty sum,” said Cliff, exhaling an almost inaudible whistle.

“Yes. Can you do it?”

“I’ll have to. What choice is there?”

Claudia stared down at a large splinter where some unknown piece of metal had gouged the floor. She was burning within. Live coals in the stomach. What choice was there? Plain enough: Let him sit in jail until the trial.

No one spoke for a few moments until Cliff said, “It’s been a long time, before the mill shut down, since I’ve been what most people would call very well off. I’ll have to borrow, put my house up as
collateral. It’s worth a deal more than four hundred.”

His beloved house, the family home. And all the rotten publicity. Cliff’s good name. On account of Ted. My contribution to our marriage, she thought in her bitter shame. Did he, this minute, have any regrets? She couldn’t look at him.

“It’s a good thing we have business with two banks. I’d hate to have to ask Callahan’s bank for a loan, even with good collateral. I’d hate to come face to face with him at all right now.”

“How soon do you think you’ll get it?” asked Miller.

“I can take care of it today.”

“Okay,” Miller said. “Why don’t you go outside, Mrs. Dawes? You look as if you need some air.”

“Yes, go,” Cliff urged. “I’ll be there as soon as we get the paperwork done.”

Claudia did not protest. Leaving the courtroom, she passed close to Ted. In custody, she thought, Ted’s in custody. Though he said nothing, his eyes implored her. And she gave him a smile with a “thumbs up,” lifting her head high as she went out.

Cliff brought her home and left again for the bank. Alone, she walked through the house just looking at things, from the dining room with its 1910 family portrait above the mantel, through the broad hall into the sunroom, where flowering plants kept summer alive through the dark winter. This house had never had a mortgage. And she stood in the sunny hallway again, wringing her hands. Odd, she thought as she became aware that she was doing
so, it’s not only in Victorian novels, but true, that people in despair do wring their hands.

After a while, though, she spoke aloud to herself. “This won’t do. No, Claudia, it won’t do at all.”

The remedy, the oldest remedy known to women, had always been work. For some time she had been reminding herself that the pantry cabinets, stored with fancy old china and cut glass seldom used, could stand a good cleaning. Very well, there was no better moment than the present to begin.

She was in the midst of this chore, surrounded by bric-a-brac, when Cliff came home. She looked at him, asking a silent question. Speech right now was not only difficult but apparently, for both of them, unnecessary, because his answer, though soft, was brief.

“It’ll be taken care of.”

Her response was a nod. How explain her gratitude or her pain? Surely, knowing her as he did, he knew that too.

“It’s cooling off,” he said. “What about having supper out under the trees?”

So with scant appetite they ate and talked a little about daily things, whether they should take Rob to a different veterinarian, or whether they needed a new fence in back. Later they listened to the news, heard some music, and went to bed.

“Do you want a sleeping pill?” asked Cliff.

“No pills.”

I must get through this by my own strength. There’s a long road ahead.

H
aving said nothing for the last half hour, Mama complained, “I’m trying to figure out why you’re taking all these blacktop byways instead of the interstate. We’ll never get home at this rate.”

“Because,” Dad said, “I like to watch summer marching up north of Boston. You don’t see anything on an interstate. Besides, what’s the hurry?”

North of Boston
. Last semester they had had to memorize a poem of Robert Frost’s.

Charlotte had selected that one because of the mountain, which she could see from her window; far off and dark blue, it merged into clouds so that sometimes you were not sure whether you were really seeing it at all.

But now I don’t want to go back there, Charlotte thought. I have to get away. My friends will ask where I’ve been. I don’t want to talk to them. I look awful, skinny and scrawny. Emmabrown will hug me and cry and want to know what they did to me in Boston. I’ll cover my eyes if Dad drives past Claudia’s house. If only there were some cleaning cloth or dust mop that could just wipe things out of my head, things that keep cropping up when I don’t want them to! Elena, giggling with Judd in Florida. His striped shirt. Elena and Dad at night, doors slamming and the chandelier tinkling in the hall.

Listen, Charlotte, you’d better pull yourself together or they’ll take you to a shrink, at least they’ll try to. But you won’t go. You only need to get away where nobody knows you, and you’ll be all right. Yes, you will, Charlotte.

“Look,” Dad said. “There’s a real country school. I wonder whether it’s still in use. Probably not. Can’t have more than three rooms with a stove in each. McGuffey’s readers. Well, at least they learned grammar then, which is more than they do today.”

A country school would be nice. It wouldn’t be like this one, with a cow pasture across the road, although I would like that. But I could go to a boarding school. Long ago and far away. Isn’t that somebody’s poem? At least it would be far away.

“Have you heard anything from your brother about what’s going on?” Elena asked. “You never tell me.”

“We’ve had other things on our minds, haven’t we? Besides, I hate the subject.”

“We can’t dodge it. No, don’t look warnings at me. Charlotte certainly wants to know what’s happening.”

Dad looked back at her through the rearview mirror. His forehead had worry wrinkles.

“Do you, Charlotte?”

She did, and also she didn’t. “I suppose I do,” she said.

“Well, I’ll make it short and simple. Ted’s been arrested on two rape charges. Rape and kidnapping. He drove a girl out to the lake against her will. He broke her nose.”

Little fingers of alarm ran down Charlotte’s back. “How did they find out? I mean, does everybody know?”

“You needn’t be afraid. We haven’t made any complaint, so no one will know about you. These girls’ parents went to the police. That’s different. It’s in all the newspapers.”

“Who are the girls?”

“Their names are withheld. That’s not to say their names won’t leak out when they have to testify.”

“What will happen to Ted?”

“I imagine he’ll serve time.”

“They should take him out and shoot him,” Elena said.

Dad sighed. “Everything’s a mess. Cliff had to make enormous bail. And Claudia—well, you can imagine how she must be.”

A memory of lemon tarts flashed. I still have some of the books that she lent me, Charlotte thought.

“I’m sorry for her,” she said.

“Sorry!” cried Elena. “The woman’s a fool. If they put that monster away for the rest of his life, which they won’t do, she’ll be well rid of him.”

Bill reproved her. “He’s a heartbreaking blow to a mother. Don’t you see that? And Claudia is far from being a fool.”

“Oh, you two! You and Charlotte. Two softies if there ever were any.”

No one answered. The car meandered through a long green aisle, around curves, up little hills and down. All you could hear was the soft throb of the engine.

Imagine having to go to court and tell, thought Charlotte. I would die.

“We’ll be in Roseville soon,” Elena said. “Let’s stop for lunch.”

“Are you hungry, Charlotte?” Dad inquired.

“It doesn’t matter whether she is or not,” Elena interrupted. “She needs building up. She needs to eat.”

“Meaning that, as usual, you are starved,” Dad said, not unkindly. “Okay, we’ll find a diner when we go through town.”

“No diner, Bill, please. You know I hate the smell of frying grease. Let’s go to a decent place. Roseville must have one. There!” Elena said a few minutes later. “The old Colonial Inn. That looks nice.”

“Tearoom,” Bill grumbled. “Little doilies, sweet salads, and a spinning wheel in the corner. Oh, and a warming pan used by Washington—no, he didn’t get up this far north. Used by somebody, anyway, by Daniel Webster, maybe.”

Elena laughed. But it wasn’t funny. Couldn’t they ever agree about anything? Even about where to eat lunch?

“Put your sweater on,” Elena commanded. “It’s chilly, Charlotte.”

“Mama, it’s warm. It’s hot.”

“Don’t take any chances. Listen to me. You haven’t got your strength back yet.”

That was true. She did not have all her strength, and since it was easier not to argue, she put on the sweater. Besides, Mama meant well.

“It’s not so bad. Even rather nice,” Bill observed of the clean, bright room with the ubiquitous blackened fireplace and iron pots, ferns in hanging baskets, and middle-aged ladies wearing floral prints. He was being, as usual, conciliatory.

Elena’s comment followed. “It’s dreary, like all these towns.”

Beyond the window where they were sitting, traffic was slow on the wide main street. People ambled under a typical arch of elms.

“It’s remarkable,” Bill said, making conversation. “The elm blight seems to have escaped this town. What a difference trees make! We don’t prize them enough.”

Elena played with her chicken salad. For someone known to have a huge appetite, she was not doing very well. She sighed, so audibly that a woman at the near table, which was very near, turned to look. Perhaps, too, Charlotte thought, she is looking at Mama’s fashionable scarlet linen dress, a type not usually worn in Roseville.

“It’s been a nightmare,” Elena said. “This whole year, finishing up with the hospital, the horror of it. A nightmare.”

“Nightmares end when you wake up,” Bill said.

“Oh, I’m awake. That’s how I know I have to get away for a while.”

Calmly, Bill asked where she wanted to go this time. And Charlotte, suspending a fork midway to her mouth, waited for the answer. Please, not Florida again!

“I want to go back to Italy. I haven’t been there in years. I’ve been thinking—during all those miserable hours in the hospital there was plenty of time to think—that it would be wonderful for Charlotte to have a year at school abroad. We could have the rest of the summer to travel first. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”

“You know very well that I can’t take any time away now,” Bill said firmly. “There’s too much going on.”

“About Ted, you mean? I should think you’d be glad to get away from that mess. What they do with him is no concern of yours.”

“Yes, about Ted, but also our business. I’m worried about the new tenants. They’re our livelihood.”

“Well, Charlotte and I can go.”

This was simply a replay of the Florida affair. “No,” Charlotte said flatly.

Elena raised her eyebrows. “So emphatic? Why not?”

You ask, Charlotte said to herself, but you know why not: Italy, and parties, and another Judd.

“Because I won’t go without Dad,” she replied, which was also true.

“You do hurt me, Charlotte. I am, after all, your mother. Sometimes you seem to forget that.”

“I don’t mean to hurt you, Mama. But I don’t want to go. What I want is boarding school, someplace out in the country.” The idea was taking firmer shape as she spoke. “I want to start right away. Some schools have summer sessions.”

“What do you think?” Elena asked Bill.

“Whatever Charlotte feels will be good for her. She’s been through enough, and she knows best how she feels.”

“You see,” Elena said, “your father won’t mind if you go to Italy with me.”

“But I don’t want to go there,” Charlotte said.

Elena shrugged. “Well, I tried, that’s all I can say. I, however, am definitely going to go.”

There was a soreness in Charlotte’s chest, a grieving that comes when, in a book or at the movies, men go off to war, a child dies, or even—even when a beloved old dog is abandoned. It’s parting, she thought, a breaking apart. That’s what it is.

“You won’t come back,” she said very low.

“I never said I wouldn’t,” Elena cried sharply. “I didn’t say that.”

“But I know,” replied Charlotte.

A heavy atmosphere engulfed them all. When they rose from the table, it followed them into the car. The engulfing sweetness of the last two weeks’ truce, when the parents on either side of Charlotte’s bed
were united in their love for her and all their words were soft, had vanished.

No one made any effort now to bring it back; even Dad stopped making conversation. In a semidoze Charlotte lay on the backseat watching the treetops fly by. When at last he broke the silence and she sat up, they were on the river road, nearing home.

“They’ve already got trucks dumping,” he said, as if to himself. “I had no idea they’d get started so soon.”

The desolate huddle of the barren building reminded her of the state penitentiary, and gloom overcame her. She hated Kingsley. She was going to leave it and never, never come back.

When Cliff and I were kids, Bill asked himself, who could have imagined where we would be today? We had the world in a jug, as the old folks used to say. We’d ride downtown with our father and visit the mill; it was the heart of Kingsley; our father was the respected king of the town, and we were the young princes.

In the days since their return from Boston he had fallen into the habit of taking an after-dinner walk, alone with his turbulent thoughts. Elena watched television, and Charlotte, postoperative but recovering, went early to bed. Sometimes he met Cliff walking. Each of them, needing now some brief escape from stress, seemed to find it in the dark and quiet summer evening. They understood each other perfectly, Cliff knowing that Elena did not want him in
their house and Bill aware that an encounter with Ted at the other house would be a disaster.

“He hides in his room,” Cliff had told him, “and won’t come out. Claudia brings his meals up to him. He’s terrified, and well he should be. I love her, and that’s the problem. If I didn’t, I’d have booted him out, let him rot in jail until the trial date, let him take his punishment. Now I’ve loaded myself with debt because of him.”