Secrets She Left Behind (11 page)

“You don’t have a fucking clue.”

Her cheeks turned red. “All right,” she said. “Sorry I upset you.” She let go of my cart and began pushing her own away. Why was I being such a prick? She scared me. She could look right at my face and not freak, and that just seemed too damn weird.

“Wait,” I said.

She turned around. Her hair swept through the air like she was in a shampoo commercial. “Sorry,” I said. “You can cook me something. Not tonight, though. I feel like crap today.” Not really the truth. I was nicely medicated, but I needed some time to adjust to a girl like her being interested in me.

“Soon?” she asked. “Can I have your cell number?”

She pulled a scrap of paper from a tiny purse and wrote down my number. She wrote hers down, too, then tore the sheet in two pieces and gave me the half with her number on it.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Keith.”

“Well, hey, Keith,” she said, sticking her hand out toward me. “I’m Jen.”

Sara
Angel’s Wings
1990

S
OMETIME DURING THE FIRST YEAR THAT I BABYSAT MAGGIE,
I began leading my double life. It crept up on me gradually until, before I knew it, it had me by the throat. By then it was too late for me to change a thing.

I hadn’t given up trying to help Laurel, despite being so rudely kicked out of the house the first time I visited. Or, I supposed, it was really Jamie I was trying to help. I’d pick up groceries for the Lockwoods when I went to the commissary and I brought over the occasional meal. Laurel tolerated me. She was nearly always on the couch when I arrived, her expression flat as she watched TV. If Maggie was with me, Laurel barely seemed to notice her. I sometimes felt as though
I
was Maggie’s mother instead of Laurel.

In early January, Jamie’s father was hospitalized with pneumonia. Since Steve was in Monterey studying Arabic, I kept Maggie at our small rental house outside Camp Lejeune while Jamie spent most of his time at the hospital in Wilmington. Jamie called often, ostensibly to check on Maggie, but the conversations quickly began to shift to something deeper. He told me how afraid he was that his
father might die. I had lost my father when I was sixteen and it was easy for me to sympathize with him.

“I can’t talk to Laurel about any of this,” he said at the end of one of our phone conversations. “I…It’s not her fault. She loves my father, and I know she’s worried about him, but it’s as though she can’t really see outside herself right now. It’s like she has nothing to give me anymore.” He hesitated. “Or Maggie. Or anyone.”

“I know.” I was sitting in a rattan rocker in the third tiny bedroom of my house—the room that had become Maggie’s nursery away from home. Jamie’d furnished it with a crib, the rocker and a changing table. “It must be so hard for you,” I said.

“I keep reminding myself that she’s sick,” Jamie said. “If she had a physical illness, I’d take care of her, so this shouldn’t be any different. But you’re right. It
is
hard. I sometimes feel like I’m losing my ability to empathize with people.”

“Oh, no, Jamie,” I said. “I watch what happens when you’re in the chapel on Sundays.” People would file into the small five-sided building, talking quietly among themselves as though the morning was nothing special. Then Jamie would walk into the chapel, and the atmosphere would shift to a higher plane. I could see the change in the faces of the people. I could
feel
it happening inside my own skin. “Think of how many lives you touch there.”

“Yeah. The lives of strangers.” He sounded annoyed with himself. “Yet Marcus pisses me off, and now I’m scared I’m losing it with Laurel. She doesn’t take care of herself. We have…no physical life anymore. I look at her sometimes and don’t even know who she is.”

I decided to take him into my confidence, the way he was taking me into his.

“It’s not great with Steve and me either,” I admitted.

Jamie hesitated. “I haven’t gotten to know Steve,” he said finally, “but you two do seem like a mismatch. You’re friendly and warm and positive and he’s very…reserved.”

That was putting it mildly. “I’m not sure I’ve ever been in love with him,” I said.

“But you married him,” Jamie said. “There must have been something there.”

I looked over at the crib where Maggie was sleeping. “There was a baby there,” I said finally.

“A baby…?”

“It was so stupid,” I said. “I got pregnant on our second date. We barely knew each other. I was so naive.”
And a virgin,
I thought, but I was already saying more than I should. “I let things go too far and then it was too late for him to stop.”

“It’s never too late to stop,” Jamie said.

“I let it go too far,” I repeated, remembering the sudden pressure of Steve’s penis pushing against me. Into me. “I asked him to stop, but he was…you know. He was so far gone he couldn’t hear me.”

“He heard you,” Jamie said. “Don’t make excuses for him.”

“He said he didn’t. I believe him. He was—”

“You were date-raped.”

“No.”
That was too extreme a description of what had happened. “It was my fault.”

Jamie hesitated again. “But…what happened to the baby?” he asked.

Gripping the phone hard, I started to cry the tears I’d learned to hide from Steve. “He died,” I said. “He was born at thirty weeks. He only lived a few hours.” I could remember the shape of his fingernails and the narrow bridge of his tiny nose as clearly as if I’d given birth to him only a moment before.

“Sara,” Jamie said quietly. “I’m so sorry. Why didn’t you tell me? And here you’ve been taking care of Maggie. I never would have asked you to if I’d known.”

“Taking care of her has helped.” I wiped my tears away, thinking, so
this
is what it feels like to unburden yourself to a man. I hadn’t even known it was possible.

“Well,” Jamie said after a moment. “At least Steve married you. He took responsibility. A lot of men wouldn’t, especially after dating for such a short time. You two barely knew each other.”

“You’re right. But I had to marry him.”

Jamie was quiet. “You don’t have to
stay
married to him,” he said finally.

I bit my lip. “And you don’t have to stay married to Laurel.”

“I do,” he answered. “It’s like I said, Sara. She’s sick. That’s different.”

My phone conversations with Steve during that same period were very different from those I had with Jamie. Steve called nearly every day from Monterey. He told me about the other guys in his classes and how hard the work was, but he was always talking about nuts and bolts. Never about his feelings.

“Will that baby be gone by the time I get back?” he asked one time when he heard Maggie crying in the background.

“Would it bother you, having her here?” Maybe having a baby around would remind him of Sam, even though I was quite sure Steve had put Sam completely out of his mind. I imagined the sort of father he would have made. He wouldn’t be like Jamie, that was certain. Where Jamie was open, expansive and uninhibited with his daughter, Steve would have been wooden and mechanical. Jamie cuddled Maggie, cooing to her, telling her
flat-out that he loved her, while Steve had never even spoken those words to me.

“It’s just…weird,” Steve said. “It’s like he’s turned that kid over to you to raise. I don’t like it.”

“Well, it’s just while Jamie’s father’s in the hospital,” I said.

“What’s with that whole situation?” Steve asked. “What’s with his wife?”

“They…the baby put a lot of strain on their marriage,” I said. “Especially on Laurel. She’s depressed and not managing things well.”

“Hey!” Steve said abruptly. “If they split up, one of them could rent our spare room. For some extra money, they could even bring the baby. She’s practically living with us for free as it is.” He was always talking about renting out the extra room to one of the guys in his unit. We could use the cash. But Jamie and Laurel split up? I couldn’t imagine it.

The day after that conversation with Steve, Jamie showed up at my house while Maggie was napping. His eyes were red, and I knew before he said a word that his father had died. Without thinking, I wrapped my arms around him while he wept. He clung to me, and I felt the comfortable bulk of him against my body. I wanted to take the hurt away, even though I knew it was one of those hurts that would never disappear completely. I was glad he’d come to me. Laurel didn’t have the capacity to comfort him the way he needed comforting.

After a few minutes, I drew away. “Can you eat?” I asked. “I made beef stew yesterday. I can heat some up.”

He reached for my hand as he sat down at the kitchen table. “Just sit with me awhile,” he said. “Okay?”

I sat across the corner of the table from him while he told me about his father. How smart he was. Tolerant and good-hearted. People called him Daddy L, even those outside the family. Jamie wished I could have met him. He’d been so shrewd, buying up the Topsail Island property when it was cheap, making money that would keep the Lockwoods wealthy for generations.

We sat that way for a long time, Jamie holding my hand while he talked. I focused on the sensation of his skin against mine, so I could remember later exactly how it felt. That’s when my double life truly began to take hold. I pretended to care about Laurel, wanting her to get better for the sake of her husband and daughter, yet at the same time hoping she didn’t, so I could hang on to the part of Jamie and Maggie that I had. Without them, my life would have been too empty to bear.

I was shocked when I realized I was fantasizing about both Steve and Laurel dying. It was easy enough to picture with Laurel. She’d starve herself to death. Maybe even kill herself. Then there was that whole big Iran and Iraq mess heating up in the Middle East and maybe Steve would be deployed there and maybe he would be killed. Then Jamie and I would gradually get closer and closer, comforting each other in our grief until we finally realized we belonged together. We’d get married, and I would adopt Maggie. Maybe we’d go on to have kids of our own.

The fantasy came with a terrible, gut-wrenching guilt, but it was hard to control. I could be sitting in the living room with Steve while he studied for an exam, and I’d be knitting a scarf and killing him off in my mind at the same time.

And then, everything changed.

One day, while Maggie was with Jamie at the chapel, I took
some groceries to the Sea Tender. I knocked on the door and when I didn’t get an answer, I went inside to find Laurel sitting on the kitchen floor. It was so unusual to see her off the sofa that I dropped the groceries on the counter and rushed to her side.

“Laurel!” I said. “Are you okay?”

She looked up at me. There was an electric drill in her hand.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Screwing up,” Laurel said with a small laugh. She looked at the drill. “In a couple of months, Maggie’ll be crawling and then walking, and I got worried she could get into the things under the sink here and in the bathroom.”

I saw the small plastic clip in Laurel’s left hand and realized she was trying to childproof the cabinets. Trying to protect her daughter. The brittle part of my heart that I’d reserved for Laurel cracked into slivers like a broken window.

I sank down next to her. “Can I help?”

Laurel stared at the drill. “I think I did it wrong,” she said. “I don’t think the part on the door is exactly in the right place to match up with this piece.”

“Let me see.” I checked the plastic piece she’d screwed into place on the door. It was off just slightly. In the plastic latch and the small crooked screw and the cumbersome drill, I saw the love of a mother for her child. The love that Laurel’s stubborn depression—her stubborn
mental illness—
could not extinguish.

My eyes suddenly filled with tears. “It’ll be okay,” I said. “We can just put this one a little to the right.” I considered taking the drill from Laurel’s hand and making the hole in the door myself, but it would be better if she did it. With a pencil, I marked the spot for her to drill. I held the door steady and Laurel, biting her lip in concentration, drilled the hole. When she screwed the
plastic hook in place, she sighed with exhaustion, as if she’d swum a few laps in a pool.

“Beautiful, Laurel!” I said.

Laurel closed the cabinet door and saw that it hooked. She unhooked it. Hooked it again.

“Ta-da,” she said in a very small voice. She set the drill on the floor. “I’ll do the bathroom cabinet tomorrow.” Then she looked at me. “Thank you,” she said. “You’ve done a lot for us. Don’t think I don’t know how much. And I haven’t thanked you.”

“You’re welcome.” I put my arm around her, the gesture automatic, although it felt strange. It felt even stranger when Laurel rested her head against my shoulder. Her hair smelled musty. Her lethargy was nearly palpable, and I felt tired myself all of a sudden, as though the exhaustion was catching. “I’m glad to do it,” I said. “I love taking care of Maggie. She’s a joy.”

“She always cries with me.”

“Maybe she picks up on your…your sadness,” I said. “I know you don’t want to think about it, but you really
may
need some, you know, professional help to pull out of this.”

Laurel’s body stiffened beneath my arm. She grabbed the counter and stood up, and I knew the spell was broken for both of us.

“I brought groceries,” I said, getting to my own feet. “Can I make you some lunch?”

Laurel started for the couch. “Not hungry,” she said.

She was so thin. I saw the long ridges of her shoulder blades beneath the back of her T-shirt, like the beginning of angel wings, and I knew that, no matter what happened from this day forward, I would no longer be able to wish her dead.