Secrets She Left Behind (24 page)

Sara
Painting and Sewing
1991

J
AMIE SPLIT HIMSELF IN TWO. THAT WAS THE WAY I SAW IT. IF
I’d been stronger or tougher or meaner, I would have demanded more. Instead, I witnessed Jamie’s struggle to be there for me and our beautiful son, as well as for Laurel and Maggie, and I couldn’t bring myself to make things harder for him. The baby who was yet to be born would up the score on Laurel’s side. Two to one. I didn’t want to think that way, but sometimes I did.

I spent a lot of time in the comfort of the chapel. On Sundays, I often stood near the entrance with Keith and Maggie to keep them from disrupting the service. I was there during the week as well. The walls needed painting, and I talked to Jamie about painting them myself—a massive job. I asked him if I could bring color into the space I loved. He looked alarmed at first. His vision for the chapel had always been pure white walls, but when I talked about the view—how it looked outside the panoramic windows after a rain, with the sand that deep khaki color—he understood what I was saying. So I painted the inside of the chapel the color of wet sand, all by myself, in between feeding and changing Keith. Jamie’d found a nanny for Maggie, and although I missed the little girl, I had
to admit it was a relief not to have both of them to care for. I loved Maggie, but I would have resented being asked to watch Laurel’s child as well as my own now that Jamie seemed to have chosen between us. That was small of me, but I couldn’t help it.

When I finished painting the chapel, I asked Jamie if I could make cushions for the pews. The task of making the long, foam-filled cushions would be grueling, but I pleaded, and Jamie finally agreed. I spread fabric on the floor of the chapel office and cut it into long rectangles. I brought in a sewing machine and sewed well into the evenings.

All my work served a purpose separate from making the chapel warmer and even more beautiful: it kept me from thinking about the Sea Tender. Laurel had stopped drinking, Jamie told me. She was doing much better. He’d made the right decision to go home, he said. All the while, I painted and sewed because I knew which home was ultimately Jamie’s greatest love, and it was the one where I was working.

I was in the chapel when Jamie called me early one morning.

“The baby’s here,” he said, and I knew from the thick, tired tone of his voice that something was wrong. My heart dropped. As envious as I was of Laurel, I would never wish for anything to happen to her or the baby.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. My first thought was that, like Keith, the baby had a hole in its heart, but that was not the problem.

“They took him away from us,” Jamie said. “Laurel’s been drinking all along. She just hid it from me somehow. She was smashed when she went into labor last night. Marcus drove her in so I wouldn’t know. And the baby—” His voice broke.

“Oh, Jamie. Honey.” I put down the fabric I’d been sewing. “What happened?”

“They think he has this…condition called fetal alcohol syndrome. He looks okay, except for being small. But it’s something about his development or…I don’t understand it all yet. I just…”

“What do you mean, they took him away from you?”

“Protective Services. They have custody of him, though he’s still here at the hospital. The social worker said Laurel probably had severe postpartum depression after Maggie was born and that she’s been drinking to…they called it self-medicate. I shouldn’t have left her. I should have insisted she get help.”

“You did everything you could,” I said. “You couldn’t force her. Even that psychiatrist you took her to told you that, remember?”

“This poor little guy,” he said. “He’s all tied up to machines. I can’t take it, Sara. Laurel’s upset. I know she feels terrible. But she doesn’t really understand the whole thing. The social worker said our best chance of getting the baby back is for her to go into rehab, but she won’t do it.”

I turned off the sewing machine. “I’m coming to the hospital,” I said.

On the drive to the hospital, I felt my anger toward Laurel building. Laurel had everything. Jamie. The money. Two children. And she was doing her best to throw it all away and hurt every single person who cared about her. Everyone treated her with kid gloves, and it wasn’t working.

When I arrived in Laurel’s hospital room, I found Jamie sitting next to her bed. Laurel looked ashen and tired, her eyes at half-mast.

“Go get a cup of coffee, Jamie,” I said.

He looked at me. “I don’t need a cup of coffee.”

I grabbed his arm, tugged him out of the chair and pulled him physically to the door. He stopped in the doorway, trying to read my face, and I knew he was worried what I might say to Laurel in his absence. Tough.

“Go,” I said.

Once he left, I sat down in the chair he’d vacated and skipped right over the pleasantries. “You need to go into rehab,” I said, “for your family’s sake if not for your own.”

“I wish y’all would just leave me alone.” Laurel’s voice was so whiny and pathetic. I wanted to slap her face. Slap some sense into her.

I somehow managed to get control of my anger. I told Laurel about the first time I saw her. It was in the chapel, when she’d looked so pretty and so full of love for her husband. I told her how much Jamie loved her. How her children needed her to be whole and healthy for them. For a moment, I thought I was getting through to her.

Then she shook her head. “All I want right now is a drink,” she said.

Furious, I sat forward and grabbed her wrist. “You’ve become a selfish, self-absorbed bitch, Laurel, you know that?” I stared hard into her eyes. “I know your hormones got screwed up,” I said. “I understand you can’t help the depression. But you can
fix it,
Laurel. You’re the only one who can.”

I got up, scraping the chair against the linoleum floor, and walked out of the room. In the hallway, I started to tremble, and I fought tears as I left the hospital and walked into the parking garage, knowing I’d done what no one else had dared to do: tell Laurel the truth.

Andy

I
HAD A HARD TIME GETTING ALONE WITH UNCLE MARCUS.
Mom and Maggie were always around, but finally it was just me and him at breakfast Saturday. I felt embarrassed all of a sudden, but I knew I had to do it.

I poked my cereal with my spoon. “My condom is too old,” I said.

Coffee all of a sudden squirted out of Uncle Marcus’s mouth and he started choking. He got up and leaned over the sink and coughed and coughed. Was he having an asthma attack?

“You need your inhaler?” I asked. I never saw Uncle Marcus’s inhaler, so I didn’t know where to get it.

He shook his head. “I don’t have asthma, remember?” His voice was croaky like a frog. Finally he got a paper towel and wiped his mouth and then his eyes. He sat down again. I looked real hard at his face. He looked like he’d been crying, but he was smiling. “You just caught me off guard there, buddy. Sorry ’bout that.”

“You spilled coffee on the table.” I pointed to a place where the coffee came out of his mouth.

“Thanks.” He pressed on the coffee spot with his paper towel. Then he looked at me. “What are you talking about, Andy?” he asked. “Do you mean the condom I gave you a while back?”

I nodded. “It says ten-oh-seven on it.”

“Well, you’re right, then. It’s too old.” He breathed out like he was real tired but he didn’t look tired. “Are you saying you and Kimmie want to have sex?”

“Yes.”

“Well—” he got up and poured some more coffee in his cup “—I’m proud of you for coming to me and for wanting to be careful,” he said. “But let’s talk about it a little first.”

“Me and Kimmie already did.”

His eyes got big. “Did what?”

“Talk about it.”

“Oh.” He sat down again. “Okay. And what did you say?”

“That we both want to do it but how we need a new condom. I saw them at Food Lion but I don’t know which one to get.”

“I’ll get you some, And. Don’t sweat it. But please. There’s no rush. You’re only—”

I just knew he was going to say I was only sixteen, but he looked out the window instead.

“There’re some rules that come with having sex,” he said.

“Never ever do it without a condom,” I said. I remembered that’s what he told me.

“That’s right. That’s rule number one. Number two is to always treat a girl with respect. That means you don’t go telling other people that you had sex with her.”

“It’s private.”

“
Very
private.”

“I’m telling
you,
though. You just said you were proud of me about that.”

“I mean you don’t tell your friends.”

“Like Max.”

“Especially not Max.”

“He tells me what he does with his girlfriends, though.”

“Do you think he’s treating them with respect?”

“I don’t know. I’m not there when he’s with them.”

“No, I mean, by telling you what happens between him and them. That’s disrespectful.”

“Oh.” I got it. “Right. So I won’t tell Max.”

“Or any other friends. It’s between you and Kimmie.”

“Yup. Can I have the condom now?”

Uncle Marcus shook his head. “I’m not done,” he said.

“Okay.” He had a lot of rules.

“Do you love Kimmie?” he asked, all serious.

“Totally.”

He nodded. “Well, here’s another rule. If she
ever
says no or she doesn’t want to do it, you don’t push her.”

“I’d
never
push her.” I was surprised he thought I’d do that.

“I mean, you don’t try to talk her into it,” he said. “When a girl says no, that’s it. You stop. You won’t want to stop, but you have to. Even if you have to get up and go in the bathroom and…”

“Jerk off,” I said.

He laughed and twisted his mouth up funny. “You know more than I figured about this,” he said.

“So does Kimmie. We both know how to do it.” We’d been talking about it a
lot
since the movies. I couldn’t wait to see her again, and not just at stupid swim practice when all the people were around. “We just haven’t ever done it. Either of us.”

Uncle Marcus rubbed his face with his hand. “It’s a powerful urge, isn’t it?” he asked, like he didn’t know about it himself.

I nodded.

“D’you remember we talked last year about another powerful urge you have? Used to have?”

I shook my head.

“Hitting people?”

“Oh, yeah. When they call me a name.”

“Right. And what was the rule for that?”

“Stop, think and act,” I said. “Only it’s atomic now.”

He scrunched his eyebrows together. “What do you mean?”

That wasn’t the right word. “You know. When you don’t need to do all the steps in your head.”

“Automatic?”

I smiled. “Yeah.”

“That’s great, Andy. But when it comes to sex, I want you to go back to the rules. When you feel like…getting close to Kimmie that way, stop and think first.”

“About what?”

“About being safe, first of all. About how it might be better to wait.”

“For
what?
” I was getting confused.

He blew out a
long
breath. “Too many rules, huh?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Just repeat the important ones back to me.”

I just wanted the condom, but I knew he wouldn’t give it to me unless I said the rules. “Always use a condom.” I looked at the ceiling, remembering. “Don’t push her if she says no. Jerk off instead. Don’t tell other people.” Then I looked back at him. He was smiling. “How’d I do?”

“Great, Andy,” he said. “I’ll get you some condoms today, okay?”

Keith

L
AUREL CALLED ME A COUPLE OF DAYS AFTER THE P.I. PAID
his visit to my trailer.

“I spoke to Mr. Johnson,” she said, “and he’s concerned you have some household bills coming in with no way to pay them.”

Damn Mr. Mister Johnson, I thought. He’d asked me about the bills that were piling up, but what gave him the right to talk to Laurel about them? Maybe since she was paying for him, she got to know everything there was to know.

“And how is this your business?” I asked.

“Let me take care of them,” Laurel said.

“Uh-uh,” I said.

“Keith,” she said, “please don’t let your pride get in the way of letting people help you.”

I would have hung up on her if I didn’t know she was right. I needed help if I wanted to stay in the trailer. So far the phone and electric bills had shown up, along with medical bills that weren’t covered by my insurance. I knew where my mother kept her checks and had thought of forging her signature, but the bank knew she was missing and I figured I’d just end up screwing myself. I didn’t need the house phone as long as I had my cell. And I could get by without electricity until winter, but I would definitely need
it then. I wished Dawn hadn’t let Frankie move in with her. I could tolerate living with Dawn, but that was out of the question with him there now.

“If it makes it easier to swallow, I’ll use the restitution money, okay?” Laurel said. “Instead of having that money automatically sent to your mom’s bank account, I’ll pay whatever bills come in.”

All right,
I thought. “I don’t need the house phone,” I said. “Just the cell.”

“Well, the P.I. said for you to definitely keep the landline,” she said. “Just in case someone tries to contact you about your mother.”

Oh, man. I wished someone
would
contact me. Kidnapper. Extortionist. Mom herself. As long as it wasn’t the school or Social Services, I’d love that phone to ring.

I decided to go over to Jen’s that afternoon. I didn’t call first and I guess it was kind of uncool of me to just drop in, but I felt like we were getting tight and she wouldn’t mind. There was no answer when I knocked on the front door of her cottage, though, so I walked around back and saw her sitting alone out on the beach. Her back was to me, and even though the sky was overcast and gloomy, she had on a straw hat and she was bundled up in a big tan sweater.

“Hey!” I called as I walked toward her. The ocean was rough, and she didn’t seem to hear me. “Hey!” I shouted again when I was practically on top of her.

She jumped to her feet suddenly, a hand to her chest. “You scared me!” she said.

“Sorry.” I smiled, reaching for her, but she dodged my hands.

“Don’t do that again,” she said. “Don’t sneak up on me, okay?”

“Okay.” I raised my hands like I was showing her I was unarmed or something. “I said I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right.” She flopped down on the sand again. “Didn’t mean to overreact.”

I sat next to her. “You want me to go?” I asked.

She shook her head. That’s when I noticed that her eyes were red, her cheeks damp. I’d caught her crying.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Nothing.”

“Then why are you crying?”

She didn’t answer right away. Finally she smiled. “You know how girls get sometimes. PMS and all that. Anything can set us off.” She pointed at a string of pelicans flying low over the rough gray water. “Like the pelicans, for example. See the one at the end? Why’s he at the end? Is he sick or just slow? Is it some pelican pecking order? Does he always have to be last?”

Whoa. Weird. PMS could turn a perfectly sane chick into a lunatic.

“So you’re sitting here crying over a pelican?” I asked.

“Not specifically. I’m just trying to explain how I get emotional sometimes. It doesn’t need to make sense.”

She had those scars inside. I couldn’t make myself ask about them. I didn’t want to get into a whole big heavy thing with her.

She wiped her cheeks with her hands like she was trying to erase her bad mood. “You want to watch a movie?”

“Yeah. Sure,” I said, though I would have rather gone to bed with her. I had the feeling that wasn’t going to happen.

“Okay.” She stood up and brushed off the back of her shorts. Then she brushed off the back of my jeans, which only made me want to fuck her ten times more.

She suddenly stood on her tiptoes, leaned over and kissed me on
the cheek. “I’m glad you’re here, Keith,” she said. “I really am.” And she put her arm around my waist and kept it there as we walked back to her house.