Can You Keep a Secret?

Trigger warnings: child death, suicide

"Can you keep a secret?" she asked Margaret. The question that always strikes fear into the individual being challenged, as it is asking them to act in a certain manner before being given any catalyst. It is just like being asked to swallow whatever someone has grabbed from the medicine cabinet on the understanding that they will be told what it was once it has hit their digestive tract.

Margret thought about it for a second, her mind assessing the two desirable responses of 'no', and 'tell me what it is first' - both of which would have conveyed a lack of trust and a cold-hearted disregard that Margaret could tell from Elizabeth's disposition would not have gone down well in the current moment - and so settled inevitably, but grudgingly, for “yes, of course, you

can tell me anything”.

The two wealthy, middle aged women – Margaret, short and plump but with the friendliest of round faces and envious long brunet hair, and Elizabeth, taller, slimmer, with shorter, grayer hair but a pointier more glamorous face, with eyebrows that on most women

would have not have worked, but suited Elizabeth perfectly - both looked into each other's eyes with raised, worried brows. Elizabeth in fear of revealing what was about to come, and her friend’s reaction, and Margaret in the fear of what was about to come, and her own reaction.

“I’m having an affair”, Elizabeth spat out anxiously, as quickly as she could, dropping her eyes to the ground as she did so for a good five seconds before slowing lifting them again to read Margaret’s face for a reaction.

Margaret mulled over what she had just been told, as her gaze was fixed firmly on the horizon across the East River by which the two were sat on a bench in a park up high above the FDR Drive below. They came often to this overlook in Manhattan’s swanky Sutton Place district as they both lived 5 blocks away from it – Margaret, uptown on her own in the penthouse her late husband, Arthur, had left her in his will, and Elizabeth, downtown in a more modest but still luxurious 3 bedroom apartment with her husband, John.

“Say something, Maggie, the silence is killing me here”, Elizabeth pleaded, placing one hand on Margaret’s leg and gently shaking it. Margaret, with her eyes still stubbornly on the horizon, opened her mouth as though she was about to speak, but closed it again with a sigh. “Why?” is all that eventually came out of her mouth when she tried again.

“I don’t know why, Mag. I just missed the excitement, I guess. John and I have been married for 15 years, you know?!”.

“I am fully aware, Lizzy. I was your bride of honor if you hadn’t forgotten!”, Margaret snapped.

“Of course I haven’t forgotten, you were amazing, … and why are you getting so mad? I thought you’d support me in this”.

“I can’t support what you are doing, Lizzy, I just can’t. John is a lovely man and he deserves so much better than this. You’re the most selfish woman I’ve ever met. This is the final straw, I’m done with you, I’m sorry!”. Margaret stood up quickly, looked at Elizabeth for the first time since she had revealed her secret, opened her mouth to speak, sighed, closed it again - shaking her head in a slow fashion that clearly expressed her disappointment in her friend, and walked off, sobbing.

Elizabeth, in complete shock, watched her best friend since Kindergarten disappear across the road and up 1^st Avenue. She sat back in the bench and watched the boats on the river and burst into tears. She felt so alone, so ashamed, so scared. John was her everything, her life. He had always been there for her; through the cancer, through the miscarriage, through the death of Tommy, their 2-year-old angel who went to bed one evening and never awoke. John had been her rock when the ensuing depression that these life events had imprisoned her in for over three years clenched its claws into her heart, mind and soul. How could she be doing this to him?

As Elizabeth’s busy surroundings – the rush hour traffic on the FDR Drive below her, the increasing amount of people that were entering the park for some post-work decompression, and her mind – started to disappear into her thoughts, she began to get more and more angry with Elizabeth and her reaction. How could her best friend abandon her like that when she had reached out for help, and why was she getting so upset about what she had told her, anyway?

On 1st Avenue, Margaret emotionally made her way home when she was stopped by a familiar, and now extremely concerned face. “Mags, what’s up, what’s happened? Come with me upstairs, my apartment’s right here”. Dr. Sandra had been Margaret’s councilor during her deep grieving for Arthur. Arthur and Margaret had been married for eight years to the day when he was climbing down from the roof of their Southampton vacation home after trying to set up a charming yet extremely histrionic anniversary surprise, and slipped off the ladder, three stories to his death. Margaret was hit hard but ‘her Arty’s’ sudden demise and had attempted to take her own life twice before Dr. Sandra entered her life - coming to visit her twice a week after the funeral to ensure she didn’t make it a third time lucky.

“Sit down, take a deep breath, take a sip of this tea and tell me what’s going on”, Dr. Sandra said in a stern yet compassionate tone.

“Sandy”, Margaret whispered through her weeping, “can you keep a secret?”.

“Of course, you can tell me anything”, confirmed Dr. Sandra immediately, using the maternal voice which made her such a successful therapist.

“Have you ever met my best friend, Lizzy? The one with the eyebrows”.

“Yes, I think I have”, replied Dr. Sandra, somewhat confused about whether this question was part of Margaret’s story or whether she had just randomly digressed from her course.

“I’ve been having an affair with her husband for the last year”.

The End!