Our Little Secret

Our Little Secret

“Come on!  I’m right aren’t I?”  I ask her.  She takes a rattling breath, reaches a trembling, scaly hand for her cigarette and smiles an enigmatic, annoying, Mona Lisa smile, - and did she give a shallow nod?  I’m not sure.  Mom’s got laryngitis – well that’s the lie my sisters tell her. They also tell her she’s moved in “just until she gets better”, but they’re already planning her wake!  What a family, desperate to party no matter what the occasion.  There’s no other family like them, I swear!  What’s more, I think mom knows and she’s enjoying playing along!  Getting the last laugh. You wouldn’t think such a raucous bunch would be good at keeping secrets, yet they like to polish up the skeletons now and again, but they always leave them in the closet. 

Just maybe I know a thing or two they don’t!

“Glen!” Brandi shouted at her usual conversational pitch, “it’s your job to clean out Mom’s house.  Carling and me – we’ve got too much to do, and Sherry has her bad hips and rheumatism in her hands.  Make sure you get right to it.  We don’t want to miss the property boom”.

Of course, compliant baby brother as I am, I refrained from mentioning that I live a hundred miles away and they are right around the corner.  Nor did I say Sherry’s bad hips and hands don’t stop her from going dancing three times a week and bar tending at weekends. No, inevitably, I cancelled my plans and the next weekend drove over to mom’s.

It’s the same cramped ranch we squeezed into after dad died and we found out he’d no life insurance and precious little savings. Grandma Phyllis helped out with the deposit, and we never heard the last of that. Mom had to go back to hairdressing and Brandi and Carling gave mom most of their wages to pay the bills. I slept in a kind of oversized closet off the kitchen, roasting in the summer and shivering in the winter, and the girls all had to share a room. That’s probably why Sherry got pregnant and ran off at seventeen to live with her boyfriend and his parents and their excuse for a dog.

The house reeked of cigarettes, so I pried open the windows and turned on the ceiling fan which stirred up the dust and made me cough.  After that I was at a loss where to start.  There was so much stuff.

Hours later, and with many trash bags filled with junk, it seemed as if I hadn’t made a dent in the mess. I went into my “room” and started to go through the boxes tossed in a precarious pile in there.  I was almost exhausted by the time I came across them; three worse-for-wear circlets of faded gray-blue flowers.  Mom had kept them from that wedding!  I could scarcely believe it!

The rain’s still slashing down outside.  Auntie Pat’s told everyone over and over again in her foghorn voice, cousin Tess was frantic this morning, screaming she wouldn’t even get married if she couldn’t be on the patio, under the arbor. But she looked very pretty in her crinkly white dress, holding her bouquet stiffly in front of her bulge, not fooling anyone even me.  My sisters and her best friend, Trace look pretty stupid in their fluorescent tangerine dresses, the turquoise headdresses tangled like misplaced haloes in their flaming red hair (well okay, Trace is strawberry blond).  I’d have looked even stupider if I’d agreed to be the ring bearer.  Tess’d have insisted I wear orange velvet knickers or something.  The suit was bad enough.  I’m glad I got to roll my sleeves up and get rid of the tie after the reception.  Then the DJ arrived and after all the usual feedback squeaks and reverb, and a few off-color jokes, he played some half-decent stuff: “The Power of Love” – obvious for a wedding, “Head over Heels” and “Crazy for You” also predictable, but then having drained a few glasses, he lost his edge, playing, “If you love somebody, set them free” and “I Did it My Way”.  Nobody else seemed to notice – the party was in full swing, with the tangerine sisters gyrating vigorously and the oldies jiggling up and down, waving their arms around embarrassingly. When they shrieked for the “Chicken Dance” I thought it was time to go next door to the “quiet room” and play Pac-Man.  There were a few gray hairs sitting in the bay window, but they couldn’t hear themselves speak – it was still deafening even in here.  It didn’t bother me, I focused on Pac-Man gobbling up the cherries until the conga line wove its unsteady, hysterical way around the room.  Suddenly, above the uproar was a piercing scream.  Auntie Peggy (not a real aunt), was almost falling down stairs, sobbing and crying out, “Call an ambulance, Brad’s collapsed!”

And that is how my dad died – taking a “rest” as my family tell it, during his niece’s wedding. They’re a little hazy as to how it was that Auntie Peggy found him and no-one’s tried to explain why her zipper was undone to her bra line or why she was clutching her balled-up panty hose.  At thirteen, and in shock, everything was confusing and these questions didn’t even cross my mind.

Arriving back to mom’s the next day I’m tired and dejected.  My sleep was  troubled with thoughts of dad.  Gregarious, impulsive, self-absorbed dad. They told me he’d always wanted a son, especially after three girls, and yet I could never shake the impression I disappointed him. Quiet, introspective and scrawny – not the strapping guy he’d expected would follow in his footsteps.

Half-heartedly, I sort through some more boxes, discarding the sad bric-a-brac that was once mom’s treasure.  Tucked at the bottom, it’s glass inevitably cracked, is a photo of Robbie, Auntie Peggy’s son.  I remember her passing it around the Thanksgiving table after the men settled down to watch the game. I’m not sure how mom got it or why she framed it. Robbie, in the photo, was eighteen and had just enlisted in the marines. I recall the moment when the light bulb turned on for me.  What I had failed to see in the flesh, the camera had captured with stark accuracy.  His shorn auburn hair and recently razored face revealed all the planes and angles of a face that was uncannily my dad’s.   I remember I had gasped and felt a fool.

Now, in my room, in my mom’s house, a new suspicion begins to wrap me in its tentacles.  Slowly, I walk to the bathroom, wipe the mirror with a dank hand-towel and take a good, long look at my face.  Robbie, with his bright skin, his dark auburn hair, playful green eyes and sharply angled cheekbones was every inch his father’s son.  But am I?  With light brown hair and blue eyes it’s not impossible, but where did the dimple come from, the long nose, the broad brow? 

I have to know.

Ten minutes later, I park at Brandi’s house.  I tell her I want to sit with mom for a while. She raises a penciled-in brow and, for once, she doesn’t say a word.  After she’s gone, my words tumble out;

“Dad’s not my real dad!  Come on!  I’m right aren’t I?”

After she smiles her sly smile and incrementally inclines her head, she slowly, oh so slowly replaces the cigarette in the ashtray.   Then she reaches for my hand and gives it three little squeezes.

And I know.

Very deliberately, I squeeze her  hand in return so she understands -  it’s our little secret.