A Letter on the Power of Secrets

Can you keep a secret?

Dear Cecilia,

If you ever find yourself courageous enough to ask that question or one of its likeness (i.e. Can I tell you a secret?), it is in your best interest to banish it from your thoughts and perish it from your vocabulary. If you can. It may be a very difficult endeavor, but it will save you much heartbreak.

They (your mother and her husband and all their friends in that social circle they call ‘enlightened’) cast me as a woman scorned because I hold this view, and yet they know not truly the pains of bearing the burden of a secret and of giving it away. I know both more intimately than perhaps any other acquaintance I have happened upon in all my years. Learn vicariously through my mistakes, dear granddaughter, and you will not suffer the same end as I. Old and lonely and miserable and hidden from society for being senile. Senile! The sheer audacity to confuse wisdom with the going of the mind is beyond me, but believe me, loveliest Cecilia, that I am more conscious now than I was in my prime. It was in my prime that I made the mistake of asking that dastard question to a friend. Read carefully my story and make use of the precious knowledge you gain. Waste not this opportunity, for if you proceed to squander your life away, I will have no pity.

It all begins in naiveté, my dearest Cecilia. Naiveté can be summarised as the blind trust of young folk such as yourself – though lest you be tricked, think not that it affects young folk alone. Rather, it is the mind of being young, of being innocent, of which naiveté is bred. Dare I say, your mother is still naïve and gullible (the two often occur together but are not synonymous). She has not the least amount of practical experience in the word, which, I acquiesce, is a result of my failure to be stern. My childhood naiveté was a product of my own mother’s coddling as well.

You see, I was never very disciplined as a girl. My mother was a decidedly forgiving caretaker, and as long as I did not cause any lasting visible or reputational harm, I was able to pursue my heart’s content. I never faced the consequences of my actions or my words, never saw any results, until I asked that accursed question.

The recipient had been, what I had thought, my closest and dearest friend, which is why your predicament scares me. So similar are the situations, it is not infallible that the same misfortune will befall you. This is my first impartment of the knowledge I have gained in my years – trust not those who are scarce to confide in you information of a non-superficial kind. Looking back, this girl (for the sake of not dredging up more memories about her than necessary, she shall hence be known only as ‘this/the girl’) was always a willing confidant. She took my stories and my actions in stride and never seemed to change her opinion of me. My second impartment – trust not those whose opinions never change but remain stagnant for anyone who actually cares will express emotion, favorable or unfavorable.

The signs were so clear now that this girl was acting more on the part of a benefactor than a friend. We had never spoken before my mother and father’s death, and it was only after that the knowledge had been made public did she approach me. Our acquaintanceship was nothing more than a public display of pity, a testimony to her kind-hearted nature. What fool was I! Think carefully, Cecilia, of whether this describes your ‘friend.’ Your parents have recently come into a sizable sum of money (oh yes, I know full well though they try to hide it). Has this made your ‘friend’ more anxious to see you? Has she asked for a small loan or for you to guide her places? If so, or if there is even a trace of such sentiments, do not ask her. It may be all the better to slowly release that friendship, like unhooking a fish from a net to release it back into the water. Let her not be suspicious lest more problems arise.

But alas, I am woeful at keeping a coherent story line, so do forgive me loveliest Cecilia. I was describing the start of my entanglement with the girl. Yes, she was very superficial had I been a bit wiser to notice it. Never did she ask to enjoy my presence in private but only in public was I invited. To picnics on the shores or to galleries with her social circle. Being an orphan, I believe I was so desperate for affection even of the platonic kind that I willingly let her parade me. Naiveté is confusing kind words for affection. Affection comes from a place deep in the heart; kind words are simply manufactured by the mind and produced by the tongue. Do not let yourself be misled by candied proclamations as I was.

Being none the wiser, our friendship continued for years (precisely, five years). In that time, I told her more and more stories – intimate stories, mind you. I told her of my inheritance, of my first love, of my last conquest, of my new dresses. Of things trivial and grave alike. She took them all with indifference (refer again to my second impartment of wisdom). However, I learned hardly anything about her personal being. All I can remember now is that she preferred the color blue to red, liked her tea with two sugar cubes, often bathed in the lake by her house, had three brothers, and that her uncle owned a factory over in New York.

I was nineteen when I committed that sin.

Can you keep a secret?

Dear Cecilia, I know your parents have told you little of my life. They are ashamed, perhaps maybe with good reason, at the way I conducted myself during my early years. Indeed, I was wild from the lack of discipline from what few years I had someone to discipline me. As a child, I was misbehaved, but as an adult, I was promiscuous and licentious. However, love (another thing I must greatly caution you against) came to me in the purest way. He worked in the bakery near my old schoolhouse. He was a recent addition to that small town and knew little of everyone’s reputations. He was two years older than I, but his heart and his soul were younger. His hair was curly and his cheeks were rosy, like one of those cherubs people paint on the cathedral ceilings. That must make me the devil as I, with shame can say, seduced him after two months of courting. I had not intended to return his affection – true affection – but I did.

While I will not divulge more of this story until you are older, I will tell you that we planned to elope. I was ecstatic and wanted to share the news. I had hardly anyone to tell (I was rather unpopular though that seems to be a mark of my disposition rather than situational effects) but the girl.

I asked her, Can you keep a secret?

Of course, she said yes, and I remember bursting with happiness, real happiness, as I gushed to her about my impending, albeit secret, marriage. Had I been less naïve I would have noticed her face grow tight and her eyes dark with jealousy and envy. I did not know she fancied the baker’s apprentice until years after. I did not know that she had competed for his attention only to be pushed aside by the common, catty woman she had taken pity on for the last half decade. It must have been a terrible wound, though I hardly find myself apologetic.

Not even a day after I had shared every detail like the fool I was, did she find the boy’s father and tell him everything. I can imagine his face along with his wife – staunch in shock with pinched brows. His mother’s lips would have been trembling while his father’s face slowly purpled.

The baker’s apprentice – the only man I have ever loved and felt loved by in return – was baptized Breandan Doyle. You will notice that your grandfather’s name was Archibald Wright.

His parents ended our courtship violently. I had been attending a service that Sunday with Breandan. My faith was drained in my youth and I had been reluctant to sit in those pews normally reserved for those much holier than me, but I remember how he took my hand and held it the entire time. When his parents interrupted the end of the service, I sincerely doubt they expected me to be there. His father’s face was molted and splotched as he stalked up the pews and pointed his bony finger at me.

The words he said explicitly I cannot repeat by I’m sure you can imagine what might have been said. He laid bare my entire history – all my previous excursions and exploitations as learned through the girl – with gratuitous detail to the entire congregation (which was most of the town). The shame, the humiliation. I promptly ran out of the church and hid in my house for the next week, daring only to leave for the essentials.

You once asked me about the small scar on my cheekbone. Your mother would have told you it was by accident – that I fell upon the edge of some rocks as a child. It is not so; on one journey beyond my safeguard’s door, a child picked up a stone and chucked it at me. Witch! he had called me among other things. I fled back inside and staunched the small cut to the best of my abilities but I was no nurse.

It was clear that, while I had never had the town’s favor, I was wholly and utterly unwelcome. I was cast out when the debt collectors came. My parent’s properties were seized until many years later when I returned and rebought them. I had lost everything. My name and past still echo in this town and yet it feels more like home than the city your parents so love will ever.

I do not know if Breandan ever sought after me, if he tried to write but could not find me. I do not know much of his life after except that he enlisted in the military. Whether he came back, I also do not know. I fear I broke his heart beyond repair, but I will never know.

But now you see the danger of telling a secret even to someone you believe a close, loving confidante. I often used to imagine what life would have been had I kept that secret and married Breandan. You would not be alive, and I would not have this tale nor this wisdom, and I have since learned that such thinking and pondering is futile. Whether there was a different path matters not if it is in the past for such path no longer exists except in theory. Learning, no matter how painful, from the past is the only thing it offers us. Reminiscing and learning.

I do not know what secret, my dearest Cecilia, you plan to share with this ‘friend’ but I suggest, as I opened this letter with, not sharing it at all. Unless you are certain and willing to stake your life on her fidelity, do not. Secrets do not exist once they have been shared, just like pure love can only be given away once. I know this letter is not of a lighthearted nature as you may have been anticipating, but do not feel sorrow or anger towards either me or yourself and learn from my mistakes so that history may not repeat.

Wishing you the best, your loving grandmother,

Susan Wright