These Things Hidden

I wasn’t the perfect girl like she was, and I never will be. Oh, but they tried. All through high school, it was pressure, pressure, pressure. Staying in that house, I couldn’t get my thoughts straight, couldn’t make a decision, couldn’t breathe. I tried to go to St. Anne’s College, tried to keep up with my classes, tried to make friends, but whenever I walked into the classroom a wave of panic would come over me. It always started in my ears, a strange buzzing sound that would trickle down my throat and out toward my fingertips, leaving them numb. My chest would tighten; I couldn’t catch my breath. The instructors and students would gawk at me and I would stare back until they seemed to melt before my eyes. Their ears would slide down their cheeks, their lips would dribble down their chins, until they were nothing but fleshy puddles.

It wasn’t until I swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills that I found in my mother’s medicine cabinet that my parents finally decided to leave me alone. They gladly sent me over the river and through the woods to Grandmother’s house with a suitcase and a prescription for an antidepressant.

Things feel right here. Grandma got me to go to a doctor; I took my medicine and it got me back on track. I’m doing fine. But I won’t talk to Allison. I can’t talk to her. It’s better this way. Better for her and better for me.

For once in her life, Allison got what she deserved.

Allison

I set the receiver back into its cradle, all the while knowing that Olene is watching me carefully with her quick, birdlike eyes. Once I get settled and find a job, one of the first things I’m going to buy is a cell phone so I can have a little privacy when I talk. I’m sure my parents would buy me a phone, but I don’t want my first interaction with them to be about money. Besides, I want to show them that I’m going to be okay, that I can take care of myself. I wonder if they are thinking about me right now. Secretly, I had hoped they would have been parked in front of Gertrude House to welcome me when I arrived.

Olene must be psychic, because she says, “Many of the residents have cell phones, but we have guidelines here that phones need to be turned off while doing chores or when we are having group sessions. We want to respect others’ need for quiet.”

Olene picks up where she left off with the tour. She leads me through the kitchen, where we will take turns making dinner, and to an octagonal room with a ceiling that extends above the second floor. This is where the residents watch television. A gray-haired woman wearing a waitress uniform is dozing on a sofa and a young, petite, dark-skinned woman is holding a toddler on her lap and singing softly to him in Spanish. The television is tuned to a soap opera, the volume muted.

“This is Flora and her son, Manalo,” Olene says in a whisper. “And that’s Martha.” Olene waves a hand toward the slumbering woman. Flora’s eyes narrow into suspicious slits and she gathers Manalo more closely to her. The little boy waves a chubby hand at us and grins.

“Nice to meet you,” I say.

Flora speaks rapidly to Olene in Spanish, her tone tight and hostile, and Olene responds back in Spanish, as well. I have the feeling that Olene is going to have to do a lot of talking to calm the other residents of Gertrude House when it comes to me.

“Let’s go on upstairs and I’ll show you your room,” Olene says, taking me by the elbow and steering me from the television room to the spiral staircase that leads to the bedrooms. I can feel Flora’s eyes on my back as I follow Olene up the steps. I’ve been here for all of twenty minutes and everyone already seems to know who I am and what I’ve done. I know I shouldn’t let it bother me so much, I had to deal with the same things in jail, but this seems different somehow.

“The expectation is that everyone takes an active role in the upkeep of the house,” Olene says, and I can see this is true. There isn’t a speck of dust anywhere and the floors gleam. Olene gently knocks on a closed door before opening it to reveal a small room with bunk beds and two small dressers. The beds are made up with blue and white floral comforters and thick, soft pillows. Another rush of exhaustion overtakes me and I want to go lie down. The walls are painted sky-blue and there are crisp, white curtains covering the windows. It’s a very peaceful room.

“Your roommate, Bea, is at work right now. She’ll be home in a few hours. Why don’t you unpack your things, get settled and I’ll come back in a little while and we can finish the orientation.” I look at the bunk beds and hesitate, wondering which one is mine. “You get the bottom bed,” Olene says. “Bea likes to sleep on the top bunk—she says that the bottom bed makes her feel claustrophobic.”

Olene pats me on the arm as she moves to leave the room. “Olene,” I say. She turns back to me, and I’m stricken by how kind her worn face is. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” She smiles. “Get a little rest and holler if you need anything.”

My few belongings fit into one drawer of my bureau with room to spare. In a way, Gertrude House reminds me of the summer camp I attended when I was eleven. I share a room with bunk beds and, from what Olene has said, we follow a very specific schedule that is posted in the main gathering area. From the moment we wake up at five-thirty to lights out at ten-thirty, our day is filled with chores, and group sessions on everything from managing finances to anger management to mastering interview skills.

I sit on the lower bunk and bounce a bit. The springs are firm but giving. This feels like a real bed, not like Cravenville’s hard, institutional slab, with rough, scratchy sheets that smelled of bleach. I lift a fluffy pillow and bury my nose in it. It smells of lavender and I feel tears prick at my eyes. Maybe it won’t be so bad here. It couldn’t be any worse than jail. Maybe the other girls will learn to like me. Maybe my parents will forget about what the neighbors think and welcome me as their daughter again. And maybe, just maybe, Brynn will forgive me.

I inhale deeply one more time and lower the pillow from my face and that’s when I see it. Its blank eyes stare up at me and its smudged plastic face is frozen in a half smile. I pick up the baby doll. It’s old and battered and looks like it came out of a Dumpster. Across the doll’s bare chest is one word, slashed in black permanent marker, a word that I now know will follow me everywhere, no matter where I go. Killer.

Claire

Bookends is dim and quiet. A sudden Sunday afternoon rainstorm has driven away the stifling August heat and all of the customers. As Claire Kelby unpacks a box of books, Joshua pokes his head up from behind the counter, his yellow hair standing on end. She tamps down the desire to lick her fingers and smooth the flyaway strands. His dark brown eyes look expectantly up at her.

“Can I help you, young man?” Claire asks her son in mock seriousness.

“I’m bored,” Joshua answers dismally, and kicks his sneakered foot against the front of the counter.

“You’ve read every single book back there?” Claire asks him, and Joshua glances over his shoulder toward the shelves and shelves of books. Looking back at his mother, he nods and tries to bite back a smile.

“Uh-huh,” Claire says skeptically. “Where’s Truman?”

“Sleeping,” Joshua grouches, drawing his eyebrows together. “Again,” he adds about their six-year-old red-brindled English bulldog.

“I don’t blame him. It’s a rainy day, good napping weather,” Claire responds. “Do you want to help me? I’ve got lots of boxes to open and books to shelve before we close. Or maybe you want to take a nap, too?”

“I’m not tired,” Joshua says stubbornly, though his eyes are heavy. “When’s Dad going to get here?”

“He’ll be here soon,” Claire assures her son, and leans over the counter to place a kiss on his blond head. She looks around the bookstore that has been both a refuge and a yoke. Years ago, the store and its responsibilities had kept her sane. The long hours had kept her mind busy, kept her focused, distracting her from the knowledge that her body, which had served her so well over the years, had ultimately betrayed her. Sometimes this realization struck her suddenly, squeezing so tightly she would have to stop whatever she was doing—helping a customer, unpacking books, answering the phone—and deliberately pry away the fingers of anxiety that clutched at her heart until she could breathe again.

Then, inexplicably, Joshua came to them, as miracles often do, on an ordinary day, well after the acceptance that they would never have a child of their own, biological or otherwise, had settled in. More and more, Bookends seems to snatch away all the time she wants, needs, to be with her son. He’ll be heading off to kindergarten soon and she guards what’s left of her time with him fiercely, even though she knows he’d much rather be playing outside than stay with her in the bookstore.

Claire handled all the business aspects of opening the bookstore nearly twelve years ago. Finding the perfect location on oak-lined Sullivan Street, in the newly revitalized downtown section of Linden Falls, securing the small-business loans, ordering the books and hiring the part-time help. Jonathan, for his part, created the most beautiful bookstore Claire could have ever possibly imagined. The building had originally been a dressmaker’s shop, owned by an independent woman who had moved to Linden Falls with her aging father in the mid-1800s. It was lovely, with an intricate tin ceiling and walnut woodwork that Jonathan had uncovered beneath years of old paint, varnish and grime. Rifling through the second floor and the attic, Claire and Jonathan found musty bolts of cloth and bushel-size jars of buttons made of mussel shells, bone and pewter hidden beneath a table. Claire loved to imagine the dresses designed over that table—a christening gown edged with lace, tiny seed pearls sewn to the silk bodice of a wedding dress, a black mourning dress made of cashmere.

Joshua tries to heave himself up on top of the counter, his shoes scrabbling against the front panel. “I’m bored,” he repeats as he slides to the floor. “When will he be here?” he asks again.

Claire steps from behind the counter, reaches down, lifts Joshua into her arms and sets him next to the cash register. “He will be here in about—” she looks at her watch “—half an hour to pick you up. What do you want to do?”

“Tell me about my Gotcha Day,” he orders. Claire gives him a long, expectant look. “Please,” he adds.

“Okay,” Claire agrees, swinging him into her arms. As is often the case lately, she is struck at how big he’s getting. She can hardly believe that he’s five years old. She presses her nose into his neck and breathes in the comforting scent of the Yardley of London soap he bathed with just that morning. Joshua, in a sudden need for privacy, has started ordering her out of the bathroom when he gets ready for his bath.

“Only Truman and Dad can be in here when I take a bath, because we’re all boys,” he explained.

So Claire, after running the bathwater for him, sits on the floor in the hallway, her back resting against the closed bathroom door, and waits, calling through the door every few minutes, “You okay in there?”

Now she carries Joshua to the plush, comfortable sofa that sits in a corner of the bookstore and they settle in for his favorite story. The story of how Joshua became theirs.

“Before we can talk about Gotcha Day,” Claire says, “we have to talk about the first day we met you.” Joshua snuggles more deeply against her and, as she has every day for the past five years, Claire marvels at his sweetness. “Five years ago, last July, Dad and I were sitting at the kitchen table trying to figure out what we were going to have for dinner when the phone rang.”

“It was Dana,” Joshua murmurs as he fingers the milky-colored pearl hanging from her ear.

“It was Dana,” Claire agrees. “And she said that there was a beautiful little boy waiting for us at the hospital.”

“That was me. That was me waiting at the hospital,” Joshua tells Truman, who decides to hobble over to the pair. “And that birth lady couldn’t take care of me so she left me at the fire station, and the fireman found me just lying there in a basket.”

“Hey, who’s telling this story?” Claire asks, and gently pokes him in the ribs.

“You are.” Joshua wrinkles his upturned nose and tries to look sorry.

“That’s okay, we can tell it together,” Claire assures him.

“And all the firemen didn’t know what to do!” Joshua exclaims. “They just stood there and looked at me and said, ‘It’s a baby!’” Joshua holds his hands out, palms up, a look of animated consternation dancing across his face.

“You were a surprise, that’s for sure.” Claire nods in agreement. “The firemen called the police, the police called Dana, Dana took you to the hospital, and Dana called us.”

“And when you held me in your arms for the first time you cried and cried.” Joshua giggles.

“I did,” Claire concurs. “I cried like a baby. You were the most beautiful little boy and—” At the same time they hear the bookstore door open and Jonathan enters, his work jeans and T-shirt streaked and dusty from his current renovation.

“Hey, guys,” he calls, shaking the rain from his black curls. “What’re you doing?”