Secrets in the Attic

  "Karen!"

  "Don't be so thick. And you don't have to be modest with me, Zipporah. We've told each other too much about our own orgasms," she reminded me.

  Still, it made me blush and catch my breath to hear her talk about her mother and Harry Pearson that way.

  "Besides, you can get a real education about boys if you just read your brother's journal."

  "I told you . . ."

  "All right, all right. I'm just teasing you. Let's get back to Dana After the phone call and your visit, short visit, with my mother, the coast will be clearer. Pedal your rear into town on Monday night. Tell him to meet you in front of the post office. Your bike will be safe there. He'll pick you up and drive you up the hill, maybe to the lake, ostensibly to talk about me, but he'll really be doing it because he's interested in you, so you don't have to do much more than say you don't want to talk about me. It's too disturbing. Something like that. Even get yourself to cry a few real tears. He'll want to comfort you. Let him, and that's how it will start."

  "How can you be so sure of all this? You make it sound as if you've written the script," I said.

  She smiled. "In a way, I have, I guess. Look, there's no reason for you to be moping about and suffering forever, is there? Besides, I told you. I'll be sharing your experience, and it will give me something while I'm holed up here."

  "How long are you going to do this, Karen? Someday, my parents are bound to find out. My mother will come up here, or you'll make some noise or something."

  "I told you. After a while, I'll just leave. I might not even tell you. I'll just be gone. Don't worry."

  "I'm not worrying for myself as much as for you," I said. It was true.

  "I know. I appreciate it. I need some more time to pass, and there are things I still have to do. I can't leave you behind in such a state of innocence. What kind of a friend would I have been?"

  "Jesse's home in two weeks," I reminded her.

  She stared at me a moment and then stood up, her arms extended and her hands clenched in fists. She paced a moment and turned on me, her face full of rage.

  "You just won't stop. You just won't stop reminding me about how horrible my situation is. No matter what I do to forget for a while, to make things like they were, to keep us happy and birds of a feather, you just harp and harp and harp on my being holed up here!"

  Her voice reverberated in the attic. I held my breath. She was crying, too.

  "I'm sorry, Karen. I'm sorry."

  "You're supposed to be helping me at my time of greatest need. We have a plan. Let's follow it."

  What plan? I thought but didn't ask.

  "Okay. Sorry. I can't help being nervous about it. I'm trying. Really, I am."

  She started to calm down and returned to the sofa. She sat quietly for a moment, gathering her thoughts and nodding.

  "The next few days are all set, then. You're off tomorrow for New York. You'll make the call. You'll do the stupid visit to my mother. You'll see Dana. We'll have much to talk about and do, as much as we ever would have. Right?"

  "Yes," I said.

  She smiled again, and then she hugged me. I looked at my watch, and she pulled back as if I had slapped her.

  "Go on down before your mother drives in. You're worthless to me when you sit there on pins and needles."

  I rose, grateful for permission to go.

  "You sure you have everything you need for tonight? I won't be able to come back up here."

  "I'm fine. I have everything I need in the trunk behind the sofa," she said, nodding at it.

  I looked around the attic. As big as it was, it still seemed confining and dark to me. I always enjoyed our times up there, but we always knew we could throw open the window and shout or leave whenever we wanted to leave. Once, it had been magical for us. Could it be that way ever again? Was it still that way for Karen? Was that what sustained her during all those long and lonely hours alone?

  "What do you do up here in the dark?"

  "I use that little flashlight to read, but I put the blanket over me so the light can't be seen in the window, not even a tiny glow, and then I just go to sleep. I'm fine. I'm managing. I've done a lot more exploring of the things up here, too."

  "What if my mother came up here one day while I was at school, and I wasn't here to give you any warning?"

  "No problem. You know how those stairs announce visitors. I'd hear her, and guess what?"

  "What?"

  "I fit very well in that armoire in the corner. I've already tried it. I can breathe all right in it and watch through the cracks until I see her leave. I'm fine," she reassured me. "We'll be fine. In fact," she continued, "I have a lot to show you about the things up here and tell you about when we can spend more time together without worry. I've spent hours and hours looking at things we've never touched. You don't even know about the old journals and newspapers, I'm sure.

  "And of course, I think about you and how you're living for both of us at the moment," she added. "That's why you can't fail. You won't be just failing yourself."

  "I'm doing the best I can. It's hard lying to my parents and to everyone else, Karen."

  "I know. Don't forget, I've been doing just that for most of my life," she said.

  She smiled and hugged me again. I walked to the attic door, paused, and looked back at her.

  "I could become like everything else up here," she said. "Another orphan in the nest of orphans if you desert me."

  "I won't," I promised, and I left, closing the door behind me.

  The tears I cried for her and myself all fell behind my eyes, like tiny hailstones pounding on my fractured heart.

  12 A Collect Call

  My parents prepared for our trip to New York as if we were going to another country. They carefully planned the travel schedule, how and when we would get to our hotel, where we would eat dinner before the show so we would be close enough to walk to the theater and, if we wanted, to walk back to the hotel. Since we had moved up to Sandburg, none of us had been to New York. Because we had lived so close to the city, we never stayed overnight in a hotel there, either. My mother was excited about it, because my father, through a friend, had gotten us a great deal on a suite in a very fancy Manhattan hotel, the St. Regis. I didn't know it before we left, but my bedroom in the suite had its own phone. When we arrived and I saw what our accommodations were like, I thought my opportunity to make the phone call Karen wanted was that much better and easier for me to accomplish, but I underestimated how hard my mother would work at having me do things with her in the city every minute, and it occurred to me that it would be unwise to have the call traced to our suite.

  Almost as soon as we checked in, my mother plotted out our every move, and from there until we returned, I was never out of her sight. Together, we would walk up Fifth Avenue and go from one wonderful department store to another. She was eager to see and to show me the new fashions and buy me some new clothes. She wanted us to have lunch at a restaurant that looked out at the skating rink in Rockefeller Center. Our jaunt was to be girls only. My father was happy about that. He was meeting some old lawyer friends for lunch, anyway, and said he would then look for a new suit and some new shirts and shoes on his own, "without anyone looking over my shoulder."

  I began to worry that I would have no opportunity whatsoever to make the call, but after we had walked and shopped and had our lunch and shopped some more, my mother decided it was time to go back to the hotel, rest, shower, and spoil ourselves with bubble baths and facial creams she had bought in a beauty shop on Madison Avenue. She was doing so many things she normally did not do. I sensed she wanted to splurge and be extravagant and carefree to help us all forget, especially me, what she called the Pearson tragedy.

  We had two full bathrooms in the suite. I waited for her to step into hers to take her bath, and then I took the tape recorder out of my suitcase. It was nearly four-thirty. I was afraid Karen's mother might not be home, of course. What would I, do if that happened?
We were to go to dinner and then the show. My parents would be with me all the time, and afterward, back in the suite, I couldn't risk playing the tape. They'd hear it for sure. I'd have to sneak out somehow and get to a pay phone, preferably outside the hotel. I did see one about half a block down near a magazine stand.

  I hurried out to the elevator and was lucky enough to have it right there and waiting. Moments later, I was out of the hotel, charging down the sidewalk. I got into the phone booth quickly, my hands trembling so much I nearly dropped the recorder, too, but I finally got myself together enough to dial the long-distance operator and request the collect call using Karen's name. My heart was thundering in my ears as I waited for the connection and heard the ringing. I held my breath until Darlene Pearson said, "Hello." The operator announced the caller and the request. Karen's mother was quiet so long the operator had to repeat it.

  "Yes, operator, I accept the charges. Karen?" she cried into the receiver.

  I pushed the button on the recorder, and it played back Karen's message. Then, as she had instructed, I started to hang up before turning off the tape recorder. As I brought the receiver back to its cradle, I heard Darlene Pearson screaming, "Karen! You come home!"

  My heart was pounding even harder. I believed Karen knew what she was doing when she asked me to do this. I could understand how it would take the pressure off us, especially off me, in the community, but I felt terrible about hurting her mother. She must be in a frantic state of mind now, I thought. However, there was nothing I could do. The deed was done, and as my father was fond of saying, the die was cast.

  I hurried back to the hotel. This time, I had to wait for the elevator and felt my insides tumbling around with tension. After all, I had done something else that would stun my parents when and if they ever found out. When I got to my floor and to our suite, I took a deep breath and then entered, praying my mother was still in her bath. She was. I hurriedly went to mine and ran the water. Then I hid the tape recorder in my suitcase. My chest still felt like a tight-skinned drum upon which my thumping heart pounded.

  Even soaking in a tub full of soothing bubbles didn't calm me or stop the quivering under my breast. Fortunately, my mother was too absorbed in everything she had done and everything we had bought. She didn't notice the tightness in my lips and the abject fear in my eyes as we both started to dress. She did distract me for a while when she shared some of her makeup with me and talked about dressing up our faces. This was also something we had rarely done together.

  Shortly after, my father arrived and showed us all the things he had bought, too. We had to rush a bit to get to our early dinner and make the show. No one had any time to think about anyone else. We ate at one of my father's favorite New York restaurants, where both my mother and I feasted on lobster. My father insisted we all share a mud pie, which was really chocolate and coffee ice cream in a pie shell. I know I ate much more than my share. I saw how they were both smiling at me, happy I had an appetite, but I was eating to keep from crying and to stop the bees buzzing in my stomach.

  The show we went to see was, according to my father, "the hottest ticket in town," Silk Stockings. I did enjoy it and watching the performances and seeing the glamour of a Broadway show took my attention completely away from everything that was happening around the Pearson tragedy. While I was in that theater, I even forgot Karen was back at our house, hiding in the attic. As we came out of the theater into the crowds pouring out of other theaters, seeing the women in fashionable dresses, men in suits and tuxedos, taxicabs everywhere, and more limousines on the street than I had seen in a year, the excitement remained with me and my parents. We held hands and walked all the way back to our hotel, and when I looked up at the lights and the great billboards and saw all the people and the traffic, I understood what Karen had meant when she talked about living in a city that never slept.

  Would she ever really sleep again?

  Would I?

  It wasn't until we were back in the suite that the three of us realized just how tired we were. My big four-poster bed with its lusciously soft pillows appeared so inviting that I felt like diving onto it. I was undressed and ready for it in record time. The music from the show was still ringing in my ears. I cuddled up and wrapped the comforter about myself just as my mother came in to say good night.

  "Did you have fun today, Zipporah?"

  "Yes, very much."

  "So did I. We've got to do more of this sort of thing With your brother, too," she added. "When he is generous enough to give us some of his precious time, that is. You know he's not coming directly home from college?"

  "No, I didn't know. Why not?"

  "He's visiting with his roommate's family for a week. They're all going to one of the Michigan lakes to a large cabin they have there. He was so excited about it I couldn't complain."

  "That's nice," I said. I wanted Jesse home, but I was very, very nervous about him coming back before Karen left. This, at least, gave us more breathing space to prepare for that.

  "We'll have a nice breakfast tomorrow and then take a slow ride back. Your father wants to look at a new car in Jersey. It's just a small detour, but one .of his friends has a friend who has a dealership. You know your father and his influential friends," she said.

  We smiled. She kissed me good night and left. I cuddled the blanket and pressed my face into the pillow. I wanted to soak into the softness and disappear like a cherry sinking into whipped cream. I begged sleep to come, to take me away from my thoughts, but before it did, I conjured Karen back at our house, maybe watching television in my room or maybe even venturing outside in the darkness to get some air and feel less trapped, even though, for now, she was tethered to our house.

  Where would she go when it was time to leave? I imagined her growing old in the attic, fading into a ghost herself, until I was no longer sure if she were there. She would dwindle like an old experience, harder and harder to recall, the details of it falling away until there was nothing left but a vague remembrance, something like my father's best friend in high school. He and his friend could pass each other on a street in this city and not know it.`Something might be stirred for a moment. They would both pause and try to think what it was, but the noise, all that competed for their attention in the present, would drive it away quickly, and that would be that. Gone forever.

  Heaven forgive me, I thought, but right now, I longed for that. Even thinking such a thing made me feel like a terrible traitor, like some bird leaving the nest but leaving her broken-winged sibling behind to stare out at the world she would never touch until she fell out and tumbled to the earth. In my dreams, the overcast sky rained feathers.

  My parents were up before I was. My mother wouldn't let my father wake me, but he made as much noise as he could, because he was anxious to get under way. I was deliberately slow to get myself moving. I knew that sometime toward the end of this day, I would have to face Karen's mother. When I finally did get up and dressed, my father hurried us along to breakfast. The appetite I had the night before was gone. I barely nibbled on a toasted bagel, and I know I looked half-asleep.

  "I guess Zipporah can't take the fast life," my father joked.

  "We'll stop at a really nice place for lunch," my mother promised.

  I tried to be upbeat, but I couldn't put aside thinking about all that awaited me at home. When we stopped in New Jersey on the way back up to Sandburg, I was surprised to see the car my father was considering. It was a red convertible sports car that sat only two people. We had three cars in the family already, counting Jesse's car, but if we traded in either my mother's car or my father's for this, how could we three fit if we wanted to use it for a family trip?

  My father decided to take a test drive and asked me to go with him instead of my mother.

  "It's all right," she said. "Go on. I'll ride in it later."

  I got in, and we sped off with the top down. It accelerated so fast the wind whipped through my hair. I shrieked when my ribbon went flying.
My father was driving it as he would a race car, careening around corners and trying the funny-sounding horn.

  "Don't you dare drive it this fast," he told me.

  "Me?"

  "This will be your car eventually," he said. "Of course, I'll buy it now so I can break it in for you."

  "My car?"

  "Mostly. Your brother will try to steal it, of course, but we won't let him," he said.

  I ran my hand over the soft, luxurious black leather seats. He turned on the radio and laughed with delight at the rock and roll. It was as if the car was magical and could turn him or anyone his age back into a teenager.

  He slowed down for the return to the dealership. "What do you think?"

  "It's beautiful."

  "And not hard to drive, as long as you keep within the speed limit. The day you get your first speeding ticket is the day I sell it," he warned.

  "I don't even have my license. I have to wait to take driver's education, Daddy."

  "It's all right. Years pass so quickly, you wake up one morning and think you've been in some time machine. Take my word for it. It seems like I was just eighteen."

  He looked at me, his face taking on that dark seriousness he could muster in seconds, especially in court.

  "The thing is, Zipporah, you have a lot to look forward to. These should be and will be your best years. I want you to enjoy them, enjoy your youth. I don't want what's happened with the Pearsons to ruin things for you so much that you let it all pass you by, understand?"

  I nodded. My heart felt as if it were bubbling instead of beating. The words were bunching up in my mouth, pressing at my lips, urging my tongue to move and deliver. Tell him! the voice inside me screamed.

  Tell him about Karen. End it before it becomes too late, before your parents are so disgusted with you they'll wish you were never born.

  "Daddy," I was sure I began, but he was so absorbed in driving the car and listening to the music he didn't hear me. He turned into the dealership and pumped the horn to bring my mother out.