Secrets in the Attic

  I rose and walked out, glancing back at Jesse, who still hadn't raised his gaze from the floor. Tears were flowing freely down my cheeks now. I wasn't crying for myself or even for Jesse or Karen. I was crying for my father, who looked as if his heart had been torn into pieces.

  Who knew how Karen would react to all this? I thought. I expected some hysterics. This was going to be a terrible scene. I took a deep breath and opened the attic door.

  "Karen," I called.

  I didn't see her anywhere.

  "Karen, are you here?"

  Silence was barely interrupted by the breeze whistling through the shutters. Not finding her waiting there stunned me. Daddy wouldn't believe me. He might want to come up to see for himself. I turned and hurried down the stairs. When I reentered the living room, I saw Jesse had his hands over his face. Daddy looked as if smoke could come flowing out of his ears any minute.

  "Well?" Daddy asked.

  Jesse took his hands away to look at me.

  "Where's Karen?" he asked.

  "Yes, where is she?" Daddy demanded.

  I shook my head. "She's not there, Daddy. I'm not lying. She's not in the attic."

  He sat there for a moment. Then he leaped to his feet. "Neither of you leave the house. If she comes back, call the police. Do you hear me, Jesse?"

  "Yes sir," he said.

  "Don't say a word to your mother if I don't get to her first," he added.

  I wondered how we would manage that. One look at us would tell her something was terribly wrong. He looked at us, shook his head, and walked out of the living room. To me, it felt as if the air followed him. Jesse sat there staring at the wall. Then he turned to me slowly.

  "You're not lying, are you? She's really not up there."

  "I didn't see her, and she didn't respond when I called," I said, and then something came to mind, something that sent a chill through me.

  "What is it?" he asked, seeing my face pale.

  "I didn't look in one place, her hiding place, the old armoire. She once showed me how she could hide in it if anyone came up to the attic unexpectedly."

  "But why wouldn't she come out when she heard you call her?"

  I shook my head, rose, and walked slowly back to the stairway. Jesse followed, and we went up the attic steps. I looked back at him, and then we continued up to the door, paused, and opened it.

  She was standing by the window, looking down at the new sports car. She had been in the armoire. "Karen," I said. It was barely a whisper.

  She turned slowly, smiling. "You two have a wonderful life, you know that? Whenever I came over here, I would bathe in the love and affection. I would fantasize that it was my home, too, and they were my parents. I told you that before, didn't I, Zipporah?"

  "Yes."

  "I never told you, Jesse." She laughed. "I even felt a little incestuous being with you. That's how powerful my fantasy was."

  "Jesse knows everything now, Karen," I said. "That's good. I wish I did. Know everything, that is."

  "There's no proof to support the story you told about Harry Pearson," Jesse said. "We mean the part about him and his dead mother. The apartment .. . there is no apartment."

  "There was," she said.

  "No, I was in it last night. It's an unfinished room. No one could live in it."

  She kept shaking her head.

  "And the police didn't find the wig you claimed you were wearing, or the dress," Jesse added.

  Karen's eyes widened. "They're lying."

  "Why would they lie about something like that, Karen?"

  "Then my mother got rid of it all before they arrived."

  "But why?" Jesse asked. "Why would she submit both of you to such madness?"

  "You'll have to ask her. Maybe someday someone will, but probably not anyone in this onehorse town. You ever hear of Gulliver's Travels? Well, this is Gullible Travels, stories about the fools in Sandburg," she said, and laughed.

  "My father knows everything, Karen."

  "Everything again? Even what went on between us, Jesse?"

  Jesse blushed.

  "I didn't think so. I saw him rush out and drive off and figured as much. Well," she said, walking toward us and the door. "At least I'm getting out of here."

  "Where are you going?" I asked her.

  She paused in the doorway. "I'm going home," she said. "It's time to go home. Call me later. Maybe we'll do something. I just hate thinking about all the homework that's piled up, but you'll help me withit, won't you, Zipporah?"

  I didn't know what to say. I just stared at her. She was making no sense.

  She smiled.

  We watched her walk out and down the attic steps.

  "Jesse," I said, squeezing his arm. "Do something. She's in a daze. It's all been too much, finally too much."

  "Hey," he called down to her. "Don't you want a ride?"

  She turned at the base of the attic steps and looked up at us. She was smiling again.

  "In the new car?"

  "Yeah, sure," Jesse said.

  She stared a moment, holding her smile, and then shook her head.

  "I don't think so, Jesse. Maybe tomorrow. I'd like to walk. I've been shut up indoors too much, and that's not very healthy. But thanks "

  She continued down the hallway, down the stairway, to the front door. Jesse and I followed slowly and watched her walk out. I started to cry as she went down the driveway, glanced back to wave at us, and continued on the road to the village. In moments, she was gone. How many times had I wished for that? Now it was breaking my heart.

  Jesse went to the phone and made the call Daddy had asked us to make. He quickly explained who he was and what was now happening. I saw him wait until someone else took the phone, and he went through it again.

  "She's just walking down the road toward town," he told whoever had taken the call I imagined it to be Chief Keiser himself. "Just walking," he repeated, as if he had to convince himself as well.

  Then he hung up and looked at me.

  I turned and ran upstairs, ran all the way back to the attic and shut the door.

  Epilogue

  Somewhere. I read that this world, everything that happens, even everything that happens in the whole universe, could be God's dream, and the bad things that happen are just his nightmares. We don't exist, at least not in the sense we think we do. I thought if that were true, then maybe nothing was our fault. We were as Jesse said Shakespeare wrote, merely players on a stage.

  I certainly hoped so. God would then snap his fingers and wake up, and this dream would pop like a bubble. He would start dreaming again, and we'd have another chance to be young and carefree. Darkness would no longer seem like a disease creeping in over us, and rain wouldn't feel like tears.

  Funny, but what I feared the most was not the eternal anger and disappointment of our parents but the loneliness that could result from it. When you deeply hurt people you love and who love you, you push away from everything just enough to be out of sync with it all. You can't look at people straight on anymore, and when you walk, you think the world itself has tipped a little. Nothing, not flowers or trees, blue skies or dazzling stars, not music or laughter, nothing, brings you the joy it once did. It's as if you lost the right to be happy.

  Of course, our parents wanted to forgive us, and I never doubted they tried with all their heart and soul, but we knew that in the end, even though they could find a way to turn us back into a family, they couldn't find a way to forget, What made all this particularly difficult was what some people call the dropping of the second shoe. When it fell, it fell with thunder and lightning and seemed to tear the earth below our feet. How we didn't both fall into the chasm and disappear is a mystery or a miracle I would not fully understand.

  Soon after Jesse called the police that day, a police cruiser came by, and they took Karen away. As it turned out, Daddy was at the police station at the time of Jesse's call. Whatever influence Daddy and his associates had with the powers that be was enoug
h to keep me and Jesse from being charged with any crime. The district attorney took into consideration our youth and Jesse's having made the phone call. It didn't prevent the story from leaking out. Daddy always believed the two state detectives did much to make sure that it did. He told me it was part of the cost of being who he was. It was his nature to be a thorn in the side of bureaucrats.

  For a while, our boat was rocking. We worried about the impact it would have on Daddy's career, and more than one night was taken up with a serious discussion about the wisdom of remaining in Sandburg. There were always other opportunities in other communities, and that was true for Mama and her nursing as well, if not more.

  As it turned out, however, small towns proved to be more forgiving. The diminutive population, the nearly daily contact most inhabitants had with each other, made everyone a sort of extended family. All understood one another's struggle to make a living, survive, and do well, and most had empathy for the difficulties we all had.

  Karen and I used to enjoy mocking the village and its inhabitants, but I began to see that all of the derision was mostly coming from her, from her own wounded self, her envy and longing to get off the emotional crutches and walk as proudly as any other girl her age, especially me.

  When the older people in the village saw me, they would shake their heads, wag a finger of caution, and give me some sage advice, such as, "Remember, you are known by the friends you keep," or simply, "Make sure you help your parents."

  The younger people had completely different reactions. At school, which was winding down to the end of the school year, I suddenly became infamous. Before, I was merely the friend of someone who had done a terrible thing, but now I was something of a folk hero. Everyone wanted to know how I had managed to keep such a secret. I began to feel as if I were a character in a movie who had suddenly stepped off the screen and started up the aisle. Invitations to parties, to sleepovers, and even for dates, started flowing my way. To some of the boys, I was dangerous, and that made me exciting. Even Dana Martin looked disappointed in himself for driving me away.

  Of course, I did none of these things for a while. I could never get myself to ask my parents for anything and wondered if I ever would again. I worked hard to bring my final grades up, helped around the house more, and took great care not to get into any trouble. No teacher would even look at me with reproach, not that I was Miss Perfect or anything

  I think I floated most of the time. At least, that was how it felt. Right afterward, I actually ran a fever and felt so numb all over that Mama took me to see Dr. Bloom, who studied me carefully and concluded I had no infections. I was deeply depressed. He spoke softly to my mother privately about it, and I know one of the things she and my father considered was a therapist, but I rallied soon afterward, and the problem just went away.

  Jesse took it all much harder. If he could, he would have gone out back and whipped himself. He was too ashamed to return to Daddy's offices, and for weeks, he remained at home, working on the house as if he wished he could embrace it and get some solace and comfort from it. He went at it all with a maddening drive of perfection. Not a shingle would be permitted out of line, not a spot of rust on any pipe, not a weed on the lawn. It was his idea to empty the attic of all the old things. One night at dinner, he suggested we donate most of it to thrift shops and give whatever else to a consignment store.

  "Some of it is so dry and brittle. We have a fire hazard," he declared. "And besides, I'd like to clean up the place, repair and paint the walls. Maybe we can do something better with it."

  I didn't oppose the idea. When Karen was taken away, I had gone up to the attic, but I hadn't been there since. I was afraid of the memories it would stir up.

  Daddy agreed, and Jesse took on the task of emptying the attic. He did it mostly during the day, while I was at school. I was grateful, for I didn't even want to see any of the furniture, especially our magic sofa.

  Sometimes, I imagined Karen was still up there. There were times at night, after I had gone to bed, when I thought I heard footsteps above me. One time, I was absolutely positive I did, and it put a chill under my breast and down my stomach. I rose and listened harder. Then I considered the possibility that it was Jesse. I went out to the hallway and saw that his bedroom door was ajar, so I peered in and saw his bed was empty. He was upstairs. I thought I would go up to see why, but I chose instead to return to my bed. He had his own demons to exorcize, I thought. He needed to be alone.

  More than one girl at school, however, begged me to show her the attic, the scene of the fantastic story, or, as Karen had once said, "our own Anne Frank hideaway." I simply shook my head to indicate the mere idea was distasteful.

  "It's been shut up," I told them. They believed it, because they imagined that would be exactly what their own parents would do. Lies were still useful, unfortunately.

  I had one terrible confrontation with Karen's mother. She was so angry Daddy thought she might influence the district attorney or clamor for Jesse and me to suffer some punishment somehow. He also feared she or her attorney would find some way to initiate a civil suit, so when she called to come over to see us, he thought it would be wiser not to reject her.

  "She has a right to this," Daddy explained. Jesse and I sat in the living room like two errant children, waiting to be reprimanded. Fortunately, Mama was home. My parents greeted Darlene Pearson at the front door, and Mama hugged her, both she and Daddy stringing apologies, sympathies, and hope in their greetings. Then they brought her to the living room. We both looked up at her. She shook her head, and Mama asked her to sit in Daddy's chair, facing us.

  "Would you like a cold drink, Darlene?" "No, nothing, thanks," she said, her eyes burning through me. "I came here to hear from your

  own lips why you did such a thing," she said. I thought I wouldn't be able to speak. My throat felt that tight. Jesse chimed in quickly. "We didn't intend to hurt anyone. We thought we were helping her."

  "Helping her?" She looked up at Daddy who was leaning against the living-room doorjamb, his arms folded. Mama was looking down and standing just to Darlene's right. She turned more to me. "You came to my home. You lied to the police. You lied to me to my face. You let me feel sorry for you, when all along, you were in cahoots with her, deceiving everyone. Can you imagine what my nights were like, my days, facing all those people and worrying about her, while all along, you two were playing house down the road?"

  "That wasn't what we were doing," I said.

  "You didn't do her any good delaying it all. Poor Harry," she said, and looked up at my parents again.

  Mama nodded. Daddy glanced at us but said nothing. "I did my best," she said, the tears coming into her eyes now. "You have no idea what it's been like for me."

  She looked up at Daddy. "There isn't anyone in this community who didn't know how hard it was for me with her after I married Harry."

  Daddy nodded.

  She turned back to me. "I thought you would be a good influence on her, Zipporah. She would do better in school. She would see how wonderful a family could be."

  "I'm sorry," I said. "She was my best friend. I loved her like a sister."

  Those words at least took the heat out of Darlene Pearson's face.

  "Well." She sighed deeply and then rose. "I don't know what I'm doing anymore. I don't even know why I came here, what I expected from any of you," she said.

  "Don't hesitate to call on me if you need anything, any help, legal or otherwise," Daddy told her.

  She nodded and started out, pausing to look back at Jesse and me.

  "I can only pray for her, pray for you all," she said, and left. Mama followed her out. Daddy stood there looking at us for a long moment and then left.

  "I don't care what they say about Karen," Jesse told me. "That woman had something more to do with it all than she makes out. She's just trying to pass off her own guilt."

  I was glad Daddy hadn't heard him.

  Afterward, information about Karen's dispositi
on trickled into our home. We knew that Daddy had the information way before but filtered it slowly, like someone who was trying to prevent arsenic poisoning. Too much at once would kill you. Of course, we knew Karen was placed in

  confinement, which we later found out was really a mental clinic. The district attorney had put everything on hold until a clear and concise diagnosis was made. It went on that way for nearly two months, and then, toward the end of the summer, that second shoe was heard.

  Jesse had done a good job of cleaning out the attic. He deliberately painted it a bright blue to contrast with the faded gray walls it had. He and Daddy considered redoing the flooring as well. It was a large enough area to present all sorts of

  opportunities.

  For a while, our lives seemed to be readjusting. The return to what was normal for us had come, and there was even some laughter in our home again. Jesse was preparing for his return to college, and Mama and I had done most of the shopping for my return to school--new clothes, shoes, and a new school briefcase. There were ripples of optimism.

  And then Darlene Pearson drove up one evening just as we had sat down for dinner. She rang the doorbell.

  "Who could that be?" Daddy asked.

  "Only one way to find out," Mama said, rising.

  "It better not be one of those religious fanatics come to preach the end of the world," Daddy shouted after her. "I just might believe him."

  Jesse and I smiled at each other and waited.

  "Oh! Darlene," we heard Mama exclaim. Moments later, she followed her into the dining room.

  "Sorry to interrupt your dinner," she declared with a smug smile that churned my stomach. I held my breath. "Late this afternoon, I learned the news, received confirmation that Karen is pregnant."

  For a long moment, no one spoke. When I gazed at Jesse, I saw the explosion of pure terror and fear in his eyes. Daddy rose quickly and reached for the extra chair.

  "Please, Darlene, have a seat."

  She contemplated it as if it were on fire, and then she relented and sat, her lips drawn tightly, burying the corners in her cheeks.