Best Kept Secret

  Francie had nodded. “But why does he have to move so far away from his home?”

  “There really isn’t anyone else in the family who can take him. Now that Julia has the twins, she has four kids under the age of five. Nell is still in school. And as for Adele, she isn’t all that much younger than Grandma Abby.”

  There had been many more phone calls after that, and, Francie assumed, many conversations between Grandma Abby and Uncle Peter. Yet when they’d arrived the day before, and Peter had bounded out of the car and exclaimed, “Hi, Francie, my niece! We’re here on our trip!” she’d wondered just how much he understood about what was happening.

  “Uncle Peter thinks he’s just on a trip,” Francie said to Dana now.

  Dana winced. “Yes. Or at least, that’s what he wants to believe. I know Grandma Abby has been preparing him for the move.”

  Francie heard voices then and whispered to her mother, “They’re up.”

  From down the hall, Grandma Abby was saying, “Today we’ll bring the rest of your things in from the car, honey. I’ll help you unpack. And then I have to leave. You remember that, don’t you? I’m going to leave before lunch.”

  “And I stay here?”

  “Yes, you’ll stay here.”

  Peter entered the kitchen first. “Hi, Dana. Hi, Francie, my niece. This is a nice trip.”

  Francie saw her grandmother glance at her mother.

  “What?” said Dana.

  “I didn’t say anything,” Abby replied.

  “You were thinking something.”

  “Just wondering if you have all the notes I sent.”

  “Every single one.”

  “Because you’re going to need them.”

  “I know. That’s why I saved them.”

  “Peter is a big —” Grandma Abby started to say, but when Dana stared pointedly in his direction, Grandma Abby stepped into the dining room. Dana followed her.

  “He’s a big responsibility,” Francie heard her grandmother continue.

  “Well, this was your idea. If you think I’m such an unreliable member of this family, why did you entrust me with him?”

  “I don’t think you’re unreliable —”

  “I’ve raised a daughter, you know.”

  Francie looked from Peter, who was standing uncertainly in the kitchen, to her mother, whose face, she could see, was turning red. “Um, Mom?” she said. “Grandma Abby?” She inclined her head toward Peter, and her mother and grandmother returned to the kitchen.

  Peter sat heavily at the table. “Is this my place?” he asked. “Are we having pancakes for breakfast? I like pancakes.”

  “You do?!” said Dana in an unusually bright voice.

  At that moment, Francie heard the sound of scratching at the back door, followed by an annoyed woof from Sadie. “I forgot she was outside!” Francie cried. She rushed for the door and returned to the kitchen, Sadie at her heels.

  Peter leaped up from the table and retreated to the hallway.

  “She won’t hurt you,” said Francie. “Remember? Remember last night? She just wants to be your friend.”

  “I don’t want a dog friend.”

  “Francie, put Sadie in your room,” said Grandma Abby.

  “What?” Francie cried. “That’s not fair. She —”

  “Mother,” said Dana. “I think we know how —”

  But Francie headed off the argument. “Okay, okay.”

  She led Sadie down the hall to the bedroom and closed the door quietly, saying, “It’s just for a little while. I promise. You’re a good girl. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  When she returned to the kitchen, she leaned against the counter and watched Peter eat his breakfast. Dana, who had been unprepared to make pancakes, had served him toaster waffles. Peter was cutting them up sloppily and chewing with his mouth open. But he was enthusiastic with his praise. “These are good, Dana! These are very good.” A piece of waffle fell out of his mouth and landed on the floor. He leaned over, picked it up, and put it back in his mouth. Francie squeezed her eyes shut.

  Across the table from Peter, a conversation was taking place that he seemed unaware of.

  “You have the list of foods he won’t eat,” Grandma Abby was saying, leafing sternly through a sheaf of papers that were covered with her handwriting. “The list changes frequently, but these are the ones he won’t eat now. And there’s no point in trying to force him to eat anything he says he doesn’t want. It’s just not worth the trouble. Everything else you need to know is here, too — bedtime, morning routine, TV shows. Oh, and this is somewhere in the notes, too, but it’s critical — he absolutely never remembers to look before he crosses the street. You have to hold his hand —”

  “I know. You’ve told me. Listen, my main concern,” said Dana, interrupting her mother, “is the day-care situation. I sent you the brochure for the place I found. He’ll only need to go there when I’m at the studio, but that will probably be four days a week.”

  “He should be fine. He used to go to day care sometimes at home.”

  “I like day care,” said Peter suddenly.

  Dana brightened. “Great! We’ll visit the new place tomorrow.”

  “The new place?”

  “The one you’ll be going to here in Princeton.”

  “I don’t want to go to day care in Princeton.”

  “Honey, you’ll have to go there when I’m at work and Francie is at school,” said Dana patiently.

  Peter looked helplessly at Grandma Abby. “Will you go with me?”

  His mother shook her head. “No. I’m leaving before lunch today, remember?”

  Francie made a mental note not to say, “Remember?” to Peter all the time.

  * * *

  Francie steeled herself for a horrible, heart-wrenching good-bye scene in the front yard that morning, but when Grandma Abby’s suitcase had been loaded into her car, and she and Dana and Francie were standing nervously on the lawn with Peter, he said, sounding very adult, “Drive carefully, Mom.”

  Grandma Abby looked at Dana and Francie in surprise. Then she laughed and said, “I will. And I’ll call you tomorrow night.” She wrapped her arms around Peter and embraced him for a long time. “I love you.”

  “Love you, too.”

  Francie hugged her grandmother, and then Dana and Abby stood, facing each other.

  “Thank you for this,” said Abby stiffly. “I don’t know what Orrin and I would have done if —”

  Dana waved her off. “I wanted to do it. Peter is my brother. You know how I feel about him. Anyway, this is what families are for. Isn’t it? Sometimes we have to say good-bye in order to move ahead.”

  Grandma Abby stepped away. She nodded quickly, gave Peter another hug, climbed into the car, and backed down the driveway.

  “Wait!” cried Peter, but his mother was pulling onto the street. He turned to Dana. “When is she coming back?”

  “You’ll see her over the summer, but this is your home now.”

  “No!”

  Francie took her uncle’s hand. “Hey, Uncle Peter,” she said, “did you know there’s a secret garden behind our house?”

  “What? A true secret garden?”

  Francie nodded. “I’ll show you. And also, the kid next door? His name is Richie, and he can make armpit farts.”

  Peter laughed. “Francie, my niece, you are not supposed to say fart!” He glanced at Dana. “But it’s funny.”

  “Yes,” agreed Dana, who was smiling. “It is funny.”

  “Dana, I’m going to take Uncle Peter on a private tour now.”

  “A private tour …” Peter repeated, sounding awed.

  Francie led her uncle toward the house. “It starts inside. I’ll give you the special private tour of our house and then a tour of the neighborhood.”

  “Will I see the secret garden and kid who makes the armpit …” Peter’s voice trailed off, but then he said gamely, “the armpit farts?”

  “If he’s at
home. Come on.” Francie opened the door for Peter. “Now, the first thing to know about our house,” she began, “is that Sadie could turn up almost anywhere. She especially likes my bedroom, but she also likes the kitchen, the laundry room, the couch in the living room, and the window seat in the dining room. She could turn up anywhere. She’s kind of like an Easter egg.”

  Peter raised his eyebrows. “Wow.”

  “So the tour will start now, and while we’re looking around, you try to find Sadie, okay?”

  “Okay,” Peter replied solemnly.

  The tour lasted ten minutes, and Peter located Sadie on a pile of towels in the laundry room.

  “You found her!” exclaimed Francie.

  “Yes.” Peter backed away, but said nothing. And when Francie announced that Sadie was going to join them on the tour of the neighborhood, he didn’t object.

  Peter took in the secret garden, which was a narrow strip of yard between the side of the house and a toolshed, where Dana and Francie had set out a birdbath, several bird feeders, and a small statue, and planted a row of rose-bushes, now just beginning to turn a bright spring green. They turned onto the street and Francie suddenly grabbed Peter’s hand. If he couldn’t be trusted to cross the road by himself, then he certainly wouldn’t know not to get into a car with a strange man to take a peek at a puppy named Bubbles.

  Francie held tight to Peter while he studied the homes along the street and the small brook two blocks away. Her uncle was disappointed when no one answered the bell at Richie’s house, but was greatly pleased that afternoon when first Kaycee and then Amy dropped by to meet him.

  Bedtime did not go as smoothly as the rest of the day.

  “That isn’t my bed,” Peter announced as he stood in the doorway of what had been the guest room but was now filled with his things.

  “I know it’s all new,” said Dana, “but this is your room and that’s your bed.”

  Peter shook his head. His eyes filled with tears. “Can I call Mom?”

  “I’m sorry, honey,” said Dana, “but she isn’t home yet. She won’t be home until tomorrow. You’ll have to wait until then. She’ll call you as soon as she can.”

  “But I need her!”

  “You have us,” said Francie, peeking into the room. “Let’s all read together. You get in bed, I’ll sit in the chair over there and read aloud, and Dana will sit on the floor with Sadie. Look at all the picture books we have. We’ll each choose one. Except for Sadie, since she can’t talk.” Peter smiled. “You choose first,” Francie continued.

  “I choose Peter the Important. You wrote that, right, Dana? You wrote it about me?”

  “I wrote it about you and I wrote it for you.”

  “Because I’m your brother.”

  Peter climbed into bed and lay flat on his back, his arms folded behind his head. He was asleep before Francie had reached the end of the story.

  “Good morning, Francie! Good morning, Francie, my niece,” Peter exclaimed in his husky voice. “Today is your big day.” He lumbered into the living room, where Francie was assembling her outfit for the afternoon. “Graduation day,” he added. “Where’s your cap and gown?”

  Francie smiled at him. “Unfortunately, we don’t get caps and gowns. It’s just eighth-grade graduation. So this is what I’ll be wearing.” She pointed to the black skirt and white blouse she had laid on the back of a chair. “The boys wear black pants and white shirts.”

  “No caps?” Peter asked.

  Francie shook her head. “Sorry. But there will be singing. The graduates — all the eighth graders — are going to stand on risers and sing songs we’ve been learning in chorus.”

  When Peter continued to look disappointed, Francie added, “We get diplomas, though. Rolled up and tied with gold and blue ribbons. Gold and blue are our school colors.”

  “Well,” said Peter after a moment. “Okay.”

  Sadie wandered into the living room, sniffed at Francie’s outfit, then crossed the room and sat at Peter’s feet. He reached down to stroke her head. “What do I wear to your graduation, Francie?” he asked.

  By now Francie knew her uncle well enough to realize that what he was really asking was whether her graduation was an opportunity for him to wear his good suit, which he adored.

  “Ever since my brother was a little boy,” Dana said once to Francie, “he has loved getting dressed up.”

  “You get to wear your suit,” Francie told Peter now. “And Dana and I bought you a new tie to go with it.”

  “Really? A new tie? Thank you, thank you!”

  Peter threw his arms around Francie and gave her a bear hug.

  Francie smiled again. She was trying very hard to be excited about her graduation, but she had a feeling she wasn’t nearly as excited about it as Peter was. She knew that the graduation should mark the beginning of new adventures, of the next step in her education, blah, blah, blah. But all Francie could see were ends of things. The end of middle school, the separation from Kaycee, who would soon follow her brother to school in Pennsylvania. Sure, Francie would join Amy at Princeton High, but Amy would be a year ahead of her, and Francie would start off in the fall as a lowly freshman without her best friend at her side. It was not appealing.

  “But you know we’re still going to be best friends,” Kaycee kept saying. “We’re best friends for always. We’ll still see each other after school —”

  “You won’t get home until almost five every day.”

  “Then we’ll see each other on weekends.”

  “It won’t be the same. These are the kinds of things parents tell you when they’re getting divorced. ‘Just think of all the one-on-one time we’ll have.’ ‘We’ll still be able to see each other half of each week.’ But it really isn’t the same, and everyone knows it.”

  Kaycee had sighed. “I don’t know what to tell you. I still feel like we’ll be best friends our whole lives. Think about it: Even if I were going to go to Princeton High with you, eventually, we’d go to different colleges. Did you think our friendship would end then?”

  “No,” Francie had muttered.

  Now she looked at her uncle, at his open, happy face, and she smiled. “I’d better get going. I’ll see you at the ceremony this afternoon.”

  * * *

  The John Witherspoon Middle School graduation was to be held at two o’clock that afternoon. At one thirty, the eighth-grade girls were directed to the girls’ locker room and the boys were directed to the boys’ locker room. They changed into their black-and-white outfits, and shortly before two, they lined up in the gym. The weather had “cooperated” (as Matthew would say), and the ceremony was to be held outdoors. The bleachers for the students had been set up facing rows of metal folding chairs for the guests.

  “Can you believe this day is here?” Kaycee whispered to Francie as they jostled to line up alphabetically.

  “I really can’t,” Francie replied, once again feeling a sense of melancholy wash over her.

  “Places, students!” called the vice principal. “Right now!”

  Francie and Kaycee hugged briefly, then rushed to their spots in the line. Francie could hear the school band tuning up, and as the graduates finally filed out the door and toward the bleachers, the band began playing “Pomp and Circumstance.”

  Francie gazed straight ahead (at the back of Robin Glover’s neck) until she had reached her spot on the bleachers. Then she turned and faced the audience. At first, all she could see was row after row of heads glistening in the June sunshine. How would she ever locate her family? She held up her hand to shield her eyes from the glare and suddenly she caught sight of an arm waving wildly. “Francie, my niece!” called an excited voice.

  Peter, of course. He was half standing, resplendent in his suit and his new tie. Dana tugged him back into his chair, and that was when Francie realized that seated all together in a row were her mother, Peter, Adele, Matthew, and Matthew’s latest girlfriend, Maura. Melissa/Melanie was a thing of the past. Sh
e had been followed by Valerie, then Kim, and now Maura. Francie detected something different in Matthew’s relationship with Maura, though. It was steadier. It had started more slowly. And Matthew had taken greater care when he’d introduced Francie to Maura. Francie thought Maura might one day become her stepmother, although Matthew had said no such thing.

  How could Dana stand it? Francie wondered. There she was, sitting four seats away from the woman her ex-husband was probably going to marry, with no spouse of her own on the horizon. Yet she looked perfectly calm. Dana had not dated one single solitary guy since the divorce. She had thrown herself into her painting and her writing, and then into providing a home for Peter. She never said a word about being lonely or about wanting a husband, and she seemed content enough to spend time occasionally with Matthew and Maura.

  “I don’t get it,” Francie had said more than once to Kaycee. “I just don’t get it.”

  “Does she seem happy?” Kaycee had wanted to know.

  “Well, yes.”

  Kaycee had shrugged. “Then I guess she’s okay with the way things are.”

  Francie had let the subject drop.

  Graduation officially began when Junette Shavers blew a note on her oboe and the band played the first bar of “You Are the Sunshine of My Life.” After two stanzas, the graduates joined in the song, swaying from side to side in time with the music. Francie saw Peter swaying in the audience, bumping shoulders alternately with Dana and Adele, who smiled indulgently at him. For some reason, this sight made her tear up and, for several moments, she was unable to sing. Robin Glover glanced curiously at her, but Francie stared straight ahead, willing her tears to dry up and her throat to open up.

  After two more songs, the principal, Ms. Danow, walked to a microphone that had been placed before the risers. She welcomed the guests, saying, “Thank you all for coming to honor the John Witherspoon class of nineteen eighty-four as they reflect on their years here and set out on the path to their futures with open minds and open arms.”