Secrets in the Shadows

  It's easier to say okay than to say anything else, I decided. People leave you be when you agree with them.

  My operation was scheduled for a later date. Until then, I was left to heal and get stronger. Tyler sent me flowers and a box of candy. Aunt Zipporah visited me at least a half dozen times, and my grandmother was there every day. My father called, and then he and Rachel sent me flowers and candy as well, but he said nothing about coming to see me. He wished me good luck on my operation and promised to keep in touch and especially to keep in touch with my grandparents.

  No one from my school came to see me or even called until two days after my operation.

  I found out the operation took nearly ten hours-- the hip joint was that shattered. I was told that we wouldn't know how successful it had been for a while and that I would need some physical therapy.

  The day after I was returned to my own room, Charlene Lewis came to see me. My grandfather had gotten me my school assignments to work on as soon as I was able. I had done very little. In the back of my mind was the idea that maybe, just maybe, I would never return to school. I didn't know what I would do as an alternative, but I dreaded the day I would walk back into that building, so when Charlene appeared in my hospital room doorway, some of that dread came in with her.

  "How are you?" she asked.

  I shrugged.

  "I don't know yet. I was operated on and we have to wait to see."

  "Very little about you has trickled out, but we did hear that you had something seriously wrong with your hip," she said.

  I nodded.

  "If I can walk, I will probably have a bad limp. My dancing days were short-lived," I added.

  She looked very unhappy for me. She and Bobby had been in one of the cars behind us, so they had seen the accident or come upon it first. I had also heard that they were the ones to get to a home and get the police and ambulance on its way.

  "Nearly the entire senior high school attended Craig's funeral," she said. "The baseball team attended in uniform. Bobby and Mickey and two others were the pallbearers."

  I didn't say anything. My grandparents-- actually my grandfather--had decided not to attend. My grandfather was afraid of a scene between Craig's mother and my grandmother. He didn't come right out and say that, but I knew it was what he was thinking.

  "It's been horrible at school," Charlene continued. "Girls break out in tears constantly. Bobby's so depressed. Everyone's depressed."

  I pressed my lips together hard to keep myself from crying.

  "I suppose you heard that there was a police investigation and they had found the pot in the car."

  "Yes, I heard," I said.

  "Most of us know, of course, that Craig had it. This wasn't the first time, but his mother . .."

  "I know. She's telling everyone I brought it along, right?"

  Charlene nodded.

  "Jennifer Todd's mother is one of Craig's mother's best friends. She said Craig's mother had discovered a lot of stuff about the murder your mother committed. She said she had found it in the desk in his room and she says you brought it to Craig to convince him your mother didn't do it just so you could get him to be your boyfriend."

  "That's not true! He had it all there and showed it to me. She knew that he had it before he even had spoken to me. She knew!"

  "She's telling her friends that you got him crazy with it. She's making it sound like you put a spell on him. Some of the girls, well, a few like Mindy and Peggy, are telling people they saw you do witchcraft stuff. Remember that day at the baseball practice when you were kidding about it? I shouldn't have, but

  I mentioned it. It gave them something else to make up about you. I'm sorry," she added quickly. "But it didn't really matter what 1 said and didn't say. You know how some people are. They enjoy listening to and telling stories about other people. It makes them feel popular."

  "Why did you come here to tell me all this, Charlene?" I asked, my eyes narrow with suspicion.

  She looked down and then up at me.

  "I felt sorry for you, Alice. I know the accident wasn't your fault. Bobby was screaming at how crazy Craig was driving, and I don't believe any of that junk about witchcraft, of course. I just came here to make sure you knew about it."

  "To warn me?"

  "Yes," Charlene said.

  "Don't worry about it. Tell everyone I'm not going back to school. They don't have to keep gossiping about me anymore. They've won. I'm gone," I said.

  She looked surprised. "What do you mean? Where will you go?"

  "Anywhere," I said, and I meant it. Then I turned back to her. "I wish you had been the one chosen prom queen. Craig might not have been so reckless, so swollen up with it all."

  "You can't blame it all on that," she said, smiling.

  "No? Did anyone, even Bobby, ever know that Craig's parents forbid him from taking me, that they had taken away his allowance and they had taken away his car?"

  "They had?"

  "He didn't rent that car to be a big deal, although it made him feel like one. He had to rent a car or join in with the limousine some were renting, and he didn't want to do that."

  "I didn't know. No one did, I think."

  "Yeah, well take that back to the gossip mill and have them churn it into something."

  "I feel sorry for you, Alice. I really do."

  "Oh yeah? Tell me, Charlene, if I do go back to school, will you be my best friend?"

  "What?"

  "Just what I said, will you?"

  "I thought you said you're not coming back." I smiled at her.

  "I'm not," I said. "Now you can be the center of attention and tell them you saw me and heard everything firsthand. Make up whatever you want. Tell them I had candles burning in the room and I was chanting in a foreign language."

  "I won't do that."

  "Whatever. I'm tired. Thanks for stopping by."

  She stared at me a moment and nodded. "I didn't mean to upset you. I'm sorry."

  I grunted, and she turned to go. I did feel bad. Why take it out on her, the one girl who had cared enough to visit me?

  "Charlene."

  She turned back.

  "I'm the one who's sorry. I didn't mean to sound so bitter. Thanks for coming to see me."

  She smiled.

  "One thing," I added. "Tell Bobby good luck on his college career and baseball career. If Craig were here, he would say that."

  She widened her smile.

  She really was beautiful. I wished that somehow things had been different and I could have been her best friend. We would have had a great senior year together. Maybe she and I would have become like my aunt and my mother had been.

  "Good luck, Alice," she said and left.

  The walls seemed to close in around me and shut out all noise, every peep, except the far-off sound of someone sobbing.

  It took me a while to realize that the sobbing was my own.

  10 A Fresh Start

  . The operation on my hip was not a total success. Even after I got over the pain, I was unable to walk without a pronounced limp. It made me feel as if I was walking on a tipped surface all the time. After nearly five weeks of care, surgery, postoperative care and therapy, I returned to the Doral House. My grandfather suggested I move to a downstairs bedroom tor a while to avoid having to go up and down stairs, but the doctor had specifically said I should not avoid stairways.

  "There's no reason why you can't climb a stairway. If you think of yourself as physically disabled, you'll be physically disabled," he told me with a smile.

  I was easily able to rationalize and tell my grandparents that he was right. I could pretend my body wasn't that much different from the way it had been before the accident. I wasn't all that restricted in doing the things that were important to me. After all, I wasn't going to be a ballerina, was I? And I wasn't much of an athlete before the accident. However, pretending I wasn't any more disabled than I had been before the accident was just fooling myself, I decided. Neverthel
ess, I did reject Grandpa's suggestion to avoid the stairs. I remained in my own room.

  During my recuperation period, I had done whatever schoolwork I had been given and was granted the right to finish with home study. My grandfather arranged for me to take my final exams after school when everyone else was gone. I didn't know exactly what he had told the administration and my teachers, but whatever he had said worked. He was good at convincing juries, so I had no reason to be surprised at his success in persuading the school authorities to treat me differently. I suspected he relied a great deal on my psychological trauma, which wasn't altogether a false argument.

  I still had great difficulty recalling the exact details of the car accident. I had absolutely no memory of what had occured immediately afterward. For a while I even had trouble recalling specifically how the accident evolved. The hospital assigned a therapist to speak with me, and together, she and I worked out the details until I felt it all come rushing back. She was surprised when I suggested Craig was reckless and practically suicidal because of his anger at his parents. However, after I detailed some of what he had said and what had led up to it all, she nodded at me with a look of appreciation.

  "You're a pretty bright young lady," she said. "Don't sell your future short."

  What future? I wanted to ask. Except for my art, I had never been ambitious about anything, and now it seemed to be impossible to envision myself passionate about any sort of career. As for my art, a very strange new fear came over me during my period of recuperation. For the first few weeks after my return from the hospital, I did not attempt to go up to the attic. My grandmother was not unhappy about it. She had looked for every opportunity to get me out of the attic as it was.

  "I know what the doctor told you, but you don't have to go and climb another set of stairs every day," she said. "Your grandfather could bring all your art materials downstairs and set up a studio for you in the guest's bedroom. Why look for trouble? All you need, Alice, is to injure yourself before you're fully recuperated from the injuries you had."

  "Fully?" I asked. "How can I ever recuperate fully, Grandma?"

  She looked away rather than answer. No one seemed capable of coming right out and saying,

  "Sorry, you're never going to walk right again. You'll always have this awkward gait, this pronounced limp."

  Hours and hours, days and days, weeks and weeks of therapy did little to change it. I was able to move faster afterward, but not eliminate the limp. I thought it made me look like an old lady suffering from arthritis, especially if anyone was looking at me from behind. Almost as an act of acceptance or, rather, an act of retreat, I returned to wearing the clothing I had worn before my seemingly overnight remaking. To my way of thinking, the so-called Granny Clothes my fellow students accused me of wearing were more appropriate for me now.

  I know all this further depressed my

  grandparents, especially my grandfather. They saw it all to be a great setback, one disappointment piled upon another until the entire foundation for our family would collapse.

  I knew that my grandmother blamed my grandfather somewhat for all that had occurred. I overheard them arguing about it one night. She accused him of pushing me too fast perhaps or being too permissive. I didn't know until 1 had overheard their conversation that she had wanted him to convince me to not go to the prom since Craig's parents were so against it.

  "It was doomed from the start," she said. "That family was so divided, the poor boy couldn't enjoy himself no matter what he did, and Alice got caught in between. Think of where she'd be today if she hadn't gone. And perhaps that boy would still be alive, too."

  I didn't think that was fair. My grandfather was no fortune-teller, and she wasn't totally free of blame either. She had encouraged rue to become social, too. It all made me think that I really was the center of unhappiness in this house. I concluded that no matter what I did, it would always leave a dark, depressing mark on the heart of things. I imagined waking up one morning and finding the words Doomed for Disaster imprinted on my forehead, a different kind of mark of Cain, but one as infamous and devastating,

  nevertheless.

  During these days and weeks, my grandfather appeared so defeated to me. He walked with more of a stoop, something I had never seen him do, and he was far less talkative, no longer excited about bringing home his legal war stories. Our dinners together became pantomimes, with the only sounds being the clink of dishes and glasses and silverware.

  "Aren't you ever going back to your art?" my grandfather asked me one night.

  I had taken to spending hours and hours lying on the sofa watching television, soaking myself in someone else's make-believe. Like some elderly lady confined to her small world, I escaped only through the famous boob tube.

  "I don't know," I said.

  "You haven't been up in the studio since you've come back from the hospital?"

  "No. Between going to therapy and resting, I haven't had the time or the desire," I told him.

  "Your art could become better therapy," he suggested.

  I looked at him. He was so desperate for a glimmer of happiness again, especially for me.

  "To tell you the truth, Grandpa, I'm afraid of my art now," I said. I had to tell someone about this new fear, and he was the best one to tell.

  "What?" He looked toward the door to be sure my grandmother wasn't hearing this conversation. "Why would you say such a thing?"

  "I'm afraid of what I would draw, paint, what would come out of me right now."

  "Well, maybe that's a good thing, a good way to get it out of you, Alice. Consider that," he said.

  "Like the kind of art therapy mentally disturbed people do in clinics, like what my mother is probably doing?" I asked. It was mean, but I couldn't help it.

  He didn't flinch. "If it works for them, it might work for you. You've got to get back out in the world. It's like falling off a bike, Alice. If you don't get right back on, you might not ride again."

  "What of it? Where am I going?" I muttered. "Who else cares, anyway?"

  "I wish you wouldn't think like that. You have to stop blaming yourself for things. And," he added, lean ing toward me, his eyes almost flaming with the passion of his inner fury, "you've got to stop thinking you bring only bad luck to people. Don't tell me you don't, and don't let anyone ever convince you that you are."

  I didn't want to say anything more about it. I especially didn't want to argue with him I hated hurting him more than I hated hurting myself. It was better to be silent, to refer to that all-around perfect way out, the perfect word, the key to escape.

  "Okay," I said.

  He sat back and another day passed.

  And another night. And another week, until finally, I was confident enough with my walking to go out, to take walks on the road, especially our road, a road with little traffic and people watching. In my own way I helped myself grow stronger until, one afternoon, I finally went up to the attic. It was truly like opening the door to another world, the famous escape to Wonderland my grandmother had ironically once hoped I would find.

  There waiting for me was the picture of my mother at the window that I had started months ago now. I was drawn back to it to finish it. However, when I had done so and my grandfather, happy I had returned to my art, came upstairs the following Saturday morning to look at it, I knew I had driven a stake of deep sadness into his heart.

  It was no longer my mother who was looking out the window, dreaming of escape.

  It was pretty clearly I who stood there with that great need and desire. He wasn't going to recommend anyone else, least of all my grandmother, see the picture. He uttered a few words of praise and then said, "Zipporah's arriving any moment. Come down soon."

  He left. My aunt Zipporah was coming to see how I was doing and have lunch with us. She had tried to visit as much as she could, but the summer was beginning and with it all the new preparations for the cafe. I expected her to push for my going there to work and get my mind off t
he accident.

  I sat on the sofa and remembered that first afternoon with Craig, those moments when I had almost given myself to him in order to answer the questions I had about my own craving, intimate needs. I had been created up in this attic, maybe on the sofa that had been here then. It seemed not only

  appropriate but also necessary for me to find the doorway to my own sexual identity and maturity here as well. In my heart of hearts, I believed it was almost something predestined.

  For Aunt Zipporah and my mother, the sofa had been a sort of gateway, a place to find their escape. It gave them pictures, dreams, places, maybe even answers. Suddenly, as I sat there, it did so for me as well. It truly came like a revelation, a plan of action delivered from some spiritual energy or power I could connect with only up in the attic. I rose quickly and went downstairs, finally enthusiastic about something.

  Aunt Zipporah arrived about twenty minutes later, gushing with exuberance, energy, happiness and excitement as always, but perhaps a little more so every time she came to the Doral House now. It was as if the three of us, my grandparents and I, were starving for joy and she was bringing us a Red Cross package full of delight and jubilation. I saw the way my grandmother fed off her cheerful laughter and smiles.

  I could almost feel the transfusion of sunshine driving away the dark clouds, clouds I had brought.

  She talked incessantly, refusing to permit any long moments of silence among us, filling them quickly with stories about the cafe, Tyler's new recipes, the characters who came in and the way the small city was preparing for the upcoming new college year. She had handicraft gifts from the artisans, jewelry, needlework, carved wooden figures, a bag of surprises with a story attached to almost everything.

  The looks of joy and amusement I saw on my grandparents' faces convinced me that what I had envisioned upstairs in the attic while I sat on the sofa was right. I quickly decided that as soon as I had a chance to be alone with my aunt Zipporah, I would propose it. When she wanted to take a walk with me, I immediately agreed, because it would give me the opportunity to tell her my idea. I was afraid my grandfather would want to come along, but he saw us leaving as his opportunity to make some important phone calls, and my grandmother was preparing our lunch.