Secrets in the Shadows

  "Why not?" I asked.

  "Oh, I don't know. After both kids were off, Elaine talked about us moving to Monticello into one of those town houses. She'd be closer to the hospital and I'd be closer to the office and the courthouse, being that's the county seat. We wouldn't have to worry about maintenance."

  "Why didn't you move then?"

  "Can't say. The idea just sort of drifted away, and she had done so much to improve the property. I suppose neither of us wanted to desert it."

  "But it has such bad memories," I dared mention.

  "Naw. You can't blame the house. It's just a house," he said, smiling. "You haven't seen any of those ghosts people think dwell here, have you?"

  "No. I wouldn't be afraid of them if I did," I added, and he laughed.

  "I bet you wouldn't."

  I wouldn't, I thought. Ghosts were probably as lonely as I was, trapped between two worlds.

  He started down the walk to the driveway and then to the road. I followed along. He looked back and gestured with his head for me to catch up. I did, and we started to stroll down the street, walking along quietly. It was a nice day with the sort of sky that seems to be a faded blue, dabbed with starch white puffs of clouds that looked more like smoke from steam. When I was little, my grandfather called those clouds God's breath, comparing them to the little puffs we saw of our own breath on very cold winter days and nights.

  We continued walking. The warm breeze stirred the trees, causing the branches to shudder rather than rustle. A small black bird did a little dance on the road and then lifted off and into the forest to disappear in the pockets of darkness. Occasionally, I would see a deer on this road looking bewildered about the strip of macadam in the midst of its natural habitat. There were always lots of rabbits hurrying along as if they were late for a very important date. Once I saw a fox, and my grandfather swore he saw a bobcat. He was walking with his head down now, but he suddenly paused and took a deep breath before looking at me and smiling.

  "I wasn't just kidding back there about you losing your baby fat, Alice," he said. "Sometimes, a girl--or a boy, for that matter--grows up overnight. At least it seems that way. Elaine's afraid to see it happening. That's natural for mothers and

  grandmothers, I suppose. She was the same with Zipporah."

  "Why?"

  "Oh, I suppose they don't want to see their children and grandchildren have to face all the problems they know come with it."

  "Like what?"

  "Boys, for one thing," he said, widening his smile. "Worrying about relationships, looks, the whole ball of wax, as they say. You ever hear the expression `Little kids, little problems, big kids, bigger problems'?"

  "No. Where would I hear it?"

  "Right. Where would you? Which is something I wanted to talk to you about, Alice."

  He continued walking.

  "What is?"

  "You should try to do more with your opportunities at school. You're spending too much time alone.

  Join clubs, teams, whatever, anything that will help you get out more. Despite how protective and worried she seems sometimes, I'm sure your grandmother would like to see that, like to see you do more social activities. It's not good to spend so much time by yourself at your age."

  I felt tears coming to my eyes. Did he think all this was my fault?

  He glanced at me because I was so silent.

  "I'm not complaining or criticizing you, honey. I just want you to be happier. You should do fun things kids your age are doing. I mean, I love your paintings and I think you might just make something of your art, but you want to also do things that enable you to be with other kids your age."

  "It's not because I don't want to," I said, which was at least a half-truth.

  "Oh?"

  Surely he had noticed my isolation before this, I thought. This was just his way of investigating.

  "The school is full of cliques. I don't exactly fit in with most of them."

  "Nonsense. Tell me the truth. Have you turned down invitations to things, Alice, because .. ."

  "No," I said sharply.

  "Well, sometimes you have to go halfway. It's hard to find a perfect friend or friends. You have to forgive them for their failures. Why don't you just join something? Isn't there any club, activity that interests you besides your art? Once you're in something, you'll see how much easier it is to make friends, because you'll have common interests."

  I didn't say anything. We walked on.

  "It's just a suggestion," he said. "I want you to be happier."

  He paused and looked out over a field of high, wild grass.

  "I was thinking of buying this property once," he said. "Developing some modest housing. It's going to happen soon. People from New York are thinking more and more of this area for second homes. I might still do it. I've sent out some feelers through a real estate agent."

  He glanced at me.

  I didn't have much interest in any of that and he knew it. He's just trying to change the subject, I thought.

  "No one's made fun of you lately, have they, Alice?" he asked sharply.

  Last April there was a very bad incident. Two of the girls in my class, Peggy Okun and Mindy Taylor, were slipping nasty notes into my hall locker, asking things like, How can you sleep there? Do you hear the moans of Brandon Doral? (Brandon was supposedly murdered by his wife and buried on the property.) The worst note was, Who's hiding in your attic now? Is your mother back?

  I didn't tell anyone about it, but one afternoon, after I had come home, one of the notes fell out of the math book in which I had put it, and my grandmother found it near the front door. She showed it to my grandfather and he went ballistic. I had to tell him it had been going on for some time. At his insistence, the principal put the dean of students on the case. Through observation, they discovered who had been doing it by catching them in the act. The hullabaloo it created was more disturbing for me than the notes had been. Both Mindy and Peggy were suspended for two days and then had a week's detention, but all that did was bring them more sympathy and make me look more terrible.

  "No," I said.

  "You'd tell me if they were, right?"

  "Yes," I said, but not with any enthusiasm. He knew I wouldn't.

  "Maybe we should have moved away," he muttered. I didn't think he meant for me to hear it.

  He snapped out of his dark mood quickly, however, and talked about taking the family to a fun new restaurant in Middletown tomorrow night.

  "Your grandmother made sure she had time off while Jesse and the kids are here."

  "Isn't Aunt Zipporah coming to visit?"

  "Oh, sure. She'll be here tomorrow morning," he said. "But Tyler will have to stay at the cafe. She'll be with us for a couple of days."

  "That's good," I said. I so looked forward to seeing Aunt Zipporah, especially when my father and Rachel had come.

  We turned back toward the house.

  "Well," my grandfather said, "I suppose I should seriously consider resurfacing the driveway. I've resisted all these years, but your grandmother says it's embarrassing. I imagine the birds have been saying nasty things about us," he joked. "I can't think of anyone else who would care. The rabbits don't seem to mind, right?"

  I smiled. It was so much easier to be with him than it was to be with my grandmother. Why wasn't he as worried about what I might have inherited and what I hadn't as she was? I wondered. Did he see or know something I didn't? Did he know the truth all these years?

  "Can I ask you something, Grandpa?"

  "Sure. Anything," he said. "Just don't ask me to be late for dinner."

  "I'm serious," I said.

  "Oh, no. When one of these Stein women gets serious, I'm in deep trouble." He paused. "What is it, Alice?"

  "Were you absolutely positive that the things my mother claimed Harry Pearson had done to her were never done to her?"

  He glanced at the house as if he wanted to be absolutely positive we were too far from it for my grandmother to
overhear the conversation.

  "I really wish you wouldn't be thinking about that so much, honey."

  "I can't help it," I said.

  He nodded.

  "Well, I'm sorry to say there was never any doubt that she was a very disturbed person."

  He looked like he was going to tell me more. I waited, holding my breath.

  "Her story was quite fantastic, and there just wasn't any concrete evidence to support any of it. Could it somehow still have been true? Well, I suppose we should never absolutely discount anything. It's so long ago and so much damage has been done to the truth, whatever it is, that it's impossible to make any firm conclusions that will satisfy you--or me, for that matter. It won't change anything now."

  "It would for me," I said.

  "I meant for your mother." He turned to me. His face darkened with the shadow of his deep thoughts. "I don't know how you can do it or if you ever will, but somehow, I wish you could let it all go, Alice. Be your own person and put it away."

  "I don't know who I am, Grandpa. I don't know how to be my own person."

  "You will," he said and put his arm around me to squeeze me to him. "Someday, you will. I'm confident."

  We saw the car my father and Rachel had rented coming down the road toward the house.

  "Why does Rachel hate me?" I dared ask.

  We watched my father turn into the driveway.

  "She doesn't hate you, Alice," my grandfather said in a tired, frustrated voice. "She's threatened by you. I think you're old enough to understand. You're a part of Jesse that she doesn't want to admit exists. In time, she'll get more comfortable with you, especially when you come into your own. Until then, treat her like thin ice. Don't worry. I'll always be there," he added.

  Even if my father isn't, I wanted to add but didn't.

  "Hey," my father called to us when he stepped out of the car. "You know how big the potholes are in this driveway already?"

  "Really? I never noticed," my grandfather said and winked at me.

  I smiled, and we walked back to join them. Rachel walked faster into the house.

  "Where you guys been?" my father asked.

  "I took Alice over to look at the Bedik property.

  Still thinking about buying it all for

  development. As an artist, Alice could envision it all better than I can."

  My father looked at me.

  "So what do you think, Alice?" he asked. "Is your grandfather crazy?"

  "No."

  "And even if I were, she wouldn't say so," Grandpa told him. They laughed.

  "I'd like to see that painting we were talking about before I left," my father told me. "Where is it?"

  "In the attic," I said. He flashed a look at my grandfather and then at me, his eyes at first full of trepidation and then, suddenly, brightening with excitement.

  "Okay. Let's go take a look."

  He had never, ever been up there with me alone. My heart didn't pound; it twittered and then filled me with an electric excitement that streamed down my body as we all headed for the front door.

  Rachel had gone to put away whatever she had gotten at the drugstore. My grandmother was in the kitchen, and the twins were still fast asleep.

  "I have to make a few calls," my grandfather said. He glanced at me I think he wanted to make it possible for my father to be alone with me.

  My father nodded. He looked a little nervous but started up the stairway. I looked down the hallway to see if Rachel was coming back, and then I hurried up after him. When we reached the second landing and the short stairway to the attic door, he stepped aside to let me go first.

  My eyes were practically glued to him when he came into the attic behind me. Of course, he knew how it had been changed, but still, coming up here had to have a special meaning for him. As he panned the room, I could almost see him turn back into the boy he had been years ago. Memories were surely flashing across his eyes in snapshot fashion. Selfconscious at how he was behaving, he quickly turned to me.

  "Dad's improved the lighting up here, I see." He nodded at the rows of lights in the ceiling. "Where's the new painting?"

  I stepped up to an easel and uncovered the picture. He approached and studied it as if he were truly an art critic, nodding and smiling.

  "I see what Dad means. It's very good, Alice. You've really blended those colors well, and I love the sort of -kinetic energy you have in the turn of the leaves. Is this any particular tree on the property?"

  "Yes," I said, moving toward the windows that faced the rear of the house.

  He stepped alongside.

  "See across the field to the left?"

  "Oh yes."

  "When I'm up here for a while, looking out the window, concentrating, I see things that would ordinarily be missed," I told him

  "Really? Like what?"

  "Things," I said. I took a breath. "Things I imagine my mother must have seen spending hours and hours alone, looking at the same scene."

  He was silent.

  Had I violated some unwritten rule by mentioning her? Was this the end of our special time together?

  "Actually," he said, "I'd like to talk to you about all that."

  Was I hearing correctly? I dared not utter a word, a syllable, even breathe.

  "Dad . . . and Mom are worried about you, Alice. It's part of why I worked out this short holiday for Rachel, the boys and myself."

  "What is?"

  "You," he said.

  "What do you mean, me?"

  "You have to start thinking about your future. Even if you want to become an artist, you've got to expand. Any artist, writer, songwriter, anyone in the creative fields has to have real experiences from which he or she can draw to create."

  "Emily Dickinson didn't," I said. "She was like a hermit. She wrote poems on pillowcases."

  "But think of what she might have achieved if she had gone out among people, events, activities."

  "She's in our English literature hook. She's that important to our literature. She didn't need real experiences. She invented them, imagined them."

  "You're a pretty smart girl, Alice, a lot smarter than I was at your age, I'm sure, but believe me, you have a great, deal to give to other people and draw from other people. You've got to let yourself go. Join things. Dive into it."

  "That's what Grandpa was just telling me," I said. I nodded to myself. This is a conspiracy, all right.

  "You should listen to him. He never gave me bad advice."

  The entire time we spoke to each other, my father and I looked out the window and not at each other. We rarely looked at each other directly.

  "I know it's been hard for you," he continued. "You inherited a lot of baggage, but you have to step out of it."

  "Like you did?" I asked and turned to see his reaction.

  For a moment his lips trembled and I thought he was going to be angry, but then his face softened and he nodded.

  "Yes," he said. "I was selfish, but you do selfish things to survive sometimes. What I owe you, I can't even begin to pay back. Your grandparents stepped up to the plate on my behalf, pinched hit. They've done a better job than I could have. That's for sure, but they're ,,both very worried about you, as I said, and it's time I stepped in, too."

  "To do what?"

  "Help you in any way I can, Alice."

  "Any way?"

  "I'll do whatever I can," he said, which I knew meant whatever Rachel permitted. "I mean, I want to give you advice, guidance, be a sounding board. I hope it's not too little too late, but . . . well, you see what I'm trying to say, don't you?"

  I turned away and looked out the window again. I did, but I wasn't sure that what he was offering was anywhere nearly enough.

  "Dad's right," he continued. "You have to let go of the darkness, Alice."

  "You want to help me do that?"

  "Yes. Very much," he said. "If I can."

  "Okay," I said and slowly turned to look at him, blue eyes to blue eyes. "If you really mean
that, then tell me everything," I said.

  "Everything?"

  "Tell me exactly who she was and tell me what happened up here."

  3 Take a Chance

  . Of course, I expected my father to shake his head, mumble some excuses and flee the attic, but instead, he walked back to the small settee my grandfather had put up here and sat. I didn't move from the window.

  "When I see you standing there by that window, Alice, with the afternoon light playing around you like that, you really do remind me of her. There is a remarkable resemblance. I used to think that was lucky for me. No one would look at you and think there's Jesse Stein's daughter. I could continue to pretend I wasn't responsible. I was very immature then."

  "I'm about the same age she was when she was up here, right?"

  "Yes, but of course, I knew her before all that. The truth is, and your aunt Zipporah doesn't even know the true extent of this to this day, I had seen your mother secretly a few times before she was up here. I knew how close your aunt and your mother were, and I thought your aunt would be quite upset about it."

  "Then you didn't think she was crazy all the time or else you wouldn't have been seeing her, right?"

  "No, I didn't think that," he said and smiled. "She was pretty unusual, unpredictable, however. You'd never know what she would do or say. She could change moods in an instant and loved doing and saying things that had shock value. I had never met another girl like her and haven't since. She was like a wild mare you wanted to corral but never could. She couldn't stand any sort of confinement, whether it was physical or mental or emotional, which was why I'm sure she hated being up here."

  He laughed.

  "Why is that funny?"

  "That isn't, but she once told me she'd never fall in love because falling in love turned you into a slave, took away your independence. She said she'd rather fall in and out of love continuously, even with the same person, which is what I think she did with me."

  "Why did you want to help her? Why did you keep her secretly up here after you learned what she had done?"

  He looked away, and he was quiet so long, I thought that was that. He had told me as much as he ever would or could. I gazed out the window, then looked at him again.