My Secret History

  “She doesn’t want to be pregnant. She’s looking for an, um—”

  I didn’t want to say the word, but in any case I didn’t have to.

  He said, “Who sent you here?”

  If I said Mrs. Mamalujian it might get back to her, and she’d die if she knew it was me.

  “My friend.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “You wouldn’t know him.”

  He had already started heading for the door. That was my signal to leave. He said, “You came to the wrong place.”

  But I knew it wasn’t the wrong place. I knew that was his business. But he didn’t like my looks.

  “How much does it cost?”

  “I’m very busy,” he said, taking my arm and steering me out.

  “These friends of mine are pretty desperate.”

  He said, “Maybe they should have thought about the consequence of what they were doing.”

  I pushed his arm away and was about to hit him when I heard a gasp—either the mother or the daughter. And if I decked him there were witnesses. I now saw that they were wealthy. So was Zinzler. But I wasn’t. That was why he said it was the wrong place. I had planned on raising the money, whatever it cost; but it wasn’t a question of that. You had to look wealthy. I was not humiliated. I was angry. And my only satisfaction was that in the split second in which I had raised my fist to hit him he might have feared for his life. Going downstairs I regretted that I hadn’t said to him, I’m coming back to kick your ass.

  On the Greyhound Bus to Boston I considered how much I hated that doctor, and I began to dislike Mrs. Mamalujian. When she put her glass out someone poured gin into it. When she approached a door, someone opened it. When she stared at something in a glass case they took it out and showed her. If she had gone to the doctor he would have done what she wanted. These things cost money. I had no money, and it seemed as though, having none, I did not exist. What annoyed me was that I had not thought much about this before, and I had been happy.

  9.

  Going back to the pool was like going home. I slept in Medford, but I didn’t live there. My life was a system of secrets. My mother said, “How was the Cape?” and I said “Fine,” remembering that I had said I was going to the Cape for the weekend. How could I say I was going to New York City with a fifty-year-old woman in order to find an abortionist? They did not know me at home anymore. They knew me better here at the pool, but even so my life was hidden.

  I ate at the pool. I kept spare clothes in the lifeguard room. I took my showers in the changing room. I did most of my reading at the pool—all these fucken women writers, Muzzaroll said, seeing Evelyn Waugh, Caryl Chessman and Rainer Maria Rilke. Muzzaroll was proud that he had never read a book by a woman. “Joyce Cary!” he screamed one day. Another fucken woman.

  I also got my messages at the pool.

  Mrs. Mamalujian called me the day after I returned from New York.

  “How about dinner tonight?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “I’m not very hungry.”

  “That’s got nothing to do with it.”

  The trouble with being rich was in thinking that food had nothing to do with hunger. Lunch is a figure of speech she had said not long ago.

  “I’ve got a nice place in mind,” she said. “Whale steaks!”

  I was determined not to go. I had a clear memory of two of them.

  I said, “I’m pretty busy”—to remind her that she was not busy at all—and, “I’ve got some things on my mind”—to remind her that her head was empty. But she just laughed and hung up.

  One of the things on my mind was Lucy. I had not called her, because I was afraid to tell her that I had failed. And why should I see Mrs. Mamalujian if I hadn’t seen Lucy?

  She left me a note one lunchtime saying I must see you. Love, L. and I had the thought that the problem was solved and that she was eager to tell me so. Sometimes, these supposed pregnancies were just a scare—that was what people said. It was nerves. You worried about being pregnant because you missed your period and you went on missing it because you went on worrying. You weren’t pregnant. You were just worried.

  I met her after work. She was glad to see me but she was still very pale.

  I said, “How are you?”

  “I feel okay,” she said.

  I thought that meant she wasn’t pregnant anymore.

  “Is everything all right?”

  “No,” she said, and my heart collapsed: we were still stuck.

  She said, “What about New York—what happened?”

  “Not much,” I said, and she knew it meant nothing.

  She nibbled her lip and I knew she was fretting.

  The jukebox in the Harvard Gardens was playing “Get a Job” and almost drowning out what Lucy was trying to say.

  “I’m afraid,” she said. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Just help me.” She put her hand on mine. “Want to go back to my room?”

  I had no sexual urge at all. I didn’t want it, I didn’t dare, I had lost interest. It seemed to me that after all these years I was beginning to understand what a sin was.

  I said, “It’s money, you know. If you’re rich you can have anything.” I thought of my failure in New York—it had all been rejection. “If you don’t have money in America you’re out of luck.”

  “You talk as though it’s better in other countries,” Lucy said.

  “You could get an abortion in another country. In Russia, for example, where they don’t believe in God. You’d just go to the hospital and that would be it.”

  Lucy had started to cry.

  “My mother keeps calling me and asking me to go home for a visit. But I don’t want to. I’m afraid she’ll ask me questions—or she might guess.”

  “I’ll go with you,” I said, before I could restrain myself. I was sorry the moment I said it. Then I had to go to the toilet. I gave her my wallet and said, “Take some money out and pay for the beer, will you? I’ll be right back.”

  She was sobbing at the table when I sat down again.

  “Oh my God. Oh, my God.”

  “Please, Lucy. People are looking at you.”

  But she wasn’t sad—she was angry. She said fiercely through her tears, “You’ve been lying to me. You’re nineteen. You’re just a stupid kid.” And she flung my driver’s license down.

  And I could tell that her mother felt the same way. Mrs. Cutler—that was Lucy’s name—was a very nervous woman, about fifty. It interested me how she could be the same age as Mrs. Mamalujian and yet be totally different—as different from Mrs. Mamalujian as a man is from a woman. She wasn’t angry that her daughter had brought a young kid in an army jacket down to dinner; she was crestfallen. There was a look of collapse in her eyes; she was nervous and wore an apron. None of this Mrs. Mamalujian chatter and assurance—no makeup, no big hats. Mrs. Mamalujian had an irritating laugh and an original face. She defied you to think about her age, and then you couldn’t imagine it. Mrs. Cutler was apologetic and shapeless, and she looked like an old woman.

  She said, “Was it a good trip down?”

  We had taken the bus to Plymouth and then caught a local bus to Manomet, and walked the rest of the way, to the house above the cove. We had sat in gloomy silence the whole way. I read Camus’ The Stranger. Now and then I glanced at Lucy and thought: This is what marriage must be like. It was like being unhealthy. You just sat there with the other person and you had to be very careful.

  “It was nice,” I said. “I like the South Shore. The North Shore is all snobs.”

  Mrs. Cutler said, “We used to have ever such a lovely house on the cliff when Lucy’s father was alive. But we had to sell it. I couldn’t keep it up.”

  Lucy didn’t say anything—but it was a disapproving silence.

  “You must be famished. I’ll bet you could tear a herring.”

  “I’d like to show Andy the beach before w
e eat,” Lucy said.

  We walked down the road, which was warm crumbling tar on this late-August day. Tall grass, weeds with blue flowers, and small thorn bushes lined the road and had a lovely dusty smell. A car rattled past and the man at the wheel waved.

  “You know him?”

  “I know everybody here,” Lucy said glumly.

  She took a sudden step into the grass, and I saw she was on a path. I followed her down the cliff to the beach.

  “It’s pretty.”

  “It’s awful. It’s dull,” she said. “Can you imagine what it’s like to grow up in a little town like this?”

  Waves smashed noisily against the rocks. The rocks were rounded and black and looked like tumbled cannonballs.

  “That was Mr. Philpotts,” she said, pointing up at the road. “Now he’s going to tell the whole town that he saw me and you going down to the beach.”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “He’ll describe you,” she said.

  “I don’t care.”

  “That’s the trouble with you,” she said, and walked away from the rocks to where the beach was smoother with sand and pebbles.

  “We found a whale here once. A little one. At first we thought it was a mattress, or one of those tractor tires that wash up out of nowhere. It was so strange. It was right here”—she kicked a groove into the beach with her brown loafer—“and its mouth gaped open. It was lying on its side like a big fat flounder. When we jumped on its side the eye bulged.”

  “How did you know it was a whale?”

  “Because it wasn’t a shark.”

  I was thinking: People always complained about them, but their little towns seemed wonderful to me.

  “What are we going to do?” Lucy said, without any warning.

  Just that question caused my sick feeling to return. It was like a hole in my stomach.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll think of something.”

  “My mother doesn’t suspect anything.”

  “That’s good,” I said.

  “It makes me feel horrible.”

  I wanted to start walking fast and keep walking down the beach alone, to Plymouth, to Duxbury, back to Boston and beyond.

  “I’m so afraid,” she said.

  She touched me and I felt a panic, but I didn’t want her to know how frightened I was, or that I didn’t want to touch her. So I took her hand and I kissed her and I made myself even more panicky than before.

  “It’s a nice beach,” I said. “Funny there aren’t more people around. Especially at this time of year. I wonder if they need a lifeguard?”

  Lucy was looking down.

  “What happened to the whale?”

  “One day it was there, the next day it was gone. The tide took it away.”

  That was perfect—the dead stinking thing with its jelly-eye just floated off and left the beach clean. I prayed for that easy solution for us.

  Lucy had started to cry. Was she thinking of the whale?

  “We’d better go back,” I said. “Your mother will be wondering where we are.”

  She blew her nose and then looked up at me with hatred. She said, “Why did you lie to me? You’re nineteen years old. You don’t know anything. Tuck that shirt in. Don’t you know any better?”

  We walked back to the house, not saying anything. I wanted to go—-just leave on the next bus. But I felt guilty and I didn’t want them to know it, so I stayed. I talked, because Lucy didn’t say anything. In my nervousness I told them the whole plot of The Stranger—and it seemed silly and pointless when it was reduced to a few sentences.

  Mrs. Cutler said, “These French books can be very interesting.”

  I knew she was bored and frightened by me, and I hated Lucy for not saying anything. I tried to get her to talk, because I thought if she kept quiet she might begin to cry.

  Mrs. Cutler said, “Won’t you have some apple pie?”

  “I’d love some,” I said, and then I had another piece to please her.

  “You have a good appetite,” she said. “That’s a good sign. Lucy’s hardly eaten anything.”

  Lucy looked up, and at first I thought her expression was angry. But then I saw she was sick. She got up from the table and hurried out of the room. I heard her tramping down the hall.

  Mrs. Cutler said, “Lucy tells me you’re a lifeguard. You must be a very good swimmer.”

  “It’s a pool, so there’s not much swimming involved. The kids push each other under. That’s the real problem.”

  “I’ve always loved the water. I can’t imagine what it would be like to live in Ohio, say, and never see the ocean.”

  I thought I heard Lucy throwing up several rooms away.

  “The dangerous part of a pool is the deep end,” I said. “People go in over their heads. You have to watch them like a hawk.”

  It all seemed innocent and easy to me, and I wanted it that way, and wondered why I hadn’t been satisfied with it. I hadn’t watched them like a hawk. I had read books in the lifeguard chair and hardly looked up except to see what time it was or what Muzzaroll was doing. I hated myself for searching for more than I should have and for complicating my life and ruining Lucy’s. And what about Mrs. Mamalujian? I said that I was a lifeguard but that obvious thing was the most untrue thing about me.

  When Lucy came back to the table her face was chalky, and it seemed much whiter because she had put on lipstick.

  She said, “I think Andre wants to go.”

  “No,” I said. “I want to help with the dishes.”

  They said they wouldn’t let me, but I insisted and snatched up dishes and silverware. I resented doing it, and I wanted to go, but I was unable to bring myself to say it. I stacked the plates by the sink, and looked for a dishcloth and they kept saying, “Don’t bother.”

  “You could sit down and read the paper,” Mrs. Cutler said.

  That horrified me—being a sort of husband or father, sitting in a wing chair, reading the Globe under the lamp, while the women clanked the dishes and whispered. I wanted to go.

  “You’ve missed the last bus,” Mrs. Cutler said.

  “That’s all right,” I said.

  “You can stay here. Lucy, make the bed in the spare room.”

  “No, no,” I said, because I saw myself in a box upstairs all night, and then more of this at breakfast tomorrow. “I’ve got a friend in Plymouth. He’s expecting me to stay.”

  Lucy looked sharply at me.

  “I’ll just put these dishes away and then I’ll shove off.”

  “I wish we could drive you,” Mrs. Cutler said. “We used to have a car. We used to have a lot of things.”

  I hated the way she said that, and I wanted to leave before she said anything more. But she offered me a coffee and I couldn’t refuse.

  Mrs. Cutler sat there looking bleary-eyed. How much worse she would have looked if she had known what was happening here.

  Lucy said, “Go to bed, Mother. You know you never stay up this late.”

  “We’ve got company, Lucy.” Then she yawned. She still wore her apron. There was a stack of knitting next to her chair—ropes of wool and a half-made sweater. “But I can’t keep my eyes open.”

  When she stood up I realized that I would soon be alone with Lucy, and I was nervous again. The hole opened in my stomach and weakened me.

  “I have to go, too,” I said. “Thanks a million for the dinner, Mrs. Cutler.”

  “Come again,” Mrs. Cutler said.

  Lucy went as far as the front gate and said, “What’s this about a friend? You didn’t mention any friend.”

  “I forgot to.”

  “I’m frightened,” she said. “You don’t seem to realize that.”

  “I realize it,” I said. Why couldn’t the tide come up and take me away?

  “What are you going to do about it?” she said in a low desperate voice.

  I had no answer, so I hugged her and kissed her and told her again not to worry. Then I s
aid I would have to get going or I’d be late, because it was a long walk to Plymouth. I let go of her and ran into the darkness and down the road.

  But I turned back and took the narrow path to the beach. I could see the edge of beach from the froth on the breaking waves. I went to the far end, where they had found the washed-up whale. I crouched on the sand and lay down. It was a clear moony night, and the sand was still warm, but after a few hours the air turned cold and the sand became damp. But I had nowhere else to go. I had been lying. I didn’t have a friend.

  I shivered all night, and in the morning Lucy was standing over me.

  She said, “You’re nineteen. Why did I ever believe you? You’re sleeping on the beach!”

  I was startled and too cold to think of anything.

  “That’s what nineteen-year-olds do. They sleep on the beach. They’re brainless.”

  Lying on the damp sand had made my muscles ache. I stood up and almost tipped over.

  Lucy said in a hard voice, “I’m going to need some money. Three hundred dollars. You’d better find it, sonny.”

  It was like a challenge. She was a different person from the one I had fallen in love with as I knelt in her closet on Pinckney Street. It was hard to remember how we had laughed or made love. She didn’t trust me anymore. She was like an enemy. I was afraid of her.

  I said, “Don’t worry—I’ll get the money.” I knew where I could.

  Then there was no more to say. We walked heavily through the sand to the cliff. That little conversation about money took away the rest of our love.

  10.

  On Labor Day, the end of summer, Kennedy was back in Boston campaigning—marching in a parade, shaking hands, being bright. He was a living reminder that I had nothing. I did not wish him ill, but it was impossible to see his smile and not wish to see it wiped off his public face. But I disliked him most because I was certain that he would be elected. Nixon had a sloping and snoopy-looking face and shifty eyes. Very few people liked or trusted him. I wanted this unpopular man to be president, so that he would be opposed and mocked. A charming and glamorous person like Kennedy could get away with murder.

  But I could not have gone to the parade even if I’d wanted to. It was the last day the pool was open, but because it was the middle of the week there was a foul-up in Accounting and we were paid for two weeks. At lunchtime we cashed our checks at the Harvard Gardens. I had one hundred and seventy-two dollars, including last week’s money, which I had been intending to deposit.