PAIN THROBS BEHIND MY EYES, my
thoughts twist into a
knot, and this morning’s orange juice sours in my stomach. A secret can do that
to you when you’ve kept it in too long.
There’s a knock, and then my mother is talking through
the closed bedroom door. “Stephen, are you okay? Did you go back to bed? It’s
after nine. Are you going to work? Don't you have to pick up Janie?”
I reach out of the covers and turn the fan to high to
drown out her voice. Then I grab my cell phone and find the familiar
combination of numbers with my thumb. No answer. My mother knocks again.
“Leave-me-alone!” I yell.
When Janie and her mom moved into the neighborhood, I
was seventeen and Janie was just a kid. Her mother came over to use our phone,
but she brought a secret with her. She’d been keeping it from her own daughter,
yet she practically used it as an introduction with us. It's just Janie and me
now. We're starting over.” Then she leaned in closer to my mother. “My husband
killed himself last year. We tell people it was a car accident.” Her voice was
thin like tissue.
“Don't you ever repeat a word of that,” my mother said
as soon as Janie’s mom left, and it didn’t seem like that big a deal to me.
Things started to look different three years ago when I
got hired as a manager at Hollywood Video Rentals. I was training Janie on the
register and watching her scan in a copy of Better off Dead when the secret came back to me. And I wondered if
she knew the truth yet.
The first night we hung out after work, I got my answer.
“Get behind the wheel,” I said, handing her the keys to my Echo.
“I don't have my license.”
“Did I ask?” She placed the keys back into my hand and
got quiet. “Hey, I just thought it'd be fun. It’s no big deal.”
“It is a big
deal,” she said. “I don't know if I'll ever want to drive. My dad died in a car
accident.
That was the first time I felt the weight of the
knowledge I had. It was heavy in the center of my gut, like eating week-old
meatloaf and just waiting to see if you’ll be able to keep it down.
“You shouldn't be spending so much time with that girl,”
Mom said the first time I brought Janie to the house. “She's too young,
Stephen. Way too young.”
Somehow, when Janie was over, Mom would morph into the
world’s most attentive hostess. We wouldn’t be in my room five minutes when Mom
would bust through the door with two mugs of hot chocolate, or a plate of
brownies, or a bit of news that just had to be shared. When she’d finally
retreat to the living room, she always turned back and smiled as she slid the
doorstop with her foot to keep the bedroom door open. Mom was annoying. Mom is annoying. But she did have a point. Janie was young.
So, the more time we spent together the more we tried to keep things quiet. But
the longer we kept our secret,
the harder it was to keep the
secret from her.
The hardest times were her birthdays. They left me
wondering what the magic number was. When would her mother decide that Janie
was ready to hear the news that her father heard voices in his head, had been
institutionalized for a time, and flung himself off a bridge one day? I dreaded
the sound of her voice when she would tell me she’d learned this terrible truth
about her father—one that I’d known and kept from her for years.
But that day never came.
Again, now, I push speed dial and watch the seven digits
play across the phone that has kept us connected for the past three years, all
hours of the day or night; stupid stuff or serious, crap that we had to get off
our chest, or great news that we couldn’t wait to share, the voice on the other
end was my purpose, my lifeline. My validation. I hold the phone to my ear and
hear the same automated tone I’ve heard all night long.
Last night when Janie broke up with me and gave me that
line about needing space, I just wanted her to tell me the truth. I would have
done anything for it. This morning the secret beats with a pulse of its own,
living, breathing, and demanding to be set free. It rises up, and my stomach
heaves. I watch breakfast come up into the toilet and I know that
I’ve kept the secret too long. I know how it might
sound, but this is not about revenge or payback or anything like that. I just
need to talk to her. I just need to tell Janie the truth. I hit redial. She'll
pick up eventually.
She
has to.
