Best Kept Secret Page 2

“Oomph!” I said, laughing and hugging him to me so he wouldn’t crash his head into the nearby bookcase.

  “I love you to the stars and back!” he announced.

  “All the way to Timbuktu,” I answered.

  “All the way to Kalamazoo,” he finished. The words were our nightly routine when I tucked him into bed, what I whispered in his ear before he drifted off to sleep.

  Charlie pulled back and landed a wet, slightly open-mouthed kiss on my cheek. His breath smelled faintly of the peanut butter and syrup he had had on his pancakes. I almost wished I could take a bite out of him, I loved him so much.

  We played for a couple of hours, coloring and building with more blocks. I took a hot shower, trying to scrub the cobwebs from my brain, while Charlie sat on the bathroom floor, chattering away about Spider-Man and what kind of superhero outfit he wanted me to sew for him.

  “Mama doesn’t sew, baby,” I said from behind the shower curtain. Where he had gotten the idea that I could, I had no clue. I opted to throw away his socks rather than darn them; he’d even seen me do it.

  “That’s okay,” he said simply. “You can learn.”

  We both got dressed, then went outside to the backyard so Charlie could climb on the wooden jungle gym Martin had tried to put together for Charlie’s second birthday party. At the last minute, I ended up having to call the toy store to send an employee to finish the job.

  “I can do it, Cadee,” my husband had said.

  “Uh-huh. And is it supposed to lean against the fence?” I only meant to tease him, but he dropped his tools to the lawn and stormed off toward the garage.

  “It’s a safety thing, honey!” I called out. “We don’t want the other kids’ parents to sue!” He didn’t answer, and every time after that when a project needed to be done around the house and I asked him to help me with it, he’d shake his head and say, “I don’t know, Cadee. You don’t want me to screw it up. Maybe you’d better call a professional.”

  Now, the May sun was warm on my face, and my eyes wandered over the overgrown clumps of vibrant bluebells and delicate forget-me-nots along the fence. Yard work—another thing I didn’t have time to do. The outside chores had always been Martin’s. At least, when he came home from work long enough to do them.

  “Watch me, Mama!” Charlie said over and over again as he went down the slide or made his way up the ladder. “Watch this!”

  “I’m watching,” I reassured him, my arms crossed over my chest. My thoughts danced with the descriptions I needed to be writing. I wished I could just sit Charlie in front of a movie and get started. I knew some writers could get words on the page no matter what was going on around them—with music playing or children chattering in the background—but I wasn’t one of them. I needed silence to work.

  I pushed Charlie on the swing and chased him around the moss-covered pear tree until it was time for lunch. “What do you want to eat?” I asked as we walked up the back steps into the house.

  “Orange,” Charlie said.

  “Oranges?” I said. “I don’t think we have any.”

  “No. Not oranges. Orange.”

  “Ohhhh,” I said, realizing what he meant. It was his favorite color. I fed him macaroni and cheese and sliced peaches.

  After he ate, I snuggled with Charlie on the couch and watched an episode of The Berenstain Bears. As I held him, his eyelids drooped and his breathing deepened. When the show ended, I glanced at the clock. It was almost 1:00.

  “Time for your nap, baby,” I said, kissing the top of his head. When he didn’t respond, I knew he was asleep.

  I carried him into his room, marveling at the heft of his deadweight, careful to keep jostling his body to a minimum. I lay him down, slipped off his shoes, and tucked his favorite blue blanket up around his neck, making sure the silky edge was against his face, the way he liked it. Quietly, I shut the door behind me, listening for any movement. He didn’t make a sound. Success.

  Back in the kitchen, I grabbed a poppy seed muffin I’d baked the day before, thinking it might be better for me than finishing off the entire pot of cheesy pasta. I started to type the description of a popular San Juan Islands, Fidalgo Bay, 1890s Victorian. I was cheating a little, using online reviews for references and interviewing the establishments’ owners over the phone instead of in person, but the logistics of lugging Charlie along for a road trip to visit them all were too complicated to consider.

  I’d barely gotten a page completed when I heard Charlie’s door open. His bare feet pattered down the hall.

  “You need more sleep, baby,” I said, turning to look at him when he came through the kitchen’s arched doorway.

  “Nope!” he said cheerfully, though his cheeks were rosy and his eyes half-lidded. “I’m hungry.”

  “You just ate lunch. And you only rested half an hour. You need to get back in bed. Mama needs to get some work done.”

  He clambered up into a chair and looked at me expectantly. “I’ll help you.”

  I sighed, tapping my fingers on the top of my thigh. “No, honey. You can’t. This is grown-up work.”

  He pounded on the table with his fists. “I’ll help you!”

  “Charlie,” I said as gently as possible. “You can play quietly in your room, but Mama needs to be by herself for a little while. We’ll play later.” If he didn’t get a nap, I wouldn’t get anything accomplished and both of us would hate the rest of this day.

  “No!” Charlie said, setting his jaw in a determined line. It was his father’s expression, one I had seen on my ex-husband’s face too many times to count.

  Something in me snapped. I shoved my chair back from the table, then tucked my hands in my son’s armpits and lifted him out of his chair. He gave a few rowdy kicks and managed to knock my laptop onto the floor with his foot. It landed on the checkered linoleum with a frightening clatter. All my work was on that computer—I wasn’t a master of backing up my copy. If he just killed the machine, I was screwed.

  “Dammit, Charlie!” I yelled. My heartbeat galloped in my throat. “Knock it off.”

  “Don’t say ‘dammit’!” he screamed, continuing to struggle as I carried him back down the hall to his room.

  “You’re fine,” I told him through gritted teeth. “Mama’s here. You’re fine. “

  “Daddy!” he wailed, wriggling and writhing to get away from me. “I want my daddy!”

  It made me crazy how often my son asked for Martin. Charlie and I spent most of our time alone even when his father lived with us. Yet something did shift when my husband no longer came home at night. I was it. Responsible for absolutely everything. Sometimes I wasn’t sure I was up for the job.

  I lay Charlie in his bed. “I love you, sweetie, but you need to take a rest.” I kept my voice calm, though aggravation skittered along its edges. I smoothed his hair and he kicked at the wall, still crying. I hoped he’d tire himself out and go back to sleep as he’d done a hundred times before. I closed the door behind me again and this time, I stood in the hall, waiting.

  Over the next five minutes his screaming intensified. There was the loud thunk of something being thrown against his door. A toy, probably. It wouldn’t be the first time. The tips of my nerves burned beneath my skin.

  “You’re a bad mama!” he yelled.

  His words felt like a slap. He’s only three. He doesn’t mean it. Tantrums are normal for lots of kids. Still, tears rose in my eyes and I pressed a curled fist against my mouth at hearing my child accuse me of my deepest fear.

  Swallowing the lump in my throat, I returned to the kitchen and picked up my laptop, happy to see it wasn’t destroyed. I would never get anything done with him screaming in the background; I needed someone to watch him. I thought about calling my younger sister, Jessica, but she was seven months pregnant with twins so I didn’t want to bother her. My mother was more the type to visit her grandchild than to babysit him, so with this late notice, that left me with only one option.

  I grabbed my cell phone an
d punched in Martin’s number, taking a few deep breaths as I always needed to before talking with him.

  “I’m really sorry to bug you,” I began, hoping he’d give me a different answer than the one I expected. “But can you take Charlie for a few hours this afternoon? I’m on deadline.”

  “Why’s he screaming?” Martin asked.

  I gave him the short version of why his child was pitching a fit. “I know it’s my weekend, but if you can help me out, I’d really owe you one.”

  “Sorry, I would, but I’ve already got plans,” he said.

  You always have plans, I wanted to say, but managed to bite my tongue. The role of bitter divorcée was one I worked hard to avoid.

  “I can take him an extra night this week, though,” he went on to offer.

  “The article’s due tomorrow,” I said, trying to keep the desperation out of my voice. The editor had already cut me some slack; it was unlikely he would do it again.

  Martin sighed. “I don’t know what to tell you, Cadee. I can’t do it. But I’ll pick him up Wednesday at five.”

  After he hung up, I slammed down the phone on the table, adrenaline pumping through my veins. Goddamn him. So much for the concept of coparenting. I shouldn’t have bothered to call. Charlie’s cries escalated into punctuated, high-pitched shrieking. I didn’t know what to do. I started to weep, the internal barricade I usually kept high and strong crumpling beneath the weight of my frustration.

  After a few minutes of feeling sorry for myself and wondering how my child didn’t sprain his vocal cords screeching like he was, I plunked back down at the table, wiping my eyes with my sleeve and thinking I might just polish off that pot of pasta after all. As my gaze traveled toward the stove, the sunlight streaming in through the window glinted off a bottle of merlot on the counter and caught my eye.

  I checked the clock. It was almost 2:00. People who worked outside the home had drinks with a late lunch, didn’t they? I could have half a glass now, just to take the edge off, and maybe another before bed. Not even two full glasses for the day. Some people drank more than that with their dinner alone. And it wasn’t like I did it all the time. I needed to relax. Just this once, I thought as my son sobbed himself to sleep in his room. Just today.

  I swore to myself I’d never do it again.

  Pulling up in front of Alice’s house to pick up Charlie, the shame is strong enough in me that I must fight the urge to drive away. I’d go anywhere to not feel this. Canada is only a couple of hours north. I could run off and not have to deal with any of it. I could start again, build a new life with our maple syrup-friendly neighbors. I could learn to say “eh?” at the end of every sentence. I could blend right in. I wouldn’t have to go to treatment. I wouldn’t have to write all those silly assignments or attend AA meetings. I wouldn’t need to find some ridiculous notion of a higher power. I could leave. I could . . .

  There he is. All thoughts of escape disappear. Charlie comes bounding out of my ex-mother-in-law’s front door, his dark brown curls bouncing around his perfect, elfin face. He needs a haircut, I note. Something for us to do today, something to fill the hours we are alone. He is wearing blue jeans and a polo shirt I didn’t buy for him, one I would have left on the rack at the store. His smile is wide. His hands flutter in excitement as he races down the stairs toward me.

  “Mommy!” he exclaims, and my heart melts into liquid. I throw the gearshift into park, turn off the engine, and jump out to meet him. He leaps into my open arms and clings to me like a spider monkey, his skinny arms and legs wrap around my neck and waist in a viselike grip. I bury my nose in his neck and breathe him in—his nutty, warm, slightly funky little-boy scent. This is the first time in two months that we’ll be alone overnight. Two months and four days since Martin came to my house and took him away.

  “Where were you?” he demands. “I missed you!”

  “I’ve missed you, too, butternut,” I say, choking on my tears. I nibble on the thin skin of his neck, growling playfully. It is our game.

  “Ahhhh! Stop it!” he squeals.

  I nibble again. My lips cover my teeth so I don’t accidentally hurt him. He squeals again and wriggles like an eel in my arms. “Let me go!”

  “No, I won’t let you go! No way!” I say, holding his precious body to mine.

  “Mama! Ahhh!! It tickles!!” His sturdy legs wrap themselves even tighter around me and he continues to squirm.

  God, oh God, how could I ever have done anything to lose him? How could I have been drunk around this gorgeous little boy? I am sick—undeniably ill.

  “Hello, Cadence.” My ex-mother-in-law’s words land like a gauntlet at my feet. They cause me to peek up from the warmth of my son’s neck. Alice stands atop her front steps, arms folded tightly across her chest. Her eyes are stone. Her silver-streaked black hair is pulled back from her face in a tight bun at the base of her neck, not a loose strand in sight. She has applied just enough makeup to avoid being mistaken for dead. She wears her standard khaki slacks and practical, scoop-neck, long-sleeved navy knit top. No frills for this woman. No fussy, floral prints. She is all business, the bare necessities.

  “Kill her with kindness,” Andi said when I expressed my anxiety about having to see Alice in this first official exchange. “That’ll piss her off. “

  “Really?” I asked, skeptical. “I want to piss her off?”

  “No, you want to be kind.” She gave me a beatific smile. “The pissing her off part is just a bonus.”

  Purely out of respect for Andi’s advice, I manage to smile at Alice when she greets me. It is a tenuous, struggling movement—my cheeks literally tremble with the effort. “Hi, Alice. How are you?”

  “Fine.” She gives me a tight-lipped look, one I recognize as her version of a smile under duress. From the moment I met her, it was clear that Alice had envisioned a much more suitable partner for her only child. A lithe, Nordic blond perhaps, petite and demure. Instead, she got me—all wild brown curls and fleshy curves. Big breasts, big opinions.

  “You’re late,” she says.

  I twist my wrist up from my son’s body, which is still clamped around me, and look at my watch. Ten minutes after 9:00 a.m. Panic seizes me. She’ll report me to Mr. Hines, the court guardian. I’ll lose my son. I worry that everything I do goes under automatic scrutiny. How does it look for me to do this? I wonder, as I order a soda at dinner. Are they wondering why I don’t ask for a real drink? A glass of wine? A vodka tonic with a twist? I feel like I have to explain every little movement, or lack of movement.

  It’s similar to how I used to feel when I’d buy wine at a different grocery store or corner market every day. “I’m having a party tonight,” I’d explain to an uninterested checker. “Eight people, so I’ll need four bottles of wine.” Like the checker gave a good goddamn.

  “Only a few minutes late,” I say to Alice now, not just a little defensively. “Sorry.”

  “It’s fine,” Alice says, looking at me with cool disdain.

  Charlie chooses this moment to wriggle out of my grasp. He jumps up and down in front of me. “Look, Mama! I can do a cartwheel!” Falling forward, he places both palms flat on the wet grass and does a donkey kick not more than eight inches or so off the ground. He lands on his knees with a thump.

  I clap for him. “Excellent!” He grins, causing the deep, cherry-pit dimple on his left cheek to appear.

  “Charles!” Alice scolds. “Look what you did to your jeans!”

  The grin vanishes. He stands, looks down at his now brightly stained green knees. “Sorry.”

  I reach down, ruffle his curls. “That’s okay, buddy. That’s why God invented Spray ’n Wash, right?”

  “Yeah!” he says. He looks up at me, smiling again, and then to the sky. He waves. “Thanks, God!”

  Oh, my Charlie. My eyes well up. Would you look at that. Look at that sweet soul. I haven’t completely screwed him up.

  “God isn’t doing your laundry,” Alice says lightly as she steps
down the stairs.

  I look at her, anger tight and warm in my chest. It’s that mama bear feeling rearing its head.

  She sees my eyes flash. Her expression melts into one of supreme smugness. That’s right, it says. Here it comes. Yell at me. Give me something to tell the court.

  Kill her with kindness. The chant I played over and over in my head on the way to this moment. I take a deep breath before speaking.

  “Thanks for taking such good care of his clothes. I’ll wash his jeans today, and bring them back.” And then, because I cannot help it, I continue. “Why doesn’t Martin do his laundry?”

  She lifts her jaw. “Martin is busy working. Martin is busy making sure his son is fed and clothed and brought to school on time. He is very busy being a parent.”

  Which is more than I can say about you, I hear the unspoken finish to her statement. She doesn’t need to speak. Her eyes paint the words: black, ugly brushstrokes in the air between us.

  “How nice for him,” I spit out. I can’t stop myself. “Most single parents don’t have someone to pick up their slack.” Dammit. And I was doing so well.

  “Most single parents don’t drink themselves into oblivion, either,” she launches back. She speaks quietly, over Charlie’s listening ears. “I didn’t.”

  Her words pummel me. They stop my breath. Sudden, violent guilt invades each cell in my body. She is sacred and pure. I am the evil, rotten mother who couldn’t control her drinking. I deserve her hatred. I deserve the pain that goes with it. She is right and I am wrong. I earned every minute of all I have to endure.

  Charlie grabs my arm with both hands and pulls in the direction of my car. “Mama, let’s go,” he whimpers. “I want to go.”

  “Okay, monkey,” I say. And then, to Alice, “I’ll have him back tomorrow at twelve o’clock.”

  “Twelve o’clock sharp,” she says.

  “Right,” I say. “C’mon, Mr. Man.” Any fight I had is knocked clear out of me. Round one: Alice. I let Charlie lead me to the car and help him climb into his booster seat, ever conscious of Alice’s sharp blue eyes on me. For good measure, I say loudly, “All right, you’re all buckled in,” just so she can’t tell the court I let Charlie bounce around like a red rubber ball inside my car. Anything is a threat now. Anything could be used against me. I step slowly around to the driver’s side, open my door, and then force myself again to smile at Alice and wave good-bye. “Say ’bye to your omi, Charlie bear.” This is what he calls her, Omi—the German equivalent of Nana.