Betsy Wickwire's Dirty Secret (17 page)

I
didn't call Paige. I got up early the next morning and baked chocolate chip cookies. I made six ham-and-cheese sandwiches — one each for Dolores and me, four for Murdoch. I mixed a Thermos full of homemade lemonade and bought a couple of large bags of honey-dijon kettle chips too. I packed everything in Mom's vintage picnic basket and threw in a gingham tablecloth and some napkins. I wasn't sure if Dolores would think it was great or “too friggin' tasteful” (that's what she'd said about Amy's house once). I decided I didn't care. This is what I wanted to do. Dolores would at least appreciate that.

I showered and straightened my hair. I put on my blue-green bikini and a white shirt that made the most of the little bit of tan I had. I decided I was going to go shopping this week and get myself some new clothes.

I also decided to find out if Jack was still dating
Hannah, and if not, whether I could wangle a way to introduce him to Dolores. I did my best not to be skeptical. I hadn't liked Dolores very much when I'd first met her either but now I loved her. I realized she was my best friend. Maybe my best friend ever.

It was pouring rain by the time the Rebel pulled up. Dolores said, “Here. You get in the front. I want to lie down,” and gave me a big, phony wink.

Murdoch suggested that maybe, given the weather, we should go to a movie, but both of us booed that down. Everyone would be at the movies today.

“We zig when lesser men zag.” Dolores was stretched out on the back seat and didn't even bother opening her eyes. “We go to the Valley.”

We talked for a while about a cartoon Murdoch had drawn in the sand the day before. He'd totally captured the horrified looks on our faces when we'd picked up the lobsters to put them in the pot, but I insisted I wasn't as skinny as he made me out to be and Dolores claimed she wasn't as short. We threatened to start drawing cartoons about him.

“Fine. Give ‘er,” he said, and we all laughed because it was such an un-Murdoch-like thing to say.

Or maybe that's why Dolores laughed. I laughed because I was happy. I would have laughed at anything right then. The day before, I'd thought I was caught
in this inescapable trap, and now, everything was fine. Everything was
better
than fine. I'd wanted it all, and I'd got it.

The rain was pounding down. The Rebel didn't have air conditioning and we had to roll up the windows. It felt muggy inside but very, very safe.

Some song came on the radio that we all hated and Murdoch changed the station to one I'd never heard of.

Dolores said, “CKDU. I love CKDU,” but that was the last peep that came out of her for a while.

I was aware of the music, of Dolores snoring, and of the sloppy sound the wipers made trying to keep up with the rain, but the car still seemed unbearably silent.

Say something
, I kept thinking.
Just say something
.

Sometime later I managed to mumble, “You okay driving?”

“Oh yeah, I don't mind this,” he said.

“Good.” I was going to have to do better than that.

I hadn't had to do anything with Nick, other than to make myself available. I'd looked at him the right way a few times and I'd always made sure I was where he was going to be, but other than that, I'd left it up to him. Nick and I had been playing by the same rule book.

I didn't know the rules here. That was the problem. I'd have liked to tease Murdoch about something—but would that turn me into a buddy? I didn't want to be his
Gregor. Dolores had said he was in love with me, but what did she know? That could just be Dolores being Dolores.

I could see his hands on the wheel without really looking at him. His fingers were long and straight and his nails were square. I was half afraid that my hand was suddenly going to fly out and touch his.

“How did you learn to draw so well?” I said, and it seemed like the perfect question. It was something I really wanted to know and it was sort of personal, but not in a weird way.

“It's the upside of unpopularity.” He laughed. “When you're thirteen years old, six-foot-five and a hundred and twenty pounds, you got a lot of time to kill. You learn to amuse yourself.”

I felt sad for him for a second—then I remembered the portrait of Dolores he'd done one night at the Esquire Diner out of french fries, ketchup and the gravy left over from his hot hamburger sandwich. What was there to feel sorry about?

“I wish I could draw,” I said.

“You could. Anyone can. I could teach you if you want.”

The thought was excruciating in both a good and a bad way. “Oh,” I said.

“Oh?” He took his eyes off the road and smiled at me. Now I was the shy one.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” he said.

The answer was
because you're adorable
but I didn't say that. I looked at the dashboard and kind of laughed. “I guess I just don't think I could do it.”

“Sure you could. If you can see, you can draw.”

“What do you mean?”

He thought for a long time. “Well, okay. People see a ball and they know, like, intellectually, that it's round so they draw a circle—but then it doesn't look right. That's because they're listening to what their brain's telling them and not their eyes. If they shut off their brain and just looked, they'd know they're not actually seeing a circle. It's an ellipse—you know, sort of oval, flattened out. They'd also see that there's a shadow here and a light spot there and all those things make a difference. Be honest about what you're seeing and you can draw.” He raised his eyebrows. “You could do that. You seem honest to me.”

My cheeks went hot. I turned and looked out the window.

“That sign was for Gaspereau,” I said. “You know where we're going?”

“Not really, do you?”

“I do.” Dolores sat up. I wondered how long she'd been listening. “Yeah, this is it. Exit 6.”

We wended our way along these twisty old roads. By the time we got to the river, the rain had stopped but
everything was so soaked that we stayed in the car to eat our picnic. Dolores spread the gingham tablecloth on the back seat and laid everything out. She excused herself for a moment and came back with a couple of wild roses for a centrepiece. If she found this all too HGTV, she wasn't saying.

I leaned my back against the car door and picked at my sandwich. Cheese isn't really orange, I thought. Murdoch poured some lemonade and I realized his thumb—now that I was really looking—was just a little cube on the side of the cup. That made me smile. He smiled back.

“Hey, what's going on up there?” Dolores said.

“Nothing.” We both blushed.

“Yeah, right.” She rolled her eyes and tucked into the chocolate chip cookies.

“Mmm. Al dente,” she said with her mouth half full. “Just the way I like them.”

Dolores and Murdoch stuffed themselves while I watched. She teased him about something. He stuck his arm out behind him and put his big hand right over her little face. She laughed and tried to keep on talking but he held her jaw shut. He only let go when she licked his hand. I read that scene entirely differently than I would have two days earlier.

Dolores wiped the spit off her face with her sleeve, then said, “Shall we go?”

“Go?” I said. “I thought we were tubing.”

“I dunno,” she said. “It's kind of cold and wet.”

“You okay?” Murdoch said.

“Other than just having been brutalized by a giant squid, you mean? Yeah. I'm fine. I just don't feel like doing anything active at the moment. I also remembered I have some errands to do. So, home, James!”

Murdoch turned on the car and looked at me. “This all right with you?” We both laughed. We knew it didn't make any difference whether it was or not.

When we got back to the city, we volunteered to go shopping too, but Dolores insisted we leave her at the mall. Murdoch seemed surprised but I understood. I just prayed she wouldn't wink at me again.

“Betsy. I'll meet you tomorrow at 1612 Jubilee Road. The lady's name is Mosher, I think. No, Moser. Whatever. Nine-thirty?”

I nodded. Dolores slapped the hood of the Rebel and darted into the mall.

Murdoch turned to me and said, “Where to now?”

I swallowed.

“I can take you home, if you just want to go home.”

“No,” I blurted out, but I didn't have anything else to say after that. The pause was agony. “Want to go for a walk maybe?”

“Sure. Yeah. Okay. Where?”

“Um.” I sort of grimaced. “We could just leave the car here and walk down to the Arm?”

I knew Dolores would have come up with something better than that. A secret trail. A breathtaking view. A vintage ‘50s bowling alley. She wouldn't just get out of the car and take a walk through the parking lot.

I said, “The sun's going down. It might be pretty.”

“You don't have to justify it.” He had this little smile on his face, more in his eyes than his mouth. “I was thinking the same thing.”

We locked the car and walked across the endless stretch of asphalt. We had to step around puddles and discarded plastic bags and mall food that hadn't quite been washed away by the rain. Twice Murdoch put his arm out to keep me from walking into moving cars.

“Isn't this lovely?” I said.

“Ah, yes. The modern urban landscape.” He rubbed his hand up and down behind his ear and smirked.

There was a school playground beside the mall. The field was at least a tad more picturesque than the parking lot, although my feet were soaked by the time we cut across it to the tall fence at the end. Murdoch went over first, then reached up to help me. I didn't really need the help but I took it. I hopped down and he held on to my hand just a little longer than he had to. I knew Nick would have used this as an opportunity to kiss me—or,
realistically, whatever girl he happened to be with at the time.

“You're athletic,” he said. “I guess.”

“You know what? You're one of the only people I've ever met who didn't ask if I played basketball.” “Do you?” He laughed. “No.”

“Too bad. You got the height.” My heart thumped like something heavy crashing on to a garage floor. I took his hand and turned it over. “You got the hands.” I laid my palm flat against his. His fingers were a knuckle longer than mine.

“But not the ability or the interest.”

“Then why should you?” I said.

I wanted to bend my fingers between his but there was this big, deep, scary pit between wanting and doing.

“You can draw with them,” I said, and took my hand away. “That's a better thing to do.”

He shrugged. “I don't know about that.”

We were awkward again. “Wow. Look at the sky,” I said. I was so grateful the sunset was there to distract us.

He said, “I know a place where we could get a really good view.”

“Better than over the Walmart?”

“Even better.”

We cut through a subdivision and crossed Chebucto Road and I suddenly knew where he was taking me. Larry O'Connell Field. The irony was not lost on me.

The sun had almost disappeared by the time we got there. The sky was navy blue and dark pink and this wild, intense orange. “Funny,” I said. “Those colours are beautiful here but would be really tacky on a shirt or a chair.”

“I agree—though I don't know if Dolores would. I'm pretty sure she has a shirt just like that.”

I laughed.

“Dolores and the sky can wear those colours. The rest of us can't,” he said.

“Why do you think that is?” “We're too small.”

I laughed again. We stood and watched until the sky went dark. Neither of us said anything, although I did a lot of thinking.

“Well, should we go?” Murdoch said.

“No.” My voice squeaked.

I took his hand. After a couple seconds, when I thought I could bear it, I looked up at him. “No,” he said.

It actually hurt. Nick flashed in my brain. Had I gone and made a fool of myself again?

But Murdoch didn't let go of my hand. He led me over to a park bench. “You'll hurt your neck,” he said. “Sit down.”

The bench was soaked. “On my lap,” he said.

I sat down and put one arm around his shoulder. We seemed almost the same size like this. I took off his glasses but didn't know what to do with them.

“In my pocket.” He nodded at his chest.

I looked at his eyes. I knew they were blue but I couldn't see that in this light.

He reached over and brushed some hair off my face.

“Ready?” he said.

“O
h god,” Dolores said. “I can't even stand being in the same room with you.” I put down the Windex and leaned against the wall.

“What? What did I do?”

“Oh, please. I feel like an extra in a Harlequin movie-of-the-week.”

I turned to the window so she couldn't see me laugh. “As usual, I have no idea what you're talking about.”

Dolores put on an accent that sounded more or less British.
“Betsy turned to the window. The memory of his hot lips thrusting, longing, aching for hers …
”

“Okay, okay.” I'd been busted. “You're exaggerating.”

I went back to cleaning the window. I stretched to get the top. Murdoch could reach this, easy, I thought, which made me think of how tall he was which made me think of sitting on his lap which made me think of …

I tried to control my face.

“I clearly am not exaggerating,” Dolores said. She was sitting with her feet on the coffee table I'd just polished. “But that's neither here nor there. You're both consenting adolescents and, frankly, I don't care what type of mischief you get up to in your free time.”

She reached into her plastic bag. “I do, however, want to talk to you about this week. We got five new clients. I managed to squeeze them all in around our regulars but we're going to have to be really organized. I printed out this schedule for you.”

She wagged a piece of paper at me. The Queen wasn't moving. “Shall we go through it?” She rattled it at me again.

I walked over and took it.

“Nice handwriting,” I said. When Dolores said printed, I'd expected computer type but this was done in turquoise calligraphy.

“I'd do your wedding invitations for you too, but I'm afraid I'm busy this week.”

“Ha-ha.” I read the list. “Whoa. We're all over town.”

“Yeah. And some of it's quite time-sensitive. The Gairs—Tuesday?—want us to help them get ready for a garden party. Then, let's see … the Huzaks need us exactly between two and four Wednesday. They're working around meetings or something.”

I checked the addresses. “How are we going to do that?”

“I tried calling your boyfriend to see if he'd drive us but he wasn't picking up his cell. Perhaps you could tempt him.”

I undid my top two buttons. “I'll do my best.”

“That's the spirit. Now I'm going to clean the second floor where your passionate sighs won't distract me from my work.”

I buttoned my shirt. “I'll try to keep it down.”

“Finished with the vacuum?” Dolores didn't wait for an answer. She snapped out the cord and dragged it upstairs.

This was our first time at the Mosers. I preferred new clients to old. It was like the difference between running on a treadmill and running on a road you'd never been down before. You still did the same thing, but at least you got to see something new along the way.

I stuffed the newspaper I'd used to clean the windows into a recycling bag and looked around the living room. I wondered what the Mosers were like.

Tidy
.

I grabbed my cleaning supplies and headed into the TV room.

Late forties, early fifties
.

The pictures in the hall were watercolour prints of boats on the water.

Conventional
.
Maybe they had a son. Someone for Dolores. I knew she had a crush on Jack but I also knew the guy personally and just couldn't see it happening.

But what did I know? That was another thing I'd learned this summer. That I didn't know anything about anybody. Which made me think of Murdoch. I was glad Dolores wasn't there to see the look on my face.

The Mosers' big-screen TV was sitting in the centre of a large bookcase full of photo albums, knick-knacks and even the odd book. It was going to take me ages to dust.

First things first.

Even though I knew no one was around, I looked over my shoulder before I pulled a photo album off the shelf and leafed through it. Someone's wedding. Not the dress I would have chosen, but passable. I slipped the album back where I'd found it, then pulled out another one. Baby pictures. Kids' birthdays. Someone else's wedding. The usual. I went to put it away but noticed something shiny in the back.

I got that shimmery feeling. I checked to make sure Dolores wasn't around, then reached behind the albums and pulled out a pack of cigarettes.

Someone—one of the nice tidy conventional people who lived here—was sneaking smokes. I tucked the cigarettes back behind the albums and started dusting.

I had to laugh. I'd yet to find a house that didn't have its secrets.

I'd dust a desk and see the overdue bills or bad report cards. I'd sweep the kitchen floor and find the toenail clippings. I'd rifle through the medicine cabinets of perfectly decent people and discover a treasure trove of remedies for fungus and jock itch and boils and ringworm and lice and constipation and bad breath and warts and every other hideous human infliction imaginable.

It had been an education, that's for sure. Nothing surprised me any more —and only a few things comforted me the way Amy's Prozac had.

I dusted around some figurines and realized I didn't need to be comforted any more.

I heard “The Wheels on the Bus” start playing. I leaned out the door and called, “Dolores! Your phone!” but the vacuum was going. She'd never hear me. I dropped my cloth and followed the music to the living room. I found her plastic bag and grabbed her cell.

“Lapins de Poussière …. Oh, hi … Yeah, sure … Un-huh … Oh, no! Really? …”

My skin knew it before I saw her. I turned around and there was Dolores, standing in the door staring at me. I mouthed,
It's Amy
.

Dolores started coming toward me. I said, “We'll do that. Thanks for calling. Bye,” and hung up.

“Amy lost a pair of diamond earrings and was just asking us to keep an eye out for them tomorrow. They were her mother's, I guess, and really valuable.”

“Next time my phone rings, would you mind just calling me? I don't need a receptionist.” She was so mad her lips were white.

“I tried. You didn't hear me. I didn't want to miss it.”

“Well, miss it. I have call-answer.” She rolled her eyes and grabbed the phone from me. “Some of us, you know, have let ourselves be swept up into the technological revolution …
Mon sac à main, s'il vous plait.”

I handed her the plastic bag. She said,
“Merci,”
and flounced back upstairs.

What was the big deal? Was she getting calls from someone I didn't know about? Or did she not like me rummaging through her stuff? People can be funny about things like that.

It dawned on me again that Dolores might have secrets too.

I went back to the TV room to finish the bookcase. All these little doodads were going to take forever to dust. I considered just doing the bottom shelves. No one was going to see the top anyway.

I was starting to think like Dolores.

Maybe not knowing how to swim was the only secret she was
willing
to tell us. Now that I thought about it, I
realized she did a lot of talking but somehow never really told us much about herself. It was like she expected Murdoch and me to “share” but somehow the subject always changed before it was her turn.

I picked up an Inuit sculpture of a seal with an ivory tusk going through its brain and dusted it.

So? Why should Dolores tell me everything?

Not like I'd been 100 percent up-front. My big secret was supposedly that I'd wet my bed until I was ten but I'd even fudged that a bit. I didn't tell them about making myself throw up after eating an entire s'mores cheesecake. I didn't tell them about stalking Nick. I didn't tell them about holding myself under water.

Murdoch had told me about his dad, about dropping out of engineering school, about wanting to be a rock star when he died. What was he not telling me? He had secrets too.

That didn't scare me. It didn't even give me that shimmery feeling. It made my stomach flip the same way it did when I thought about kissing him. I wanted to know what his secrets were and I wanted to be brave enough to tell him mine. It would be fun. It would be more than that.