Secrets 01 Secrets in the Attic (26 page)

"What's up?" Jesse asked.
I sat on the sofa, and he followed.
"I received a phone call while you were taking the ride."
"Oh. And?"
"The police went to Karen's mother's house after Zipporah's second interview. There was no way Harry's mother could have been living in any apartment behind the house. There was an unfinished room, but there was no bathroom or any kitchen connections. Darlene Pearson said her mother-in-law had her own room in the house, the biggest bedroom, arid never moved out. She had a stroke, and for a while there was a nurse. "I wondered if Karen meant Harry went to that bedroom, of course."
"Sure, she could have meant that, right, Zipporah?" Jesse asked me.
I didn't reply. There was no confusion about it in my mind. Karen was specific about there being an apartment. She even talked about listening at the door.
Jesse was disappointed by my silence but tried to ignore it. "Did you ask about the crime scene?" "What is it you expected us to learn, Jesse?"
"I just wondered if there was anything to support the story," he said, and glanced at me.
"They found Harry Pearson's body. They found the knife That was it, Jess."
"Maybe Darlene Pearson cleaned up the room before the police arrived," Jesse suggested. "Covering up what had happened, what she didn't prevent."
I felt how hard he was struggling to support what Karen had told me and him
"Cover up? Like what? What was there to cover up? Harry was dead on the floor."
"Harry's mother's wig or something?"
"Why would Harry's mother's wig be in that room? Are you suggesting that Harry wore his mother's wig? You're taking the
Psycho
thing a bit far, aren't you? Isn't it a little on the incredible side to believe Darlene Pearson would tolerate such a state of affairs? Even if she wasn't worried for Karen, she would be worried for herself. Anyone would."
Jesse looked down.
"You guys know more than you're telling me," Daddy said.
Neither of us denied it.
Daddy leaned forward. "Holding back any information is a crime. You've been told that, Zipporah, and you know it, Jess. I'm not bothered by that as much as I am discovering you guys didn't trust me with the information."
Jesse couldn't raise his eyes. The silence was tearing at both our hearts.
"It's not his fault. It's mine," I blurted.
"What is?"
Jesse looked at me and shook his head, but I knew the time had come. Daddy had warned me that keeping the truth down wasn't easy.
"I spoke with Karen right after she stabbed her stepfather," I began.
"Where?" Daddy asked.
"Here," I said. "She came here, Daddy."
My throat was closing, and tears were burning at my eyelids. I tried to swallow. He was staring at me, the disappointment beginning to seep into his face, his eyes narrowing. He leaned forward, his hands on his knees.
"Here?"
"Yes, Daddy. I came home and found her here. She was in the attic."
He leaned back. "In the attic?"
"Yes. She had no place else to go."
"Where is she now, Zipporah?"
"She's in the attic," I said.
Daddy was quiet. He glanced at Jesse, who continued to look down at the floor.
"You're not telling me she's been upstairs in that attic all this time, are you, Zipporah?"
I nodded. "Except for one night or two."
He took a deep breath and gazed out the livingroom window for a moment. Then he turned to Jesse. "When did you know about this, Jesse?"
"The day after I came home," he said.
Daddy's face hardened. "What about the New York phone call, Zipporah?"
"I did it with my tape recorder. She recorded the message, and I played it over the phone. She didn't want the police looking for her around here anymore. I went to the pay phone while Mama was in her bath."
"My God," Daddy said. "You've been harboring a fugitive in our home. You assisted her in deceiving law enforcement. You caused your mother to tell a lie. Do you realize what you've done?"
"She was my best friend, Daddy," I cried through my tears. "You told me what E. M. Forster said about choosing between your friend and your country."
"That was something entirely different from this, Zipporah. I would have thought you understood. I've overestimated you, both of you," he said, looking at Jesse. "Okay. Go upstairs, and bring her down immediately. Go on!" he snapped. His lips were whitening in the corners with the flow of anger through his face.
I rose and walked out, glancing back at Jesse, who still hadn't raised his gaze from the floor. Tears were flowing freely down my cheeks now. I wasn't crying for myself or even for Jesse or Karen. I was crying for my father, who looked as if his heart had been torn into pieces.
Who knew how Karen would react to all this? I thought. I expected some hysterics. This was going to be a terrible scene. I took a deep breath and opened the attic door.
"Karen," I called.
I didn't see her anywhere.
"Karen, are you here?"
Silence was barely interrupted by the breeze whistling through the shutters. Not finding her waiting there stunned me. Daddy wouldn't believe me. He might want to come up to see for himself. I turned and hurried down the stairs. When I reentered the living room, I saw Jesse had his hands over his face. Daddy looked as if smoke could come flowing out of his ears any minute.
"Well?" Daddy asked.
Jesse took his hands away to look at me.
"Where's Karen?" he asked.
"Yes, where is she?" Daddy demanded.
I shook my head. "She's not there, Daddy. I'm not lying. She's not in the attic."
He sat there for a moment. Then he leaped to his feet. "Neither of you leave the house. If she comes back, call the police. Do you hear me, Jesse?"
"Yes sir," he said.
"Don't say a word to your mother if I don't get to her first," he added.
I wondered how we would manage that. One look at us would tell her something was terribly wrong. He looked at us, shook his head, and walked out of the living room. To me, it felt as if the air followed him. Jesse sat there staring at the wall. Then he turned to me slowly.
"You're not lying, are you? She's really not up there."
"I didn't see her, and she didn't respond when I called," I said, and then something came to mind, something that sent a chill through me.
"What is it?" he asked, seeing my face pale.
"I didn't look in one place, her hiding place, the old armoire. She once showed me how she could hide in it if anyone came up to the attic unexpectedly."
"But why wouldn't she come out when she heard you call her?"
I shook my head, rose, and walked slowly back to the stairway. Jesse followed, and we went up the attic steps. I looked back at him, and then we continued up to the door, paused, and opened it.
She was standing by the window, looking down at the new sports car. She had been in the armoire. "Karen," I said. It was barely a whisper.
She turned slowly, smiling. "You two have a wonderful life, you know that? Whenever I came over here, I would bathe in the love and affection. I would fantasize that it was my home, too, and they were my parents. I told you that before, didn't I, Zipporah?"
"Yes."
"I never told you, Jesse." She laughed. "I even felt a little incestuous being with you. That's how powerful my fantasy was."
"Jesse knows everything now, Karen," I said. "That's good. I wish I did. Know everything, that is."
"There's no proof to support the story you told about Harry Pearson," Jesse said. "We mean the part about him and his dead mother. The apartment .. . there is no apartment."
"There was," she said.
"No, I was in it last night. It's an unfinished room. No one could live in it."
She kept shaking her head.
"And the police didn't find the wig you claimed you were wearing, or the dress," Jesse added.
Karen's eyes widened. "They're lying."
"Why would they lie about something like that, Karen?"
"Then my mother got rid of it all before they arrived."
"But why?" Jesse asked. "Why would she submit both of you to such madness?"
"You'll have to ask her. Maybe someday someone will, but probably not anyone in this onehorse town. You ever hear of
Gulliver's Travels?
Well, this is Gullible Travels, stories about the fools in Sandburg," she said, and laughed.
"My father knows everything, Karen."
"Everything again? Even what went on between us, Jesse?"
Jesse blushed.
"I didn't think so. I saw him rush out and drive off and figured as much. Well," she said, walking toward us and the door. "At least I'm getting out of here."
"Where are you going?" I asked her.
She paused in the doorway. "I'm going home," she said. "It's time to go home. Call me later. Maybe we'll do something. I just hate thinking about all the homework that's piled up, but you'll help me withit, won't you, Zipporah?"
I didn't know what to say. I just stared at her. She was making no sense.
She smiled.
We watched her walk out and down the attic steps.
"Jesse," I said, squeezing his arm. "Do something. She's in a daze. It's all been too much, finally too much."
"Hey," he called down to her. "Don't you want a ride?"
She turned at the base of the attic steps and looked up at us. She was smiling again.
"In the new car?"
"Yeah, sure," Jesse said.
She stared a moment, holding her smile, and then shook her head.
"I don't think so, Jesse. Maybe tomorrow. I'd like to walk. I've been shut up indoors too much, and that's not very healthy. But thanks "
She continued down the hallway, down the stairway, to the front door. Jesse and I followed slowly and watched her walk out. I started to cry as she went down the driveway, glanced back to wave at us, and continued on the road to the village. In moments, she was gone. How many times had I wished for that? Now it was breaking my heart.
Jesse went to the phone and made the call Daddy had asked us to make. He quickly explained who he was and what was now happening. I saw him wait until someone else took the phone, and he went through it again.
"She's just walking down the road toward town," he told whoever had taken the call I imagined it to be Chief Keiser himself. "Just walking," he repeated, as if he had to convince himself as well.
Then he hung up and looked at me.
I turned and ran upstairs, ran all the way back to the attic and shut the door.
Epilogue

Somewhere. I read that this world, everything that happens, even everything that happens in the whole universe, could be God's dream, and the bad things that happen are just his nightmares. We don't exist, at least not in the sense we think we do. I thought if that were true, then maybe nothing was our fault. We were as Jesse said Shakespeare wrote, merely players on a stage.

I certainly hoped so. God would then snap his fingers and wake up, and this dream would pop like a bubble. He would start dreaming again, and we'd have another chance to be young and carefree. Darkness would no longer seem like a disease creeping in over us, and rain wouldn't feel like tears.

Funny, but what I feared the most was not the eternal anger and disappointment of our parents but the loneliness that could result from it. When you deeply hurt people you love and who love you, you push away from everything just enough to be out of sync with it all. You can't look at people straight on anymore, and when you walk, you think the world itself has tipped a little. Nothing, not flowers or trees, blue skies or dazzling stars, not music or laughter, nothing, brings you the joy it once did. It's as if you lost the right to be happy.

Of course, our parents wanted to forgive us, and I never doubted they tried with all their heart and soul, but we knew that in the end, even though they could find a way to turn us back into a family, they couldn't find a way to forget, What made all this particularly difficult was what some people call the dropping of the second shoe. When it fell, it fell with thunder and lightning and seemed to tear the earth below our feet. How we didn't both fall into the chasm and disappear is a mystery or a miracle I would not fully understand.

Soon after Jesse called the police that day, a police cruiser came by, and they took Karen away. As it turned out, Daddy was at the police station at the time of Jesse's call. Whatever influence Daddy and his associates had with the powers that be was enough to keep me and Jesse from being charged with any crime. The district attorney took into consideration our youth and Jesse's having made the phone call. It didn't prevent the story from leaking out. Daddy always believed the two state detectives did much to make sure that it did. He told me it was part of the cost of being who he was. It was his nature to be a thorn in the side of bureaucrats.

For a while, our boat was rocking. We worried about the impact it would have on Daddy's career, and more than one night was taken up with a serious discussion about the wisdom of remaining in Sandburg. There were always other opportunities in other communities, and that was true for Mama and her nursing as well, if not more.

As it turned out, however, small towns proved to be more forgiving. The diminutive population, the nearly daily contact most inhabitants had with each other, made everyone a sort of extended family. All understood one another's struggle to make a living, survive, and do well, and most had empathy for the difficulties we all had.

Karen and I used to enjoy mocking the village and its inhabitants, but I began to see that all of the derision was mostly coming from her, from her own wounded self, her envy and longing to get off the emotional crutches and walk as proudly as any other girl her age, especially me.