The Language of Secrets (2 page)

He was letting it in, again and again: the fact that his father was dead. He knew he should be inundated with memories, consumed with sorrow. But there was no flood of memory, no sadness. There was only a sense of dread—a chilling knowledge that the splintered door to some long-buried chamber was quietly being forced open.

*

Sierra Madre and Lima Street were about ten miles north of the address on the box he had been given at the hospital. He should have been able to find his way easily, but he was driving through a completely unfamiliar landscape. He was lost in a maze of curving streets, lush lawns, and stately homes. Then, finally, he saw that he
was passing a city marker, a simple stone plinth topped by a concrete urn cascading with flowers and foliage. At the base of the plinth, in neat bronze letters, were the words SAN MARINO.

Like its marker, the city itself displayed both restraint and abandon. It was a Southern California town with roads named after martyred English saints and mansions reveling in an abundance of Tuscan tile.

The house Justin had been looking for was positioned atop a terraced lawn. A blond woman in a blue work shirt and mud-speckled jeans was at the side of the driveway, energetically digging a flower bed.

When he saw her, Justin’s eyes filled with tears. Somewhere within this stranger he could see the little girl who had once been his sister. He lowered the car window and all he could manage to say was: “Did you used to be Lissa Fisher?”

The woman leaned on her shovel and watched as Justin got out of the car. “Do I know you?” Her smile was warm. She was pulling a strand of hair away from her face, leaving a faint tracing of dirt on her cheek. A precarious tilting sensation, a feeling of being in terrifying free fall, swept over Justin. He tried to speak, but no words would come.

He saw that his silence was making the woman uncomfortable. She tugged on the shovel a little, as if preparing to leave.

“I went to Lima Street,” he said quickly. “I thought Mom and Dad would still be there, but …” Suddenly the words were tumbling out of him, almost incoherently. “At the nursing home they told me about Dad. They had some of his things. They were going to send them to you but I thought that if I brought them it might be a good way for us … for me … to reconnect and …”

The woman was already recoiling, holding the shovel in front of her, backing away. “Who are you?”

“Lissa, I’m your brother. I’m Justin.”

Lissa’s voice was angry, tinged with fear. “Whoever you are. Whatever your game is. I want you off my property. Now.”

She turned and bolted toward the house. The slam of her door reverberated like the sound of a gunshot.

*

His sister’s rejection had been so venomous and so complete that it had shaken Justin to his core; it had spun him back toward his old habit of walling off all thoughts about his past.

After returning from San Marino, he had tried to concentrate his attention on his new job. And on Amy and Zack.

But he’d been unable to ignore the nagging questions about his family that had been raised by his return to Lima Street. This morning, the continuing absence of answers to those questions had finally overwhelmed him. He had called the convalescent hospital to request the name of the cemetery in which his father was buried.

Now, Justin was walking through a maze of jumbled headstones—most of them cracked and crooked, none of them rising more than a foot or two above the uneven graveyard grass.

It was September. Santa Ana winds were feeding wildfires on the mountains. The air had the heat of furnaces and the smell of cinders in it.

As Justin approached his father’s grave, he was feeling dazed and hollowed out.

It had nothing to do with the heat or the fire. It had everything to do with what was waiting for him at the grave site.

He was not walking toward just one headstone; he was walking toward three.

The newest was his father’s: “Robert William Fisher … December 14, 1941–June 16, 2005.”

The next grave marker read “Caroline Conwyn Fisher …
May 1, 1943–October 31, 2004.” It belonged to his mother. A flash of pain shot through Justin; it was almost unbearable. A piece of his heart had been ripped away.

As he turned toward the third headstone, Justin’s eyes were blurred with tears. The stone was smaller and far more weathered than the other two. It took him a moment before he could clearly see its inscription:

Justin had come in search of his father’s grave. And he had found his mother’s. And his own.

*

The discovery of a headstone bearing his name had been so ghoulish, so incomprehensible, that Justin hadn’t known what to do or to feel. He had, of course, gone home and told Amy. But then, after that, he’d said he didn’t want to talk about it anymore.

It was now November. Thanksgiving was only a few weeks away and Justin was at home. Determinedly calm. Sitting at the end of a lounge chair, bathed in sunshine.

Zack was on the patio floor at Justin’s feet, captivated by the windblown petals of a white rose that had fallen from its bush. He was carefully picking up petal after petal, solemnly delivering each one into Justin’s outstretched palm.

Zack’s contemplative, unblinking gaze unsettled Justin. He wondered what it was that his son wanted of him. Was Zack expecting him to magically transform these scattered scraps into a
dewy white rose, perfectly reassembled in all its intricacy? Or did Zack simply want to know that when he held out his own hand, his father’s would be there waiting for him? Strong and open and ready?

Justin had no idea what Zack expected, or what he thought. Zack was foreign territory. He was a baby, and Justin didn’t feel completely at ease in the wordless, unknowable world of babies. But Zack was also his son. The simple act of looking at him—seeing the sleepy brown eyes and honey-blond hair that were so like Amy’s, watching the dimple appear in Zack’s cheek when he laughed, the dimple that was so like his own—produced a rush of love and protectiveness more powerful than any emotion Justin had ever experienced.

Zack let the last of the rose petals drop from his hand. He rested himself against Justin’s leg and yawned. Justin picked him up. He lay back, closed his eyes, and allowed Zack’s warm, dense baby weight to settle against his chest; as he did, Justin knew that he would, without question, give his life for this little boy—and that he would, without hesitation, take the life of anyone who dared to harm him.

The tenderness of this moment was the only thing Justin wanted to think about, the only thing that he was allowing himself to think about.

*

“Did you find everything you were looking for?” The remark was addressed to Justin, but the clerk’s gaze was fixed on something at the far end of the store. Justin tossed his American Express card onto the counter, letting it land beside two bottles of wine that were already there.

The nap he’d taken with Zack had used up most of the afternoon,
and now he was running late. He glanced impatiently in the direction of the clerk’s mesmerized stare.

A girl was standing at the magazine rack. Her face was hidden by a fall of auburn hair, but her crop-topped, miniskirted outfit left the rest of her on grand display. She was beautiful, and the sight of a beautiful woman always brought a rush of pleasure to Justin, an instinctive spark of joy similar to the feeling he got from seeing a mint-condition muscle car or a perfectly hit baseball. These were the places where, for Justin, art and grace could be found.

The second or two he spent looking at the girl were seconds in which he briefly forgot the fog that surrounded his life.

The clerk was ringing up the two bottles of wine: “Wow. DuMOL. That’s a seriously outstanding chardonnay.”

“My in-laws are coming to dinner,” Justin said.

“You guys must really be into the good stuff.” The clerk handed Justin a receipt and carefully slipped the two bottles into a bag.

“I’m into good, my father-in-law is into expensive. This gives us both what we like.” Justin picked up his wine and headed for the door. The clerk went back to gazing at the girl with the auburn hair.

As Justin was leaving the store, he almost collided with a man and woman who were coming in.

The man did a double take. His face lit up with a grin. “Justin Fisher. My God, what are the chances of coming to the States for a holiday and running into you?” He spoke with a crisp British accent. “How are you enjoying being back in your homeland, m’boy?”

Justin had not a clue as to the man’s identity, and it frustrated him. For as long as he could remember, he had been plagued by the inability to recognize people’s faces. He was often in the awkward
position of talking to someone, of having to feign a cheerful familiarity, while he was desperately trying to figure out who the person was. The blankness was so complete that Justin could spend hours with people in business meetings and then, when he met those same individuals on the street a few days later, they’d be complete strangers to him.

“Darling, this is the great Justin Fisher.” The man smiled at his companion, then looked back at Justin. “This is my wife, Fiona. I’m not certain, did you two ever meet?” In the split second Justin took in deciding how to respond, the woman came to his rescue. “No,” she said. “Actually we never did. But Trevor often speaks of you, Justin. He so enjoyed it when you lot would have your afterwork get-togethers in Cadogan Square.”

Justin laughed. Not with amusement, but with relief. He now knew who the man was. He had been the manager of the hotel across the street from Justin’s in London. “Great to see you, Trevor. Next time I’m in the UK, we’ll have to get together. Sorry I can’t stay and talk, my wife and I have a dinner party tonight and I was supposed to be home helping in the kitchen ten minutes ago.” He shook the man’s hand, gave the woman a quick kiss on the cheek, and was already sprinting toward his car as he said: “Wonderful to have finally met you, Fiona.”

When he was safely inside the car, it took him a few minutes to calm down. The encounter with the Brits had rattled him. In light of the strange events set in motion by his visit to the house on Lima Street, Justin’s visual amnesia and the odd blank place it occupied in his mind suddenly felt diabolical—like brushing against the rot of insanity, or evil.

*

“So, Mom, are you raking in the cash?” Amy poured the last of the chardonnay into her mother’s glass.

“By the carload, honey. By the carload.” Linda’s laugh was full and hearty, the product of a voice that had years ago been burred by whiskey and sanded with cigarettes. Justin was sitting across the candlelit table from Linda, thinking about how much she and Amy resembled each other. They had the same expressive brown eyes, the same effortless grace. Looking at Linda, Justin could see how lovely his wife would be in middle age. Amy glanced up and caught Justin studying her. She winked at him before turning her attention back to her mother.

“Judge Atwater,” Linda was saying, “you remember him, Amy darling. Always used to come to parties and stay way too late. He had that toothy wife who was supposed to be related to the Kennedys.”

Amy’s father interrupted the story with a boisterous laugh. “Good thing the old guy’s got a checkbook as big as his prostate. Your mother relieved him of a million two this afternoon. To underwrite some community center for ghetto kids.”

“Daddy.” Amy gave her father a quick frown. “Nobody says
ghetto
anymore.”

Her father looked at her over the rim of his wineglass, baiting her a little. “So what am I supposed to call the poor bastards?”

“Underprivileged.”

“Baby girl, get up in the morning and call the boil on your backside a beauty mark all you want, but come the end of the day, you’re still stuck with the same festering bag of pus you started with.”

“Oh Don, for goodness’ sake.” Linda threw her napkin at him. “Dial it down. We’re trying to have a civilized conversation here.”

Don lobbed the napkin back at his wife and turned to Amy. “Kiddo, you’re never going to solve the problems of the poor, the hungry, and the pissed-off with a dictionary. The only way those kind of problems get solved is with brains, with a core group of the
poor and the pissed-off who give a shit, and with cash. That’s where your mother comes in.” Amy’s father sat back, smiling. “This girl of mine is the best thing that ever happened to charity in L.A.” Amy’s mother gave him a kiss that was as swift and sweet as one passing between a schoolgirl and her first love.

Justin finished the last of his wine and glanced at his watch. He had never been at ease with Amy’s parents. They were a daunting combustible mix of big money, high visibility, and vaguely undignified beginnings. Linda had once been a Vegas showgirl. Don had traces of South Philly in his speech and the swaggering body language of a gangster.

Don liked to brag about how he’d gone backstage at the Tropicana and introduced himself to Linda by presenting her with a marriage proposal and the keys to a new Corvette; and Linda liked to tell the story of how she had accepted the keys, then told Don she had a date and that he’d have to wait for an answer to his proposal.

They both reveled in telling the tale of their initial seventy-two hours together. At the end of those seventy-two hours, Linda said she’d learned all she needed to know about Don. That he was a concert promoter. That his last name was Heitmann. That he was funny, generous, a little crass, and a guy who wanted to see the world and succeed in the music business. Don always concluded their story by saying that on the seventy-third hour they got married, drove out of Vegas together, took on the world, and then “goddamned conquered it.”

It was Justin’s suspicion that Linda, over the years, had carefully refashioned the woman she once was: She had observed refinement and style in the people and places she’d encountered, and then applied them to herself in polished, tissue-thin layers. Now, aside from her lusty sense of humor, there was very little evidence
of the showgirl that she had been. Linda was a smooth, seamless, self-made pearl.