These Things Hidden (19 page)

I
n her heart, she knew that she couldn’t take care of him. She had agonized over the decision. Charm was sure he had smiled at her, though the book she found at the library explained that babies didn’t
really
smile until they were six weeks old. But Charm swore that when the baby had waved his tiny fists in the air, he gave a brief, true smile. They all knew from the very beginning that their time together was just temporary. Charm and Gus couldn’t even bring themselves to give him a real name. Gus called him
Kiddo
or
Buddy
and Charm would whisper sweet confections and baked goods into his ear.
Hey, Cupcake,
she would say as she lifted him out of the makeshift bed they had made out of a laundry basked lined with soft blankets.
Good morning, Soda Pop. Peanut Butter, Apple Dumpling, Cheese Doodle.
He would look at
Charm with those wise old eyes as if to say, “Not much longer, huh? It’s just a matter of time and I’ll be outta here.” Charm’s heart would twist and she would cry and cry until the front of his onesie was soaked through and then he would begin to wail until Charm couldn’t tell which cries were hers or which were his anymore.

Weeks of keeping him a secret and of sleepless nights were wearing Charm down and it was clear that Gus was getting sicker by the day. In the middle of the night she would wake up to the baby’s hungry cries and then to Gus’s hacking coughs. Charm just couldn’t do it anymore, care for both a baby and a sick man. Gus had taken her in when no one else would, without question or judgment, and he treated the baby like he was always there, just a part of the family. Gus was the closest thing to a father that she’d ever known. The baby had barely left a mark in this world yet but Gus left an impression that was deep, permanent. Gus was dying and she had to choose between the one whose journey had just begun and the one whose journey was ending.

It was late one night when Charm finally made the decision. She was pacing around the living room with the baby on her shoulder, trying to get him to sleep. She was half-comatose herself and blindly caught her foot on an end table sending the baby tumbling from her arms. She had
dropped
him. Wide-eyed he looked up at her from the floor, the breath knocked from his little body,
his mouth opening and closing as if trying to communicate what Charm already knew.

Silently, without waking Gus, she tucked all of the baby’s things around him in the basket and drove him to the fire station on Oak Street in Linden Falls, one town away, just over the Druid River. The same fire station where Gus once worked. She wondered at the logic of this, but convinced herself that if Gus worked there, it must be a good place. They would take care of him.

She lifted him from the laundry basket that she had set on the car floor beside her and held him close to her chest. He had cried himself out and fallen asleep, his sweet little fingers and hand curled up like a pink flower under his chin. She needed to do this impossible thing, give away the only thing that had ever loved her on first sight and with no strings attached. She laid him gently back into the laundry basket and carefully carried him to the firehouse, all the time looking around to see if anyone had noticed her. It was a starless, warm night and no one was on the street. She kissed his soft cheek and whispered, “Be good, Pumpkin,” and set him gently as a prayer into the shadows. Remembering with a heavy sadness playing ding dong ditch with her friends as a child, she pressed the doorbell next to the entrance of the firehouse and ran.

T
he phone is ringing as I unlock the door to my grandma’s house and Milo runs over to greet me, snuffling at my pockets, which I always keep filled with treats. The cats, Lucy and Leith, wrap themselves around my legs and mew hungrily. “Just a minute, guys,” I tell them. The phone continues to trill and I call out, “Grandma! Grandma! Telephone!”

I let the phone ring and I go to the cupboard and pull out two cans of cat food. My grandma’s voice fills the room. “We can’t come to the phone right now. Please leave your name and number and we’ll call you back.” After the beep I hear Allison’s voice. I toss the cans of cat food on the countertop in irritation and they skid across the surface. I start to stomp up the stairs so I don’t
have to listen to the message that she leaves. Why can’t she just leave me alone?

Her voice follows me up the steps and I freeze. “Brynn, please pick up, please pick up the phone!” I shake my head and begin to go up the stairs again.

“Brynn! It’s Dad. Please,” she begs. I slowly come back down the stairs. “Dad’s in the hospital. Mom’s a mess. I don’t know what I should do. I need you to talk to me. Please.” Allison is crying hard now and I move toward the phone. “Brynn, I need you,” she ends in a whimper.

I try not to think too much about the details of that night. But it was the only time in my whole life that my sister asked for my help. This I remember, this small detail I think about at night when I can’t sleep. That night my sister needed me. I was always the one who needed my sister, the one who needed protection from neighborhood kids, my parents, teachers. Myself. And she never, ever let me forget it. It had been so long since she’d helped me willingly. No, there was always eye rolling, big sighs and shakes of the head. It’s not like it was hard for Allison to help me out. Everything came easily to her. But as we grew older and the differences between us grew more obvious, she always had a way of making me feel small and simple.

Allison has written to me letter after letter, saying the same thing over and over again.
I’m sorry,
she writes, as
if that will fix everything. Sorry for what? I want to ask her. Sorry for treating me as if I was a pesky irritation? Sorry for making me help you give birth? Sorry for making me keep your secrets? I don’t even open her letters anymore; I throw them in the bottom drawer of my dresser. It hurts, doesn’t it? I want to ask her. It hurts to need help and it hurts to have to beg for it. Sorry, sorry, sorry. I used to say it all the time. For everything. Not anymore.

Who’s sorry now? I want to ask her. Who’s sorry now?

I reach out and lift up the phone.

C
harm is out walking when he dies. It is a rare warm and sunny day and she needs to get out of that house. She stops in to say goodbye to Gus before she leaves the house—she does this every time she leaves his room anymore, just in case. She bends down, kisses his cheek and whispers, “See you.” Their standard goodbye. Gus has been asleep for the past two days. Not once does he open his eyes or speak. She wants so much to hear him call her “daughter” again. She’s never heard anyone—not even her mother—call her this. It is such a nice word, when she thinks about it. Daughter. Dot … her. Like a punctuation mark. It says,
This one here, she’s mine.
So final, forever.

When she comes back in from her walk by the river,
he is gone. His chest is still, his eyes closed. He is at peace.

Charm can’t stay in Gus’s house all alone, and Jane offers to come over and get her and bring Charm back to her home so she could stay there for the night or longer if she’d like to. The hearse has already come and gone. Charm was surprised by that, the long black car, beetlelike, creeping slowly up to the front of the house. She felt the urge to take off her shoe and throw it at it. The man from the funeral home was very nice; he had a soft, calm voice that made Charm feel like he would treat Gus well. He explained to her that Gus had already made all the arrangements for the funeral—picked out a casket, the music, everything. The funeral director asked if Charm had something in mind for Gus to wear for the funeral. As if he could take it off when the funeral was over.

Doris, Gus’s favorite hospice volunteer, helps her decide. Together they rifle through his closet, filled with his khaki pants and oxford shirts, all much too big for him now. From the very back corner of the closet Doris pulls a plastic-covered black suit hanging neatly on a hanger.

“What do you think of this?” she asks, holding it up for Charm.

“I don’t know.” Charm looks at it doubtfully. Gus never wore a suit.

“He must have kept it for a reason,” Doris says, lifting the plastic away and checking the size. “It should fit him.”

“It’s fine, I guess.” Charm shrugs. She is suddenly very tired. Her eyes burn and all she wants to do is get this day over with.

“Go lie down, Charm,” Doris tells her. “Get a little rest.”

“I’m okay. I’m just going to sit outside and wait for Jane to come.” Doris promises to drop the suit off at the funeral home and goes into the kitchen.

Charm sits on the front steps waiting for Jane to pull up. Picking out Gus’s clothes has made her think of her own. Charm has nothing to wear to a funeral, no skirt, or dress pants even. Only her nursing scrubs and jeans. She has nothing to wear on her feet but her thick-soled nursing shoes and a pair of old tennis shoes. Charm looks down at them. They are speckled with mud from her walk by the creek and a little hole is beginning near the big toe. Charm can’t wear scrubs or a pair of faded jeans and a T-shirt to Gus’s funeral. A new panic overtakes her, different than the sick, waterlogged feeling of losing Gus. More of a plastic bag over your head, not being able to breathe sensation. Charm stands quickly and runs back into the house, where she finds Doris stripping down Gus’s bed.

“What’s the matter, Charm?” Doris asks with alarm, seeing the tears running down her face.

“What am I going to do?” Charm asks her helplessly, palms facing upward, showing her how empty they were. “I’ve got nothing.”

“Oh, Charm,” she says, dropping the sheets she is holding and rushing over to her. Doris wraps her soft, wide arms around her. Charm is practically twelve inches taller than Doris is, and her tears drip into Doris’s tightly permed hair. “It’s going to be okay. Gus loved you. He’s taken care of you.”

Charm keeps crying, not understanding Doris. “He’s dead.”

“Charm.” Doris lets go of her and takes a step backward so she can look up at her. “Gus left you everything. He told me. His house, his savings, his life insurance.” Doris folds her back in her arms and Charm feels better. For a moment, she can almost imagine that it is her mother who is holding her tightly.

The two hear a knock on the front door and Charm knows that Jane has arrived. “I’ll get it,” Doris says, wiping her own red eyes. “You go wash your face and grab your bag.” Charm goes into the bathroom connected to Gus’s bedroom and turns on the cold water. She stares at herself in the mirror above the sink, unable to believe what Doris told her about Gus. Her face is splotchy and her eyes are swollen from crying. She
splashes the cold water on her face and it feels good. She opens the medicine cabinet, buying time. Charm doesn’t want Jane to see her like this; she always told her how brave and strong she was. Charm wants her to keep thinking this.

Inside the cabinet are razors and shaving cream, toothpaste and Q-tips. There are prescription bottles of medicine and Band-Aids and a fingernail clipper. There is the bottle of cologne she gave Gus two Christmases ago. She carefully lifts the bottle and opens the lid. Gus’s scent—not his sick, dying scent but the scent she remembers, this cologne mixed with the smell of his shampoo—washes over Charm and she smiles. This is what she wants to remember. She replaces the lid, and holds the cologne bottle close to her. Charm moves toward the living room, but then stops and goes back into the bathroom. She reaches into the shower and pulls out Gus’s shampoo, a cheap generic brand that smells like green apples. Carrying her two prizes, she goes out to meet Jane. She doesn’t know if she will ever come back to stay.

G
us’s funeral is horrible and nice all at the same time. Charm feels silly in her new dress and high heels, even though she wanted to dress up for Gus to thank him for all he’d done for her. But the dress doesn’t quite fit her right and she can’t walk in the shoes without her ankles wobbling. In the safety of her pew where no one can see, she steps out of them and presses her toes into the red plush carpet. Jane and Doris sit with Charm in the front of the church and she’s surprised at how many people have come to say goodbye to Gus. Dozens and dozens. Mostly his firefighter friends, many wiping away tears.

Charm sees her mother sitting alone, near the back of the church. Charm tries to get angry, wants to be offended at the gall her mother has in showing up to
Gus’s funeral at all, but it fades quickly. Reanne looks beautiful, although completely inappropriately dressed for the occasion in a short, low-cut black dress and three-inch heels. Charm notices Binks didn’t accompany her mother and she is pleasantly surprised that her mother chose to pay her final respects to Gus without another man hanging all over her. Through the years Charm has become accustomed to seeing a man always at her mother’s side and she looks smaller somehow, less significant, without Binks next to her. More than anything she wants her mother to walk up the aisle through the church and slide into the seat next to Charm. She wants her mother’s arm around her shoulders, wants her comfort.

But Reanne stays at the back of the church and Charm remains in her pew. The priest tells many funny stories about Gus and everyone smiles through their tears. Gus had once been a free spirit, happy. A force of nature. That was obviously before her mother got through with him, Charm thinks, when his smiles weren’t forced and laughter came more easily. Halfway through the service she hears her mother’s distinctive cries, low and breathy. Charm turns in her seat and sees her mother crying into a handkerchief. Somehow her mother even manages to make crying attractive.

After mass, Reanne waits for Charm to reach the back of the church and tries to hug her, but any of Charm’s
longing for a mother’s affection has faded away and she steps away from her touch. Reanne still manages to ask about Gus’s will, if he happened to leave her a little something.

“I don’t know anything about that,” Charm says, and steps outside. It is cool and overcast. Charm hopes the rain will stay away until after the burial.

Reanne follows her out onto the steep front steps of the church. “About your brother …” Reanne begins, and Charm cranes her head in search of Christopher.

“Is he here?” Charm asks, trying to keep the worry from her voice. The idea of Christopher coming back to Linden Falls and being in the same town as Joshua makes her stomach clench.

“No, but he called,” Reanne says, looking shiftily around her. Jane and Doris are standing a respectful distance away, giving Charm and Reanne space to talk. Charm wishes they would come over and rescue her. “He started talking about you again. Something about when you were in high school. It’s very strange.”

“He was probably high,” Charm says, and Reanne stiffens.

“He didn’t sound high,” she says defensively, but quickly changes the subject. “So, did Gus ever talk about what he wanted done with the house?”

“I told you, I don’t know anything about that,” Charm
says impatiently. Her head aches from crying. She just wants to get away from her mother.

Reanne hisses in her ear. “The only reason Gus let you stay with him was to try and get me back. He thought if he was nice to you, I’d come back to him,” she whispers around a tight smile.

Charm learned a long time ago that the best way to irritate her mother was to speak as calmly as possible. “He cared enough about me that he left me his house and his savings. What did he leave you?” She pauses for effect. “Nothing. He left you nothing.”

Reanne’s lips tremble. “I am still your mother. You have no right to speak to me this way.”

People emerge from the church, stepping between Charm and her mother. They give her hugs and tell her how proud Gus was of her, that he talked about how smart she was, how he thought she was going to go far in this world, that she was going to be a wonderful nurse. Charm begins to cry again. Surprisingly, Reanne squeezes through the crowd and places an arm around her shoulders, drawing her close. “Shhh, Charm, it’s okay,” Reanne croons. Charm looks up at her mother and through her tears she can see that Reanne isn’t even looking at her as she says these comforting words, but is glancing surreptitiously at the people around her.

Charm ducks away from her mother’s touch and says to Jane, “Can I ride with you to the cemetery?”

After the burial, once again Reanne makes her way to Charm’s side, but this time she has Binks with her.

“Hey, Princess Charming,” Binks jokes, as he does every time she sees him. “Sorry to hear about your … Gus.”

“Thanks,” Charm says, wishing they would both go away.

“How did you ever get a name like Charm?” he asks.

“Ask my mother, she came up with it,” she tells him, trying hard not to be rude.

“You were my good luck charm,” she says, pulling out a cigarette and lighter.

“Mom, not here,” Charm scolds. “It’s a funeral, for God’s sake.”

Reanne ignores her and blows cigarette smoke out of the corner of her mouth. “I knew after you were born everything was going to be okay. I’d get married, get a little house. It worked for a while.” Reanne shrugs. Charm looks at her mother in wonder and cannot imagine that they could be any more different. When Charm was young, Reanne laughed easily and nothing much seemed to bother her. She never worried about money or bills or whether there was enough food in the house. It was only when you sat off to the side and watched without her knowing that you could see the hardness around the eyes. She could be a fun mom but she wasn’t
a good mother. Reanne laughs like she has an aspirin on her tongue. “Then my luck turned to shit.”

“Hey, do I look like shit?” Binks’s feelings are hurt.

“Naw, hon,” Reanne tells him. “I just meant I don’t have my own house anymore. I sure do miss having my own house.”

“You could have stayed with my father—he had a house. Juan had a house, that guy Les had a house. Gus had a house, too,” Charm says hotly, unable to help herself. All the other mourners have left except Jane, who is waiting for Charm in her car.

“Charm, you know I couldn’t stay with your father,” Reanne says in a whiny voice. “He cheated on me and beat up on your brother.” Charm rolls her eyes in frustration; her mother always misses the point.

“You dated a guy named Juan?” Binks asks in disbelief.

“He was nice,” Charm says shortly.

“He couldn’t handle the cultural differences,” Reanne says, waving her hand to dismiss the whole six months they had lived with Juan.

“The only cultural difference was that you were sleeping with another guy on the side,” Charm snaps, and begins to walk away from them.

“Hey, you watch your mouth!” she yells, following after Charm.

“Now, now, guys,” Binks says, trying to calm them
both down. “It’s been a hard day for both of you.” He holds out his hand toward Reanne. The gesture seems to mollify her.

“Mom, I don’t want to fight with you,” Charm says, rubbing her eyes.

“I don’t want to fight with you, either,” Reanne says, her forehead wrinkling with concern. “You look exhausted. Are you staying at Gus’s house tonight?”

“No. I’m going to stay with Jane tonight and then see how I feel,” Charm responds. “I’ll talk to you later, Mom. Okay?”

Reanne leans in and gives Charm a brief hug and Binks pats her on the back. Charm is walking toward Jane’s car when Reanne speaks. “Charm, I got a phone call the other day. From a girl who said she went to high school with you.” Charm turns and looks at her mother in exasperation.

“Mom, can we talk about this later? I just want to get out of here.”

“She said her name was Allison Glenn. Said she just moved back to town and wanted to catch up with you. I remember the name, but I can’t quite place her. Was she a friend of yours?”

Charm tries to keep moving, away from her mother and Binks, away from the cemetery with its rows and rows of headstones and the lonely mound of dirt that lies on top of Gus, but her body betrays her. She can’t take
another step. Instead, she just stands there in her ridiculous high heels and looks at her mother, mouth gaping.

“Are you okay?” Reanne asks suspiciously. “You look funny. Do you remember her?”

It clicks for Charm then. She’d been right about the girl she saw in the window of Bookends. Allison Glenn. The girl who murdered her baby girl and abandoned her newborn son was out of prison. She was back in Linden Falls and had somehow found Joshua.