Catherine McKenzie - Hidden

“Where’d you find that poem?” I ask. “I’ve never heard it before.”

“Dad had it.”

“He did? Where?”

“In this book I found…please don’t be mad.”

“Why would I be mad?”

“ ’Cuz I found it in his stuff.”

“What stuff?”

“His travel bag. In his office.”

“Why were you looking in there?”

“It’s stupid.”

The house is loud and full, but we’re in a pocket of quiet, Seth and I.

“Tell me.”

“I feel like I’m starting to forget things, about, you know, him, and I thought if I held some of his things…”

“It’s okay. I understand.”

“You do?”

“I do.”

“Are you forgetting?” he asks.

“I’m sure I am, but I have so much more to remember, so I haven’t noticed yet, you see? We knew each other for a long time.”

“My whole life.”

“And then some. Are you hungry? You should eat.”

“Do you think I could go upstairs instead? There are too many people down here.”

“Of course.”

I realize there’s no one Seth’s age in the house. Only a few of his friends were at the church. Did they not want to come to the funeral, or did their parents think they weren’t old enough to deal with what’s been thrust upon my son?

“Why don’t you take off those clothes and put on something more comfortable? I’ll come up soon and we can be quiet together.”

He agrees and walks toward the stairs, a hitch in his step.

I stand there for a moment, uncertain of where I can stand to go next. I move eventually in the general direction of the kitchen, only to be stopped by Connie, my piano teacher.

She stands rigidly in front of me, her arms crossed. She’s wearing a severe black jacket and skirt.

“Hi, Connie. Thanks for coming.”

She nods curtly. “Lessons start again next week.”

“What?”

“Next week.”

“I don’t think I’ll be able to. I mean—”

“You will come to the conservatory. We will see if you can. It is time to see.”

She talks like a tennis ball machine, firing words at precise intervals.

“I’ll try.”

“I will expect you at noon.”

“I don’t—”

“It is your choice. Do as you wish.” She places a large, mannish hand on my shoulder. “You are strong, Claire. Come to the conservatory so you can remember.”

She walks around me, headed to the front door. Tim’s standing there, shrugging off his coat. I catch his gaze. He holds it for a moment, then looks away. I watch as he stares into the sea of people in the living room. He raises his hand in greeting to someone and disappears from view.

Several more people circle me, hug me, tell me how sorry they are. When I manage to escape, I go to the kitchen in search of a glass of water. I run the tap till the water is cold and start to fill a glass. I look out the window, wondering if I’ll ever be able to do so without thinking of the police car pulling up to divide my life in two.

Today it all looks innocent, despite the unusual number of cars parked on the street. There’s a woman who looks vaguely familiar standing at the edge of the walkway. She raises a cigarette to her lips and inhales deeply, letting out the smoke in a long, slow stream.

A cigarette. Yes, that’s what I need. I let the glass I’m holding slip from my hand and hurry to the hall closet and my coat. In a moment I’m out the door.

“Please tell me you have another one of those,” I say.

The woman looks at me, startled. She’s been crying.

“Of course. Hold on.” She clamps her half-smoked cigarette between her teeth and peers inside her purse. She pulls out a red-and-white package and hands it to me. “Here you go.”

I take the crinkly package and tap out a cigarette. The act of putting it in my mouth, catching a whiff of the tobacco, makes me want a drink, but I never did manage to find one inside.

The woman holds a lighter at the end and flicks it on. I inhale quickly, twice, to make sure the cigarette is lit. The warm smoke sears my lungs. I can tell the exact moment the nicotine hits my bloodstream. Eight seconds, the time a rodeo cowboy has to stay on his bucking bronco.

“These are getting hard to find,” the woman says. Her voice is vaguely familiar too.

“Cigarettes?”

“No, lighters.” She flashes the green plastic cylinder at me, then puts it in her coat pocket. “Used to be, everyone always had a lighter, even if they didn’t smoke. I had to go to three stores to find this one.”

I take another haul, enjoying the illicit pleasure.

“We probably should be hiding behind the shrubbery. If my parents see me with this, they’ll throw a fit.”

A thin smile. “I know what you mean. My husband’s a doctor and if he only knew…” She takes a last drag, throws the cigarette to the ground, and grinds it out with a black ballet flat. “God, these things really are terrible. I thought it would help, but it doesn’t. Sorry, I’m babbling.”

“It’s all right.”

“The service was beautiful, by the way. I guess I should’ve started with that. I’m so terribly sorry for your loss. It’s a…terrible thing.”

“Thank you…you look familiar to me, but…do we know each other?”

“Oh! I’m the company representative. Patricia Underhill, from the other Springfield? You can call me Tish.”

Tish. Tish.

“We met once,” she continues in a breathless rush. “You probably don’t remember? At that company retreat in Mexico, a couple of years back? We only spoke for a few moments…”

Mexico. Right. The first trip Jeff and I took alone together in forever. Things were mostly normal then. Things felt good. At dinner, like today, I’d slipped outside for a cigarette and found a woman about my age sitting on the edge of a retaining wall under the bright bougainvillea trees, crying.

“Are you all right?” I’d asked.

She looked up, embarrassed, hastily wiping her tears away. She was wearing a cocktail dress in a pretty color (green?), and her long hair was loose and black against the moonlight. She obviously belonged to our party, but we hadn’t been introduced.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Why are you apologizing? I’m the one intruding on your privacy.”

“This place isn’t very private.”

“I’m not the one who made you cry, right?”

“No, of course not.”

“So, then, no apology necessary.”

“Thanks.” She stood up and wiped the dirt off her backside. “I’m Patricia. But people call me Tish.”

“Claire. Wife or participant?”

“Oh…participant, I guess. My husband’s inside.”

“Mine too.”

“What about you?”

“I’m a wife. At least, on this occasion.”

She nodded. “I know exactly what you mean.”

I pulled a cigarette from my skirt pocket. “Do you mind?”

“Of course not. I wish I could join you.”

“You can if you like.”

“I don’t really smoke. And my husband wouldn’t like it.”

I held a flame to the end of my cigarette. “Why do you think I’m skulking out here?”

She smiled, and she was quite lovely, in an understated way.

We stood there in silence for a bit before Tish said, “This is going to sound strange, but…do you ever wish you could do your life over again?”

“Everyone wishes that sometimes.”

“I mean really actually do it, start again. See if you can get it right the second time around.” She shook herself. “I’m sorry. You don’t need to hear the inside of my brain. I’m having a weird night.”

“Stop apologizing. I’ve had my share of weird nights. And yes, I think about that sometimes, but I don’t think it’s helpful.”

“No, of course.”

“I mean, I don’t think you have to do your life over to change it. I think it’s wrong to think you can’t change things in your life now because of decisions you’ve made in the past. Most things aren’t permanent—except children, of course.” I smiled, thinking of Seth, missing him.

“I wouldn’t give up my daughter for anything,” she said fiercely.

“You see. Your decisions can’t have been all wrong.”

“You’re right.”

“Don’t be so sure. It might be the cocktails talking.”

“No, thank you, this has been helpful.” She tugged at the bottom of her dress, straightening it. “I don’t have mascara all over my face or anything, do I?”

“You’re fine.”

“I guess that stuff really is waterproof.”

“Good to know.”

“Thank you…Claire. I should be getting back.”

“Of course.”

She smiled again, wanly this time, then walked up the torch-lit path.

“You were outside crying, right?” I say, then instantly regret it. “I’m sorry—”

“No, that’s all right. I was crying. And you were…great. I was in a bad place and…I don’t know if you remember what you said that night, but it helped.”

“I remember, and I’m glad, but I can’t take any credit. It was probably something I’d heard on a talk show.”

“I doubt it.”

“So…did you do it?” I ask.

“Do what?”

“Change the thing you were regretting…Wow, that was way too personal a question, you don’t have to say.”

“No, it’s fine.” She bites her lip. “The answer’s yes. In a way, I did.” Her face becomes incredibly sad.

I look over her shoulder, trying to give her some privacy.

A police car rounds the corner onto our street, driving cautiously. It stops in front of the driveway. A man I know is at the wheel.

“Anyway, I should be…go inside, I guess,” Tish says, but I’m only catching every other word. My heart’s beating so loudly it’s drowning everything else out.

“Thank you for coming,” I say, my eyes fixed on the vehicle.

“It was important to me to do it.”

The driver kills the engine and it’s déjà vu all over again, as Jeff would say. But it can’t be more bad news, it can’t be. Everyone I know, everyone I love, is in the house behind me.

The officer opens the door and gets out. My eyes track to the one thing that’s different from last time. The plastic bag he’s holding in his hand.

This time my body doesn’t fail me when I realize what it must contain, and because I can’t get away fast enough, I turn on a dime and sprint to the house.

My conversation with Claire leaves me feeling short of breath. I tell myself it’s the cigarettes, but they have nothing to do with it.

Claire.

I feel like I’d recognize her anywhere.

Which is silly, and not what history relates, because when Jeff sent me a picture of her and Seth, early on, when we were trading pictures of our offices, our streets, little snippets of our lives, I didn’t recognize her. Not at first.

But I couldn’t shake her face from my brain. Something about it was haunting me, until it finally came to me one night when thoughts tumbled through my brain like clothes being dried.

We’d met. In fact—and, of course, because when else could it be?—we met at the same time I first met Jeff.

I remember how excited Brian was when I told him we’d been invited to the retreat.

“Mexico! Wow. You’re moving up in the world,” he’d said, ruffling my hair and looking proud.

I smiled back though felt a flutter of unease. Truth be told, my original instinct was to refuse the invite, but the shocked look of a coworker, a look I knew Brian would repeat, quickly put an end to that fantasy. At least there was a sweet-looking golf course in the brochure. It had been a while since I’d made it out for a real round.

And there was the potential of Brian’s excitement. He’d been giving me “helpful” nudges for a while. Were there any openings above me? Could I move from HR to another area of management? Wasn’t the merger a great thing? A whole new world of opportunities?

Brian’s a great doctor. He’s patient and interested and will deliver your baby at two in the morning in a snowstorm. But, despite the fact that he eschewed a big-city practice, he’s ambitious. For himself, for me. And while I got that about him, he never seemed to understand or believe it when I told him I wasn’t like that. That I was happy to coast. To drift and somersault like a dried-out leaf in the late fall, hoping to avoid the rake, the collecting pile, the compost heap.

And by this time, there was something else too. A growing feeling that I had to stop drifting along, although I didn’t know how to. That I’d been letting life act itself out on me when I should have been directing it. I’d wake up in the morning sometimes, disoriented, not sure where I was. When it would come back to me—Springfield, house, Brian—I couldn’t help wondering how it had happened. How I’d ended up in this place, with this man, this life. How?