Catherine McKenzie - Hidden

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m going to give you some advice, Jeff, and then you’re going to hit me and I’m going to fly out of here.”

“Get on with it, then.”

“One minute doesn’t erase a thousand.”

“Of all the…what the…maybe it does.”

“No, not unless you let it.”

“How would you know, anyway?”

“I know, okay? Let’s leave it at that.”

“No, I need you to tell me.”

He sighed. “I let one moment, one idea, ruin my thousand moments, all right? And I’ve regretted it ever since.”

“And what? That’s supposed to make me forget about today?”

“It should.”

“What do you know about it?”

“I don’t know anything. That’s my whole point. She was sad, Jeff. She was vulnerable and I took advantage. And I’m a complete asshole for doing that, but that’s all it was. It didn’t mean anything. Not to her. And I’m sorry, okay, I’m sorry I had anything to do with it.”

“You’re sorry.”

“Yes. I’ve been feeling like a jerk for a long time. Ever since I found out about you and Claire. Before that even. And when you feel like that…well, let’s just say it’s not much of a stretch to start acting like one. I fucked up. I’ve been fucking up forever. And I’m sorry. You’re my brother, and I’m sorry. Now hit me, and go home to your wife.”

I stood there staring at him, a foot away, as wet as I was now. My brother. Someone who knew things about me I’d forgotten. Someone who I betrayed, and who betrayed me in return.

Hitting him wasn’t going to solve anything.

But I did it anyway.

When I got home from the airport with grazes across my knuckles and a dull ache in the joints of my hand, I felt like Grady Tripp at the end of Wonder Boys. Too many things had happened in too short a time span. Did people’s lives really change this quickly? Years of sameness, and then a few hours, a few moments, and everything’s different? But, yes, of course they can. It happens all the time.

My clothes had dried on me in the way that only happens after you’ve been soaked to the bone, and they felt stiff and uncomfortable. I wanted to strip them off, climb into a steaming shower, and then sleep, but I knew that might be a long way off.

When I walked through the front door, Claire was sitting on the couch in the living room under the reading lamp with her feet curled under her, staring off into space. Her eyes were red and puffy, and the wastepaper basket nearest to her was full of balled-up Kleenex.

“Where’s Seth?” I asked.

“Upstairs. Asleep, last time I looked.”

I checked my watch. It was seven, early for him to be in bed.

“Does he…is he okay?”

“He has a slight fever. He actually asked to go to bed.”

She stood clumsily, then fell back to the couch, clutching her foot.

“Foot cramp,” she said through clenched teeth.

“Ouch. Sorry.”

“No, I deserve it.”

“Claire—”

Her fingers worked at the knot in her foot, which I knew from long experience could be excruciating. “No, I do.”

I wanted to go to her, put my arms around her, and wait out the cramp like we’d done so many times before, but the image of her in Tim’s arms held me back.

“Will you sit for a minute?” she asked. “You’re making me nervous, standing there like that.”

“How am I standing?”

“Like you’re wondering if you should pack your things.”

I let that hang there as a deep weariness settled over me. I closed my eyes for a beat, two, then Claire was there, at my shoulder, leading me to the couch.

“You shouldn’t walk on that. You’ll make it worse.”

She grimaced and I could see her fighting the instinct to fall to the floor and cradle her foot in her lap until the cramp passed. Sometimes it was fast, but a few times I’d found her in the hall, or the bathroom—wherever she was when the cramp hit—where she’d been stranded for half an hour or more.

She pressed on and we were on the couch, both worn out and gripped by pain.

“Can I talk? Will you listen?” she asked.

I looked her in the face for the first time. Her eyes were the color they only were when she’d been crying. They always turned this amazing shade when she was particularly upset.

“We don’t have to do this now. We can wait till you feel better.”

“I’m not going to feel better until I put this right. If I can.”

“What did you want to say?”

She blew out a long breath. It reached my face, a sweet smell I always associated with kissing her. And in thinking this I knew—I was going to forgive her.

Probably.

Assuming that’s what she wanted.

“I’ve screwed everything up, haven’t I?” she said.

“Do you really want me to say?”

“I guess I meant it more rhetorically, but I wanted to tell you I was sorry. I mean, of course, you know I’m sorry, so desperately sorry. I won’t insult you with the details, unless you want to know—”

“No!”

She started. “No, of course you don’t. And there’s nothing to tell. You saw everything there was to see.”

“Did I, Claire? Did I really?”

Did I see what’s in your heart? I wanted to ask, but didn’t.

“You did. And Tim’s gone.”

“I drove him to the airport.”

“You did?”

“You didn’t know?”

“He packed his stuff and left. Said he wouldn’t be back. Did he…you drove him to the airport?”

“I did.”

“Why?”

“I wanted to hear what he had to say for himself. And punch him in the face, though that was his suggestion.”

“You what? You’re not making sense.”

“No. Nothing is.”

She fell silent, her hand massaging her foot idly. I could tell by the way the muscles in her neck loosened that the worst of the cramp had passed.

“Is that it?” I asked.

“No. I’ve been sitting here, trying to think of a way…trying to make you believe me. I know it’s always been hard for you that Tim and I were together. I know you’ve wondered about him, about us.”

I didn’t deny it. How could I?

“I’m not saying that I don’t understand how you feel. I’ve always known, really, and it’s something I should’ve worked harder to correct.”

“Because I was totally in left field?”

“Not totally, but not in the way you mean.”

“So you haven’t been harboring some secret wish that he’d come back? Declare his undying love for you? Beg you to take him back?”

She smiled uncertainly. “Of course I have, or a small part of me has, anyway. Just like I bet what’s her name—Lily—is wishing that same thing about you sometimes, no matter how happy she is right now.”

“But the difference is, I haven’t shown up in her life.”

“Right, but you have to let me have that, Jeff. That’s the part of girl-Claire that was hurt by the first person…it’s not real, is what I’m trying to say. It’s revenge. And revenge isn’t sweet. And it isn’t the point.”

“What is your point?”

“Do you remember why I told you I came back here? Why I wouldn’t move away with Tim?”

“Because of your dad? That promise you made him?”

“Right. I know it sounds stupid, and part of me was probably just testing Tim, but it was important to me to do what I said I was going to do. But if I’m being perfectly honest, if Tim had shown up in those first few months, I probably would have left. My dad would’ve been hurt, but Beth had already broken his heart. He would’ve gotten over it. Anyway, all this to say that he might be the reason I came home, but he’s not the reason I stayed.”

“What’s the reason, then?”

“Do you really not know?”

“I only know what you tell me.”

“I hope that’s not true, but I will say it. I’ll say it if you promise to believe that I’m telling you the truth.”

I looked into the gloom beyond the puddle of light from the reading lamp. Little balls of it reflected off the photographs on the wall leading up the stairs to where our son was sleeping, oblivious to the chaos in his own house.

“All right. I promise.”

She placed her hand on my arm. “I came back for my dad, but I stayed for you, Jeff. I stayed for you.”

And because I’d promised, I believed her.

And in the end, I stayed too.

After Tim leaves the daycare, I receive a curt email from Connie that I know will be followed by a Chinese water torture of communication until I comply. So I let the staff know I’ll be gone for a couple of hours and walk from Playthings to the conservatory.

On my way, I wonder, as always, what it is about this woman that removes my free will. She’s had my number since the first time I met her, both figuratively and literally, and I’ve never known how to keep her from using either.

“Because you like it,” Jeff would say. “She pushes you. And it feels crappy at first, like the first round of golf after winter, but by the back nine, you’re loving it.”

He was right, of course. Somewhere along the way, I’d lost the ability to push myself, to get outside myself, inside myself. Music was the way I’d always done that in the past, and Connie pushed me hard enough to realize that it still worked after all these years. It was still something I needed in my life to feel whole, happy, connected. It was a fundamental part of me and always had been.

And as I walk down the quiet side streets, empty and abandoned by the parents at work, the children at school, I realize that this too has been missing since all this happened. There hasn’t been any music. None coming from the radio I won’t turn on, the iPod I will not play, and the piano I have not touched. As a result, it’s too quiet up there in my head, and this has let the noise in.

So after I do a few scales and runs to warm up my fingers, and Connie puts a new piece in front of me, something modern and dissonant, I dive into the score. I play it clumsily and loudly, these off-kilter notes, until they work their way inside my brain and the volume’s loud enough that there isn’t room for anything other than the music.

When I get home from the day, there’s glue in my hair and a tiredness that’s familiar, workable. Beth’s left a note that she’s gone to the gym, but Seth is there, and I make dinner for him for the first time since that Friday. Less than two weeks ago on the calendar, but we’ve been through a time machine since then. And like in the Stephen King novel I was reading shortly before all this happened, the time that’s elapsed since I stepped through the wormhole bears no relationship to real time. Two weeks, two minutes, two years. Any of these is a possibility.

I throw together a mismatch of foods left by our friends and neighbors, who I still have not thanked, my mother’s voice reminds me. There’s chicken curry, chickpea salad, and rosemary potatoes. As Seth picks at his food (the Tupperware crew really didn’t have a twelve-year-old boy in mind in their act of kindness), he tells me that two women he didn’t even know dropped off the latest batch when he wasn’t-watching-TV after school.

“Thought you’d slip that in there, did you?”

“But I wasn’t.”

“Of course not. You’re a good kid, Seth.”

He scowls.

“Did I say something wrong? Being a good kid not cool or something?”

“No one says ‘cool’ anymore, Mom. Jeez.”

“What do they say, then?”

“I don’t know? We don’t talk about it.”

“So you’re saying that kids today all get along, and there are no cliques, no geeks, no loners. It’s a real utopia over there?”

“No…I…what does utopia mean?”

“It’s like an ideal place, the perfect place.”

“I don’t think that’s right.”

“That’s what it means.”

“No, I mean that’s not what school’s like.”

I ruffle his hair. “Of course it isn’t. It never has been. But it’s not worse than usual, right? Are people—”

“Everyone’s being fine, Mom. Like I told you. Nicer than usual, even.”

As if to confirm this, the phone rings. Seth skips over the floor to answer it. I can hear the high tones of a teenage girl’s voice coming out of the receiver.

“Hold on a sec.” He lets the phone dangle. “Gonna take this upstairs. Can you hang up?”

“Sure.”

He bounds from the room and I pick up the phone, slammed by the déjà vu of a thousand similar instances from when I was Seth’s age. Back before Twitter and Facebook and IMs and texts, all I had was the phone, pressed against my ear for so long after dinner every night that it took on my body temperature. If I had a fever, the receiver might’ve melted.