"It is immoral not to tell."
Albert Camus
"We will arrive on Tuesday," the letter says.
My first cousin, Susy, and her older sister, Willa, will be here at noon tomorrow. I did something to Susy when she was ten and I was thirteen.
"We hope to visit with you awhile," Susy says.
Secrets, so many I can't talk about. Can't deal with.
My dead son, my worst secret. A wound each day. Nineteen years ago. Everything stopped nineteen years ago. Sleep walking now, the walking dead since then.
Secrets. Even if I could, I wouldn't share them. Limits even for grave robbers. Secrets which must lie silent.
Luke's terrible suitcase in the closet. Blood red. Beneath six heavy boxes. Yet, when I, the father die, they will find it, my children will. Luke's brothers, sister.
Unless I destroy it, it will be there. They will open it. I will be dead, they will be grieving, then they will open that suitcase. Will smell him. His clothes. Which I never washed. The sweet, sweat smell of my son who, like me, hated to bathe. Unlike me, did not bathe, did not wash his long, oily hair, wore the same clothes for days, lay on a mattress on the floor in my room near me, the two dogs lying there with him.
His secrets in the suitcase. Our secrets now, since his death. His and mine. No one else in the universe knows them. So bad, so awful, so terrible, I hardly remember what they are.
Broke the locked chest, savagely. Found the journals, the hit list, the horror.
Hidden away now nineteen years later. Nineteen years last April. He killed her on April Fool’s Day, later jumped from the 36th floor of the hotel on Easter Sunday at sunrise, next to the church with the cross on top. Secrets.
Susy will be here tomorrow. Have to clean up the place. Think of something to serve them. Get my soul in order.
I suppose she went to a therapist somewhere through the years. Who told her I was a rotten bastard, and though it wasn't rape, it was psychic rape, so call it rape.
"Call it rape," she probably said. As though it had happened to her, the therapist.
What I did, I guess, was more like fiddle around with her private parts two or three times a day. During those three weeks she stayed with us, her mom in the hospital.
Mostly hugging and kissing. Which she seemed to like. I can wish she'd told the therapist, "All that love. I never got that again. From anybody, guess I never will."
Wish she remembered it like that. Through the okay though rocky marriage and her five children. Maybe she never told anyone until she told the therapist -- 20 years after it happened. Maybe the secret was warmer, better, more interesting before she told it.
Like a loss, after she told it. Like something she couldn't get back. Like she had stolen something from herself -- the secret.
The secret of how I came to her cot on those hot summer days, and she pretended to be asleep, and I pretended to take a nap with her -- would always eventually snuggle up tight next to her and softly kiss her hair and neck and say I loved her. Over and over.
And touched her, and she told a therapist, I think, that she loved that, but the therapist was very, very angry, and told her she was re-doing the past, changing it around.
Last saw her fourteen –- no, now 15, years ago. At my step-father's funeral. Back their 1500 miles away for the funeral.
"And I stared at you the whole time," she could be telling herself as she journeys to my home now. Stared at my sad, haunted face. Stared at me all through the meal in the church basement, ignoring the cold cuts and other funeral food.
I returned the look four times during that hour, not smiling. Looked at her as I had so long ago, my eyes perhaps not changed at all. Sad. And afraid and guilty and angry, but tender, too, like someone who eats love like cake and never gets enough, never will.
My eyes questioning her, as though I would quickly apologize, if necessary, though I had forgotten nothing, remembered it as clearly as she did, had thought about it every day of my life, just as she had. As though I had only committed one sin in my entire life, but was steadfastly damned, eternally damned, used to it. Patient with it.
"If the world had permitted it," she maybe says to herself, "I would have left my husband and children that day, and you and I would have gone somewhere, found a refuge somewhere, out of the rain, the cold.
"You could have pretended to lie down to rest," she could say, "to take a nap. To hide your sad, sad eyes. I would have pretended to take a little nap with you. I would have snuggled tight up against you, kissed your graying hair, your neck, would have whispered as though you couldn't hear. ‘I love you, love you, love you.'
"And in the gentlest way," she could say, "I would have unbuttoned the top button of your pants, slowly unzipped your fly, would have slowly, gently, reached inside, through the opening of the front of your shorts. Would have reached inside with warm, trembling fingers, gently touched your private part, cupped it in my hand, gently, gently, and then, when at last you opened your eyes, those sad eyes of so long ago, at that first moment of how it was, exactly as it was when I was ten, I would have ripped your thing off your filthy body! Your scream of anguish, the ultimate apology would reach straight through the rainy streets of the little town. All the way to the church. Waking your step-daddy in his casket.
"Rape. Rape, indeed. A gentle word.”
Desperate memories, secrets. And now Susy is returning. Tuesday. On the visit will Susy and Willa find a way, subtly, subtly as a dream
will they really say nothing at all? -- subtly, only a hint, a half question --? Do I remember, they will ask gently, breath held, eyes on me – do I --remember that summer when Susy was ten when she stayed with my mom and me, stayed for three weeks, do I remember?
And, if they ask, will I hardly hear the question, not flinch, acknowledge nothing, will I be charming as can be, innocent, bland, unknowing, say, "Oh? Maybe. Let me think. Three weeks? Let’s see now -- let me think back. Three weeks –-”
But I remember everything. Clearly. Not shallowly. Not as in a shallow "story." No trick endings. Remember it all, clearly.
Strangely, remember it clearer every day. Maybe not every day, but every week. Can't shake it that I must do something, what should I do? Should I ask for forgiveness? How many people know? Did she tell her mother?
Would I make it worse now -- Susy and Willa -- by saying out loud that it happened? What good would it do? The confession only for myself, really?
What? -- I expect her to let me off? Her saying, "Forget it, we were just kids, it meant nothing, just a kid thing, it didn't screw up my life even five percent! Let it go, forget it, why are you embarrassing me by even bringing it up?"
Is that what she would say? If I called her on the phone now? What if her husband were listening? Her children? Why stir things up? It was probably nothing. I can live with it.
They came, were here yesterday. They were here. I went to meet them, they were old women, fat around their middles, gray-haired, fattened, ballooned, kind-faced, Willa with the same gap-toothed smile she had at twelve in the moonlight on the farm and she wanted, I wanted, to do something, in the haymow or corncrib, somewhere, and little Susy was Grandma's darling, the second Shirley Temple --
"Hello!"
"Hello!"
"Well, hello!"
I hugged them, dear first cousins, as though from another race, another continent, Midwest plump and old, how could they be so old? I felt the conspiracy. Between Susy, myself, Willa, Susy's whole family, the whole world, everyone, silently conspiring: we won't tell, but you did it, it wasn't horrible but very, very bad, no one remembers but you, but everyone silently remembers.
Susy, the younger, seemed older than Willa, spiritually. Carried herself well. No, her hair isn't gray, it is pleasantly dyed blond or strawberry. Their faces are unlined. Plump and Midwest-unlined.
They looked at my wonderful photo album for an hour. There we were, young, the Depression years, happy farm-faced kids. The parents gaunt-faced, worried.
"Do you remember that time I stayed with you and your mother?" Susy asked. "While my mom was in the hospital?"
"Oh. Let's see. Oh yeah, I remember. Two weeks, wasn't it?"
"Three weeks," she said.
The talk went on. After a while Willa brought up the same subject. I looked at them coolly, neither innocent nor guilty, my sins paid for over many years of remembering.
And then finally they were leaving. The goodbyes. The promised letters. The hugs, the semi-kisses. Two heavy, worn women. Willa was innocent after six children and nine grandchildren. Susy was not. A nice person. I liked her. But she is perhaps flawed. Flawed a bit. Nothing to do with me.
If Susy and I were alone for many hours someplace someday, it would come up, I'm sure. Then I would know. This way is even better, the way it is. But sad, a little, at certain times. Like a mild, but chilling breeze.
Secret.
Albert Camus
"We will arrive on Tuesday," the letter says.
My first cousin, Susy, and her older sister, Willa, will be here at noon tomorrow. I did something to Susy when she was ten and I was thirteen.
"We hope to visit with you awhile," Susy says.
Secrets, so many I can't talk about. Can't deal with.
My dead son, my worst secret. A wound each day. Nineteen years ago. Everything stopped nineteen years ago. Sleep walking now, the walking dead since then.
Secrets. Even if I could, I wouldn't share them. Limits even for grave robbers. Secrets which must lie silent.
Luke's terrible suitcase in the closet. Blood red. Beneath six heavy boxes. Yet, when I, the father die, they will find it, my children will. Luke's brothers, sister.
Unless I destroy it, it will be there. They will open it. I will be dead, they will be grieving, then they will open that suitcase. Will smell him. His clothes. Which I never washed. The sweet, sweat smell of my son who, like me, hated to bathe. Unlike me, did not bathe, did not wash his long, oily hair, wore the same clothes for days, lay on a mattress on the floor in my room near me, the two dogs lying there with him.
His secrets in the suitcase. Our secrets now, since his death. His and mine. No one else in the universe knows them. So bad, so awful, so terrible, I hardly remember what they are.
Broke the locked chest, savagely. Found the journals, the hit list, the horror.
Hidden away now nineteen years later. Nineteen years last April. He killed her on April Fool’s Day, later jumped from the 36th floor of the hotel on Easter Sunday at sunrise, next to the church with the cross on top. Secrets.
Susy will be here tomorrow. Have to clean up the place. Think of something to serve them. Get my soul in order.
I suppose she went to a therapist somewhere through the years. Who told her I was a rotten bastard, and though it wasn't rape, it was psychic rape, so call it rape.
"Call it rape," she probably said. As though it had happened to her, the therapist.
What I did, I guess, was more like fiddle around with her private parts two or three times a day. During those three weeks she stayed with us, her mom in the hospital.
Mostly hugging and kissing. Which she seemed to like. I can wish she'd told the therapist, "All that love. I never got that again. From anybody, guess I never will."
Wish she remembered it like that. Through the okay though rocky marriage and her five children. Maybe she never told anyone until she told the therapist -- 20 years after it happened. Maybe the secret was warmer, better, more interesting before she told it.
Like a loss, after she told it. Like something she couldn't get back. Like she had stolen something from herself -- the secret.
The secret of how I came to her cot on those hot summer days, and she pretended to be asleep, and I pretended to take a nap with her -- would always eventually snuggle up tight next to her and softly kiss her hair and neck and say I loved her. Over and over.
And touched her, and she told a therapist, I think, that she loved that, but the therapist was very, very angry, and told her she was re-doing the past, changing it around.
Last saw her fourteen –- no, now 15, years ago. At my step-father's funeral. Back their 1500 miles away for the funeral.
"And I stared at you the whole time," she could be telling herself as she journeys to my home now. Stared at my sad, haunted face. Stared at me all through the meal in the church basement, ignoring the cold cuts and other funeral food.
I returned the look four times during that hour, not smiling. Looked at her as I had so long ago, my eyes perhaps not changed at all. Sad. And afraid and guilty and angry, but tender, too, like someone who eats love like cake and never gets enough, never will.
My eyes questioning her, as though I would quickly apologize, if necessary, though I had forgotten nothing, remembered it as clearly as she did, had thought about it every day of my life, just as she had. As though I had only committed one sin in my entire life, but was steadfastly damned, eternally damned, used to it. Patient with it.
"If the world had permitted it," she maybe says to herself, "I would have left my husband and children that day, and you and I would have gone somewhere, found a refuge somewhere, out of the rain, the cold.
"You could have pretended to lie down to rest," she could say, "to take a nap. To hide your sad, sad eyes. I would have pretended to take a little nap with you. I would have snuggled tight up against you, kissed your graying hair, your neck, would have whispered as though you couldn't hear. ‘I love you, love you, love you.'
"And in the gentlest way," she could say, "I would have unbuttoned the top button of your pants, slowly unzipped your fly, would have slowly, gently, reached inside, through the opening of the front of your shorts. Would have reached inside with warm, trembling fingers, gently touched your private part, cupped it in my hand, gently, gently, and then, when at last you opened your eyes, those sad eyes of so long ago, at that first moment of how it was, exactly as it was when I was ten, I would have ripped your thing off your filthy body! Your scream of anguish, the ultimate apology would reach straight through the rainy streets of the little town. All the way to the church. Waking your step-daddy in his casket.
"Rape. Rape, indeed. A gentle word.”
Desperate memories, secrets. And now Susy is returning. Tuesday. On the visit will Susy and Willa find a way, subtly, subtly as a dream
will they really say nothing at all? -- subtly, only a hint, a half question --? Do I remember, they will ask gently, breath held, eyes on me – do I --remember that summer when Susy was ten when she stayed with my mom and me, stayed for three weeks, do I remember?
And, if they ask, will I hardly hear the question, not flinch, acknowledge nothing, will I be charming as can be, innocent, bland, unknowing, say, "Oh? Maybe. Let me think. Three weeks? Let’s see now -- let me think back. Three weeks –-”
But I remember everything. Clearly. Not shallowly. Not as in a shallow "story." No trick endings. Remember it all, clearly.
Strangely, remember it clearer every day. Maybe not every day, but every week. Can't shake it that I must do something, what should I do? Should I ask for forgiveness? How many people know? Did she tell her mother?
Would I make it worse now -- Susy and Willa -- by saying out loud that it happened? What good would it do? The confession only for myself, really?
What? -- I expect her to let me off? Her saying, "Forget it, we were just kids, it meant nothing, just a kid thing, it didn't screw up my life even five percent! Let it go, forget it, why are you embarrassing me by even bringing it up?"
Is that what she would say? If I called her on the phone now? What if her husband were listening? Her children? Why stir things up? It was probably nothing. I can live with it.
They came, were here yesterday. They were here. I went to meet them, they were old women, fat around their middles, gray-haired, fattened, ballooned, kind-faced, Willa with the same gap-toothed smile she had at twelve in the moonlight on the farm and she wanted, I wanted, to do something, in the haymow or corncrib, somewhere, and little Susy was Grandma's darling, the second Shirley Temple --
"Hello!"
"Hello!"
"Well, hello!"
I hugged them, dear first cousins, as though from another race, another continent, Midwest plump and old, how could they be so old? I felt the conspiracy. Between Susy, myself, Willa, Susy's whole family, the whole world, everyone, silently conspiring: we won't tell, but you did it, it wasn't horrible but very, very bad, no one remembers but you, but everyone silently remembers.
Susy, the younger, seemed older than Willa, spiritually. Carried herself well. No, her hair isn't gray, it is pleasantly dyed blond or strawberry. Their faces are unlined. Plump and Midwest-unlined.
They looked at my wonderful photo album for an hour. There we were, young, the Depression years, happy farm-faced kids. The parents gaunt-faced, worried.
"Do you remember that time I stayed with you and your mother?" Susy asked. "While my mom was in the hospital?"
"Oh. Let's see. Oh yeah, I remember. Two weeks, wasn't it?"
"Three weeks," she said.
The talk went on. After a while Willa brought up the same subject. I looked at them coolly, neither innocent nor guilty, my sins paid for over many years of remembering.
And then finally they were leaving. The goodbyes. The promised letters. The hugs, the semi-kisses. Two heavy, worn women. Willa was innocent after six children and nine grandchildren. Susy was not. A nice person. I liked her. But she is perhaps flawed. Flawed a bit. Nothing to do with me.
If Susy and I were alone for many hours someplace someday, it would come up, I'm sure. Then I would know. This way is even better, the way it is. But sad, a little, at certain times. Like a mild, but chilling breeze.
Secret.
