These Things Hidden Read online

  “I know, I know.” She holds up a hand, trying to placate Charm. “You’re doing a great job. I’m just saying there are always options for you and resources. You let me know if you think Gus is taking a turn for the worse or if you need more help. Okay?” She looks her levelly in the eyes.

  “Okay,” Charm answers, knowing that Gus would never stand for being moved from his home.

  “I saw your mom the other day,” she says casually as she scans the kitchen. Charm is aware that, as a nurse, it’s Jane’s job to make sure that Gus is getting the care he needs. She’s not worried—the house is always clean and she always makes sure to have food in the refrigerator.

  “Oh?” Charm says as if she doesn’t care. But she listens, greedy for any snippet of news of her mother.

  “Yeah, I saw her at Wal-Mart in Linden Falls. She looks good. Said she is working as a waitress at O’Rourke’s.”

  Charm doesn’t respond. Her mother has had many jobs over the years and Charm doubts this one will last long.

  “She’s still with that guy, Binks.”

  “For now,” Charm says bitterly.

  “She asked about you. I said you were doing great,” Jane says gently.

  “She could ask me how I am on her own, she knows where I am. She lived here long enough for her to remember.”

  “She wondered if you’ve heard from your brother,” Jane asks tentatively.

  “No,” Charm says guardedly. “Not for years. Last I heard he was doing drugs and participating in other highly illegal activities.”

  “You are doing great, you know,” she tells me again. “You hang in there. Soon you’ll be done with college and can begin your own life.” She hoists her bag over her shoulder and calls out to Gus. “The lady of your dreams is here, Gus. Turn off that junk on the television!” Gus’s laughter rings out from the other room and then they hear the click of the television being shut off.

  Charm sees how gentle and caring Jane is with Gus and knows she’s like that with all her patients. She gives him medication that relieves the pain and finds a way to make him smile through the pain the morphine can’t reach, treating Gus with the dignity and respect that is so important to him. Because in the end, that’s all he really has left. He knows he is going to die, but Jane is easing the way for him. She talks to him like he was the man he remembers himself to be—the firefighter, a respected member of the community, a good friend and neighbor.

  She thinks about someone finding out what they did five years ago. If anyone learns of the law she had broken, her dream of becoming a nurse would disappear.

  I want to do what Jane does for others, Charm thinks. I hope that I get the chance.

  Brynn

  I wake up shivering. The windows of my car are fogged over and it takes me a minute to figure out where I am. I wipe away the condensation with the heel of my hand. The sky is black and I see that I’m still parked in front of Missy’s apartment. No lights shine in the apartment and the street is quiet.

  My neck is stiff from sleeping with my head against the steering wheel and my mouth feels dry, like it’s stuffed with cotton. I think back to the night before, about how I thought for a second that boy could possibly be interested in me. Just me. I had thought that by leaving Linden Falls I would be able to start over in a place where no one would know where I came from, who my sister was. But I was wrong.

  I turn the car ignition and flip the heat as high as it will go, so that warm air blasts against my face. The display on the dash says it’s three-thirty. I hope my grandmother isn’t waiting up and worrying about me. I try to gauge whether or not I’m sober enough to drive back to my grandmother’s house or if I should knock on Missy’s door and crash there for the rest of the night. I can’t bear the thought of facing her, though, of explaining why I left in such a hurry. I’m sure word has already made the rounds. Soon I’ll be right back where I was when I lived in Linden Falls. That girl. Brynn Glenn. That girl whose sister went to prison for drowning her newborn.

  I decide that it’s safe for me to drive home. The world isn’t spinning like it was last night, even though my head is pounding and my stomach churns. I flip on my headlights and carefully pull out into the street toward home. I don’t know what I’m going to say to my grandmother. The truth, I guess. She’s just about the only person in the world I can be honest with, at least to some degree. She knows that I felt like an outsider in my own house. My grandmother understood. She told me that she felt the same way living with my grandfather and my father. They were both perfectionists, both incredibly smart, both interested in finance and astronomy. She said that try as she might, she always felt like she was on the outside looking in, wanting to be a part of their circle but never finding the space to squeeze in.

  When I was fourteen I took a sketching class at the community center. One of our first assignments was to do a self-portrait. I sat in front of my mirror for hours with my sketch pad and pencil, just staring at myself. The nib of my pencil didn’t touch the paper, my hand floating above it like a butterfly trying to find a place to land. Eventually, Allison wandered past my room and poked her head in.

  “What are you doing?” she asked me.

  “Nothing,” I answered. “Just an assignment for my art class. I have to draw a self-portrait.”

  “Can I see?” she asked, stepping into my room. I remember thinking, My sister is so beautiful. She should be the one I sketch a picture of, but I didn’t have the nerve to ask her. I tilted my blank sketch pad toward her and she looked at me, a troubled frown on her face. “I think that must be the hardest thing for you to do, for an artist to do. To draw yourself. For the whole world to see what you think you look like.” She shook her head at the thought, as if impressed. “Maybe start with your eyes,” she suggested. “And go from there.” Then she was gone, on to the next activity, the next school project, the next workout.

  I sat there for a long time, all alone in my room, smiling. Not just because Allison graced me with her presence—which rarely happened—but because she called me an artist. For once I wasn’t the little sister, the nobody. I was Brynn Glenn, the artist.

  I still have that portrait I ended up drawing of myself. It shows me sitting in front of a mirror, looking at myself, paper and pencil in my hand. And if you look closely at the pad of paper that I’m holding, you’ll see another girl looking in a mirror holding a pencil and paper, and on and on until the girl in the mirror is so small you can barely see her. I thought it was pretty good and my art teacher did, too. I got an A. I showed my mom and dad and they told me I did a nice job. I asked if I could get a frame and put the sketch inside it and hang it in the living room or somewhere, but my mother said no. The picture didn’t really go with the decor of the house.

  I never showed the picture to Allison. I was afraid of what she might say. For that one moment, Allison considered me an artist. I wanted her to keep that thought, remember me that way.

  As I pull my car into my grandmother’s driveway, I see that she has left a light on for me. As quietly as possible, I unlock the back door and step into the kitchen. The light above the stove is on and there’s a note on the table. Hope you had fun with your friends. There’s cake on the counter. I smile. This is another reason I love my grandmother. There’s always cake. My stomach still feels queasy so instead I get a glass of water and make my way to my bedroom. Milo is curled up on my bed, fast asleep. I nudge him to the side and crawl under my covers but sleep doesn’t come. I get up again, swallow my medication, adding an extra two pills to make up for the doses I missed the past few days and pull out my sketch pad. Climbing back into bed, I begin drawing, my hand moving as if on its own. Dark clouds, a river, my sister, a baby…and me. Watching it all.

  Allison

  I’m on for cleaning bathrooms today at Gertrude House and then later I’m going to meet with Olene about a possible interview for a job at a local bookstore. I’m very excited about the job prospect and nervous, too. Olene is active in several
community groups and many of her girls, as she calls us, get jobs at local businesses near Gertrude House. I set my bucket of cleaning supplies on the floor, grab the toilet wand and lift the lid of a toilet. Inside, I find a particularly realistic doll with wide, staring eyes looking up at me from the toilet bowl. I can’t breathe when I see it. It has the same smooth pink scalp of the baby I gave birth to and its arms are reaching out for me as if begging me to pick her up. I don’t stomp out of the bathroom wielding the toilet brush, ready to fight; I don’t yell or scream obscenities, or promise revenge. I sink to the floor of the bathroom and lay my forehead against the blue tiled wall and cry and cry.

  Finally, Olene comes into the bathroom—there are no locks on any of the doors in the house—and sits on the floor with me, holding me as I cry as I haven’t done in years. No one has ever seen me cry this way. Not my mother, or father, or even Brynn. I hold on to Olene’s thin frame, her knobby shoulders digging into my cheek, and cry.

  “Shhh now, Allison, shhh,” she whispers into my ear, her stale cigarette breath a welcome breeze against my cheek. “It’s going to get better,” she promises. “Do you hear me, Allison?” I snuffle and nod into her neck. “Then let’s get you up and wash your face.” She places her rough, leathery hands on my shoulders. “It’s not going to be easy,” she says, looking up at me. “It’s probably going to get a lot harder before it gets easier. No one can change what you did or what has happened in the past.” I lower my head and start to cry again. “But—” she says so sharply that I have to look at her again. “But you do have control over who you are now and how you carry yourself. Do you understand?” I can’t answer her. “Do you understand?” she says again, and I bob my chin up and down.

  “Meet the world with hope in your heart, Allison,” Olene says gently, tears gathering in her own eyes. “Meet the world with hope and it will reward you. I promise,” Olene says in a way that I know she’s said the exact same thing to dozens, maybe hundreds, of girls over the years.

  I nod my head and rub my eyes.

  “Are you going to be okay?” Olene asks.

  “I’m fine,” I tell her stupidly, nodding my head up and down and sniffling. It is so obvious I am anything but fine. “I just need a few minutes.”

  “Okay.” She pushes herself up from the floor and stands over me for a moment as if trying to decide if she should say more. “I’ll see you later at the group meeting.” She glances down at the baby still floating in the toilet. “You want me to take care of that?”

  “No, I’ve got it,” I say, and I hear the door click softly shut when she leaves. I look into the mirror at my swollen eyes and blotchy face. I can’t let the other women see me this way, I tell myself, and bend over the sink to splash cold water on my face. For a brief moment I think about how shockingly cold the river water would have felt on my baby’s face and a strangled gagging sound comes from my throat. I force myself to look in the mirror one more time and smooth my hair. It’s still long and shiny, a sunny yellow. I hate it. I grab a fistful of it, take a deep breath and look through the medicine cabinet for a pair of scissors but find none.

  I pull an old towel from the linen closet, reach in and lift the dripping doll from the toilet by its arm and wrap it up tightly. This is my test, I suppose, my initiation into the halfway house sorority, Phi Beta Felon. Well, I’m a kick-ass test taker. I open the bathroom door as the other residents sidle up to doorways to watch as I walk past them, my head raised, my back straight. I move purposely through the hallway down the steps, ignoring the snickers and comments as they follow behind me. I stomp through the kitchen and out the back door to where the large black garbage cans are stored. I wrench off the plastic lid and nonchalantly toss the bundle in. It lands noiselessly among the scraps of stinking food, the soiled paper towels, the garbage discarded by women who did bad things.

  Hope. Olene had said to meet the world with hope. I want to do this. I need to do this, but I don’t know how.

  As I move through the hallways of Gertrude House I hear the whispers of “killer” and see the angry, disgusted faces of the other residents. I will never be free of my past as long as I stay in Linden Falls. I have to get this job at the bookstore and I have to do my time at Gertrude House and then I’m going to move away. But first I have to see my sister face-to-face and make her talk to me.

  Claire

  The lights that line Sullivan Street sputter on at nine-thirty even though the sky has been midnight-black since seven. Watching the rain fall in silvery sheets, Joshua stands with his fingers pressed against the front window of Bookends, leaving sticky fingerprints that Claire won’t have the heart to wipe away. Look, the smudged impressions seem to say, look who has been here—a little boy of five who loves sour gummy worms and chocolate-flavored soda. Both of which Claire, in a rare moment of indulgence, allowed Joshua to have. They weren’t supposed to be at Bookends this late on a Monday evening, but Ashley, Claire’s seventeen-year-old part-timer, called in sick. Then the ceiling began to leak, causing a flurry of rearranging and mopping. Distressed, Truman slunk into the back room and Claire gave in to Joshua’s pleadings for his favorite sugary snacks.

  Now, two hours later, an exhausted Claire climbs the old rickety stepladder that Jonathan is convinced she will break her neck on one day, to finish the inventory that should have been completed hours earlier.

  “Mom,” Joshua says fretfully, “I saw lightning. I think it’s going to thunder.”

  “Just give me a few more minutes, Josh, then we’ll pack up and go home. I’m almost done. Are you tired?” Joshua shakes his head no. “We’re going to have to start getting you to bed earlier. You start school next week,” she tells him as she scans the upper levels of the bookshelves, noting what titles need to be ordered on her clipboard.

  “Can I go upstairs?” Joshua asks. Above the bookstore is an unoccupied but furnished efficiency apartment that Jonathan has been updating in hopes that they can rent it out to a college student one day.

  “Nope. Sorry,” Claire tells him. “Dad still has a bunch of his tools up there. There’s nothing fun up there, anyway, except for a leaky ceiling. I promise I’ll be ready to go in…” She lifts her wrist to check her watch and nearly tumbles off the ladder. “Whoops,” Claire says, steadying herself. “We’ll leave in fifteen minutes.”

  Joshua sighs heavily as if he doesn’t quite believe his mother. “Okay. I’m going back there.” He hooks his thumb in the direction of the children’s section and walks wearily away.

  Such a little old man, Claire thinks. She hears the jingle of bells as the front door opens and two young men slouch in. “Sorry, we’re closed,” she tells them, truly apologetic. She hates to turn readers away—not just for the money, although there’s that, of course, but she knows that yearning feeling of wanting the weight of a new book in her hands. “We open tomorrow at nine,” she adds over her shoulder, not becoming suspicious until they pull the hoods up, their faces hidden in the recesses of their oversize hooded sweatshirts. It’s the end of August and despite the rain it’s still warm and humid in the evenings. Dread fills her chest and only one thought comes to her mind. Joshua.

  The shorter of the two glances up at Claire, his hood slipping back, his dark eyes flickering toward hers. The second boy, taller and leaner, makes a beeline to the cash register. With a bony, nail-bitten finger he jabs at the register and the drawer opens with a clang, striking him in the stomach so that the sound of the coins clanking against one another echoes through the store. “Hey,” Claire calls in disbelief. “What are you doing?”

  The tall boy ignores her and begins stuffing bills and rolls of coins from the register into the pockets of his sweatshirt. Claire starts down the wobbly ladder, thinking of only placing herself between Joshua and the thieves.

  “Stay there,” the taller boy orders. She moves down one more rung, saying a silent prayer that Joshua won’t come out of the children’s section in the back. “I said, stay there!” he shouts, and he mo
ves toward Claire. His hood slips back to reveal brown wisps of hair, framing a face that could be very handsome if his lips weren’t curled in an angry sneer, revealing stained teeth. Meth mouth, Claire thinks. The boy has lifeless, dark eyes. Where is Truman? Claire wonders. Where is that dog when I need him?

  Again, Claire thinks of Joshua, hoping he’ll stay tucked away, but as she looks over her shoulder he is standing there, staring up at her with fear in his eyes. He looks so small and fragile. His face creases with worry and his hands are clenched together in front of him. The thieves haven’t seen him yet. Claire imperceptibly shakes her head at him, willing him to go back into the children’s section and hide, but Joshua is frozen in place. Claire takes another tentative step down the ladder and the boy reaches into the pocket of his sweatshirt. A few bills flutter to the ground and she sees the glint of metal. “Don’t fucking move,” he spits as he pulls a knife from his pocket.

  “I’m…I’m not moving,” Claire assures him, her eyes darting from Joshua to the knife.

  “Jesus.” His partner moves toward the cash register. “What are you doing? Put that away.” This boy is smaller, more compact, built like a gymnast or a wrestler. Black curly hair springs out from his hood and his eyes are gray, the color of slate.

  “Shut up,” the tall thief orders his friend and then says to Claire, “Where’s the safe?”

  “There is no safe, just the cash register.” Her legs are beginning to cramp and she resists the urge to shake them out, afraid to move.

  “Where’s the safe?” he demands again, his voice rising in frustration.

  They all hear the whimper at the same time and Claire’s stomach plummets. Joshua.

  “What the hell?” the shorter of the thieves asks no one in particular.