Best Kept Secret: A Novel

Over the next couple of weeks, I rack my brain trying to come up with a good idea to pitch to Tara. Editors are always looking for the hook—there are very few truly original ideas, so my best shot is to find a new and interesting angle to bring to the table. O readers look for inspiring, self-help-oriented content, but I’m the last person on the planet to be giving out any kind of self-improvement advice. If O published something I wrote and a reader found out my current life circumstances, they might sue for misrepresentation. False advertising, at the very least. I was crazy to contact her in the first place; crazy to think I was ready to take on something so big.

Instead, I take on something small. On the Friday of the last weekend in April, I decide that not having Charlie with me is as good as any other time to do a deep clean of my house, so I head out to Target to pick up supplies.

I’ve never been an immaculate housekeeper, but when my drinking began taking up more of my day than being sober, my surroundings pretty much mimicked my inner struggle with chaos. I am loath to admit it, even to myself, but there actually came a point when I ran out of clean underwear and instead of doing laundry, I simply decided to stop wearing them altogether. With my alcohol-soaked brain, this seemed a perfectly reasonable act at the time; now, it seems desperate and sad . . . defective, really. I mean, what kind of person does that?

While I was in-patient at Promises, Jess hired the cleaning service she and Derek use for the houses they put on the market to come and scour the surfaces of my home. They ended up needing three days to complete the job, and I will never be able to repay my sister for her kind gesture. I don’t even want to think about the mess they found, the wine stains they had to scrub out of my carpet, the thickness of scum built up in my bathtub. The gunk under the toilet rim was there long enough for me to consider giving it a nickname. Since coming home, cleaning brings me relief. Instead of finding solace in a bottle of wine, I attempt to find it in Comet cleanser.

After wolfing down a giant corndog and a diet soda from the concession stand for lunch, I wander the aisles, considering the numerous selections of countertop cleaning solutions. When my cell phone rings, I fumble for it, thinking it might be Jess, and pull my cart to the side of the aisle so I don’t block other shoppers from trying to get around me. “Hello?”

“Hi, Cadence. It’s Kristin. From group?”

“Oh, hi.” My response is guarded.

“I’m sorry it has taken me so long to call you,” she says. “I kept meaning to . . .”

“No worries,” I say. I’d seen her at group a couple of times and thought about how she hadn’t called, but it didn’t bother me. Not really. Isn’t that what most people do, say things like, “We should do lunch,” or “I’ll call you next week,” and then you never hear from them again? I’ve rarely taken this kind of thing personally before and I don’t see a reason to start now. I regard a picture of a genie on a bottle, promising me surface shine like no other, and wonder briefly if it’s really true what they say about bald men being more virile than those sporting a full head of hair, and how one thing could have anything to do with the other.

“How are you?” I ask.

“I’m okay.” She pauses. “Well, not really.” Another pause. This phone call is going to take forever if she continues to do this. “Why do we do that?”

“Do what?” I say, thinking she might be talking about her pausing habit.

“Say we’re okay when we’re not.”

I shrug, as though she can see me. “We’re conditioned that way, I guess.” The bottle with the genie convinces me to throw it in my cart. I start to move down the aisle, phone tucked between my shoulder and my ear. “Can you imagine what would happen if we started answering that question honestly? Like ‘How are you?’ ‘Well . . . actually, I’m a mess. I started drinking heavily, and now I’m fighting for custody of my son.’ People would run screaming down the streets.”

She laughs, and I’m relieved. Most people would not consider the reference to drinking heavily very humorous. I’m not even sure I do, but there it is again, that sarcastic reflex. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” She takes a breath. “So, I was wondering, do you want to go to a meeting this afternoon?”

“Hmm . . .” I murmur, turning my cart down the next aisle, my eyes searching for the packages of multicolor scouring sponges. “I was kind of planning on cleaning my house.”

“Oh.” Her voice is small. “Do you want some help? I’m completely fastidious. It’s sort of a compulsion of mine.” She gives a short laugh. “One among the many, I guess.”

I hesitate—she hears this.

“I’m just . . .” she starts, then fades off. “I’m having a hard day. My house is so empty. My mom took the kids to Ocean Shores for the weekend and being totally on my own without being able to even visit them . . . the quiet is killing me.” There is only the slightest quiver in her voice, but I hear it. I know what she’s feeling. Silence is brutal for those accustomed to the constant noise of children. I also know what it must have taken for her to work up the courage to pick up the phone. Other than calling Jess, I have not had that kind of courage myself.

“Why didn’t you go with them?”

“I couldn’t get it approved by Child Protective Services. It’s mortifying, having to get approval to spend time with my own children.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry about. It’s my own fault.” She takes a deep breath. “So . . . you want some help?”

“You’re not at work?” I ask, grabbing the largest pack of sponges I see. Leaning over to reach them, I almost swerve my cart directly into an older lady walking next to me. I mouth an apology to her angry expression. She purses her thin lips in disapproval, and I have to grip the handle of my cart to keep myself from flipping her off. Defensive and angry—I can’t imagine why some man has not swept a catch like me right off my feet.

“I work from home a couple days a week,” Kristin says.

“Doing what?” This perks my interest. For some reason, I imagined Kristin a kept ex-wife, fully supported by child support and alimony. Taking child support from Martin, no matter how much I did need it to help pay the bills, has been difficult enough for my pride to contend with. I keep a separate account for Charlie’s expenses. I buy his clothes, many of his books and games, and cover the copay on his trips to the doctor with the money Martin pays me each month. If there’s anything left over, I apply it to the other household bills.

“Graphic design,” Kristin says. “I work for a firm over in Bellevue, but I really only go into the office for the social aspect of it, or to meet with clients. The actual work I can do from home.”

“Huh, that’s pretty nice.” I review the contents of my cart. I’m ready to head home. “Are you really sure you want to help me clean?”

“Definitely. I need to get out of my head.” Again, a statement I can relate to.

“All right then,” I say. I give her my address to punch into MapQuest, and we agree she’ll be there in less than an hour. I try to remember the last time I invited another woman to my house, outside of Susanne and Jess, and come up empty. The only thing I have to change is everything.

Andi will be proud.

I park in front of my house and the first thing that strikes me is the deteriorating state of the yard. This prompts me, on the way to my front door, to drop to my knees. I yank out the groups of dandelions and horsetails that have begun to overtake the bark-covered beds. I pull with vigor and intent, carelessly throwing the weeds behind me, not bothering to set them in any kind of a pile. My knees become damp—stained, I’m sure—but I continue to work, finding relief in eradicating imperfection with such immediate results. It’s unfortunate that I can’t apply the same process to my own failings.

I am working with such intent, I don’t notice when a car pulls up in front of the house, a door slamming, or steps moving toward me.

“Cadence?” Kristin’s voice pops through my concentration—a pin puncturing a balloon. I fall back onto my butt, my hand pressed over my heart, which is suddenly pumping like a jackrabbit on speed.

“Jesus! You scared me!” I look up at her. Damn, she’s tall.

She pulls the corners of her mouth down, gritting her teeth, breathes in sharply. “God, I’m sorry. Didn’t you hear my car?”

I look over to the curb and see a huge, tan Chevy Suburban. “I guess not.” I flap my hand in her general direction. “It’s okay, not a big deal. You just caught me by surprise.” I take a slow, deep breath in an attempt to slow my pulse. “Did you have any trouble finding it?”

She shakes her head. “You’re not too far from me. I’m just over in Magnolia.” I notice she looks softer with her hair down; the angles of her face don’t look quite so severe. She smiles prettily, and I notice one of her front teeth crosses slightly over the other. My mom would love to slap a set of braces across them.

“Ah.” I stand up, brush off my jeans, and return her smile. “Well, welcome.”

“Thanks.” She eyes the yard warily, the weeds tossed haphazardly along the walkway, all over the grass. “Are we doing yard work, too? I sort of have a black thumb . . .”

I laugh, wiping my dirty hands on the seat of my jeans. “Oh, no. I just got a wild hair. Impulse control issues, according to the great and powerful Andi. No ability to pause between thought and taking action.”

She smiles. “She doesn’t miss much, does she?”

I shake my head. “Nope. It’s highly irritating.” I motion toward the front door of the house. We step inside, and I watch her take in the front room. She sets down her purse on the entry table.

“What a great little house! How long have you lived here?”

“About six years. We moved in when I found out I was pregnant with Charlie.”

She glances at me sidelong, careful. Her eyes are the shade and shape of a newly minted quarter. “My son’s name is Riley. He’s six. Eliza is eight.” Her eyes fill, her bottom lip trembles. “Sorry. I can’t seem to stop crying.”

“Don’t be sorry. I know how you feel.”

She gives me a grateful look.

I show Kristin the rest of the house, and then we start cleaning, me in the bathrooms, she in the kitchen. I turn the stereo up loud, selecting an eighties greatest hits compilation, figuring we are about the same age, so she and I weathered junior high and high school humming along to the same new wave tunes. We work for a couple of hours, talking only when she needs direction as to where to stash my pots and pans, or where I hide the vacuum cleaner. When we both end up in the living room—each dusting the shelves on either side of the fireplace—I tell her how since getting out of treatment, I’ve cleaned like never before.

“I so totally get that,” she says, lifting up one of Charlie’s many Spider-Man action figures to dust beneath it. “Managing external circumstances to calm internal chaos. Like if my environment is orderly, maybe my thinking patterns will follow suit.” She sets the toy back down, looks at me, and sighs. “If only it were that simple, right?”

She continues working, focused and motivated, seemingly oblivious to just having so accurately summarized my own crazy thought processes. She appears happy to have something other than her own life to think about. There is something incredibly comforting about having another person in my home, no pressure to pretend or entertain. She is here because she wants to be. And maybe, just maybe, she’s here because she needs this as much as I do.

I am touching up the gross area on the floor around the toilet in the master bathroom when Kristin calls my name. She steps into my bedroom, grinning. “Hey, I think we’ve done it. This place looks totally awesome.”

“Like, totally, dude,” I joke. Thankfully, she laughs.

“Were you a Valley girl?” she asks. “I so totally was. I had a handbook and everything. I campaigned for months to get my mother to let me change my name to Tiffani. With an ‘i.’ ”

We laugh about this, too, and I can’t believe how normal I feel, how at ease I am with this woman I barely know. I don’t do this kind of thing. I’m unsure how, exactly, it’s managing to happen.

“Do you still want to go to a meeting?” I ask her, stepping into the bedroom. “I have a couple that I normally go to, but I’d be willing to check out something different, if you know of any.”

Kristin looks in the mirror at her messy hair, her now dirty clothes. “I don’t think I’m presentable enough to go to a meeting. I’m kind of a wreck.”

“I’d offer you a change of clothes, but I highly doubt I have anything that would fit you. We have slightly different builds.” It’s automatic for me to resent her a little for her thin frame, though I really wouldn’t want to be as skeletal as she is. Her clavicle looks like it could be used as a deadly weapon.

“I know.” She sighs, regarding us both in the mirror. “I’d kill for your curves.”

“Are you kidding me?” I give her a look like she is out of her gourd. We are the approximate physical imitation of Laurel and Hardy. “Everybody wants to be tall and thin.”

“No, everybody wants boobs like yours. I look like a boy.”

“You can buy boobs,” I say, cupping my hands beneath my breasts and pushing them upward, where they belong. “I can’t buy a faster metabolism.”

She giggles. “Yeah, but what about men?” She holds out her arms, encircling an invisible partner, twisting her face into a moony, exaggerated romantic expression. “Oh, baby, oh, my love . . . let me gather you to my bosom. . . . Whoops, you just broke your nose on my breastplate!”

We are both laughing now, and a sense of release fills me. Tension lifts from my body with each breath.

“Should we just hit a meeting another time?” she says after we manage to get ahold of ourselves. “I actually feel a lot better. More centered, I guess. I can spend the rest of the weekend getting a couple of work projects done.”

I nod. “Sure. I should probably try to get somewhere on my next article, too.” First, though, I have to come up with an idea.

“You’re a writer?”

“Well, sort of. “ I make a face. “A freelancer. For now.”

“That makes you a writer.” She winks. “Fucked-up, alcoholic creative type, like me.”

I smile. There’s something marvelous about four-letter words pouring out of the mouth on such a beautiful face. It strikes me how normal she seems. If I hadn’t seen her in the group room at Promises, I never would have guessed she was an alcoholic. She is too polished, too pretty. It just doesn’t fit.

“Haven’t you ever noticed how many actors and writers have problems with substance abuse?” Kristin goes on. “Look at Hemingway. Or Britney Spears.”

I laugh. “I’m sure Hemingway would love being lumped into the same category as Britney.”

She smiles. “You know what I mean, though, right?”

“Sure. Robert Downey Jr. is brilliant, but a serious alcoholic and addict.”

“Oh, I love him. I’m so happy he got sober.”

“Me, too.” I walk her toward the door. She stops short in the hallway, runs the tip of her index finger over a silver-framed picture hanging on the wall. In it, I’m behind my two-year-old son, chin propped on his right shoulder, my arms wrapped tight around his waist. It is an icy winter day; we are both bundled up in ski jackets and gloves. Our cheeks are red, our eyes bright. We have just finished building his first snowman. Our grins are ear to ear.

“Charlie?” she asks.

I nod, tight-lipped, two wide, tight bands of sorrow building up in the muscles of my neck. I made him hot cocoa that morning, and scones, which he mispronounced as “stones.” Since that day, that is what they’ve been; when he’d ask for them, it was, “Mama, will you make me blueberry stones?” I never had the heart to correct him.

“Look how happy he is,” she says. “He’s got your smile.”

“I miss him,” I say softly. And then, barely audibly, “I’m so sorry for what I’ve done.”

“I know.” Her expression melts into compassion and she leans in and hugs me. It is a solid, strong embrace. I hug her in return, grateful.

“Thanks for letting me come over,” she says, pulling away to move toward the living room. “I feel better.”

“Anytime,” I say, somewhat surprised to realize I mean it. “Thank you so much for your help.” I’m pretty sure I’m not just talking about the cleaning. I don’t know where to put all I feel. This woman fed something in me today that has lived a lifetime of starvation.

After she leaves, I throw in a load of laundry, and for the first time in months decide to fix myself something healthy to eat. Since there’s nothing in the house, I swallow my angst about the local market and zip over the few blocks to buy some romaine, cooked chicken breast, cranberries, and pecans for a salad. I find a small loaf of par-baked French bread and imagine its fresh, yeasty scent wafting through the house.

On the drive home, I realize that this has been one of the more pleasant afternoons I’ve spent in a very long time. I can’t remember laughing so much since Martin took Charlie away—long before that, really. I didn’t get anything written for Tara like I’d hoped, but I also didn’t obsess about what Mr. Hines’s decision will be. I didn’t cry. I didn’t sit and roll around in mental misery over all the mistakes I’ve made. I got my house clean. And I think—in spite of every wall I threw up in defense—I might have even made a friend.