The Secrets Beneath the Secrets

Sometimes, you think someone is telling you a secret when she is really just sharing something that you would keep secret if it were yours.  We don't give away anything that truly worries us.  We only share the stuff we can handle getting out, even if it doesn't feel like it as the words slip from our mouths, even as thoughts of how the information might be used against us, of how we might be perceived, sweat our dreams.

When you reveal something you've been hiding, it's because you have something else you're not sharing, something else that lives under that secret, another secret unto itself, one heavier with shame, one you think you won't ever be able to tell.

When I tell you that I looked through not one but three of my ex-girlfriends' journals, stealing past their secured drawers and password-protected defenses, the electric tingle of a Jerry Springer segment rushes up through your guts, shimmies in your heart.  It trembles at the corners of your faint, unintentional smile.  You feel the chill of the moment I slipped into the shadows, the hot fraction of a second it took for me to decide to flip a page or click a button and force my eyes into the role of accomplice.  You want to see me caught.  You want to see me get away.  You want to read their journals, too, but let me take the fall.  I am your hero, the one who crossed the line you always wanted to but never did.  I am your enemy, the one who violates privacy, who trespasses in the halls of the heart and mind, the one who might read your diary next.  I am not to be trusted.

You wonder why I've told you this.

But you are distracted.  The journals are a red herring.

You should not stop at the knowledge of these women's words, the image of the pages, white in my hands, the sentences scrolling into paragraphs on a computer screen.

What else, you should wonder, have I done?  What other, darker things?

Because I just gave away the journals.  You didn't even have to ask.  I told you, but because I did it in a whisper, you believed what I was saying was sacred.  This is how it's always done.  It is how you've done it with your priests, friends, lovers, parents, children, pets, bosses, colleagues, strangers.  You have hung your head over a cross or a bottle or your hands and confessed your sins without anyone putting a gun to your head.  You have told yourself it was hard to say the words, but we both know the truth.  They slipped out of you like a sigh because holding them in became harder than letting them out.

When I was seventeen, I stole my brother's girlfriend.

We could discuss the language here if we wanted to.  How "stole" in this context would be an objectification.  How dramatic it is, too.  We could have a whole conversation about choices, about responsibility.  We could slip into the world of cliches that exist specifically for cases like this one.  It takes two to tango.   It's a dog-eat-dog world.  (Or a sister tramples her brother's feelings on the way to fulfilling her hormonal goals world.)  The facts here matter a lot less than the truth.  But nonetheless, I will share them.

Fact: I met my brother's girlfriend online in the days of AOL when she instant messaged me, saying she was new in town, and because she was a little younger than me, my brother's age, I told her I'd introduce her to him so she might have a ready-made friend, and I did, but she and I continued talking and getting to know each other as my brother and her got to know each other, too.

Fact: She and my brother began officially dating not long after they met, and he fell hard for her.

Fact: My brother's girlfriend kissed me one night maybe five or six months into her relationship with my brother while she and I were watching a movie in her room.

Fact: I did not kiss back.

Fact: I told her if she wanted a relationship with me, she'd have to break up with my brother, that I wouldn't go behind his back.

Fact: It didn't occur to me that I would hurt his feelings whether or not the relationship was behind him or in front of him.

Fact: She broke up with my brother, and we started dating.

Fact: My brother did not invite girls over to the house after that.  He told our mother he didn't want me stealing anyone else.

The Truth: My brother's tears.  All the receipts for flowers he bought her while she was thinking about being with someone else.  The gold ring he gave her just because.  How he loved her more than I did.  How I loved him more than I loved her but did this to him anyway.  How long it took to repair the damage.

And so you know this now, what I am capable of.

And you feel sated.  Like unless I've murdered someone, there isn't much more I can say to drag you any deeper.  But you'd be wrong because I just gave that story about my brother to you.  Just gave it away.  Don't you remember what I said about this trick?

Here is another: I faked my own homicide when I was sixteen years old.

Closer, still: I led my twin sister, the person I loved and trusted most in the world, to believe I was dead.

It was hard to do.  I had to think carefully about what clothes I'd wear, what props I'd use.  I found a crowbar in the garage, pulled a knife from the block in the kitchen, grabbed a couple of rags from underneath the sink, pulled out a few tomato-based condiments.

I carried a rag, dowsed in barbecue sauce and ketchup, along with the crowbar to the front porch, set the bar by the welcome mat and the rag closer to the steps.  I left the front door open a crack.  It would be just dark enough when my sister got home so that she wouldn't notice the smooth, un-dented door frame.  But she'd see the black, serpentine outline of the crowbar, the ruddy handprint on the door.

I took an old t-shirt and slashed it with scissors.  I smeared ketchup and barbecue sauce around the gashes in the cloth, and before pulling the shirt over my head, spread the condiments all over my abdomen.  I finished by dabbing a bit on my ears, cheeks, and neck.  I pushed it though my hair like it was styling gel.  I smelled like a summer cookout, but in the glow cast by the the snowy TV screen, it wouldn't matter.  All she'd notice was the slits in my shirt. If she touched my face, her fingers would come away sticky, warm, and red. 

In the living room, I turned on the television.  The black and white dots fizzed and popped.  I set the condiment-smeared knife on a rag by the couch.  (I couldn't risk my mom yelling at me for messing up the carpet.)  I grabbed the portable phone from its cradle, smeared blood over its raised, plastic buttons, clicked it on, and listened to the dial tone until it broke into a harsh beeping that would let my sister know the phone had been off the hook for a long time, disconnected.  

I lay down with the phone loose in my grip.  I contorted my body, forcing my limbs into painful positions that would prove this wasn't a prank.  I practiced not breathing.  I listened for the crunch of wheels on gravel, for my sister's car barreling up the long driveway, branches and overgrown plants scraping metal and glass.

I slowed my breathing as I heard the car door slam.  The screen fuzzed in front of me, casting an eerie blue-white glow on me and the phone, softly beeping in my hand.  Footsteps on the flagstones.  Footsteps on the porch.  A gasp.  The front door creaking open.

"Carol?" Her voice trembled.  I reminded myself that laughing now would ruin everything.

A step forward on the wooden foyer floor.   She could see my body from the front door, but did she know what it was?  Another step.  Softer steps on the carpet in the hallway leading to the living room.   

Again, closer, just above me now, my name in the form of a question, tears catching on the letters.

The phone, lifted from my bloody palm.  A hand in my sticky hair.  I reminded myself to be heavy and limp, like an overcooked strand of pasta.  She shook me.  This was supposed to be funny, but I didn't feel like laughing.  I could hardly breathe.  

As she reached for the phone, I opened my eyes.  "Got you," I said, and she spun towards me with wide, relieved eyes, like I was a miracle.  She threw her arms around me and cried into my hair.  Her perfume washed over me until I could no longer smell the ketchup or barbecue sauce.  I closed my eyes and let her hold me.

What do you think of me now?  Is your lip still trembling with the thrill of revelation?  Or are you sick? Have you put some distance between us so you will not have to relate to the years of pain that 16 year old with the sauce in her hair must have been trying to escape from there in that living room while in the crush of her sister's arms?  Did you know that this is something that teenager can never undo?  That her sister still brings it up, often in the company of others, and that the one who pulled the prank knows that her sister does this not to hurt her but to show the depth of her hurt?  The sister, the one who believed the person she loved most in the world had been murdered, wonders why her sister would do something so mean.  She wants answers.  But there is only the sound of forbidden pages turning, of lips trespassing on lips, of a phone beeping into the night.  And under all of that, something deeper still, something yet to be shared.