Lies and Secrets
Stilted, without a drop of ease in my movements, I stepped toward the nursing home, and my hands trembled with trepidation like never before in my forty-five years. I wasn’t sure how I would find him. If he would even remember me, never mind the history between us.
But it was something I had to do for closure. To hopefully stop the troubled dreams that plagued me since my daughter Louise’s dog died shortly after her twelfth birthday. Her sadness awakened a desolation buried deep in the recesses of my being, dormant these long years.
When I was pregnant with Louise, the way he’d pulled away from me at my mother’s funeral when I went to hug him still stung.
“Not here,” he’d hissed in my ear.
If not there, when and where? I was aching and broken, pregnant with a granddaughter my mother would never see. Where the hell, indeed?
When I was very young, he’d been a force for good in my life, staying up all night with Father, trying to save my dog JJ. Doc had hugged my eight-year-old self and said he was sorry, tears streaming from his dark-ringed eyes. It cuts deeper when someone you’d previously trusted with all your heart betrays you.
Memories of that time flooded my mind as I put one foot in front of the other on the cobblestone walk in the here and now. Maple trees bordered the snow-white columns holding up the entrance to the building, somewhat like an old Greek colonnade. I smiled at that. And those long-ago moments, some that made me shiver, kaleidoscoped before me in the dappled sun filtering through the leafy canopy.
On a dare, in eighth grade, against my nature and better judgment, I’d taken a book from the library. And lied about it when the teacher noticed me sneaking it into my bag. Holding the book aloft, he centered me out in front of the class, accusing me, but worse, he’d called my father.
In the shadow of Father’s disappointment, I cried until he took me in his arms, comforting my sobbing shame.
Tearfully, I apologized to my teacher. Probably due to my repentance, but no doubt the waterworks helped, he gave me a book about Greek Mythology.
“Many a battle between good and evil erupts within these pages.” My teacher slipped the thin volume, a white-winged horse on its cover, into my unsteady outstretched hand. The mythical creature drew my gaze.
He smiled. “You like Pegasus?” I loved horses, and for four years, I’d had my pony and best friend, Dandy, but a mythical winged horse had never entered my dreams. I clutched the book to my chest.
Shyly, I returned his smile and nodded.
Lightly he rested his hand on my shoulder. “Enjoy the stories. I hope you acquire some understanding of our fragile human nature from them.”
I thanked him, appreciating the book and the treasured forgiveness.
However, a heavy soul lingered with me as if Aletheia, the Greek goddess of truth, weighed me in her hand and found me wanting.
The next day I sat on our porch steps, the cold cement clutching at my thighs as the soft morning sun caressed and warmed my shoulders. Its light promising penance. The fragrance of sweet summer flowers filled the air like holy incense.
I bathed in absolution. Nevertheless, something secretive persisted in my life, a stain of shame, although the guilt, in this case, belonged to another, and what remained concealed was more furtive than falsehood.
To tell my truth risked distressing my father. Would I be believed?
Doc, the veterinarian, my father’s closest friend, sought me out in my father’s absence. My job was to exercise our racehorses, a young girl’s dream, until that nightmare of a man came creeping around, all hands and gyrations.
He would draw up close behind me and grab my budding breasts. It hurt. Then he tried to kiss me, pumping up against my leg. The thick musky odour of his aftershave clung to me as I jumped away and ran from the barn’s shadow to the meadow, tears blurring the view of white daisies that dotted the field. My pony whinnied and tossed his head in greeting.
There was no time for a bridle, and out we raced to Father in the far field. My urgency was transmitted to my charger. His hooves landed fast and true on the fresh-turned earth, dust clouds rising in our wake as we drew alongside the tractor. I hollered over, “Doc’s here.”
Dad geared the machine down and cupped his hand to his ear to hear above the chug of the motor. His hand dropped away from his head and motioned me over. When I dismounted, my feet sunk into the soft ground, dusting my shoes and lower legs, but I plodded on and grasped hold of the tractor fender to gain purchase on the little stair closer to Father’s seat.
I took a deep breath and repeated what I’d said, “Doc’s here.”
“Tell him I’ll give him a call. There’s a lot of work ahead of me here yet.”
“He really wanted you, Father.” How I wished to say, please come, I need you, but the words stayed stuck to my tongue.
“All right. I’ll be in.” His deep voice strained. Father took a slug from his water jug before lifting the disks out of the earth and heading the tractor in.
Relieved, I dawdled and let my pony snatch bites of twitch grass on the way back. Doc’s voice wheedled its way out to the yard from the open barn door as he tried to explain that he’d only dropped in to say hello, and I needn’t have interrupted the farm work. They talked for a few minutes, and then Doc left without a glance at me.
I stood, my limbs rooted to the spot as if turned to stone, silently staring at his back, realizing he knew I wouldn’t divulge his deceitfulness. If I’d posed nude on the highway up the hill from our farm, I couldn’t have felt more vulnerable.
Father climbed aboard the old Nuffield tractor, frowned and cranked the steering wheel toward the field to continue his honest day’s work.
Conversely, Doc continued his treachery on many subsequent days while I dodged in a dreadful game of keep away. No respite in sight. I couldn’t bother Father again without a better explanation. Instead, with my heart pounding, my stomach churning, I would dart out with a horse to leave Doc and his desires behind. The barn, my haven, spoiled.
Any concept of who or what constituted good shattered like a bird’s egg hitting hard ground. Doc, I’d considered a decent man. More than the act itself, the betrayal became an unfathomable river, deep and murky.
“Aletheia, what can I possibly do?” Not expecting an answer, I ambled along the lane to the house, my head bowed. The truth goddess couldn’t help me because no way would I reveal this shocking reality.
In one Greek myth I’d read, princess Andromeda, chained to a rock, suffered danger from a sea monster, the Gorgon Medusa. Her rescue arrived in the form of Zeus’s handsome son, Perseus. He beheaded the Medusa, and the magnificent Pegasus sprang from its blood.
Two summers had passed, and neither mythical hero nor mortal soul girded up to champion my cause. My loyal pony, dubbed in as my charger Pegasus, but I’d need to act as my campaigner—the problem mine alone. Only I could break my chains and banish this lecherous man.
A storm brewed as I stood beside the barn, my rock; the wind yearned and whispered around me as I faced the expansive electric-blue sky. My arms hung out at my sides, palms upward, appealing to the heavens for strength. “Please find me worthy of aid.”
One morning, all the swallows took flight in a chirping ruckus from their nests on the barn beams—Doc had entered the refuge. He lumbered close to me and rubbed against my leg, a randy, old, rutting boar of a man. “A kiss—Just a little kiss—One little kiss.”
When I didn’t jump away, a salacious leer crossed his face. His heartbeat thrummed against my chest. His aftershave nauseated. I held my ground. Within me trembled the terrifying might of an Amazon. Yet, farmgirl, I remained.
Roughly, I jerked him back away from my fledgling womanhood and slammed his portly body into the barn’s stone wall. My strong young hands gripped his weak old ones fast at his sides. He spluttered. His face flushed pink as sweat poured from his brow.
More potent than I looked, I kept him, my prisoner, while I kissed each of his cheeks feather-light. “That, dear Doctor, is how a girl kisses her father,” I emphasized the word father, as I loosed him. His eyes, shocked and startled, revealed understanding as he scuttled away.
That fall, Father took his horse to a country fair and allowed me to bring my pony as a reward for a summer of hard work. On the return trip, Father wanted to stop at Doc’s place to show off the ribbon my Pegasus and I won because Doc had always taken an interest in me. My dear Dad had no idea.
He asked if it would be all right, as I didn’t like anyone making a fuss over me. The truth stuck thorny and complicated, so I lied, and we stopped. I wasn’t worried about that lie, and Aletheia left me alone. My heart rested easy in my chest, with my secret kept. Secrets aren’t exactly the same as lies. In time, Aletheia and I dissolved our one-sided correspondence.
Father never found out what had transpired in his absence, and Doc never touched me again. After high school, Doc offered me a job in his surgery because I planned to attend veterinary college. I declined. Father said I couldn’t be serious about being a vet, refusing such a generous offer. Time passed, and I attended nursing training instead.
Now I was dropping in on Doc, a frail geriatric in a special care home. I hoped for closure, perhaps an “I'm sorry."
He sat in a chair, slumped forward against a safety belt. Blue veins stood out like sentinels on his thin, frail hands. I wondered why I'd come.
"Hello, Doc. It's Mia." My voice was soft and easy, but my heart thumped like a wagon on a rutted road. Would he remember me?
His gaze turned to me, a faint light in his filmy eyes. I doubted it was of recognition, but he said, "How nice of you to visit."
"Bloody nice." The words tumbled out my mouth, and if he comprehended what I meant, there was no sign.
Whether Doc remembered what transpired back in my father's stable with only the horses and birds to witness, I no longer cared. His diminished body and the lack of light-lustre in his eyes told me there would never be an apology.
To ask for forgiveness means to own the deed. Doc was never man enough, certainly not now with the Grim Reaper's hand on his shoulder.
But we are not all good or bad but slide a scale between the two. Our desires and deeds to be weighed in the balance.
Father went to his maker spared my secret. Neither remorse nor regret filled the recesses of my soul.
"Do the nurses treat you decent here, Doc?"
"Oh, yes. They're good to me."
"I’m glad.” Reaching down, I kissed him lightly on the cheek. No trace of his signature aftershave assailed me, just a fresh soapy clean odour. I turned and left, never looking back.
Harpocrates, the Greek God of secrets, rises new each morning with the silent sun. So too, can I.
But it was something I had to do for closure. To hopefully stop the troubled dreams that plagued me since my daughter Louise’s dog died shortly after her twelfth birthday. Her sadness awakened a desolation buried deep in the recesses of my being, dormant these long years.
When I was pregnant with Louise, the way he’d pulled away from me at my mother’s funeral when I went to hug him still stung.
“Not here,” he’d hissed in my ear.
If not there, when and where? I was aching and broken, pregnant with a granddaughter my mother would never see. Where the hell, indeed?
When I was very young, he’d been a force for good in my life, staying up all night with Father, trying to save my dog JJ. Doc had hugged my eight-year-old self and said he was sorry, tears streaming from his dark-ringed eyes. It cuts deeper when someone you’d previously trusted with all your heart betrays you.
Memories of that time flooded my mind as I put one foot in front of the other on the cobblestone walk in the here and now. Maple trees bordered the snow-white columns holding up the entrance to the building, somewhat like an old Greek colonnade. I smiled at that. And those long-ago moments, some that made me shiver, kaleidoscoped before me in the dappled sun filtering through the leafy canopy.
On a dare, in eighth grade, against my nature and better judgment, I’d taken a book from the library. And lied about it when the teacher noticed me sneaking it into my bag. Holding the book aloft, he centered me out in front of the class, accusing me, but worse, he’d called my father.
In the shadow of Father’s disappointment, I cried until he took me in his arms, comforting my sobbing shame.
Tearfully, I apologized to my teacher. Probably due to my repentance, but no doubt the waterworks helped, he gave me a book about Greek Mythology.
“Many a battle between good and evil erupts within these pages.” My teacher slipped the thin volume, a white-winged horse on its cover, into my unsteady outstretched hand. The mythical creature drew my gaze.
He smiled. “You like Pegasus?” I loved horses, and for four years, I’d had my pony and best friend, Dandy, but a mythical winged horse had never entered my dreams. I clutched the book to my chest.
Shyly, I returned his smile and nodded.
Lightly he rested his hand on my shoulder. “Enjoy the stories. I hope you acquire some understanding of our fragile human nature from them.”
I thanked him, appreciating the book and the treasured forgiveness.
However, a heavy soul lingered with me as if Aletheia, the Greek goddess of truth, weighed me in her hand and found me wanting.
The next day I sat on our porch steps, the cold cement clutching at my thighs as the soft morning sun caressed and warmed my shoulders. Its light promising penance. The fragrance of sweet summer flowers filled the air like holy incense.
I bathed in absolution. Nevertheless, something secretive persisted in my life, a stain of shame, although the guilt, in this case, belonged to another, and what remained concealed was more furtive than falsehood.
To tell my truth risked distressing my father. Would I be believed?
Doc, the veterinarian, my father’s closest friend, sought me out in my father’s absence. My job was to exercise our racehorses, a young girl’s dream, until that nightmare of a man came creeping around, all hands and gyrations.
He would draw up close behind me and grab my budding breasts. It hurt. Then he tried to kiss me, pumping up against my leg. The thick musky odour of his aftershave clung to me as I jumped away and ran from the barn’s shadow to the meadow, tears blurring the view of white daisies that dotted the field. My pony whinnied and tossed his head in greeting.
There was no time for a bridle, and out we raced to Father in the far field. My urgency was transmitted to my charger. His hooves landed fast and true on the fresh-turned earth, dust clouds rising in our wake as we drew alongside the tractor. I hollered over, “Doc’s here.”
Dad geared the machine down and cupped his hand to his ear to hear above the chug of the motor. His hand dropped away from his head and motioned me over. When I dismounted, my feet sunk into the soft ground, dusting my shoes and lower legs, but I plodded on and grasped hold of the tractor fender to gain purchase on the little stair closer to Father’s seat.
I took a deep breath and repeated what I’d said, “Doc’s here.”
“Tell him I’ll give him a call. There’s a lot of work ahead of me here yet.”
“He really wanted you, Father.” How I wished to say, please come, I need you, but the words stayed stuck to my tongue.
“All right. I’ll be in.” His deep voice strained. Father took a slug from his water jug before lifting the disks out of the earth and heading the tractor in.
Relieved, I dawdled and let my pony snatch bites of twitch grass on the way back. Doc’s voice wheedled its way out to the yard from the open barn door as he tried to explain that he’d only dropped in to say hello, and I needn’t have interrupted the farm work. They talked for a few minutes, and then Doc left without a glance at me.
I stood, my limbs rooted to the spot as if turned to stone, silently staring at his back, realizing he knew I wouldn’t divulge his deceitfulness. If I’d posed nude on the highway up the hill from our farm, I couldn’t have felt more vulnerable.
Father climbed aboard the old Nuffield tractor, frowned and cranked the steering wheel toward the field to continue his honest day’s work.
Conversely, Doc continued his treachery on many subsequent days while I dodged in a dreadful game of keep away. No respite in sight. I couldn’t bother Father again without a better explanation. Instead, with my heart pounding, my stomach churning, I would dart out with a horse to leave Doc and his desires behind. The barn, my haven, spoiled.
Any concept of who or what constituted good shattered like a bird’s egg hitting hard ground. Doc, I’d considered a decent man. More than the act itself, the betrayal became an unfathomable river, deep and murky.
“Aletheia, what can I possibly do?” Not expecting an answer, I ambled along the lane to the house, my head bowed. The truth goddess couldn’t help me because no way would I reveal this shocking reality.
In one Greek myth I’d read, princess Andromeda, chained to a rock, suffered danger from a sea monster, the Gorgon Medusa. Her rescue arrived in the form of Zeus’s handsome son, Perseus. He beheaded the Medusa, and the magnificent Pegasus sprang from its blood.
Two summers had passed, and neither mythical hero nor mortal soul girded up to champion my cause. My loyal pony, dubbed in as my charger Pegasus, but I’d need to act as my campaigner—the problem mine alone. Only I could break my chains and banish this lecherous man.
A storm brewed as I stood beside the barn, my rock; the wind yearned and whispered around me as I faced the expansive electric-blue sky. My arms hung out at my sides, palms upward, appealing to the heavens for strength. “Please find me worthy of aid.”
One morning, all the swallows took flight in a chirping ruckus from their nests on the barn beams—Doc had entered the refuge. He lumbered close to me and rubbed against my leg, a randy, old, rutting boar of a man. “A kiss—Just a little kiss—One little kiss.”
When I didn’t jump away, a salacious leer crossed his face. His heartbeat thrummed against my chest. His aftershave nauseated. I held my ground. Within me trembled the terrifying might of an Amazon. Yet, farmgirl, I remained.
Roughly, I jerked him back away from my fledgling womanhood and slammed his portly body into the barn’s stone wall. My strong young hands gripped his weak old ones fast at his sides. He spluttered. His face flushed pink as sweat poured from his brow.
More potent than I looked, I kept him, my prisoner, while I kissed each of his cheeks feather-light. “That, dear Doctor, is how a girl kisses her father,” I emphasized the word father, as I loosed him. His eyes, shocked and startled, revealed understanding as he scuttled away.
That fall, Father took his horse to a country fair and allowed me to bring my pony as a reward for a summer of hard work. On the return trip, Father wanted to stop at Doc’s place to show off the ribbon my Pegasus and I won because Doc had always taken an interest in me. My dear Dad had no idea.
He asked if it would be all right, as I didn’t like anyone making a fuss over me. The truth stuck thorny and complicated, so I lied, and we stopped. I wasn’t worried about that lie, and Aletheia left me alone. My heart rested easy in my chest, with my secret kept. Secrets aren’t exactly the same as lies. In time, Aletheia and I dissolved our one-sided correspondence.
Father never found out what had transpired in his absence, and Doc never touched me again. After high school, Doc offered me a job in his surgery because I planned to attend veterinary college. I declined. Father said I couldn’t be serious about being a vet, refusing such a generous offer. Time passed, and I attended nursing training instead.
Now I was dropping in on Doc, a frail geriatric in a special care home. I hoped for closure, perhaps an “I'm sorry."
He sat in a chair, slumped forward against a safety belt. Blue veins stood out like sentinels on his thin, frail hands. I wondered why I'd come.
"Hello, Doc. It's Mia." My voice was soft and easy, but my heart thumped like a wagon on a rutted road. Would he remember me?
His gaze turned to me, a faint light in his filmy eyes. I doubted it was of recognition, but he said, "How nice of you to visit."
"Bloody nice." The words tumbled out my mouth, and if he comprehended what I meant, there was no sign.
Whether Doc remembered what transpired back in my father's stable with only the horses and birds to witness, I no longer cared. His diminished body and the lack of light-lustre in his eyes told me there would never be an apology.
To ask for forgiveness means to own the deed. Doc was never man enough, certainly not now with the Grim Reaper's hand on his shoulder.
But we are not all good or bad but slide a scale between the two. Our desires and deeds to be weighed in the balance.
Father went to his maker spared my secret. Neither remorse nor regret filled the recesses of my soul.
"Do the nurses treat you decent here, Doc?"
"Oh, yes. They're good to me."
"I’m glad.” Reaching down, I kissed him lightly on the cheek. No trace of his signature aftershave assailed me, just a fresh soapy clean odour. I turned and left, never looking back.
Harpocrates, the Greek God of secrets, rises new each morning with the silent sun. So too, can I.
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Mary Daurio
Mary Daurio is a grandmother studying creative writing at Brock U while working on a short story compilation about her experiences driving racehorses. Her work has appeared online and in print.
Friday Flash Fiction, Cafelit (online and in Best of Café Lit11), Medium, Pure Slush anthologies, The Fictional Café, Harrowsmith Magazine, Spillwords Press, and Adelaide’s magazine and anthology. |