SECRETS by Dan Martin

Everything about Lisa had to be a secret, where we met (at a yoga retreat in Costa Rica) and that at the end of the week we exchanged email addresses, and that  she even gave me her home address so I could send her my book, which I addressed formally  to “Mrs. Lisa Velarde,” and wrote:  “Dear Mrs. Valarde”  and a few inane lines like “It was a pleasure meeting you…and I hope you like my little book”  above my signature on the inside cover, in case her husband opened the package.

And that she had recommended a book to me, The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls, an amazing memoir detailing the author’s harrowing childhood, which seemed to mirror Lisa’s own life, abandoned at an early age by a borderline psychotic mother who was in and out of mental hospitals and finally died when she was 10, and a more or less sane but inappropriate and narcissistic father who once hit on one of her friends in high school.

And that after that we exchanged phone numbers and began texting each other, first once in a while and then nearly very day, and that we then we started calling each other, first just to say hi, and then the calls began to stretch out to 10, 20, 30 minutes, sometimes an hour, before the phone would suddenly go dead, which meant that her always suspicious husband Lou had come home.

And that I started to live for those calls and texts and emails. And that maybe she did too.

Everything had to be a secret because there was something about her and me and the two of us together, even though we were 3000 miles apart, she in LA, and me on the east coast, sitting in a bar one night telling her things I’d never told anyone, about my son who was struggling again in life like he had growing up, unable to fit in in high school, how I’d come home from work hoping he wouldn’t be there, cause that would mean he had finally been invited to a party and wouldn’t have to spend another sad, lonely Friday night with me.

And she understood, maybe because of her own 10 year old son who had a rare bone disease and was in and out of the hospital. But to me it was cosmic, synchronistic, my own private late-in-life miracle: “Where have you been all my life?” I said into my cell phone, really meaning it, and then I said it again cause she hadn’t responded. Whether she hadn’t  heard me or was just speechless at the trite absurdity of my words, I didn’t know. But I repeated them anyway. And then she did respond, with what sounded like an embarrassed laugh, but I didn’t care cause she’d  been saying things like that to me too, about our special connection and how we’d always be part of each other’s lives no matter what. And I had believed her.

But  it turned out that Lou had been monitoring her texts and phone calls and emails from the beginning, even had seen the video she’d made the night we all went out together in Costa Rica, and I was in it. And even though there was nothing intimate going on between me and Lisa on the video, just my presence had sent him over the edge.

She called me on a Saturday night, and left a message to call her the next day, and when I did Lou answered the phone and I knew all at once that my job was to convince him that it had all been innocent , that we were just friends, sharing books and family stories, and I thought I was doing a pretty good job, talking about our kids and our families, and telling him that I was going through a divorce and that he was a lucky man to have such a beautiful woman like Lisa who loved him so much.

That last part was a mistake, I knew it as the words came out of my mouth , knew that he would take it the wrong, or the right, way, knew that he would see that it hadn’t all been so innocent, and not just what had gone on on the beach on the last night in Costa Rica, but more important all that had happened since, that I was attached to his wife in a way I shouldn’t have been, but couldn’t help being.

She texted me later that day, a cryptic message, that had always been her style, “I’m in for 72 hour observation,” was all it said. Turned out that after I had hung up the phone with Lou they’d had a big fight which got physical, and he had tried to throw her out of the house and  she had run up to her room and locked herself in. And he had called the police, told them she was suicidal and had locked herself in her room with dozens of bottles of pills, powerful narcotics she was taking for depression and anxiety. So she had been dragged out of the house by the police and involuntarily committed.

A few days later she sent me a text saying that she and Lou and her therapist had all agreed that she should cut off all contact with me. Didn’t even say goodbye cause I guess Lou was monitoring her messages. That was pretty much the end though we did secretly text and email each other once in a while over the next several months, until I got an angry email from her saying to never ever contact her again.

Way back in the beginning Lisa had sent me a birthday present, a “lovely,” that was her favorite word, that she said in her lazy California accent that got to me each time I heard her speak. It was a soft tan leather bound journal, that she’d found in a catalog in England and had sent to me at home cause I told her that my wife never ever got the mail.

I had just got out of Court. I hate going to Court, hate wearing suits, and I always try to settle all my cases in part I think, though it sounds stupid, so I don’t have to go to Court. But this time I’d had to go, it was an unsettleable family Court Matter, about custody and visitation for my sweet but dim client. We did well in Court and I was wanting to share my triumph with someone, so I called home, and my wife answered the phone and I said, like I always did: “What are you doing?”

And she said, “I’m opening a present from your girlfriend Lisa.” Said it just like that, with no emotion, the way she was about everything, so I didn’t know then, and don’t know now, though we discussed it several times afterwards, whether she was mad or sad or indifferent about the fact that Lisa had sent me a present, with a little card inside that said, “I love you….Lisa”, didn’t know what my wife really thought cause we had been living apart emotionally for a long time.

And buried under the tissue paper inside the box was a bigger greeting card size card, that explained and expressed Lisa’s  love in ways no one had ever done before, told me things about myself, wonderful things no one had ever said to me, things I had always hoped were true, thought might be true, but didn’t really think were true, cause no one had ever said them to me before.

I don’t know if my wife found or read what Lisa wrote on the bigger card.

That was the real secret.