Laura Lippman: Every Secret Thing

“Not even for a minute,” Ronnie said. “Anything could happen. Someone has to look after that baby.”

They crept up to the door. The screen was heavy metal mesh, so dense that it was hard to see much in the cool dark house beyond. But they heard nothing. No footsteps, no voices. Did you call out? Later, they would be asked that question so many times, in so many ways. Did you knock? Did you ring the bell? Sometimes Alice said yes, and sometimes she said no, and whatever she said was true at the moment she said it. In her mind, there were a dozen, hundred, thousand versions of that day. They called out. They rang the bell. They knocked. They tried the door and, finding it unlocked, marched inside and used the phone to call 911. The mother was so happy that she gave them twenty dollars and called the newspaper and the television stations, and they were the heroes on TV.

Most of the time, Alice was sure of two things-they knocked on the door, the screen door, with its mesh so tight and small that it was almost impossible to see anything in the shadowy house. It was a screen over the screen, an intricate metal design, like something on a castle. It ended in tall thin spikes, higher than their heads. They said: “Hello? Hello?” Maybe not very loudly, but they said it.

“This baby is alone,” Ronnie said. “We have to take care of this baby.”

“We’re too little to baby-sit,” said Alice, who had asked her mother about this at the beginning of summer, when she was trying to figure out a way to make enough money to buy her jellies and other things she wanted. “You have to be in high school.”

Ronnie shook her head.

“We have to take care of this baby.”

The baby in question was asleep, slumped sideways in her carriage, so her full cheeks were flat on one side, full and puffy on the other, like a water balloon whose weight had shifted. She wore a pink gingham jumper with matching pink socks, and a pink cap of the same gingham.

“Baby Gap,” Alice said. She loved Baby Gap.

“We have to take care of this baby.”

Later, alone with her mother and the woman with the spotted face-exquizits, Alice finally got Ronnie’s joke-they would ask her again and again just how Ronnie said this. WE have to take care of this baby. We have to TAKE CARE of this baby. We have to take care of THIS BABY. But Alice could not, in good faith, remember any emphasis. Eight words, requiring no more than five seconds to utter. We have to take care of this baby. We have to take care of this baby. We have to take care of this baby. Wehavetotakecareofthisbaby. They were being good, they were being helpful. People like children who are good and helpful. That’s what Alice kept explaining. They were trying to be good.

What did Ronnie tell her grown-ups-her parents, the handsome man with the shiny blond hair and the suit with the funny name? Seersucker, Alice ’s mom had said, looking at the blond man in the hallway. Seersucker. Alice knew, from her mother’s tone, that this was a good thing, as good as classic or vintage, even exquisite. What did Ronnie tell Mr. Seersucker, what did he believe when it was all over?

But that was the one thing that Alice never knew, never could know, and still did not know almost seven years later when she was released by the State of Maryland for her part in the death of Olivia Barnes.

“Interesting,” the ophthalmologist said, rolling away from Cynthia Barnes in his wheeled chair, like a water bug skittering for cover when the lights went on in the middle of the night.

“Not exactly my favorite word in a doctor’s office.” Cynthia tried to sound lighthearted. The metal apparatus was cold and heavy on her face, and although it wasn’t literally attached, she couldn’t help feeling as if she were in a vise. Each flick of the doctor’s wrist- Better here? Or here? Here? Or here? -seemed to tighten the machine’s grip on her.

“ Good interesting,” he said, rolling back to her. “Now, is it clearer with the first one or”-he flipped something, inserted something, she had never been sure what he was doing-“or this one.”

“Could I see those again?” She sounded tentative, even to her ears, which shamed her. Cynthia still remembered what she was like back when she was always sure about things.

“Absolutely. This one”-the letter O, bold but a little wavy around the edges, as if it were underwater-“or this one.” This O was not quite as bright, yet it was clearer.

“The second one?”

“There are no right answers here, Cynthia. An eye exam isn’t a test .” He chuckled at his own wit.

“The second one.”

“Good. Now is it better with this one or”-another flip-“this one.”

“The first one. Definitely the first one.”

“Good.”

She felt a little glow of pride, then embarrassment for caring at all. She had arrived at the doctor’s office on a wave of apologies, having skipped her annual exam for the last three years, despite the friendly little postcards that arrived every spring. She was AWOL from the dentist, too. And she might have passed on this eye exam, if it weren’t for her younger sister’s sly observation that Cynthia was squinting more often these days. “You keep straining like that, you’re going to have one of those little dents,” said Sylvia, who had never forgiven Cynthia for getting the one pair of green eyes in their generation. “Better reading glasses than Botox.”

Cynthia had almost snapped: Get off my damn back, I’ve earned that dent . Instead she had made this appointment with Dr. Silverstein, who had moved to the northern suburbs since she saw him last.

Satisfied, Dr. Silverstein swung the machine off her face, returned her contact lenses to her, along with a tissue to catch the saline tears that flowed from the corners of her eyes. He was younger than she, it dawned on her. He must have just been starting out when she first went to him thirteen years ago. She wondered how those years had treated him, if his life had gone according to his expectations and plans.

“Well, I’ve seen this before,” Dr. Silverstein said, smiling so broadly that his dimples showed, “but I’ve seen few cases as pronounced as this.”

Cynthia was not comforted by the smile. She had known too many people whose expressions had nothing to do with what they were about to say.

“What? What?” I’m going blind, I have a tumor behind one of my eyes, which explains the headaches . But she hadn’t told Dr. Silverstein about the headaches. Should she?

“Your eyes are getting better, Cynthia. We see this sometimes in people who have worn contact lenses for a long time. Nearsightedness improves. You’ve been having trouble focusing on things because your contacts are old and pocked by protein deposits, not because you need a new prescription.”

“What about reading glasses?”

“Not yet.”

“Good. I’ve heard that if you get reading glasses, your close-up vision gets worse and worse.”

“Ah, yes, that old wives’ tale. It doesn’t quite work that way.” Dr. Silverstein picked up a model of the human eye, which Cynthia found disgusting. She hated to visualize what lay beneath the fragile veneer of skin, always had. She was nauseated at the sight of flattened squirrels and cats in her neighborhood, and a passing glimpse of one of those surgery shows on cable could send her into a near faint.

“There’s a muscle that controls the lens of your eye, if you will. It gets rigid with age…” His voice trailed off when he realized Cynthia was staring over his shoulder, refusing to make eye contact with him or his plastic model. “Anyway, no reading glasses yet, just a new contact lens prescription. These should be ready in a week. Should the nurse call you at home or at work?”