Let Me Whisper in Your Ear by Mary Jane Clark Read Free Book Online Page A

Mommy’s place. She had acted as if it were not at all strange that Mommy was upstairs in bed at dinnertime, instead of at the kitchen table eating meat loaf with her husband and daughter. Laura drank all her milk and ate all her peas and hoped that being a good girl would make everything all right.
    Laura had also pretended not to notice that Daddy was drinking even more than usual.
    For as long as she could remember, Daddy drank from the red-and-white cans. Mommy usually didn’t say anything, but Laura could tell that her mother was keeping track of the “red-and-whites” piled up in the trash can each day. “Emmett, that’s enough, honey,” she’d say. Usually, Daddy would stop.
    With Mommy unable to keep watch now, Daddy didn’t stop. He drank more and more. He slurred his words. He smelled like beer. Sometimes he’d stumble and fall when he got up from his chair.
    One night, Laura said, “Daddy, that’s enough, now.” And her father hit her. After that, Laura pretended not to notice as she heard one beer can after another pop open.
    Somehow, even in her little girl’s mind, Laura had known that her father had not meant to hit her. He loved her. She knew it. She excused him because she knew that Daddy was worried about Mommy.
    She knew because she had heard him. When her parents thought she was safely sound asleep in her room, blond, wispy-haired Laura stood in the hallway outside her parents’ door and listened to their hushed voices.
    â€œOh, Sarah, what will I do without you?” Daddy cried.
    â€œShh, sweetheart, shh. I’m so sorry, so sorry. But you have to be strong, you have to go on, for our little girl, for Laura.”
    â€œI can’t.”
    â€œYes, you can. You must. But, Emmett, you’ve got to stop drinking. Promise me you’ll get help.”
    Laura heard her father whimper and it scared her. If Mommy was leaving her, all she’d have was Daddy, and he was falling apart. Daddy, who she’d always thought was so big and strong. Daddy, whom she’d have to depend on to make everything all right. Daddy, who was sobbing.
    â€œPromise me, Emmett. You have to tell someone. Unburden yourself. You’ll never be able to stop drinking with what happened nagging at your conscience. You have to stop feeling guilty and own up to it. Admit to what happened. It was an accident. Go to the police. Confess.”
    Laura knew what “confess” meant. She had made her First Holy Communion that year—and along with it, her first confession, the other sacrament, Penance. She had had trouble coming up with things to tell the priest, things that would be considered sins.
    She stood in her flannel pajamas and bare feet, and wondered, What did Daddy do that Mommy is so worried about?
    Twenty years later, a childhood and adolescence of secrets and physical abuse behind her, Laura still did not know what her mother had been whispering about. But her forehead carried a constant reminder of her father’s sickness and inability to control himself.

14
    D R . L EONARD C OSTELLO finished his rounds at Mt. Olympia Hospital with a heavy heart. But it was not his last patient, a teenage girl who had been knifed in the face by some lunatic in Central Park, that left him feeling bereft. When he was done with her, several operations and many thousands of dollars later, she might even look better than she had before.
    Costello walked slowly down the hospital hallway, the antiseptic scent of recently cleaned linoleum filling the air. Nurses hurried down the hall, their crepe-soled shoes squeaking. Doctors’ names crackled over the PA system. But Costello was only faintly aware of the activity around him. He was thinking of his conversation with Gwyneth Gilpatric and it was deeply troubling him.
    Did she know? How could she know about the Parkinson’s? He hadn’t told anyone, not Francheska, not even his own wife.
    He had taken