Secret Language by Monica Wood Read Free Book Online

every moment seems important: passing each other in the skinny hall on the way in or out of the bathroom, pouring cereal into shallow bowls before Faith leaves for work, Connie for school. She’s hoping for one of life’s indelible moments—lately she is filled with hope—but she doesn’t expect to recognize one even if it comes.
    “I’m getting married,” she murmurs one morning as Connie starts out the door.
    Connie turns; her blonde eyebrows go up. “Wow.”
    “You want to be my maid of honor? Phoebe said she’d buy you a dress.”
    Connie shifts on her flat red shoes, the frayed hem of her jeans brushing the cotton strap. A month from the end of her second senior year, she looks poised for flight. She glances around the trailer, at the white walls, the clean tabletops, the new scatter rugs.
    “Where are you guys going to live?” she asks. Her eyes, made up in the palest green, seem furtive, scared.
    “In a house,” Faith says. “It’s in Portland, and the man says we can rent as long as we want, till we have a down payment.” She feels terribly sad, watching Connie’s high-boned face, remembering herself as a nineteen-year-old senior.
    Connie is half in, half out of the trailer, not moving. “Oh.”
    “You can live with us if you want. I mean, if you don’t go to stewardess school right off.” Connie has been working at Long Point Variety all year and hasn’t mentioned stewardess school once. “It’s a nice house,” Faith says. “It has an upstairs.”
    “Does it have a yard?”
    “Yes.”
    “A fence?”
    Faith thinks. “I don’t remember.”
    “How many rooms?”
    “More than you can imagine.” Faith looks away. “Enough for all of us.”
    Connie lingers at the door; Faith has no idea what she’s thinking. It occurs to her that moving into her first real home with a new husband would be easier if Connie came along. At times Faith is enchanted with the idea of marrying Joe—she dreams of a home with windows thrown open, a big dog asleep on the porch—but at other times she feels like a foundling left on a mountainside to die.
    “I suppose we could sell this place,” Connie says, looking around.
    “Do you want to?”
    Connie makes a sound between a cough and a laugh. “Why wouldn’t I?”
    Faith can’t think of any reason, but the idea is troubling. “So, will you?” she says.
    “Will I what? Live with you or be the maid of honor?”
    Faith shrugs. “Both.”
    “Okay,” Connie says, and is gone from the door.
    Faith stands in the archway of the Fuller front room, the family assembled, their eyes on her. Connie stands just ahead of her, dressed in pink silk, her arms held close to her sides. Faith might as well be looking at herself, a column of stone set into the watery motion of Joe’s family. The satin of Faith’s ivory dress brushes her cold skin all the way down to her ankles. She holds the flowers a few inches from her middle, half expecting them to explode.
    The front room burgeons with peonies from Phoebe’s garden, grand bursts of white and pink. One of Joe’s sisters-in-law is playing something momentous on the family piano, a monstrous thing, resoundingly stolid under the considerable weight of framed photographs of various stages of boys.
    Faith looks at nothing but the pink, lacy hem in front of her as Connie leads the way in a graduation-style march to the mantel, where Armand stands, round as a preacher, on the scuffed brick.Heat bears down on her from all sides but she cannot warm herself. She’s gone cold with the fear of love and the knowledge of her un-belonging, so cold she can barely stand, and so she removes herself from this joyful gathering, steps secretly away from them all while her chilled body stays.
    She watches Joe slip the ring over her knuckle. She watches herself murmur “I do,” all the faces tensing forward because they cannot hear her.
    She will remember this moment many, many times. Remembering, she will believe that if she had