S.E.C.R.E.T. (Secret 1)

I had begun to note that as my neighbors got older, they didn’t leave; they just moved to a lower floor. The Delmonte sisters had made the move a few months ago after Sally and Janette, two other sisters, finally moved to an assisted living facility. When the cozy two-bedroom was freed up, I helped them haul their books and clothes from the second to the first floor. There was a ten-year age difference between Anna and Bettina, and though Anna, at sixty, certainly could have taken the stairs for a few more years, Bettina forced her hand when she turned seventy. Anna was the one who told me that when the single-family dwelling was converted into five apartments in the ’60s, it became known as the Spinster Hotel.

“It’s always been all women,” she said. “Not that you’re a spinster, my dear. I know single women of a certain age are very sensitive to that word these days. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a spinster, even if you were a spinster. Which you most certainly are not.”

“I am a widow, though.”

“Yes, but you’re a young widow. Lots of time to remarry and have children. Well, to remarry at least,” Anna said, one eyebrow up.

She slid me a dollar bill for my troubles, a gesture I had stopped resisting long ago as that bill would inevitably end up folded over eight times and shoved under my door a few hours later.

“You’re a treasure, Cassie.”

Was I a spinster? I had gone on one date last year, with Will’s younger brother’s best friend, Vince, a lanky hipster who gasped when I told him I was thirty-four. Then, to cover his shock, he leaned across the table and told me that he had a “thing” for older women—this from someone the ripe old age of thirty. I should have slapped his stupid face. Instead, an hour into our date I began glancing at my watch. He was talking too much about the crappy band that was playing and how bad the wine list was and how many run-down houses he was going to buy in New Orleans because the market was surely going to correct itself anytime now. When he dropped me off in front of the Spinster Hotel, I thought about asking him up. I thought about Five Years hunched in the back seat. Just have sex with this guy, Cassie. What’s stopping you? What’s always stopped you? But when I caught him spitting his gum out the window, I decided I just couldn’t take off my clothes in front of this overgrown boy.

So much for my last date, I thought, as I prepped a bath and stripped off my waitress clothes. I wanted to wash the restaurant smell off me. I glanced down the hallway at the little notebook on the table by the front door. What was I supposed to do with it? Part of me knew I shouldn’t read it, and the other was powerless to resist. So all through my shift I kept putting it off, thinking, When you get home. After dinner. After a bath. When you get into bed. In the morning. Never?

Dixie circled my ankles for food while water and bubbles filled the tub. The moon hovered over Chartres, and the sound of cicadas blotted out the traffic sounds. I looked in the mirror and tried to see myself as someone else would for the first time. It’s not that my body was awful. It was a good body, not too tall, not too thin. I had dishpan hands, but overall I was in good shape, probably from waitressing all day. I liked the shape of my butt, it was nicely rounded—but it’s true what they say about your late thirties: everything starts to soften. I held my C-cups in my hands and lifted them slightly. There. I imagined Scott, no, not Scott. Will, no, not him either. He was Tracina’s, not mine. I imagined that guy, the one from the restaurant, coming up behind me and putting his hands on me like this, and bending me forward and then … Stop it, Cassie.

I had stopped getting those stupid Brazilian waxes after Scott died. The look always unsettled me, like I was supposed to be a little girl or something. I let my hand travel down to my … what? What do you call it when you’re alone? Vagina always sounded by turns juvenile and clinical. Pussy was a guy’s term and felt too feline for me. Cunt? No. Too much. I moved my finger around down there, and found, to my surprise, that I was wet. But I couldn’t muster the energy, the effort, to do anything about it.

Was I lonely? Yes, of course. But I was also slowly shutting down parts of myself, seemingly for good, like a large factory going dark, sector by sector. I was only thirty-five and I had never had really great, mind-blowing, liberating, luscious sex, the kind that notebook seemed to allude to.

There were days when I felt I was just a suit of flesh pulled over a set of bones, pouring in and out of buses and cabs, walking around a restaurant, feeding people and cleaning up after them. At home, my body was a warm place for the cat to sleep on. How had this happened? How had this become my life? Why couldn’t I just pick up the pieces and get out there, like Will had said?

I looked in the mirror again: all that flesh, all of it available and tender, yet somehow locked away. I stepped into the bath and sat down, then slid all the way under the water, submerging my head under the suds for a few seconds. I could hear my heart underwater, beating out a sad echo. That, I thought, is the sound of loneliness.

I rarely drank, let alone drank alone, but somehow that night called for a glass of cold white wine and a warm bathrobe. I had a box of Chablis in the fridge, albeit one that had been there for a couple of months, but it would have to do. I poured a big tumbler full. Then I settled into the corner of the futon-couch with the cat and the notebook. I traced the initials PD on the cover with my finger. Inside was a

nameplate with Pauline Davis printed on it, but no contact information. That page was followed by a table of contents in scripted lettering, spelling out steps, one through ten:

Step One: Surrender

Step Two: Courage

Step Three: Trust

Step Four: Generosity

Step Five: Fearlessness

Step Six: Confidence

Step Seven: Curiosity

Step Eight: Bravery

Step Nine: Exuberance

Step Ten: The Choice

Oh my God, what did I have in my hands? What was this list? I felt hot and chilled at the same time, like I had uncovered a dangerous but delicious secret. I got up from the couch to draw down my lace curtains. Fearlessness, Courage, Confidence, Exuberance? These words had leapt out at me from the page, blurring before my eyes. Was Pauline taking these steps herself? And if so, where was she on the list? I sat down again and read the steps once more, then flipped the page to the next heading, “Fantasy Notes on Step One.” I couldn’t stop myself. I began to read:

I can’t tell you how scared I was, how worried that I would chicken out, cancel, run. That’s what I do, right? When things get overwhelming, esp. sexually. But I thought of the word Acceptance, and I became open to the idea that I should accept this, accept the help from S.E.C.R.E.T. But when he silently entered the hotel room and closed the door behind him, I knew I wanted to go through with it …

I could feel my own heart beat as though I was in the hotel room as this stranger opened the door …

This guy! What can I say? Matilda was right. He was so damn sexy … he walked towards me slowly like a cat, and I backed away until the bed stopped me at the back of my knees. And then he sent me backwards on the bed with a gentle nudge, lifted my skirt and parted my legs. I pulled a pillow over my face after he uttered the only words he’d say that day: You are so fucking beautiful. And then he brought me into a kind of ecstasy I can’t really describe here but I will try …

I shut the book again. It was wrong to read this. It was so raw. This was none of my business. I had to stop.