The first secret arrived while Hannah was waiting. The doctor was running late. Maybe her physician was taking time to answer each patient’s questions and conduct a thorough examination, but she suspected the office was behind schedule because somebody had arrived late, which dumped everyone in the sick-and-well queue into limbo.
The waiting room chairs were filled with patients. She had brought the front section of her newspaper but, minutes ago, finished reading it, including the op-eds she usually only glanced at. On the end table beside her languished magazines so old and well-thumbed that she could visualize the contagious microbes bouncing about the glossy surfaces like video-game villains. She stared at the crooked picture on the opposite wall. A sailboat on sunny waters slanted towards the fake leather loveseat below. Hannah defeated the urge to rise from her seat, cross the room, and straighten the framed photograph by imagining her trapped compeers tsking at her compulsive nature.
On her right, an older woman—her handknit cardigan buttoned to the throat—labored over a sheaf of papers affixed to a clipboard. As she filled in the spaces highlighted with neon yellow, she sighed. “I must have given them this information a hundred times. Where do my answers go?” The woman flipped once more through the forms, then walked them back to the receptionist’s window. When she returned to her seat, she glanced at the magazines. “Don’t they ever get any new ones? I’ve seen these already.” Her voice was weary, and she rubbed her black eyebrows with thick fingers sporting no fingernail polish and, on her left hand, only a modest wedding band.
Never would Hannah initiate a conversation with a complete stranger. As a teen, whenever her chatty mother started talking to absolutely anyone within earshot, Hannah felt her backbone collapse into Jell-O, as mortification strove to shrink her to invisibility. But, this morning, rather than appear rude and with nothing else to occupy her, Hannah saw no harm in answering. “Maybe the doctors and nurses take the new magazines home to read first.”
Her seatmate smiled. “You must be right.”
Color-coded folder in hand, a nurse appeared at the doorway to the exam rooms and called for “Mr. Otis,” who jumped out of his chair as though afraid the nurse would change her mind if he didn’t respond quickly. Hannah wondered how many others remained in line ahead of her.
“What are you in for?” The woman next to her asked, then laughed. “Guess that doesn’t sound quite right.”
“Only a misdemeanor,” Hannah replied. They both chuckled.
“I shouldn’t ask,” the woman admitted. “Kind of personal, isn’t it?”
“No worries, I’m just here for an annual checkup.” Even as she reassured the friendly woman, Hannah found her own response odd. She had no reason to encourage such busybody behavior.
“An annual checkup—yes, that’s what I told my husband, so he won’t ask too many questions.” The woman tightened her lips. “I don’t want him to find out.”
“Find out?”
“I might have something really bad.” The woman touched Hannah’s arm. “You seem like someone people tell things to. The kind of person who can keep secrets.”
“Oh, I’m not a doctor—I couldn’t possibly comment on anyone’s medical condition.”
“No, I mean, I’d feel better if I told someone, but I don’t dare tell my friends. Can’t risk my husband finding out. I’m afraid he won’t want me anymore.”
An aching compassion washed over Hannah. If this stranger had a serious health issue, Hannah could do nothing for her, except maybe listen. “You can tell me,” she said. “I won’t repeat it to a soul.”
Later, when she returned home, Hannah took the woman’s secret out of her purse, where she had folded it into a clean tissue. She puzzled over the circumstances of this deep, one-time intimacy. Surrounded by strangers, an unknown woman had confided her inmost burdens.
Hannah fetched an empty jelly jar. Cheerful, perfect strawberry images decorated the lid. She tucked the secret inside and stashed the container on a basement shelf amidst a trove of spare jars.
Then, more and more secrets came, as if people in need shared some app or tracking device that drew them to her. Hannah scrutinized herself for signs that she had started behaving differently. Surely, this wasn’t another weird symptom of perimenopause.
At first, mainly strangers approached her. In the grocery store, as she gently fingered the avocados, praying to find a few that were nearly ripe, a short man in a flannel shirt asked her what parsnips looked like. “I’m shopping for my mother who broke her arm.”
“Here, I’ll show you where the parsnips are.”
Beside the case filled with carrots, celery, radishes, and parsnips, the man thanked her, then shook his head. “I’m afraid Mom will use this broken arm as an excuse to move in with me and my wife.”
“Uh,” Hannah tried to dodge the man’s confession, “I couldn’t possibly advise you about that.”
“I feel so guilty,” he admitted. “But she would ruin our marriage.”
In the end, Hannah took home his secret and housed it in an empty peanut butter jar.
Next, when waiting at the car repair shop for an oil change, she tried but couldn’t ignore the dinging phone tones and flashing fingers of the nearby woman with a dainty nose ring and a magenta streak running through her long hair. After exhausting minutes of a non-stop texting duel, the young woman finally announced, “I’m turning off my cell—that’s the only way to stop her!” She saw that Hannah was listening. “My girlfriend,” the texter explained, “won’t let up—she thinks I’m hooking up with my ex. I’m tempted to say she’s driving me to cheat on her. But that won’t help anything.”
“Maybe telling her would help,” Hannah offered, then cringed at her cheeky advice to a total stranger.
“Oh….” The woman shook her head. “It’s very complicated.”
By the time her car was ready, Hannah knew her seatmate’s knotty familial and romantic history. She took the secrets back to her house and tucked them into a floral-printed box that retained the fragrance of the jasmine soap it once held.
The following week, as Hannah rode the subway to a museum downtown, a bedraggled woman, who carried an infant bundled into a padded snowsuit with teddy bear ears, slumped into the seat beside her. “I hope he’ll stay asleep,” the mother confided, pushing her unruly hair from her face. “The rocking of the train soothes him, but the loud announcements and station stops interrupt any moments of peace.”
The woman’s winter coat was spotted with baby drool and spit-up. The smudges under her eyes looked like yesterday’s mascara. “I must be a monster,” she told Hannah. “There are times I want to leave him on the Metro.” She laughed like a bad actor. “Just kidding.”
Hannah left the subway with the mother’s secret temporarily stored in an Altoids tin from the bottom of her purse. When she got home, Hannah would find a proper container.
In her past, she had kept secrets, but now it was different. In elementary school, for instance, she and her girlfriends shared gossip and inside jokes, although the information was lower stakes: Kenny loves Olivia, Margie’s wearing a trainer bra, Mrs. Tuttle has a hairy lip. Anyway, such disclosures were hardly secret, as the whole class knew what the whispering was about before half a day had passed.
At least the recent revelations felt rather anonymous, as strangers were the ones giving their secrets to Hannah and she didn’t know the other involved parties. Any obligation was minimal—all she really had to do was listen. During the unburdening process, she sensed the freeing relief that the secret sharer experienced. The person even appeared to stand more upright—an ironic description, Hannah thought. After all, a secret was a type of lie, making her complicit in the deception. But if the truth was hurtful to others, she was providing a service by keeping it hidden. Besides, these incidents seemed to arise from accidental proximity and extended waiting. It isn’t as if I’m seeking out these confidences, she reminded herself—although she was, in fact, proud to be sought out for her trustworthiness.
Soon, however, work colleagues and other acquaintances began to track her down. In the office, they would catch her alone at her desk or out in the hallway as she returned from the restroom. The intern who stole yogurt cups and cookies from his coworker’s lunch in the communal refrigerator. The communications specialist who was having a fling with the IT guy. The administrative assistant who admitted she furnished her kids with school supplies from the copy room cabinet: “I’ve been asking for a raise for more than two years—the company can spare me some pens and paper.”
Acquaintances would call on the phone or drop by her house. No emails or letters, she noticed. They were careful not to put anything in writing. They acted as if the call or visit were casual but inevitably arrived at a sniffling or finger-wringing confession. Her social life became increasingly awkward as a tonnage of embarrassments, intrigues, wrongs, and fears were shifted onto her. In an effort to split herself from her friends’ secret lives, she created the mantra, “Into the basement and out of mind.”
With all the inflowing confidences, Hannah was compelled to organize the downstairs shelves by category: sins against romantic partners, grudges against family members, grievances with bosses and coworkers, petty thefts including income tax cheating and shoplifting, minor vanities such as facelifts and tummy tucks—on and on went the daunting process of classifying the shared information. Her limited space now required storing several secrets in each jar, and she began to mark the containers with masking tape labels such as “infidelity,” “embezzlement,” and “mothers.”
One spring morning, as she tied her athletic shoes in preparation for a brisk walk outside, the doorbell rang. She didn’t recognize the slim woman with the skinny neck who stood on the welcome mat.
“I need my secret back,” the stranger stated as though Hannah had it handy.
“I’m sorry—who exactly are you?” Hannah blurted before realizing how insensitive she sounded.
The woman took off her sunglasses and scowled. “You remember, I had finally started dating a decent man but didn’t want to risk telling him that I’d given away a baby when I was sixteen.”
Disturbed to be ambushed at her private residence, Hannah bristled. “And you want your secret back because…?”
“Because I think my boyfriend is going to propose, and I want to be honest with him. What kind of relationship would it be if he doesn’t know my history?”
Hannah nodded, even as her brain raced. How to find the woman’s secret amid the hundreds now hoarded in the basement? “Well, of course, I’ll need the requisite thirty-day period for retrieving a filed secret.”
The woman shifted her handbag more firmly on her shoulder and twisted her lips in disapproval. “You never said anything about a thirty-day retrieval period.”
“Sorry, that’s the policy. You can come back in a month.” Hannah crossed her arms to punctuate her assertion.
“Hmpf.” The woman retreated behind her sunglasses and departed with abrupt steps.
Hannah shut her front door and scrambled downstairs to the basement. Legs apart for balance, hands on her hips, she surveyed the months of secrets stashed into glass jars and coffee cans, crammed in old stationery and check boxes, stacked layers deep on narrow shelves….
Where would she have stored Skinny Neck’s buried truth? A sin against a romantic partner—or a family grudge, as her parents had given their teenager little choice about placing the baby up for adoption? Hannah might have to sort through every container until she found the needed secret.
This would take forever. She had kept the confidences, sure, but never thought she’d need to return any. And the nerve of Skinny Neck to demand back her confession after so much time had passed!
As if this incident weren’t upsetting enough, at work the communications specialist, with panic darkening his face, grabbed her in the kitchen. He pulled her close and whispered so vigorously that he was practically spitting, “You said you wouldn’t tell anyone about IT Guy and me.”
“I never said a word,” Hannah protested, also in a whisper.
“Then why did the marketing team give me a Cupid T-shirt for my birthday? They think they’re being cute, but I didn’t want anyone at work to know.”
“It’s not my fault you stare at IT Guy every moment of every single staff meeting. Some secrets are one and done. Others are ongoing.”
“I trusted you—I can’t believe you’re trying to blame me.” His jaw quivered with venom.
“Could it be,” she aimed for a gentle tone, “you actually want people to know?”
“Or maybe,” his whispering stopped, “you really want people to know!” He narrowed his eyes to snake slits and marched off.
This was so unfair. Two guys in the office were no longer speaking to her, and all she had done was listen when asked.
Meanwhile, her friend Q phoned with another accusation. “How could you tell V that I can’t stand her bratty kids!”
“The topic never came up. She must have figured it out on her own.”
“I’m all sunshine and kissy-kissy when I’m over at her house. There’s no way she learned this from me.”
Hannah resented another unwarranted allegation. “What do you expect?” she flung at her friend. “Your aversion leaks from your pores the way a drunkard reeks of alcohol.”
The rapid change in her reputation bewildered Hannah. Instead of being the trusted person who brought relief to strangers, colleagues, and friends, she had morphed into the architect of deception and strife. Q and V were no longer speaking to each other—or to Hannah. Apparently, V was mad because Hannah hadn’t told her when Q first confessed her dislike of V’s children. An irony Hannah found almost laughable.
When Skinny Neck returned after a month, Hannah pretended not to hear the doorbell. Even when the woman knocked as if she carried a hammer in her purse, Hannah hid out of sight in a back room. Before giving up, the woman screamed, “Your car is in the driveway. I know what you’re doing!” Hannah hoped her neighbors hadn’t heard the racket.
Before long, another stranger showed up. “I told you I made some big investments and hid them from my wife,” he said, “but I want to straighten this out now.” Hannah cited the thirty-day retrieval period and sent him away.
After her prolonged efforts to find Skinny Neck’s secret, the basement was in shambles. At first, Hannah had been methodical and separated the jars she had checked from the containers still to be scrutinized. But her resentment was growing now that her confidants no longer appreciated her good deeds. After full days at her job, she was too tired to search and resisted spending her weekends in such painstaking and disheartening tedium.
Skinny Neck reappeared one day as Hannah was carrying in her groceries. “I knew if I staked out your house, I’d catch you,” she snarled. “Where’s my secret?”
“Wait here.” Hannah dropped the bags of produce on the kitchen table, clomped down the basement steps, and grabbed up a secret willy-nilly. Maybe the woman wouldn’t notice right away—
“Finally!” The intruder grabbed the jar and ran down the front steps towards her car.
Hannah turned the lock on the doorknob, clicked the deadbolt, and even slid the flimsy security chain into its track. She listened as the woman’s car, out on the street, accelerated loudly, then zoomed away. Later, when it was dark, she would retrieve the remaining groceries from her trunk. Yet Hannah worried, once Skinny Neck opened the jar, how long before she came back? It was too much to hope that the woman would be fooled or settle for someone else’s secret.
Her landline rang. Without greeting, her nextdoor neighbor launched into a complaint: “That strange woman is so creepy. She sits in her parked car at all hours, like a burglar casing our street. I call the police, but she’s always gone by the time they arrive. Now I find out you’re the cause of her endless stalking and today’s racket. I don’t know what you’re doing—but STOP! I’m reporting this to the Homeowners Association.”
Hannah hung up, then sat down to brainstorm. That evening, she retrieved the canned goods that remained in her trunk and parked a block away, so that Skinny Neck would see no car in the driveway. After the sun came up, Hannah kept her blinds and curtains drawn.
By mid-morning, persistent pounding on the front door started again. Hannah peeked through her bedroom mini-blinds. Sure enough, the human hammer was Skinny Neck, her left hand gripping yesterday’s glass jar like a Molotov cocktail. Before the nextdoor neighbor could phone the police, Hannah herself called 911.
“There’s a stalker beating on my front door,” she explained. “This strange woman keeps coming to my house and accuses me of taking something of hers. She makes no sense and won’t go away. I think she must be unhinged.”
The dispatcher noted the address. “We’ll send someone right away. Don’t engage with the perpetrator, ma’am.”
When the police car drew up—its blue lights flashing—the woman froze, the glass jar held above her shoulder as though ready for launch.
Two officers approached and soon talked the woman off the porch and into the back of the squad car.
Before they left, one of the cops took a statement from Hannah, who thanked the police for their assistance. Though needled by guilt, she ended with, “I hope the poor woman gets whatever treatment she needs.”
Skinny Neck was only the beginning, Hannah realized. She had to protect herself. At work, she would keep her head down. At home, maybe adopt a large dog with a scary bark. Couch surf or check into a hotel. Find a roommate or hire a house sitter to say Hannah had moved abroad.
No, she needed a long term plan. Despite everything she’d done to help others feel better, soon she wouldn’t be comfortable around anyone. She had to escape.
Hannah applied for new jobs and, although no raise was involved, accepted a position in a related field. She discontinued her landline service and bought a new cell phone with a different number. She cut her hair short and dyed it red. The realtor she contacted soon sold the house and found her a rental property across the city.
Two weeks before moving day, Hannah stuffed the containers from the basement into enormous black yard bags and arranged for a special trash pickup. In the past, she might have taken time to separate out the secrets and recycle all the glass, cardboard, and aluminum. Now, however, she just wanted these burdens out of her life.
Yet throwing away the secrets wasn’t enough—somehow, she had to reverse the Secret Keeper’s curse. On the Internet, she read about possible remedies. She tried taking a salt bath, smudging her energy with a selenite wand and sage bundle, casting a candle spell, and making a mirror box. But she couldn’t tell if the curse had been dispelled.
Several days before the move to her new home, Hannah drove to Home Depot to buy some additional supplies. She balanced rolls of shipping tape and a dozen packing boxes in her orange shopping cart and stood in the self-serve line. Behind her waited a woman in her early forties, grimacing as she talked on her cell phone.
“I’m at the store, honey. Let me call you right back. You’re home from school now?”
The woman paused to listen. “I know, people can be so mean. Don’t let it get to you. I’ll call you as soon as I get outside.”
The concerned mother ended the call and exhaled, emitting a hundred hurts from years gone by. She muttered, “Kids—how can they be so cruel to each other?”
Oh, no—this was how every secret started. Hannah should not ask the woman what happened. In the past, she had tried to help, and look how the world repaid her. Time to reverse this dynamic. Turning towards the mother, Hannah asked, “It’s not just kids, is it?”
“You said it,” replied the empathetic woman.
“Believe me, I know.” Weighed down by selfish intent, Hannah rested her hand on the stranger’s arm. She lowered her voice to a confidential tone, then began, “You seem like someone people tell things to. The kind of person who can keep secrets.”
