Rebecca Schwartz 05 - Other People's Skeletons

cow. Wasn’t that an anti-Semitic remark? It couldn’t be, because Chris had said it— the same way psychics must exist because she was one. I had to think this over; I had to digest it. And right now I wanted answers about what I’d already thought over.
    “You’re as bad as anybody else. You said Roger DeCampo was crazy when all he did was say he had friends who’d seen ETs. And you go around hearing voices!”
    “I do not hear voices— that’s clairaudient, and I’m a classic clairvoyant. Roger Whizbang is clearly crazy because he’s obsessed— not because he thinks aliens exist.”
    “But you don’t know that. For all you know he had an experience like me— he went around all his life thinking there probably weren’t ETs, the same way I thought psychics were frauds— and then his best friend tells him he’s been kidnapped by little green men. What’s he supposed to do with that? I mean if a sane and rational person told him—”
    “Ohmigod!” She put her hand over her eye in that way she has. “You’re right. I am as bad as anybody else. I really am.” She sat quietly for a minute, and then she said, “Thank you for pointing that out.”
    “That’s okay,” I said. “I guess I am too.”
    “No. You stood up for the guy— I mean, you didn’t fall in love with him, but you didn’t condemn him as a maniac. And I guess I did.”
    “It isn’t that— it’s that I haven’t even read Shirley MacLaine. And I’ve probably spent hours making fun of her.”
    So we cleared the air a little— though I still had food for thought— and ended up with a great big sloppy hug. But I still went home feeling empty and isolated. It was nothing to do with Chris’s diatribe on religious intolerance— and the more I thought about it, I thought maybe she had a point— but everything to do with the loneliness I felt at learning I didn’t really know her.
    And it was only exacerbated by the way Rob and I had spent the day— pursuing Jason McKendrick’s secret. It was abundantly obvious he had at least one … more than one. Adrienne was a secret from the Rodenboms, and the fact that she was only his roommate was a secret from Barry Dettman— or else she was his lover and that was a secret from us.
    Did everyone have secrets? Did Rob? Did Julio?
    Did I?
    I thought about it. What were secrets about in our society? Sex, usually. We Americans were still as puritanical as the Pilgrims. If not sex, then what? Crime. That was a big one. Embezzling. Insider trading. Cheating on your income tax. Then there was money. Especially if crime was involved. What else? I had to admit Chris was right. Religion. “Weird” beliefs, meaning any that were different from— well she was right— from the sacred cows. If you wanted to practice law in this town, you’d better not be psychic. If you wanted to be considered intelligent and taken seriously, you probably shouldn’t get born again. But something nagged at me here— Chris was right about sex and women, too— Christianity did denigrate them. So how could an intelligent person be a Christian? I heard a little voice— did this mean I was psychic?— saying: How’s Judaism on those issues?
    No better , came the answer. And yet you could be intelligent if you were Jewish. What if you were something
really
outside the norm? Better keep it a secret.
    Other secrets I thought of: Addictions. Eating disorders. Health problems. These were the things you didn’t talk about— unless, in the case of the former two, you were in “recovery.” I realized that I had mentally put quotes around the word— denigrating someone else’s way of talking about his belief system, his life. Chris was so right— mocking was second nature. And the realization of it made me feel horribly isolated.
    Feeling grumpy and weird (was “weird” a judgmental, isolating word?), I stepped in the shower. Water is a great calmer.
    And yet, by the time I stepped out, I was more upset. Near panicked, in fact. Because in the course of my shower, I found a lump in my breast.
    I pushed the panic down. It couldn’t be there. I had felt a rib, that must be it. But I was too ragged to make sure right now— I’d do it in the morning. I made that a promise to myself: I’d check it first thing in the morning.
    Okay then, I had to get ready to go say good-bye to Jason McKendrick, someone I’d never even known. I wished I had time to play the piano— I knew that would lift me out of the