Cynthia's Secret

As the song goes, she was a coal miner’s daughter.* Cynthia, or Cyn as her family and friends called her, was the seventh of eight children born to the Palmers of Little Fork, West Virginia. The youngest of two girls, she’d already had seen her older sister Kathleen escape a life of poverty, debt, and death by decamping to Northern Virginia when she was 17. There, she met and married Brian Fields, an accountant. They just had their first child.

For Cynthia’s father and brothers, there was no escape. As a child, Cynthia watched as black lung disease—miner’s lung—slowly took her father. Even now, 10 years after his death, she still could hear her father’s labored breathing, his shortness of breath and chronic cough, and his inability to breathe lying flat. For him, death could not have come too soon enough. Even so, his sons had no choice but to follow him into the mines, where Cynthia was certain they, like their father, would perish.

Marching off to their deaths, they are, she thought each morning as she watched them leave the company-owned shack in which they lived and march down the street to the mine shaft, each carrying a lunch bucket dutifully filled by their mother the night before. Only Timothy, the youngest stayed behind, still too young to work the mines. But his fate was sealed as well. It was only a matter of time. They’d all end up owing their souls to the company store** before dying of miner’s lung.

It was Kathleen who convinced her to leave. “What have you to look forward to?” she asked her one day on the phone. “Any husband you could fine in Little Fork would almost meet the same fate as dad, and you’ll end up spendin’ your days rockin’ babies, washin’ clothes, and readin’ the Bible every day for the rest of your life!”

Cynthia knew she was right. And, as guilty as she felt leaving her widowed mother, she also couldn’t bear to watch what inevitably would happen to her brothers. So, with money sent to her by Kathleen, one morning in the fall of 1976, Cynthia caught the early morning Greyhound out of Little Fork, arriving some 13 hours later at the bus terminal in Arlington, Virginia. The small bedroom in the back of Kathleen and Brian’s apartment became her new home, and within days, she enrolled in several secretarial courses at a local community college. Two semesters later she was ready to join the thousands of others seeking employment around the Washington Beltway, where the need for secretarial service was insatiable.

It was an ad in The Washington Post for a legal secretary at my firm, Borchert, Simpson, and Overly, Attorneys at Law, that brought Cynthia to our door. What she knew about the law you could put in a thimble. Our HR interviewer, a young man just out of college himself, could have cared less. Cynthia, dressed in a skimpy red dress, held him spellbound. I posit he had barely looked into her eyes, much less at her face, during her entire interview.

He brought her to my office the next morning, introduced her to me, and led her to her desk outside my office, bringing her a cup of coffee before departing for his office. There she was, now wearing a blue dress cut well above the knees with a top that barely concealed how well-endowed the good Lord had made her. Frankly, I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had told me she was dressed to go on a date right after work. I mean, what the hell was HR even thinking? We’re one of the two or three top legal firms in Washington. Can this woman even type?

I let her get settled outside my office while I busied myself at my desk. A little over an hour passed before I heard a soft knock on the door.

“Come in.”

It was Cynthia.

“Do you need something typed, Mr. Marshall?”

“No, not at this time, Miss Palmer. But you might want to familiarize yourself with the style we use for filing papers with the various courts in the area.”

I swiveled my chair around, stood, and grabbed a case from the file cabinet behind me: United States v. Caufield, 1975.

“Here. This one is for a case we won two years ago in federal court in Alexandria. Take a look at it. Get a feeling for the types of pleadings we have to submit.”

She took the file, thanked me, shut the door behind her, and returned to her desk, where she began to sift through the papers. When I left for lunch, the court papers and briefs were spread across the entirety of her desk. Her gaze was focused intently on what appeared to be some constitutional research performed by our staff. When I returned an hour later, she was still there, apparently not having eaten. She was still reading the various documents when I left for count at 2:00 p.m.

I got to the office early the next morning, before any of the staff and other partners had arrived. Her desk was clear; on mine was a note: “Thanks for the opportunity to review the material. I returned it to the file cabinet behind your desk. Cyn”

Cynthia arrived just before 8:00 a.m. After knocking on my door and entering, she asked if I wanted a cup of coffee—I didn’t—and asked if I had a minute to discuss the case she reviewed the day before.

“Sure. Let’s move over here,” I replied, motioning her over to the small conference area near the panoramic window in my office that overlooked the Iwo Jima Memorial and the southern entrance to the National Capital.

We sat, whereupon I asked what she thought of the file I had given her.

“That criminal case you gave me to look at yesterday . . . I’m curious. Howja come up with using the Fourth Amendment as your defense?”

“Wow!” I thought. For someone with no legal training, you certainly got to the heart of the problem fast. I never expected her to delve into things so deeply. After all, she was expected only to take my scribblings and turn them into draft court filings for the other partners to review and mark up. Her interest in the law startled me.

“Well, it was simply a matter of following the evidence trail. I mean, the police had no business searching our client’s home without a warrant. It took the jury 20 minutes to return a Not Guilty verdict. I’m surprised the judge didn’t throw the prosecutors out of his courtroom after we finished questioning the arresting officer!”

She laughed. “That’s terrific. Do ya mind if I look through some other files in my spare time, Mr. Marshall? I find this legal stuff really fascinating.”

“Not at all, Cynthia, and please . . . call me Bill. You’re welcome to review any of the files in this office, but please remember they must remain here at all times.”

“That won’t be a problem, Bill” she said, smiling. And with that, she stood, turned, and walked to her desk, where she began typing a brief.

And could that woman type! I mean, have you ever seen someone lock up an IBM Selectric? Cynthia could. She regularly produced documents at speeds in excess of 120 words per minute, error-free, be they correspondence, court briefs, or what-have-you. The other partners in the practice couldn’t get over it. I think they were envious. Tough shit, boys! Suck it up! She’s my secretary.

Not that she didn’t have her faults. Good as she was in the office, she did tend to overdue things a bit on the weekends. Which accounted for her increasingly late arrivals on Monday mornings. I intuited she had a steady stream of lovers, some lasting weeks, some lasting months. I knew she probably slept with most of them, but hey, that’s her business, right? Sometimes she would regale me with how wonderful this or that one was. “Bill, Carlos is the guy for me,” only to have him replaced within a week. It simply was impossible to keep up with her love life.

But she never let her love life and the turmoil it brought interfere with her work . . . until that one fateful Friday in the middle of June 1979, when she failed to show up for work.

No one with whom she chatted at the office had heard from her. Nor did she leave a message for me.

I was worried. A call to her sister’s apartment mid-morning brought forth the answering machine. To avoid raising concerns, I left an innocuous message: “Miss Palmer, this is Mr. Marshall. I’m at the courthouse. Just want to remind you to bring that file you took home yesterday back to the office. Thanks.”

It now was late morning, and there still was no word from Cynthia nor her sister.

Then, just before noon, my phone rang.

“Bill, please come to Alexander’s Three. You know, the penthouse restaurant. It’s just up Wilson Boulevard from Route 1. Can you be here in 10 minutes? It’s important.”

“Of course. Be there shortly,” I said.

I was a short hop, skip, and a jump over to Rosslyn and into the garage in the basement of the building housing Alexander’s Three. Once up the elevator and into the bar, I joined Cynthia at the bar, where I found her smoking a cigarette. I signaled the bartender for my usual, a Black Russian.

“Now,” I said, “what’s this all about?”

At first she said nothing, staring straight ahead at her image in the huge mirror in front of us. Every few seconds or so she took a drag on her cigarette and slowly blew the smoke out through pursed lips.

The bartender set my drink in front of me and left. I lifted my glass. “Cheers.” I took a sip.

Silence.

Finally, she turned toward me and asked: “Can you keep a secret?”

“Of course. Just you and me here. Secret is the word.”

“I’m pregnant.”

What? I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I always figured Cynthia was pretty savvy when it came to these things . . . that she would have taken precautions. My god, there were any number of ways to prevent this from happening. I mean, even the guys could have done something. What the hell!

“Okay,” I said in a measured tone, “do you know who the father is?”

“Yes, but don’t tell anyone.”

“We said this would be our secret, Cyn.”

She ashed her cigarette with studied deliberation into a nearby black porcelain ashtray. Then, looking down, she murmured, “It’s Kathleen’s husband, Brian.”

“Are you certain?”

“Absolutely. I happened two months ago on a Saturday night. Kathleen and some girlfriends went into Washington for a girls night out. I ditched my date around 10 p.m. and went back to the apartment. The baby was sleeping in his and Kathleen’s bedroom, so we started to drink a little. One thing led to another and before you knew it—”

I didn’t respond.

“Well, aren’t you going to say something?” she demanded. “Like, how disappointed you are, or how disgusting this is? Or look what a fucking mess you’ve made of everyone’s life. For Christ’s sake, they have a baby, Bill. And she’s my sister!”

“I’m not going to judge you, Cyn. I’m sure you’ll be harder on yourself than I or anyone else ever could be.”

She took another cigarette from her pack, put it between her lips, ignited her butane lighter, and lit up. Then, after inhaling deeply, she slowly pushed the smoke out of her mouth with her tongue while inhaling through her nose.

“I can’t keep the baby, Bill. It would destroy my family. What am I going to do?”

“Do you want me to set you up with an appointment with my internist,” I asked. “I’m sure he could make whatever arrangements you’d need to help in this situation.”

At hearing this, she became flustered, stood, stubbed her cigarette in the ashtray on the counter, and bolted for the door.

I paid the tab and ran after her, but she had vanished in the hallway, having taken an elevator to the ground floor.

I returned to my office. Obviously, I couldn’t call her sister’s apartment, so at this point, there was nothing I could do but wait until Monday morning and continue our conversation at work.

I arrived at the office on Monday morning at 7:30 a.m. Cynthia hadn’t arrived by the time I left for court at 9. When I returned around 11 a.m., a man who was sitting in the reception area reading the paper.

“That’s Mr. Lawrence now,” the receptionist said to him, pointing me out.

He stood and walked toward me. “Mr. Lawrence? Mr. Bill Lawrence?”

“Yes, can I help you?”

“I’m Detective Wayne Masters of the Arlington County Police Department. I’m afraid I have some bad news, sir. Your secretary, Miss Palmer—”

“Yes? Cynthia?”

“Sir, I’m afraid she’s dead.”

“Dead?”

“Yes, sir. She apparently committed suicide last night. It looks like she jumped from the roof of Alexander’s Three restaurant in Rosslyn. We found your business card in her wallet.”

“Did she leave a note, Detective?”

“No, sir. Her sister and brother-in-law are at a total loss to explain what happened. We were hoping you, perhaps, might have some thoughts regarding her state of mind.”

“Beats the hell outta me, Detective. I haven’t the slightest idea why the poor woman took her life.”

*Loretta Lynn’s signature tune from 1970.

**Tennessee Ernie Ford’s 1955 version of the iconic 1946 coal mining song written by country singer Merle Travis.