Black-Eyed Susans (35 page)

I’m hoping Lydia will appear in that
chair and tell me something I don’t know. She usually does.

“If you really want
to try hypnosis, I’ll recommend another therapist. I’m not on board here.
This is not what I do. I thought you understood this.”

“I don’t want another
therapist.”

My forehead begins to sweat. I’m
hanging from the ceiling, a bat in the dark.

There I am. In the back of the parking lot.
Tying my Adidas shoe with the pink laces that were in my Christmas stocking. Glancing
up. There’s Merry, gagged with something, pressing her face against a backseat
window of a blue van. Me, running. Clinging to a sticky pay phone. Praying the
silhouette turning the ignition in the van didn’t see me. Sudden, excruciating
pain in my ankle. Concrete slamming up. His face, looming. Strong arms, lifting me.
Black.

“Tessa. Are you seeing
something?”

Not now.
I can’t stop the
movie to talk. I want more. I close my eyes into a light so bright it burns.
There’s Lydia, dancing with the Susans. Pushing them off the floor. Voguing to
Madonna in my kitchen. Brushing my hair until my scalp tingles. Imitating Coach
Winkle’s sex talk:
Every time you think about doing it, I want a picture of my
head to pop up. I’ll be saying: “Genital warts, genital
warts!”

Images, smashing into my brain.
Lydia’s drawing of the red-haired girl and the angry flowers. Mr. Bell, drunk. The
dogs yipping and spinning in crazy circles. Mrs. Bell crying. Lydia and I pedaling our
bikes to my house with our bodies slung low and forward, feet churning as fast as they
can. Mr. Bell’s Ford Mustang breathing like a nasty dragon in the driveway while
we hide in the flower garden. My father talking to him in calm tones on the porch.
Sending him away. It was one night, and a hundred nights.

Me, the protector. A sob catches in my
throat.

Cut. New scene. Here comes the doctor. Right
on cue. I’ve seen this part of the movie before. There’s Lydia. And over
there, under that tree, are Oscar and me. Such a pretty campus to take a walk. If
I’d let Oscar tug me the other way, I never would have seen them.

The camera weaves in
close. I can almost read the titles of the library books crammed in Lydia’s arms.
Lydia, the pretend college girl. Yammering up at the doctor in her usual, earnest
frenzy. The doctor, hurried, trying to be polite, looking like he wants nothing more
than to get away.

MR. LINCOLN
: Your honor,
permission to treat the witness as hostile. I’ve been patient but I’m in the
home stretch here. This witness has skirted around my last five questions.

JUDGE WATERS
: Mr. Lincoln, I
see nothing hostile about a hundred-pound girl wearing glasses unless it’s that
her IQ is larger than yours.

MR. LINCOLN
: Objection
… to you … your honor.

JUDGE WATERS
: Ms. Bell. You
need to answer. Did Tessie lie about anything related to this case?

MS. BELL
: Yes, your
honor.

MR. LINCOLN
: OK, let’s
go over this one more time. Tessie lied about the drawings?

MS. BELL
: Yes.

MR. LINCOLN
: And she lied
about when she could see again?

MS. BELL
:
Yes.

MR. LINCOLN
: And before the
attack, she lied about where she was going running?

MS. BELL
: Yes.
Sometimes.

MR. LINCOLN
: And your father
also lied about where he was going sometimes?

MR. VEGA
: Your honor,
objection.

A little more than a week before Terrell is
scheduled to die, and I’m cleaning out Effie’s freezer.

The judge rejected Terrell’s habeas
corpus appeal five hours ago, news leached to the bottom of my stomach. Bill delivered
the announcement by phone. I could barely listen after I heard the word
rejected.
Something about how the judge felt it was
a tough call
but there was
no convincing evidence
that Terrell was innocent and the jury got
it wrong.

It’s not like the police aren’t
still plugging away with Igor’s new theories. They’ve turned up sixty-eight
names, all females in their late teens to early twenties from Mexico and Tennessee who
went missing in the mid-to-late ’80s—Jo’s best estimate on the age of
the bones.

The problem is, that list of sixty-eight
translates to hundreds of searches for family members who have moved or died or who
don’t answer their phones or who simply won’t give up their DNA to help
identify the Susans. At least fifteen people contacted by the police are family members
still listed as suspects in some of those cases. Some of them are probably killers, just
not the one we’re looking for. Eleven girls on the list turned out to be runaways
found alive but never removed from the missing persons database. It’s a slog that
could take months or years, all of it surmised from an ancient
code from the earth. It seems impossible. I can’t even figure out the best way to
scrape purple Popsicle juice out of Effie’s freezer.

“Effie, keep or toss?” I know
the answer—it’s been my mantra for the last hour—but I’m asking
anyway. I’m holding up a plastic bag that contains the battered paperback copy of
Lonesome Dove.
Gus McCrae and Pea Eye Parker had been freezing to death for
years behind several foil-wrapped items furry with ice crystals. Those have solidly hit
the trashcan outside without Effie’s knowledge.

“Keep,” Effie admonishes me.
“Certainly.
Lonesome Dove
is my favorite book of all time. I put it in
there so I’d know where it was.” I’m never sure with Effie if these
explanations are truth or cover-up.

Two days after Terrell is scheduled to die,
Effie is moving to live with her daughter in New Jersey. I can barely breathe thinking
about the absence of Effie’s spirit in this house, but here I am, helping my
friend load her life into boxes. At least that was the plan.

So far, she has not relinquished her hold on
anything, including four iron skillets that are almost exactly alike except for the
stories fried into their black history. In one, Effie made her husband’s favorite
Blueberry Surprise pancakes on the day he died. The skillet with the slightly rusted
handle belonged to her mother. Effie almost came to blows over it post-funeral with a
sister
who can’t cook a lick.
The other two leave the best, crispest
almost burnt
crust on okra and cornbread, and
you always have to have
two pans of okra.

Effie is rather elegantly sprawled on the
kitchen floor in a pair of old red silk pajamas, looking like an old Hollywood diva, if
that’s possible sitting on yellowed black-and-white linoleum surrounded by sixty
years of pots and pans. The kitchen, like the rest of the house, is a wreck. She has
spent the last three days yanking every single thing out of the cabinets, shelves, and
closets and tossing it onto the beds, the floor, the tables, any available open space.
The effect is that of a tornado hitting an antiques store.

“Sue, you’re awfully quiet. Is
it that damn Terrell Goodwin business?”

My fork stops its
scraping. My head emerges from the freezer. Effie called me Sue, her daughter’s
name, while asking me the most pointed question of our relationship.

“Don’t look so surprised. My
mind’s not that far gone, hon. I thought you might finally bring it up after the
police broke down my door that night and ripped off my earphones. But you didn’t,
and that’s fine. It’s not even a smidgen of who you are, honey. Who you
are—well, I’m going to miss who you are something terrible. And Charlie. I
want to see that girl grow up. She’s going to teach me to do that Sky-hype thing.
Did I tell you that Sue’s fiancé and I had a real good talk last night?
He’s fifth-generation New Jersey Italian. He told me it’s always been an
honor and privilege in his family to take care of the old. At least that’s what I
think he said. I couldn’t understand half the conversation. I thought he had a
speech impediment for the first fifteen minutes.”

I laugh because I’ve listened to Effie
rattle off fluent French in her East Texas drawl, and it wasn’t as pretty as a
Hoboken accent. It’s a slightly uneasy laugh, because I’m not interested in
any heartfelt, tell-all goodbye with Effie. I’m going to leave her dreams alone. I
don’t want her to see my eyes dilate into black holes or for her to walk endless
fields of yellow flowers that hold the scent of death. I don’t want her to wake up
still smelling it.

I’m relieved when my phone begins to
buzz somewhere near a counter of jumbled spices. I dig it out from under yellowed
directions for a Sunbeam Percolator and a recipe for Doc’s Gay Salad. I have no
memory of placing my phone under anything; it’s like the kitchen is turning into
some form of kudzu and growing over itself.

Jo’s name is on the screen. An instant
sense of dread, pickled with hope.

“Hello,” I say.

“Hi, Tessa. Bill told me he let you
know about the judge’s ruling. Sucks.”

“Yes, he called.” I want to say
more, but there’s Effie.

“I’m a little worried about
Bill. He looks like he hasn’t slept for
days. I’ve never
seen him quite like this with a case. I think it’s all tied up in his grief for
Angie. Like he can’t let her down.”

If I start to feel something for Bill or
Terrell right now, I will feel everything. I already sense the hot well building behind
my eyes.

“There’s another reason
I’m calling,” Jo continues. “The cops got the guy who stuck those
signs in your yard. He was caught vandalizing the lawn of a Catholic priest in Boerne. I
thought you might want to get a restraining order. He’s free on bond. His name is
Jared Lester. He’ll probably end up with a severe fine and community service
instead of jail time.”

“OK. Thanks. I’ll think about
it.”
I’ll think about not purposely pissing him off right now.

“One more thing. He claims, rather
proudly, that he planted the black-eyed Susans under your windowsill several weeks ago.
I’ve checked, and the potting soil in his garage has the same basic signature as
what I sampled from your yard that day. I don’t think he’s lying. He brought
it up voluntarily in the police interview. Here’s the deal. He’s only
twenty-three.” Meaning, not my monster. I do the math. He was five when I was
tossed in that grave.

Effie’s eying my throat, where my
pulse drums. One of my tears drops onto the yellowed coffeepot instructions with the
cartoon percolator with a Mr. Kool-Aid face. I begin to methodically stand the spices
into efficient lines.

How long has Jo known?
Long enough
that the police have caught this man, interviewed him, and set his bail. Long enough to
run tests on potting soil.

I should give Jo a break, of course. As she
ran that test, she had to know the outcome couldn’t reassure me that much.

My monster is still out there.

This time, the door opens, and it’s
me on the other side wanting in.

I search his face, and my heart cracks.

I silently beg him to see all of me. The
Black-Eyed Susan who
talks to dead people, and the artist with the
half-moon scar who tortures paint and thread to make sure beauty exists somewhere inside
her. The mother who named her daughter Charlie after her father’s favorite Texas
knuckleball pitcher, and the runner who has never stopped running.

“You look like hell,” I say.

“What are you doing here?” As he
says this, Bill is pulling me across the threshold into his arms.

We haven’t spoken much or texted in
the last several days. Bill doesn’t appear to have showered for most of them. I
don’t mind. He smells alive. His chin scrapes my cheek like sandpaper. Our lips
connect and, for a very long time, that’s all there is.

“This is a bad idea,” he says,
breaking us apart.

“That’s my line.”

“Seriously. I’m running on
fumes. Let me get you a beer and we’ll talk.”

“I’m so sorry about
Terrell,” I say, following him inside. “Sorry for everything.” My
words, inadequate.

“Yes. Me, too.” His voice is
grim.

“I didn’t mean to be so short on
the phone. I was just … shocked.”

He shrugs. “Next stop, U.S. Court of
Appeals. A bunch of buffoons with rubber stamps. The habeas appeal was our real shot.
Have a seat and I’ll be back with your beer.”

He disappears through an archway, leaving me
to glean what I can from the first encounter with his living space. I scour the art on
the walls the way other people surreptitiously peer at bookshelves and CD collections.
Or used to anyway. A few decent modern prints with reds, greens, and golds. Nothing that
provides insight into Bill’s soul, and if it does, I don’t want that to pop
my bubble.

I pick out a buttery white leather chair and
wonder a little too late if I’d gotten a nice young law intern named Kayley into
trouble by bullying her for Bill’s home address. When I showed up in Angie’s
basement, Kayley dripped as much exhaustion as Bill. I wore her
down
with my red eyes, driver’s license, and a rambling dissertation on Saint Stephen,
still being stoned to death over Angie’s shrine of a desk. Kayley spent much of
the dissertation time trying not to gape at my scar, openly impressed that she was
meeting the myth.

All of which led me to this 1960s-era
converted garage, which I’m sure is worth about $600,000 plus. It nests in the
winding waterways and trees of Turtle Creek, a famous, wealthy old Dallas neighborhood
where Indians used to camp. I love the play of light on hardwoods, the gracious white
brick fireplace with a grate covered in ash, even the concentric coffee rings near the
open laptop on the coffee table. The art, not so much. It matches these pillows.