Burying the Honeysuckle Girls (8 page)

Chapter Ten

Sunday, September 16, 2012

Mobile, Alabama

Rowe squinted at the pill bottle for so long, I had to wave the empty vial at him. He blinked at me.

“Let’s just start with a simple yes or no,” I said. “Did this bottle come from you?”

He sighed. “I’d tell you if I could read the label. I need my glasses.”

“It’s Haldol, Rowe. And the fill date is 1987. Did you sell this to my mother?”

“You’ve got to be kidding me. How the hell should I remember something from 1987?”

“Your mother worked at Pritchard back then.”

“Not exactly,” he said. “My mother had connections at Pritchard. She was on the board.”

“And that’s how you got started in your career as Mobile’s premier dope dealer, right? She brought home extras.”

“Can I have my clothes back?”

“Not until I get answers.”

“It was a long time ago, Althea, okay? Why do you even care?”

I leaned in. “Because when my mother died, when I was five years old, this bottle was almost entirely full. It took me about eight years to finish it off. I went slow—a pill here, a pill there. My special, magical SweeTarts.”

He made a face.

“Pathetic, I know. What can I say? By the time I was thirteen, I’d run out. I didn’t know where to go or who to talk to. I was afraid to ask my father. You know my father, the state’s attorney? The only person I knew who had anything to do with Pritchard, where this stuff came from, was your mother. So I rode my bike to your house and knocked on the front door. Only she didn’t answer the door, you did. Remember?”

He remembered. I could tell by the way his face flushed to purple, the way his shoulders slumped. The way, under his big gut, he’d shriveled up to nothing.

“Look, I was an idiot back then,” he mumbled. “I’m sorry.”

“What are you sorry for?”

“You know.”

“What are you sorry for, Rowe?”

“For . . . that time . . . in my basement.”

“What about all those other times?” I said, my voice trembling. “What about all those other goddamn times?”

Quaking in the freezing air-conditioning, watching my clothes form a pile on the orange shag rug . . . I’m dying of shame . . .

He looked miserable. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

“Did you sell these pills to my mother?”

“Yes. I sold your mom Haldol. What’s your point?”

“Why did she want it? What was wrong with her?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t even know how she found out I could get it for her. I was only giving some stuff to my friends back then. I was just trying to help her out.”

“There’s more. There has to be.”

“I have a family, Althea,” he said, his eyes pleading, beads of sweat rolling down the side of his face. “A wife and three children. The youngest is a baby. Do you hear me—a fucking three-year-old! I have a company with over six hundred employees depending every day on me. To see that they can feed their families. Sure, I take a little something now and then to take the edge off. But that’s it. I don’t sell the shit. Not anymore.”

“That’s not what was happening here five minutes ago. And because I’m sure you don’t want anything to upset your wife and three children, you’re going to tell me everything,
everything
, you know about my mother.”

In one instant, I saw Rowe’s eyes go flat and dark. His body rose up and out of the backseat and came at me with the force of a tsunami. I scrambled backward like a crab, onto the console between the front seats. But quicker than lightning, he swung a fist and cracked me right above my eye. I fell back, the dashboard connecting with my head.

I saw him then, looming above me, massive and red with rage, reaching for me with both hands. I felt myself lifted up and over the seat and then flipped and slammed facedown on the backseat. He yanked at the waistband of my pants as I thrashed and kicked.

“You’re gonna take a picture of me?” he said, one hand pressing down between my shoulder blades, pinning me to the seat. “You little brat. I will fucking kill you.”

My head throbbed, and I saw pulsing purple-edged lights. Cawing sounds filled the car, and I realized it was me, my mouth against the leather, trying to scream. I stretched out my hand, groping for the key fob on the console. My fingers closed around it, fingers pressing in desperation, and in a split second, the air was filled with the earsplitting, shrieking sound of the car alarm.

I felt him release me, and I scrambled up and away, pressing my back against the opposite door.

“Jesus!” he yelled. “Shut it off!”

I didn’t move, the fob clutched in my fist.

“Althea!”

I looked down at the fob. I couldn’t focus.

He was pulling on his pants, scrambling for his shirt. “Hit the red button, you idiot.” He held out his hand. “Just give it to me.”

“Fuck you,” I yelled back. I gripped the fob to my chest and looked out the window. A couple of golfers had paused near the pro shop and were staring in the direction of the car. I felt a hand swipe at me, ripping the fob out of my grip. I turned around, clawed for it, but it was too late. Rowe was holding it up triumphantly, and suddenly there was silence.

He threw the fob at me, narrowly missing my head.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said in a level voice. “But I need you to give me that phone.”

“Tell me what you know about my mother. Tell me, and I’ll give you the phone.”

“And you delete all the pictures.”

If we’d been a pair of hyenas, we’d be circling and snapping at each other. At this point, though, between the two of us, I speculated that Rowe was the one with far more to lose. After a few seconds, I saw his eyes flicker, and I realized, with a twinge of incredulity, that I was right. I’d done it. I’d beaten him.

“I know you won’t believe me,” he said. “But I only wanted to help her.”

He was right. I didn’t believe him, but I told him to get on with it anyway. Even if his story was crap, I had to hear it. It was all I had.

“She was in a bad way the last night I saw her. She was messed up, hallucinating, and talking like a crazy person. She asked me to take her a couple of places.”

“And you did it?”

“Yeah. I took her to a house up in Birmingham.”

“What house?” I asked.

Rowe shrugged. He’d never seen it before, had no idea who lived there. Trix had told him to stay in the car and disappeared inside. That’s when he’d left.

“You think you’d recognize the house if you saw it again?” I asked.

He shook his head, looked out the window. “Maybe.”

I leaned forward, threaded a couple of fingers into the crevice between the seat and console and extricated the phone. I laid it on the seat between us. “Go to Birmingham with me,” I said. “Show me the house. And tell me everything, I mean everything, you remember.”

“Fine.”

“Really?”

He was already thumbing furiously at the phone. “You know, I knew the first time I ever laid eyes on you, I was going to regret messing with you.”

I inhaled deeply and let it out, as steadily as I could. “You’re going to Birmingham with me, okay, Rowe? You’re going to show me the house and then go through every detail of what happened to my mother, from the beginning to the end. Right?”

He didn’t lift his head, engrossed in deleting the incriminating photos.

“You know it’s too late. They’re already in the cloud. Believe me.”

“I don’t know that I do. Maybe I just deleted them all.”

“Maybe you did, Rowe. And maybe you didn’t. I wouldn’t think you would want to risk that kind of thing.”

He stopped. Sighed. Tossed the phone down. “God. Okay, whatever.”

I climbed into the front seat and put the key in the ignition. The car didn’t make a sound. Not even a click. It was like a horrible replay of the incident with my own car earlier that morning.

I turned the key again. Nothing.

“Well, it’s been real,” Rowe said behind me. “Give me a call when you get your car fixed. We’ll talk.” He reached for the door, but it was locked. He jabbed at the button but couldn’t unlock it. “Come on, Althea, I said I’d help. Now cut it out.”

I ignored him and turned the key again but there was no response.

“Althea . . .”

I twisted the key and twisted again, but the mechanism wouldn’t catch. Buzzing with frustration, I ripped the key out and sent it sailing into the passenger’s-side window. Simultaneously, there was a
chunk
, and a
click
, and, all on its own, the engine roared to life. My head jerked up in shock.

Jay, standing at the nose of the car, his eyes narrowed ominously, held up a duplicate key fob.

“Good God, who is that?” Rowe said behind me.

I held my breath as Jay rounded the car, opened the door, and slid into the seat beside me. He shut the door and met my eyes. He raised his eyebrows.

“Hello,” he said.

“Hi,” I managed.

He waited. I did too.

“Just FYI,” he said finally. “This is a very nice car. It has a remote starter, a kill switch, and a tracking system. I knew where you were the minute you left my house.”

“Ah.” I swallowed.

He nodded gravely, like I’d delivered a sincere apology and he’d graciously decided to accept it. He glanced over his shoulder. “Who’s this?”

“I was just going,” Rowe said, his hand on the door.

“Rowe Oliver,” I said.

“Old friend,” Rowe said.

I snorted. “Human excrement.”

“So. You guys just hanging out in my car, in the broiling-hot parking lot? Just shooting the breeze?”

I felt my face flush. “He has information about my mother. He was going to show me a house she visited in Birmingham, that last night.”

“Okay. Birmingham. Sounds great.”

I met Jay’s eyes. He was studying my face, and I knew I was going to have to explain everything to him soon.

“Why don’t you let me drive?” he suggested.

Or I could always make up more lies.

Rowe led us right to the house, a mossy Tudor crouched on the top of Red Mountain. We pulled the car to the bluff side and stared. Between the crisscrossed timbers, the mildewed plaster was cracked, bits of it crumbled away. The windows were dark and there was no name on the rusted iron mailbox. One lone oak tree, half of it sawn off from disease or a lightning strike, curved its branches protectively over the house. The yard was mostly dirt with a few clumps of crabgrass.

“You recognize it?” Jay asked me.

I shook my head. “Who lived here?” I asked Rowe.

“I don’t know. She didn’t say.”

“Spare me. You know.”

“Maybe I did, but I don’t remember now,” Rowe said. “I just dropped her off and drove back home.”

“I have pictures, Rowe. Pictures I will show your wife,” I snapped.

From the backseat, he started to jabber. “Look, Althea, I wish I could tell you more, but I don’t know anything. I drove your mom here, and then I left. That’s it. That’s all I know.”

Somewhere in the middle of his speech, a tidal wave of exhaustion and despair hit me, and I felt tears spill out and down my cheeks.

“Do you believe him?” Jay asked me in a low voice.

I met his eyes and sniffed away the tears. Shook my head.

“Do you think he knows more?”

I nodded.

“Do you want me to help you?”

I hesitated. Nodded again.

“Say it.”

“What?”

“Say you want me to help you.”

I studied my knotted fingers. “Jay, will you help me?”

He studied me for a minute, I guess sizing up whether he thought I was going to pull my next crazy stunt. Then he looked in the rearview mirror. “You better call your wife, Mr. Oliver. Tell her you’re going to be late for dinner.”

Chapter Eleven

Sunday, September 16, 2012

Birmingham, Alabama

I told Jay I wanted to clean up and eat before paying a visit to whoever lived in the house overlooking the bluff. I wouldn’t be doing myself any favors by showing up looking like so much hot garbage.

Jay found a Target a couple of miles down the highway, and I went inside to pick up supplies—a couple of T-shirts, jeans, pajamas, and underwear. A handful of protein bars and water bottles. We found a hotel, a shabby collection of beige buildings with “Suites” in the name and a deserted parking lot. Jay gave me the credit card to check us in, and when I got back to the car, we marched Rowe into the room. Rowe called his wife and fed her a story about going to Birmingham on last-minute business, then Jay shut him in the tiny living room and locked the door between us.

“He can’t leave, and he can’t get at you,” Jay said.

I nodded, but I didn’t really believe him. I didn’t think I’d ever feel safe around Rowe Oliver.

While Jay ran a bath, mounded high with hotel-provided bubbles, I told him everything, beginning with the snack cart and ending with the cell-phone pictures. He told me he’d gone online and found the house on the bluff listed to Walter and Val Wooten. The name Wooten seemed vaguely familiar to me—maybe I’d heard somebody mention it at some point in the past. Once I was in the tub, he examined my forehead like it was the most interesting thing he’d ever seen in his life, maybe to avoid looking at the rest of me. I appreciated the effort, but at that point I honestly didn’t feel a shred of modesty.

“It’s not as bad as I thought,” he said. “But I still wouldn’t mind breaking his neck. Can we just send that loser home and call it a day?”

“No,” I said. “He has to go with us. He knows more than he’s telling.”

“Althea, it’s past eight. You’re exhausted. We shouldn’t go back to the house until morning. Let’s let him go.”

I rested my head against the back of the tub. “No. I need him.”

“He’s trouble.”

“I know.” I looked at him. “But so am I. And speaking of that, I really am sorry for stealing your car.”

“It’s okay. But I actually expected more out of you, after that big speech you gave me about your sordid criminal past.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not a car thief. I’ve always been more of a steal-your-wallet kind of gal.”

Or your mother’s pills.

He laughed. “Really? No.”

I gave him a look.

“You’re serious?”

“Oh, yeah.”

He leaned forward. “How was I not aware of this?”

“Because I was good at hiding things from you. I was good at hiding things from everybody.”

He was quiet for a moment.

“Don’t feel bad. Lying is my superpower.”

I’m warning you,
I thought.
This is me warning you.

He lifted an eyebrow. “You feel like getting it off your chest now?”

I laughed. “Not really.”

“I make a great confessor.”

“You go first,” I said.

He raised his eyebrows.

“Confess. Tell me about your wife.”

He scratched the back of his head. “Okay, well. She’s okay. A really good person, actually. Just not for me. She just wanted . . . a lot. A bigger place. A second place. A third place.”

“And you didn’t?”

“It wasn’t going to happen. I wasn’t on that level with my career. Ending it was for the best.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay. I’m starting to feel not too terrible about it. It’s in the past.”

I chopped a bubble mound, leveling it. “The past matters, though, doesn’t it?”

“For you, it does. Yes.” He had this strange expression on his face—this look full of unspoken meaning. “And for me too, I guess. You and I were the past, weren’t we?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, your turn. Tell Father Jay. Whose wallet did you steal?” He was grinning now.

I thought for a minute, then ticked off my fingers. “Leonard Albrecht’s, Jeff Tole’s, Scott Matthews’s . . .”

“Total dick,” he said. “That guy deserved it.”

“Clark Duncan’s, Farrell Westridge’s. Coach Anderson’s, three times.”

“Nice.”

“He always left it in his desk drawer during lunch.” I sighed. “I did purses too. Many, many purses.”

“And you used all that money to buy . . .”

“Pills.”

He examined his laced fingers.

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” I said. “A lot.”

“You know, you should’ve asked for my help back at the country club. I could’ve probably been of some assistance.”

“Rowe’s my problem, not yours.” I turned my head away. The porcelain felt cool against my face.

“Still.”

“He’s bad news. And he’s a fighter. I didn’t want to get you mixed up in all that.”

“You do not know me. I will fuck a brother up.”

I smiled. “Right.”

He was smiling now too. There was an awful lot of smiling between us, way too much of it. It made me feel drunk. Or high. I wondered when I would start blabbing—saying things that were uncomfortably real. That I would deeply regret later.

I shifted in the tub. “Tell me the truth. Why are you here?”

He sat back on his heels, studied the tile floor or his knees or something else I couldn’t see. When he spoke, his voice was low.

“Because you’re somebody who was important to me.”

I waited.

“And I’ve always been a little ashamed about how I kind of faded out of the picture when you hit your rough patch.”

“My rough patch,” I said. “You make it sound so charming.”

“I want to help, Althea.”

All of a sudden, I felt exposed, sitting there in the tub. He must’ve felt it too, because he turned sideways, so that we were both facing the door and the neatly arranged towel rack. He draped his forearms over his knees. Tapped his thumbs together.

“You want to talk about him?” He jutted his chin at the door separating us from Rowe.

“He didn’t do anything,” I said. “I took care of it.”

“No, I mean, when you were younger.” I felt myself flush, the heat rising up through my body. “He hurt you, didn’t he? Another thing you never told me.”

I pictured the Lortab. Tasted it melting on my tongue. I untwisted the bath plug and watched the soapy water swirl down.

Quaking in the freezing air-conditioning, watching my clothes form a pile on the orange shag rug—first the pink crop top, then my acid-washed denim shorts, then my white Victoria’s Secret bra, the only one I have. The embarrassing, little-girl cotton underwear goes down too, and it’s done. I’m naked—my back hunched, arms wrapped around myself, dying of shame. Here in this dark basement room in front of a grown man, I stand trembling in the cold and humiliation and terror. I can’t help thinking how pathetic my little half-developed breasts must look, how thin and pale I am.

Rowe sits a couple of feet away on a futon, hands laced behind his head, surveying me. Then he bursts out into laughter. I want to cry, but I don’t. I just wonder what could possibly be so funny about a naked girl.

“It was a long time ago,” I said finally.

“I’m here, Althea. I’d like to be a friend to you, if you’ll let me.”

I’d never told anyone the whole story. In spite of the dozens of doctors and therapists, counselors and facilitators who’d tried to get it out of me, I’d kept that information to myself. I’d shared versions of it, of course—meandering, pathetic half-truths that got me more meds, papers signed, files closed, whatever I needed at the time. But my story—the real story—was mine alone, like the cigar box, a precious possession belonging only to my mother and me.

The bathtub was empty, and I shivered. Jay jumped up and pulled a towel from the bar, handed it to me. I wrapped it around me and stood, face to face with him. I reached one arm around his neck and kissed him.

He pulled back, gently removed my arm. “Althea, don’t. You’ve got to talk to me.”

Suddenly, the bathroom wall shook. It was Rowe, pounding on the door. “Hey!” he yelled. “Hey!”

I stumbled back, my heart thumping.

“I know you guys can hear me! Listen. You guys are going to have to let me go soon or my wife’s going to completely lose her mind. I’m just warning you, she will call the police in a heartbeat. She loves 9-1-1. The dispatchers all know her by name. Listen, she calls 9-1-1 when she chips her manicure. She calls 9-1-1 when we run out of toilet paper. You guys hearing me?”

Jay leapt up and ran out. I could hear the muffled yelling, back and forth from between the rooms.

I slumped down on the toilet seat. The pills were in my purse in the room, practically calling to me. I closed my eyes. Two or three, and I’d feel weightless. Four, five, or six, and I’d be gone for hours. I’d just have to be careful, but I knew how to avoid overdosing. It was one of my many worthless talents.

Or I could go back in the room and face Jay. Tell him what Rowe had done to me all those years ago. And watch for him to get that blank look in his eye that told me he saw me for the woman I really was. That he thought I was dirty and disgusting, and he’d prefer to start his life over with somebody more suitable. A woman less damaged.

After Jay had gotten Rowe calmed down, I dressed in the unlikely flowered Target pajamas and slipped into our room. Jay was sitting on one of the chairs by the window, murmuring into his phone. I sat on the far bed, pulled a pillow onto my lap, and wrapped my arms around it. He hung up, laid the phone on the dresser.

“Friend of mine. A lawyer. I just left my name and number. You don’t have to talk to him if you don’t want to.”

I nodded.

“Are you okay?”

“I wanted to tell you what Rowe did. If you still want to hear.”

His expression didn’t change. “I do.”

I was quiet a moment. I had the crazy thought that the words of the story, when I let them out, would cut me. But that was nonsense, wasn’t it? Speaking words didn’t hurt; it was keeping them in that did that. I just hoped I could get through the story without an imaginary, gold-dust-covered red raven dive-bombing my head.

“He didn’t touch me at first,” I began. “He just looked. Which was bad enough. Sometimes I have to remind myself that.” I dropped my gaze to the ugly patterned carpet, suddenly aware of the way my heart seemed to be trembling inside my chest. Trembling instead of beating. I inhaled. “He just looked until I turned sixteen.”