Deep Fried and Pickled (Book One - The Rachael O'Brien Chronicles) (22 page)

Wires inside my head sparked. Thinking hurt. I stopped mid chew and asked, “Does Billy Ray paint?”

“Paint what?”

“Canvas’.”

Katie Lee wore a ‘what’? on her face. “Not that I know of. I can’t believe y’all missed the shootin’ flames. Unless,” she said, clucking her tongue, “someone was makin’ their own camp fire with a certain McCoy boy.”

“I wish I could remember.”

The left corner of Bridget’s mouth twitched, and her eyelids creased. “Did you ingest something you shouldnt’ve?”

“If cigarettes, secondhand clam smoke, and downing the laced beer you handed me count, I’m guilty.”

“In case you forgot that was my beer you drank.”

I bit into my toast. “What’d you put in it?”

“What are y’all talkin’ about?” Katie Lee asked.

“I have no idea,” Bridget said and dropped her head back into her arms.

WALKING IN THROUGH THE BROWN’S front door, Patsy released an oversized straw that attached her lips to her convenience store Big Gulp cup. “Hey y’all,” she called out. “I wanted to say goodbye before ya head on back.”

“I thought you were upstairs,” Katie Lee said. “Asleep.”

Patsy shook the mist off her hair. “I woke up early, went home to shower and changed clothes.”

On a rainy day, Patsy resembled the Morton Salt girl. She secured her hair with a yellow silk scarf and let the edges dangle in her wet hair. The scarf matched the cut off shorts and knee-high rain boots she wore. She carried an air of ‘fuck you’ that I envied. I wished I’d hung out with someone like her at school. She’d have helped tame a pack of bitches that patrolled the hallways. As a high school freshman, three of them cornered me in a bathroom stall. They verbally threatened my existence, and raided my purse of cash and cosmetics. For four years, I watched my back and avoided the restrooms. I’ve never carried a purse since. I could’ve learned a lot from Patsy; maybe it wasn’t too late.

The phone rang in an adjoining room. Katie Lee didn’t have the self-control to leave a beeping device alone, and darted across the kitchen. I slid into a chair across the table from Bridget. Settling into the seat-cushion, I pouted my lips. “You don’t look so good. Can I scramble you some eggs?”

Bridget threw her hand on her mouth, pushed her chair back and ran around the corner. I should have felt more satisfied than I did. Barfing her guts didn’t change what she’d done. Nothing would. She had a hidden agenda that empowered her to play puppet master with other people’s lives. The drug she plunked in my beer could’ve driven me to do something beyond stupid. She needed to be stopped.

“Hey Raz,” Patsy said. “You left the party early.”

The rain slowed to a taper, and plunked at the cobblestone path that separated drooping mounds of sea oats. Outside the French door windows, the weight of the water had pressed the grass blades toward the ground. “Patsy, will you walk with me to the river?”

 She searched my eyes, and nodded for me to follow. Winding through the garden path, we kept quiet until we had a view of the murky Trent. The storm had calmed the surface chop but stirred up the river bottom. Patsy pulled two cigarettes out of her pocket, lit them, and handed me one. She inhaled and blew her smoke heavenward. “What’s going on?”

“Someone drugged me last night, and I know who.”

Patsy didn’t say anything. She concentrated on the expression on my face. 

“Bridget put something in my beer.”

She resisted a drag. “Why’d she do that?”

“Friday night, I overheard her in the master bedroom. She and Nash knocked the Brown’s headboard around. Probably chipped the varnish.”

Patsy didn’t react. She inhaled, filling her lungs. Releasing she asked, “Are you sure?”

“Unfortunately. It’s the chiggers’ fault. I was in the master bathroom putting cream on the bites. Before I finished, the two rolled onto the Brown’s bed. I was trapped.”

“Nash is a fuck head. Does Katie Lee suspect anything?”

A dark cloud curled closer to us, and the sky rumbled its discontent. “Not yet. I confronted Bridget Friday night. She bullshitted me. Said she wanted to tell Katie Lee herself. That’s not going to happen. Now she acts like I’m from planet nut-so. After last night’s narcotic trip, I’m convinced that she and Nash are out to teach me some kind of warped lesson.”

I flicked the ash that grew on my cigarette. A fish flipped out of the water, catching some flying insect then disappeared under the surface. I wished I had fins, so I could swim under something.

Patsy had known Katie Lee and Nash since grade school. She was part of Katie Lee’s inner circle, and I valued her perspective. Somberness washed her face. “I knew he was shit. He’s been getting into trouble since middle school. Petty stuff; stealing, fighting, practical jokes. In high school, he advanced to moneymaking opportunities. Growing marijuana, selling a science test he stole from a teacher’s briefcase. I’d thought his one redeeming feature was loyalty to Katie Lee. Nash Wilson is slippier than weasel shit on a doorknob.”

“Should I tell Katie Lee when I get back to the dorm?”

Patsy stared down the Trent River as if the answer would float to her on top of a water crest. “We have to think this through. Nash has Katie Lee’s heart wound tighter than a yo-yo. If you or I tell her, I’m not sure she’ll believe us.”

“Has she mentioned ending it with him?”

“Katie Lee’s in a full-blown addiction until she finds somethin’ better.”

“So what do I do?”

“For now, keep quiet.”

“What? And act normal around Katie Lee and Bridget?”

“You don’t have proof. Both Nash and Bridget can deny the allegations. You’ll be lookin’ like a trouble stirrin’ liar.”

Pulling the souvenirs from my pocket, I showed Patsy. She took the lighter from my hand and rubbed her thumb over the NW initials. “He could have dropped it anywhere.”

Patsy was there for me on my first visit to The Bern. Without her, I would’ve spent the night in the field at Billy Ray’s. She knew this town, and the players. I’d entrusted a huge secret. I sunk my hands into my jean pockets, “Nash and Bridget are fakers.”

Patsy crushed her cigarette under her boot. “Don’t worry, we’ll reveal the two connivers.”

Now the two of us just needed to figure out what to do about the two of them.

NOTE TO SELF

Mitch McCoy is a slice of nice. Hopefully I didn’t embarrass myself too much.

Bridget definitely doesn’t play fair.

I’m not comfortable keeping these kinds of secrets. Patsy and I need to come up with a plan, soon.

I’ve nicknamed the New Yorker who wanders into occupied beds, Macylocks.

22

T
aboo
T
urkey

A
toddler kicked the back of my airplane seat for two hours. The pilot announced the Ohio temperature, twenty-three degrees with snow in the forecast. Without Mom, the holidays were going to be different.

My Nana lived with her best friend Gert for twenty years. Even after Nana passed we continued to spend Thanksgiving at their bungalow. Gert was biologically too old to be my aunt, but Dad and I considered her family. Aunt G had called Dad two days ago with news. She’d won a trip to Las Vegas in the jackpot draw at The Bingo Bucket. She chose free drinks, nickel slots, and the all you can eat buffet over spending the holiday with Dad and me. I was less than excited with all the changes to tradition but didn’t blame her? If given a choice, I’d go to Vegas over Canton.

Without Mom and Aunt Gert, I resolved that I’d just have to deal, and embrace a quiet turkey day at home. I decided there could be benefits: wearing my pajamas all day, plenty of leftovers, and a VHS movie marathon. I’d made a grocery list, and planned to surprise Dad by volunteering to cook the bird and homemade fixings.

At baggage claim, the man who greeted me was not the same person who’d raised me. When Dad had dropped me off at college, his hair was salt and peppered. The salt had disappeared along with twenty pounds. Before I hugged him, I asked, “What’s up with the spandex bike shorts?”

“Just finished a step class. Relieves the stress from the day, works out the kinks.” Lifting his chin, he said, “And I’ve been told, it detoxes the pores for a healthy glow.”

My father, a man who’d never purposely broken a sweat, and didn’t know an astringent from paint thinner, attending aerobics class? As if this tidbit wasn’t enough of a shock, he delivered a second zinger. “Since it’s just the two of us, I invited a friend over for dinner tomorrow. We’re going to start a new tradition. Fondue Thanksgiving.”

“Friend?” I asked. “What friend?”

“Someone I met in aerobics.”

For eighteen years, my father and I had a surface relationship. We didn’t discuss anything in the category of touchy-feely. My mom’s astrological disappearance turned my relationship dynamics upside down. Mom had chosen a group of traveling mediums over Dad and me, and now my father had a female friend whom he’d invited over for Thanksgiving. If I read the signals correctly, Dad had rebounded.

THE GOOP INSIDE THE FONDUE pots carried a striking similarity to what bubbled in metal pans at the cafeteria self-serve station. Dad’s mystery guest had a name, Trudy Bleaux. Wiping something drippy from her chin, she giggled, and told Dad and me, “Everyone should turn the holidays into a fondue tradition.”

I estimated Trudy’s age somewhere between way too young to be my mother and too old to be my sister. She wore a silky scarf blouse, draped and belted over mocha leggings. The printed pattern on her chest mimicked a turkey dinner that had pulsed inside a Cuisinart.

Spearing cubed meat product purchased from the refrigerated deli section, I eyed the spider plant on the sofa table behind Dad and calculated my chances of nonchalantly lobbing my tidbit into it. “Rachael,” Dad said, covering his mouth. “Give this sauce a try.”

I dipped the mystery cube into thick brown semiliquid that simmered above a small flaming tin of gelled butane fuel. The sauce resembled gravy but tasted like sweet potato. I wasn’t convinced that dipping meaty cubes into baby food concoctions out gourmet’d actual turkey and fixings. If this became an American tradition, I’d move to England.

“You should really get your heart rate up at least four times a week for forty minutes,” the fondue queen told me. Trudy looked nothing like my mother. She was tall and lanky with mousy thin hair that draped over her shoulders. My mother was petite with short-layered hair. Trudy cross-pollinated color combinations and my mother stuck to solids with an occasional check or striped shirt. I wondered how she and Dad had connected and more importantly, when they’d disconnect.

She kept touching Dad’s hand and I had trouble focusing on her babbling. When she fed him from her skewer, the visual made me want to hurl. “If you lose something in the sauce,” she told him, “you have to kiss the person on your right.” If I lost something, it wasn’t going to be in the fondue pot.

“Course number two,” Trudy announced, and I wondered if she giggled in her sleep. “Cubed squash and purple potato accompanied by chive cheese sauce.” The bubbling goo had a striking likeness to Velveeta. Fried chicken was a close substitute for turkey, and I hoped the drive thru would be open tonight.

“You and Trudy,” Dad said, “have something in common.”

“Really,” I said, pouring myself a generous glass of chardonnay. I figured Dad wouldn’t flinch at my heavy hand since we had company. On the positive side, Trudy could be beneficial; with her in the room, I could probably get away with lighting a joint.

“You’re both a whiz in the kitchen.”

“Rachael,” Trudy said, “You and I should enroll in scullery classes.”

“You mean culinary?”

“Everyone has to eat,” Trudy said. “Wouldn’t it be fabulous to prepare those fancy layered cakes you serve with tea and éclairs?”

I washed down my cheese coated potato cube with an entire glass of wine and looked at my dad. He had to be testing me for —hell I didn’t know what.

Dad goo-gooed over Trudy who had none of the attributes of my mother. She was the kind of person who provided inspiration for a cartoonist. Thank God we weren’t out in public. It was embarrassing. I hoped that whatever was going on was an ephemeral thing. Then I started to worry. What if I lost him too?

SLEEPING IN MY OWN BED was the best part of being home. Each night, I cracked my window and held my elbow out, careful not to extinguish my Benson and Hedges in the snow that collected on the sill. Spending break with Dad and Trudy grated on my nerves. I actually used the excuse of studying to get away from the two of them. Although, Trudy didn’t sleep over, they were never apart for long, and I wondered when Dad got his work done.

What had happened to my family? For eighteen years, we were normalish. Now, Mom was off seeking a vortex to channel and Dad had dyed his hair, exercised, and dated. Wasn’t I the one who was supposed to be doing crazy things? Mom and Dad had forgotten who the teenager was. My family dynamics had skidded off the rails, and now I seemed to be the sensible one. That was not right.

My nightly cigarette helped relax me, and I counted the days until my flight back to school. I pulled a crumpled piece of paper from my backpack and dialed Patsy McCoy. With Katie Lee and Nash in The Bern over break, I wondered if anything had happened.

“Hey Raz,” Patsy greeted me, and I couldn’t help but smile. Patsy McCoy was up to something. I heard it in her voice. “Has Bridget tried anything lately?” she asked.

I laid on my bed and rested my feet on the wall. “It’s bizarre. Bridget’s sickeningly sweet, especially to Katie Lee. She’s on her best behavior, offering to do Katie Lee’s laundry, buying her sodas and laughing at all her jokes. Always at her side, like a puppy after it crapped on the carpet.”