by E. G. Scott
SIXTEEN
CHARLOTTE
“You were a strange child.” I can hear my mom exhaling. Whether it’s tobacco or medical-grade sativa, I don’t ask. The chance that it’s a combination of the two is as high as she likely is.
“Well, thanks, Mom. But I actually just asked if you remembered any of my childhood friends who I was particularly close to.” I’m desperate to figure out why Jane Doe is familiar but completely erased from my mind. Childhood seemed like a good potential lead. I’ve been on with her for six minutes and I’m already wishing I hadn’t called.
“I assumed you were referring to Socket? You were friends for so long. I always thought she looked just like you.”
She never misses an opportunity to remind me of the ways I’m different from everyone else.
“Mom, Socket was genderless. And an imaginary friend. No one knew what Socket looked like.”
I haven’t thought about my imaginary childhood best friend in a very long time. “I mean like actual friends. A best friend I forgot about? A pen pal? Or maybe a half sister you never told me about?” I mean it as a joke but consider the scenario and shudder at the possibility.
“Honey, trust me, you’d know if you had any other siblings. You know how terrible I am at hiding things.” She is.
“Awful, Mom.” I try to rid myself of the images of things seen while snooping in her room as a kid.
She snorts. “Oh, I was successful in hiding plenty. And for your own good too. I know you think I was a terrible mother, honey, but you could have done much worse.”
This is our banter. She always maintains that she did the best she could as a single mom raising a “strange child.” I think she could have done better.
“Mom, how did I end up parting ways with Socket?”
“Well, let me see if I remember. It’s been a long time.” The reason I called her was because of her memory. It’s like a steel trap and she prides herself on it but likes to make me work for the information.
“The guidance counselor from the elementary school, Mrs. DeHirsch—she’s dead now—called me in to talk about how we could get you to socialize better. You were spending a lot of time in the corner talking to yourself—or talking to Socket—and your teacher, Ms. Bordeaux, was getting concerned. When she asked you what you were talking about, you apparently said, ‘We were talking about Socket’s head surgery.’ It was dark, honey, but no one can argue that you didn’t know early on exactly what you wanted to be when you grew up.”
“Shockingly, you never told me that, Mom.” New anecdotes like these make me wonder how much revisionist history she’s peppering in. There are numerous origin myths about my surgical predisposition. All told by her. Funnily enough, I recall none of the instances of wanting to become a doctor, only the feeling I had when I was told that it’s what I’d always wanted: that she was describing someone other than me.
“Didn’t I? Huh. Oh yeah. You were fascinated with medicine at a very young age. Thankfully you didn’t take to operating on the neighborhood pets, like that one little psychopath who lived two doors down. What was his name? He’s the president of some bank, which his mother will remind you of every time you run into her. Is it Douglas? Oh, it’s going to bother me. Miraculously he lived to adulthood with that horror show of a father.” I hear ice in a glass clinking as she pauses.
“Mom. Focus.” I don’t hide my exasperation; as usual she’s undeterred.
“God, remember that teacher, Ms. Bordeaux? She was a piece of work. I’m pretty sure she’s dead now too. She shame-walked right into class in last night’s outfit more than twice. You could smell the Tanqueray and Parliaments on her a mile away. When I did parent days in the classroom—”
“Okay, off topic, Mom. But since you brought it up, why didn’t anyone say anything about my kindergarten teacher being a degenerate alcoholic?”
“Charlotte, honey, it was a different time. People weren’t so uptight about child rearing. I would have drunk too if I was spending my days with six-year-olds.” She sighs dramatically. “The world was not as scary of a place as it is now. I used to let you walk to school by yourself all the time, and you only had a babysitter until you were able to unlock the door by yourself.”
“And wasn’t there a spate of kidnappings around that time, in our town?” If she won’t drive us back to the topic on hand, I will.
“Anyway, Mrs. DeHirsch—newly married—she was so proud to be a guidance counselor, she had a sharp mind too, and she was really interested in you. She wanted to make sure you didn’t leave kindergarten without some friends. Very sweet, such a tragedy.”
“Mother. You are a walking obituary.” I sigh. “What happened to her?” I don’t even want to know. But she’ll tell me regardless.
“Cancer,” she stage-whispers.
“Terrible.” It is, but it also may be completely untrue, given the source, so I choose to live in the world where Mrs. DeHirsch is still with us. “Can you tell me what happened at school?” I’m gentle but impatient.
“After the conversation at school, I took you to McDonald’s and we talked about how it was time to start playing with other children and leave Socket at home. You got sad but were very mature about it. You asked if we could take flowers to Grandma’s grave, and you had a talk with her while I waited in the car. When you got back into the car, you just said, ‘Socket is with Grandma now.’ It was a little spooky, honestly. And I didn’t notice the poison ivy until we got home. You’d picked flowers for Socket to put on Grandma’s grave, and apparently grabbed a hand and faceful of poison ivy in the process. Poor kid. You had it everywhere. Even rubbed your eyes with it. You looked so bad, I thought they were going to call social services on me when I took you to school the next day. They sent you home immediately, called me at work, and that nurse, what’s her name, gave me an earful.” She laughs mightily.
“Hilarious,” I deadpan.
“Charlotte, honey, are you feeling okay? What is this all about? You sound off.”
I backpedal quickly. “I’m fine, Mom. Just thinking about the past a lot this week, no reason in particular.” I’m as terrible a liar as she is, but in place of convincing deception, we are extremely well versed in deflection.
“Thinking about the past too much never ends well.”
We’ve got a strong repression game too.
She pivots. “How’s your love life? Seeing anyone special?” It took her much longer to ask this time around than usual.
“Still looking for Mr. Goodbar.”
“Ha!” Never fails to get a laugh out of her. “God forbid. What a movie that was. Tuesday Weld was incredible. You know it was her only—”
“Oscar nomination. I know, Mom.” We have this conversation at least once a month. Because she’s been told more than once that she looks like Tuesday Weld, Mom acts as though they are old friends.
“Char. Are you sure you are okay, honey? Maybe I should come over. We haven’t had a visit for a while.”
“No, that’s okay.” I wish I’d given a pause before unleashing my emphatic no.
A tiny part of me considers changing my mind. I could let her in on everything that’s going on. But where do I even begin? She doesn’t know about Peter. I certainly won’t tell her that I’ve been back in contact with Henry. And why worry her with the added plot twist of a mysterious dead woman who I can’t place for the life of me? I just don’t want to feel so alone in all of this.
“Probably for the best anyway. I’ve got big plans tonight.” She doesn’t elaborate, and I don’t push.
“Mom, I’m going to hang up.”
“Okay, sweetie. Talk to you soon. Call me in a few days.”
“Will do. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.”
She laughs. “You really were, honey.” She exhales again into the phone.
“I really was what, Mom?”
&
nbsp; “A strange child. But such a sweet one. Once you started to make friends, you couldn’t stop. You loved everyone, even the bad apples. Especially them.”
SEVENTEEN
WOLCOTT
“Those. The crabapple branches.”
The pair of bells strung to the door chime as we enter June’s Floral Shop, drawing the attention of a woman who uses a set of clippers to direct two young assistants between a refrigerated case and the large vases set up along a marble tabletop. She props her spectacles up to eye us, as if trying to determine whether we’re more buttercup or daffodil guys.
“Good afternoon, gentlemen. Let me know if I can help you with anything, okay?” She offers a smile before turning her attention back to the bustling assistants.
I wait for a moment, to give my partner a chance to do the honors, but he’s absorbed in the botanical paradise. I take the opportunity to address her. “May we speak with you for a moment?” I say, flashing my shield discreetly so as not to alarm the small handful of customers perusing the displays.
“Of course,” she says, and crosses over to where we’re standing. “What can I be of assistance with?”
Silvestri’s tongue is practically mopping the floor of the shop. “This place”—he beams—“is gorgeous.”
She chuckles slightly. “Why, thank you,” she says, then pauses awkwardly.
He snaps out of his trance. “Where are my manners? I’m Detective Silvestri. This is my partner, Detective Wolcott.”
“A pleasure, Detectives,” she says, studying my partner curiously. “A real anthophile, huh?”
“It’s just . . . you have some very exotic types on hand here.” He catches himself and blushes. “As you know.”
She smiles. “Certainly nice to have an admirer in the shop.” Suddenly, the corners of her mouth drop. “Oh goodness. You’re not here for a condolence arrangement, I hope.”
“No, ma’am,” says Silvestri. “Nothing that grim. We’re just tracking down some information on an order that came through your shop within the last few days.”
She exhales. “Thank goodness,” she says, and nods in the direction of the cash register. We follow her to the counter, where she flips open a laptop and begins hitting keys. She pauses to look up at us. “Now, was this a pickup or a delivery?”
“We’re not entirely sure,” I respond. “Basically, we’re trying to figure out who placed the order.”
“I see,” she says. She tips her spectacles down and eyes us over the top of the frames. “Cheater?”
“I’m sorry?” I respond.
“It’s a philandering husband, isn’t it?”
I stifle a laugh. “We’re not at liberty—”
“Oh, come on!” she protests. “I could use a little intrigue around here.”
“Are you kidding?” asks Silvestri, looking around the shop. “I’m spellbound.”
“You’re making my day, Detective. Okay, what was the name of the recipient of the arrangement?
“Charlotte Knopfler,” I respond.
She clacks away on the keyboard for a few seconds before her eyes light up. “Oh right.” She hits a few more keys. “One of my assistants took the order.” She continues tapping the keys. “Okay, it was placed yesterday and delivered to Ms. Knopfler at her office same day.”
“Can you tell us who placed the order?” I ask.
She finishes tapping, props her spectacles up, and studies the screen. “I sure can,” she says, and looks at us. “The order was placed by a Brooke Harmon.”
EIGHTEEN
RACHEL
I’m not afraid of dying. Being alive is much harder than the alternative.
I once flatlined in the back of an ambulance and was dead for an hour and twenty minutes. There was no bright light, but instead a feeling of being suspended in a warm, thick darkness filled with the sensation of complete emotional and mental weightlessness. I was awash in a euphoria stronger than my first hit of heroin. I didn’t want to come back.
Alas, it wasn’t my time, thanks to a paramedic who shot me full of Narcan and brought me back from the dead. When I opened my eyes and saw his looking down at me with tears brimming, he confided that there was no way that he was going to let me die that day because I bore a striking resemblance to his little sister.
Those eighty minutes of death saved the rest of my life. When I came back, I knew I didn’t want to feel the way I’d been feeling pre–death experience any longer. I never used again, and I came back with a burning desire that I hadn’t ever had previously: to live. I had little to start with, so building any kind of life for myself was progress.
What I am afraid of is being abandoned by people. This is the fear that one of my first counselors suggested was the primary reason I’d started using in the first place. Drugs were a means of self-medication to allay the pain of being afraid, something most people do, but generally with less lethal modes. Now I chase clarity with the same verve I did getting high.
I had a pretty uneventful, normal childhood until my dad went into a routine surgery when I was fourteen and never came out. My mom never really recovered and kind of faded into the background of both of our lives, a shadowy figure who moved quietly to and from her job and the couch. I was an only child, so I sought friends as siblings and spent a lot of time at sleepovers and going on other people’s family vacations as a de facto foster kid.
I had a strong curiosity about friends’ older brothers who made questionable life decisions, usually in the form of motorcycles, weed, beer, and Metallica, gateways for people with a certain brain chemistry and a deeply laced need for rapid reality removal.
It could have been anything that I chose to self-medicate with, but my choice in company greatly influenced my tools of self-destruction. The older brothers became men and the anesthetizing effects of beer and weed stopped cutting it for them. My unfortunate preference for love interests with death wishes and the absence of an off switch in my brain were a dangerous combination. My lack of fear or ability to moderate anything made me an attractive partner in crime, and there was no shortage of dangerous partners willing to gun it toward trouble at top speed with me.
When I met a beautiful man-boy named Bo, the king of parlous choices, like turning his headlights off at night when we were drunk and high so the police couldn’t see us going ninety miles an hour, I clung tightly to him until I become so subsumed in shooting drugs that there ceased being room in my consciousness for anything or anyone else. I lasted three months on the black tar diet before I took my reviving ride in the back of that ambulance. By some miracle, Bo had the wherewithal to call 911. It was the last high–thrill ride the two of us took together.
He didn’t survive the ride.
* * *
When Charlotte and I met, we had a lot in common. For starters, our love for needles. Granted, her passion was using them to heal, and mine was a dormant desire to fill them with smack, but it was a starting place.
Thankfully I’d had more than seven years clean by that time, but there was always that twinge of desire hanging in the fringes of my brain if I let myself get too overwhelmed, tired, or out of sorts. I’d actually gotten acupuncture done in the first year of my recovery by my rehab roommate, who was an impressively powerful healer in between her drinking benders. The needles were extremely effective for cravings, so I became an acupuncture junkie. I dabbled in all of the healing methods available: Tibetan bowl sounds baths, qiqong, Reiki, cupping, craniosacral massage, and reflexology. If it had the promise of healing my damage, I binged on it. Eventually, I decided to become a healer myself.
I was volunteering to be a test patient in a class Charlotte was in while I finished up my reflexology training at our school, and we were partnered up on the first day. She became my test subject as well. It was the beginning of the most important friendship either of us has ever had.
I’d learned a
lot about myself getting sober and in general found other people to be more problematic and triggering than positive influences on me, so up until that point, I tended to roll through life alone. I sporadically went to NA meetings and felt secure in my sobriety most of the time, but I probably should have tried harder to build a support system in the rooms I was spending time in. Always being on guard prevented me from making any deep connections, and the rate at which people would cycle in and out was frightening. I never wanted to get too attached to any one person.
It wasn’t until I met Charlotte that I came out of my shell and trusted more than I could have imagined. She was really the first solid friend I’d ever had, and it opened me up in a major way. I appreciated the path she was taking, especially after she confided in me what had brought her to that decision.
Being stuck with a bunch of energy-moving needles can really open the emotional dam of stored-up feelings. One of the first times I was on her student table, she did a series of needles that had me crying like a baby. She hadn’t experienced how powerfully emotions came through in practice yet, only in theory.
“I’m so sorry!” she said when she witnessed my emotional flash flood.
“This is what is supposed to happen,” I reassured her.
“I guess I knew that intellectually, but I wasn’t really prepared for it. Are you sure you are okay?”
I managed to smile through the onslaught. It was always good to dump the hard feelings. Crying was cleansing as hell.
“I’m great. Every time I experience a purge like this, I feel better for days after. Just another onion layer being peeled back. There is always more and deeper, but it feels important to be getting there.”
She’d lit up. “It’s funny. In my previous work, I was working toward the same goal with my patients. But they were always unconscious, so it was one-sided. It’s a surreal experience to go from that to this. Getting feedback in real time . . . it’s amazing.”