by Debra Kent
I exploded in tears. Eddie put his arm around me. “Hey,” he murmured. “What’s all this?” He kneaded my shoulder. “Are you okay?”
“It’s just that . . .” What could I say? Oh, Eddie, I’m so very relieved you’re not the Long Island Kennel Killer? And I just engaged in a gratuitous sex act with you?
“. . . I’ve never seen such a beautiful go-cart.”
Eddie walked me to the door. “Hey, thanks for the treat,” he said, touching my hair.
“Think nothing of it.”
He chuckled. “Cute.”
I turned to face him. “No, Eddie, I’m serious. I don’t want you to think about any of it. Don’t think about us.” I knew I could never be with him again. Maybe he wasn’t the serial killer after all, yet I’d suspected him, and that’s reason enough to end things now.
Eddie stuck a finger in my belt loop and pulled me toward him. “Let me know if you change your mind.” He put his mouth on mine and gave me what I knew would be our last kiss.
’Til next time,
V
April 28
Kevin called. My printer is ready. By the time I made it to his apartment complex, my makeup had melted and I was soaked in sweat (the A/C on the Jeep broke down last week and I couldn’t afford to have it fixed). I took a rickety elevator up to the second floor, then walked down a narrow hallway saturated with a mélange of smells from many kitchens.
I found Kevin’s apartment at the very end: 2B. He greeted me cheerfully and invited me in. I told him I didn’t have much time. “Give a guy a break,” he said playfully. “We don’t get a lot of womenfolk in these parts. Please. You’d be doing me an enormous favor.” He bowed and waved his arm with a flourish. His apartment smelled like Thanksgiving and looked just as I’d pictured it—a mess of disabled technology. Computers with their guts laid bare, dismantled fax machines, broken desktop copiers, heaps of technical magazines and instruction manuals, cans of compressed air to blast away dust, tangles of cables and wires. If it had been my apartment, I’d be apologizing for the mess, but Kevin behaved comfortably. He was barefoot. His feet looked soft and delicate, like a child’s.
“You’ve got to taste this,” he said, gently setting an old aluminum pie tin on the table. “I made it myself.” He peeled off the aluminum foil. “Sweet potato pie. My mom’s recipe.” He lifted a forkful to my lips and I suddenly felt shy. It was such an intimate and tender gesture. And it was so nice to be with a sweet, normal man for a change.
I opened my mouth and he gently slid the fork in. “It’s delicious,” I said. “Really incredible.”
Kevin beamed. “I know.” He grabbed another fork and we dug into the pie together.
Then excused himself and this time I heard it: the buzz. I’m sure it came from the bathroom. What could he possibly be doing in there? Shaving? Drilling holes? Using a vibrator (but why? and how?). A few moments later, I heard a flush and then the sound of water in the sink. I pretended to leaf through one of his electronics magazines.
“Hey, before I forget, I’ve got something for Pete.” He pulled a shopping bag from what was originally designated as a living room. I looked inside. It was filled with broken Game Boys, radios, and Palm Pilots. On the top of the pile was a pair of plastic goggles and a small screwdriver set. “I get this stuff from suppliers, use it for components. I thought he’d enjoy fiddling around with it.”
“Thanks! I’m sure he’ll love it.” I probably shouldn’t have said anything else, but my curiosity was like that of a hyperactive two-year-old. “Hey, Kevin, I was just wondering . . .” I started. “The last couple of times you, you know, excused yourself, I heard a sort of buzzing sound coming from the bathroom. Is that some kind of electronic gadget, I don’t know, some state-of-the-art computer thingamajig you’ve got there? I’m just dying to know.”
“I’ve got an artificial sphincter, Valerie.”
Oh God. “I’m so sorry, Kevin, it was none of my business, please forget I ever asked anything. God, I’m such an idiot!” I felt the blood rush to my neck and face.
He sat down and smiled. “No, no, don’t be silly. It’s a fair question, and I’m not embarrassed to talk about it. I guess it would have come up eventually if we became closer.” Kevin went on to tell me that he accidentally shot off part of his lower intestine and rectum in an unfortunate accident involving his college roommate’s handgun. “That’s the real reason I dropped out of Michigan after my freshman year. There’s a cuff around my anal canal. Most of those cuffs inflate on their own but it takes about ten minutes, and that’s a little too long, so I got the kind with the electric pump. Ten minutes is a long time when you have a lovely lady waiting for you in the living room.” He winked at me.
I know this sounds hardhearted, but I really don’t want to date a man with a fake ass.
’Til next time,
V
April 28, continued
I went to the health club to sweat off Kevin’s sweet potato pie and ran into The Incredible Shrinking Anna Fletcher, whose son Eli is in Pete’s Tiger Cub troop. I met Anna eleven years ago in a stress management seminar I was leading at the public library. She weighed probably close to 200 pounds. I’d watched her slide up and down the scale for years, thin as a whippet some months, other months so fat that even her back had cleavage. Today Anna is a fit size 12 and has remained so for five or six years.
I figured she went on a liquid diet, or had her stomach stapled, which seemed like a drastic strategy but not out of the question; at this point I’d slice my fat off with a turkey carver. I would consider anything. I had to know how Anna dropped those pounds. So I asked her.
She quickly glanced around the room, then pulled me into a corner. “How desperate are you?” she asked, her voice almost a whisper. “I mean, have you hit rock bottom?”
I recognized that phrase. It originated with Alcoholics Anonymous. Anna must be in a twelve-step program. Let’s see. I recently ripped a pair of Victoria’s Secret underwear with my bare hands because the elastic waistband was cutting off circulation to my lower limbs. I reached into the garbage disposal to retrieve the half a Kit Kat bar Hunter had tossed in. I picked all the marshmallow stars out of a box of Lucky Charms, then told Pete it must have been a defective batch. “I guess so,” I told her.
Anna nodded sympathetically. “Listen. I’ve been on every diet known to man. Slim•Fast. Jenny Craig. Nutrisystem. Low carb. No carb. Cabbage soup until it was coming out of my ears. And I’ve joined and rejoined and spent so much time at Weight Watchers I could have worked there if I hadn’t been so fat. And those weigh-ins! I’d do anything to knock off a few ounces. I’d take off my wedding band, my belt. Gosh, I even pulled out a tampon once. None of those things worked for me, not in the long run. There’s only one thing that kept the weight off.” I looked into Anna’s lovely face and waited for her to continue. “Abstinence.”
“What? You stopped having sex?” I was horrified.
“No, not that kind of abstinence.” Anna laughed. “I mean, I abstained from all the foods that I loved a little too much. Chocolate, cookies, cake . . . frozen cookie dough, you know what I mean.”
I sure did.
“I haven’t had any of that stuff in six years, not even cake on my own birthday!”
I stared at her. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“It’s a miracle,” she said, smiling. “But that’s what the Overeaters Anonymous program promises, you know. Miracles. We’ve got a saying. ‘It works if you work it.’ ”
I felt panicky. I knew I’d stumbled onto the Big Answer to my Big Fat Problem, but couldn’t imagine permanently parting ways with my favorite foods.
’Til next time,
V
April 29
“Did you see the paper this morning?” It was my mother, and she was breathless. “Did you?”
“No, Mom, I’m still in bed.”
“Zoe Hayes is alive and well and living as a circus performer in Texas! She is a trapeze ar
tist!”
It was 7:53. “That’s incredible. So she’s not dead?”
“No, no, no, she’s alive, Valerie. Just like your dream. You predicted this, honey, don’t you see?”
“How is it like my dream, Mom?”
“Remember? The perches? Hopping from perch to perch? And remember what it said on the X ray? It said Abilene. And that’s where they found her. Abilene! Texas! She checked into the hospital after she broke her arm! The broken wing, Valerie. Don’t you see?”
I ran outside in my pajamas and swiped the newspaper off the driveway. The headline: ZOE HAYES ALIVE IN TEXAS. Six paragraphs down: “Detectives credit the Hayes discovery to an e-mail tip sent by a local resident. In the e-mail, the writer described what now appears to be a psychic dream which eventually lead detectives to target the region in and around Abilene. ‘We looked into every lead that came across our desk, no matter how far-fetched,’ Detective Avila said. ‘This lead happened to be the one that panned out.’ Hayes had checked into Abilene General Hospital for the treatment of a fractured wrist, where she was recognized by an emergency room orderly. The injury was sustained during a rehearsal of her trapeze act. Police have not released the identity of the person who sent the e-mail. A spokesperson for Zoe Hayes’s family confirmed that the person who provided the information will be eligible for the reward money.”
The next call was from a detective, a man named Michael Avila. He said he wants to stop by the house later to ask a few questions, “just to wrap up the investigation.” What if I’m implicated somehow? What if the police think I knew all about Zoe Hayes’s transformation from radiography technician to trapeze artist? I felt the blood drain to my feet. I was shaking. I had to calm myself. I searched the medicine cabinet in the downstairs bathroom for Xanax, but all I could find was Tums. Then I remembered I had tucked one pill into the small zippered compartment in my fake Kate Spade bag. I swallowed it dry.
I asked Lynette if she could take Pete for the night. “What’s wrong? You sound weird.” I thought about Lynette’s orderly, uneventful life. I wasn’t ready to tell her that I was the unidentified woman who led police to Zoe Hayes. “I’m just tired, that’s all. I could use a break.”
“Of course you could,” she responded. “Being a single mom’s gotta be a bitch.” The word sounded unnatural coming from her chaste mouth. “We’d be glad to take Pete. I’ll stop by with Hunter to get him. Hey! Did you hear? They found Zoe Hayes. She’s alive!”
“Yes. I heard.”
Lynette and Hunter appeared at my door just as Detective Avila pulled up. She arched an eyebrow at me, as if to say “So this is why you wanted Pete out of the house.” I decided I’d better set her straight. “Lynette, this is Detective Avila. He’s here to ask me a few questions.” Lynette looked at me quizzically. Behind the detective’s head, I mouthed, “I’ll tell you later.”
Lynette nodded and said, brightly, “C’mon boys. Who wants to make Rice Krispie Treats?”
Michael Avila reminded me of that hunky redheaded TV chef, the one who sounds like a cabdriver and looks like an Irish god. We spent the first fifteen minutes discussing the Zoe Hayes case. Yes, I really dreamed it. No, I didn’t consider myself a psychic. No, I didn’t mention the dream to anyone else except for my mother. We spent another hour talking about everything besides the Zoe Hayes case. I imagined what our offspring would look like.
He used the bathroom. I didn’t hear any buzzing, thank God.
“Well,” he said, reaching for his pad, “I should go now. I’m sure you’re anxious to eat dinner with your husband and son.” He watched me with what looked like a hopeful smile.
“I’m in the process of getting a divorce. Any day now.”
“Really?” I thought he looked relieved, but I may have imagined it.
“Listen, Valerie, I’d appreciate it if you’d stick around for a while in case I have any more questions. And if there’s anything you want to talk about, you can reach me on my cell phone, twenty-four/seven.” He handed me his card. I ran a finger over the raised letters of his name and then it came into my mind, as involuntary as a twitch: Val Avila. It had a nice ring to it. For him, I’d change my name.
I know. I’m hopeless.
At 9 P.M. there was a reporter and cameraman on my doorstep. Someone (probably my mother) had leaked my name to the media. Now I had an excuse to call Michael Avila. I asked him if it was okay to talk to the press.
“Sure. Why not?” He paused as if he were about to say something, but didn’t go on. “Okay, then, you’ve got my number if you need to reach me.”
“And you have mine. My number, I mean. You know, if you need to reach me.”
He didn’t say anything else, and I felt like a total jackass.
By 10 P.M. I was still a jackass, but a famous one. I made the top story on the nightly news. Local woman’s ESP leads police to Zoe Hayes, stay tuned.
I never made it to my first OA meeting. Maybe next week.
’Til next time,
V
May 3
Some version of the Zoe Hayes story has been on the front page almost every day, supplanting the usual summer stories: Drought Likely To Affect Harvests. Market Street Closed For Repairs. County Fair Draws Hundreds.
Zoe Hayes won’t talk to the press, and no one in her family is granting interviews. An attorney working for the Hayes family said that I was entitled to the reward money. At first I didn’t want to take it—it seemed so tacky, and besides, the woman is alive— but Mom convinced me that I had no choice but to accept the reward. My bank statement came today. My mother is right. I’ve decided, though, that after I pay off my bills and stash a little money away, I’m going to do something charitable with the rest of it. Assuming there’s anything left.
’Til next time,
V
May 5
I’m scared to be alone in the house. I’m thinking of getting a watchdog. I should probably just sell the house. The problem is, we’re in the best school district in the city, and there’s nothing for sale in our area right now, except for the Miller house, but they don’t have a basement and I refuse to live in a house without a basement. Where would we go in case of a tornado?
I haven’t been able to sleep normally in weeks. My shrink wants to put me on Ambien, but I really don’t want to take any more pills. My mother says I’ll be fine just as soon as the divorce is final.
’Til next time,
V
May 8
Yet another phone call for Valerie Ryan, psychic. This time it was an assistant producer at Good Morning America. So far I’ve had calls from People magazine, the Chicago Tribune, and The Today Show. I know I should be excited (or at least amused) by this sudden celebrity, but I’m not. The attention is unwelcome. I have no interest in being on TV, and not only because it will make me look fifteen pounds fatter. I wish these people would leave me alone.
Roger called me and asked, “If you’re so psychic, why don’t you predict what I’m going to do to my girlfriend tonight?”
My old boss Cadence Bradley (aka Amazon.bitch) phoned too. I naively assumed she’d called to congratulate me. “I hear you’re quite the celebrity,” she began, in a tone that suggested she hadn’t seen or read anything about me, but only heard this from someone in the office. Cadence is the type of person who prides herself on an ability to remain unsullied by popular culture, unreachable by its messengers. She doesn’t watch TV (except PBS), doesn’t listen to radio (except NPR), and never goes to the movies (except art films). She lives in our community but refuses to subscribe to the local paper.
“How are you, Cadence?” I asked.
“I’m calling to see that you do not mention your past affiliation with the Center,” she said. “We don’t want our organization to be associated with any of your . . . paranormal experiences.”
’Til next time,
V
May 9
I just heard from a woman who says her husband has been missing since Ju
ly 1993. She has his picture posted on milk cartons, even went to a fortune teller she’d found in a tent at the Universal Studios fake Arabian village in Orlando. “The lady said she was pretty sure Fred was the victim of spontaneous combustion,” the woman told me. “But I think he ran out on me.” She said she read about me in the paper and I’m her last hope. I explained that I didn’t consider myself a psychic; even if I did have a touch of ESP, I couldn’t marshall it on command. She thanked me extravagantly just for taking her number.
Someone else called to ask if I could help locate his lost bowling trophy.
’Til next time,
V
May 10
I had a meeting with Omar Sweet early this morning. It’s official: Roger will not be charged with bigamy or statutory rape. There’s not enough evidence to convict him. “The case won’t hold water,” Omar told me wearily. “He’s the original Teflon man. Nothing sticks.”
The good news, however, is that it’s almost certain I’m entitled to all of Roger’s undisclosed assets, and I’m likely to win full custody of Pete. “You’re a hero,” he told me. “You’re the woman who found Zoe Hayes.”
’Til next time,
V
May 11
It’s over. The rotted shipwreck has finally sunk. Roger Tisdale and Valerie Ryan, according to the laws of this state and as certified by Judge Harry Mendelsohn, are officially, and rather anticlimactically, divorced.
The papers came in the mail this morning. I expected registered mail, certified mail, Federal Express, something with a little more pomp and ceremony. Instead, I found the envelope stuffed in my mailbox along with the electric bill, the church newsletter, and the ever-reproachful Victoria’s Secret catalog.
Decree of Marriage Dissolution and Settlement Agreement. The end of a marriage reduced to fourteen sheets of paper and a few teaspoons of black ink. The settlement agreement detailed the division of property. I get the house and most of its furnishings, plus the Jeep, the big-screen TV, my iMac, and half of the $61,452 in savings and investments. Roger gets the van, the condo on Lake Merle, the weedy two acres we bought and never developed outside of Grand Haven, the broken-down speedboat we’ve had in storage since 1993, the other two TVs, the Gateway and the laptop. Everything I brought to the marriage (my mother’s silverware, my Todd record collection) is once again solely mine, and everything Roger brought to the marriage (the Cuisinart, the stereo, the hideous wooden mask in the family room, and the even more hideous vaginal sculpture fashioned from a tree stump) is, mercifully, once again his.