The...nothing at all.
It’s not Timothy Allred.
Not Madeline St. Clair.
Not even a half-assed reporter.
For a moment, it looks like Madeline. Same skinny arms and high-end workout clothes. Giant, bug-eyed sunglasses. The whole get-up.
But it’s not her.
When we finally pass one another, I see it’s a random woman on the far end of middle-age. Gillian or Audrey in two decades, but not yet. She has shoulder-length blonde hair and—when she lifts the sunglasses—a pair of starkly blue eyes. When they settle on me, her smile is self-satisfied, almost withering.
I smile back.
She has no idea how close I was to bludgeoning her with a fist-sized stone.
In scurrying back to my car, parked down by The Stairs at the park’s entrance, I can’t help but single out a feeling drifting around in my head like harmful bacteria.
My intuition is confirmed when I open the door and peer up into the depths of the woods above me.
Someone is watching.
I wasn’t alone in the woods. I just happened to get out-flanked.
And so it begins, I think.
9
The next time I see my mother, I’m surprised at her lucidity. There’s no gobsmacked bewilderment on her face, and gone is her yellowish hue. She seems more herself, and though I still don’t breathe normally—who can, in a hospital—I nevertheless manage to keep my pulse below heart attack range.
“Why, Mary Ellen! How long’s it been since I’ve seen you?” she says, her eyes as bright as polished gems. She’s sitting up in her hospital bed.
“It’s been a minute, mom.”
At this, her glowing face falters. “I’ve been somewhere else, haven’t I?” she asks.
This is her preferred metaphor, as though she just got back from a milk run.
I comfort her. “That doesn’t matter,” I say. “The truth is, I’m here now, and you’re here now, and we can enjoy this moment.”
She doesn’t need to know what she’s missing. That hurt look in her eyes is enough to prevent me from correcting her. Instead, I sit and clasp her hand.
“I see the way you’re looking at me, and I don’t like it. It’s not my intention to sit here and talk about my health. So, why don’t you tell me all about your trip?”
She has me go through each and every detail, from the look and feel of the understated Seattle airport, to my impressions of how much Nashville’s changed.
I go through it all again—even though she’s heard it once before—because it feels good to talk to her, and my heart swells whenever we’re not mired in the talk of her mortality.
“Sometimes, I don’t even recognize this city,” my mom says. “I feel like—who is it?—Rip Van Winkle, waking up after a long nap. By the time I get out of this place, I’m sure there will be a new, hip neighborhood rising from the ashes somewhere.”
“Or a new burger joint,” I add.
“Or coffee shop.”
“Or hot chicken place.”
“Or a barbecue shack.”
I try to think of something else but come up short, and my mom laughs. I’ve been told I have her smile, and it’s a compliment I’ll accept.
She was once a beautiful, spirited person, the kind of woman you want to be around. The kind of woman who doesn’t always get her way but does things her way.
Now, she has the haggard look of a bag lady trundling down the street behind a shopping cart full of cans.
It just goes to show there is no dignity in the process of dying. She’s withering away before my eyes, and the years of cancer scares and tumor probes have left her a shell of her former self.
Before my mind drags me further into the quagmire of Mom’s ailments, I change the subject.
Too bad for me, it’s the one subject she doesn’t want to hear about.
“I’ve seen Madeline and the rest of the girls since I got back.”
My mom peers at me, her eyes going to slits. “Oh yeah? I hope it wasn’t near a bus they could throw you under.”
“Mom—”
“Those girls are no good, and I don’t think I need to go on and on regarding how I feel about them.”
“No, you don’t.”
“They are horrible human beings.”
I sigh. “I know, mom.”
“Raised by the devil himself.”
“Okay.”
“And I don’t want you getting yourself involved with them again.”
“I just said hello,” I say.
It’s a minor lie, but one I immediately regret.
“Mary Ellen, they used you up, and then they just left you to hang in the wind. Whenever I see mention of them, I get so angry, I want to spit.
“People change, Mom,” I say, but I can’t quite get any weight behind it.
“Only out of necessity,” she replies. “Those...girls, they’ve never had to become better people because nobody’s ever required it of them.”
“Their lives aren’t perfect.”
“Remind me to book the world’s smallest violin for their pity party.”
She’s not wrong, and I can’t quite figure out why I feel the need to defend them. Complicated relationships bring up complicated feelings, I guess.
“Let’s change the subject,” she says, noticing my frustration. “How long are you planning on staying?”
Out of the frying pan and into the fire, I think.
“How about this: I don’t know how long I’m staying, but I promise I won’t leave before you get better.”
“What a lucky mother I am,” she says. “I can tell all the old biddies at dialysis that my daughter is willing to stick by me until I’m less likely to croak.”
I bring her hand up and kiss her knuckles, smiling. “Oh, no need to brag on me.”
She chuckles to herself. “I always said we could develop a fine Laurel and Hardy routine, if only we could decide which of us is the fat one.”
“Neither. We could be Laurel and Laurel, or Hardy and Hardy. I can’t remember which one is which.”
“Oliver Hardy was the big one. I shouldn’t call him fat. Plus, he was born down in Georgia, so I guess we should claim him, being a good southern boy and all that.”
“So we should be the Double Hardys?”
“Or something similar.”
She shifts uncomfortably in her bed and winces.
“You okay?”
She smiles through the pain. “I’m fine, my girl. It just hurts to get old, and I think maybe all the years have waited until just now to stack up on me.”
At one point, her mouth goes slack on one side, and she looks up at me. Behind her once-vibrant eyes, there is now only a look of confusion.
“Mary Ellen?” she asks.
“Yes, mom?”
“Are you okay? Is everything okay?”
She reaches for my hand, clasps it with hers, and her eyes are extremely insistent. I lower myself into the seat next to her hospital bed.
“Of course, I am, Mom. I’m doing all right. Just fine, fine, fine.”
“If you get yourself into anything you can’t get out of,” she says, “I don’t want you sticking around this town, just for me.”
“What would I—”
“Those girls are trouble,” she interrupts. “I know they are, but I also know they have a magnetic pull on you, one that even you don’t realize. So, all I’m saying is, be careful.”
“I will,” I reply, hoping I sound convincing.
Truth be told, I already feel myself being dragged down into something dark and murky, something where the sun above is hardly visible.
“I love you.”
“I love you, too,” I tell her.
She smiles, and we sit quietly for minutes on end, basking in this moment in which no worry and no fear exists. Just a mother and her daughter. No one else.
Soon after, her mouth opens, and she loses clarity, so I call the nurses and take leave of the roo
m until they’ve got her stabilized.
Outside, the doctors and nurses relate more bad news. It’s worse than they thought. The prognosis is not good. Long-term care. Extended physical therapy.
Maybe a home.
It’s too much.
Thankfully, over the years, I’ve developed a keen sense for zoning out when I feel sad or threatened, so I spend most of it nodding.
Mom’s health care is good, so I don’t have to worry about her or money...yet.
***
The whole of Nashville is my oyster, but I find myself falling into old habits.
Audrey convinces me, through some not inconsiderable begging and pleading, to attend one of her “get-togethers.”
I think she feels a little guilty about how the chicken shack conversation went and wants to make amends. She is perfectly amicable on the phone and steps right on past any comment that could be misconstrued as salty.
When I arrive, I have to psych myself up, physically forcing my hand to open the door so that the valet could park it in a neighboring driveway.
This is it, I think. This is how the downhill slide begins.
But by the time I find my way to the front door, I’m feeling much, much better. Or at least less bad. My stomach does its normal loop-the-loops, and then I’m inside.
Her house is situated on a hill overlooking the city, though at this point in the summer, the foliage obscures most of it, so the Nashville skyline looks more like fallen stars than a series of flashy, high-rise buildings.
I leave my coat with a hired doorman and walk tentatively into the main room.
This is not a game night, a get-together, or any other quaint euphemism.
It’s a flat-out party. A celebration. Words almost fail to note the lavish nature of this rendezvous of the rich and famous in Nashville’s social circle.
I make my way to a nearby table, just to catch my breath. I need a minute, and I might need it to stretch out to five or ten before I can make an actual appearance.
The spread is immaculate.
There are appetizers—catered by a celebrated local company—and a ton of wine. I pick through hor d’oeuvres and select a fancy, speckled piece of delicate meat and pair it with a particularly stinky cheese. It’s all an act—a means for me to keep my head down and avoid eye contact—but for the time being it works.
Until, of course, a group of loud, brusque men elbow drunkenly in and start snapping up food as if it were just for them.
I bolt, hoping to God they don’t recognize me.
When I finally make my way to the main room, I come to realize: there are enough people to sink the Titanic. Audrey swims through dozens upon dozens of well-dressed, well-coiffed hangers-on to meet me. She’s all smiles and twinkles, and her dress a shiny match for her face.
“I hope you found the place okay,” she says as she leans in for an uncharacteristic cheek kiss. This is who she is now. Or at least who she pretends to be. “Parking around here is a real bitch.”
She smells like wine and sweet, sweet perfume. It almost reminds me of some earlier time in my life, but before I can clasp it with the tips of my fingers, it floats off into the air like smoke from a dying cigarette.
I want to tell her about my experience at Percy Warner, about the possibility that we are all being stalked, but she’s got me by the wrist before I can get a word in. Audrey guides me through the crowd and has her man behind the bar pour me a glass of Malbec.
“Isn’t this a fun time?” she asks, full of manufactured cheer.
Looking around, it’s clear these are not my people. They might have been in another universe, had I been able to finish my time at DDA. Or gone on to a degree in finance or law or some other respectable profession. But as it stands, I am an interloper in this world, one whose reputation precedes her, and so I can’t even fully immerse myself in the crowd as a stranger.
I settle into a spot where no one will spill their drink on me, and I try to look disinterested. It’s a pale impossibility, because the partygoers seem to have a knack for making eye contact with me.
I feel their questions like poisoned air all around me.
How could you?
What was it like?
Do you regret it?
They pretend like I’m beneath them, but in truth they’d probably trade the pearls around their necks for an intense five-minute conversation with me.
Unlike Audrey, who glows like lamplight at dusk, these people smolder. Fires about to extinguish themselves. They wear dark clothes and discuss dull ideas. It’s all houses, houses, houses and traffic, traffic, traffic. A few ebullient mothers on the outskirts discuss the rigors of breastfeeding, but otherwise, it’s all pretty one note.
Nothing about it strikes me as interesting, so I look for an exit strategy. I’ve made my appearance. Audrey has effectively turned me into a coffee table book, a provocative piece of art. Something to discuss in hushed tones over by the wine bar.
I’m a living conversation starter.
It seems as though I’ve fulfilled my purpose, so I give Audrey the I’m-getting-out-of-here thumb from across the room, and she responds by hurrying over and begging me to stay.
“You can’t leave now,” she says. “Everybody wants to meet you.”
I can’t help but take a look around.
These people are living gutter balls, and it’d be kind of sad if I didn’t already know them by face and reputation. I mean, through Audrey’s social media accounts.
Greta is the closeted daughter of a local politician, which would be fine, save for the fact that she publicly calls gays “animals” to be consistent with her mother’s political brand. She thinks no one notices the eyes she makes at Audrey.
But I do.
Bethany and her husband—over by the champagne punch—are swingers, and they have hooked up with at least three other couples here. Based on the conversations in Audrey’s messenger app, they’ve propositioned her but have made no progress.
Rosemarie just got out of rehab and is downing drinks on the sly when she thinks no one is looking. She’s a little hung up on Donovan, who just finished up his season on The Bachelorette, where he got drunk and mishandled a hot-tub hook-up, so he got sent home.
Schuyler is involved in shady business deals, and his wife Margot almost let a kid drown at her one-year-old’s birthday party because she was doing coke in the bathroom with a local chef named Stefan.
Is this what Audrey thinks of me? That I’m yet another ornament on her human bric-a-brac shelf? Do I fill some void in her clique?
Okay, I tell her. I’ll stay for a drink. I promise.
Yadda yadda yadda.
Once she is sufficiently mollified, Audrey wanders away, leaving me to fend for myself. I find myself watching Audrey’s husband manage himself among the flocks and flocks of wine drinking clingers in his midst.
Jenkins Finnell is a nice enough guy. He smiles at all the right moments, makes a few well-placed jokes, but there is something innately sad about him. Whereas Audrey lives for this kind of function, her husband exists on the outskirts, visible but withdrawn. Like me. It’s probably better that way. Audrey has blossomed into quite the attention-seeker, and it just wouldn’t do for her to have to compete for the spotlight.
However, I find myself kind of enamored by this man, and so I pay way more attention to him for a time than I do the rest of the party.
He seems to be looking for something that isn’t there, his eyes scanning the scene but never really settling on any one thing or person. It’s easy to ignore, to shrug off, but I see it, having been that very person for the last twenty years myself.
When he takes his drink and spins away from the group, I follow him out to the balcony. He catches me in his periphery and turns to regard me.
It takes him a moment to figure out who I am, but when he does, his gaze softens.
“Mary Ellen Hanneford,” he says, smiling gently. “I never thought I’d see you at one of these parties. W
hat a hell of a thing for your nervous system.”
He’s reaching into his jacket pocket, and he retrieves a half-open pack of cigarettes. Being a Belle Meade gentleman, he offers me one before lighting a cig for himself.
“Is this not your scene?” I ask.
Peering through the trees, I see the twinkle of some financial building or another. It would be a beautiful sight, if it weren’t ruined by this downer of a party.
“Yeah, well, most of these people assume I’d just prefer to discuss finance all night, or some other thing, but I’m just not—I don’t know. Maybe I’d just rather not talk at all. How’s that for good cheer?”
“I think it’s perfectly fine,” I say. Then something occurs to me. “Do you actually remember me? Like, I know that Audrey’s probably mentioned me at some point, but didn’t you go to school with—”
He nods, somewhat sadly, as he puffs on his cigarette. He looks away. “Yeah, I don’t think we ever ran in the same circles, but I was friends with Everett in a kind of casual way. He was a good guy. Why?”
I try to shake my head noncommittally, as if it just occurred to me, but the truth is, it’s all people seem to want to discuss. “I don’t know. It seems to follow me like an evil spirit. Part of me just wants to know more about him.”
“Everett.”
“Right. Everett. I don’t mean—”
“No, it’s okay,” he says. “I wasn’t best friends with the guy or anything. It just seems, I don’t know, necessary to regard him by his first name, lest it—”
“Fade away?”
“That’s right,” he says, and his smile is more melancholy than I’d like. “One thing people didn’t say a lot back then—he was sad. A real sad guy. His parents, they pushed him to be something he wasn’t.”
“Which was.”
“Popular.”
“Say that again?”
“They wanted him to be popular,” he says. “He was quiet and—what’s it called—introverted. Quiet and depressed is not good, when you exist in a world of sharks.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Everybody had it out for that kid. He got it from both ends, at home and at school. It’s like this: he tried to kill himself once. I mean, obviously, before the final time.”
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