The Book of Essie

by Meghan MacLean Weir

  Aside from that picture there are a few other close-ups that were published in the Enquirer and other papers of that kind. There is very little text accompanying them, nothing to place the shots in time or space apart from the date of publication. They are all from that same year. Then nothing.

  I reread every article I can find that mentions Elizabeth and was published over the last six years. There’s a good amount to sift through from her junior and senior years of high school, pieces about whether or not she would be allowed to attend the junior prom (no) and then a flurry of online activity when it was announced that she would be going to her senior prom with a boy named Carter Banks. He was probably chosen by her parents to escort Elizabeth to the dance. I doubt they’ve kept in touch, but it’s all I have to go on, so I take a chance and google his name. Unlike Elizabeth, Carter Banks has a fairly typical online presence, which is to say that within minutes I know far more about him than I ever knew about my best friend growing up. Most important, I know that he is enrolled at the University of Chicago, my alma mater, which gives me options.

  It’s Friday, meaning that the registrar’s office at the university will be closed through the weekend. Still, stopping by on Monday and sweet-talking my way into a copy of Carter’s schedule is not entirely out of the question. It’s what I did my junior year when some senior got too handsy with my roommate Samantha. She never reported it and in her head I know she didn’t even think of it as assault, though as the one who walked in on them, I can say with the utmost clarity that an assault was exactly what it was. Since she wouldn’t let me take her to the school counselor, I figured the best I could do was help her avoid the asshole until he graduated that spring.

  I played the Libby Bell card with Darlene, the woman in the registrar’s office, said that the senior was stalking me but that I couldn’t report it without risking it hitting the papers. Her eyes teared up a little as she took my hand, but I think that had more to do with how much I look like Justice, even now that I’m older and my sister isn’t. I could tell that Darlene was the sort of woman who would have taken Justice’s death particularly hard. People will do practically anything if they think it will keep me safe. They all feel guilty that when it mattered most for Justice, no one did a thing.

  So the registrar is one option. Darlene still works there, and she still sends me a card on the birthday that I once shared with my sister, but she won’t be in for two more days and I don’t want to wait that long. Then I find Carter Banks’s name in an orchestra program listed under percussion, and with just a little more searching, I learn that there will be a performance of Carmina Burana next weekend that is being rather graphically advertised as “Orff with Their Heads.”

  I smile for the first time since I started reading, not because I find the pun amusing but because now I know how to find Carter Banks. It’s better than nothing. Blearily I rub my eyes and shut my computer. It is after midnight, so I leave Mike a note and riffle through a pile of clothes until I find some pajamas that smell clean enough. Then I fall into bed. Just as I’m pulling the covers up around my ears, I hear him moving around in the kitchen, but I am asleep before he comes into our room.

  * * *

  —————

  The next morning I get up early and head to the campus security office. The fall of my sophomore year I interviewed a guard named Azzam Ghazali for the school paper after several students’ cars were broken into. It was my first real assignment as a journalist, or at least that’s how it felt. I know that if I had met Azzam even six months earlier, we would not have become friends. I was raised to believe that there are different kinds of people and that this world can best be navigated by recognizing folks for what they are and not expecting them to be what they are not.

  For instance, as Mama had told me more than once while I was growing up, Lee Sherman was a drunk. There was nothing that would change that; it was just how he was made. So instead of asking the Mississippi to reverse direction and head back up north, it did infinitely more good to fill a Crock-Pot with stew and drop it off on Lee’s front stoop. Then at least he would eat that week. There was no harsh judgment in her voice when Mama talked about Lee. His actions may have sometimes attracted her derision, but the man himself was always forgiven. Nor was there any judgment when she told me that the congregation of Reverend Nance’s church were not really Christian, that they were just going through the motions but they had none of them answered God’s true call.

  “Don’t you think I know a Christian when I see one?” Mama would ask, and Justice and I would nod because Mama was famous for her looking eye, for being able to tell with just one glance the truth that was inside. She knew when a cow was ready to calf even before Topher, the ranch hand, who told people he’d been raised by a dairy cow called Etta Place and that the cattle were practically family as far as he was concerned. And Mama knew when Lou Ann Laramie had been beaten one too many times and was fixing to shoot her husband. That’s how she got there first and took the rifle out of Lou Ann’s hands. Mama told Mo Laramie that if he laid a hand on his wife again, she would come back and save Lou Ann the trouble and just shoot him herself.

  “People may not have the power to help what they are, but you two best be able to separate the good from the bad. If you can’t, then you’re liable to pack a pound cake when a shotgun is required or the other way round.”

  She said this to Justice and me as we brushed the horses the day after Easter, the last one we would spend together, though at the time there was no way of knowing what would happen in December of that year. This memory is rooted firmly in time only because I wanted to skip the talking and get back to the house, where Mama had promised we could have pie for breakfast. I complained of having to go out in the cold at all while the visiting cousins slept in. Still, even with a thin crust of snow covering the ground and the wind whipping across the flat prairie as it stretched for miles in all directions, inside the barn it was warm. I leaned my cheek against Jasper’s withers and his muscles twitched as if I were a fly in search of blood, then he turned his head around with a baleful expression to urge me to start brushing him again.

  In the next stall, Mama ran a currycomb over Milo’s back. Justice had named him when he was born, which made him for all intents and purposes her horse, but Mama had said that she would take care of Milo if Justice agreed to work on the knots that had gotten tangled up in one of the lead lines. Knots were one of Justice’s specialties. Her fingers were small and strong, the opposite of my own clumsy ones. So Justice sat outside Milo’s stall on an overturned bucket, her quick deft touch unraveling the line.

  As she worked, she said to Mama, “Pa says that Ham’s son Canaan was cursed because his father sinned, that the child takes on the sins of the father. And that God made all their descendants black as punishment so that his transgressions would show up clearly on their skin.”

  Mama did not stop working on Milo when she answered, “Don’t you two go around thinking less of someone just because he was born ignorant or shiftless or colored. It is our Christian duty to protect them from themselves so that the Lord might have mercy on all our souls.”

  I remember thinking how good Mama must be, how righteous, to preach love even for those who were black or brown, while knowing how badly Pa would punish her if he heard her talk that way. Even now, long after coming to realize the prejudice in such a loaded statement, I still think Mama was brave to say what she did. She was trying to teach us as much about love as she knew how.

  * * *

  —————

  Azzam has moved up through the ranks since his years watching over the BMWs and Audis in the student lot. I place a coffee from his favorite diner on his desk in offering. He embraces me warmly, then motions for me to take a chair and we both sit. There is a picture of his son dressed in a shirt and a crooked tie, smiling shyly into the lens, placed prominently on a bookshelf next to the watercool
er.

  “My friend,” Azzam says, “you cannot be here just to visit an old man. I can tell. It is not possible that a television star such as yourself has time for the likes of me.”

  I wrinkle my nose and say, “You saw it, then?”

  “Saw it? I DVR’d it and will watch it often.”

  I laugh and say, “Please don’t do that. But I may have another chance to grace your television screen before too long. That is, if you’re willing to help.”

  He spreads his hands wide and his lips stretch out into a grin. “When have I ever refused the call of Liberty?”

  I clap soundlessly at his pun, since it is one of his favorites.

  “I knew I could count on you, patriot that you are,” I say. “I need to know when and where the orchestra practices next.”

  “As you wish,” he tells me and turns toward his computer and pulls up the schedule for campus events and security assignments. “Shane is unlocking Mandel Hall for them at ten. Does that help?”

  I lean forward and kiss him on the cheek. “You know, I think it just might.”

  * * *

  —————

  Walking across campus, I catch sight of the tower before I can see Mandel Hall, and I remember how when I first visited, I was convinced that God must live here, the buildings were so beautiful. I think that this conviction, which I told my parents had come to me in a dream, was the only reason I was allowed to leave home for college. That and I told them I would be studying early Christian religion, which of course I did, among other things.

  I wait by the fountain and flip through the Facebook pictures of Carter Banks that I’ve saved on my phone. He’s wearing the same jacket he had on in his most recent selfie when I spot him crossing the courtyard.

  “Carter!” I yell and raise my hand in a wave.

  He smiles uncertainly, likely trying to work out where we’ve met and if we’ve hooked up and whether it might be better to run away. I am already jogging closer and extending my hand.

  “Hi. I’m Libby. We don’t know each other, but I’m hoping you can help me with something.”

  He stuffs his hands into his jacket pockets and lifts his shoulders against the wind.

  “Shoot,” Carter tells me.

  “I recently spoke to Esther Anne Hicks. I believe you went to prom with her sister, Elizabeth?”

  He says nothing and his face is a blank, no confirmation or denial.

  “I was wondering if you might still be in touch with Elizabeth. Essie wants to find her and she asked me to help look.”

  “Shouldn’t she just ask her parents?”

  “Maybe she did already, or maybe she doesn’t think that’s an option. I don’t know. I just know that she needs to find Elizabeth. Are you still in touch or not?”

  But Carter is already backing away.

  “Essie didn’t send you,” he snarls. “Why can’t you all just leave those girls alone?”

  “She needs to find Lissa,” I call out, and he stops at my use of the nickname. “Please.”

  “Is Essie in trouble?” he asks and he moves a step closer.

  I shrug. I don’t know what else to say that might convince him to trust me so I try, “How could she not be?”

  Carter clenches and unclenches his jaw as he deliberates. Then he takes out his phone.

  “One call. That’s all you get. I’m not going to take you to her. I’m not even saying I know where she is, do you hear me?”

  I nod. “Thank you.”

  “Come on,” he says and motions me to follow him out of the courtyard and into a line of students carrying violin cases or rolling cellos. Once we’re inside and out of the wind, Carter dials.

  “Hey, Liss,” he says. “I’m sorry to do this, but there’s a woman here who wants to talk to you…No, don’t hang up. She says that Essie sent her. I haven’t told her anything. She doesn’t have your number, but I’m going to hand the phone to her, if that’s all right.” He looks up and mouths the words Go ahead and holds the phone out to me.

  “Elizabeth?” I say, then, “Lissa?”

  “Who told you that you could use that name?”

  “I’m sorry. Elizabeth, then. It’s just that it’s what Essie called you when we last talked.”

  “Why on earth should I believe that you’ve spoken with my sister?”

  “My name is Liberty Bell. I met Essie a few days ago when we filmed an interview. Maybe you saw it?” I’m met with silence, so I say, “Maybe if I text you a link to the video and Carter takes a picture of me on his phone…” I trail off, uncertain how to finish.

  “That’s not necessary,” she tells me. “I recognize your voice now. What is it that you have to say?”

  I step away from Carter and turn my back. “Essie wants to know why you never come home. She wants to see you.”

  “That place stopped being my home a long time ago.”

  “She wants to know what happened, why you left, or at least why you won’t come back. She seems to think that something drove you away.”

  “Why? What did she say?”

  “That’s it. That’s all she told me. She said that I should find you and get you to talk to me or else get you to meet her at one of the pre-wedding interviews so that she can talk with you herself.”

  “Who’s getting married?” Elizabeth asks.

  “Your sister. At least she says she is.”

  There is a pause, then Lissa says, “Tell my sister she’s crazy. Nothing happened. I’m not in any trouble. I just want to be left alone.”

  I take a chance since it worked on Carter and say, “But what if she’s the one who’s in some kind of trouble?”

  There is another moment of hesitation as Elizabeth considers this. Then in a cold voice, she says, “I told you. I don’t live there anymore.”

  Roarke

  I ran into Essie Hicks at the baseball game yesterday, which is why I can now say with the utmost certainty that the girl is even crazier than she looks. I’m not sure who I would say this to but that’s entirely beside the point. Not Mom or Dad; they’ve been acting truly nuts ever since their fancy tea at the rectory a couple days ago. Also, they aren’t home, so I can’t say anything to them at all. I thought they might show at the game if Dad finished early at the store, but no such luck. Then this morning they were out the door while I was still trying to convince my brain that it was time to wake up and start moving. They yelled something about talking to their lawyer as they left but didn’t answer when I asked them what it was about. Then they were gone.

  So I’m alone and there are a few hours to kill before I have to head to baseball practice. Mom left nearly a full pot of coffee, which is good, because I was up half the night thinking about Essie Hicks, though I can’t really explain why. Something about the way she looked at me makes me feel like she thinks she knows me. That in itself is not a surprise. Girls are always looking at me like that, like they feel they have me figured and are just working out how to fix me. Their solution usually has something to do with kissing or else giving me access to what’s underneath their shirt. But yesterday, with Essie Hicks, there was a moment when I thought she might be right. Maybe she does know me. Maybe she knows me better than I want to admit.

  I go for a run and then hop in the shower. When I get out, I can hear Mom and Dad moving around downstairs. Their voices are loud and so I hang out upstairs, waiting for them to finish whatever argument they’re having. Eventually, though, I am out of excuses and besides that I’m hungry. I wait for a particularly impressive bit of shouting to die away before I trudge heavily down the stairs, making enough noise that they will hear me coming.

  Just as I expected, by the time I enter the kitchen, it is silent. Mom stands at the counter putting together some sandwiches. Dad’s pouring the last of the morning’s coffee over some ice.

&n
bsp; “Son,” he greets me as he nods. He takes a long gulp of his drink and I can tell that he’s stalling. Finally, he says, “We need to talk.”

  Mom’s still standing with her back to us, facing the counter. She places a piece of bread on top of the sandwich she’s putting together and leaves her hand there, hovering above the crust.

  “Suzanne?” Dad calls over to her and she jumps a little.

  “Coming,” she says after letting out a sigh.

  In a few swift, practiced movements she cuts the sandwiches and places them on a plate, which she sets in the middle of the kitchen table. Dad and I sit.

  “Help yourselves,” she tells us unnecessarily. We’ve never had to be told to dig into food before. But no one moves. After a pause, Mom sits down. I look from my dad, who is dunking one of his ice cubes beneath the surface of the coffee with his index finger, to my mom, who is staring at her lap.

  Since I am generally of the opinion that it is best to get out ahead of things, I take the initiative and say, “I didn’t do it, whatever it is.”

  Mom ventures a small smile, but I can see that the effort pains her. Dad clears his throat. I wonder how long we are going to sit here before one of them says something. I don’t have to wonder for too long, though, because after a painful and heavy silence, Dad says, “Roarke, I think you know that the store has been struggling.”

  This isn’t news. Our station wagon has four bald tires that should’ve been replaced a year ago. It’s a miracle that the car made it through the winter without an accident. But it’s not just our store. The whole country is in a recession, though the talking heads on the news say that the numbers are improving. Whatever that means. Still, I know we’re not rich, which is why I’m not counting on Columbia. Even with financial aid, we don’t have the money for me to get back and forth or pay for room and board. I’m fine with State. I really am. I tell myself this every day.