Mary Bliss clamped her hands over her ears. “I do not want to hear this, Katharine.”
“I didn’t mean to kill him,” Katharine said, stabbing at the elevator button. “I just wanted to have some fun. And maybe get a little revenge on that bitch girlfriend.”
“You’re still in love with him,” Mary Bliss said. “It’s natural to want him back.”
“What I wanted was some honest-to-God sex,” Katharine said. “I don’t care what anybody says, a vibrator is not the same thing. A vibrator can’t scratch your back, or kiss your nipple. A vibrator doesn’t have a tongue…”
“Stop it right now!” Mary Bliss exclaimed. “We are in a hospital! Don’t you have any decency?”
“No,” Katharine said. “If I had any decency, I wouldn’t have gone down on Charlie on the practice tee tonight. He was a little pale, afterwards, I admit, but we were having such a good time. It was his idea to go back to my place. And afterwards, when he started groaning like that, I just thought, you know, he was letting me know how good it was. But then he went all blue…”
The elevator chimed softly, and the doors slid open. An elderly man in a black cleric’s collar, white-haired, bent over a walker, shuffled onto the elevator and looked first at the control panel, and then helplessly around at the two women for some kind of direction.
“Lobby?” he said in a wavery voice.
Mary Bliss punched the number 1 on the control panel and the doors slid shut.
“I think maybe it was the Viagra,” Katharine continued, ignoring their new companion. “He told me he bought it off the Internet. You’re only supposed to take one, but you know Charlie. If one’s good, two are better. And he really did have the most amazing woodie. You should have seen it, Mary Bliss. He was so proud of himself.”
Mary Bliss clamped her hands over the priest’s ears. “Katharine, for God’s sake!” she shouted.
The elevator bell chimed softly again. Third floor. “This is us,” Mary Bliss said, shoving Katharine off the elevator.
They trooped down to the CICU reception desk.
“Charlie Weidman,” Katharine said to the clerk. “My husband. Has he been moved up here yet? Can I see him now?”
Mary Bliss noticed the language. Husband. Katharine was referring to Charlie as her husband. She took it as a sign.
The clerk picked up the phone and called back to the unit. A moment later, she handed Katharine a plastic clip-on visitor’s ID tag.
“They’ve given him morphine for the chest pain, so he’s asleep. But you can see him if you don’t stay more than a few minutes.”
“Come with me?” Katharine turned to Mary Bliss, her voice pleading.
The clerk shook her head. “Sorry. Only family in the ICU.”
“She’s my sister,” Katharine said. She drew her fingertips across her chest. “Cross my heart.”
“Uh-uh,” the clerk said, eyeing them both. Katharine stood a good six inches taller than Mary Bliss, her frosted blonde hair and blue eyes a telling contrast to Mary Bliss’s dark hair and eyes.
“For real,” Mary Bliss added.
“Go on, sisters,” the clerk said, handing Mary Bliss a visitor’s tag. “Five minutes. Then you’re outta there.”
The two women stared down at Charlie Weidman, who was, as promised, asleep. The heart monitor beside his bed beeped softly, and his face, behind the oxygen mask, seemed peaceful. His color was better, and his breathing was regular.
“See?” Mary Bliss said, nudging Katharine. “He’s fine. He’s not gonna die at all. So now you can quit feeling guilty about killing him. Come on. Let’s go home. I’m beat.”
“Hmm,” Katharine said. She glanced around Charlie’s glass-walled ICU cubicle. The unit seemed quiet. Two nurses at the horseshoe-shaped desk were bent over a computer monitor. Another talked animatedly on the phone.
“Just a minute,” Katharine said. Before Mary Bliss could stop her, she’d lifted the sheet covering Charlie, poked her head under it, then surfaced again.
“Damn,” she said. “I guess the Viagra wore off.”
46
The first thing Mary Bliss noticed was that the house was just as she’d left it. The front porch light was still on and her car was the only one in the garage.
She felt a chill go down her spine. Dear God. It was 2:30 A.M. Where was Erin?
Erin’s bedroom was empty, and in its normal state of upheaval. Mary Bliss checked the answering machine, but there were no messages.
Erin had left to go to the free concert at around seven o’clock. She was wearing shorts; a red, white, and blue halter top; and blue flip-flops from the Gap. Atlanta had a strict noise ordinance, no outdoor concerts could continue past midnight. So where was her daughter?
Mary Bliss went out to the front porch and looked over at the Bowden house. All the lights were off. She could see Josh’s beat-up black Chevy parked in the driveway. Erin had planned to drive her group of friends to the MARTA station, take the train to the Mid-town station, and then walk to the concert.
She had been relieved at this sensible plan. Parking in the area was nearly nonexistent, and though the neighborhoods surrounding the park had long been gentrified, there was still an alarming amount of street crime in the area. Erin would be with friends, Mary Bliss thought. She’d be with Josh. She’d be safe.
Was Josh home? She went back inside, had her hand on the phone, picked it up, started to dial, hung up. Should she wake Randy up, demand to know where her daughter was at this time of night?
Wait. She dialed Erin’s cell phone number. It rang once, then a recording came on, instructing her that the number was not in service. That’s right, she thought. She hadn’t been able to pay Erin’s cell phone bill, and with everything else going on around her, it hadn’t been a priority.
“Where are you?” she said aloud.
She tried fixing herself a cup of tea, but when it had brewed, she couldn’t stand the tinny taste. She went upstairs, lay down on her bed, fully clothed, but found her eyes would not close.
“Screw this,” she said finally.
She got in the car and backed it out of the driveway. Once she was out on the street, she didn’t know what to do next. Where should she look? Where would a seventeen-year-old girl be this time of night?
She cruised the streets of Fair Oaks, searching for Erin’s little blue Honda. The first place she looked was the soccer field where she’d found Erin the night she’d arrived back from Mexico. But the parking lot was empty.
The lights were off at Jessica’s house. All of Fair Oaks, it seemed, was asleep. Except for Mary Bliss McGowan. She turned the car’s radio to WGST, the all-news station, listening for any reports of car accidents, or muggings, or any kind of incident at all that might involve her daughter.
When she’d finished cruising the neighborhood, Mary Bliss drove over to the nearest MARTA lot. A train whistle hooted softly as it passed by on the overhead tracks. She could see at a glance that only a handful of cars were parked in the lot, and none of them were Erin’s Honda.
She turned up Clifton Road, and then onto Ponce de Leon. The oak-lined avenue was quiet. No cars in sight, no flashing blue lights or sirens. Mary Bliss exhaled a little. A major east-west artery leading from in-town neighborhoods to downtown, Ponce was so narrow, the oaks crowding right to the edge of the pavement, she’d always been terrified of wrapping a car around trees, or worse yet, a utility pole.
She drove past the Krispy Kreme, one of Erin’s favorite late-night hangouts. The first place she’d wanted to drive, once she’d gotten her license at sixteen, was to the all-night Krispy Kreme on Ponce. The doughnut joint was brightly lit, the neon red HOT TO GO light flashing, meaning fresh doughnuts were coming off the conveyor belt; and two police cars were parked side by side in the parking lot, officers hanging out their cruiser windows, drinking coffee and gossiping. But there was no blue Honda. She thought, briefly, of turning her car around, approaching the cops, asking for their help in finding h
er missing daughter.
No. She knew what they’d say. A seventeen-year-old out past curfew was a matter for parents, not police. Anyway, Erin would never speak to her again if she sicced the police on her.
She turned onto Monroe and followed it down to Piedmont Park. The streets surrounding Atlanta’s version of Central Park were deserted, except for the occasional dog walker or Rollerblader, but yards, streets, and sidewalks were littered with the debris of ten thousand people devoted to heavy metal rock and roll: beer cans, fragments of Styrofoam coolers, fast food bags, broken lawn chairs, and paper wrappers from sparklers and firecrackers. The smell of cordite hung heavy in the thick, humid air.
The roads into the park were closed and blocked off with Atlanta Police barricades. She felt a wave of helplessness wash over her. She pulled her car into the blocked-off parking lot, put her head down on the steering wheel, and started to cry.
There was no telling how long she’d been there before she heard a light tapping on her window. Startled, she jerked her head up.
A city sanitation worker, dressed in white coveralls, stood beside her car. “You all right, ma’am?” he asked, his young face etched with concern.
“My daughter,” she said, her voice faltering. “She came to the concert tonight. But she never came home. I was looking…”
“Cops shut the concert down at midnight,” he said. He wore his hair in a Mohawk that was dyed hot pink, and he had a tiny tuft of hair on his chin, sort of an embryonic Fu Manchu goatee. He should have looked frightening, or threatening, but he didn’t. He looked like somebody’s big brother.
“I know,” Mary Bliss said. “I’ve looked all over our neighborhood. I checked the MARTA station where she said she was going to park. I thought maybe, maybe some kids were still hanging out here. She’s only seventeen. I’m worried, something might have happened.”
“Me and my crew just finished running the big sweeper truck through there,” the young man said. “We didn’t see nobody. Unless they’re hiding out. She wouldn’t be hiding out now, would she?”
“No,” Mary Bliss said, surprised. “Why would she be hiding out?”
“Dunno,” he said. “Me and my old man used to fight and shit. I’d take off, hide out at my buddy’s house a day or two, ’til he cooled down.”
Mary Bliss frowned. “She’s never done that before.”
“Maybe she’s with her boyfriend,” he offered, giving her a sly wink. “Probably, she hooked up with this guy. They’d been drinking, maybe smoking some weed, and they decided to go someplace private. She can’t come home drunk or stoned, right? That wouldn’t be too cool.”
“I’d kill her,” Mary Bliss said quickly. “I won’t tolerate drugs or alcohol. She’s only a child.”
“Right,” he said. “So that’s why she’s stayed out all night.”
“But where?” Mary Bliss asked.
He grinned. “You’d be surprised the places me and my girlfriend used to crash when we were in high school. Hell, sometimes, we’d sneak in her basement. We’d be down there all night long, and her parents never even knew it.”
Mary Bliss shuddered. Her own basement held a hot water heater, mildewed luggage, and the furnace. The one place Erin wouldn’t go was the basement.
Her shoulders sagged. She rubbed her eyes.
“You should just go on home,” her new friend urged. “It’s not that big a deal. Kids stay out all night all the time.”
She was exhausted and she was out of ideas. Maybe he was right. Maybe home was the only place left to go.
“You want my advice?” he asked, straightening and stretching.
“Sure,” she said.
“When she does come home, don’t go off on her, you know? Don’t be screaming and hysterical and threatening to ground her and shit like that.”
“She’s broken every rule we have,” Mary Bliss said stiffly. “She should be grounded for the rest of the summer. If she’s alive, that is.”
He shook his head in disapproval.
“Say I don’t ground her,” Mary Bliss said, thinking it over. “If you had a teenager, what would you do if your child stayed out all night and scared you to death like this?”
“Stay cool,” he said. “Just stay cool.”
Mary Bliss drove home. Erin’s Honda was parked in the garage.
She stormed into the house and up the stairs, driven by a white anger. How dare she! The little monster!
Erin’s bedroom door was open. The clothes she’d worn earlier in the evening were scattered on the floor. Her daughter was asleep, lying on her side, clutching the Dutch doll baby quilt Mary Bliss had made her while she was pregnant.
Mary Bliss stood over her, her hand opening and closing. Erin’s cheek was pink and damp with sweat, her breathing sweet and slow.
Mary Bliss tucked a strand of Erin’s hair behind her ear. The monster was home. She turned off the hall light and went to bed.
47
“She’s back!” Katharine said, slamming the kitchen door behind her.
Mary Bliss looked up from the morning paper. “Who?”
“The bitch-whore,” Katharine said, referring to Charlie’s girlfriend.
Katharine stalked over to the refrigerator, got out a Diet Coke, popped the top, and sat down at the table across from Mary Bliss.
“I went over to Piedmont first thing this morning to check on Charlie. I even stopped at the bagel place at Toco Hills to get him one of those marble bagels with salmon cream cheese like he likes. I even went by his condo, to pick up some pajamas and things for him, and there she was, bigger than hell, coming out of the condo, with an overnight bag.”
“Maybe she’s moving out,” Mary Bliss said.
“She’s moving, all right,” Katharine said. “She’s moving in on the kill. She didn’t see me, so I went around to the back of the parking lot, and when she got in her car, I followed her. To the hospital.”
“Oh,” Mary Bliss said. “How do you think she found out so soon? It’s only been a day.”
“I know how she found out,” Katharine said. “The old fool called her.”
“Damn,” Mary Bliss said. “How’d you find that out?”
“I skulked around down in the hospital cafeteria for about an hour, then I called up to the cardiac unit and got one of the nurses to check to make sure she was gone. And when the coast was clear, I marched myself up there and tore Charlie Weidman a new one.”
“Katharine!” Mary Bliss scolded. “He’s not supposed to have any stress. The man just had a heart attack.”
“While he was in bed with me,” Katharine pointed out. “If it hadn’t been for me, calling the EMTs and getting him to the emergency room, he’d be laid up there in a bronze casket at Patterson’s Spring Hill by now.”
Mary Bliss decided to refrain from pointing out that not two days earlier, Katharine had been blaming herself for causing Charlie’s delicate condition.
“How did he take being yelled at?” she asked.
“The big baby kept clutching his chest, like he was gonna have another heart attack,” Katharine said. “He’s just pulling that heart attack crap to keep from having to deal with choosing between me and the BW.”
Mary Bliss folded the newspaper in quarters, then put it in the recycling bin by the back door.
“Is that a choice you want him to make in his current condition?” she asked, trying to choose her words carefully.
“Hell, yes,” Katharine said. “He’s being released from Piedmont next Tuesday. Yesterday when I was up there, he was all lovey-dovey, holding my hand, telling me how he now has something to live for, how he wanted the three of us to be a family again. You know he can’t go home to his condo when he leaves the hospital, because the bedroom’s on the second floor. He was hinting big-time about coming back to my house. Idiot that I am, I even offered to bring him home and take care of him.”
“Until you saw the BW.”
Katharine nodded vigorously. Tears sprang to her eye
s, and she swiped at them angrily with a paper napkin. “Damn him.”
“Come on,” Mary Bliss said, tugging at Katharine’s hand. “Get up. Come with me. Forget about Charlie for now.”
“I wish I could,” she said, blowing her nose loudly. “Where are we going?”
“Upstairs,” Mary Bliss said. “To Erin’s room.”
“I don’t need a nap,” Katharine said. “I’m fine. What I do need is a hit man.”
“For Charlie or the BW?”
“Both,” Katharine said. “What are we going to do in Erin’s room?”
“We’re going to search every damn inch of it until I get some answers,” Mary Bliss said.
Katharine followed her dutifully up the stairs. She paused in the doorway. “Wow,” she said, taking it all in. “Chip’s room was never this bad. What kind of answers are we looking for?”
“Anything,” Mary Bliss said. “She stayed out all night Thursday night. I searched all over Atlanta for her. I even went over to Piedmont Park, thinking maybe she’d gotten drunk and fallen in the lake or something. Finally, I gave up and came home at about four A.M. And here she was, sound asleep in her bed.”
“All night?” Katharine raised an eyebrow. “Did you slap her butt on restriction?”
“No,” Mary Bliss said. “I didn’t say a word. What good would it do? She has a job, her own car, her own friends. She hates me. Hardly ever speaks to me.”
“Who was she with?” Katharine asked. She inched her way gingerly into the room and started pulling out the drawers of Erin’s chest of drawers.
“Josh,” Mary Bliss said.
“Did you speak to Randy about that?” Katharine asked. “I can’t believe he thinks it’s okay for Josh to be staying out all night with his girlfriend.”
Little Bitty Lies Page 24