“Hiiii, Shelby,” he said.
“Oh, Eddie.” I was disappointed. “It’s stuff like this that made me want to talk to you.”
He actually waved me away. “It’s okay, Shelby. Go. Leave me. You shouldn’t be with a fuckup like me.”
“Eddie.”
He attempted to sit up, faltered, and managed to do so. I’d never seen him this smashed. There were two half-empty bottles of tequila and Southern Comfort on the little table that we usually ate on. That was a pretty deadly mixture. He had probably had a shot of one, and then a shot of the other. Repeat until blotto.
“You knew I was coming over,” I said.
“Oh yeah, I knew. That’s why you’re seeing me as I really am.” He spread his arms. “Take a look, Shelby. This is the real Eddie Newcott. The one that can’t be with you, Shelby. I’m bad for you, and you know it.”
“Stop it, Eddie, that’s not true.” It was what I said at the time. I couldn’t stand seeing him in such depths of self-hatred. I remember feeling more angry than sorry for him, but it hadn’t been my intention that day to break up. Deep down, I knew that Eddie was an incredibly sensitive person. He was an open wound. And I was close enough to see the lesions.
And yet he still had secrets that he kept away from me.
“Eddie, what are you hiding? What are you not telling me?” I asked.
He started laughing. Laughing. “My God, Shelby, are you kidding me? There’s a ton of shit I’m not telling you. And that’s exactly why you gotta go.” He stood with trembling, wobbly legs. “You need to forget me. I’m no good, Shelby, I’ve already done terrible things, and I will do more. I’m evil inside. I’ve been made evil by my father and—by my father and what he did to me.”
For a second, I thought he was going to finish his sentence differently: “… by my father and—.” But I don’t know what it was. Still, I was skeptical. “What are you talking about, Eddie? What terrible things have you done? What you did out at that bar—you were right, that guy maybe deserved to be taught a lesson—so that’s not a terrible thing. So, what? What else are you talking about?”
“I really did kill my father!”
“I—” I was struck dumb. There was a stretch of silence before I responded with a simple “What?”
He became very animated and agitated, pacing back and forth unsteadily in the small space. I had to move back against the bookcase to give him room. “Shelby, my father beat me and humiliated me and hated me. When I was young I saw how he beat and humiliated and hated my mom.”
I was shocked by the things he was saying. “Why did you come home and live in the same house after your discharge from the army?”
“I had no choice. I had no money. It was going to be for a short time, but it didn’t work out that way.”
“So you killed him?”
He nodded, speaking very fast. “Uh huh, that’s what I did, I really did. I got a job at his company because he, well, hell, he forced me to. You don’t understand, I wasn’t a son to my father; I was just a thing he wanted to control. So, one day out in the field, something happened with the block and tackle. You get to it way up on the top of the derrick. Dad told me to follow him up there so he could show me how to fix it. It was a scary climb on rungs that were part of the derrick grill, you know what I mean? It was a windy day, too! We got up to the top, the crown block, the little platform up there. Even there he yelled at me for taking too long to make the climb. He called me a sissy—even after I’d been in the goddamned army. The ground was a fucking long way down. I knew then that I had my chance to get rid of that bastard. He squatted and started working with the cables, you know? I was handing him tools and there was a moment that he leaned over and was off-balance, you know what I mean? And … I just pushed him. That’s all I did. Just a little push. And off he went. I knew he wouldn’t survive the fall. It was a fucking long way down.”
He plopped down on the bed and sat there with his face in his hands.
I couldn’t believe what I’d just heard. And yet, even though the news was so shocking, in some way, it didn’t seem like news. I wasn’t all that broken up about it. Charles Newcott had been a horrible human being. I’m not even sure I could call him a person.
“Eddie, are you telling me the truth?”
He looked up, one hand still on his face, one eye peeking through his fingers. The image reminded me of one of the more memorable sinners in Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel painting of Judgment Day, which depicted the soul’s utter realization of the terrible deeds he had done.
Eddie nodded.
I swallowed and said, “Eddie, you should know that I fully understand why you did it. It was wrong, but I do understand.”
The hand dropped, and he looked at me suddenly with a very strange smile on his face. Like he was a little devil about to pull a prank on an unsuspecting victim. “You won’t tell on me?”
“Eddie …”
He waved me away again. “Go, Shelby. Forget about me. Forget I told you that. Go on with your life, Shelby. I’m no good. I can’t corrupt you anymore.”
My heart shattered. That’s the only way I could describe it. I’d experienced minor romantic mishaps up to that point, but Eddie was the most serious relationship I’d ever had in my young adult life. It was my first real heartbreak—after our very first “breakup” as children—and it hurt. It really did.
“Do you mean that?” I asked.
“Yeah. Go. Go back to Illinois. Forget about me. Please.” He hung his head.
We were silent for a moment. Then I said, “Goodbye, Eddie,” turned, and left the bomb shelter.
I wouldn’t see Eddie again until seventeen years later. We would be very different people by then.
16
Back at the Best Western, I tell myself it’s going to be an early night. At least I’m hoping it will be. I’m one of those people who can never sleep well when traveling, and I dislike not having my own pillow. Nevertheless, I open my tablet and connect to the Internet in order to check my email and the like. The television is tuned to a mindless talent competition show—sometimes music can be nice in the background. If only the judges would shut up.
After taking care of business, I go to Google on a whim and type “Edward Newcott Evil Eddie” in the search box. Dozens of links appear. Evil Eddie had attracted attention, infamous on a national basis. I didn’t know the extent of his fame overseas, but I see URLs for a London and a Paris news outlet. Most of the recent articles are about the trial and the upcoming execution. Eddie is painted to be a demon, a creature that deserves to die by lethal injection.
I am very torn. Recalling the night he told me he’d killed his father prompts me to reexamine everything. I want to be prepared for my face-to-face with Eddie tomorrow. Even if he is so far gone mentally that we’re barely able to speak to each other, I am determined to fully come to terms with how I feel about him and the things he’s done. What he did to Dora Walton and her baby is unthinkable. No question about it. I shouldn’t have anything more to do with Eddie because of that, but I can’t help but believe he was sick in the head. The Eddie I know couldn’t have done that horrible deed.
Could he?
After all, he’d killed before. He’d admitted to me—and only me—that he caused the death of his abusive father.
How the hell do I feel about any of it? I don’t know. God help me, but I am torn.
The TV becomes an ambient drone as my mind drifts back to that summer of 1977. The pain of Eddie telling me he didn’t want me in his life anymore drove me back to Evanston earlier than I’d originally planned. I abruptly announced to my parents that I was going back to Illinois, even though it wasn’t yet the middle of July. They were upset, but I said I’d get a part-time job, which would help with expenses. I did, too—I got a job as a secretary through a temp agency. I worked in the Chicago Loop in a building not far from Union Station, so I was able to take the train to and from Evanston. One of the few things I did well at the
time was type. I knew a little about the WANG word processor and easily got a position in a firm that sold investor relations products. I never understood what they were, but I dutifully typed letters and answered phones. It wasn’t bad money, either—eight dollars an hour, which was fabulous in 1977. Too bad I had to disappoint the firm in August when I announced I had to leave and go back to school.
I didn’t hear from Eddie for a long time. It took me at least until spring of 1978 to truly get over him, but even then he was never far from my mind. I dated some, even became intimate with one guy named Brad, but he was definitely in the rebound category. That ended a month or two after it began. I did my best to concentrate on my studies. The previous semester, I had changed my graduate field of study to literature and had started writing more. It was nothing spectacular, just material that I was sure would be the next great American novel. Turned out it was crap, but it was a good learning experience. Novel number two went into the drawer, never to see the light of day. Nevertheless, the work I did in class was pretty good, if I do say so myself, and I made high marks. My professors thought I showed talent, which was very encouraging. I graduated with an MA in literature in May of 1978.
There was a teacher’s aide in my advanced rhetoric class named Derek. Derek Golding. He was also in graduate school, had taken longer to get through it, and was in his fourth, and last, year. He was due to receive his MA at the end of the semester. Good-looking, smart, and much different from Eddie. For one thing, he wore glasses and was thin, nonathletic, and a bit of a nerd. But I liked him. He had a wicked sense of humor, and he made me laugh. Toward the end of the school session, he asked me out on a date. Back then, there was no stigma of teacher’s aides—or even full professors—dating students. Happened all the time. We went out to dinner and had a great evening. We started dating, and as soon as school was out we were sleeping together.
The romance was going well when I suddenly received a call from my father.
My mother had died suddenly.
I can’t describe how horrible I felt. The guilt was tremendous. All the past years I’d spent basically shoving away the reality of my sick, tormented mother caught up with me, and I broke down in a serious way. Derek did his best to console me. He offered to come back to Limite with me for the funeral, but I told him it was too soon for him to be that involved with my family. It was.
My father told me that Mom had taken an overdose of sleeping pills. Whether or not it had been intentional, the police refused to say. “Accidental” was the official report, but I think I knew better. My mother departed this world voluntarily, and as miserable as I’d seen her be, I could almost understand it. Still, I felt betrayed, guilty, and angry. Mostly, I was very sad.
Dad was crushed. Just in the few months I’d been away, he had aged a decade. His hair was completely gray, when a year earlier it had been a little salt and pepper. He handled it well, though, kept a stiff upper lip, and seemed to be more concerned about how I took it. The funeral in Limite was attended by all my parents’ church friends—a small but supportive crowd.
I didn’t see Eddie, nor did I attempt to contact him. He didn’t send a sympathy card. I wasn’t even sure he knew my mother had died. His mother surely must have known, and wouldn’t it have made sense that she’d tell him? Whatever.
My father hoped I would stay in Limite for the rest of the summer, but I had another secretarial temp job that I wanted to get back to. I’m not sure I could have remained sane in that town with the ghost of my mother hovering over me, disappointed that I had left the front door unlocked and caused baby Michael’s abduction, as well as mortified by my dating the boy she had wrongly accused of the crime. It was better to be back in Illinois. Besides, that’s where Derek was, and I needed someone like him at the moment. He may have been a nerd, but he was sensitive and kind; and he loved me.
We got married in February 1979, when I was twenty-four. By then, we had moved into an apartment in Lincoln Park, Chicago, one of the nicer neighborhoods in an exciting but difficult city. I fell in love with it despite the oppressive winters, the traffic, the crime, and the crowding. It had art, theater, and music; film and literature; culture and food; and all the things that made a big city worth the trouble.
The big problem was that Derek and I were both writers. Big mistake. The competitiveness was mutual. His first book—a nonfiction political tome about Nixon’s administration—was a bestseller. I was still struggling to write that first—no, third—novel and finding my voice, as well as holding down a nine-to-five job as a secretary.
The other issue we came up against was children. Derek wanted children; I was ambivalent. It wasn’t that I didn’t want children, I just didn’t feel ready. I felt as if I had things I needed to accomplish first. Nevertheless, I gave in, and we tried. And tried. When nothing happened, both of us were tested and it turned out I couldn’t have babies. I was fucking infertile. It took over a year to find out that the reason was because I had an ovarian cyst the size of a watermelon. I’m exaggerating, but that’s what it felt like to me when I was diagnosed. I underwent surgery in 1981 at the age of twenty-six, which left me with a seventeen-centimeter scar on the outside of my body, a severed fallopian tube, and more scarring on the inside. Part of my ovary had to be removed; it was a big deal. Afterward, my hormones went berserk. The doctors told me that if I ever did conceive, it was likely that I’d have an ectopic pregnancy, and that didn’t sound like a whole lot of fun. So I made it a point not to have a child. I went on birth control again, which helped with the hormonal imbalance, but it wrecked my marriage.
In the spring of 1982, Derek and I separated after three years and two months of matrimony. The divorce became final in 1983, just around the time I turned twenty-eight.
Thank goodness my first good novel—the initial Patricia Harlow romance—had been accepted by Harlequin and was due to be published later that year. It was what kept my spirits up. Otherwise I might have considered myself a failure—both in love and in work. The breakup was messy and painful, and Derek wasn’t very understanding. We don’t speak or communicate now. The last I heard, he was living in Seattle, happily married—to his third wife—with grandchildren. Good for him.
I suppose that experience soured me on relationships. It was a while before I boarded the dating roller coaster once again, but I did so with a completely different attitude. Somewhere along the way I had decided that my goal was simply to find companionship, enjoy it while it was there, and move on when it was over. To tell the truth, it was very liberating. There was no longer pressure to become the ideal American housewife and mother. I could just be me, fall in love with whomever I wanted and for however long I wanted, and concentrate on my work.
That may sound selfish and egotistical, but I’m here to say that I’ve been very happy with that situation. The only people I’ve had to please were my agent, my editor, my readers, and myself. And that was enough. I’ve lived with three different dogs since the early eighties—much better companions than men, I must say—and still enjoyed the company of the opposite sex on my own terms. I suppose my political and social attitudes kept moving further left during the late seventies and early eighties. Even though I wrote trashy romance novels, I became a fiercely independent feminist. So sue me.
The Forgotten Promise generated decent reviews and surprisingly good sales. Harlequin wanted more, so I gave it to them. I’m proud to say I’ve had a novel published every year since 1983, and then some—the odd stand-alone or anthology contribution. I quit my day job and became a full-time author in ’84, and I haven’t looked back. I moved to different places in Chicago twice and have lived in my current residence—also in Lincoln Park—since 1998. A townhouse, all to myself. Heaven on earth.
My career really took off in 1986 when Hollywood made a movie of The Forgotten Promise. It turned out to be a sleeper hit, and more people started buying my books. I’d like to think it was all about talent, but the practical side of me acknowledges that suc
cess in the publishing world is primarily dependent on luck—just as it is in any of the arts. I felt truly blessed when my luck held out again four years later. In 1990, they made a film of my 1989 novel, The Moon Pirate, which also happened to be my first New York Times number one. With one of Hollywood’s most popular heartthrobs cast as the love interest, it attracted a lot of female moviegoers. For some Tinsel Town reason I’ll never understand, the actress who played Patricia in the first movie wasn’t cast in the second one, so there was an inconsistency that I believe hurt what could have been a franchise. Another film based on one of my novels was produced in 1997, which didn’t do very well. I didn’t mind. Dealing with Hollywood was very stressful and complicated. The money was quite good, thank you very much, but I was happy just to be my own boss and be a romance book factory. There have been a few nibbles from Hollywood since then, but I didn’t allow myself to be bitten. I’ve made a very good living with the books alone. With the fame, of course, came a certain loss of privacy. For a while, in the early nineties, I often appeared on television—talk shows, game shows, and the like. I was thirty-six when my picture was on the cover of Entertainment Weekly. Not bad for a small-town girl from West Texas.
During the late eighties, I finally saw a psychologist to work out some of the issues I still had with my mother. I felt very guilty about a lot of things, not least with leaving the front door unlocked some twenty years earlier. The way I treated my mother those last years of her life was despicable. Despite the glorious success I was having as an author, my conscience was hammering at me. I had to do something about it, so I chose to pour my heart out to a shrink. The woman I saw tried hard to work with me, but I have to admit her failure was my fault—I just wasn’t very receptive. After a couple of years of therapy, I stopped. Since then, I’ve mostly come to terms, more or less, with my guilt, but there are times when the self-reproach comes crashing back. I live with it and concentrate on my work.
As with most things, a trend is eventually replaced with new ones, and that’s what started happening in 1993 to 1994. For one thing, I wasn’t in the public eye as much. The TV appearances slowed down, and there were fewer requests for interviews, though luckily book sales remained steady. Thus, as I approached my forties, I regained most of my privacy. I could walk the streets, eat in restaurants, and ride the train without being recognized. The few times it happened were never unpleasant.
The Secrets on Chicory Lane Page 12