When I Close My Eyes

by Elizabeth Musser

  “Anyway, that went on for several months, I think. Momma being gone. Daddy leaving for what seemed like long stretches and us staying with Mrs. Swanson or some church friends for sometimes a week at a time. Everybody treated us royally, but still, we felt upset and kind of abandoned.”

  And when Daddy was home with us, his odd behavior continued. The outbursts, the anger. It was anything but fun.

  “But the scariest night was when I went into the kitchen to get a drink of water before bed, and I found Daddy sitting in the dark with an empty wine bottle beside him. He was crying.”

  After another bite of muffin, I hoped this last story would satisfy the detective.

  “My parents only drink wine occasionally, maybe when they’re out to dinner at a nice restaurant. Because there’s alcoholism in Momma’s family, they don’t keep alcohol at home. But that night, I knew my father was drunk—I’d seen Aunt Kit like that. And then a few weeks later he didn’t come home at all, and Mrs. Swanson came rushing over to stay with us. The next day I heard her talking on the phone, telling someone else she had to stay with us because our father had gotten a DUI. I didn’t know what that meant till I asked Hannah.” I shrugged and added, “Anyway, it was just one more awful episode in the whole awful year.”

  When I’d finished my remembering, I felt worn out and deflated. The feeling that our whole world had fallen apart was as vivid as though it had just happened.

  Detective Blaylock gave me a fatherly pat on the back and said, “Thanks for sharing all this, Paige. I know it wasn’t easy, but believe me, it’s helpful.” He pulled at his beard again. “So the first time your father went away was the same day as your mother left for France, is that right?”

  I nodded.

  I had ratted on my father, and I felt rotten about it, but at least I hadn’t shared all the gory details, and I definitely hadn’t shared the part that was now worrying me the most. That was the weekend that Aunt Kit had come unexpectedly. When she found us eating dinner with Mrs. Swanson in charge, she asked where Daddy was. I told her he had to go away for work, and she laughed.

  “Oh, I’ll bet he did,” she said. “I know what that’s about, honey. My father went off gallivanting a lot too.”

  Mrs. Swanson had quickly shut Aunt Kit down, but I had heard yet another new word. And when I looked it up I wondered what Aunt Kit meant. Was she saying Daddy wasn’t really working? That he was doing something else? What?

  At nine I hadn’t understood Aunt Kit’s insinuations about my father. But now, at seventeen, I thought about her accusation, and I felt sick to my stomach. Ever since the shooting, Daddy had looked so shaken and displaced and . . . and guilty. Yes, my father looked guilty. Just as he had during The Awful Year.

  HENRY

  I worked all day in a frenzy, my hands shaking like crazy, and the boss kept looking at me sideways.

  “My boy’s not doing so good,” I told him.

  “Go on and be with him, Henry. Be careful driving to Asheville now. You don’t look so good yourself.”

  “I can finish my work, Mr. Dan. No need to let me go, I swear.” I was sweating, feeling dizzy, and Mr. Dan had a real worried look on his face.

  “You’re okay, Henry. I’m not firing you. Go on and be with your boy.”

  So I left the printing press in the early afternoon, but I didn’t go to Asheville. Not yet. First I went back to the library and turned in that book. Miz Garrison was there, and she looked at me kinda funny.

  “You okay, Henry?”

  I’d forgotten how bad I must look, having drunk all that beer and taken way too many pills. “Just had a rough night worryin’ about my boy. He had his surgery and he’s not doing so well.”

  Her startled expression softened, and she said, “I’m sorry to hear it, Henry.” She took the novel from me and put it in one of them little shelves on rollers, then looked back at me with that same expression on her face.

  “Don’t suppose you got the latest one of Miz Bourdillon’s books here, do you?” I was feeling real sick to my stomach, and I bet my face was all pale and greenish.

  I shouldn’t have asked that. Should have just hurried out of there. But she brightened and said, “You’re in luck! Someone just returned one of our audio copies this morning. Do you have a CD player?”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “Well, if you’d like to listen to the audio version, it’s really well done.” She fetched it from the cart and checked it out for me.

  “Thank you,” I said and hurried out of the library and around the corner to my truck, where I threw up all over the parking lot.

  PAIGE

  I flew into Drake’s arms as soon as he rounded the corner in the hospital corridor. “Thank goodness you’re here!” I grabbed his jacket in my fists and held on tight, resting my head on his chest, listening to his heart beating just the way it should, with no tubes attached.

  After a moment he pulled me away and said, “Hey, hey there. Calm down. Let’s go sit.”

  I mashed my lips together, feeling heavy, a weight, that noose. “Could we get out of here for a little while? My head’s about to explode.”

  “I was going to suggest the same thing, but can I see Momma Jo first?”

  “The nurse shooed us out of the room and ordered complete rest for two hours. Then Hannah will sit with her. But we’ve reserved your place by her bed after dinner.”

  I looped my arm through his, totally natural, the way we used to walk when I was still a little kid and he was a teenager.

  “I thought we’d grab something to eat downtown.” He patted my hand. “I know just the place.”

  Of course he did. He drove us straight down Biltmore until we reached Battery Park Avenue ten minutes later. The familiar red and yellow sign greeted us—Chai Pani, Indian Street Food—and my mouth started watering. It had the best chai in town. “Thanks,” I whispered, a knot in my throat.

  “You need some food that you can actually taste, Bourdy. Hospital fare can get old.”

  We stepped into the dark interior with its red walls and little white Christmas lights hanging from above. The smells! Spicy, aromatic. My stomach growled loudly, and Drake glanced at me and grinned.

  I felt my insides do a little dance.

  We ordered green mango chaat and Pani’s signature matchstick okra fries for starters. Drake got a beer, and I had well, yes, chai.

  We’d never done small talk well, so I wasn’t a bit surprised when he immediately said, “I told you I remembered something else about TAY. I’ve been thinking about the sequence of the events. Remember how for years and years there was a woman who attended every single one of your mother’s book signings—all throughout the Southeast? We joked at first about her overly devoted fan. But then when it kept happening, we got a little nervous and called her the stalker?”

  I chewed on an okra fry. “Yeah. Hannah and I were just talking about her a few days ago.”

  “Did anyone ever figure out who she was? Did you ever actually meet her?”

  “Oh yeah, we’ve all met her. Her name is Charity Mordant. We hadn’t seen her in years, and then last month she suddenly showed up at one of Momma’s signings. She’s a little overly enthusiastic, but she’s nice. A ‘real number’—that’s what Momma calls her. She’s loud and boisterous and wears gaudy jewelry and way too much makeup, and her clothes are colorful and eccentric.” I closed my eyes for a moment and could perfectly picture Charity Mordant rushing over and smothering Momma in a bear hug, like they were the best of friends. “She’s strange but not deranged.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess after she freaked us out that first summer by coming to every signing, well, we got used to her. She won us over.”

  “Exactly.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I don’t really know. I’m just bringing up things that I’ve been thinking about.” He smiled, his blue-green eyes twinkling a little and his dimples showing
, and he looked so absolutely handsome, as well as cute and winsome, that my stomach fluttered in the way it had when I was thirteen.

  He didn’t notice and started twirling a pen in his left hand and then tossing it from hand to hand. “Okay, here’s a completely different scenario. You know I spent half of that year on your couch with your mom listening to my endless tirades. One day she was in tears when I came in. You and Hannah were off somewhere, maybe with your dad. And she was crying and shaking and holding a letter in her hands. She said something like, ‘Drake, forgive me. I’m being pursued by an irate woman. Again.’ She cried a little more and then she told me about the other times she’d gotten these very upsetting letters from a grieving lady accusing her of putting dark thoughts in her daughter’s mind.”

  “Yes! I was just telling Detective Blaylock about that. Except I didn’t know that woman wrote more than once. Wow.” I pushed a few fries onto Drake’s plate and said, “Eat.”

  He took a bite and continued. “So my parents were divorcing and Momma Jo’s parents had both died, and your mother’s novel had just come out. Your father sent her away to France to rest, right? But before she left, she got the letter from an angry reader—the letter I saw. And then your dad was gone a lot. . . .”

  Drake had started on the green mango chaat. He groaned with pleasure at our favorite Indian snack food, a mixture of potato pieces and chickpeas, sour Indian chili, coriander, and other tangy spices. “Delish.”

  “And landed in jail for a DUI,” I finished. “And we stayed with a bunch of different people. And Daddy was acting so weird. I told the detective all that.” I lifted my eyebrows. “Well, a watered-down version. And I didn’t tell him about the time Aunt Kit came and stayed with us for a few days. She kept talking about Daddy as if he were a real jerk and said he was out gallivanting.” I made air quotes around the word. “I never thought about it again until now. She meant he was seeing someone else, Drake. Having an affair . . .”

  “Impossible!” Drake said.

  But we’d thought the same about his father, and we’d been wrong. Drake looked me in the eyes.

  “Don’t go down that road, Bourdy. Please.”

  “I won’t. I agree, it’s impossible.” I sounded confident, but there was something I couldn’t admit even to Drake. Daddy’s explanations of his frequent absences that fall were very sketchy. And that didn’t sound like innocence to me.

  ———

  We walked along the French Broad River, the air biting and fresh and the sun starting to dim. I wanted this to be my life. Not the hospital. Not conversations about stalkers and murder and insanity. I just wanted to enjoy this stroll with Drake and let the beauty of the area seep into my soul and forget for an hour the horror of the past week.

  I leaned into Drake and again, it was natural and comforting and innocent. He was treating me exactly the way he always had, as my big brother, my protector, my best friend. Certainly not like a boyfriend. My heart was beating a bit unpredictably, and I silently berated Hannah for putting thoughts in my head.

  “I know it’s all pretty heavy on you, Bourdy. And I know you’re trying to be strong for your dad. But you don’t have to be strong for me. Let’s not talk about this anymore right now.” We walked into a little gazebo that jutted out over the river, and he leaned his back against the railing. “Tell me about college choices and SATs.”

  I rolled my eyes. “No, thanks.” He was right. We should change the subject, but I couldn’t. I needed to ask the next questions, the ones that strangled me. “Do you ever think about marriage, Drake? I mean, with what happened to your parents? Does that affect you?”

  “So, no more talk about murder, just divorce?” But he was smiling down at me.

  “I’m sorry. It’s just that with that detective’s questions, I keep reliving things that scare me. Your parents fell out of love, and I think my parents . . .” I refused to cry. This was not the time for that!

  He lifted my chin. “What is it, Bourdy? What do you need to say?”

  I had to ask him the one question that I’d never asked anyone. “Drake, do you think a person can love too much?”

  He got a pained expression on his face, seemed to wrestle with a thought, but then simply said, “Explain.”

  “Like I said, I didn’t tell Detective Blaylock everything. I couldn’t tell him what it is I’m really afraid of. But Momma did have depressive episodes, and sometimes she told Daddy it was too dark. And if she kept getting mean letters, maybe Daddy just lost it. I don’t think it was an affair. Surely it wasn’t . . .” I covered my face in my hands and let out these huge gut-wrenching sobs.

  His arms came around me again. “Shhh. You’re not thinking straight, Paige. If there’s one thing I know, it’s that your dad loves your mom.”

  After I composed myself a little I said, “I know that. I do. But what if he loves her too much? What if he did something that seemed like love to him, but it wasn’t?”

  “What are you suggesting, Bourdy?”

  “Maybe he tried to find the person who was sending those letters so that Momma wouldn’t have to deal with someone who kept making her crazy. Would he do that?”

  He scrunched up his face. “Are you suggesting that your father deliberately sought out the person who had sent menacing letters to your mother and threatened him or her?”

  I grabbed him and held on tightly, desperately, the way Libby had done to me earlier in the day. “Maybe. I don’t know. I’d rather it be that than an affair. And I have this memory that just keeps pressing in, but I can’t quite recall it. Something important. But I do know that Momma hadn’t received any mean letters for the past few years. They stopped coming a long time ago.” Still holding on to Drake, I groaned. “And I’m sure Detective Blaylock is going to ask Daddy about them. I mentioned the very first one to him. I thought it was weird that Daddy hadn’t said anything yet.”

  Several couples walked past the gazebo. When we were alone again, Drake whispered, “Look, Bourdy, maybe you could write down everything you remember about the letter from long ago and the ones now. Just put your thoughts on paper and leave your poor dad out of it. Let the detective talk to him.”

  “You’re right. Of course you’re right. I’m just a mess at the moment. A complicated mess.” We used to call Momma a complicated mess. I let go of him, swiped my eyes and nose, and tried to clear my head. Tried to think of something else to talk about. “So you really aren’t dating anyone?”

  How did that escape?

  He smiled. “You and your sister. Always asking the same questions. You’d think you were related.” He was staring out at the river and could not see the deep blush on my face, but I felt it. “And the answer is the same as always. Nope. At least not anyone seriously.”

  I deflated a little. What did that mean?

  “Bourdy, this year is really demanding. Not a lot of time for a love life.” He changed positions, leaning over the railing of the gazebo, and I caught his reflection in the water, dark and deep and smooth.

  “Yeah, you engineers have it rough.”

  “But let’s go back to your original question. Do I ever think about marriage? Of course I think about it sometimes.”

  I was so relieved to be talking about anything, anything at all to get off the subject of Daddy’s love for Momma. “Well, let me know when you decide to get married, okay? So I can prepare myself. Remember how jealous I was when you were dating girls in high school and I was, what, about thirteen? How I had that crazy crush on you?”

  He nodded. “I remember it well. Sorry to have caused you so much pain.” He had a teasing tone in his voice, but something about it sounded serious too. “No, marriage will have to wait for a while.”

  “Till you finish your degree and get a good job and, of course, find the right girl.” I suddenly didn’t want to be talking about this subject either.

  “No. Not exactly like that. I mean, of course I plan to finish my degree and get a job. But I’ve already found t
he girl. That’s why I have to wait. . . .”

  “What? That doesn’t make sense! A minute ago you said you aren’t dating anyone seriously, and now you claim to have already found the girl.” I felt tears in my eyes again. Frustrated, I balled my fist, trying to ignore the liquid that trickled down my cheek. “Sorry. I think I’m just too tired to be having any kind of conversation at all.”

  He wasn’t facing me, had his hands still braced on the railing, and he was staring out into the waning day. He was silent for a minute. Then he said, “I’m just waiting for you to grow up, Bourdy.” He turned around and looked straight into my startled eyes, took me by the shoulders, and gave the sweetest grin. “Just waiting for you, is all.”

  CHAPTER

  12

  FRIDAY

  JOSEPHINE

  2006 . . . Hannah and Paige were playing in the sand at La Grande Motte, building a castle to imitate the town. Josephine had a big floppy hat covering her head, and she was sitting in a folding chair that kept her close to the ground.

  “Can you recite that poem again, Momma?” Paige asked.

  Paige had finished reading A Wrinkle in Time earlier that week and now she wanted to read anything else by Madeleine L’Engle. Josephine had no access to a library with books in English, but she had access to her memory. “This is a poem by Ms. L’Engle. I think it is very beautiful,” she had said the day before and then had begun to quote “Second Lazarus.”

  Paige had listened to the short poem again and again, smiling each time Josephine pronounced the last sentence about how pain is sometimes necessary in order to experience true freedom.

  Josephine recited it yet again, and Paige looked up from their sand castle and beamed. “It’s beautiful, Momma. I like that poem! It’s like that verse on your Lucidity Lath. You have to lose your life to find it.”

  How could an eight-year-old grasp that poem when she herself could barely take it in? But Paige had an astute mind, brimming with imagination and depth. How Josephine longed to protect her creative daughter from all the emotional damage she had experienced in her own childhood. Thank goodness Paige did not spend much time with Josephine’s parents and Kit. Like her mother, Paige had a penchant for writing stories. Fortunately, she did not brood and hide in deep places in her mind. When she was mad or upset, she displayed it for all the world to see.