The Sweet Dead Life

by Joy Preble

  He laughed. “Good point. I’ll keep it PG-13. It’s only a date, Jenna. One date.”

  He was silent then. I waited with him through the quiet. I was going to leave it at that, actually. But my question bubbled up and out before I could stop it. “If we figure this all out, if we find Dad—will you be just gone?” This was bigger than Lanie Phelps. Bigger than any piece of all the craziness.

  Casey looked surprised. Had he not thought about this?

  “I don’t know,” he said. But he didn’t sound afraid, just matter-of-fact. “Amber won’t tell me. Maybe she doesn’t know, either. I’m getting the impression they don’t trust her much up there.”

  So he had asked. It was also good to know that “they” (whoever “they” might be) were suspicious of her, too. Not in the big ways, obviously. But she clearly still had a lot of explaining to do, and not just to us.

  “Where is she, anyway? Amber the annoying?”

  “Ha! Don’t call her that to her face. She’ll be back. Not sure when. Soon, though.”

  “Whatever.” I was suddenly cranky and my back felt stiff from sleeping on the floor. The nausea that I’d had for so long was mostly gone, but it still lingered in the back of my throat. I hoisted myself up and stretched.

  “You’re still taking your Cipro, right?” Casey asked. “Maybe you need another IV.” He studied me like he could assess this from looking. “Just not from Renfroe.”

  Without warning, he pulled me into a hug. My face mashed against his shoulder. I blinked, unable to do anything but smell that nice smell of his.

  “Did dying hurt?” I asked against his shirt, my heart thumping. “Were you scared?”

  Casey was quiet so long I wondered if he’d heard me.

  “Yeah,” he said. “It did. Yeah, I was. But not for long,” he added. “I came back quick, Jenna. I came back for you.”

  My eyes started leaking as I remembered looking over at Casey in the car.

  “I’ll stay as long as I can,” he whispered. “I promise. I won’t leave y’all if I can help it.” He let go and ruffled my hair in a big brotherly way that he’d never done before. “Who else could put up with all your crap?”

  Before I could think of a suitable insult, he knocked on Mom’s door and opened it. She stirred and sat up in bed. She stared at us for a long while.

  Then she managed a weak smile. “Since when did you start holding your sister’s hand?”

  What Casey Told Mom:

  Your vitamins have been recalled. Nothing to worry about, just the Number 40 red dye was defective. Best not to take anything for a few days.

  If any new bottles appear, don’t take any of those, either. The vitamin company has no idea how many batches were messed up. Better safe than sorry.

  QUESTIONING HER ABOUT Dr. Chest Hair was trickier. She remembered (mostly) that he had helped me at the hospital. She said—definitely—that he came to visit every couple weeks. That was all we knew for sure. Her memory was like a knotted shoelace that you end up throwing away because you don’t have the patience to untangle it.

  I thought about how nice Renfroe had been to me, how gentle and concerned.

  “When he was here,” I asked Mom, “what did y’all talk about?”

  Casey sighed. We’d asked Mom this every which way we could think of. She hadn’t come up with any answer.

  “Work, maybe?” I persisted. “They must really miss you at Oak View.”

  I figured it was a nice thing to say. I’d never had a job, but Mom had loved hers. It was one of the things that kept her from falling apart in that first year after Dad disappeared. The patients she worked with needed her, just like we did. Dr. Renfroe needed her, for God’s sake.

  My chest tightened. Had Renfroe been faking how he felt about Mom? How could we have been so wrong? When she first started getting too depressed and nervous to go out, she worried about this sort of thing: how the Doc and all those patients would get by without her.

  I watched Mom’s face. Maybe it was my imagination, but something flickered there. One thing triggered something else and the wheels started cranking like the swirly dash display in our poor deceased Prius.

  “People were dying, you know,” my mother said. She winced, as if shocked the words had come out of her mouth.

  “What?” Casey asked, now riveted.

  Mom’s eyes started to glaze over and then snapped back in focus. I turned away, an old habit. It hurt too much. Would she ever get well from whatever was gnawing at her system? I pictured it inside her like one of those disgusting nutria that swam in the pond near our house. Wharf rats, people called them. Big ugly rodents the size of beavers, chewing on Mom’s brain. I’d only been sick for a couple months. She’d been like this for years. What if the damage was permanent?

  “Dying,” my mother said. “Dale Horowitz. Jennie Buck. Hal Klein. Of course they were all really sick. I told Stuart I was concerned. He said it was just a coincidence. ‘Holly,’ he said. ‘Don’t you worry about it. You did the best you could. Things happen.’ So I tried. But I should have been there. You know people need something to live for. If they think it’s hopeless, they just give up. That’s why I worked my patients so hard. When you get back language, you feel empowered, you know.”

  I glanced at Casey, who shrugged and shook his head.

  “Go on, Mom,” he urged.

  Mom pursed her lips. “I told your father that, too. Before the day he didn’t come back. You know what he asked me? Did I trust Dr. Renfroe? I told him of course I did.” She paused. Then she said, “I don’t think your dad did, though. But then he was gone.”

  Her tone was so vacant, so detached. Could we buy any of this? She wasn’t really Mom yet. The real Mom would be riled up that she hadn’t pursued my father’s hunch. At least that’s what I hoped. Suddenly I thought back to that piece of sports column I’d kept. Of course Dad would have been suspicious. It was like what he’d said about baseball: If you were watching, you’d catch those tells. Those little signs.

  He’d seen something in Renfroe. And so had we.

  When Amber arrived, Casey called me in absent from school. Then Amber pretended to be Mom and did the same for him.

  In between the calls, Amber gave me a “lying is justified because there’s a greater good involved” speech. The A-world continued to have a lot of gray areas, which was fine by me. I had never taken to the idea that Heaven was a bunch of folks who all thought the same way, sitting around, patting each other on the wings about their good fortune. On the other hand, it appeared even the more liberal angels weren’t thrilled about my brother’s inability to shake his marijuana habit.

  All of which set me somewhere between happy and queasy. On top of everything else, I was now feeling comfortable (or close enough) with Amber Velasco. Maybe it would pass—like those ultra-skinny jeans everyone used to like until it occurred to most folks that unless you were anorexic or a heroin addict you pretty much looked like a sausage stuffed into a too-small casing.

  I used Casey’s phone to leave a message on Maggie’s cell. She texted back immediately. What the f is going on with you?

  I am not abbreviating. Maggie just typed ‘f.’ Unlike me and Amber and my brother, Maggie does not have a colorful vocabulary.

  Mom’s sick, I texted back, for lack of a better excuse.

  Casey’s phone buzzed almost as soon as I pressed send.

  “Jenna?” Maggie made sure it was me and not Casey before she went on. “No offense, but your Mom is always sick. You need to get your butt to school. Do you need a ride or something?”

  “Maybe by this afternoon,” I said. “I’m gonna see how she feels.”

  We hung up. I knew she knew I was lying. It would have to wait.

  I headed to Casey’s room to find Amber eyeballing the two (yes, two) glass bongs sitting on the floor next to his laptop, the second being the rarely-used multi-colored one that Dave swore was imported from Germany. Instead of her perpetual EMT outfit (which she’d even wo
rn bartending), she had on regular jeans and a long-sleeved black button-up shirt that showed a little cleavage and a hint of black lace bra. She was also wearing cowboy boots: a slick, pointy-toed pair that looked worn-in like she’d had them a while.

  Casey was sitting on his bed, looking sheepish.

  “What the hell am I doing here?” Amber said, mostly to herself.

  “Please tell us!” I snapped. “We’re dying to know!” I cringed, immediately regretting the lame pun and remembering the fact that Renfroe himself had used it.

  Without an answer, she grabbed Casey’s laptop, then sat at his desk and powered it on. I shuddered. If she wanted to touch his laptop, that was her business.

  “Let’s get to work,” she said, adjusting her blouse around that lacy bra. There was no denying it. Outside her EMT gear and dorky utility belt, Amber Velasco was a hottie. Funny, if Casey weren’t dead and practically back together with Lanie, he’d be in heaven right now. (Or not so funny.)

  Amber’s plan was to research every obituary we could find that connected to Oak View Convalescent Home.

  “Let’s start the day Dad disappeared,” Casey suggested.

  “I think we should start before that,” Amber replied, her fingers flying over the keyboard. “Whatever this is, it has to be big. We have to find a pattern.”

  She had a point. If people were dying like my Mom had hinted, and the whole thing was bad enough to make my father disappear and cause Dr. Renfroe to mess with my mother’s brain, we needed to cast a wide net. Not everyone who passed away got mentioned in the paper, of course. We got going and hoped for the best.

  By nine in the morning, we’d found three people.

  By ten, we’d found three more.

  By noon, I’d snuck off for a quick shower and changed into jeans and my Ima Razorback shirt. Also my Converse, since unlike some people, I had no boots. I stopped to make tea and toast for Mom and lied to her about why I was home, claiming that it was a teacher work day. Oh, and I also ignored several texts on Casey’s phone from Maggie.

  By the time I returned to Casey’s room at 12:30, he and Amber had uncovered four more deaths of elderly patients living at Oak View Convalescent. Most, but not all, seemed to have suffered from Alzheimer’s. One guy had possibly died of a stroke. This was not an exact science; we had only the obituary wording and sometimes a request for contributions to go on. So if the family asked that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to Alzheimer research, we assumed that’s what the person died of.

  “Ten dead people,” Casey said. “That’s a lot, right?”

  “It’s a freaking old person’s home!” I yelled.

  He and Amber frowned at me.

  “Old people die,” I said. “It happens. Come on. I mean that’s why they’re there, right?” I wanted us to be wrong—about all of it. Was Dr. Renfroe really doing something to make all these old folks die before their time? Why? What sick reason could he possibly have?

  Amber turned back to the screen. “Ten is ten too many. Even for a facility like that. None of the ten had cancer or any other immediately life-threatening illness or condition.”

  Casey began to pace back and forth. “So let’s say Mom was on to something. What the hell is Dr. Renfroe doing over there? Knocking ’em off for sport? Feeding them poisoned tapioca pudding or something?”

  “Not funny,” I told him. “Remember me? Your poisoned sister?” I shifted my gaze to Amber’s boots. If I still had boots, I would have shivered in them.

  We tossed around possibilities. Dr. Renfroe was a crazed maniac. Dr. Renfroe had poisoned himself by accident and lost his mind. Dr. Renfroe owed the Mafia millions of dollars in gambling debts and was cashing in on phony insurance claims for his victims. (Amber’s theory.) Dr. Renfroe was in fact a nice guy, but Oak View was built on Indian burial grounds and the ghosts were killing the residents. (Casey’s theory. As far as I know, he hadn’t touched either bong.) The patients were dying naturally, and this was all a crazy coincidence. (My theory.)

  Somewhere in the middle of the theorizing, my stomach growled that it was finally ready to make up for lost time. “I’m starving,” I announced. “Can you call over to Beijing Bistro?” Casey had baked the last frozen pizza for breakfast. Plus there was the definite possibility that Amber would pay for the food.

  Amber’s phone rang in her pocket. She glanced at the caller ID. “Terry,” she mouthed to us: her friend at the lab.

  Terry was a loud talker. Casey and I could hear most of it through the tinny phone speaker. We huddled around Amber. The herbal concoction in Mom’s system—which we now knew was probably getting into her from the stash of vitamins helpfully supplied by Dr. Renfroe—was in fact what Terry had suspected. It had some of the properties of gingko biloba. But there was one big difference. It seemed to have the opposite effect. Terry wasn’t sure why, but he aimed to find out.

  Amber hung up and smiled at us. “Terry’s a crazy man. He lives for this shit.”

  “What shit?” I demanded.

  With that, Amber started jabbering like a girl with a crush. In the last 24 hours, Terry had also conducted a little experiment with mice. There were lots of lab mice at Texicon where he worked. Specifically, he’d given them the same chemical compound he’d discovered in Mom’s blood. Then he sent them on a “memory course” to find cheese. Just a simple little maze that rodents could master easily. But instead of sharpening the mice memories—find the cheese, find the cheese—the compound made them forget the cheese. Stranger still, they didn’t even seem to care about the cheese anymore. Maybe they knew it was there; maybe they didn’t. But they walked right by it. If they bumped into it, maybe they would eat it. Maybe not.

  All the talk about cheese made my stomach rumble.

  “Meaning?” my brother asked.

  Amber arched a perfect brow at us. “Meaning we have proof that Dr. Renfroe was giving your mother something to make her forget. On purpose. Now we need to find out why. And what it is he wanted her to forget. It had to do with the deaths at Oak View, I’m sure. But it’s probably even bigger. When we know, I’m betting we’ll know what happened to your father. Or at least we’ll be closer to figuring it out. Terry’s emailing over a PDF with the blood work specifics.”

  Then what? I wondered.

  Would we just grab Renfroe and interrogate him? It wasn’t like we were cops. This was not an episode of Law & Order. Besides, if it were, we’d be done by now and watching something else. Which would mean that we had dug up the truth, something I both wanted and didn’t want all at once. A tiny piece of me still wanted to be wrong. I liked Renfroe. Up until three days ago, he seemed a decent guy. Plus, I was my father’s daughter. I was pissed that I hadn’t caught the tells.

  Amber’s phone beeped. The three of us huddled over the tiny screen again.

  According to lab guru Terry, Mom’s blood showed deficiencies in a bunch of the stuff that helps memory: B-12, folic acid, and E. Her good cholesterol was also crazy low; and Terry believed we needed to pump her up with omega-3 fatty acids (the phrase “fish oil” was repeated three times) and possibly a couple glasses of wine every day. He also suggested checking her teeth and making sure she didn’t have a bladder infection.

  In short: it was probable that Renfroe’s so-called “vitamins” had been leeching everything good from my mother’s system.

  “Holy shit,” Casey and I said together. We all agreed that: 1) Any colorful language was justified. 2) It was time for a road trip to visit Dr. Renfroe in his home turf of Oak View Convalescent Home. 3) We would pick up Chinese food on the way.

  There was just one problem.

  Now that the vitamins were working their way out of her system, Mom was starting to feel better.

  There is only one good part (in my humble opinion) about having a mother who is totally unfocused and often slightly unhinged: Once you figure out how to ignore the fear and the anger and the not-knowing, you can basically do whatever you want. Your mother won’t notice.
But in the time between her tea and toast and our decision to head into Houston, Mom had started noticing.

  “I know you must have told me,” she said, “but why are you two home today?” She had moved to the couch in the family room and was drinking a mug of something (Tea? Hot water? We had no more coffee.) that she’d prepared all on her own. She was wearing jeans and a clean gray and white striped T-shirt and an old pair of topsiders. She’d arranged her hair into a half ponytail. There was pinkish lip gloss on her lips.

  I stared at her. Casey stared at her. Amber stared at us.

  Mom tilted her head. Her eyes looked sharper. Alert. This was amazing. This was fantastic. This was a nightmare.

  “Teacher work day,” I said. “Remember?”

  The look that Mom gave me was the kind of look she should have been giving us for a long time now. The one that said she knew we were up to some youthful shenanigans. That she was on to us. That she would not ignore the sweet smell of pot wafting from her son’s door night after night. That she would not just cry and go back to bed when her daughter passed out in front of her. This was the mom I had wanted so badly the past year. But now she had to go away. Now we needed to drive to the Medical Center and inform Dr. Renfroe that he was a slimy bastard who had made my father disappear, plied my mother with destructive vitamins, and most likely poisoned my boots for reasons unknown. Not to mention how he had probably killed off a bunch of innocent old folks.

  “Amber?” Mom set her mug on the coffee table. “That’s your name, right?”

  Amber nodded anxiously.

  “Why are you in my house in the middle of the day? Don’t you have somewhere to be? Aren’t you a paramedic? Is that your Mercury Marquis on our driveway?”

  “Mom,” Casey began. “Mom—”

  “Jenna,” my mother interrupted, turning to me.

  “Yeah?”

  Her forehead wrinkled, her eyes even more intense as she studied my face. “You’ve been sick, haven’t you? And there was an accident. I …” She shifted back to Amber again.