He thrust the phone at Jade, who thanked the receptionist profusely, and hung up.
“Listen, I’ve been through all kinds of crap with Marianne over the years, and she always bounces back. Plus, you and I are smart enough to figure this out. Tell me the last thing Marianne said to you.”
“It was nonsense. Like she was speaking in tongues.” Darius rubbed his scruffy stubble.
“You mean full-blown mania?”
“No. Her speech wasn’t racing, it just didn’t make sense. She’d trashed her shoe closet, pulled out everything to create a mountain of shoes—”
Or to create extra hiding space.
“—and then she spat out a disjointed sentence about the English village where she grew up and sleeping with this guy Simon, some teen stud who excelled at . . . you know, sex.” Darius blushed. In any other circumstances it would have been cute. “And when I asked if she was trying to make me jealous, she yelled at me to get out. And then I asked about Dr. White, and that’s when the boots started flying.”
“I thought you said a boot. Singular.”
“Does it matter at this point?”
Jade tried and failed to connect the dots. “What happened to the pile of shoes?”
“Dumped back in her closet. I should have listened harder to what she was saying. Why didn’t I listen harder, Jade?”
“Interesting. I’ve never heard her mention anyone named Simon before. There was this kid, Gabriel. She used to talk about him. Nothing concrete, but I’d always assumed he was her first love.”
“And why would you assume that?” Darius gave her the look that had sent more than one intern scurrying into the control room in tears.
“From the change in her voice when she talked about him.”
Darius’s eyes turned from brown to black.
“But, you know, he could just have been her playmate.” Shit. Seriously bad word choice.
“Tell me more about this Gabriel,” Darius said.
Despite all the huffing and puffing, Darius was a little boy lost, thanks to his overprotective mama. You could blame everything on the mother. Jade did. Her mom had been an inadequate excuse for a woman who should never have had one kid, let alone two more with different men. Jade left her behind on the day she blasted out pleas for help to the police and social services. And then she ran, stopping only when she reached Carrboro and heard about this place where street kids could crash, no questions asked. The sign above the doorway had said “Girls In Motion.”
“It was years ago, Darius. And she didn’t tell me that much. They used to hang out in the local cemetery and smoke weed. He was Robin to her Batman—the person she had heavy philosophical discussions with, her compadre-in-arms for the crazy shit like . . .”
“Like what?” His voice turned hard.
“Why don’t I go check the passports? On the off chance she’s gone to England.”
“No.”
Darius taking charge was far more problematic than Darius freaking out. Like Marianne, he didn’t think small.
“Start packing a bag for me. Enough clothes for a few days. I’m heading to the airport.”
“Whoa.” Jade raised her hands. “First, we don’t know where she is, which means no way am I letting you dash off to parts unknown. Second, you don’t pay me enough to handle your boxers. And third, have you lost your friggin’ mind? We have superstars due any minute, and they’ll be expecting you to meet them with smiles and all that catered shit Sasha ordered last week.”
“Fine.” Darius threw his hands up. “I’ll pack my own bag.”
“Darius”—she pointed to the side of the tub—“sit.”
He did, and she glanced at her watch. Where were the interns? After she’d implemented the no-cell-phones rule in the studio, they’d started coming to the house to dump their bags. Should she have given them wake-up calls when she’d buzzed Sasha? Maybe it was time to quit recording and mixing and become the studio nanny.
Darius twisted his platinum wedding ring. “We’re wasting time.”
“No, we’re not.” She sat next to him and draped an arm around his shoulders. “You’re a hothead, and I have a working theory, which means you need to listen to the voice of reason. That would be me. Sasha’s going to take over as head engineer, because she’s more than capable of keeping the mojo flowing, and you’re going to deal with the band.”
“Bullshit. You’re not flying to England without me.” He jumped up.
“No one’s flying to England.” She used her inside voice. “I’m going to search for Marianne while waiting for Dr. White’s call. If we need to, we can contact the cops. But let me find her. I’ve done it before, and I focus better when you’re not scrambling my thoughts. And while I do that, boss, you’re taking a shower.” She made an overly dramatic gesture of wafting away his strong male odor in case he hadn’t gotten her original message. “Go, do the thing that generates our paychecks and let me do what I do best—deal with Marianne. I’ve got this.” How many times did she have to say that to Marianne and Darius: “I’ve got this?”
“I know, doll. You’re a star.” He grabbed her hand and held on too tight.
“Hard to believe, but this episode will burn itself out. I’m guessing she needs another meds shift; and we haven’t considered this, but the change in her pattern could be hormonal. We’ve been blaming everything on the head injury, but perimenopause could be the culprit.”
Discussing Marianne’s menstrual cycle with a fifty-year-old guy had become Jade’s new normal. Bipolar illness had ripped away their privacy bumpers, thrown her and Darius together like castaways.
Hormones, head injury. The words flitted around her brain but refused to settle. They were too easy, and nothing about understanding Marianne was easy. Something was driving Marianne hard—something locked deep within her. Something that meant the shoe closet was no longer cutting it as a hiding place. And who was this Simon dude?
Darius loosened his grip and planted a smacker of a kiss on her knuckle. “Do me a favor while I get ready for the band? Run a Google search on a village called Newton Rushford. That’s where she lived until she was sixteen. Names, we need names. Someone we can call.”
“Gabriel’s not a common name. Could be we’ll get lucky and he’s still there.”
“Hack into her laptop, password crazylady-asterisk-one. No! Better plan. Call the English cops, and—”
“Shower,” she said.
Closing the door, Jade retreated into the bedroom and placed her hand on Marianne’s pillow.
Where are you, Mama Bird?
The universe answered. Peeking out from under the pillow on Darius’s side of the bed was the corner of a white envelope.
TWO
MARIANNE
Marianne hadn’t visited the village cemetery since the first time she died. In a spectacular display of melodrama, even for a sixteen-year-old mental patient, she hacked at her wrists with a dull penknife until blood had seeped into the black soil of the freshest grave.
Facts would suggest a time lag between important events: losing her sanity at Simon’s memorial service, being shipped off to the nuthouse, her release and subsequent failed suicide. The details, however, were MIM—missing in madness. She’d learned decades ago to not trust her own thoughts, but the villain here was electroconvulsive therapy. ECT zapped those memories right out of her brain. Along with the identity of the person who’d saved her sorry ass that night in the cemetery.
Marianne grabbed the handrail as the black cab screeched around a sharp bend on the winding country lane. Maybe she should suggest the cabbie stick to London-only fares, but that would involve talking, and she hadn’t talked to anyone since slamming the door on Jade’s hand. Not in whole sentences that mattered. If you were running away you had to travel light—with language as well as baggage.
Cool midafternoon air rushed through the open window. Her right leg jiggled, and her fingers tapped a frantic beat. After thirty years she was back.
“Good kip?” the cabbie said.
“Hmm.” Faking sleep for the last hour had been a necessary tactic against his incessant questions: “On your holidays? No, what brings you all the way out ’ere, then? Bit off the beaten track for a tourist. Can’t say anyone’s ever asked me to drive them from Heathrow to a village in Bedfordshire before. You sound like a Yank. Been ’ere before, ’ave you?”
Too many questions, and she was clean out of answers.
She’d done everything right for years: stopped messing with her meds, quit guzzling handfuls of nonprescription drugs as if they were jelly beans, dumped all her liquor, and joined AA. Implemented a strict eleven p.m. lights-out and learned to meditate. Mindfulness? She could write the manual. And where had all the self-discipline, psychobabble, and mood stabilizers taken her? Back to being a volatile girl with blood on her hands.
A red haze of grief hovered over the road as the countryside sprawled into the sheep-riddled fields of her childhood. She quashed the impulse that said, Jump. Jump out of the cab and watch your flesh rip, watch yourself bleed on the road. It’s what you deserve.
She had killed her own baby; she had killed someone else’s baby. And then she saw Jade’s hand on the door frame and slammed the door anyway. Hurt her with intent. Once could have been an accident; twice was a pattern; and maiming Jade should belong in the realm of the unimaginable. Where did you run to when you had nowhere left to hide? “Go to your safe place,” one of her meditation tapes said. Apparently hers was a cemetery. In rural England. She had abandoned her family for a plot of land full of dead people. What happened next would be anyone’s guess. Manic-depressive illness should come with an ejector button. Hit that sucker, let me bail because this isn’t funny anymore.
Visions of bloody corpses danced in her head like perverted sugar plum fairies. She scratched the scars on her wrist, and watched white claw marks form and disappear.
A black mass of jackdaws rose as one, cawing and flapping into the sky, and the buzz of unharnessed thoughts became a deafening riff, a melting pot of craziness twenty-four hours a day. No furlough for good behavior. Grabbing the side of her head, Marianne tried to focus on the scent of wild hedgerows and something slightly rank. Probably sheep shit.
The road dipped down a small incline, and the sun pushed through the clouds scudding across the sky. There, up ahead: the yew trees, those majestic guardians of decomposing bodies, ashes in urns, and bone-filled coffins. The endless mental chatter dimmed, and her pulse slowed. Imagine that. Her lying, cheating brain had not tricked her: the cemetery of Newton Rushford, isolated on the edge of the village, could still offer peace.
“You can stop here,” she said loudly.
The cabbie glanced over his shoulder. “You sure, luv?”
Marianne reached for the door handle and paused. A graffiti-covered van blocked the gate, and voices came from inside the cemetery. Real ones, for once. She’d had no plan—who had time to slow down and plan?—but she’d had expectations of solitude. Did people have nothing better to do on a Friday afternoon than hang out at a cemetery?
“Lady?”
A weed whacker roared, then made a kickback sound as if hitting something large and solid, and a girl laughed. High, giggly, a teenage laugh. A teenage girl was in the village cemetery. No, that’s not possible. The only girly laughter that had ever belonged in the cemetery was hers. This was where she and Gabriel came for existential debate, where they picked apart the mysteries of life and death. Most adolescents hung out in parks and basements. Not them. They had a one a.m. rendezvous every Sunday in the cemetery and dared the village ghosts to join them. And then, one night, Simon had gate-crashed. And altered history forever.
The girl laughed again.
Marianne swallowed a primal scream of Mine. “Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?” The cabbie swiveled round and stared at her as if she’d sprouted horns.
Right, a hallucination. Good to know, hadn’t had one in a while.
She foraged in her bag for sunglasses and slipped them on. “I’ve changed my mind. Go straight, then turn right, and drop me by the pub. Please. Thank you.” That sounded confident and reasonable. Certainly not the voice of a woman who had, the day before, boarded a transatlantic flight with the attitude of someone running out to pick up Carolina pulled pork for lunch.
The cab started moving again, each jolt bouncing her thoughts between Simon and Gabriel: her lover and her love. How was that for a contradiction? During her first inpatient psychiatric stay, she’d written both of them rambling letters filled with the horrors of restraints and sedation—unfazed by the fact that one of her addressees was dead. But back then she was labeled schizophrenic, and no one expected rational behavior. She’d kept those letters. Knew exactly where they were: in the back of her shoe closet. Best hiding spot until it was no longer big enough.
Old stone houses closed in on both sides as the driver inched past the line of cars squashed bumper to bumper. They circled the village green and parked by the church, in an open area that surrounded the war memorial. The poppy wreath, left over from last year’s Remembrance Sunday, was propped against the base. Poppies, the color of blood, the symbol of death. On July 17, her birthday, they’d planted the first ceramic poppy at the Tower of London to commemorate the outbreak of World War I. That should have been her sign, a personal message from the Grim Reaper. A warning that death never lets go.
Images swarmed: a sea of ceramic poppies bleeding out of the Tower of London. Heads on spikes. Traitors’ Gate. Anne Boleyn on the block. Anne Boleyn, a mother who had miscarried months before her execution.
A small gasp escaped and Marianne disguised it with a cough. The cabbie didn’t ask if she was okay. He merely stopped the meter and turned, hand extended. She counted out enough bills to keep a small country afloat. As always, she listened to the inner voice that whispered, Yes, I’m insane. But please like me, and overtipped.
Her stomach gurgled. She’d eaten nothing on the plane except for a bag of pretzels and the Twizzlers purchased at the Raleigh airport. The Twizzlers might have been a mistake. The pretzels too. She meant to eat at Heathrow, but there were so many people she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t swallow, couldn’t do anything as panic turned her heart into a conga drum. And then she’d retreated to the business class lounge, curled up, and slept.
“Hungry, are we?” the cabbie said.
“I guess.”
Adrenaline hit, sideswiping her as she reached for her Queen Bee bag. Her limbs ached with exhaustion and yet her mind crackled with the need for a quick spin of the lunatic-in-the-attic routine. Random thoughts marched like ants on the move. She needed to lie down and listen to music. Music would bring relief. Something classical, a little melancholic. Yes, music was always the cure. She took a shallow breath.
“Wanna receipt?” This time the cabbie didn’t bother to turn around. She was already old news.
“No, thanks.”
Marianne clambered out and frowned. Nostalgia wasn’t everything it was cracked up to be. The leaded windows of the pub, an old coaching inn, had been boarded over. Two hanging baskets, dangling plant skeletons, swayed and creaked in the wind. And the stone building opposite that should have been a post office was some type of café. The iron rings once used to shackle prisoners during coach changes remained, but the striped awning had been replaced with a hot-pink banner that screamed “Puddings Galore: Best Homemade Desserts in the County!” She might be a certified crackpot, but she would never announce her business in pink. Pink.
Alone on the uneven cobbles, Marianne stared up at the Victorian spire of the church. An anachronistic monstrosity, her mom used to call it. The flag on the top of the bell tower whipped back and forth hypnotically. Come inside. Stay a while, it seemed to say. Relive your public disgrace. Although technically she’d discovered psychosis in the churchyard, not inside the church. When volts of electricity had blasted shotgun holes into you
r memory, details mattered.
The air filled with muffled organ music, and like a rat following the Pied Piper, she wobbled toward the church in her high-heeled boots. Her mother always said that if you grew up in the village it was your home for life, that the villagers would welcome you back. Although in her case a lynching might be more appropriate. After all, she was the reason one of their own had met a grisly death on the A428, where traffic now droned. A constant stream of people in transit, traveling over the site of the crash. The first crash, one of two, a matching pair. A repeating pattern.
Adjusting her sunglasses, Marianne walked up the stone steps and entered the churchyard through the lych-gate. On her right was the family mausoleum of the lords of the manor; on her left, yew trees planted over mass graves of victims of the Black Death. Someone had created perfect lines of cut grass around the ancient lichen-covered headstones. How long since they’d stopped burying villagers here and opened the cemetery?
As she inhaled the smell of fresh grass clippings and gasoline, a memory flashed of ranting and raving to a crowd of spectators. She glanced up at the gargoyles, the grotesque stone faces—part beast, part man—that had played silent witness to her naked downfall. Yes, she had removed every piece of clothing before going oh-so-publicly psycho. If only you could choose which memories to lose.
The music stopped, and her thumping heart filled the void with a steady, deafening rhythm.
Positive thoughts, positive thoughts.
Hadn’t she and Gabriel discovered a pair of swans nesting down by the old bridge on the night of their first teenage kiss—a messy tongue job that took her by surprise? And what about stealing candy from the village shop and daring him to do the same? But the good memories were shoved aside by flashbacks of roaring out of control.
Spots danced before her eyes, and she scratched at her wrist—her fingernails moving faster and faster. High heels on cobbles be damned. She ran to the ancient porch of the church. The smell of rotting funeral lilies hugged her tight; panic, bitter and metallic, filled her mouth. The decorative iron and oak door, unchanged since the thirteenth century, barred her way. Seizing the cold metal ring of the handle, she threw her weight against the door.
Echoes of Family Page 3