She sat up, wiping her face. “Because I love you. I don’t know why. But I still do.”
“Well, you won’t get anywhere by crying like a spoiled child.”
Chapter 17
Another hot day, the temperature was ninety-two, and because of the overnight storm, the humidity was thicker than ever. Debra rattled a bag of cat food which was just as effective as calling them. Heaping a pile in the old hubcap, she called, “Here Kitty, Kitty.” Midnight came first, then Kitty Callie. Soon enough, the cat clan streamed from every direction, and she began the morning ritual of counting them.
She was still upset about last night. Something was going on in that house and whatever it was disturbed her terribly . . . four, five, six . . . . Greg had blamed the mysterious thumping sounds on the storm. He blamed what sounded like scratching in the walls on mice, and blamed the electrical outage on an overload . . . seven, eight, nine . . . . All of which could have been true . . . ten, eleven, twelve . . . . But what about the sound of footsteps coming upstairs? Greg had told her, don’t worry so much. But what about the lock on the bathroom door when she’d been in the shower? The house was a hundred years old and built with its own funeral parlor. Why would the realtor have said that if it hadn’t been true? Someone must have died here within the last hundred years and was probably mourned in this very house. She had been subtly asking for months and months, gone to the church in the square where the graveyard was, asked inside the church—no one could say.
. . . twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, . . . . She counted again to make sure, hearing dried cat food crunch as they ate, the territorial cats growled. One of the cats was missing. “Here Kitty, Kitty!” She yelled, shaking the bag fierce, looking for the last one to come. “Kitty, Kitty. Here Kitty, Kitty.”
Her skin luminous with sweat, she watched the goldenrod as it waved in tides. The seventeenth cat was gone. Only the living remained.
Chapter 18
The day was done. Debra would leave tomorrow. She disrobed, watching Greg through the glow of the bedside lamp. His heavy brow, his deep-set eyes, his clean-shaven chin. He was in bed, reading a cycle magazine, and let it fall to the floor when she closed the bedroom door. The scent of lavender and ginger lingered in her hair, the last of a free sample from an expensive boutique. She’d asked Sam to water Otto while she was gone, and feed the cats, too. Julie would be gone for a week at the fair. Debra would leave tomorrow.
Greg sank back in the pillow, elbows back, his hands clasped behind his head. Debra turned off the light and crawled under the blanket where he was. “I’m going to take some time to see my mother tomorrow. They said her memory is coming back,” she pillow-whispered, resting her head on the rise and fall of his chest, her body molded to his.
“Let me go with you. I just need a couple days to finish the job on Sprague Road.” His soft baritones lulled her.
“That’s alright.” Her breathing slowed to the rhythm of his. “If I leave by nine, I should be in Cincinnati by two. I’ll stay with Mrs. O’Shell for a few days. It’ll be nice to see her again.”
She had a late start that morning, the traffic was heavy and she got lost when she couldn’t find the right exit in Cincinnati. Driving through a blowing rain, the wind whistled through a window that wouldn’t completely close. It was four o’clock and the brown-brick building loomed ahead. Debra felt her stomach tighten, her hands already shaking. They’d told her that shock treatment therapy was standard treatment, a cure-all for the most baffling mental cases, severe depression for instance. She’d seen this kind of depression, the kind that took its victim to a faraway place inside their own head. A place where reality boils away, until it becomes a fog.
The facility towered over a barbed wire perimeter where a long stretch of field surrounded it. After parking and going through security screening, she found herself in an elevator. Anxiety growing, she pushed the button for the 23rd floor, the psychiatric ward. The elevator ascended higher and higher in conjunction with Debra’s rising pulse. She inhaled—slow, deliberate. She exhaled—easy, purposefully. She had lost count of how many times she’d been taken away as a child, and placed in a foster home. Doctors would play with her mom’s medication and her mom would seem okay for a while, and social services would give Debra back. Then her mom would start drinking again and would stop taking the pills because she said she was fine, and it would start all over.
An armed guard frisked Debra like a common criminal, guided her through an iron gate, and left her on her own to find room A312 down the long narrow hall, the heaviness of her heart, thumping, pulsing. She saw a caged nurse’s station, and four armed guards.
A big-bellied nurse and an unkempt man were blocking the hallway so Debra tried to nudge past them. He held an unlit cigarette in one hand and a lighter in the other, his hair was uncombed and his vacant eyes beheld dark circles.
“Give me that.” The nurse commanded. “You have to wait till I take your temperature.”
“No,” The man grunted, and shuffled right into Debra, probably without seeing her. She flattened her back against the wall, trying to get past. The nurse grabbed his wrist, and shoved the thermometer in his mouth.
He bit it. Debra heard the glass break as she inched along the wall. His lips tight, he held the broken bits in his mouth.
“What did you do? Spit that out!” the nurse yelled, fighting with his hands. “Call Doctor Strong! Stat!” she yelled to the nurse’s station. He wasn’t fighting back so much as he was keeping his mouth closed.
“Calling Doctor Strong . . . Calling Doctor Strong, Ward five,” echoed over the PA system. “Calling Doctor Strong to ward five.” An armed guard rushed in and then another. Debra crept further away, watching them strong-arm the frantic patient, watching the guards pin him down. She turned away from the commotion, hearing the yells and screams all the way to room 312. Standing in the doorway, looking inside, she saw two cot-like beds in the small cramped room that were bolted to the floor. It was an eerie feeling to see her mother sitting there, stringing beads, as if each one were a rare jewel. Hardly recognizable, her hair was up in a pretty French twist, white strands at her temples. When did her mother get old?
“Mom?”
Aida jumped, startled, dropping her box of beads. “My . . . my . . . m . . .” She seemed stuck on one word and then stopped short, her glazed-over eyes fixed on the wall.
“Mom, it’s me.” Debra said from the doorway, suddenly that daughter again who couldn’t do anything right. Aida dropped to her hands and knees, picking up beads that had rolled under the bed. The woman who shared her room scooted inside the doorway behind Debra.
“They messed with her brain you know,” the woman said, digging in a used-up Kotex box that was on a shelf. “Do you have a match?” she asked, pulling out a cigarette.
“No, I don’t smoke.” Debra said, still watching her mother.
“Poop. Everyone else is allowed to have lighters, but they took mine. Isn’t that asinine? All I did was mention to that idiot scrub woman that I could set fire to these curtains just as good with a lighter as I could with a match.”
“Really . . . .”
“She told me to hand it over. I told her I was allowed to have it. I told her it was mine. She tried to take it away—it was mine. Do you know what they did then?” The woman’s straw-like eyebrows straggled to the wrinkle lines in her forehead as she spoke; the fat under her arms jiggled with every move of her hand. “They called Doctor Strong. You know what that means?”
Aida broke in, her words monotone, “Every able bodied man, get to the psyche ward.” Aida seemed to acknowledge her surroundings now, the people around her. “They jumped her all at once and crucified her to a gurney. They’ve done it to all of us. It was just your turn,” she said to the woman, a haunting laugh lingering. “It’ll be your turn someday,” she said to Debra. Aida got up from the floor, her eyes on Debra’s. Aida got up close. “They’ll come after you, you’ll see.”
&
nbsp; Debra stood there without moving, watching her mother close in to an inch away from her face. Nose to nose, staring into her mother’s eyes, she dare not blink, she dare not speak. Shock treatment had erased Aida’s memory, the white-coats had said, reserved only for extreme cases. Pieces of memory would be reintroduced so the patient could accept their lot in life. Debra was one of those pieces.
“You smell—like me,” Aida said as if she was onto to Debra, onto some sort of charade.
“That’s wild,” came from Debra’s lips. Here she was in a crazy place, this crazy person saying crazy things. It didn’t seem real.
“Don’t get smart with me. I’m still your mother,” Aida said, working hard for each word. “This is all your fault.”
Debra froze, gripped by a lifetime of guilt. She’d blamed herself. It wasn’t her fault but she blamed herself just the same. Aida had killed Bill because of her. Aida pled insanity at the trial which brought her here to live out the rest of her life. Debra said nothing, knowing too well trying to reason with a mentally unstable person was the same as trying to reason with a drunk. They just don’t get it, no matter how much you want them to. “Mom,” Debra said nicely. She would put a spin on it. She would turn it around. “I love what you’ve done to your hair.”
“Just who do you think you are?”
Debra smiled politely, her insides wrenched. “It was nice to see you again. I have to go now,” she said, rounding up a seemingly cordial visit, promptly turning her back, and leaving the room. It hurt so badly, first to see her mother in this awful place, and then be assailed because she’d come.
“Debby I’m sorry. Don’t go.” Aida wrung her hands nervously, prattling on. “Please. Don’t do this. I’m your mother. Please don’t leave me here.”
Debra focused straight ahead as she walked down the long hall, the click of her shoes echoing within its walls. She would be strong. She would blink back the wet in her eyes, and she would be strong.
“Debby. Please. I love you. You’re everything to me.”
Debra stopped. She bounced a glance off the gate and at her mother. This was the woman who would knock her to the floor. The woman who would sit on her chest, grab her hair and pound her head on the floor, in one of her psychotic frenzies. Why did she have to think of that? It was done now, over. Things were different. So very different. She told her mother she loved her. She said she’d stay longer next time. “Next time you’ll feel better.” Looking into Aida’s eyes, she could see they were empty now . . . electric-shock empty.
A guard unlocked the chain-link door. Debra kissed her mother’s cheek, and squeezed through the door as it opened.
She dove inside the ladies room, and sitting on the toilet, she brought herself back to the present. She took a purposeful breath. Things were different now. Her mother’s insanity was not meant to be shared, that’s what a caseworker had said, ‘Aida’s insanity belongs with Aida. Your sanity belongs with you.’ She took another breath. ‘Disconnect. Disconnect.’
The case worker had said, ‘A mentally ill person is like someone who’s drowning. They’ll drag you under. You’ve got to let go.’ Debra washed her hands, splashed cold water on her face, and dried with a paper towel—telling herself to settle down. She mindlessly tugged at her lashes, displacing a few at the root. A tight bunch came out in her hand. It hurt. Eyelashes fell down her cheek. She rubbed her fist in her eye, stopping herself from pulling out any more.
She would go to Mrs. O’Shell’s house, a woman who fostered her once. She would go to the quaint little house where clusters of roses and baby’s breath grew. Where a baby grand piano held a hymnal, a red and gray afghan on the seat. She would smell stuffed cabbages cooking. Mrs. O’Shell’s house—this was where God dwelled—not in any pew in any church, but here where this faithful servant lived.
Debra rang the doorbell, and rubbed her face in both hands as she waited. ‘My sanity belongs with me. My sanity belongs with me. I am not my mother . . . .’ The door opened.
“What a wonderful surprise,” Mrs. O’Shell said, hugging her like a long lost child. “It’s so nice to see you. How have you been?”
“I’m good. How are you? It’s been so long.”
Mrs. O’Shell looked right at the bald spot in her lashes, Debra could tell. She hid her face in her hands. “I haven’t done that in years and all of a sudden . . . .”
“Oh, Honey. It’ll be all right.” Mrs. O’Shell took Debra’s hands in her gnarly fingers, examining the delicate torn strips of skin. “Look at your cuticles.” She held Debra’s hands as if in a prayer, her hands small like Debra’s. “I don’t know anyone else who could have handled all this as well as you. I admire you so.”
Debra found solace here. She would lay down all of her burdens and Mrs. O’Shell would help sort them all out. “I saw my mother today . . .” Debra stopped mid-sentence when she came inside to something she wasn’t prepared for. The house was terribly unkempt. There were clumps of dirt and dust and shoe-crud. Piles of junk-mail littered the couch and a broken toaster for some reason. Dusty old knick-knacks were strewn on a stained carpet that hadn’t been vacuumed since who knows when. This wasn’t what she had pictured.
“How is your mother?” Mrs. O’Shell asked, limping along with a cane. Debra suddenly put the bits and pieces together, conversations they’d had, letter she’d read. Mrs. O’Shell was seventy-nine, diabetic, and three of her toes had been amputated one at a time.
“She’s . . .” seeing this happy face, Debra wouldn’t spoil the old woman’s joy. “She’s well,” Debra said. They would go to the kitchen and have cookies and tea, she thought. They would sit and laugh and reconnect, and then she would help the old woman clean. The kitchen was just as bad. The flowered linoleum floor was sticky where something must have been spilt. From the way it looked, it must have been a while ago. There was a sink-full of rancid dishes, a box of adult diapers against a wall. And here was Mrs. O’Shell smiling for all she was worth. Debra guided the old woman to a kitchen chair, and prepared the sink to wash dishes.
“I would say you don’t have to do that, but I’m afraid you’d stop,” Mrs. O’Shell said, covering a laugh like a Geisha girl—a very old Geisha girl. Debra knew she always hid her laughter because she was afraid her false teeth would fall out. Not that they ever had.
“We bought a house,” Debra said, dipping into sudsy water.
“A new house . . . how exciting.”
Chapter 19
It had been a week since Debra had seen her mother. She looked forward to jogging with Julie more than ever—even in the heat. Julie’s letters had seemed to stop, but this time when Julie swung by, she showed up with another letter.
Julie
I hope you received my letters. I don’t think I had your whole address quite right. I hope you did because I could never rewrite them. Well, if you did, you probably know who I am, right? I wonder if you came Friday. If you did, I’m sorry I missed you. I couldn’t make it because I got called away again (NY). Work is getting to be a problem. I was looking forward to meeting you at our restaurant. We would have had such a good time together! My, how romantic it will be to sit next to you, holding hands. We’ll order the best meal and my favorite wine (you remember?). You are so gorgeous, so pleasant to be near. I bet you look terrific in a beautiful evening gown, so fragile, loving, and sensitive. It will be the most memorable time of my life! You sitting with me would make me so proud! I will always remember your warm smile. It will be so nice to talk to you! On the other hand, I’m afraid you’re going to tell me that you’re happily married. I don’t know yet. I didn’t know how else to make you love me. I am so in love with you, Julie! Give me one more chance! Meet me again next Friday, same time & place. Please give me that one experience of a lifetime! If I don’t see you, I will let go and try to stop loving you. This will be extremely hard because I know you would like me and, perhaps in time, love me like I love you. I have to say, this has been real exciting writing to you. Remember
, there will always be someone loving you for the rest of your life. ME
Debra stood motionless. “Julie, I don’t know what to say. What are you going to do?”
“Nothing. He said if I didn’t show up that he’d stop. Besides, Kyle would go nuts if I tried to meet him again. Most likely this guy just wants to watch me and pretend he isn’t there.”
“Can you be sure that will end it?”
Julie’s hand trembled as she took back the letter. “What if this guy’s lurking around my house and looking in my windows? What if he’s following me? I can’t call the sheriff unless he threatens me or actually does something, and he hasn’t. Yet. And how can I avoid contact when I don’t even know what he looks like.”
“What does Kyle say?”
“He says he’s going to find out who he is and kill him. I’ve never seen him like this,” Julie said as they crossed the road. She looked worn out, like she hadn’t slept for days.
“What do you say we jog in the morning, tomorrow?” Debra asked. “We can get a breakfast first and split it like we did last time.”
“I don’t know. Call me in the morning.”
Chapter 20
A fire breathing dragon coiled the body of a naked woman down the length of his arm, a heart of blood, the tail a pitchfork. A string of skulls encircled his wrist—part of a whole tattoo. His arms and back, his chest and stomach, were a canvas of hearts and snakes, skulls and naked women, and flames. Bruce pulled a black muscle-man shirt on over his head, and wadded up the game warden shirt he’d just taken off. He reached under the car seat and retrieved the hunting knife that he’d wrapped in a kitchen towel—its bloody case still in his trunk where he fetched a crowbar. His car was parked where it had been the last time—the deserted-looking parking lot in Brentwood Pines Development—the place down the street from Debra’s house.
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