by Betty Webb
“Candice wanted to be a veterinarian, go to Africa, treat animals wounded by poachers.”
Something else wasn’t pink. In back of the pink-dressed blond girl in the life-sized painting above the bed, the trees were green with lilac flowers.
Seeing all this, so soon after Jacklyn’s shrine to her Stevie, reminded me of something. “I didn’t see anything like this up at Debbie’s. Doesn’t she…?”
She cut me off. “We all grieve in different ways. Debbie wants to forget, I want to remember, to believe that Candice will find her way home someday. That’s why I continue to live in a house that’s too big for me, so when she comes back I’ll be right here waiting for her. She used to sit in that window seat, watching the birds in the lake. Herons. Egrets. Plovers. Canada geese, six different species of ducks. She’d even given some of them names, like the little cinnamon teal that was missing a foot. Peg Leg, she named him. One of the herons was named Estelle, but heaven only knows why. I had plenty of time to kill Norma before I drove up to Black Canyon City.”
She wasn’t even looking at me, just at the portrait.
“Did you?”
“If I were a stronger woman, I would have. I would have killed Wycoff, too, burned those marks all up and down both legs and both arms and…” She cleared her throat. “But I’m not that strong.”
I know truth when I hear it.
“You know what? I’ll take that tea now.”
***
Back at my apartment I opened the bankers’ box again and took out the pictures of my bloodstained dress, now lying next to my Vindicator.
I left the knife where it was—its time was past—but I picked up the photograph of the dress.
Closed my eyes.
Whispered the names of the children.
Candice.
Lindsey.
Stevie.
And all the other missing children out there whose mothers couldn’t forget them, mothers still waiting for them to come home.
Was my mother waiting for me?
Chapter Twenty-five
When I woke up the next morning, Snowball was lying on my chest, purring. It sounded peaceful.
And peaceful wasn’t a condition I was used to.
I’ve had conversations with worse creatures than kittens, so I asked, “Does Snowball want breakfast?”
He purred louder.
“Coming right up, then.”
Gently moving him aside, I crawled out of bed and staggered to the kitchen with him trailing behind me. I opened a can of Fancy Feast, and ladled it into his bowl. After watching Snowball eat for a while, I went into the living room and surveyed the damage. Ruined drapes, ruined sofa cushions, scratched-up coffee table. For some reasons known only to his little cat brain, he had spared the black satin pillow emblazoned with WELCOME TO THE PHILIPPINES that I’d stolen from one of my first foster families. They were good people and I’d wanted something to remember them by.
But maybe it was time to return it.
***
Andrew and Bernice Preston lived in Leisure World in Mesa, a gated retirement community just a little over twenty miles east of Scottsdale. The Prestons had been forced to give me up when Andrew lost his job at a car dealership that went bust under during one of the Valley’s economy slumps, necessitating him to take a job at his brother’s John Deere franchise in Kansas. That was more than, what, thirty years ago? A couple of years ago they moved back to Mesa, where two of their own children and several grandchildren lived. Through some miracle, they had seen me being interviewed on television after the bloody end of one of my cases and managed to track me down. We had kept in touch ever since.
Like many of the Leisure World residents, the now-retired Prestons opted for a maintenance-free condo. Theirs overlooked the golf course, which came in handy for Andrew since he loved spending time on the links. As for Bernice, she spent most of her days quilting and visiting with family and friends, every now and then paying homage to the God of Exercise by losing tennis matches. If it hadn’t been for the Prestons, I might never have known normal families existed.
I parked my Jeep in the visitor’s lot and hiked through the heat to their condo, where Andrew, a young-looking seventy, immediately invited me in. Like many Arizona homes, the Prestons’ décor paid homage to various Indian tribes. As I took a seat on the butternut-colored sofa, I spotted two Navajo sand paintings, several Hopi Kachinas, a Yaqui mask, a Zuni pot, and even several Northwest Indian carvings—Tlingit, I think.
Bernice, still lovely although her hair was now entirely silver, waved away my apology when I tried to hand over the WELCOME TO THE PHILIPPINES pillow. “You didn’t have to drive this all the way out here, Sweetheart. If I’ve lived without it this long, we can go on without it.”
“But I stole it,” I muttered, red-faced.
Andrew, always genial, grinned. “When I was seven, I stole a package of Fleer’s Double Bubble from the corner grocery store. ’Course, my father made me take it back.”
I thrust the pillow at them again. “But the pillow’s life is threatened. I have a cat now.”
“Cats love pillows.” Andrew shoved it back.
Bernice ended the shoving match by plucking the pillow out of her husband’s hands during a too-slow transfer. “We’ll put it on the bed in the guest room. Thank you, Lena. That’s a very kind thing to do, returning this, but we always understood why you took Andrew’s pillow. You hated to say goodbye, so it was something of ours you’d always have with you.”
Since they had returned to the Valley, we had discussed our tearful parting several times. Long ago I’d forgiven them for leaving me behind. CPS rules forbade a foster parent taking a “client,” as we children were called, permanently out of state. But even adults had to eat, and the Prestons had to go where the jobs were.
“Iced tea, Lena?” Bernice asked, after she’d returned from taking the pillow into the guest bedroom. “You’re all sweaty.”
“Still around a hundred-ten out there. Maybe we’ll get lucky and a monsoon will roll in.”
We discussed the weather—hot and getting hotter—while we sat at the dining room table, sipping our tea. Bernice always snuck sugar into hers, and while it was too sweet for me, I drank it anyway.
“Oh, by the way, did I tell you I found a stack of my old journals when I was cleaning out our Wichita house before we moved back?”
Andrew frowned. “Bernice, maybe you shouldn’t…”
She shushed him. “You worry too much.”
Journals? I’ve never understood people’s need to record their lives. Had brunch with Estelle today. Saw Star Wars, it was great. Dreamed about frogs last night, wonder why. Dog barfed on the kitchen floor this morning…Over the years several therapists had advised to me to keep a journal, but given the nature of my memories I wanted to forget them, not record them. But since Bernice seemed enthused about her find, I faked interest. “Old journals? How fascinating.”
“One of them was exclusively about you.”
Uh oh. “I didn’t do well in school, did I?”
“Your grades were fine, but your behavior worried your teachers. I saved some of their notes and tucked them into the pages of the journal. Want to see them?”
Did I want to see teacher’s notes describing my violence in the classroom? The time I’d slapped Cheryllee for taking my pencil? The time I’d kick Ralphie in the balls for pinching my butt? The time I’d bit Mrs. Robinson when she tried to drag me off Carmen because Carmen had called me a homeless little tramp nobody wanted?
“I’ll pass.” I said.
Andrew was still frowning. “Listen to the girl, Bernice.”
As usual, Bernice ignored him, but when she spoke, her tone was gentle. Come to think of it, in the two years I’d lived with them, she’d never once raised her voice to me. “You’re still running away fro
m your memories, aren’t you, Lena?”
“With only sporadic success.” I tried not to sound bitter.
After looking at me for a long moment, she said, “I’ll be right back,” then headed down the hallway. Andrew muttered something about headstrong women.
A couple of minutes later Bernice returned with a notebook in her hand. Not one of those little blue notebooks I’d used in school, but large, with a paisley print cover. A journal. She sat down next to me and opened it to a bookmarked page.
“There’s remembering, which is healthy, and wallowing, which isn’t,” she said. “Who was Golden Boy?”
When I could breathe again, I said, “I…I’m not ready to talk about that.”
She gave me a searching look. “Whoever, or whatever, he was, you dreamed about him all the time. They weren’t good dreams.”
“Most of mine aren’t.”
“Whenever you dreamed about this Golden Boy, you’d wake up screaming.”
Andrew, bless him, said, “Bernice, is this necessary?”
“I think it’s time, Lena. How much do you remember?”
I remembered the shots, the screams, the children’s bodies being thrown into the mineshaft. I still woke up nights echoing their screams as they died. Was I already dreaming about Golden Boy when I lived with the Prestons?
“Lena?”
I snapped back to attention.
“After a couple of those screaming episodes—and they were horrific—we took you to a child psychologist. Do you remember that?”
“No.”
The expression on her face told me she had expected my answer. “Understandable. You had serious memory issues at the time. The psychologist told us that you couldn’t remember anything consciously, but that your dreams…” She paused a moment, then continued. “Once you woke up, you couldn’t remember them so she was unable to follow up on what terrified you so much. Lena, please know that we did everything we could to help you.”
“Of course you did.” The Prestons had been more than kind.
“Now it’s time for you to help yourself.” Bernice placed the paisley-print journal in my hands. “I recorded those bad nights in here, every word you screamed.”
***
The journal lay on my coffee table the rest of the day while I did everything possible to avoid it. I played with Snowball. I mopped the kitchen floor. I scrubbed the toilet. I returned Dusty’s phone call. He invited me out for another trail ride on Monday, but accepted my excuse that I was too busy. No lie, there, but I assured him that once I’d cleared the Wycoff case we would get together again.
“Clear that thing fast, Hon,” he said, “because I’m getting’ awful lonely up here.”
When I ended the call, I immediately regretted postponing his invitation. One night in his arms, just one night…
Although I knew it was a cliché, I had always gone for the bad boys. In a way, they were safest boys of all. Knowing a boy was “bad” allowed you to hold back, not let yourself get in too deep. That way, when they finally got around to doing something outrageously bad—like getting married and forgetting to tell you about it—you had an excuse to kick him out of your life, to shut the whole thing down.
Bad boys were so much safer that the good boys, the soft-eyed boys who never gave you cause to doubt them, the boys who hung in there until you wanted to scream, “Get this over with already, end this, because that’s what happens, that’s the way it always works!”
Black garbage bag “suitcases” dragging behind me as CPS forced me from one “home” to another to another to…
People disappeared on you. I remembered the waiting—almost holding my breath with the fearful waiting—for those endings to happen, the feeling of almost relief when they did, because I had no choice over the matter, no power over the endings, the endings that always came. Ah, but with bad boys you had the power to end it yourself, because bad boys always gave you a reason to end it before you began to care too much. Then the bad boys were the ones who had to drag their dirty black garbage bags to the door.
No wonder the only male relationship I’d maintained at length was with Jimmy, my business partner.
And Dusty.
***
With my apartment cleaner than it had ever been, I headed to the gym and worked out for an hour and a half. Someone had left a copy of the New Times in the dressing room, and after browsing through the film section, decided to kill more time at the local Cineplex. The latest Star Wars movie helped me lose myself in the action for a while, but the image of Golden Boy returned the second the credits started rolling. Out of desperation, as soon as I left the Cineplex I called Jimmy. Work. That would settle me down. It always did.
“What have you learned about Casey Starr?” I asked, as soon as he said hello.
“Hello to you, too, Lena. You do realize that it’s Sunday, right? The one day I’d planned to take off?”
“Sunday? That must be why the Cineplex was so crowded.” This is what happens when you get into a tizzy over your so-called love life; you forget that other people have lives, too. “Sorry, Jimmy, it’s just that…” I caught myself again. “Uh, everything okay with you and the cousins? How’s the new building project coming along?”
A chuckle. “Everyone and everything is A-okay, and thanks for asking. As for Casey Starr, that guy’s A-okay, too, at least as far as the Net is concerned. Everything, and I mean everything about him until he started Cyber-Sec, has been erased.” There was more than a touch of admiration in his voice.
“One other thing.”
“There always is.”
I took a chance. “Say, uh, I’m thinking about dropping by the Tempe Improv tonight. New Times says Janeane Garofolo’s appearing. Wanna go with?”
There was a long pause before he answered. “Sorry, but my cousin’s expecting me for dinner. It’s our usual family evening.”
“Oh.”
“Maybe some other time? I know how much you like hanging out on the Rez.”
“Yeah. Some other time.”
I ended the call.
I didn’t want to go to the Improv by myself, but I still didn’t feel ready to return to my apartment where Bernice Preston’s paisley journal awaited me. Instead, I drove out to Cave Creek and ate barbequed chicken at the Horny Toad, where I listened to a flashy, Stetson-wearing woman sing about cheating men and cows. After one set, I drove into Phoenix and stopped by Char’s Has the Blues, where a guy dressed like a biker down on his luck sang about cheating women and cruel bosses. Then I went to the movies again—different Cineplex—to see the latest Hangover retread. It made me glad I didn’t drink.
It was Freud, I think, who proposed that the way to recover from trauma was to face up to it, to name it. Name a scary hobgoblin and it’ll disappear, just like magic. I wasn’t sure I agreed. If you call a chair a chair, does that make the chair go away? No. the damned chair keeps sitting there, staring you in the face, sneering. So screw Freud. If you don’t like the chair, don’t keep looking at it. Same for memories. Ignore them. Every time I uncovered a new memory, it ruined my day. Why seek out more? Why should I read that damn journal?
In the end, though, I had to stop driving around the city, stopping in bars, and watching movies I hadn’t wanted to see in the first place. I went home because Snowball needed to be fed.
Love will kick you in the ass every time.
***
“Look at the trouble you’ve caused me,” I told Snowball as he lay curled on my lap. “If it hadn’t been for you, I could have stayed out all night, maybe drove out to the desert and looked at the stars. And I wouldn’t have had to take that pillow back, either. Then I wouldn’t have to…”
I eyed the paisley journal, sitting untouched on the coffee table.
Wasn’t there a saying, something like, “Sufficient unto the day is the evil the
reof”? Shakespeare, maybe. Or the Bible. Supposedly the Elizabethan gobbledygook meant, “Don’t eat your heart out over the past and don’t worry about the future, because today is already shitty enough.”
I eased Snowball off my lap and took a long hot shower. Then, pointedly refusing to look at the journal, I went to bed.
***
At three I was still awake. Not because Snowball lay purring on my chest, he was light as a feather, but because every time I shut my eyes I could see that damned journal.
And because I was afraid to dream.
No, not afraid.
Terrified.
Even thinking about what might be in those pages had started my hands shaking again.
But did I really want to wake up screaming for the rest of my life? Maybe Bernice was right, that it was time I remembered what I didn’t want to remember.
Tucking Snowball under my arm, I crawled out of bed and shuffled into the living room.
Grabbed the journal and began to read.
A bad night. Lena woke up screaming twice. Poor little girl, what’s she going to do when she learns that CPS won’t let us take her to Wichita? It’ll only make her worse, and she’s already acting out in so many violent ways. Something terrible happened to her, something concerning her parents. She thinks her mother shot her, but I find that hard to believe. What kind of mother would shoot her own child?
Bernice had been right about that, too. What kind of mother would shoot her own child? Not mine. Over the years I had remembered enough to know my mother had been trying to save me, not shoot me. She’d aimed the gun a couple of inches to the left of my head, but then someone knocked her hand two inches to the right. Almost simultaneously as I heard the noise, I felt my mother’s foot against my chest, and when the gun screamed in concert with my mother, I flew through the air, through the door of the white bus and onto the street below.
I saw nothing else until I woke up two months later in Phoenix Children’s Hospital, my memory wiped clean.