Black-Eyed Susans, page 19
Dr. Giles isn’t far behind Lily and, to her credit, does not act the slightest bit surprised to see me.
“Give me just a second, Tessa, OK? I’ll have about twenty minutes before my next appointment.”
“Yes. Certainly.” I feel the flush of heat in my face. This isn’t like me, to burst in on people, busy people, without warning. I remind myself that I have not yet paid her a cent.
Dr. Giles reaches out a hand to Lily’s mother. “Mrs. Tanger, we had an especially good morning. And, Lily, you’re going to draw me a picture for next time?” The little girl nods solemnly, and the doctor’s eyes meet her mother’s in a silent exchange. It’s like watching my father’s face all over again. Hope, worry, hope, worry, hope, worry.
Dr. Giles ushers me into the warm jungle of her office. I drop into one of her cushy chairs. I haven’t rehearsed what I’m going to say. I think that seeing Lily has sucked the selfish, hot anger out of me, but I’m wrong. My hands are suddenly shaking.
“I want closure.” Each word, staccato. A demand, as if Dr. Giles is somehow to blame.
“Closure doesn’t exist,” she responds smoothly. “Just … awareness. That you can’t ever go back. That you know a truth about life’s randomness that most other people don’t.”
She leans forward in her chair. “Maybe you still need to forgive him. I’m sure you’ve heard this before. Forgiveness is not for him. It is for you.” She might as well be raking her nails on the chalkboard behind her. It’s bugging me, the faint ghost of a stick figure still lingering there, half-erased. The happy sun. The flower with a center eye.
“I can’t ever imagine forgiving him.” My eyes are still glued to the flower on the chalkboard. I want to take the eraser and scrub away until everything is black. Make it clean.
“Then let’s say that there is a way for you to get closure. How do you see that happening? What if he … what do you call him?”
“My monster.” My voice is so low, ashamed, that I wonder if she can hear me. What grown-up, not-crazy woman still talks about monsters?
“OK. What if your monster opened the door right now and walked right in? Sat down. Confessed everything. You could see his face. Know his name, where he grew up, if his mother loved him, if his dad beat him, whether he was popular in high school, whether he loved his dog or killed his dog. Imagine he sat in that chair right over there, three feet away, and answered every single one of your questions. Would it really make any difference? Is there any answer that could satisfy you? Make you feel better?”
I stare at the chair.
The gun feels like a steel cookie cutter against my skin. I itch to fire it dead center into the fabric. Watch the white stuffing explode.
I don’t want to have a conversation with my monster. I just want him dead.
Tessie, 1995
“I’m nervous.” Benita’s voice is vibrating.
This is an emergency session. They’ve sent Benita in alone to do the dirty work. It’s been less than twenty-four hours since I announced that I would not be testifying.
She’s wearing no eye makeup, which is a sure sign something is very wrong. She’s just as pretty, but now she looks like the hot girl in middle school instead of the hot girl in high school. All I know is, I don’t want to be the thing that makes Benita scared. She’s been nothing but sweet and kind to me. Like, even her name means blessed.
Benita halts abruptly by the window. “I’m supposed to convince you to testify. Mr. Vega and your doctor think we have some sort of young female bond. To be honest, I’m not sure what you should do. I’m thinking about going into my uncle’s cabinet-making business.”
Wow. What a backfire.
“They want me to ask you what your worst fear is.” She plops in the doctor’s chair and meets my eyes for the first time. “They told me to sit here. Then I’m supposed to convince you that you will never live to regret testifying no matter how hard it is. So if you can tell me what you are most afraid of by going to court, that would be great. So they at least think I tried.”
Tears are brimming in her soft eyes. I’m thinking it’s not the first time she’s cried this morning. I want to get up and hug her but that might break another ethical code and she’s already smashed a few in this room.
“I hear that this defense attorney rips into people until there is nothing left but scraps.” I speak slowly. “That’s a quote my friend Lydia read about Richard Lincoln in the paper. And she overheard her dad tell her mom that everybody calls him Dick the Dick. He might get the jury to think I deserved this. Or that I’m making stuff up.”
“The defense attorney is an asshole,” Benita agrees. She is holding a finger horizontally under each eye, so the tears don’t spill.
Without looking at the box, I grab a Kleenex and hand it over. The box is always waiting for me on the little table by my elbow, never an inch out of place. “And I don’t want to be in the room with … the guy who did this,” I continue. “With him staring at me the whole time. I can’t imagine anything worse. I don’t want him to feel any power over me ever again.”
She dabs at her eyes. “Neither would I. It seems terrifying.”
“My dad will be there. I don’t want to lay out all the details, you know? Thinking about it, talking about it, makes me want to throw up. Like, I can see myself throwing up in the witness chair.”
She takes a deep breath. “I worked on this terrible case during an internship last year. A twelve-year-old girl had been molested by a sixty-five-year-old aunt who couldn’t get out of a wheelchair. It was a mess. Her own family was divided about believing the girl.”
She reluctantly shifts her eyes back to me. “See, you are already wondering yourself. Mr. Vega was the prosecutor. He’s brilliant. He had her talk about the details of maneuvering around the wheelchair during … the acts. No one doubted her when she got out of that witness chair.”
“So the jury convicted her aunt?”
“Yes. Texas is vicious with child molesters. She’ll die in prison.”
“Was the girl glad she testified?”
“I don’t know. She was pretty ripped up afterward.” Benita offers me a weak smile. “I’m thinking selling cabinets would be a lot simpler, you know? They open. They close.”
“Yeah,” I say. “But you’re good at this.”
Tessa, present day
“Why does Obama need to know my damn waistline?”
Effie, in Texas Rangers pajama pants and a pale pink silk blouse with ruffles, is trotting across the lawn, shouting, waving a piece of paper. Charlie and I have just arrived home after an early after-school dinner at the Ol’ South Pancake House. Some days, I wonder how long Effie stares out her window before we show up in our driveway, and if that time has any meaning for her. I’m really hoping it doesn’t.
I’m sure it’s been a long day of trying to remember for both of us. I’m not sure I’m up for Effie. My head hurts despite a confectioners’-sugar fix. She meets us on the porch, breathless, while her finger punches away at the typewritten letter. “It says right here that he wants me to tell him my weight, waistline, and whether I like to drink and smoke. It’s not like we’re courting. Although I do like a whiskey on the rocks and a smoke with a handsome black man every good now and then.” A skim of green eye shadow, two rosy circles of blush, and the large fake pearl clips in her ears are dead giveaways that Effie has made it out of the house today. The pearl clips pop out of the drawer for church every Sunday, but the glittering eyelids mean she’s been jousting with the ladies of the historical society. Effie regularly declares them “way too fix-y.”
I prop the door open for Effie. Charlie follows while carefully balancing a clear plastic box loaded with a sea of blue hair gel and precisely arranged food products.
Effie sniffs the air deliberately.
“It’s my 3-D animal cell project,” Charlie tells her. “Starting to rot.”
“Well, set it on the counter here and let’s take a look.” Animal cell and 3-D take the stink out of it for Effie, who lifts the edge of the Saran Wrap cover with enthusiasm. Charlie snatches the offending letter out of Effie’s other hand.
“Miss Effie, this letter is from your insurance company.” Charlie begins to skim. “They’re going to give you $100 off your deductible and a $25 Amazon card if you fill out this form and they approve your numbers. They also want your cholesterol.”
“Damn spies, all of them.” She pokes a finger into the blue cesspool. “Put 1984 on your reading list, Charlie dear. The man was a soothsayer. My waist used to be nineteen inches. Maybe I’ll write that in their little chart. And then I’ll call the cops and sue for sexual harassment when they send somebody around with a tape measure.” Her finger continues to poke away in the box. “Hair gel for cytoplasm. Clever girl. What grade did you make on this project?”
“A minus. Which is like, really good for this teacher. The average in her class for this project over her twenty-six-year career is a C plus.”
“Well, I’d say that’s the sign of a bad teacher. What was the minus for?”
“The nucleus. I used a clear plastic Christmas ornament from Hobby Lobby.”
“And the nuclear membrane isn’t rigid. Hmm. Gotta hand that one to her, I suppose.”
“Should I dump this in the compost, Mom? The jar said the hair gel is all-natural.”
“It seems like more of a biological weapon at this point. I will let you and our neighborhood scientist make the call. I’m going to change into some sweats.” And swig down a couple of aspirin.
I navigate the hall in the dark and flip on my bedroom light. There is a man, sleeping on my bed. Face turned away. And yet his reaction time is still better than mine. I’m looking down, fumbling for the gun in my waistband, and he’s already leapt the six feet across the bed, shoved a hand over my mouth, and stifled my scream.
I struggle against him. His other arm is pressing my back against a brutal chest. Charlie is in the house.
“Shh. OK?”
I stop squirming. Nod. He releases his grip and I flip away, stumbling. I find myself staring furiously at Charlie’s father.
“Jesus, Lucas,” I hiss. “You scared me. Where in the hell did you come from? Why can’t you knock on the door like a normal person?”
He shuts the door. “I’m sorry. I meant to text as soon as I got here. It was a twenty-nine-hour journey that involved turbulence and an Army pilot who enjoyed it a little too much. The cab dropped me off a couple of hours ago. Your bed was very comfy. I went right to sleep. Might have left some sand in your sheets.” His face is closer to mine than necessary. “You smell like strawberry crepes.” For a second, I remember what it was like to be wrapped in a burrito of solid Army muscle. And then I feel another little ping for Bill. He’d texted twice today. How’s your day? About two hours later: Come on, butterfly girl, talk to me.
“Why, again, are you here?” Trying to hold my ground in every way.
“I had a disturbing Skype session with Charlie. After your night with a domestic terrorist.”
“Oh.” I sit on the end of the bed. She hadn’t mentioned telling her dad, but why wouldn’t she?
Lucas plops beside me and tosses his arm around my shoulders. “I figured I might be needed, but you’d be afraid to ask. Also, I’m trying to be respectful of your parental boundaries. If you don’t think I should be here, I’ll go. Charlie doesn’t have to know. I can slip out the way I came in.”
“Which I assume is through the front door.”
“Well, yeah. You’re paranoid about everything but your security code. You should change it more than once every five years.”
“No.”
“No what?”
“No, I don’t want you to sneak out. Charlie should know you’re here.” That you’ll come for her.
I knew Lucas. It didn’t matter what had just rolled sweetly off his tongue—he wasn’t about to go quietly after traversing an ocean for his daughter.
He has dropped his hand to my waist. Distracting. He lifts up the bottom edge of my shirt, lets his finger drift, and tugs out the .22. “You could use a little practice on your quick draw. You shouldn’t carry a gun if you can’t get it out of your pants.”
I try to summon up a retort and fail.
“How about a little refresher tomorrow?” he asks.
My head is no longer pounding. If I still believed in them, I’d say this man was a godsend.
Lucas had never once judged my sanity, or told me no.
He slips the gun into my hand. “Put it up.”
“I need a favor tomorrow morning,” I say.
“Which involves?”
“Digging.”
My bedroom is dark, except for the glow of the iPad. I’m propped against a stack of pillows. A full glass of wine is within reaching distance on the nightstand. Lucas is sprawled snoring on the couch, the contents of his duffle spilled out on the living room floor. Charlie is texting under her covers. The evening’s competitive father-daughter game of Assassin’s Creed was a little too instructional for my comfort. I was relieved when Lucas snapped off the video game about half an hour ago and tucked his teen-ager into bed for the first time in months. She pretended to be too old for tucking in, but we all knew better.
The dark is friendly, for once. The man on our sofa has sifted all of the bad things from the night and stuffed them under his pillow.
Still, I’m not at rest. I’m determined to take a little trip into the past.
I hold the picture in my hand closer to the light, which makes her eyes dance. A trail of Spanish lace spills down her hair and across her shoulders. A tiny locket nestles in her throat. A modern girl transformed into a beautiful antique bride.
I had clipped Benita’s wedding picture out of the newspaper a very long time ago, about two summers after the trial. It contains only the most basic information. In the photo, Benita is beaming up at a very white man with a very white name. The bride’s parents are listed as Mr. and Mrs. Martin Alvarez and the groom’s as Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Smith Sr.
OK, Benita aka Ms. Joe Smith. I type Benita Smith into the iPad search bar and click on Images. The first twenty-five faces do not belong to my Benita Smith. The twenty-sixth picture is a red Mercedes, and the next is a shopping mall Christmas tree followed by a pearl bracelet and a baby’s foot. Farther down, a kitchen pantry with bright red rooster door handles. In case she really did go into her uncle’s cabinet business, I click to that page. No luck. I skip through endless, useless Benita Smith story links before I head to Facebook to search for Benita Alvarez Smith. Nothing. I delete her maiden name, and the Facebook screen rolls up hundreds of Benita Smiths.
Part of me doesn’t want to work too hard at this. Would she really know something that could help Terrell? Did she overhear something? Suspect something?
I had let Benita drift out of my life seventeen years ago. There has to be a good reason for that, right? We had met for coffee every Tuesday afternoon for a few months after I testified. The last time, she dropped all official pretenses. She entered the café in tight black jeans and a Remember Selena T-shirt, with her six-year-old sister in tow. Texas Monthly had made Selena its tragic cover girl that month instead of me, so I was still feeling the naive bliss of being old news.
Not long after Terrell was convicted, Selena’s killer had been sentenced and locked up in Gatesville. She was confined twenty-three hours a day to a tiny cell because of death threats. The Tejano music fans behind bars wanted Yolanda Saldivar to die for her sins. While Benita and I had whispered about that, her sister carefully strung plastic beads onto a shoelace. She had tied the bracelet to my wrist like a purple-and-yellow worm.
I doubt that Benita Alvarez looms boldly in the official records of the Black-Eyed Susans case. If her name is mentioned at all, Bill and Angie would have glanced right over it. She was never interviewed by the media. She didn’t testify and only attended the trial on the two days that I took the stand. She was a minor player to everyone but me, drowned out by the thunder of Al Vega—or Alfonso as he calls himself now. Mr. Vega, 100 percent Italian, picked up the fonso to court the Hispanic vote when he ran his first successful race for Texas Attorney General.
When a Terrell Darcy Goodwin question is sprung on him, Mr. Vega declares in no uncertain terms that he would not try the case any differently today. He sent a birthday card to me when I turned eighteen, and a sympathy card when my father died. On both, he scrawled his name and wrote underneath: I will always be there for you. The cynic in me wonders if those words are just part of his regular signature to victims he wrestled into the witness chair. But Tessie? Tessie believes she could pick up the phone and he’d be at her front door in seconds.
I clear the search bar. Hesitate, just for a second. Type. Most of my teen-age angst about my doctor is gone. I’m staring at links to an array of bombastic papers he’s written for online blogs and psychiatric journals. There’s a new one since I last searched: “The Colbert Love Affair: Why We See Ourselves in an Imaginary French Conservative Narcissist.”
I clear the search bar and type another name, even more reluctantly. Click on the link at the top for the very first time.
I’m staring at the weekly blog of Richard Lincoln aka Dick the Dick, instantly regretting that I just provided him with a hit, even the tiniest bit of incentive to carry on. Today’s post: “Gasping for air.” It’s hard to look away now that I’ve come this far. Angie always wanted me to talk to him. Thought it might bump something loose. He’s a changed man.
I can barely stomach the bio, so I skim. Richard Lincoln, crusader. Nationally renowned death penalty lawyer. Author of The New York Times best-selling book, My Black Eye.
My Black Eye. His confessional, a year after the trial. Whenever I’m in a bookstore, I turn the cover around, even though I’ve heard that he donates half the profits to the children of prisoners. Because why doesn’t he donate all of them?
