Black-Eyed Susans, page 27
JUDGE WATERS: Mr. Lincoln?
MR. LINCOLN: I’m thinking.
JUDGE WATERS: Well, while you’re thinking, I’m going to ask the witness a few questions.
MR. VEGA: Objection. I believe you are overstepping a little here, your honor. We only have this witness’s word that it exists.
MR. LINCOLN: I believe I have to object as well, your honor. I’m walking a ledge just like Mr. Vega here, not knowing its contents.
JUDGE WATERS: Thank you for your united interest in pursuing the truth, gentlemen. Look at me, Ms. Bell. I need you to speak very generally. Did you bring up the journal because you think there is something in it pertinent to this trial?
MS. BELL: Most of it was running times, personal stuff. Sometimes she’d read to me from it. A fairy tale she made up. Or show me a little sketch she did. Or …
JUDGE WATERS: Hold on, Ms. Bell. Did Ms. Cartwright let you read her journal?
MS. BELL: Not exactly. When she was acting funny, I would, though. And I’d go through her purse or drawers to make sure she wasn’t hoarding Benadryl and stuff. That’s what best friends do.
JUDGE WATERS: Ms. Bell, I need you to answer my question with a yes or a no. Do you believe there is something in the journal that is pertinent to this trial?
MS. BELL: That’s hard to say but, you know, like, I wonder. I never read the whole thing. I skimmed. We used to do our journals together. It was one of our things.
JUDGE WATERS: Do you know where Tessie’s journal is?
MS. BELL: Yes.
JUDGE WATERS: And where is that?
MS. BELL: I gave it to her psychiatrist.
JUDGE WATERS: And why did you do that?
MS. BELL: Because it had a picture she drew when she was blind of a red-haired mermaid jumping off her grandfather’s roof. You know, killing herself.
Part III
* * *
TESSA AND LYDIA
Flowers are restful to look at. They have neither emotions nor conflicts.
—Lydia, age 15, reading the words of Sigmund Freud while lounging on her father’s boat, 1993
Tessa, present day
1:46 A.M.
Effie is standing on my front porch holding a lumpy brown package. Her flimsy robe is billowing out behind her. The neighborhood is dead asleep, except for us and a few streetlights. Before she knocked, I was wide awake trying to read The Goldfinch but thinking about Terrell.
Three days left.
“I forgot to give you this earlier.” Effie plops the package into my arms. “I saw some girl in a purple dress drop it off. Or maybe it was a handsome man in a suit. Anyway, I saw it on your front porch this afternoon. Or yesterday. Or maybe a week ago. I thought I should bring it in for you.”
“Thank you,” I say, distracted.
Tessie scrawled on the front. No stamp. No return address. It feels squishy, with something stiff in the middle.
Don’t open it. A Susan, warning me.
I cast my eyes past Effie, onto the dark lawn. I survey the lumps of bushes crouching between our property lines. The shadows dancing to a tuneless rhythm on the driveway.
Charlie is at a sleepover. Lucas is on an overnight date. Bill is at the Days Inn in Huntsville because Terrell begged him.
Effie is already floating back across the yard.
Lydia, age 16
43 HOURS AFTER THE ATTACK
This is not my best friend.
This is a thing, with a Bozo the Clown wig and a slack face and tubes running everywhere like an insane water park except the water is yellow and red.
I’m holding Tessie’s hand and squeezing it, timing every squeeze by my watch, because her Aunt Hilda told me to. About every minute, she said. We want her to know we’re here. I’m trying not to squeeze the part of her hand where the bandage is turning a little pink. I overheard a nurse say Tessie’s fingernails were ripped out, like she was trying to claw her way out of a grave. They had to pick yellow flower petals out of the gash in her head.
“It can take like eighteen months for toenails to grow back,” I say loudly, because Aunt Hilda said to keep talking because we don’t know what she can hear and because I’d already reassured Tessie that her fingernails will only take six months.
As soon as I heard Tessie was missing, I threw up. After twelve hours, I knew for sure something evil got her. I started writing what I’d say at the funeral. I wrote how I wouldn’t ever again feel her fingers braiding my hair or see her draw a lovely thing in about thirty seconds or watch her face go animal when she runs. People would have cried when they heard it.
I was going to quote Chaucer and Jesus and promise I’d devote my entire life to looking for her killer. I was going to stand at that pulpit in the Baptist church and throw out a warning to the killer in case he was listening because killers usually are. Instead of saying Peace be with you, people were going to flip around in their pews and give each other jumpy stares and wonder from now on what exactly was living next door to them. There’s a knife in every kitchen drawer, pillows on every bed, anti-freeze in every garage. Weapons everywhere, people, and we’re ready to blow. That would be my message.
Tessie thinks humans are basically good. I don’t. I’m dying to ask if she thinks evil is an aberration now, but I don’t want her to think I’m rubbing it in.
The monitor over the bed is screeching for the hundredth time, and I jump, but Tessie doesn’t move. I feel like my hand is squeezing a piece of mozzarella cheese. It hits me full blast for like the tenth time that she’ll never be the same. There’s a bandage on her face that’s hiding something. She might not be pretty anymore, or funny, or get all my literary references, or be the only person on earth who doesn’t think I’m a total ghoul. Even my dad calls me Morticia sometimes.
The beeping won’t stop. I punch the call button again. A nurse swings open the door, asking me if an adult is coming back in soon. Like I’m a problem.
I don’t want to be dispatched to the waiting room again. There are a million people in there. And Tessie’s track coach was driving me crazy. Repeating how lucky it is that the calvary got to Tessie in time. Calvary is where Jesus died on the cross, you moron. I tell the story to Tessie again, even though I already did a few minutes ago.
Tessie’s eyelids flutter. Except her Aunt Hilda warned me her eyes do that regularly. It doesn’t mean she’s waking up.
I picked out Tessie in second grade, the instant I sat down at the desk next to hers.
I squeeze her hand. “It’s OK to come back. I won’t let him get you.”
Tessa, present day
1:51 A.M.
I close the door. Finger in the security code.
Turn around and almost stop breathing.
Merry’s face is pressed into the mirror’s reflection on the wall.
She’s trapped on the other side of the glass, just like the night she pressed her face against the car window in the drugstore parking lot. How much effort it must have taken for her to throw herself up from the backseat, half-dead, half-drugged, gagged with a blue scarf, one last-ditch effort to hope that someone like me would happen along to rescue her. Of all the Susans in my head, Merry’s the least needy, the least accusing. The most guilty.
It’s OK, I say softly, walking toward her. It is not your fault. I’m the one who’s sorry. I should have saved you.
By the time I press my palm flat against the glass, Merry’s already gone, replaced by a pale woman with messy red hair, green eyes, and a gold squiggly charm in the hollow of her throat. My breath fogs the mirror, and I disappear, too.
Merry has shown up twice before. She appeared in the doctor’s office window when I was seventeen, five days after I got my sight back. Four years ago, she sang “I’ll Fly Away” in the back row of the church choir at my father’s funeral.
I walk over to the kitchen drawer, pull out a knife, and slice it across the package.
The Susans, a rising hum in my head.
Lydia, age 16
6 MONTHS BEFORE THE TRIAL
I’m pounding on the door and yelling Tessie’s name.
She’s locked me out. I’m stuck in her stupid pink fairy tale bedroom that was fine when we were ten. I woke up and she wasn’t in bed and now I can’t get the door to the terrace open. I told her I didn’t want her out there alone tonight because she’s blind and it’s dangerous and I’ve been left in charge. But, really, it’s because I think she might jump off her grandfather’s roof.
Today was another Sad Day. She’s had twenty-six in a row. I mark a smiley face on my calendar every day she smiles once. No one else is marking smiley faces on a calendar and yet if Tessie kills herself tonight, it will be the fault of Lydia Frances Bell.
Lydia was never a good influence. Lydia’s morbid. Lydia might have given Tessie a little push.
I put my ear on the door. Still alive. She’s playing something dirge-y on her flute. It takes a lot of breath to blow a flute. I wouldn’t want to stand too close and get a whiff. She hasn’t brushed her teeth for six days. No one but me is counting that number, either. One life lesson of the Tessie thing is that it’s harder to love people when they smell. Of course, there are a lot of good parts, too. It’s cool to be called her fairy tale friend by People magazine. And I feel a secret, tickly thrill all the time now, the same as when I’m staring into the ocean and thinking about how deep and black it goes, and what lurks on the bottom. I like walking around inside a terrible novel, living it, getting up every day to write a new page, even if people always see Tessie as the main character.
The door is budging a little, so I bang my hip into it a little harder. It was her grandparents’ stupid idea, not mine, to bring her to their castle for the weekend. Of course, they crashed at 9:30 and are half-deaf.
Surely she wouldn’t jump because of that Frida Kahlo remark I made at dinner. Her grandmother had given me a dirty look. I mean, it was her grandfather who brought it up.
He was telling Tessie about how Frida Kahlo had painted in bed after the terrible bus accident when she was eighteen that left her frozen in a body cast. Frida’s mother made this special easel for her bed. So Tessie’s grandfather asked her if she’d like him to make something like it for her. He was trying to inspire her, but it seems to me the lesson there is that a random bus accident screwed up Frida Kahlo pretty much for life, just like Tessie’s going to be. And all I said was that it was a good thing Kahlo killed herself because she was literally painting herself to death. I thought it was funny. Like, how many Frida Kahlo faces can the world take?
The door suddenly gives way, and I stumble onto the terrace. She’s sitting on the ledge with her back to me, wearing her grandfather’s extra-large white Hanes T-shirt, looking like Casper the Friendly Ghost. She forgot her nightgown on our little overnight trip, so she borrowed the shirt out of her grandfather’s drawer.
There are much better ways to kill yourself, I am thinking. And I wouldn’t wear that.
Maybe I should let her jump. It just pops in my head.
If she did, she’d probably just end up in a wheelchair because she’s just that lucky. Or unlucky. It’s such a freaky line. All this hard work to bring her back to life when I’m pretty sure she wishes she’d gone to sleep in that grave and never woken up.
I’m really, really pissed off tonight. More than usual. I’m crying. I’m not sure how long I can keep this up. All those stories in the newspaper, and yet the ugly, real story is never told.
She’s still playing the stupid flute. It makes me want to jump.
“Please get off the ledge,” I choke out. “Please.”
Tessa, present day
1:54 A.M.
I reach into the package and tug out a plastic bag.
A shirt is inside.
Crusted with blood.
I recognize it.
Lydia, age 17
10 WEEKS BEFORE THE TRIAL
I could draw twenty smiley faces in my calendar today.
My mom just brought us freezing cans of Coke with straws, and Chips Ahoy on a plate. She said it was good to hear us laughing so much again. I locked the door after that. It was Tessie’s idea to draw these fake pictures for her new doctor, a big shocker, because it’s more like the kind of thing I would come up with. Tessie was never a big liar but I’ve never had a problem if it’s a means to an end. She told me she’s not ready to let this new doctor peer into her soul. The soul thing was just her mimicking the doctor she got stuck with right before this one. That idiot told her she could cure her blindness if she jumped off the high dive and opened her eyes underwater. I’ve never seen Tessie’s dad so mad as when I told him. He might as well be suggesting she kill herself!
Tessie’s wearing these white nerdy pajamas with lace that her Aunt Hilda gave her. If she could see, she wouldn’t be caught dead in them. But she can’t, and it’s kind of sweet. They make her look all innocent, like the world isn’t ending.
“Do you have the black marker?” Tessie’s asking.
“Yes.” I perfect a grimace on a flower and hand it over.
For once, I’m not embarrassed to draw in the same room as Tessie. She had to go blind for that to happen. Everything she draws is always so perfect. I like this picture. I definitely draw better when Tessie’s no competition.
Still, I’m thinking this picture’s a little literal. A field of monster flowers. A girl cowering. It needs drama.
I add another girl right on top of the other one. Scratch in some red. Are the girls fighting to the death? Is one killing the other? Are the poor little flowers actually just worried and trying to make it stop?
Ha-ha. Let him wonder.
Tessa, present day
2:03 A.M.
My eyes are glued to the brown stain on the pink shirt. My shirt. She borrowed it from me a very long time ago and never returned it.
It’s a lot of blood.
Not for the first time, I’m numbly contemplating the idea of Lydia, murdered.
Lydia was fond of ketchup, I remind myself. Of corn syrup and red dye, manipulation and guessing games.
There’s something else in the package.
A college-ruled notebook. I recognize it, too. There used to be a whole box of them.
A date is scribbled on the front of this one. And a name.
The L curls up on the end, like a cat’s tail. I’d seen her write that L a hundred times.
My hand hovers between the notebook and my cell phone.
Deciding how to play.
Lydia, age 17
3 WEEKS BEFORE THE TRIAL
“I’m Lydia Frances Bell,” I introduce myself, wishing I hadn’t added the Frances. Or used the Lydia, which I never felt was my true name. I’m more of an Audriana or Violetta or Dahlia. I should have given him a fake name. Tessie would say it was stupid to introduce myself to him in the first place. She’d be mad. I told her I was just going to sit in her doctor’s class one time to observe and not even raise my hand. I’ve come twice since then. Tessie is driving me freaking crazy. Last night, she nearly tore my head off when I made myself a peanut butter sandwich and brought it to her room. I mean, get over it. It’s a sandwich.
Today is the first time I signed up for his office hours. I feel as fully prepared as I can be. I’ve researched everything I can about him. I’ve read his lecture series From Marilyn Monroe to Eva Braun: History’s Most Powerful Bimbos. I devoured the case study of that girl who survived being buried alive by her stepdad, which got everyone all into him being Tessie’s therapist when his name appeared on the list of candidates. He’s been a visiting professor at three Ivy League schools. He never teaches anything with 101 in the title. I couldn’t find much personal, so that was a bummer, and nothing about his missing daughter, but I’m sure he’s a private man and is totally devoted to his life’s work.
“I’m so glad you dropped by, Lydia,” he’s saying. “I’ve seen you sitting in the front row.” His smile is a draught of sunshine. He makes me think in Keats.
I lay down my copious notes on his last lecture, about the dark triad of personality, so he can see right away what a good student I am. He asks me whether I agree with Machiavelli that we are not helpless at the hands of bad luck. It was apparently a rhetorical question, because he’s still talking. I love the sound of his voice rolling over all those four-syllable words. I feel like he is having sex with my brain.
I have ten brilliant questions all set to impress him, and I haven’t asked a single one.
He has rolled his chair over from behind the desk. His knee is pressing against my leg in this delicious pleasure-pain thing. I can barely think with his knee on mine and yet he acts like it’s not even there.
I know I need to tell him I’m the Lydia who is Tessie’s best friend, but not when he’s looking at me like that.
Next time.
Tessa, present day
2:24 A.M.
I’m whipping through the pages. They’re brutal. Nicking me, stabbing me, kicking me in the gut. Blowing me a few kisses. Love and resentment, all mixed up.
A whole other Lydia going on when I was sixteen years old. A picture behind a picture. I flash back to that night on the terrace when I thought we dredged up everything. Every unspoken pebble of anger. Every benign tumor that had been growing since our friendship began—the tumors that live under the skin of every relationship until the unforgivable moment that changes their chemistry forever.
I was wrong. There was so much more.
I’m trying to reconcile the girl in this notebook with the one who gave me back my breath with a brown paper bag. Who hugged me all night when my mother died, and braided my hair when I was blind. Who read me breathless poetry. Who wrote notes in Edgar Allan Poe’s favorite cipher, with invisible ink made from lemon juice, and stuck them in a crack in my tree house for me to find the next day. So I could hold her words up to the sun.
