Black-Eyed Susans, page 4
“Do you ever remember seeing our client—Terrell Goodwin—before the day you testified?”
“No. Not to my knowledge.”
“No is a nice simple answer,” he says. “If that’s the truth.”
“It is. The truth.”
“Do you remember a single thing that happened in those hours you were missing?”
“No.”
“The last thing you remember is buying … tampons … at Walgreens?”
“And a Snickers bar. Yes.” The wrapper was found in the grave.
“You’ve heard your 911 call that night but do not recall making it?”
“Right. Yes.”
“Tessa, I have to ask again. Is there any way you will change your mind and undergo light hypnosis? See if there’s anything you can remember from those lost hours? Or examine the drawings you gave me with an expert? If we jog something, anything, loose it might help us get a new hearing in front of the judge.”
“Absolutely no to hypnosis.” I say it quietly. “I’ve read enough about it to know that I can be directed to false memories. But examining my drawings from therapy? Yes. I think so. I have no idea whether it will help.”
“Great. Great. I have someone in mind. Someone who has worked with me in the past. I think you’ll like her.” I almost laugh. If he only knew how many times I’d heard that.
He lays his pen at a perfect 90-degree angle. Twirls it. Stops it. Twirls it. William knows how to use a big, fat pause. I’m beginning to see that he might be a very clever boy in court.
“There’s a reason you’re sitting here, Tessa. Something you aren’t saying. I really need to know what it is. Because based on those answers, you might still think Terrell Darcy Goodwin is guilty as hell.”
I couldn’t sleep last night wondering exactly how I’d answer this question. “I feel like I hurt … Terrell … on the stand.” Slow, I tell myself. “That I was manipulated by a lot of people. For years. Angie eventually satisfied me that there is no convincing physical evidence against him. And I showed you the black-eyed Susans. Under my window.” Still keeping tabs.
“Yes.” His lips have stretched into a tight line. “But a judge will write off those flowers to your imagination, or just a random lunatic. He might infer that you did it yourself. Are you prepared for that?”
“Is that what you think? That I’m making it up?”
His gaze is direct, unbothered. Irritating as hell. Maybe William doesn’t deserve to know all of it. He certainly isn’t asking the right question.
I’m beginning to think he planned for me to stumble into this room all along. Slam me back into the past. Poke something sharp into my uncooperative brain.
“My drawings aren’t your magic bullet,” I say abruptly. “Don’t pin your hopes on an angry girl with a paintbrush.”
Tessie, 1995
Thursday. Only two days after our last meeting.
The doctor cut the Tuesday session short by twenty minutes, shortly after my outburst. He called twenty-four hours later to reschedule. I don’t know whether he was angry about me bringing up his daughter, or just unprepared to hear it. If I’ve learned anything about psychiatrists in the last year, it’s that they don’t like surprises from the guests. They want to be the one to scatter the path of stale bread crumbs, even if it leads into a dense forest where you can’t see at all.
“Good morning, Tessa.” Formal. “You caught me off guard the other day. To be honest, I wasn’t sure how to handle it. For you, or me.”
“I almost didn’t come back today. Or ever.” Not really true. For the first time in months, I feel like I own a small shred of power. I blow the bangs out of my eyes. Lydia took me to the mall for a new haircut yesterday. Cut, cut, cut, I insisted. I could almost hear my hair fall, soft and sad, to the floor. I wanted to change myself. Look more like a boy. My best friend appraised me critically when it was over. Informed me that I achieved the opposite. Short hair made me prettier, she said. Emphasized my small straight nose that I should thank the Lord Jesus for every day. Drew my eyes out like flying saucers in a big Texas sky. Lydia was practicing her similes for the SAT. She’d announced the very first time we linked arms in second grade that she was going to Princeton. I thought Princeton was a small town filled with eligible princes.
I think the doctor is pacing. Traveling the room. Oscar is not alerting me. He’s sleepy, maybe because he got his shots an hour ago. My latest worry is that Daddy considers Oscar a first step to a Seeing Eye dog, and faithful, untrained Oscar will be sent away.
“I’m not surprised you feel that way.” His voice is behind me. “I should have been straight from the beginning. About my daughter. Even though she has nothing to do with why I took your case.” His second lie. “It was a very long time ago.”
It bothers me, his voice bouncing at me from different places, a game of dodge ball in the dark.
I count two seconds before his chair creaks gently. Not a heavy man, not a skinny one. “Did your father tell you about my daughter?”
“No.”
“Did you … overhear something, then?” His question is almost timid. Like something an insecure normal person would ask. But this is pretty uncharted territory for him, I guess.
“I overhear things all the time,” I evade. “I guess my other senses are super-enlightened now.” This last part is not actually true at all. All my senses have gone haywire. Granny’s recipe for fried green beans with bacon dressing tastes like soggy cigarettes; my sweet little brother’s voice is like Aunt Hilda’s fake red fingernails scraping glass. I suddenly cry along to country music, which I always secretly thought was for dumb people.
I’m not telling this doctor any of that yet. Let him think I’m suddenly hyperaware. I’m not about to rat out Lydia, who has read me every word of every story on Terrell Darcy Goodwin and the Black-Eyed Susan investigation that she can get her hands on. Researched every shrink who has tried to tunnel into my brain.
All I know is that when I am lying on Lydia’s pink down comforter, with Alanis Morissette moaning, and my best friend reading animatedly from her stack of library printouts … those are the minutes and hours that I feel the safest. Lydia is the only one who still treats me exactly the same.
She’s relying on some innate seventeen-year-old certainty that I might die if I live in a silent cocoon, curled up and fragile. That handling me with care is not going to make me better.
For some reason, I think this doctor might be the second person to understand. He lost a daughter. He’s got to be a close personal friend with pain. I hold out hope for that.
Tessa, present day
I snap off one more picture with my iPhone. Three images in all. I should have done it five days ago, before their stems bowed and their eyes stared dejectedly at the ground.
I’ve told only Angie the whole story, I think. Now she’s dead.
I am not fooled by the fainting Susans under my windowsill. I know that each of the thirty-four eyes hoards enough seeds to carpet my whole yard, come spring. I slide on my gardening gloves and pick up the can of herbicide I’ve retrieved from the garage. I wonder whether he likes to watch this part of the process. I’ve learned that poison is the best method. Not since I was seventeen have I torn up the Susans by their roots.
A breeze flutters, scattering the spray. I taste it, bitter and metallic.
If I don’t hurry, I’m going to be late to pick up Charlie. I smother on one last cancerous coat. I strip off my gloves, leave them with the spray can, run to grab the keys off the kitchen counter, hop in the Jeep, and drive the ten minutes to the freshman gym. Home of the Fighting Colts. Chattering, texting girls stream onto the sidewalk, in ponytails and obscenely tight mandatory red gym shorts that mothers should officially complain about but don’t.
The backseat door pops open, startling me, like it does every time. “Hi, Mom.” Charlie tosses in a blue Nike duffle that always holds smelly surprises and a backpack of books that lands like a chunk of concrete. She jumps in and slams the door.
Smooth, angelic face. Sexy legs. Tight muscles not mature enough to fight back. Innocent, and not. I don’t want to be aware of these things, but I’ve trained myself to see her as he might.
“My laptop sucks,” she says.
“How was school? Practice?”
“I’m starved. Really, Mom. I couldn’t print my homework last night. I had to use your computer.”
This beautiful girl, the love of my life, the one I missed all day long, is already firing up my nerves.
“McDonald’s?” I ask.
“Surrrrre.”
I’ve stopped feeling guilty about the after-practice drive-through runs. It doesn’t keep my daughter from devouring a healthy full-course dinner two hours later. Charlie eats at least four times a day and remains a tall, slender rail. She has my old runner’s appetite and red hair and her father’s mood-changing eyes. Purplish is happy; gray is tired. Black is thoroughly pissed off.
Not for the first time, I wish that Charlie’s father weren’t thousands of miles away on an Army base in Afghanistan. I wish he weren’t just a serious fling fifteen years ago that went awry a month before I realized I was pregnant. Not that Charlie seems to care a whit that we never married. Lt. Col. Lucas Cox sends money like clockwork and stays in constant touch. I think a Skype session with Charlie is on tap for tonight.
“We will talk about the computer later, OK?”
No answer. She’s texting, I’m sure. I pull out from the curb and decide to let her decompress from the eight fluorescent-lighted hours she has spent constructing triangular prisms and deconstructing Charlotte Brontë. After Charlie abandoned Jane Eyre on the couch last night for Facebook, I noticed that the heroine gazing off the cover was sporting a new mustache and devil horns. She’s so whiny, Charlie whined this morning, while stuffing her mouth with bacon.
A few minutes later, we roll up to the drive-through.
“What do you want?” I ask her.
“Uhhhh.”
“Charlie, stop with the phone. You need to order.”
“OK.” Cheerful. “I would like a Big Mac, and a MacBook Pro.”
“Very funny.”
Truth is, I love this about her—the cocky sense of humor and confidence, her ability to make me laugh out loud when I don’t want to. I wait until I think Charlie is about halfway through her Big Mac to start The Conversation. In the Jeep, just us, there is always more of a chance my words will end up in her brain.
“I’ve changed my mind and decided to get involved in the Terrell Goodwin execution,” I say. “I’ve spoken with the new attorney on the case. A famous forensic scientist is going to reexamine the evidence. She swabbed my DNA this week.”
A short silence. “That’s good, Mom. You need to be absolutely sure. You’ve been worrying about this a lot lately. People are getting released on DNA stuff all the time now. Our science teacher told us that Dallas has freed more innocent people from Death Row than almost every other state. People just think we kill everybody.” I hear her crumple up the hamburger wrapper.
“Don’t toss that on the floor,” I say automatically. To myself, I think: Is that because we have more innocent people on Death Row?
“And Angie,” Charlie adds. “She was nice. She was, like, totally convinced. And she said that none of it was your fault.”
“I’ll be in the news again.” Meaning, Charlie won’t be immune.
“I’ve been through it before. My friends will take care of me. I got this, Mom.”
The naivete of it almost makes me want to cry. At the same time, it is hard to believe that Charlie is three years younger than I was when I testified. She seems so much more prepared.
I pull into our driveway and switch off the ignition. Charlie is rustling to get her stuff, but I don’t turn around. “Never, ever get in a car with someone you don’t know. Never walk alone. Don’t talk to reporters.” My voice sounds sharper than I’d like in the tiny, closed-up space. “If I’m not home, turn the security system on as soon as you close the door.”
It’s ridiculous to deliver these worn-out instructions for the thousandth time, but I’d become too complacent. I have vowed ever since Angie’s wake to know where Charlie is every single second. A few days ago, I turned down a freelance design project in Los Angeles to build a staircase out of old cars and recycled glass. It would have carried our finances for the next two years.
“Mom.” She packs as much teen-age patronization in those three letters as will fit. “I got this.”
Before I can respond, she’s tumbling out of the car, loaded up like a soldier entering battle, jogging to the front door with her house key in hand. She’s in the house in seconds. Prepared, like I taught her. Innocent, and not.
The question that neither of us ever asks out loud: But if not him, then who?
I follow her slowly, fiddling with my phone. I almost trip over the duffle she dumped in the foyer, think about calling out to her, stop myself. I head to the small desk in the living room where my laptop sits, call up the email I just sent to my own address, download, hit print. Listening to it regurgitate a couple of feet away, I think Charlie’s right—our house needs a more efficient grasp on technology.
The printer spits out three grainy pictures of wilting flowers. Charlie’s door is already closed when I pass by.
A few seconds later, I am on my tiptoes, pulling from the top shelf of my bedroom closet the shoebox boldly marked, Tax Documents.
The killer has planted black-eyed Susans for me six times. It didn’t matter where I was living. He likes to keep me guessing. I’m sure about this now.
He waited so long between plantings sometimes that, before Angie, I was able to convince myself on most days that the right killer sat in jail. That the first black-eyed Susans were the work of a random stalker, and the other times the whims of the wind.
This box, made for ASICS running shoes, size 7, marked Tax Documents, contains the photographs I snapped every time anyway. Just in case.
I set the box on the bed and lift the lid. Right on top, the one taken with my granddaddy’s old Polaroid Instant camera.
That first time, right after the trial, I had thought either I was crazy or that black-eyed Susans had suddenly sprung up in October under the live oak in our back yard because of a bizarre weather pattern. Except the ground looked disturbed. I dug up the wildflowers by myself a little frantically with an old kitchen spoon.
I didn’t want to tell anybody because life in my house was returning to some semblance of normal. I was done with therapy. Terrell Darcy Goodwin sat in jail. My dad was dating for the first time.
The spoon struck another surprise in the dirt that day—something hard, orange, and plastic. An old prescription bottle. The label ripped off. Childproof cap.
Charlie has turned up her music. It strains through the wall, but can’t drown out the words on a scrap of paper curled up in a little orange bottle.
Oh Susan, Susan, lovely dear
My vows shall ever true remain
Let me kiss off that falling tear
I never want to hurt you again
But if you tell, I will make
Lydia
A Susan, too
Tessie, 1995
After he leaves the office, my fingers brush over three stubby charcoal crayons; the cool metal coil binding a drawing pad; a Dixie cup of water; a few brushes, a narrow paint box with a squeaky hinge. The doctor has repeated the order of the paint colors four times, left to right. Black, blue, red, green, yellow, white.
As if what colors I choose will make a significant difference. I am already thinking of swirling the colors to make purple and gray, orange and aqua. The colors of bruises, and sunsets.
This is not the first time I have drawn blind. Right after Mom died, Granddaddy was constantly trying to distract me from grief.
We sat at his old cedar picnic table. He punched a No. 2 pencil through the center of a paper plate, a de facto umbrella, so that I could grasp the pencil but not watch my hand draw. “Making pictures in your head is primal,” he said. “You don’t need your eyes to do it. Start with the edges.”
I remember the faint blue flower border that etched the paper plate, that my fingers were sticky with sweat and chocolate, but not what I drew that day.
“Memories aren’t like compost,” the doctor had said, as he guided me over to his desk. “They don’t decay.”
I knew exactly what he wanted out of this little exercise. The priority was not to cure my blindness. He wanted to know why my ankle shattered into pieces, what implement etched the pink half-moon that hung under my eye. He wanted me to draw a face.
He didn’t say any of this, but I knew.
“There’s infinite storage space up here.” He tapped my head. “You simply have to dig into every box.”
One more self-help bite from him before he shut the door, and I would have screamed.
I can hear my father outside the door, droning blurry words, like a dull pencil. Oscar has settled into the cave under the desk, his head resting on my cast. Pressure, but nice pressure, like my mother’s hand on my back. The doctor’s voice floats through the door. They are talking about box scores, like the world is running along just fine.
My head is blank when the charcoal begins to rub insistently against the paper.
The click of the door opening startles me, and I jump, and Oscar jumps, and my pad slides and clunks to the floor. I have no idea how much time has passed, which is new, because ever since I went blind, I can guess the time of day within five minutes. Lydia attributes it to a primitive internal clock, like the one that reminds hibernating animals to wake up in the black isolation of their caves and venture back into the world.
I smell him, the same Tommy cologne that Bobby always liberally sprays on himself at Dillard’s. My doctor wears Tommy Hilfiger, sounds like Tommy Lee Jones. Everything Tommy.
“Just checking to see how it’s going,” he says.
