Black-Eyed Susans, page 8
Anybody watching would think I was up to no good. If it were two hours later, when bread crusts were flying through the air, parents would tug their children away from the strange lady walking around with the rusty shovel. They might even press the non-emergency police number tucked in their contacts that they’d never used before.
On days like these, I wondered if they’d be right. Whether just two or three brain cells were deciding if I was eligible to join the woman by the tracks who lived in a tent crafted of black garbage bags and old broom handles.
This is why I brought no one with me. Not Jo, who would make no mistakes as she sealed the evidence. Not Bill, who would be worried we should have brought Jo. I am sane, and I am not, and I don’t want anyone to know.
What was that Poe quote that Lydia liked so much? I became insane with long intervals of horrible sanity.
The ducks and the pond are well behind me now. I hear the rush of the ocean. Of course, it is not the ocean. It’s just what Lydia and I closed our eyes and pretended. The only nearby route to the ocean is the Trinity River, which threads by the park on the other side and flows on for hundreds of miles, all the way to Galveston. La Santisima Trinidad—The Most Holy Trinity. Christened by Alonso de León in 1690.
Sense of place, Effie says.
I begin to count the pillars. One, two, three, four. Five. The ocean is above me now. I keep striding, toward a red cow in a purple dunce hat. He’s new.
It takes a second to realize that he’s a unicorn, not a stupid cow. The mermaid who keeps him company a few feet away has red hair that flows like mine and Charlie’s. Her bright green tail floats in a sea of fish with upturned mouths that wouldn’t think of biting. Peace, love, understanding.
None of this hopeful art was here all those years ago, when Lydia laid out her blanket under pillar No. 5 of the Lancaster Bridge. Now childlike graffiti covers every single concrete pier of the bridge as far as I can see. The pillars used to be splotched with ugly green paint and strangled with the kind of weedy vines that seem to need nothing to live.
The rush and rumble of traffic overhead.
The knowledge of a secret underground world.
The thrilling fear that all that throbbing chaos could crash down on you at any second, but probably wouldn’t.
The worry about what might lurch out of the big thicket of woods nearby.
The same, the same, the same. The same.
I survey the parched dirt floor beneath the behemoth steel and concrete structure. Still unforgiving. Hard and bare. But he didn’t plant the black-eyed Susans under the bridge at pillar No. 5, where I used to meet up with Lydia after my runs on the twisty running trails. He planted them here—a few feet away, under a large cedar elm at the edge of the woods. They appeared at a time of year when black-eyed Susans flourish, so I couldn’t be sure. I just never came back after I found them. I was twenty-four, and Lydia and I had been estranged for seven years.
A slight rustle behind me. I jerk around. A man has emerged from behind the pillar. I grip the shovel, suddenly a weapon.
But he is not a man. He is tall and lanky, but no more than fourteen. Pale skin, slouchy jeans, faded Jack Johnson T-shirt. A black mini-backpack slung over his shoulder. There’s a phone with a desert camouflage case clipped at his waist and what I’m pretty sure is a metal detector in his right hand.
“Shouldn’t you be in school?” I blurt out.
“I’m home-schooled. What are you doing? You can’t take plants out of here. It’s still the park. You can only clip their leaves.”
“Shouldn’t you be home, then? Being schooled? I’m not sure your mother would like you along this side of the park.” My nerves, no longer on high alert.
“I’m on a scavenger hunt. It’s National Botany Celebration Day. Or something. My mom is over at the pond with my sister. Teaching her the wonders of duck vision. They see, like, four times farther than us or something.”
His mother is close by. A home-schooling mother who probably has used the non-emergency police number in her phone many, many times. I have no desire to attract her attention.
There is no evidence of gathered botany anywhere on his person. “I didn’t realize that botanists use metal detectors these days,” I say.
“Funny.” He surveys me while chewing a nail. “That’s a really old shovel.”
He isn’t going away.
“What are you doing?” he repeats.
“I’m looking for something that … somebody might have left for me when I was younger. I would never steal plants on National Botany Day.”
A mistake. Too friendly. Too truthful. The first light of curiosity in his eyes. He has pushed aside a brown tail of hair so I can see them. He is a nice-looking kid. Cute, even, if he adjusted the angle of his mouth a little more.
“Want me to help? Is there metal in it? A ring or something? I can run my wand. You wouldn’t believe the stuff I’ve found in this park.” He is already at my side, practically stepping on my feet, eager, the red light on his device blinking. Before I realize it, he is casually running the detector along my leg. Then the other one. Now he is roving up, toward my waist.
“Hey. Stop that.” I jump backward.
“Sorry. Just wanted to be sure you weren’t carrying. Knife, gun. You’d be surprised who I’ve met up with around here.”
“What’s your name?” I ask. My heart is beating hard, but I’m pretty sure his gadget did not roam high enough to disturb the metal device in my chest.
I’m beginning to wonder about the mother story. About the home-schooling.
“My name’s Carl,” he says lazily. “What’s yours?”
“Sue,” I lie.
He takes this brief exchange of names as a sign of collusion. With a professional air, he runs the detector over the area where there is the evidence of my feet trampling the weeds.
“Here?” he asks.
“About. I was going to dig in a two-foot area.” How do I get out of this? If I leave, he is sure to search on his own.
“Whatever you’re looking for … did an old boyfriend leave it?”
I shiver. “No. Not a boyfriend.”
“The alarm ain’t firing. There’s nothing here.” He sounds disappointed. “You want me to dig for you anyway?”
Great. I have become the highlight of National Botany Celebration Day.
“No. I need the exercise. But thank you.”
He leans against a tree, texting. I can only hope it is not about me. In a few minutes, he wanders off without saying goodbye.
A half-hour later, I have hacked through the ancient piping of tree roots and dug a square hole about half the size of a baby crib, and a foot deep.
Carl is right.
There’s nothing here.
I can’t help but wonder whether he is watching. Not Carl. My monster.
On my knees, I rush to push the crumbly black earth back in place. It now looks like an animal’s grave.
My phone chirps, a silly sound, but my heart lurches anyway.
A text. Charlie.
Sorry I was grouchy Mommy
Charlie has passed her biology test.
I tuck the phone into my pocket and step into the deep shadows under the bridge. I think of the two girls who listened to the drone of traffic and imagined an ocean. Girls who had nothing more important to do than argue whether Jurassic Park could really happen and extol the virtues of Sonic drive-ins because they have hands-down the best ice for chewing. All of that, of course, before one of them ended up in a hole and the other one tried to pull her out.
Time to move on.
When I reach the pond, I see a mother kneeling beside a small child with a pink beret. The girl is pointing at a pair of ducks beak to beak in a staring contest.
Her delighted laugh trickles across the pond, rippling the water as it pulls more ducks her way. I see an old crazy quilt spread out behind her. A blue Igloo cooler.
What I don’t see is Carl.
Tessie, 1995
He’s jabbering.
Blah, blah. Jabber, jabber.
Apparently, it isn’t that unusual to experience something paranormal after an event.
Other people talk to the dead, too. No big deal. He doesn’t say it out loud, but I’m a cliché.
“The paranormal experience can happen during the event,” he is saying. “Or afterward.” The event. Like it is a royal wedding or the UT–OU football game. “The victims who survive sometimes believe that a person who died in the event is still speaking to them.” If he says event one more time, I am going to scream. The only thing holding me back is Oscar. He is sleeping, and I don’t want to freak him out.
“A patient of mine watched her best friend die in a tubing accident. It was especially traumatic because she never saw her surface the water. They didn’t find her body. She was convinced her friend was controlling things in her life from heaven. Ordinary things. Like whether it would rain on her. People in circumstances similar to yours suddenly see ghosts in broad daylight. Predict the future. They believe in omens, so much so that some of them can’t leave their houses.”
Circumstances similar to mine? Is he saying that with a straight face? Surely, he is smirking. And, surely, it isn’t a good idea right now to hold my head underwater with tangled fishing lines and human-eating tree stumps and silky, streaming strands of another girl’s hair. Lydia’s dad always warns us about what lies beneath the murky surface of the lake. Makes us wear scratchy nylon lifejackets in 103-degree heat no matter how much we sweat and whine.
“That’s crazy,” I say. “The rain thing. I’m not crazy. It happened. I mean I know it happened. She spoke to me.”
I wait for him to say it. I believe you think it happened, Tessie. Emphasis on believe. Emphasis on think.
He doesn’t say it. “Did you think she was alive or dead when she spoke to you?”
“Alive. Dead. I don’t know.” I hesitate, deciding how far to go. “I remember her eyes as really blue, but the paper said they were brown. But then, in my dreams they sometimes change colors.”
“Do you dream often?”
“A little.” Not going there.
“Tell me exactly what Meredith said to you.”
“Merry. Her mother calls her Merry.”
“OK, Merry, then. What’s the first thing Merry said to you in the grave?”
“She said she was hungry.” My mouth suddenly tastes like stale peanuts. I run my tongue over my teeth, trying not to gag.
“Did you give her something to eat?”
“That isn’t important. I don’t remember.”
Oh my God, it’s like I brushed my teeth with peanut butter. I feel like throwing up. I picture the space around me. If I throw up sideways, I spray the leather couch. Head down, it hits Oscar. Straight across, no holds barred, the doctor gets it.
“Merry was upset that her mother would be worried about her. So she told me her mother’s name. Dawna. With an a and a w. I remember, like, being frantic about getting to Merry’s mother. I wanted more than anything to climb out of there so I could tell her mom that she was safe. But I couldn’t move. My head, legs, arms. It was like a truck was crushing my chest.”
I didn’t know whether Merry was alive, and I was dead.
“The thing is, I know how to spell her mother’s name.” I’m insistent. “D-a-w-n-a, not D-o-n-n-a. So it must have happened. Otherwise, how would I know?”
“I have to ask you this, Tessie. You mentioned the paper. Has someone been reading you the newspaper reports?”
I don’t answer. It would get Lydia in a lot of trouble with Dad. With the lawyers, too, probably, who want me to testify “untainted” by media chatter. I overheard one of the assistants say, “If we have to, we can make this blind thing work in our favor.”
I don’t want anyone to take Lydia away.
“It is possible that you transposed time,” the doctor says. “That you know the detail of her mother’s name, how it was spelled, but found it out afterward.”
“Is that common, too?” Sarcastic.
“Not uncommon.”
He’s checking off all the little crazy boxes, and I’m making a hundred.
The toe of my boot is furiously knocking against the table leg. My foot slips and accidentally kicks Oscar, who lets out a cry. I think that nothing in the past month has felt as awful as this tiny hurt sound from Oscar. I lean down and bury my face in his fur. So sorry, so sorry. Oscar immediately slaps his tongue on my arm, the first thing he can reach.
“My Very Energetic Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas.” I murmur this into Oscar’s warm body again and again, calming Oscar. Calming myself.
“Tessie.” Concern. Not smirking now. He thinks he’s pushed me too far. I titter, and it sounds loony. It’s weird, because I really feel pretty good today. I just feel bad about kicking Oscar.
I raise my head, and Oscar resettles himself across my feet. His busy tail whacks like a broom against my leg. He’s fine. We’re fine.
“It’s a mnemonic device,” I say. “For remembering the planetary order.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars … My Very Energetic Mother …”
“I get that. But what does it have to do with Merry?” He’s sounding really worried.
“Merry thought we should come up with a code to help me remember the names of the mothers of the other Susans. So I could find them later. Tell them that their girls were OK, too.”
“And it had something to do … with the planets?”
“No,” I say impatiently. “I was repeating the planet thing in the grave, trying to, you know, stay sane. Not black out. Everything was kind of spinning. I could see the stars and stuff.” The moon, a tiny, thin smile. Don’t give up. “Anyway, it made Merry think of the idea for a mnemonic device so I wouldn’t forget the names of the other mothers. So I wouldn’t forget. N-U-S, a letter for each mother. Nasty Used Snot. Or something. I remember snot was part of it. But I flipped the letters around and made a real word. SUN.”
I’ve shocked him into silence again.
“And the other mothers’ names? What are they?”
“I don’t remember. Yet.” It pains me to say this out loud. “Just the three letters. Just SUN. But I’m working on it.” Determined. I run through names every night in bed. The U’s are the hardest. Ursula? Uni? I will not let Merry down. I will find the mother of every single Susan.
The doctor is twisting his mind around this.
I’m not such a cliché anymore.
“There were the bones of two other girls in the grave, not three,” he says finally, as if logic has anything to do with this.
Tessa, present day
The three of us barely fit in the famous Dr. Joanna Seger’s office. It isn’t at all what I expect for a rock star scientist. The large window showcases a lovely view of the Fort Worth skyline, but Jo faces the door, welcoming the living. Her desk, a modern black chunk that almost swallows the whole space, is littered with forensic journals and paper. It reminds me of Angie’s desktop in the church basement. The kind of desktop where passion is screwing organization and nobody’s making the bed.
The signature piece rising out of the chaos: a Goliath computer running $100,000 worth of software. The HD screen displays a roller coaster of lime green and black bar codes. It’s the rare spot of color except for the grinning Mexican death masks and the skeleton bride leering off a shelf like a grisly Barbie. The Mexicans, bless them, have always had a less squeamish, more realistic view of death. I’m guessing Jo can relate.
I’m afraid to peer too closely at what looks like a heart suspended in a glass box, because I’m pretty sure it is a heart suspended in a glass box. Preserved, somehow, with a putty hue. Its dull sheen reminds me of my trip to Dallas with Charlie to tour the Body Worlds exhibit, where dead humans are plasticized in polymer so we can gawk at our complex inner beauty. Charlie fought nightmares for a week after learning that this multi-million-dollar road show might be using corpses of prisoners executed in China.
I’m certain, certain, certain I do not want to know where this heart came from, either.
Lots of commendation plaques on the wall. Is that President Bush’s signature?
Bill is scrolling through the email on his phone, ignoring me. He has pushed his chair so far back to accommodate his legs that he is almost in the doorway. My own knees are crammed against the desk, probably turning pink under my cotton skirt.
This is Jo’s show, and we are waiting.
She is notched into her little cranny on the other side of the desk with her ear to the phone. She had the chance to say, “Sit, please,” before it buzzed. “Uh-huh,” she is saying now, after several minutes of listening. “Great. Let me know when you’ve finished up.”
“Very good news,” Jo announces as she replaces the receiver. “We have successfully extracted mitochondrial DNA from the bones of two of the girls. The femurs. We didn’t have luck with the skull. We’re going to have to try again, probably with a femur this time, although it was seriously degraded. We’ll keep going at it. We won’t give up. We’ll find the right bone.” She hesitates. “We’ve also decided we’re going to pull DNA from some other bones. Just to be sure there weren’t additional mistakes.”
I can’t think about this. More girls. The Susan cacophony in my head is loud enough.
I can, however, appreciate Jo’s tenacity. My iPad has been very busy since I witnessed the bone cutting. This high-tech forensic lab might be a well-kept secret in Fort Worth, but not to crime fighters around the world. The building protrudes off Camp Bowie like a silver ship hull, with a cache of grim treasure: baby teeth and skulls and hip bones and jawbones that have traveled across state lines and oceans hoping for a last shot at being identified. This lab gets results when no one else does.
