Only Flesh and Bones (21 page)

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Authors: Sarah Andrews

BOOK: Only Flesh and Bones
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I laughed in spite of myself.
Tina continued. “We’re so upset about growing old in a society that has no use for old women that we project hatred and distrust on the young. That would piss anyone off.”
“But Miriam didn’t feel that way about Cecelia. At least I don’t think she did. Hell, she was out having an affair … .” My words trailed off as I tried to fit this piece into the puzzle Miriam had left behind.
Tina said, “Miriam didn’t have to feel that way, but if she didn’t actively campaign to give her daughter another outlook, the negative message was right there waiting to take over. I’ll bet Cecelia has the normal stack of videos in her home collection. Look at the story of Snow White: the jealous old queen who casts her out. What does that tell us? And her name’s Snow White, for heaven’s sake.”
“Yeah, not Horny Young Babe Looking for Experience,” I said.
Tina grinned. “Right, so what does Snow White do? She goes to live with seven little midgets with personality flaws, cleaning up after them without even being asked. In my business, we call that codependency. What kind of self-esteem or fulfillment do we see there? Then the queen tracks her down and really gets nasty. She appears as this ugly old hag and talks her into eating an apple, just so we don’t go around thinking old can really be beautiful, and with that apple motif, we’re back to the Bible, for heaven’s sake, blaming women for original sin.”
“Knowledge is evil,” I said, wondering again what Miriam had learned in her flight from the proscribed narrow path of decency.
Tina was warming to her story. “Okay, so the queen shows up as the hag and KO’s Snow White, but hang on to your hat: the only thing that will save her is love’s first kiss. Get the image? She needs a
man
to save her, but she’s got to be a cherry, or she’s got to stay in the glass coffin! God help her she should have experimented with anyone else!”
“But voilà, here comes the handsome prince,” I said.
Tina opened her hands skyward. “And that’s the end of
the story, girls! He gives her a little peck, loads her on his horse, and they’re out of there. You remember the last words on the screen in the Disney version?”
“Wasn’t it, ‘And they lived happily ever after’?”
“In Gothic script, no less!”
“Like that’s the end of a woman’s story,” I said, thinking wryly of my lonely bed in a rented room. I tried to put Jim Erikson into that picture, but my overheated brain handed me the image of Chandler Jennings instead, smiling at me, turning the bed’s cold sheets into warm, soft sheepskin. Shaking the image from my mind, I tried to preoccupy myself with wondering just how long Cecelia was going to hide in that bathroom.
Laughing, Tina was saying, “So here’s the message, girls: keep house for emotionally stunted slobs and someday a prince will come save us!”
“Save us from what?” I asked.
Tina shrugged. “From having to grow up, perhaps?”
A
S my laboring truck hauled us up the grade toward the point where Interstate 70 slices into the mountain front, I asked Cecelia what she thought of Tina Schwartz.
In reply, she mumbled something acidic, like “Psychologists suck.”
“You seemed pretty amenable to making a second appointment with her.”
“Do I get a choice?”
“Yes, damn it!”
Cecelia shot a hurt look at me, and I realized that I had in fact shouted at her. Why, because she wasn’t thrilled with my attempts at passing her off to someone else?
Maybe it doesn’t suit her to get well
, I thought.
Then I’d be gone again
. “I’m sorry,” I said. “All you need is one more person telling you to pull yourself together, and then running off somewhere. Would it help if I promised to stay in better touch?”
Cecelia’s eyes slid briefly toward me, then back to the road in front of us. Her posture was caved in, a slack monument to noncommunication.
I tried to make my voice soft and solicitous. “You know, it’s a long, hard life you got ahead of you.”
The truck ground steadily up the interstate. The landscape rolled by in a chaotic flow as we climbed through the towering earth-guts road cuts of Mount Vernon Canyon, a jumble of Precambrian migmatites that looked like God had stepped on her toothpaste tube with the cap off. So wild and beautiful were these squiggles of mashed earth history that
they always caught my eye, but Cecelia looked neither left nor right.
“I’ve been reading your mother’s journals,” I said. “She seemed a complicated woman. Had a temper, huh? I’ll bet it felt like shit when she took off on you like that,” I added, kind of wallowing around in my own muddle of guilt and imperfect intentions. “I’ll bet—”
Cecelia wheeled on me. “Do me a favor,” she spat, her eyes wide with fear and rage. “Get out of my life!”
“Listen, Celie, maybe your memory’s not really lost. Like, maybe it’s just sitting there by the road behind you, like you kind of left it there because it was too heavy to carry.”
“Get out! Get out! GET OUT!” Cecelia screamed, so loudly that my ears began to ring. Her face went purple, a writhing mass of pain and anger.
I forced myself to look at the road, to remember that I was guiding a ton of metal up a hard surface at high speed.
Okay, then, I’ll get out, I told myself. I don’t need this. Clearly, I am not welcome. Those are fighting words, and I see no tears coming out of those eyes. I will have a short chat with her father, in which I will tell him that I think we have a therapist who might get somewhere with the problem—his guess is as good as mine.
And then what? Thanks very much, I’ll be sending a final accounting sometime next week, and how about those job contacts?
Well, not exactly … . I’d perhaps add that I intend to take another spin up into Wyoming to cross my T’s and dot my I’s … .
But it didn’t go quite that way.
I parked the truck in Menken’s driveway and followed Cecelia into the Menkens’ big, impersonal house, chasing along behind her to make certain she did not slam the door between us, forcing me to wait on the front doorstep until her father came home and relieved me of the duty of “watching” her.
Cecelia careened into the kitchen and made for the pantry
and a very large bag of jalapeno potato chips. She was obviously not going to offer me some, so I took my own turn in the pantry, reemerging with a bag of taco chips. I chewed hard, trying. Having something to chew would help me to calm down, to remember that I cared about this girl.
The better to ignore my presence, Cecelia punched the message button on the answering machine. “Hi, Cecelia,” a recorded voice said unpleasantly, as if the name tasted foul in her mouth, “I need a ride to school tomorrow. You can pick me up at the usual time. Bye. Oh, this is Heather.” Heather, the blasé blonde from the steps of Cecelia’s school? Was she the “friend” Miriam named in her journal, the girl she overheard Cecelia talking to about Chandler?
“Bite me,” Cecelia screamed at the machine, her shoulders beginning to shake. She almost dropped her bag of chips.
The machine beeped and went on with a second message. “Hi, sweetheart, this is your dad. I’m on my way home, so please keep Em there with you until I get there. I need to speak with her. Thank you, darling, and see you soon.”
The machine gave a time trace for each call, and I calculated the time when we’d see J. C.’s Mercedes swing into the driveway. I didn’t have much time. I said, “Who’s this Heather creature, and why’s she bugging you for rides to school if she’s so blessed antisocial?”
“Fuck her.”
“I’m asking for a specific reason, Cecelia. Her last name wouldn’t be Wentworth, would it?”
Cecelia stared morosely into her bag of potato chips. “Yeah. Why?”
“You and Heather used to be closer?”
“Maybe.”
“What changed that?”
“She’s a snot.”
“I was looking for something a little more specific than that. Like, did you have a falling-out?”
Cecelia knit her brows more tightly and stuffed a full handful of chips into her mouth.
Waiting politely for her to chew and swallow, I said, “She still calls you for rides to school.”
Cecelia fixed me with a virulent stare. “Yeah, well, she has to, doesn’t she? Her ma’s in the hospital for doing too many drugs, and her dad goes out of town at the drop of a hat.”
I felt a sudden sense of stillness, as if a missing arc in a circle had just dropped into place. “Drugs? Exactly what drug did Heather’s mom take?”
Cecelia took a noisy breath and let it out. “Cocaine.”
“So she’s in a rehab center.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you know which one?”
“Betty Ford,” she muttered. “But she’s getting home tomorrow. So that means Heather’s father’s going to find some reason to be gone again, so the Heather bitch has to hit me for another ride.”
“Cocaine’s a nasty drug, Celie.”
“I
know
!”
“Who told you about it? Your mom?”
“No, Mrs. Howard.
Mom
was too busy—”
The heavy purr of the Mercedes’s motor sounded in the driveway. Cecelia quickly stuffed the bag of potato chips back into the pantry, closed the door, and rushed to wash her hands at the sink.
Aloud, I thought,
“Cindey?”
I couldn’t imagine such a conversation.
The front door opened and J. C. Menken strode in. Cecelia ducked her head furtively, as if we’d been discussing something illicit. Her father caught her by the arm as she tried to slip past him, and he planted a kiss on the top of her head. She stiffened, then leaned against him like a dog. He patted her on the shoulder, a gesture indeed more appropriate for a dog than for one’s daughter. Releasing her, he beamed at me. “Emily, I’m so glad you’re still here. How did things go?”
Taking her chance, Cecelia slipped out of his arms and disappeared down the hall to her room.
“Oh, I’d say pretty well,” began, preparing myself for what I presumed would be a long chat.
“Splendid! Now, you’ll join me for dinner tonight, yes? The Howards have invited us over, and I’m sure Cecelia would prefer to study. Cindey doesn’t like to cook, but Fred fries a passable steak when motivated.”
I tried to speak, but the very idea of eating with that pair again had made me suck in my breath so fast that a chunk of taco chips had become lodged in my windpipe.
J. C. grinned expansively. “Excellent! I’ll just freshen up and we can go!”
 
On opening her door and finding me standing there with J. C., the mask of Cindey Howard’s features shifted ever so slightly from blankness to shock to repellency to a cagey welcome. She glanced uncertainly into the house before opening the door the rest of the way to let us pass through.
I walked through the broad archway into that vast living room and stopped short. Over by a far window stood the hawk-faced man from Fred Howard’s office.
He turned, fixed his needle eyes on me, frowned. To Fred, he said, “Who’s this?” He didn’t speak loudly enough that I could hear him, but I could see his lips move around the words.
Fred made a gesture that said, I’ll handle this, and hurried toward us as if readying himself to tackle an advancing line of footballers.
I was damned if I was going to be handled. I marched across the room and presented my hand to be shaken. “Em Hansen,” I said, fixing my strongest gaze on that disturbing face. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”
The man looked not at me but at Fred. His hand rose to pull the cigarette out of his mouth, but I caught it in a handshake. It was as cold as refrigerated meat. His eyes began to burn with anger, looking a threat at his host.
“Em!” Fred squealed in a bad approximation of jollity, “we didn’t know you were
coming.
What a
pleasure
.” He grasped my arm and tried to steer me toward a wet bar that
stood along one side of the room. “What’ll you have?”
I held my ground, fury feeding my rebellion.
You want to push me around? Well, you had the drop on me in your office, but now I am a guest in your home, and you will treat me with respect!
“A proper introduction would do nicely,” I said, sweetness hissing past my teeth.
“I’m afraid Cindey hasn’t set enough places, and we only have five filets, J. C. Maybe another night.”
“No matter,” I replied, answering for Menken. “Cecelia decided to stay home and get up-to-date on her homework. Big test in the morning, Fred. So who’s your friend?”
I caught a glimpse of Menken out of the corner of my eye. He was smiling, but he kept his lips tightly shut, letting Fred twist on whatever rope he had strung up for himself.
The entire dinner went like that. I kept trying for an introduction to the anomalous dinner guest, but Fred kept dodging me. Cindey sat at her end of the table, drinking a lot of wine while eating almost no food, looking back and forth between me and Menken. Fred made inane small talk, which Menken parried with ease. The mystery guest said nothing. Hardly anyone ate anything at all. Each course seemed to appear and disappear at the speed of a sleight-of-hand artist, and before I could say “Gotcha,” the dessert dishes were being whisked from the table. Fred all but ordered me to help Cindey hustle the spent dishes into the kitchen, but I stuck to my “date” like glue and followed the men into Fred’s den, a swank, low-slung room with another wet bar, this one done up in Black Watch plaid and leather. All the while, the dark-eyed man’s complexion grew darker and darker, like a cloud filling with rain and the threat of thunder. Fred served up snifters of brandy to himself, Menken, and the unnamed man, but ignored me. Smiling, Menken handed his to me and presented himself to Fred for another. As he sipped his brandy, the hawk-faced man, watched me closely from under his eyebrows, like a rat watching his enemies as he sucks filth at a sewer, but said nothing.
“Nice brandy,” I said, not having the slightest idea what
I was talking about. “So what do we not talk about now? Maybe drilling rank wildcats on the Broken Spoke Ranch?”
Fred had his back to me, pouring another dash of the brown liquid into his snifter when I spoke. His shoulders shot up and I heard the bottle hit the counter abruptly. The unnamed man’s eyes turned dark as flint as his head swiveled toward his host. I fantasized them so sharp that they could carve through his fatted flesh.
“Em,” Menken said equitably, “this is a social occasion. I’m sure Fred doesn’t want to talk shop just now.”
Fred turned and faced him. A look of mutual reappraisal flowed between them.
The conversation settled back into inane utterances, the one man still silent. I sipped carefully at my brandy, not wanting to let the alcohol have me. After ten minutes of tense civility, Menken announced cheerily, “I’d better get Em back to the house so she can head home. She has a big day of job hunting tomorrow. Fred, thanks for a fine meal, as always. Good to see you, too, Al.” And he steered me out of the house.
Ten feet down the driveway, I said, “Al who?”
Menken began to laugh. “Emily, you were superb! You worked instinctively, killed them with good manners! I didn’t have to tell you a thing. Why, if I played bridge, I’d want you as my partner.”
I said, “Marvelous. I get treated like a day-old cow pie and you want me to be your bridge partner. Mind letting me in on the gag?”
“Gag?”
“Yeah, damn it, who was that guy, and why didn’t you want to talk to him?”
“Oh no, no, no, Emily; what you don’t know can’t hurt you, right?”
I stopped abruptly. “In fact, what I don’t know can hurt me. Who was that man, why didn’t you want to talk to him, and why in hell wouldn’t Fred introduce him to me?”
“This is precisely what I mean. You knew instinctively that I didn’t want to speak privately with him, so you forced
your way into the brandy and cigars ritual in the den. You were magnificent!” He had stopped walking, too, and stood facing me, hands in his pockets, grinning. His white, white teeth and the silvery thatch of his hair shone eerily in the light from the moon, which had momentarily broken free of a bank of clouds. He began to rock back and forth, heel-to-toe, heel-to-toe.

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