Black-Eyed Susans (11 page)

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.

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
un
common.”

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.

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.

“That’s great,
Jo.” There is weary relief in Bill’s voice.