Black-Eyed Susans (5 page)

So
he’s
a liar, too. My hair
is down today, long, curling loosely past my shoulders. Still the same burnt color as
the sixteen-year-old me. Two nights ago, at the cemetery, it was tucked up tight in my
daughter Charlie’s black baseball cap.

“You tricked me,” I say.
“Nice.”

I shift uncomfortably in the chair.
I’m talking to a lawyer, one I haven’t paid a cent to keep my confidences.
Sure, he could be the boy next door with those doe-y brown eyes and clean-cut hair and
ears that stick out a little and enormous hands that could cover a grapefruit. The funny
best friend of the guy you really want, until you realize … oh,
shit.

He grins. “You look like my little
sister does right before she slaps me. In answer to your question, a forensic
anthropologist is getting a look at the bones first. Then Jo and her people step in. She
would like both of us to watch her techs work the Black-Eyed Susan case next week. Asked
me to invite you personally. Kind of as a peace offering since she ordered you not to be
present at the exhumation. She really did feel bad about it.”

I shiver slightly. There’s no vent, no
visible source of heat in here. My father used to say that February in Texas is a cold,
bitter lady. March is when she loses her virginity.

“Bones are processed every Monday
morning,” he continues. “Jo had to pull some strings to push the Susans to
the head of the line. I can pick you up, if you like. The lab’s about twenty
minutes from your place.”

“No worry this time about
contamination?” This had been Joanna’s concern about me officially attending
the exhuming of the bodies. She didn’t want even the slightest hint of broken
protocol.

“We’ll be watching the process
through a glass window. The new lab is set up as a teaching facility. State-of-the-art.
Bones are flown in from all over the world. So are students and scientists who want to
see Jo’s techniques firsthand.” He smiles tightly and picks up his
pen. “Want to get started? I’ve got to be somewhere by
two. For my job that pays the bills.” A corporate mediator, whatever the hell that
is, according to his law firm’s website. I wonder where he is hiding his suit.

“Yep. Go ahead.” Spoken much
more casually than I felt.

“Your testimony in ’95. Has
anything changed? Have you remembered anything else in the last seventeen years about
the attack or your attacker?”

“No.” I say it firmly.
I am
willing to help,
I remind myself,
but only to a point.
I have two
teen-agers to protect, the one I was and the one who sleeps in that purple room.

“Just to be sure, I’m going to
ask a few specifics anyway, OK?”

I nod.

“Can you describe the face of your
attacker?”

“No.”

“Do you remember where you met up with
him?”

“No.”

“Do you have any memory of being
dumped in that field?”

“No.”

“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.”

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.

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.”