“So what do you think?” I ask. “Is the apron the curtain? Does the curtain have nothing to do with me being dumped in that grave? Is it meaningless?” I’m feeling guilty about sounding so urgent.
“Nothing is meaningless,” she says. “The apron probably represents comfort to you. It would not be a surprise for you to connect some element of your first trauma-the death of your mother-to the other one. Tessa, the most important thing is for you to eliminate the unknown, which is frightening. If you came here and told me you could see the killer behind the curtain, like the Wizard of Oz, well… that isn’t what you really expected, is it?”
Yes. That is exactly what I expected. I grew up in Oz.
I don’t tell her that, though. Or say that this painting of my mother’s apron leaves me as unsettled as the blank curtain I drew a hundred times.
Tessie, 1995
“How do you like Mr. Vega and Benita?”
Is it my imagination or does the doctor sound a little jealous?
“He’s nice,” I say carefully. “They’re both very nice.” Adults make things so complicated. Am I supposed to like the doctor better than them? Is this some kind of contest?
“If you have any questions or concerns, you can let me know. Al Vega can come on a little strong.”
And you don’t? “I’m good right now. But I will for sure if I do.” Lately, this need to reassure him has been taking the place of my desire to annoy the hell out of him. “I do have a question about… something else, though.”
Lydia says it’s ridiculous that I’m carrying this fear around and letting it devour me, although she also thinks what’s happening is kind of cool. “It isn’t just Merry who has spoken to me.”
“What do you mean?” the doctor asks. “Who else is speaking to you?”
“The other Susans… talk to me sometimes. The ones in the grave. Not all the time. I don’t think it’s a big deal. Lydia just thought I should bring it up.”
“Lydia seems like an extremely sensitive friend.”
“Yes.”
“Well, let’s start this way. What’s the first thing you remember one of the other… Susans… saying to you?”
“It was in the hospital. When I first woke up. One of them told me the strawberry Jell-O sucked. And it did. It was sugar-free.”
“And what else?”
“Mostly warnings. Be careful. Like that.” We told you not to touch the pig-and-daisy card.
“When they speak, do you think they are trying to control you? Or make you do things you don’t want to?”
“No. Of course not. I think, like, they want to help. And I promised to help them. Sort of a pact.” It sounds absolutely insane when I say it out loud. I am rocked by the sudden terror he might convince my father to toss me in a loony bin. I am 100 percent certain that Lydia was wrong about her advice this time.
“So you talk back to them?”
“No. Not usually. I just hear them.” Careful.
“And they never suggest that you harm yourself?”
“Are you kidding? What the crap are you talking about? Do you think I’m suicidal? Possessed?” I waggle my fingers on either side of my head, like horns.
“Sorry, Tessie. I have to ask the question.”
“I have never once thought about killing myself.” Defensive. And a lie. “I have thought about killing him.”
“Normal,” he says. “I’d like to do it myself.” This does not seem at all like something a psychiatrist should say. I don’t want to feel warm and gushy about him right now. I want a freaking answer.
“So… the voices. Do you think I’m… schizophrenic? Maybe borderline?” It occurs to me that I’m opting to be schizophrenic rather than possessed by demons. Lydia absolutely refused to help me research anything about schizophrenia. Whatever knowledge I had about it up to that point was gleaned from Stephen King.
So Oscar and I ventured to the local library on our own. The eighty-five-year-old volunteer who can barely see was on duty so I thought it was safe to ask for her help. She didn’t recognize the Cartwright Girl, which is what old people call me instead of a Black-Eyed Susan.
After fifteen minutes, while the checkout line stacked up eight deep, she brought over An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and a Harlequin romance titled Kate of Outpatients, all published in the 1960s. The gist of the one by the existential psychologist was to let crazy people be crazy and stop bothering them. I reshelved it and Cuckoo and checked out Kate of Outpatients. Lydia and I are taking turns doing dramatic readings from it.
The doctor’s gaze is surprisingly kind and steady but he lets the silence stretch. Probably trying to figure out how to deliver the bad news to the poor little girl who’s soon going to be rocking and drooling in a room full of checker players.
“You are not a schizophrenic, Tessie. I know there is a set of psychiatrists out there who always think that voices indicate mental illness. There are an equal number of us who don’t. Lots of people hear voices. When a spouse or child dies, the people left sometimes talk to them on and off all day, and hear them respond. For the rest of their lives. It doesn’t make them dysfunctional. In fact, many of them claim these conversations make their lives better and more productive.”
I love this man. I love this man. He is not going to lock me up.
“The Susans don’t make my life better,” I say. “I think they are ghosts.”
“As we discussed previously, the paranormal is a normal temporary response.”
He isn’t getting it. “How do I get rid of them?” I don’t want to make them mad.
“How do you think you could get rid of them?”
In this case, my answer is immediate. “By sending the killer to prison.”
“You are well on the way to doing that.”
“And by finding out who the Susans are. Giving them real names.”
“What if that is not possible?”
“Then I don’t know if they’ll ever leave me.”
“Tessie, did your mother ever talk to you after she died? Like the Susans do?”
“No. Never.”
“I ask only because you have endured two terrible traumas for someone so young. Your mother’s death and the horror of that grave. Part of me thinks you are still grieving for your mother. Tell me, do you remember what you did at the wake?”
My mother again. I shrug. “We ate food people brought over and then my little brother and I played basketball on the driveway.” I let him win. We played H-O-R-S-E. The score was ten games to two.
“Children often play the day of the funeral as if it’s any other day. It’s deceptive. They grieve far longer and more deeply than adults.”
“I don’t think so.” I remembered the awful sounds of my dad and aunt weeping, like someone was peeling off my skin.
“Adults grieve harder in the beginning, but they move through it. Kids can get stuck in one stage… anger or denial… for years. It might be at the root of your symptoms-the memory loss, the blindness, the Susans, the code that you made up in the grave-”
“I’m not stuck,” I interrupt. “Merry and I didn’t make up a code in the grave. And I don’t want to talk about my mother. She’s gone. My problem is strictly with ghosts.”
Tessa, present day
It is only thirteen blocks from where I live now.
Lydia’s old house.
It might as well be a hundred miles. I’m standing in front of her childhood home for the first time in years. It is the second place he left black-eyed Susans, and the first time I turned and ran.