And I promised the Susans.
“You’re digging? Alone? Have you found anything?”
“Nothing. It’s a relief, and it isn’t.”
“Why are we here, if your old house is there?”
“This is Lydia’s house. Well, it used to be. I found black-eyed Susans here, too, a few weeks after the trial.”
How much should I explain? I’d shown up at the door on a Friday afternoon with a cardboard box of her stuff. I was enacting a ritual goodbye, after our friendship imploded at the end of the trial. She hadn’t been at school for a week and a half. The box held two videotapes, The Last of the Mohicans and Cape Fear, the backup makeup bag she always left in my bathroom, her Mickey Mouse pajamas.
But the house was asleep at three in the afternoon, which was unusual. No cars. The living room shades were drawn for the first time ever. I could have dumped the box and run. Instead, I unlocked the back gate. Curious. When I glimpsed the small sea of yellow flowers, I was even angrier at Lydia, and I hadn’t thought that possible. How could she let them grow? I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. Two weeks later, a For Sale sign went up, and the Bells were gone, like no one was worth a goodbye.
“Let her go,” my father had advised.
“I was in the back yard returning something to Lydia and saw them,” I tell Bill. I place my fingers at my temples and rub in concentric circles. “It’s OK if you think this is stupid. Let’s go. I’m sorry I bothered you.”
He stands and yanks me up. Then he surprises me. “We’re here. Might as well check it out.”
We knock three times before a pasty woman with short, frustrated black hair opens the door about six inches. She surveys us like we are Texas liberals and stabs a finger at the sign under the mailbox attached to the porch siding, a slight variation on a familiar plaque to ward off solicitors: WE’RE PISS POOR. WE DON’T VOTE. WE’VE FOUND JESUS. OUR GUN IS LOADED.
Bill ignores her warnings and sticks out his hand. “Hello, ma’am, I’m William Hastings. My friend Tessa here used to have a very good friend who lived in your house. Tessa has fond childhood memories of playing in the back yard. Would you mind if she took a quick look back there for old times’ sake?”
The door opens a little wider, but it’s clearly not an invitation. She swivels to shove her foot at a fat yellow cat that can’t make up its mind about going out. I’m guessing she’s around forty-five, wearing tight jean shorts that are the size she wore two sizes ago. She is carting around a lumpy rear end on skinny legs, and I’m figuring the legs are what she’s gauging her weight by as she sits on her ass and sucks down another beer.
No shoes. Band-Aids are wrapped around her big toes. Her breasts are generous flat pancakes, encased in a tank top. A tattoo of red roses snakes from her left shoulder to her elbow. The tattoo clearly required a lot of both time and clenching of teeth.
“Yeah, I mind.” The woman ignores Bill’s outstretched hand. She’s staring at the scar under my eye. I perceive a fleeting flash of respect in her eyes. She’s probably thinking bar fight.
“I’m curious, Mrs…?”
“Gibson. Not that it’s any of your damn business.”
Bill flashes his courthouse badge.
“I’m just curious, Mrs. Gibson, at 5216 Della Court, if you were a no-show to jury duty in the last five years. I have a few friends in the courthouse who would be happy to look that up for us.”
“Son of a bitch,” she fumes. “Five minutes. That’s it. Go around the side by the gate and be sure to shut it when you go. I have a dog.” She spits out the last four words like a threat and slams the door.
“Nice move,” I say.
“It’s not my first Mrs. Gibson.”
The same old chain link fence is standing guard around back, although several degrees rustier. The horseshoe catch on the side gate requires a good thump from Bill to lift. I think about how Lydia’s dad oiled it religiously.
It is a small, crunched yard with too many plastic buildings. A fake-shingled shed is shoved into the right corner, the “fancy” version with a flower box that was forgotten a long time ago. A filthy white doghouse with a red roof is plopped on the slab of concrete posing as a back porch.
A picnic table used to sit directly under a red oak tree that is now a four-foot stump topped by a statue of a bald eagle with outspread wings. The grass is long and tickly. It creeps up my leg, like a rambling daddy longlegs. Maybe it is. I almost trip over a toy plastic fire truck transformed into a weed planter.
Bill’s foot lands in an enormous pile of soft dog poop, and he lets out a loud “Shit.”
We halt, and stare more intently at the doghouse. It’s big enough for a two-year-old child to sleep in. Bill whistles. A dog starts a serious racket somewhere inside the house, and I wonder if Mrs. Gibson is loading her shotgun.
“OK, where?” Bill’s tone indicates he may be losing some faith in my treasure hunt. Once again, I regret involving him.
I point to the left side of the yard, at the very back. The weeds are a wild and shaggy carpet, but you can still make out the small hill that Mr. Bell used to call the Grassy Knoll. Lydia had inherited that need to nickname things.
Bill follows behind me, dragging his left shoe, trying to scrape off dog poop as he goes. I stop abruptly, lean over, and begin to yank at weeds.
“What the hell are you doing?” He glances back to the house. My weeding efforts have revealed a small metal door planted sideways into the rise of the tiny hill.
The rusty padlock that holds it closed would probably fall apart with a swift kick. I’m tempted.
“It’s an old storm cellar from the ’30s when the house was built. I don’t recall Lydia’s family ever using it. Mrs. Bell thought they were better off in the bathtub during tornado warnings than hanging out with poisonous spiders and beetles in a black hole.”
“Where were the flowers?”
“Planted across the top. There’s always been a layer of dirt above the concrete. Used to be grass.”
“You didn’t bring a shovel,” Bill says, almost to himself. He’s trying to fit the pieces together, and I’m holding back the big one. “You think he buried something for you… in the storm cellar?”
An image of Charlie flashes into my mind, crammed on a bus with shrieking volleyball girls, headed to Waco.
I’m missing her game for this.
“Yes.” I place two fingers on my wrist and feel my racing pulse, because Lydia always did. “Last night, I dreamed that Lydia is down there. That the flowers marked her grave.”
Tessie, 1995
“Do you ever have nightmares?”
The doctor’s demeanor today, all stiff and formal, suggests he has renewed purpose. I imagine him stabbing at a random page in his Book of Tricks right before I arrived. It is probably thick as a loaf of bread, with crackled yellow pages, a worn red velvet cover, and thousands of useless magic spells.
“Let me think,” I say. I’ve added this cheerful line to my arsenal of sure and sounds good, part of my campaign to get off this couch as soon as possible.
I could tell him that last night’s dream wasn’t exactly a nightmare, as my nightmares go, and that his daughter, Rebecca, was the guest star. I was camped out in the grave with the Susans, per usual. Rebecca peered down at us, pale and pretty, in one of my mother’s flowered church dresses. She fell to her knees and extended a hand. Her hair, wound in these goofy old-fashioned ringlets, tickled my cheek. Her fingers, when they reached me, were white-hot. I woke up, my arm on fire, choking for air.
I could tell him, but I won’t. It seems unkind to bring it up, and I am working on being kinder.