Across the yard, one of the uniformed cops is already cutting through the lock on the storm cellar. He yanks on the door and it gives way easily. He leaps back and slaps a hand over his nose and mouth, as does every person within ten feet of the door. Even Jo, who told me that on the site of the 9/11 tragedy, she smelled things she will never forget.
Now everything is going too fast. One of the crime scene investigators is busily handing out masks. One of the cops in jeans disappears into the hole like an agile snake. The shovel and lantern are handed down to him. Next, a CSI disappears. The space must be tiny, because everyone else remains aboveground. Eager. Chattering into the hole.
Mr. Bell would never let us open that door. It’s nasty down there, girls.
Empty plastic evidence bags are dropped into the cellar. In fifteen minutes, two of the bags return to the surface, bulging. They are set alongside the back fence.
The CSI pokes her head out from the hole and she beckons for the cop with the metal detector. In case there is jewelry? I could tell them that Lydia always wore her grandmother’s thin gold wedding band with the pinprick red ruby. I wonder for the hundredth time in four days why the cops couldn’t find any of the Bell family in a search of public records. It’s as if they sailed off the face of the earth.
Jo is offering her hand to the CSI, covered with muck and filth, climbing up through the door. The cop with the metal detector descends to take her place. The Gibsons are munching potato chips and passing a plastic tub of ranch dip back and forth. The geologist is methodically rolling his device over the grounds like a wheelbarrow, pausing every now and then to read his screen.
A circus.
Another evidence bag is handed up from the hole. And another and another. All of them are set along the back fence line with the others. In the end, eight black bags, like the bodies of lumpy spiders, their legs ripped off. Finally, both cops emerge, black from the knees down, tearing off latex gloves. The group huddles for a short conversation.
Jo turns and searches the yard until her eyes land on me. She walks toward me, her face twisted with concern, the longest twenty yards of my life.
How could I have left Lydia down there for so long? Why did I not figure this out sooner?
Jo’s hand is heavy on my shoulder. “We didn’t find anything, Tessa. We’re going to go a little deeper, but they’ve already dug three feet and struck clay and limestone. It would have taken the killer forever to dig through it. Seems very unlikely that he did.”
“What… is in the bags?”
“Someone used the place as a root cellar. It was trashed with broken jars and rotting fruits and vegetables. And a couple of now-dead moles that burrowed in somehow for a last supper. There was plenty of moisture to keep it rancid. Cracks in the concrete.”
“I’m so sorry… that I wasted everyone’s time.”
Nothing inside me feels that sorry. Lydia could be alive. Those flowers might really be from her. I feel a rising tide of unexpected joy.
“We’ll still sift through the contents of those bags, back in the lab. We always knew this was a shot in the dark. Literally. And I like to leave no stone unturned. Or any cliché unturned.” Trying to make me smile.
Behind her, the professor has wheeled his device right below the gaping mouth of the cellar. A small crowd is gathering, including the Gibsons, who’ve ducked under the crime tape. Someone in the center of the circle gives a shout. The uniforms are pushing everyone back to make room for the cops and their shovels.
The crime scene investigators are talking to the professor like he’s an umpire about to make a critical decision. They turn to the cops and direct how wide to make the hole.
The men nod, and carefully crack the earth.
Tessie, 1995
The doctor is telling me a story about when he was twelve.
I’m sure there’s going to be a point, but I wish he’d get to it. Lately, he’s been a little all over the place.
I’m annoyed by that smudge on his glasses, by Lydia flushing all of my Benadryl down the toilet last night. I’m sorry, she said, but it seemed to be about much more than swirling away those pink pills. Something is going on with Lydia. For the last two weeks, she’s been late instead of exactly on time and sometimes cancels on me altogether. She makes vague excuses, her cheeks flush and she rakes her teeth across the pink lip gloss on her bottom lip. She is a terrible liar. Eventually, Lydia will tell me what is wrong, so I don’t bug her.
Of course, two sentences into the doctor’s tale, I’m wondering if he’s lying. He says he was a chubby boy and yet he’s got all that wiry muscle under the shirt with the collar that stands like a pinned white butterfly. I bumped up against his arm once. It was immovable, concrete, a runner’s leg extending from his shoulder.
“I’d come home every day after school to an empty house,” he is saying.
I’m suddenly scared for the boy in an empty house even though he’s sitting across from me alive and well with no visible scars.
“Tessie, do you want me to continue? Is this story bothering you?”
“Um, no. Go ahead.”
“In the winter, the house was always dark and cold. So the first thing I did after I unlocked the door, before I put down my books or took off my coat, was walk to the thermostat and turn up the heat. To this day, the thump of the furnace, the smell of heat coming on… is the smell of loneliness. Tessie, are you listening?”
“Yes. I’m just trying to figure out your lesson here. I thought you were about to tell me something terrible happened to you.” I’m disappointed. Relieved. Vaguely intrigued.
It occurs to me that I love all of the smells associated with heat. Fireplace smoke drifting my way on a chilly night run, barbecue coals declaring it Saturday afternoon. Sizzling pork chop grease, Banana Boat sunscreen, hot towels tumbled in our old Kenmore dryer. Especially after Mama died, I couldn’t get hot enough. I flipped my electric blanket on high so much that it streaked a black scorch mark on the blue fabric and Daddy took it away. I still stretch out by the heating vent in the floor of Mama’s walk-in closet and read. I’m not sure I would have survived the last year if I couldn’t slam the screen door behind me, sprawl on the back porch lounger, and let the brutal sun fry every black thought to ashes.
“Smell is the sense that is most instantly connected with memory. Do you know anything about Marcel Proust?”
“Am I failing this test if I say no?” I can’t wait to tell Lydia that the doctor is pulling a depressed French philosopher with a handlebar mustache out of his bag. It’s a big step up. Lydia christened my last therapist Chicken Little after the woman suggested I read Chicken Soup for the Soul.
“This isn’t a test. There is no way to fail in this room, Tessie.” His tone is plodding, predictable-and, I realize, a little tired. “One of Proust’s characters recalls an entire event from his childhood after smelling a tea-soaked biscuit. Science has been chasing this theory ever since-that smell retrieves deep memories. The olfactory bulb rests near, and instantly communicates with, the part of our brain that holds the past.”
“So this is a test. You are telling me I can retrieve my memory through smell.”
“Maybe. Are there any smells that… bother you since the event?”
Peanut butter, peanut butter, peanut butter. My dad interrogated Bobby and me last week about why an almost-full jar of Jif was in the trash. Bobby didn’t tell on me.