“Effie, keep or toss?” I know the answer-it’s been my mantra for the last hour-but I’m asking anyway. I’m holding up a plastic bag that contains the battered paperback copy of Lonesome Dove. Gus McCrae and Pea Eye Parker had been freezing to death for years behind several foil-wrapped items furry with ice crystals. Those have solidly hit the trashcan outside without Effie’s knowledge.
“Keep,” Effie admonishes me. “Certainly. Lonesome Dove is my favorite book of all time. I put it in there so I’d know where it was.” I’m never sure with Effie if these explanations are truth or cover-up.
Two days after Terrell is scheduled to die, Effie is moving to live with her daughter in New Jersey. I can barely breathe thinking about the absence of Effie’s spirit in this house, but here I am, helping my friend load her life into boxes. At least that was the plan.
So far, she has not relinquished her hold on anything, including four iron skillets that are almost exactly alike except for the stories fried into their black history. In one, Effie made her husband’s favorite Blueberry Surprise pancakes on the day he died. The skillet with the slightly rusted handle belonged to her mother. Effie almost came to blows over it post-funeral with a sister who can’t cook a lick. The other two leave the best, crispest almost burnt crust on okra and cornbread, and you always have to have two pans of okra.
Effie is rather elegantly sprawled on the kitchen floor in a pair of old red silk pajamas, looking like an old Hollywood diva, if that’s possible sitting on yellowed black-and-white linoleum surrounded by sixty years of pots and pans. The kitchen, like the rest of the house, is a wreck. She has spent the last three days yanking every single thing out of the cabinets, shelves, and closets and tossing it onto the beds, the floor, the tables, any available open space. The effect is that of a tornado hitting an antiques store.
“Sue, you’re awfully quiet. Is it that damn Terrell Goodwin business?”
My fork stops its scraping. My head emerges from the freezer. Effie called me Sue, her daughter’s name, while asking me the most pointed question of our relationship.
“Don’t look so surprised. My mind’s not that far gone, hon. I thought you might finally bring it up after the police broke down my door that night and ripped off my earphones. But you didn’t, and that’s fine. It’s not even a smidgen of who you are, honey. Who you are-well, I’m going to miss who you are something terrible. And Charlie. I want to see that girl grow up. She’s going to teach me to do that Sky-hype thing. Did I tell you that Sue’s fiancé and I had a real good talk last night? He’s fifth-generation New Jersey Italian. He told me it’s always been an honor and privilege in his family to take care of the old. At least that’s what I think he said. I couldn’t understand half the conversation. I thought he had a speech impediment for the first fifteen minutes.”
I laugh because I’ve listened to Effie rattle off fluent French in her East Texas drawl, and it wasn’t as pretty as a Hoboken accent. It’s a slightly uneasy laugh, because I’m not interested in any heartfelt, tell-all goodbye with Effie. I’m going to leave her dreams alone. I don’t want her to see my eyes dilate into black holes or for her to walk endless fields of yellow flowers that hold the scent of death. I don’t want her to wake up still smelling it.
I’m relieved when my phone begins to buzz somewhere near a counter of jumbled spices. I dig it out from under yellowed directions for a Sunbeam Percolator and a recipe for Doc’s Gay Salad. I have no memory of placing my phone under anything; it’s like the kitchen is turning into some form of kudzu and growing over itself.
Jo’s name is on the screen. An instant sense of dread, pickled with hope.
“Hello,” I say.
“Hi, Tessa. Bill told me he let you know about the judge’s ruling. Sucks.”
“Yes, he called.” I want to say more, but there’s Effie.
“I’m a little worried about Bill. He looks like he hasn’t slept for days. I’ve never seen him quite like this with a case. I think it’s all tied up in his grief for Angie. Like he can’t let her down.”
If I start to feel something for Bill or Terrell right now, I will feel everything. I already sense the hot well building behind my eyes.
“There’s another reason I’m calling,” Jo continues. “The cops got the guy who stuck those signs in your yard. He was caught vandalizing the lawn of a Catholic priest in Boerne. I thought you might want to get a restraining order. He’s free on bond. His name is Jared Lester. He’ll probably end up with a severe fine and community service instead of jail time.”
“OK. Thanks. I’ll think about it.” I’ll think about not purposely pissing him off right now.
“One more thing. He claims, rather proudly, that he planted the black-eyed Susans under your windowsill several weeks ago. I’ve checked, and the potting soil in his garage has the same basic signature as what I sampled from your yard that day. I don’t think he’s lying. He brought it up voluntarily in the police interview. Here’s the deal. He’s only twenty-three.” Meaning, not my monster. I do the math. He was five when I was tossed in that grave.
Effie’s eying my throat, where my pulse drums. One of my tears drops onto the yellowed coffeepot instructions with the cartoon percolator with a Mr. Kool-Aid face. I begin to methodically stand the spices into efficient lines.
How long has Jo known? Long enough that the police have caught this man, interviewed him, and set his bail. Long enough to run tests on potting soil.
I should give Jo a break, of course. As she ran that test, she had to know the outcome couldn’t reassure me that much.
My monster is still out there.
This time, the door opens, and it’s me on the other side wanting in.
I search his face, and my heart cracks.
I silently beg him to see all of me. The Black-Eyed Susan who talks to dead people, and the artist with the half-moon scar who tortures paint and thread to make sure beauty exists somewhere inside her. The mother who named her daughter Charlie after her father’s favorite Texas knuckleball pitcher, and the runner who has never stopped running.
“You look like hell,” I say.
“What are you doing here?” As he says this, Bill is pulling me across the threshold into his arms.
We haven’t spoken much or texted in the last several days. Bill doesn’t appear to have showered for most of them. I don’t mind. He smells alive. His chin scrapes my cheek like sandpaper. Our lips connect and, for a very long time, that’s all there is.
“This is a bad idea,” he says, breaking us apart.
“That’s my line.”
“Seriously. I’m running on fumes. Let me get you a beer and we’ll talk.”
“I’m so sorry about Terrell,” I say, following him inside. “Sorry for everything.” My words, inadequate.
“Yes. Me, too.” His voice is grim.
“I didn’t mean to be so short on the phone. I was just… shocked.”
He shrugs. “Next stop, U.S. Court of Appeals. A bunch of buffoons with rubber stamps. The habeas appeal was our real shot. Have a seat and I’ll be back with your beer.”
He disappears through an archway, leaving me to glean what I can from the first encounter with his living space. I scour the art on the walls the way other people surreptitiously peer at bookshelves and CD collections. Or used to anyway. A few decent modern prints with reds, greens, and golds. Nothing that provides insight into Bill’s soul, and if it does, I don’t want that to pop my bubble.
I pick out a buttery white leather chair and wonder a little too late if I’d gotten a nice young law intern named Kayley into trouble by bullying her for Bill’s home address. When I showed up in Angie’s basement, Kayley dripped as much exhaustion as Bill. I wore her down with my red eyes, driver’s license, and a rambling dissertation on Saint Stephen, still being stoned to death over Angie’s shrine of a desk. Kayley spent much of the dissertation time trying not to gape at my scar, openly impressed that she was meeting the myth.