Raveled (16 page)

“Mmmm… how about if I show you my bra strap?” Shelby opened her mouth, then pressed the tip of her tongue to the base of her top teeth in a shamefully flirty gesture.

“A bra strap!”
Bobby acted insulted. “Please. I see a bra strap every time my mother does the laundry. A bra strap ain’t nothing to write home about, believe me.”

“All right, but this is
the last offer,” Shelby said. “Do it again.”

Bobby
repeated the refrain. Shelby didn’t answer with words this time. Instead, she began unfastening her blouse. It only had five buttons and she could easily hold the rope with one hand while undoing them. Before Bobby realized what was happening, her shirttails were untied and her shirt was off. She whipped it around in the air like a white surrender flag. “How’s that, Mr. Brown?” she shouted.

Her tits were even fuller than he’d imagined, spilling over the top of her
sheer, pink bra. The lace on the upper edge barely covered her dark brown nipples. Those were big, too, nearly half-dollar in size, like he’d never seen before. He could see right through the bra’s silky material ‘cuz it was stretched to its physical limit.

“Well?” Shelby said, oblivious to
how much she was revealing.

Bobby
responded by slowing down the swing and reeling her in. He had to pull harder than he’d anticipated and realized he’d need to relocate the swing and maybe lengthen the rope. He’d definitely set it out too far on the beam this afternoon. As much as he didn’t want to climb back out there tomorrow, he’d need to adjust it.

“You pullin’ me in or what?” Shelby said.

“What,” Bobby responded. Then he reached in his pocket and removed the other item he’d stolen from Westerling’s. He used it before Shelby could figure out what was happening, not realizing how many lives it would change sixteen years later.

Chapter
21

Allison… present

The realtor drove off in her Mercedes. Her visit made me appreciate how lucky I was to have rented all these years. Her suggestions to get the house ready to sell would cost $20,000 at least, not including a new roof. Wasn’t the idea to
make
money when you sold a house? I turned to my mother who’d sat mute through most of the meeting, though she didn’t seem to be in one of her spells. Maybe she was just sad over giving up the house where she’d raised her children. Not sure why she’d want to keep a trophy for that questionable accomplishment.

“Okay,
Mom, we’ve got a doctor’s appointment to get you to.”

She looked up from her seat at the kitchen table.
“Selena usually takes me,” she said.

“Selena’s enjoying a day off. Watching soap operas at her own house, for a change.”

I drove us to Dr. Slovinski’s office in what proved to be an unusually quiet journey to the far but burgeoning end of town, if one could consider two new boutiques and a slate of medical offices a growth boom. After performing the same memory and retention tests she’d been running for the past year, then adding in a few of the latest and greatest computerized versions that had been approved the week before, Dr. Slovinski sat us down to talk. She’d chosen the violet suit and matching two-inch heels today. At my mother’s second appointment eleven months ago, I’d flown home to accompany her. It had struck me then that the matching blazer/skirt/shoes combo on the good doctor was no coincidence. She’d gone off on some tangent about nationalized healthcare and I had tuned out. I’d spent the lecture wondering how her closet was arranged. Alphabetically? Blue, Brown, Coral, Cyan. In rainbow order? Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet. Or like a Dr. Seuss book?
Blue suit, Brown suit, White suit, shoes! New suit, Town suit, Night suit, Whose?
With her standard-issue, tall and slim figure, Dr. Slovinski no doubt fit into the suits straight off the mannequins. The biggest surprise would be if she ever surprised anyone—with anything.

“Justine,” she said in her usual monotone
, “you did great today.”

My mother smiled, but
the sentiment didn’t run any deeper than her lips. One of those smiles my mother gave when she thought the recipient needed it. A polite prompt to continue.

“The results
are about the same. The good news is that, compared to a year ago, I don’t see any more deterioration in your performance than is typical for a woman your age. The bad news is that your daughter and Selena both report an increase in your episodes.”

She stared at us
doe-eyed and unblinking as if we were supposed to respond, applaud, or cry. We didn’t know which so we stared back.

“Here’s the thing,” Dr. Slovinski said. “I’m not so sure you have anything wrong that I’m going to be able to address.”

No one could argue that Dr. Slovinski was in it to gouge the patients.

“
Often,” she said, “physical ailments drive the mental. The brain is an organ, after all. Someday, people will understand that better and stop treating mental disorders as if they’re this untouchable entity separated from the biological, like an ugly secret hiding beneath the security of our skulls.”

I sensed a soapbox coming and decided to kick the dais out
from under Dr. Slovinski’s dyed-to-match pumps. “Then what accounts for these episodes? Are you saying it’s something physical but you can’t diagnose it?”

Dr. Slovinski pointed a slow finger at me. “Bingo,” she said,
lacking any exclamation. It sounded like she was informing her dog Bin that it was time to pee. This lady must be a blast in bed. Did the shoes match the sheets?

“
I’d like to send you for further tests to start ruling things out. It may not be covered by your insurance and it could get expensive.”

Inside, I cringed, but outwardly, I kept it neutral.
Kevin and I both got by, with a bit to spare, but nobody would call it a comfortable cushion. And Kevin’s savings were about to dry out, probably faster than him.

“There is another possibility,” Dr. Slovinski said. “
You’ve heard of repression?”

I glanced at M
om to make sure she was on board, but she seemed to have repressed the question.

“Yes,” I said. “Deliberately forgetting memories. Squelching them, I guess.”

“To the extreme,” Dr. Slovinski said. “It’s a defense mechanism for trauma. Often seen in children whose memories aren’t so reliable to begin with.”

“My mother definitely has things she’d like to repress,” I said, again glancing at my mother to make sure she was okay with this topic. She gave me a quick nod with the shallow smile. “But they happened to her as an adult and she dealt with them for years like a rational human being. Why would she repress them now?”

“I can’t say for certain,” Dr. Slovinski said. “We never know a person’s tipping point. Seemingly normal people snap all the time in a variety of ways. It’s possible there are changes going on in Justine’s brain, due to aging, diet, or lack of exercise, for example. But they’d be more subtle. It might help to write down the triggers for each episode, like the topic of the conversation preceding an episode, the particular words used, where you are, and who you’re with. Perhaps a pattern will emerge.”

“So s
he has no overt signs of early onset Alzheimer’s?”

“Double Bingo for you,” she said with the requisite excitement if the Bingo prize was an expired grocery store coupon.
“But we need some scans.”

“
In other words, unless my mom undergoes a bunch of tests, we’re stuck with an oblique diagnosis of potential repression?”

“I’d like to refer her
to Dr. Wilson and to a psychiatrist to see about those repression triggers.”

Great. I’m sure the likes of Dr. Liza Graft
at Ravine Psychiatric Institute could while away years traipsing around my mother’s brain. Imagine the chart notes:
domestic abuse survivor; widow of a convicted killer; a social untouchable in a town where she once served as PTA secretary; mother of an alcoholic—and a bartender
. And after Dr. Graft finished traipsing, she could whittle and sculpt my mother into a smiling, well-rounded, fully-adjusted senior capable of living for the moment and
being present
. Me, I preferred concrete diagnoses that could be touched and seen, visible images on X-Rays.
Here’s the plaque. There’s the memory. See how the gross stuff that’s not supposed to be there covers all the crappy memories hiding over here? Well, that’s why your mom can’t remember anything
.

“Justine,
” Dr. Slovinski said, “I’m happy to give you the names of several psychiatrists. You could meet them and see who clicks best with you.”

Absolutely. S
ee who gets the biggest hard-on when they hear the Fennimore name. That’s who’d give her the biggest bang for her buck. Images of Jasper’s sparse room popped into my head. Bleak, bland, lonely. I couldn’t imagine my mom in a place like that. She needed a kitchen to fiddle around in and a backyard where she could garden and feed stray cats who didn’t care if the carved wooden sign out front said
Fennimore
.

“Allison?” Dr. Slovinski said, “are you
still with us?”

“Yes. Sorry.”

“I know how upsetting this must be for you, especially when you can’t be nearby, but I look at all this as good news.”

Perhaps good news was such a foreign concept to me in
Lavitte that I didn’t recognize it when a doctor told me my mom was crazy. I gave Dr. Slovinski the prompting smile.

“If your mother is bringing these bouts on herself, as some sort of survival mechanism, or as a way to cope with depression, then she can bring herself out of it, or at least be treated more appropriately by these other doctors. I think we’re headed in the right direction. And who wouldn’t be happy to know that their brain
is relatively healthy?”

From the deadpan expressions on my mother’s and my faces, I guess us.

“Thanks, Dr. Slovinski,” I said.

She handed me
a list of doctors with three names highlighted. “And Allison, you’re not my patient, but in my opinion, you’d benefit from some therapy, too. Maybe talk out some of the issues you have to deal with as a caregiver and whatnot.”

The fullest
whatnot
I’d ever heard. Thanks for your concern, Doc, but digging around inside this muddy, sealed-off danger zone could prove more hazardous than a minefield.

My mother and I
exited the office and stepped into a day that had turned from cloudy to sunny, and cool to humid. My mother, who was having a particularly good day, stepped first onto the sidewalk outside of Dr. Slovinski’s office. She tripped on a rock at the end of the walkway but I managed to grab her arm on the descent.

“Ow!” she said right after I felt her shoulder pop.

“Oops,” I said, wincing for her. “Better a sore shoulder than a broken face?”

She rolled her arm around a bit. “No damage done. I don’t remember that ro
ck being there.”

“Apparently, you
repressed it.”

She gave me
a cynical look but it morphed into a grin. “Come on, let’s get a bite.”

It felt like old times
, when my mother and I would walk into town together, catch a matinee, and overindulge in ice cream sundaes at Maddie’s Milkery. Mom had always paid with the little bit of money she made baking and selling her bread loaves at the Farmer’s Market.

I was about to remind her of those days when
we found ourselves staring straight into the face of Elise Smith, Smitty’s mom. As if that wasn’t scary enough, Mrs. Smith flared her nostrils and slanted her head, somehow resembling a male peacock preening in the sun. She’d die if she knew there was a wiry black hair emerging from her left nostril like the probing antenna of a curious ant. Or perhaps it was a hidden, gnarled root. Try as she might to conceal her true self with chemical treatments and injections, Mrs. Smith’s deep-seated ugliness had found a crack in the armor, too strong a part of her to remain hidden.

My mother, always the bigger person despite her diminutive stature, greeted her former friend civilly. “Good afternoon, Elise.” She continued walking, trying to minimize the awkwardness, but Elise Smith preferred
to poke the bear. Apparently, I’d won the part of the bear. Growl.

“Hm
p,” she said in response to my mother’s greeting, stepping into our path. The nostril hair pointed in my direction. “I hear you’re asking all sorts of questions about the night Bobby was killed.”

Gee, wonder who her source was. Did Smitty run right in and tattle to
Même that mean old Allison Fennimore was making him talk dirty? Oh, that’s right, she’d had her ears pinned to the door, antennae in full reception mode.

“Is there a new ordinance in town against asking questions?
” I said. “I must have missed it in the weekly.”

My mother turned to me
with mild disapproval. Bad enough I’d stirred the pot all over town but now I’d incurred the wrath of her fake ex-friend and forced her to come face to face with it. Surely, she’d be full of entreaties for me to let things lie but to my surprise, she showed great self-control and chose silent anger with me while giving nothing to Mrs. Smith.

“It’s common sense, young lady,” Mrs. Smith said. “You don’t go bringing up hurtful subjects out of spite
just to appease some warped agenda you must have concocted in New York.”

I
smiled and tapped my nose twice to tell Mrs. Smith that something was amiss on that face she chose to present as her own. I hadn’t planned to do it, but I needed a moment of distraction.

“What?” she said. She reached up and touched her nose ever-so-gently, as if it might fall off.

I tapped again, just for fun. She grabbed a tissue from her purse and dabbed at her nostrils, shoving the ugliness back to its underground lair where it could await the signal to attack.

“Do you have nothing to say for yourself?” she said.

“Not to you,” I said.

“John comes back here
twice a year,” she raged, “to share some good times and visit family. And what does he have to contend with? The daughter of his best friend’s killer.”

My mother could hold her tongue no more. “Elise Smith, you terrible, evil busybody. What business is it of yours who my daughter talks to? Surely, your son has manned up enough that he can hold his own in a conversation.
As I recall, you never approved of Bobby as a friend, anyway.”

Mrs. Smith gasped, her eyes trying to open wide with indignation.
“Justine Fennimore, how dare you? Bobby was just a boy, and I certainly never wished him dead.”

“
Really? I should quote back to you some of the things you said over the years.”

“Don’t you dare,” Mrs. Smith said with a
nasty finger pointed at my mother’s face.