Black-Eyed Susans (10 page)

Because, make no mistake, I am terrifically
lucky. If I ever forget, the Susans remind me, in chorus. And the bread isn’t
half-bad.

“Mom!” Charlie’s shriek
carries easily from inside her room. “Where’s my blue jersey?”

I find Charlie in her underwear, hair
slapping around like wet red string. She is tossing her room, a rabbit’s nest of
dirty clothes.

“Which jersey?” I ask patiently.
She owns two practice uniforms and four game uniforms. The uniforms were “required
to play,” cost $435, and three of them looked exactly alike to me.

“Blue, blue, blue, didn’t you
hear me? If I don’t have it for the scrimmage, Coach will make me run. He might
make the whole team run because of me.” Coach. No last name necessary. Like
God.

“Yesterday, he threw Katlyn out of
practice for forgetting her red socks. She was so
embarrassed.
And it was just
because her mom washed them and accidentally stuck them in her brother’s baseball
basket. He’s on a team called the
Red
Sox. Duh.”

I pull something blue out
of the tangle of clothes on the floor. “Is this it?”

Charlie is now spread-eagled and lying
faceup on her unmade bed, deciding whether the world is ending. She cranes her neck
slightly in my direction. I note that her backpack is open on the desk, unpacked,
biology homework still flayed out. The digital clock on her dresser says nineteen
minutes to go before my friend Sasha and her daughter pick her up for school.

“Mom! No! It’s the one with the
white
number and that cool edging at the bottom. The
practice
jersey.”

“Yes, I should have read your mind.
Have you looked in the washer? Dryer? Floor of the car?”

“Why does this have to happen to
me
?” Still staring at the ceiling. Not moving. I could say,
I’m done. Good luck.
Walk out. When I shouted that very same question
of the world at the tender age of sixteen, “Coach” would have seemed like a
wasp to swat. Hard to believe I’d only been two years older than Charlie is
now.

The very best thing about landing in that
grave? Perspective.

So I peer through this morning’s
prism: a science test looming in second period, an a-hole of a coach who probably could
have used more childhood therapy than I got, and a telltale tampon under my foot.

I consider the clawed tiger on the bed, the
one wearing the zebra-printed sports bra—the same tiger that every Sunday night
transforms into the girl who voluntarily walks next door to help sort Miss Effie’s
medicine into her days-of-the-week pill container. The one who pretended her ankle hurt
one day last week so the backup setter on her volleyball team would get to play on her
birthday.

“It was a really kind gesture,”
I had told her that night when she explained why she did not need the ice pack.
“But I’m not sure it was such a good idea.”

Charlie had performed her usual eye roll.
“Mom, you can’t let the wrong stuff happen all the time. There is no way
Coach would have
ever let her play. And she set three points right
after that. She’s just as good as me. I’m just two inches taller.”

I can’t count the times that Charlie
has offered me her bits of tempered wisdom along with a little frightening Texas
grammar.

“Dry your hair, get dressed, pack
up,” I order. “You have a little over fifteen minutes. I’ll find the
jersey.”

“What if you don’t?” But
her legs are in motion, swinging over the side of the bed.

Eight minutes later, I find the jersey
behind her hamper. White number 10 on the back, nearly invisible edging along the
bottom. Strong odor of sweat and deodorant. Apparently, she’d made a half-hearted
effort to put it where it belonged. No wonder we hadn’t found it.

I stick it in her duffle by the front door
and check for red socks. Two short honks chirp from outside.

Charlie appears. “Did you find
it?”

“Yep.” She looks so perfect to
me that it hurts. Damp curls that hadn’t been sacrificed to a Chi Ultra flat iron
springing up like tiny flames. Lip gloss only, so the freckles are out. Jeans, plain
white T-shirt, the St. Michael charm that she never takes off nestled in her throat. Her
father mailed it last Christmas from overseas, a design from James Avery, the kingpin of
tasteful Christian fashion accessories. He started selling his stuff out of a two-car
garage in the Texas Hill Country in 1954. Now, six decades later, his jewelry is both
holy and pricey.

But for Charlie, this piece of metal out of
a Kerrville factory isn’t a status symbol. It is a talisman, a sign that her
daddy, in the guise of a sword-carrying saint around her neck, will keep her safe. Keep
all of us safe. Lucas had worn the good luck charm as long as I’d known him, a
gift from his own mother the first time he went to war.

“You’re good to go,” I
say. “You look especially pretty. Good luck on your test.”

She slings the duffle over her shoulder and
glances over my breakfast offerings on the table by the door.

“Nice try, but not takin’ the
booger bread.” She slips the granola
bar and the banana into the
side pocket of her backpack. Another toot of the horn. Effie will be peering out her
living room window at this point.

“This day
sucks.
”
Charlie spins out the door, leaving the air charged and a chaotic trail from the
bathroom floor to her room.

I catch the slamming screen in time to toss
a wave to Sasha, whose face is hidden by the harsh glint of sun off the windshield of
the familiar blue minivan. The glass is black, impenetrable. I can’t tell if she
is waving back.

That doesn’t mean I need to run out
and check that she isn’t bleeding on the ground, out of sight, behind the live
oak, tossed out of the vehicle while she waited patiently for Charlie. That a stranger,
with all of Effie’s stolen diggers stacked in the trunk, isn’t necessarily
behind the wheel, about to drive my fire-breathing angel off to hell.

I shut the door and lean back against
smooth, cool wood. Breathe in deep. Hope that other, more normal moms harbor similar
out-of-control thoughts about their children’s safety.

I wrap up the rejected slice of
Effie’s bread, generously lathered in strawberry cream cheese, and stick it in the
refrigerator. Lunch, maybe. Wash up my coffee cup and set it to drain.

For the next ten minutes, the erratic
whirring of the sewing machine breaks the silence. My foot, pressing the pedal. Fingers
manipulating satin. Stop. Start. Stop. Start. The background noise of my childhood
before Mama died.

Not the scrape of saw against bone.

My mind is not traveling in a row of tiny
perfect stitches. It is skipping, out of order, to the places he has planted black-eyed
Susans. My eyes close for a second and the stitches derail and zigzag like a train off
track.

The list I’d made a couple of days ago
is taped to the bottom of the vegetable drawer. Shades of Miss Effie.

In forty-five minutes, I am pressing the
pedal of my Jeep.

Long after Lydia and I
broke apart, I had returned to this place. Again and again. Maybe hoping a little bit
that she would, too.

Until I stopped.

It is different, and the same. The ducks
sail on the shivering glass. Aimless. Waiting for the day’s first crust of bread
to hit the pond.

My car is slung, alone, by the side of the
road. Lydia and I had usually ridden the bus here, from Hemphill to West Seventh.

My feet are soundless on the earth. About
here is when they used to pick up speed, ready for takeoff.

Lydia was always talking, laughing, talking
while we traveled this path. Telling me what library book she’d dragged along with
her dad’s soft old green hunting blanket and an already lukewarm can of Diet Dr
Pepper.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

Diana: Her True Story.

There’s a slight breeze rustling
things. Half of the leaves on the hackberries and pecans are still trying to make up
their minds. Is it winter or not? When Lydia and I walked here, the trees were leafy and
thick. They blocked the blazing sun like a tight football huddle, casting a dark,
intimate comfort that I wonder if only a Southerner can understand.

Anybody watching would think I was up to no
good. If it were two hours later, when bread crusts were flying through the air, parents
would tug their children away from the strange lady walking around with the rusty
shovel. They might even press the non-emergency police number tucked in their contacts
that they’d never used before.

On days like these, I wondered if
they’d be right. Whether just two or three brain cells were deciding if I was
eligible to join the woman by the tracks who lived in a tent crafted of black garbage
bags and old broom handles.

This is why I brought no one with me. Not
Jo, who would make no mistakes as she sealed the evidence. Not Bill, who would be
worried we should have brought Jo. I am sane, and I am not, and I
don’t want anyone to know.

What was that Poe quote that Lydia liked so
much?
I became insane with long intervals of horrible sanity.

The ducks and the pond are well behind me
now. I hear the rush of the ocean. Of course, it is not the ocean. It’s just what
Lydia and I closed our eyes and pretended. The only nearby route to the ocean is the
Trinity River, which threads by the park on the other side and flows on for hundreds of
miles, all the way to Galveston.
La Santisima Trinidad
—The Most Holy
Trinity. Christened by Alonso de León in 1690.

Sense of place,
Effie says.

I begin to count the pillars. One, two,
three, four. Five. The ocean is above me now. I keep striding, toward a red cow in a
purple dunce hat. He’s new.

It takes a second to realize that he’s
a unicorn, not a stupid cow. The mermaid who keeps him company a few feet away has red
hair that flows like mine and Charlie’s. Her bright green tail floats in a sea of
fish with upturned mouths that wouldn’t think of biting. Peace, love,
understanding.

None of this hopeful art was here all those
years ago, when Lydia laid out her blanket under pillar No. 5 of the Lancaster Bridge.
Now childlike graffiti covers every single concrete pier of the bridge as far as I can
see. The pillars used to be splotched with ugly green paint and strangled with the kind
of weedy vines that seem to need nothing to live.

The rush and rumble of traffic overhead.

The knowledge of a secret underground
world.

The thrilling fear that all that throbbing
chaos could crash down on you at any second, but probably wouldn’t.

The worry about what might lurch out of the
big thicket of woods nearby.

The same, the same, the same. The same.

I survey the parched dirt
floor beneath the behemoth steel and concrete structure. Still unforgiving. Hard and
bare. But he didn’t plant the black-eyed Susans under the bridge at pillar No. 5,
where I used to meet up with Lydia after my runs on the twisty running trails. He
planted them
here
—a few feet away, under a large cedar elm at the edge of
the woods. They appeared at a time of year when black-eyed Susans flourish, so I
couldn’t be sure. I just never came back after I found them. I was twenty-four,
and Lydia and I had been estranged for seven years.

A slight rustle behind me. I jerk around. A
man has emerged from behind the pillar. I grip the shovel, suddenly a weapon.

But he is not a man. He is tall and lanky,
but no more than fourteen. Pale skin, slouchy jeans, faded Jack Johnson T-shirt. A black
mini-backpack slung over his shoulder. There’s a phone with a desert camouflage
case clipped at his waist and what I’m pretty sure is a metal detector in his
right hand.

“Shouldn’t you be in
school?” I blurt out.

“I’m home-schooled. What are you
doing? You can’t take plants out of here. It’s still the park. You can only
clip their leaves.”

“Shouldn’t you be home, then?
Being schooled? I’m not sure your mother would like you along this side of the
park.” My nerves, no longer on high alert.

“I’m on a scavenger hunt.
It’s National Botany Celebration Day. Or something. My mom is over at the pond
with my sister. Teaching her the wonders of duck vision. They see, like, four times
farther than us or something.”

His mother is close by. A
home-schooling
mother who probably has used the non-emergency police number
in her phone many, many times. I have no desire to attract her attention.

There is no evidence of gathered botany
anywhere on his person. “I didn’t realize that botanists use metal detectors
these days,” I say.

“Funny.” He surveys me while
chewing a nail. “That’s a really old shovel.”

He isn’t going away.

“What are you
doing?” he repeats.

“I’m looking for something that
… somebody might have left for me when I was younger. I would never steal plants
on National Botany Day.”

A mistake. Too friendly. Too truthful. The
first light of curiosity in his eyes. He has pushed aside a brown tail of hair so I can
see them. He is a nice-looking kid. Cute, even, if he adjusted the angle of his mouth a
little more.

“Want me to help? Is there metal in
it? A ring or something? I can run my wand. You wouldn’t believe the stuff
I’ve found in this park.” He is already at my side, practically stepping on
my feet, eager, the red light on his device blinking. Before I realize it, he is
casually running the detector along my leg. Then the other one. Now he is roving up,
toward my waist.

“Hey. Stop that.” I jump
backward.

“Sorry. Just wanted to be sure you
weren’t carrying. Knife, gun. You’d be surprised who I’ve met up with
around here.”

“What’s your name?” I ask.
My heart is beating hard, but I’m pretty sure his gadget did not roam high enough
to disturb the metal device in my chest.