If that is Shelby calling my name, she’ll be so disappointed in me. But after the day I’ve had, I needed the release. The burned bootleg guitar, photos of Mom and Mason and Johnny, my conversation with Pop in the hospital, finding out that he was with Mason on the day Mason died, Johnny in the ICU, Mom bringing up blood types again and running out to pay a visit to Miss Patterson about God knows what, thinking for one second that Shelby and I were both Johnny’s!
It all feels eerily connected somehow. Fucking life-size puzzle pieces right in front of our faces, waiting for someone to put it all together. The whole picture forever changing life as we have known it. Precisely why I’m here. Fighting provides an instant grasp of who I am, what I am made of. I’m still me—Ace Cooper—aren’t I?
“A-a-ace!” The shrill gets louder. A complete panic. Just like the day she found Pop in the woods.
I charge through the back barn doors, climbing to the top of a stack of hay bales—hillbilly bleachers. The place reeks of smoke, beer, sweat, blood, and is packed from the ring to the walls with people. People who get off on all of it. People unlike Shelby.
What is she doing here? And what the hell is the matter now!
She shoulders through the crowd, straight into the heart of the fighting ring. No ropes, no particular barriers other than a human square formation of onlookers as hungry for blood as the fighters.
I’ll never make it to her. I wave my arms and whistle, but she doesn’t see me. And if the fighters see her, it doesn’t stop them; they continue exchanging blows.
Then I see something I thought I’d never see. Raelynn, here with one of the fighters and as close as she can get to the action, pulls Shelby by the waist and away from flying fists.
“He’s out back,” I read Raelynn’s lips. “Go around.” She points out the safer route—going out the front and walking the exterior to the back—anywhere other than the middle of the ring.
I jump down from the hay bales and sprint around the perimeter of the barn to meet her. A week without seeing her, without feeling her body meld into mine, has felt like forever. But the look on her face is not I’ve missed you and I’m so happy to see you. The look on her face is terror. The puzzler—she’s figured it out. She collapses in my arms, shuddering uncontrollably.
“What the hell were you thinking. You could’ve been killed.” An overstatement, not killed, but she could’ve been seriously hurt.
“I think I almost was,” she cries in agreement.
I don’t think we’re talking about the same thing. “What’s wrong? Why are you shaking?” I push away, looking her over.
She looks over her shoulder, like she’s expecting someone. “Miss Patterson…your mother…where is your mother!”
“Miss Patterson has you this scared?”
“Your mother…call her,” Shelby demands. “Do you know where she is? I think she might be in trouble.”
“She’s fine. I can’t call her here, anyway.” No service, too remote.
“How do you know she’s fine!”
“I talked to her on the way home from the hospital. She was headed to Knoxville.”
“What time was that?”
I shrug. “Before sundown.”
“But she was at Miss Patterson’s.”
“Before that, yeah.” I told Mom how Pop had confessed to me that Mason suspected Miss Patterson was selling pills to Maisy. So Mom changed up her strategy. “She stopped in for a ‘visit.’” Minus the interrogation. “Apparently like you did.” I hug her to my chest. “You’re okay. Mom’s okay. She has to be in Knoxville by now at Miss Piper’s…a pawnshop…following up on another fairy godmother lead. Who is that woman?”
“Not who we think she is.” Shelby shudders, looking over her shoulder again.
“Let’s get out of here. Find a place with service. We’ll call Mom.”
With “Mom,” she loses it. Her eyes flood. Her knees buckle. Her cries are incoherent.
I all but carry her to the Jeep.
I drive out of the hollow. Shelby says nothing. Still looking over her shoulder, her eyes fixate on the passenger side mirror.
“You’re safe,” I say, rubbing her thigh.
She doesn’t respond, not even to my touch.
I call Mom as soon as we are in service. She’s leaving Miss Piper’s and headed back to Lexington. We should meet her there, stay with her until everything gets ironed out, she says.
Mason’s Ibanez wasn’t the only thing Miss Patterson had pawned. She’s been pawning stuff, a lot of stuff, for years. Mom hasn’t figured out the significance of it yet, but she has a hunch that it is significant.
We pass the county line. Shelby says nothing. At least she stares straight ahead at the road now.
By the time we hit the freeway, her eyes are closed. Resting, relieved, or exhausted? They open every now and then when we pass under interstate lights, illuminating the Jeep in the dark. But she never sets them on me.
A few blocks from van den Berg’s apartment in the sky, I take a detour to the hospital.
“This isn’t your Mom’s,” Shelby says, finally a response.
“There’s something you should know,” I preface, pulling into the hospital garage.
“I already know. My mother told me this morning. The question is why are you just telling me now.” She looks at me like I am a stranger, no one to trust.
“It wasn’t mine to tell,” I deploy the consciously noted line that Shelby said to me the night of the smudging. A cop-out, maybe. But it’s the truth. It should’ve come from her mother…years ago.
“And now is the time!”
“I know the timing sucks.” One more missing link to process on top of whatever is going through that big beautiful brain of hers, however Miss Patterson may have disturbed it. “But Johnny’s up there right now in the ICU. His bus crashed. They don’t know if he’s gonna make it. I don’t know, maybe you should see him?”
“Maybe you should see him.” Her eyes are spiteful. Now she thinks she knows something I don’t.
“Me?” Sure, I thought for a moment that Johnny might be my biological father. But not after my conversation with Pop in the hospital.
“It doesn’t make sense, but it does make sense. They’re both musical. You’re musical. She was in a band. He still is. You’re starting one.”
“Who is musical?”
“Johnny and my mom. Or…Maisy,” Shelby forces herself to say it, like she has no right to call Maisy “Mom.” Like Maisy isn’t her mom? “What does it mean! What do we do? One blunder changes the last eighteen years? She may not be the mother I would have chosen, but she’s the only one I’ve ever had.”
“But Johnny wrote that note to you.” Poem, verse, whatever it was.
“He didn’t stick around long enough to know if he was writing it for a girl or for a boy. It was probably some stupid band/car pact. They’d name the kid Shelby.”
Ah, yeah, pretty much. “What are you saying. You think I’m Johnny’s? Johnny and Maisy’s. No offense, but I don’t want your mother.” Shut up, Cooper, you’re not helping! What is she saying?
“And I don’t want your father!”
Maisy’s my mother, making Johnny my father? And Pop is her father, making Mom her mother? Nah. “‘My father and his music. Your mom and her learning. Are you sure we weren’t switched at birth.’ You said that. You laughed about that! The day I first played for you. What are you saying. Did you know something then?”
“No!” she retorts. How dare I question her integrity when I’m the one who got caught with the bombshell.
“That’s what your mom said? What Miss Patterson said?” That I’m Johnny and Maisy’s. “Whoever said it lied.” My teeth gnash on the word; it can’t be the truth.
“Nobody said it. I read it with my own two eyes in Miss Patterson’s journal—the ‘record’ of our births—‘wren tattoo ankle boy.’”
“My mom has a tattoo?” What the hell is she saying?
“My mom
…Maisy,” she forces again, “has an ankle tattoo of a wren…the bird, remember! The ‘wren feather.’” She air quotes the significance of the feather she chose for my smudging.
“That ‘record’ doesn’t prove anything. It’s not clear at all. It could be ‘Wren tattoo ankle boy’—uppercase W—proper noun Wren. You know, like Wren has a tattoo on her ankle, and Wren had a boy.” And now I sound like Shelby, calling my mom by her first name! I pull my phone from the console. “We’ll settle this once and for all.”
I text my Mom:
Do you have a tattoo on your ankle?
She texts back:
No.
She must be driving. I wait for her to pull over. She does, and then safely elaborates:
If I had a tattoo, it wouldn’t be on my ankle, LOL. Why?
If she knew why, she wouldn’t be laughing. I end the conversation. Is it even one to be had.
Nothing. Drive safe. Love you.
I do love her. I have loved her—my mother—all my life, even when I thought I didn’t. And the more this mystery plays out, the more I am aware of that love. The more I wish I would’ve honored that love all these years instead of having taken her for granted.
“The timing sucks, doesn’t it,” Shelby bites, somehow knowing I didn’t get the answer I wanted.
“Even if there is any truth to it, it means nothing. I’m not calling my mom ‘Wren,’” I jab at the messenger. My hands, still feeling the results of the fights, make me think twice about getting out and taking an actual jab at the garage wall. It doesn’t change a damn thing! “At least we’re not brother and sister,” I dismiss.
“Right!” she cries.
Then we just sit there, wondering how that’s any worse than being switched at birth.
Since we’re already at the hospital, and on the heels of our penetrating conversation in the Jeep, Ace decides to check in on Johnny. He tried earlier when he was here with his father, and after Wren delivered the troublesome news about Johnny’s condition. Being Wren’s son carried no weight when it came to the stringent “family only” ICU visitation policy. Maybe the night shift staff will be too busy keeping their eyes open to concern themselves with red tape, Ace hoped.
If they knew the truth: Ace is probably the only family Johnny has.
My brain full to its stem with the truth, I stay as far away from any more of it as possible. Yes, I wait downstairs near the ER, near the main exit. Given that Mr. Cooper was discharged earlier today, I figure it’s as safe as it gets here.
The thought of going up to the NICU crossed my mind. But Wren isn’t there. So they probably wouldn’t let me in. I’d only look like a baby-napper, peering through the glass. Would it help make sense of anything? Switched at birth—does that even happen outside of TV and books.
If we were switched, the hospital didn’t do it. We would’ve been switched in that ambulance before we even got here. “Oh, Shelby, dear…I never meant…” Miss Patterson said. Surely she didn’t mean to do it. Maybe I overreacted. She didn’t chase me down in her Caddy. Is she okay? Will anyone help her? Can anyone help her.
But if we were switched, wouldn’t the hospital have realized it. Ace and I apparently spent our first few months of life here. Shouldn’t they have realized it by then? There has to be a way—tests or something—to distinguish to whom a child belongs. Then again, why would they test with no one contesting.
And to be switched for eighteen years, Ace is right: what difference does it make.
Maybe it will make a difference for him, finding out that he is the son of a quasi-famous musician when he wants to be a musician. When the only father he has ever known refuses to support such a dream. A father who if he is biologically mine, wouldn’t want to be my father.
The mental picture is repulsive enough to quash any appetite I thought I had. I throw away the half-eaten bag of Cheetos from the vending machine, without even feeling guilty. Normally I would save them for later. Waste not, want not.
Ace is just as disturbed by the premise that my mother may biologically be his mother. What can she offer him that Wren can’t. What can she possibly add to his life. Wren could add to mine. Admitting that much feels wrong, traitorous. Considering that with mandatory and proper resources, my mother is finally making a legitimate attempt to be a better version of herself.
The only thing I foresee coming out of the truth is guilt. My mother and Ace’s father are vulnerable enough as is. Can they handle it? Will it derail my mother’s recovery? Will it throw Boone right over sanity’s edge?
It is as kinnected as Grandpa said. There’s Grandpa, and there’s Enisi, and Ace has grandparents too. How does this affect them. There is Miss Patterson. Will she go to jail? What will the community that depends on her do?
I should have left it alone. If I hadn’t gone snooping into my father’s death, none of this would’ve come out. None of this changes the reality that he is gone.
Johnny ran out. Wren ran out too, technically. Boone and Maisy did more harm than good by staying. Mason, despite reputation, did the honorable thing. And now I may not even be able to call him my father.
The motorized opening of the ER doors—a woman’s cry coming through it—calls my pirouetting thoughts in yet another direction.
“Help! Help us! Hel-l-lp!” It’s Destiny’s mother. She and Destiny’s father support Destiny by the waist, each of her arms wrapped around their shoulders. Destiny looks limp, lifeless, her chin hanging to her chest. “Wake up! Stay with us, honey,” her mother pleads, patting her cheeks.
I run toward them from the end of the hallway, only to stop when I see the swarm of personnel in scrubs. They place Destiny on a gurney and sweep her away into a room before I can blink.
Amid the shuffling of feet, voices calling out assessments and orders, and beeping of machines, the blanks are filled in in a cramped corner.
“I know it’s hard, but please, stay back. Let them do what they need to do. They will do everything they can for her. The best thing you can do for your daughter right now is talk to me,” a low, controlled voice says. “What did she take?”
“This…” Destiny’s mother pulls an empty cough syrup bottle from her purse. I can see its silhouette through the sheer curtain.
“And Lord knows how many of my pills,” her father adds.
“What kind of pills?”
“Prescription,” he defends.
“Opiates?”
He nods.
“How long ago?”
“We found her two hours ago,” her mother says.
“Two hours.” That calm voice teeters in warning personnel, “Suspected opioid overdose. We’re working against the clock here, folks!” before sliding reflexively back to collected. “Was she conscious? Able to talk to you when you found her.”
“She was drowsy but awake,” her mother says. “Awake enough to drink most of that gray tonic.”
“Gray tonic?” The voice says what I am thinking. They must have visited Enisi for help.
“Charcoal?” her mother says, questioning what it was Enisi gave Destiny and its appropriateness.
“Activated charcoal on board, folks!” The voice relays again. “Was the charcoal given at another facility? Another hospital? Urgent care?”
“No. No. It was given by a lady in our community.” Her mother’s voice chokes up at the vague and unprofessional administering, hoping she made the right decision in trusting Enisi. “She said it would buy us some time in getting here.”
“If given shortly after, it can significantly reduce the absorption of whatever she took. That’s a good thing.” The woman behind the voice pats Destiny’s mother on the shoulder and joins the other personnel at Destiny’s gurney.
“I told you, we should’ve called 911,” her father whisper-scolds.
“And what, involve the Patterson woman,” her mother scolds back.
“This ain’t Miss Patterson’s fault.”
“It’s yours, for having those damn pills in the
house. And don’t think I don’t know where you get the extras. Ten dollars a pop for pills prescribed to that woman!”
“Shhh!”
“You should ask yourself why she doesn’t take them, why she ditches them off on everyone else. Maybe you shouldn’t take them either. That could be you lying on that bed,” she says, as if it should be he and not Destiny.
“The money goes for good. Helps pick up the slack for all her charity work.”
“Charity,” she snarls, before she cries, “does this look like charity to you!”
“If I could trade places with her, I would.” He cries, too.
No sooner than I walk through the double door of the ICU, working eyes stop and dart in my direction. As if set to the same timer, they all glance from me to the desk. I guess check-in is a requirement, even at this hour.
“Can I help you?” a young nurse behind the desk asks. She gives me that look. The one we all try to hide but have when reaching to place a person we’ve met or seen before.
Is looking like Johnny enough to be considered family?
“The shiner!” she says, much too cheerful, pulling her phone from the pocket of her scrubs.
Shoot. I forgot about the badge I’m wearing on my face, more so on my cheek than on my eye and more so red than purple at this stage. I turn my other profile to her, the one minus a shiner. The side of my face that says I’m not looking to start trouble.
“Yes, I know you.” She swipes through images before thrusting the phone at me. “The ‘boxing baby cuddler.’” She giggles.
Never thought I’d be thankful for that picture. I turn the shiner back to her and say, “In the flesh.” If it gets me in to see Johnny, I’ll post it to Instagram myself.
Just Shelby Page 25
