by Greg Iles
Pearlie glances at the outside door, but her expression doesn’t change.
“You won’t tell me?” I ask.
Her face tightens in what looks like anger. “Listen to me, child. What you doing running down to the island stirring things up? What good you think you gonna do? Is any good gonna come from all this? For you? For your mama? For anybody?”
“I don’t have any choice. I have to know how and why Daddy died. And I have to know why I’m the way I am. You don’t understand that?”
She looks at the floor. “The Lord works in mysterious ways. That’s what I understand. There’s a lot of pain in this world—especially if you born a girl—but it ain’t for us to question all that. We just got to deal with it as best we can.”
“Do you really believe that, Pearlie?”
Her gaze returns to me, her eyes more intense than ever. “I got to believe it. That’s the only thing got me this far.”
“What do you mean ‘this far’? To this house? This job? Working for my grandfather?”
Indignation comes into Pearlie’s face. She speaks in a quavering voice. “I work for this family, not Dr. Kirkland. I came to work for old Mr. DeSalle in 1948, when I was seventeen years old. Your grandmama, your mama, you—you’re all DeSalles. I worked for all of you. Dr. Kirkland just the man who signs my check.”
“Is that all he is, Pearlie? Isn’t he the man who says what goes? Hasn’t he always been?”
She nods somberly. “There’s always a man who says what goes. That’s what people mean when they talk about the Man. And round here, Dr. Kirkland be the Man. Everybody knows that. Now, you gonna tell him you all right or not?”
“You can tell him after I’m gone.” I’m about to turn and go when something Michael said comes back to me, accompanied by a fragmentary image from my dreams—the black figure fighting over my bed with my father.
“Did you pull the trigger that night, Pearlie?”
The whites of the old woman’s eyes grow large. “Have you lost your mind, child? What you think you’re saying?”
“Did you kill my father? That’s what I’m asking you. Did you kill him to protect me from him?”
She shakes her head slowly. “Where you going in that car?”
“To find out the truth about this family.”
“Where you gonna find that?”
“Don’t worry about it. But when I find it, I’ll let you know. And then you can pretend you didn’t know all along.”
Pearlie opens her mouth as if to speak, but no sound emerges.
I shake my head, then turn and run back up the hallway.
I expected to find Billy Neal and my grandfather talking behind the house, but there’s no sign of them. Glancing around the parking lot, I move quickly to the Audi, flicking the electric unlock button as I go.
As I grab the door handle, Billy Neal rises from behind Pearlie’s Cadillac. He’s wearing black jeans, a green silk shirt, and snakeskin cowboy boots. His eyes are as dead as the snakes that adorn his boots, but they lock onto mine with mechanical precision.
“I’ll be damned,” he says. “A lot of people think you’re dead.”
“Is that what you thought?”
A faint smile plays across his lips. “I gave it even money.”
“Why do you hate me, Billy? You don’t even know me.”
He walks up to the Audi and stares at me over the roof. “Oh, I know you. I’ve fucked girls just like you. Pampered princesses, trust fund waiting, never had to worry a day in their damn lives. And still you blow half your money going to shrinks.”
“Why do you care?”
He lays his forearms on the roof and leans toward me. “’Cause you think your shit don’t stink. You look in my direction and you don’t even see me. In the daytime, anyway. But at night it’s a different story, isn’t it? At night, I’m just the guy you’re looking for. I’ve heard about you, Miss Cat in the Hat. You like to party, don’t you? People still remember you from high school. The rich girl who loved to have fun. They still remember your aunt, too. Same story, only worse.”
“Exactly what do you do for my grandfather?”
“Things he’s too old to do himself now. Things other people are squeamish about.” Billy lights a cigarette and blows smoke across the roof at me. “I ain’t squeamish.”
I’ll bet. “Have you fired the Remington 700 from the gun safe lately?”
A bemused smile. “You’re a sneaky little piece, aren’t you?”
Suddenly I’ve had all I can take from this grease-slick urban cowboy. “You know what? I’m tired of your act. I think we ought to bring my grandfather into this conversation.”
Billy’s smile only broadens, and I know I’ve made a mistake. “That’s what I was thinking, too. You’ve been pissing him off quite a bit lately. He’s moving heaven and earth to save this town with that casino, and you’re busting your ass trying to smear the family name. He doesn’t appreciate that at all. You could ruin the whole deal, in fact. So let’s go talk to him.”
I open the Audi’s door. “I have to go somewhere first. I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”
Before I can hit the lock button, Billy yanks open the passenger door and puts a boot on the seat. “Not twenty minutes from now. Now.”
Without thinking about it, I reach behind my back, yank the Walther from the waistband of my pants, and aim it over the roof at his chest.
“This isn’t a pellet gun, Billy. In case you were wondering.”
His eyes focus on the barrel of the gun, and his smile begins to fade. Billy Neal probably carries a gun more often than not, but I don’t think he expected to find himself in this situation before seven in the morning.
“Now,” I say quietly, “take your fucking boot off my seat and back away from the car.”
“You’re one crazy bitch,” he says, laughing softly. “I heard you were, but I didn’t believe it until…”
“Now? Or last night on the island?”
The smile returns. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, I think you do.”
“You and me are gonna have some fun one of these days, honey. Like I said, I know about you. Incest is best, right?”
The blood drains from my face. What does he know about me? I want to ask, but I know he’ll only torture me any way he can.
“Get away from my fucking car!” I yell, brandishing the gun.
Billy doesn’t move. “You haven’t chambered a round.”
“There’s already one in the pipe.”
I’m only quoting jargon I’ve heard from Sean, but it’s enough to wipe the last of the smile from Billy’s face. His boot slides back across the seat and down to the gravel.
“Shut the door,” I order.
When he does, I reach down with my free hand and hit the lock button. Then I climb in, close the door, and start the engine.
Before I can pull away, Billy leans down to the passenger window. He makes a peace sign with his fingers, reverses it, then lays the V over his lips and flicks his tongue up and down between his fingers. My stomach does a slow roll. I’d love to shoot him, but I’d never make my meeting with Malik if I did. Instead, I put the car in gear and spray the asshole with gravel as I peel away from the slave quarters I once called home.
Chapter
41
My drive to New Orleans isn’t filled with thoughts of Nathan Malik, but of my aunt Ann. Though I’ve never spent much time with her, she has left a deep impression. Ann is the beauty of the family—no small feat considering my mother’s looks—and she was an overachiever until her second year of college. Head cheerleader and valedictorian in high school. Winner of the local Junior Miss pageant. Full music scholarship to Tulane. Named Queen of the Natchez Confederate Pageant in her sophomore year of college. Then she entered a profound depression and tried to kill herself with an overdose of pills. Grandpapa had her committed, and when she was released two months later, everyone—including Ann—acted as t
hough she had miraculously been healed.
She wasn’t.
But that breakdown happened before I was born. I knew Ann as the life of every family gathering—those she attended, anyway. Though four years older than my mother, Ann always seemed a decade younger. She knew clothes like nobody else. Her body was built for fashion; she could make off-the-rack stuff look like haute couture. In photos dating from the seventies—when she was just out of high school—she has the athletic body of a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model. But by the mideighties, she was cadaverously thin, and in snapshots from that period her eyes have the glaze I usually attribute to cocaine.
Whatever the source of her energy, Ann was something no one else in the DeSalle family ever quite managed to be—cool. She taught me how to dance, how to dress, how to wear makeup. She caught me smoking my first cigarette—stolen from her pack—and shared it with me. She gave me pointers on French kissing and told me how to get rid of guys whose attention I didn’t want. She advised me always to have a guy waiting in the wings—even if I was married—because the guy you were with could and probably would betray you. Keeping another guy on a string wasn’t cheating on your steady beau, she said, it was just looking out for yourself. And that, I figured, was the way cool girls worked it.
But coolness doesn’t age well. As I got older, I overheard my mother getting calls at all hours of the night, and sometimes leaving to drive hundreds of miles to rescue Ann, who by this time—I later learned—had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Riding the highs of manic episodes, she would disappear for weeks at a time. Once the Mexican police found her working as a waitress in a Tijuana bar, thanks to an international search my grandfather had initiated. I’ve often wondered if waitress was a euphemism for what Ann was really doing when they found her in that bar.
But what I remember most about Ann was her obsession with having a baby. At times this fixation seemed the root of her mental illness. Because I left home for college at sixteen, I missed many of the travails of her quest for infertility treatment. All I know is that nothing ever panned out, and the fault lies with her, not her first two husbands. Only a teenager on speed could keep up with her during her manic periods, and no one—not even my mother—can stand to be with her when she’s in the pit of depression. It’s so unfair, really. I had no desire to become pregnant, yet I’m carrying a child in my womb. Ann was desperate to conceive, but it never happened.
What brought her to Nathan Malik’s door? Was it bipolar disorder? Or emerging memories of sexual abuse? If Malik will stop playing games with me, I could have my answer in ninety minutes.
The sign for Angola Penitentiary flashes past on my right. I usually think of the island when I see that sign, think of it and then shut the memories away. But today the image that comes to me will not be banished. It’s the one-room clinic where Grandpapa treats the black families who live on the island. The clinic where ten-year-old Ann had her emergency appendectomy. A legend in our family, the story is always the same, even in its details. A storm washes away the bridge and the boats…Ann suddenly develops a hot appendix…Grandpapa and Ivy work by the light of a Coleman lantern. Ann has a severe infection, but she survives, and the crowd of laborers standing watch outside cheers in jubilation.
Yet today, a new and terrible connection closes in my brain. What if Ann’s problem wasn’t her appendix? What if my grandfather had been molesting her? Could he have gotten her pregnant? Is it possible that the “emergency appendectomy” was actually an abortion? My God. If it was an abortion—and he somehow botched the procedure—could that have been what ruined Ann’s chances for conception in later life? Before speculating any further, I dial Michael Wells’s cell phone.
“Cat?” he says, the sound of a car radio in the background.
“Yes, can you hear me? I have a medical question for you.”
“I hear you fine. Shoot.”
“How young can a girl get pregnant?”
Michael turns down his radio. “That’s a pretty broad question. Pregnancy in twelve-year-olds is relatively common in Mississippi.”
“But what’s the youngest a girl can conceive?”
“The youngest? Well, I’m not an OB. But pediatricians classify precocious puberty as secondary signs—that’s breast tissue and pubic hair—appearing before age eight in African-American girls and nine in whites.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No. But they can’t conceive at those ages. I’m not saying it’s never happened. Why do you ask?”
“I’m wondering if my aunt Ann could have gotten pregnant at age ten.”
Michael says nothing for a few moments. “You’re thinking your grandfather impregnated her?”
“Maybe. And I’m thinking that emergency appendectomy on the island might not have been an appendectomy at all.”
“Wow. That would prove he’s the one, all right.” There’s a pause, then Michael says, “When would this have happened?”
I do some quick math. “Like 1958.”
“No way. No pregnancy at ten years old. The average age of onset of menses has been declining steadily for decades. Today? Maybe one in a million that young. In 1958, forget it. I see your line of reasoning, but I think you’re into the Twilight Zone with this theory.”
I don’t know whether I feel relieved or not. “I’m sure you’re right. My mind’s just spinning with all this.”
“Ann hasn’t called you back yet?”
“No.”
“How far are you from New Orleans?”
“Ninety miles.”
“You’re taking Sean with you to see Malik, right?”
“Right. Don’t worry, Michael, really.”
“I’m going to worry until you call me and tell me the meeting is over and you’re okay.”
His concern brings a smile to my face. “I’ll definitely call you, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Bye for now.”
“Bye.”
I take the Audi off cruise control and accelerate to eighty-five. Faces swirl endlessly through my mind like a Möbius strip—my grandfather, Ann, my mother and father, Billy Neal, Jesse and Louise—but speculation as to their true relationships is meaningless. In less than two hours, I’ll be face-to-face with the man who can tell me the exact nature of his relationship with my troubled aunt, and probably the identity of the man who molested me.
At this point, that’s all I care about.
Malik instructed me to telephone him when I was five miles outside New Orleans, but I didn’t do it. Instead I pulled off I-10 at Williams Boulevard, one of the first exits at Kenner—the westernmost suburb of New Orleans—and drove to a liquor store.
I’ve been inside once, but I didn’t buy anything. I stood staring at the bottles of Grey Goose, peering at the blue-and-white image of geese flying over the French Alps. I know that bottle like I know my own face. The French flag, the frosted glass, the blue cap. My right hand rose to a 750-milliliter bottle as though commanded by a hypnotist, but at the last moment I turned and hurried out of the store.
Now I’m sitting in my parked car in front of the store, my cell phone cradled in my shaking hands. The cashier probably thinks I’m casing the place for a robbery. Or maybe she’s seen her share of recovering alcoholics fighting the same impulse.
It’s not the physical withdrawal that’s making me shake now.
It’s Malik.
I promised Michael I would take Sean with me to the meeting, but I haven’t called him. I won’t be seeing Sean again. I don’t think I need him for this anyway. The odds that Dr. Malik wants to hurt me are very low, and I am armed. What has me shaking is the possibility of finally learning the truth about myself. Whatever Malik knows, it will irrevocably change my perception of myself.
But that’s what you came for, right? says a voice in my head.
With a soft curse, I get out, walk to the pay phone beside the liquor store, and punch in the number Malik told me to call. It rings four times, but ju
st as I think it’s going to click over to voice mail, he answers.
“Catherine?”
“Yes.”
“Are you five miles out?”
“No, I’m parked in front of a liquor store on Williams Boulevard.”
“Are you near the airport?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I’m in a motel a mile away from it. The Thibodeaux. It’s a dump with an orange sign, about a mile past the airport turn, on the right. Do you think you can find it?”
“I think I’ve seen it before.”
“All the rooms are on the ground floor. I’m in room eighteen.”
“Should I just pull up to the room?”
“Yes. I’ll be watching for you.”
I start to hang up, but I sense that he’s waiting for something. “Dr. Malik?”
“Yes?”
“Do you know who abused me?”
“Yes and no.”
Shit. “Still playing games with me?”
“You’re the one who knows that answer, Catherine. Remember what I told you about trauma. The memory is repressed but intact. It’s indelible. It’s waiting for you to dredge it up. And I’m going to help you.”
“Today?”
“Today. In a few minutes, I’m going to take you across the river Lethe. To the underworld. Then I’m going to lead you back to the world of light. When you return, you’ll be whole again. You’ll have your soul back. Your memory, too.”
My palms are cold and coated with sweat. Malik’s words have not lessened my anxiety but increased it.
“Don’t be afraid, Catherine. Are you on your way?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you drinking?”
“Stone fucking sober.”
He chuckles softly. “I’ll see you when you get here.”
The phone goes dead.
I take a last look at the door of the liquor store—WE CARD EVERYBODY—then get back in my car and start the engine. Before I back out of the lot, though, I open my purse, take out my bottle of Valium, and roll one yellow pill into my damp palm. With my left hand on my tummy, I whisper, “Forgive me, baby girl. Just one more,” and dry-swallow the pill. Then I back out and join the stream of traffic headed toward the airport.
