“Me, too,” I said, meaning it.
Because Mother was keeping something from me that was way more important than withholding a little information from the police.
And Mother had been keeping her secret a whole lot longer.
A Trash ‘n’ Treasures Tip
Shopping can be daunting at a flea market, where treasures are often hidden among the trash—like the rare photo of Edgar Allan Poe some lucky buyer purchased for a pittance and then sold for thirty-five thousand. Bet that dealer’s kicking himself. So am I—I passed it up!
Chapter Two
Slay Bells Ring, Are You Listening?
The next morning, Mother and I had same-time appointments at the mental health clinic with our respective doctors (hers, a psychiatrist; mine, a psychologist), and at a little before ten, I pulled my new used burgundy Buick into the snow-plowed parking lot. I had recently bought the “gently dented” car from Mrs. Hetzler—a friend of Mother’s in her Red-Hatted League mystery-reading club—who had shrunk so much over the years that the little woman could no longer see over the steering wheel without sitting on a Chicago phone book.
Whenever I enter the waiting room of the clinic and see all of the other patients in need of mental care, I’m reminded of a story Pastor Tutor shared in a sermon one Sunday—you know how it goes…about the room filled with looming crosses to bear, and you go, “I’ll take that little one over there.” And God goes, “That’s the one you came in with.” And you go, “Oh.”
After stomping the white stuff from our boots, Mother and I checked in with the receptionist, then hung up our twin raccoon coats. (I continued to wear mine, whether out of defiance or despair, I’ll leave for you to judge.) Then I found a chair among the other tortured seated souls, and went about selecting a dog-eared magazine from the mundane reading material (nothing too depressing, of course) scattered on a nearby end table. I chose Highlights—never saw much in Gallant, always carrying a secret torch for Goofus.
Mother, however, refused to light, flitting from one person to the next to inquire how he/she was doing, knowing not only their names, but each person’s mental condition and what medications they were currently taking, right down to asking with dramatic concern about the various side effects of those meds as based upon what she’d heard listed on television commercials.
Halfway through a Highlights story about an older and younger sister who put aside their problems to help their folks out around the house (science fiction for kids), my attention was diverted to the familiar figure of a tall, lanky, sandy-haired guy who was walking toward me from the psychiatrist’s wing.
Seeing me, Joe Lange lit up like Christmas lights, and I flashed him a big smile. We had been friends ever since community college when we’d been thrown together as partners in biology lab, where I’d had to either learn to like the irritating, know-it-all nerd, or filet him with my frog-dissecting knife.
“Hi, Brandy,” Joe said with his shy grin, planting himself in front of my chair like a palm tree. He was wearing brown corduroy slacks and a burgundy-and-gold stripped rugby shirt, which was a change from his summer attire of army fatigues. That time of year, his hair was short-cropped, not his current unruly haystack.
Allow me to explain. During college, Joe Lange—a pop-culture junkie raised on John Wayne and Superman and other macho fantasies—had joined the National Guard with the idea of playing military on the weekends, which during peacetime sounded like fun.
Then came Desert Storm.
And Joe, along with thousands of other National Guardsmen (and-women), suddenly got called into real combat and found out firsthand what war was all about. After a harrowing battle—involving a blinding sandstorm that led to heavy casualties from friendly fire—my lab partner got sent home for combat stress reaction (known in days gone by as battle fatigue and shell shock).
While Joe has never been what you’d call fully recovered, I considered him nearly normal and certainly harmless, if he stayed on his meds—as he apparently was now. Otherwise, my old pal would become a one-man commando unit—albeit a harmless one—who spent his days patrolling the woods of Wild Cat Den State Park, protecting the unsuspecting, visiting public from imagined terrorist incursion.
I patted the just-vacated seat next to me. “Join me. Good to see you back in civies.”
Joe slid into the chair. “I don’t go out to the park during the winter, you know.”
It was also hard to get used to Joe talking like a normal person and not a walking army-lingo lexicon, which usually left me in “zero-dark-thirty.”
“Yeah,” I said, “bet it gets kinda cold in those caves, unless you got a bear-size fur coat.”
“The bears out there have them already.”
“Right. Are there bears out there?” I asked.
“You bet. Wildcats, too. That’s why they call it Wild Cat Den.”
“Is that right? You learn something every day.”
Joe shifted to look at me; his features were nice enough, but everything seemed a bit askew—one eye a little higher than the other, mouth a tad wide, nose leaning a bit to one side. “Saw you at the flea market last night.”
“You were there, too? You should have said hi.”
I knew Joe collected televison and movie memorabilia, like Star Trek and Star Wars. He even wrote articles online, including one that made a compelling if nonsensical case that the science-fiction show Firefly had named its crew’s spacecraft Serenity after his hometown.
“I went early, but left after a while.” He shrugged. “Nothing but the same old junk. You know how flea markets are.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I countered. “Mr. Yeager had a first edition of the original Tarzan novel for a measly hundred bucks.”
Joe popped up like burnt bread in a toaster. “You’re kidding me! Are you serious? Who got it? You?”
I raised a calming palm. “Whoa, Big Fella. Nobody got it. But somebody almost got took.”
And I relayed the tale of the altercation that had taken place between Mother and the pudgy book scout who’d tried to take advantage of the elderly dealer.
Joe shook his head. “Old Yeager’s sure lucky your mom was around.” His sigh started at his toes and ended around his scalp. “What I wouldn’t give to own that book myself…. I only have a beat-up second edition. I’m big into ERB-dom, you know.”
To my ears that sounded like a belch followed by “dom.” “Into what, Joe?”
“ERB-dom, the fandom of Edgar Rice Burroughs, creator of Tarzan. I have lots of Tarzan books and comics and the Johnny Weissmuller DVD sets, plus John Carter of Mars and the Venus stuff and…” Joe’s eyes sharpened. “Wonder what Yeager’ll ask for it now.”
I was about to reply that Mother and I were going to see Mr. Yeager after our appointments to discuss that very thing, when the receptionist-behind-the-glass motioned that my doctor was ready to see me.
I bid good-bye to Joe, who had a glassy-eyed, inward expression, then headed down the therapists’ wing, arriving at a door marked CYNTHIA HAYS, PH.D., P.C, which I entered without knocking.
The large, rectangular room—its walls painted a soothing mint green—was divided into two sections. To the left was a homey area where a floral couch and two matching overstuffed chairs huddled around a coffee table on which a pitcher of water and a box of Kleenex awaited the next breakdown. I called this the blubbering section, and so far I’d managed to stay out of it.
To the right was the office area where Dr. Cynthia Hays—wearing clothes as no-nonsense as she was, a beige silk blouse and tailored navy wool slacks—stood next to her desk. She was petite and pretty, with dark blue eyes, a button nose, and a friendly smile. She seemed impossibly young to be a doctor (the woman had to be pushing thirty anyway, but looked about twenty) and my sessions with her were a lot like being lectured by a little sister.
“Hello, Brandy,” the therapist said.
“’Lo, Cynthia.” I’d been seeing Dr. Hays long enough that we were on a
first-name basis.
I took the patient’s chair opposite her. The desk she settled behind was almost comically oversized for the therapist’s small frame, but then, who could blame the woman for wanting to put as much distance as possible between herself and her troubled patients?
Cynthia began to review my file, which lay open on the desk in front of her, and as she did, her friendly smile became a frown. I squirmed and pretended to study the various college degrees on the wall behind her, which shared space with a Mary Engelbreit framed poster suggesting, LET’S PUT THE FUN BACK IN DYSFUNCTIONAL.
I could see the truth in that, but I was kind of hoping to put the “functional” back in.
When Cynthia finally looked up at me, concern clouded her eyes. She served up a rumpled smile and said, “I’ve had several calls about your behavior since our last meeting….”
“From Mother, I suppose.”
She nodded. “Yes. But also from other concerned friends.”
“Name one.”
“How about Tony Cassato?”
“Yeah, how about him?”
So, the Serenity chief of police had made good on his threat of contacting my therapist after I gave Connie Grimes—a venomous gal-pal of my sister Peggy Sue—a gentle shove into a pile of Halloween sweaters at Ingram’s department store. (The witch had called Mother and me “crazy,” and I don’t necessarily disagree, but the grimy Connie still had her nerve.)
I asked indignantly, “Isn’t it unethical for you to talk to other people about your patients?”
“I don’t talk about my patients with other people,” Dr. Hays responded patiently, “but I can listen. And whether you realize it or not, there are people who care enough about you to want to let your doctor know.”
I grunted.
Cynthia went on: “Chief Cassato said you were supposed to take an anger management class….”
“Yeah.”
“And how did that go?”
“Perfect. It managed to make me angry.”
Cynthia didn’t find that funny, and studied me with ever-tightening eyes. Then she said quietly, “What is it, Brandy? I thought we were making progress.”
I responded by reaching into my black leather Juicy Couture hobo bag that I’d wrestled away from another girl at a half-off sale, and brought out a folded piece of paper, which I slid across her desk. “I got this in the mail a while ago.”
Dr. Hays took the paper, opened it, and read the note that said, Wouldn’t you like to know who your real mother is?
Cynthia slowly set the paper down. “Surely you don’t believe this? A cruel note from some crank….”
“Of course I don’t,” I said coolly, and then burst into tears.
Cynthia came around her desk and, grasping me gently by the elbow, led me over to the blubbering section, where she deposited me on the couch beneath another framed Mary Engelbreit poster that read, SNAP OUT OF IT!
Am I the only one out here who hopes Mary Engelbreit has the occasional really, really lousy day?
Anyway, seated there in Blubber Town, I bawled and wheezed and hacked, and Dr. Hays trotted off, then trotted back and handed me a cup of hot coffee. Apparently, my crying jag called for more than a paltry pitcher of ice water.
Cynthia sat next to me as I delicately sniffled snot. I took a sip of the hot liquid, then said, “Thing is, I know it’s true!”
“Really?”
“I must’ve known deep down for a long time, but I just didn’t want to admit it…didn’t even want to think about it.”
Cynthia said gently, in a tone I imagined she reserved for talking clients down off a ledge, “It’s not unusual to feel that the parents who brought you up aren’t biologically yours. We often feel apart from our parents, alienated from them; sometimes we even hate them, and we often feel as if we’re from some other planet, let alone the same family. Sometimes, Brandy, there’s a deep desire within us to be different that can cause a person to fantasize that they were adopted…. And sometimes—”
“And sometimes a hot dog is a hot dog, Dr. Freud,” I interrupted. “What that letter did was bring everything into focus. You see, I know who my real mother is.”
Cynthia’s left eyebrow rose in a very Mr. Spock-like fashion that no doubt would have impressed Joe Lange.
I finished the thought: “My real mother is my ‘sister’—Peggy Sue.”
The doctor’s eyebrow came down but she said nothing.
“My sister, my mother, my sister, my mother…get it? Haven’t you ever seen Chinatown?”
Cynthia, to her credit after my rude outburst, gave me a tiny smile and a tinier nod. “All right. Let’s explore this. What makes you think your sister is your mother?”
“Things,” I said with a shrug. “Like the way Peggy Sue has always looked at me with disappointment. Who’s ever disappointed in their sister? I mean, you may dislike them, resent them, maybe even hate them…but feel disappointment that a sibling hasn’t lived up to her potential? That’s a mother thing!”
She didn’t deny it.
“And something else I couldn’t put my finger on till now, something else I’ve seen in her eyes that just doesn’t make sense coming from a sister—regret.”
Cynthia prodded. “Be specific. Facts, not feelings.”
I stared across the room at nothing. “When I was in the hospital last summer, in critical condition, I woke up to hear Peggy Sue saying, ‘Brandy…I’m sorry…I only did what I thought was best.’ I didn’t know what she was talking about…but it lingered with me. Then, later, when Mother and I were in a dangerous situation, Mother said to me, ‘There’s something I have to tell you about Peggy Sue.’ After the crisis passed, I asked her what she meant, and Mother denied having said it.”
Cynthia asked, “You haven’t confronted either your mother or sister about your suspicions?”
I shook my head, reached for a tissue, and dabbed at my eyes. “Mother would lie, of course, to protect Peggy Sue. And Peggy Sue? Well, that would open a real can of worms for my social-climbing sister.”
Cynthia asked, “Do you know who might have sent the note?”
I snorted. “I have one big fat suspect: Connie Grimes. She’s the reason I had to take that anger management class.”
Cynthia gave me a tiny smile. “Well, then, she was just trying to yank your chain with that note, that’s all.”
I shook my head. “No. It’s more than that. Connie knows the truth.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“Because of the way Peggy Sue behaves around her…always kowtowing to that cow’s every wish. It’s like Sis is afraid of her.” I took a deep breath, let it out, said woefully, “No, that note rings true, and it points to Peggy Sue.”
Suddenly, my sorrow turned to anger, and I set the coffee cup forcefully on the table, spilling it a little.
“And to think!” I said. “Life could have been so different for me! I could have grown up with money and had a real sister—Ashley, my niece—and lived her kind of privileged life!”
Cynthia cocked her head and countered, “But that’s not what would have happened, is it?”
I looked down at my hands in my lap. “No. I suppose not.”
“Can you imagine what your life really would have been like?”
I looked at her sharply. “I hate it when you make me do all the work. Is that what you get paid the big bucks for?”
“Sometimes, yes,” Cynthia said, then waited patiently.
I sighed. “All right, I’ll see if I can come up with a credible scenario…. Peggy Sue, knocked up the summer after high school, never goes to college, so she never meets Uncle Bob, who makes all the money that kept Mother and me afloat in the early years. Instead, her boyfriend—my father, whoever the hell he is—dumps Sis after finding out she’s pregnant, and Peggy Sue has to raise me as a single parent in a time when that was far more taboo, and we live in abject poverty and misery, including Mother, newly widowed and unable to afford mental health care
. In desperation, Peggy Sue marries a divorced guy who works at a gas station, and one night he molests me, after I start to blossom. I stab him to death with a kitchen knife, and Peggy Sue covers up the crime by burning down our shack with the body in it. But then she gets caught and, taking the murder rap for me, goes to jail where she has a lesbian affair with a female guard who—”
“I saw that movie on Lifetime too,” Cynthia said caustically.
I shrugged. “Well, at least that little exercise showed me Peggy Sue might have done the best thing for all of us.”
“If you’re right about this…”
“Oh, I’m right!”
“…then Peggy Sue was just a high school girl in a terrible situation. You’re thinking of her as the adult Peggy Sue. I’m sure you realize that it was a different time back then, and much easier to be ostracized. Keep in mind how hard it would have been, how difficult the choices were.”
“Fine, she’s a saint, but damn it, she should have told me at some point…not kept it a secret.” I smirked. “But then, Sis always has cared more about what other people think than the reality of her life.”
Cynthia said, “You’re accepting your theory as reality, Brandy. I admit it’s credible, but it’s just a theory, based on circumstantial evidence. You’ll never know until you talk it out with your mother.”
“Which one?”
“Peggy Sue.”
“Then you do think she’s my mother!”
We sat in silence for a few moments; then Cynthia—who had every right to be exasperated with me—said, “I won’t tell you what to do, Brandy…but if and when you decide to discuss this with your sister, pick a time that you and Peggy Sue can be alone and you can hear her side of the story. Remember, if you’re right about this…she’s been suffering, too.” The therapist stood. “I’m sorry, we have to end this now….”
“Jeez, and it was just getting really fun.”
Back in the reception room, which was empty now due to the approaching lunch hour, I sat and waited for Mother. I could hear her musical laughter, and the responding laughter from her male psychiatrist, coming from behind the nearest door of the opposite wing. After I cooled my heels for a few more minutes, Mother exited the office, smiling broadly.
Antiques Flee Market Page 3
