Ada Unraveled

by Barbara Sullivan

  Now Eddie stood outside, glorying in the feel of wind on his skin. Standing beside the small outbuilding that Luke was so afraid of. Something about snakes. It had been decades since he’d been outside. It frightened him. It thrilled him.

  Around him, the winds were blowing with a mix of emotions as great as his own, twisting his long hair about his head, taking his mind with his matted hair. He was alive! He’d been discovered. He would get help now.

  Eddie was taking refuge from the people he’d dreamt so long about being with. He found their presence overwhelming. Needed to be alone. To watch from afar for a few restful moments. Besides, they’d started arguing.

  Eddie tried to block out the shouted emotions coming from the long, disjointed house. Beyond the house, to the east, he could see the fires approaching in the distance, a long band of orange and blood-red on the horizon—looking like a spreading wound ripping open the uneasy seam between land and sky. Earth and heaven.

  And between the howling gusts, angry voices flew like hawk cries--carrying only snatches of meaning.

  “How long have they…down there? How long…known…horror?” It was the big woman, one of his many aunts. Her voice carried well.

  Before, inside the kitchen, the littlest aunt with sad eyes had told him she’d thought he’d died long ago. She said they’d even had a funeral.

  No wonder no one ever came looking for him.

  “And where is Luke? Are you still helping him hide…you always knew...?”

  The words made him look around nervously, suddenly afraid the madman was out there behind him in the crazy dark. He shook his head, trying once more to clear his thoughts. Eddie was fighting the drugs by hiding the horse pills under his tongue. But a couple of times he’d been made to swallow.

  Suddenly his grandfather ran out the back door. A wiry, skinny, ancient man, he turned to yell back at the furious women, “She lived just up the street…to see her so badly, why didn’t you? She been missing for three months!”

  Eddie watched him as he went around the side of the house and disappeared into the darkness. Then he surprised himself by deciding to follow, carefully stepping across the dry grasses. But it only took a few feet down the narrow path for his legs to start hurting.

  He stopped, letting a sadness reclaim him. There was no point denying it. He was old and frail, not as old and frail as his grandfather, but in some ways…. ¸

  His breath came hard and shallow along with his disappointment.

  He couldn’t even keep up with a guy twice his age.

  The winds screamed around him as if they were being chased by something even greater and he leaned against some boulders, waiting for his heart to stop fluttering. He slid down the hot stones. He would rest a moment. He would….

  Something moved nearby him, also going down.

  Maybe it was just the wind tickling the chaparral--wind and shadows toying with the light flowing over the hill from the long disjointed house. He wedged deeper between the rocks, half-hiding, half-dreaming in the sultry stupor he’d suffered from for years.

  Since…since….

  A memory flitted into his brain. Of a time, just before his sixteenth birthday. He was sneaking back home late at night. He’d been in the fields, with Vera.

  Beautiful red-headed Vera.

  A teenager all caught up in his testosterone.

  He’d thought they were asleep. He’d thought his parents had passed out in their bed from another hard day’s drinking. So he’d quietly snuck upstairs and fallen asleep on his bed, dreaming sexy dreams of sexy Vera.

  He’d awakened in the basement, barely able to comprehend, barely able to separate real from unreal. Barely awake, barely moving, and then they’d put him under again with another needle in his arm. His mother and father.

  So long ago.

  The old man suddenly returned, making mewling sounds of fear, grabbing at his leg, his face screwed up as if in terrible pain. What should he do? Should he get the others?

  But then the shadowy presence he’d sensed before moved back up toward the house. So he knew. He knew--he would do nothing. Just like always.

  He would hide and wait for the terror to pass.

  He pushed back against the hard stones, willing them to take him in, begging them to make him as implacable as they were.

  His tears evaporated in the parching air, benefiting nothing, as his grandfather suffered his death.

  He wouldn’t tell them what he saw.

  Chapter 11: Secret Secrets

  Andrea stood and took off her jacket. She turned and draped it over the back of her chair. I stared, open mouthed again. The tortured skin on her breastbone had not been a birth mark! It was some kind of tattoo, a raised tattoo…in the shape of a cross. No, it was a full blown Catholic crucifixion, complete with suffering Christ! And I knew this because now I could see three more tats on her thin body. On her right shoulder was a raised tattoo of the Hebrew Star of David. On her left shoulder was an elevated tattoo of a happy Buddha. And on her back was an engorged tattoo of the Islamic star and crescent.

  How the blazes was that done? How did you raise a tattoo?

  So did this mean that Andrea was a religious zealot? I was thinking not. A religious zealot would pick just one religion to zeal about. These body art icons, or this tissue torture, was a political statement of some kind.

  The three just revealed tats looked new, not just fresh new, but angry new, bruised, reddened, infected. I glanced at the faces of the other women. Yes, they were new. The other women were as shocked as I was.

  Andrea did a model’s turn so we could take them all in again.

  “What are you thinking Andrea?” It was Elixchel.

  Finally, grinning from ear to ear, Andrea pulled herself up as tall as her little body would allow and said, “So, what do you think of my latest, girls?”

  She was no longer a petite and feisty—even edgy--Peter Pan, she was a warrior elf with pink and purple spiked red hair and painful-looking scars.

  I realized I was smiling and forced myself to stop. Part of me had to like her. She didn’t give a hoot what anyone thought.

  Part of me was afraid for her.

  Ruth snapped at her angrily, accusing her of ruining her body in the name of political art—spitting out the phrase as if it were a deadly poison. Hannah defended Andrea’s need for emotional space, to be more present in her own thoughts about religion.

  Gerry worried her infections would worsen if she didn’t use antiseptics. And Elixchel cautioned that we shouldn’t speak about politics, religion or sex at our bees lest we offend someone.

  Throughout, Andrea sprinkled swear words. They flowed from her mouth naturally. I could see and feel the anger from the others at each nasty word.

  Victoria stayed silent—I wasn’t even sure she was hearing us. If her fingers weren’t steadily laying down stitches I might have believed she’d died an hour ago.

  “Okay, now that you’re awake, how about I share my secret?”

  Still standing, Andrea began. “This is mostly for you, Rachel, ‘cause the others have already heard my complaints about my childhood. My mom is a dorky doe and my dad’s a bullheaded ram. And together they made dumb sheep. That sums us up completely. Except that I’m the black sheep. I’m not what they wanted. And my not so secret secret is that my dad and I fought all the time. We were too much alike. Redheads. He was a blue collar guy, still clinging to his religion. My mom was always making excuses by labeling me a tomboy. Nice try, but not even close. I’m a lesbian.

  “I was already living with Victoria when my dad had his first heart attack. When my mom called me, when he had the second one, I went into the hospital to talk…you know, just to try to straighten….”

  She buried her face in her hands and stayed that way for several minutes. When she looked up again her pale complexion was blotchy with emotion.

  “Well, it was too late. He never regained consciousness. There wasn’t really anything more for us to say
to each other, anyway.” Andrea’s fingers toyed with the needle and thread stuck in the quilt in front of her.

  “I just wanted…to, you know, let him know….”

  She got up and walked into the hall and disappeared. It was many moments before she returned.

  I bowed my head to my sewing, feeling badly for her. She was really hurting. And now that her dad was gone, there was no way for her to make peace with him.

  My thoughts wandered out the door again, this time revisiting a trip to my grandchildren. I wished I was seeing them again tomorrow.

  I wished I could go home to bed.

  The wall clock chimed again--the whole batty tune and three solitary Big Ben chimes. Three o’clock. Good grief! Why was I doing this sew-all-night-long thing? It was horrible. My hands were burning and cramping. My stomach was churning out gallons of acid—which chewing three extra strength antacids hadn’t helped. My neck had long ago solidified into a pillar of pain. And my eyes were crisping from overexposure to 900-megawatt florescent light.

  Finally Victoria called for a break.

  The sweet smell of reheated pie was triggering my gag reflex, so seeking distraction I volunteered to wash the dishes. Gerry assisted me by drying. The others stood and leaned in various poses of weariness around the kitchen, sipping and munching.

  Suddenly Gerry asked about something I had casually mentioned hours ago, prompted by her revelation that her brother was a Sheriff’s deputy. I had told her that Matt and I had been contacted by someone asking us to revisit the circumstances around a notorious mass murder case in her brother’s jurisdiction.

  “So someone called you about the Albanes murders after all these years? That was in nineteen eighty-nine, wasn’t it?”

  “Come to think of it, that happened right around here, didn’t it?” Elixchel said, overhearing. It wasn’t hard. We were only a few feet apart.

  “Albanes?” Abigail asked.

  Victoria headed for the dining room table with Andrea in tow, carrying her dishes for her, doing penance for her anger.

  Gerry said, “Yes. That happened in Julian--a terrible tragedy. They never caught the men who did it.”

  “Men?” I prompted.

  “Wait, who are the Albanes?” Abigail.

  Geraldine briefly explained. “The Albanes family was murdered near here, killed in the middle of the night. There was some talk about the way the murders were done, that there must have been more than one assailant. But I’m interested in who called you, Rachel.”

  “Men,” Ruth murmured from across the kitchen, then sipped her tea. Over the rim of her cup, her eyes were staring off into another world. “Voice boxes were cored out. Women were abused.”

  Hannah gaped at her mother’s gruesome description, and suddenly all eyes were on Ruth again. I made a mental note to tell Matt to contact Ruth. I don’t know where she got her information from, but the details could help with his research. Maybe with artful questioning he could knock something else loose.

  “So what, they bled to death?” Abigail asked.

  “Actually I’d heard they had their throats slashed,” Andrea said sprightly, returning from the dining room. Where’d you get that their voice boxes were cut out, Ruth?”

  But Ruth wasn’t answering anymore. She’d turned slowly and was drifting away to join Victoria.

  “Cored. Strange use of words,” I muttered. Definitely no more apple pie for me.

  Gerry asked, “So who called?”

  All eyes were on me, but that was privileged information, so I just shrugged and shook my head.

  “The newspapers didn’t say anything about voice boxes. Ruth must be doing one of her psychic things again.” Andrea said, wiggling her fingers by her ears. “Your mother is truly weird, Hannah. Truly.”

  Hannah raised her brows and looked askance at Andrea. I could suddenly read her mind. She was thinking…you think my mom is weird?

  But the talk didn’t return to the Albanes and their strange deaths. Not this night, not this month.

  We were back at the quilting rack, now mired in an indolent mood. Lazy, slothful. Until Abigail told Ruth it was her time to share a secret.

  “Oh good! We’re gonna’ hear about Baby Ruth!” chirped Andrea. “What d’ya think, Elixchel? Shall we change her name to Baby Ruth? Or Babe Ruth. She had to have been a babe back in the day, doncha’ think, El-shell?”

  Elixchel loudly sighed, her exasperation over Andrea’s teasing spilling over. Ruth out did them both.

  “My guts are going bad.”

  “Mom.” Hannah.

  “No, you have to share something from your childhood,” Abigail said. “But talk to me later about your guts. Dr. Abigail cures all,” she said with an impish grin. Definitely spending too much time at home with her nurse mom.

  “No I don’t have to share. And besides I can’t remember that far back.”

  But she did. Ruth proceeded to tell a story of how she was almost hung by a neighborhood gang when she was three, because she wouldn’t stop jabbering.

  “Not a gang like the gangs of New York, a gang like Our Gang. Just kids who lived on the same street. Victoria always talked for me when I was little. She was my second mother. It delayed my speech. Then one day I began talking a blue streak and ever since then I’ve been in trouble.”

  My mind drifted away. Story-telling wasn’t working anymore. It wasn’t passing the time, it was putting me to sleep.

  My head lurched forward, and I woke with a start. Abigail giggled, I smiled sheepishly at her, and stretched.

  “You know what I’ve wondered all these years Vicky? What did I say that made them want to lynch me?”

  Victoria looked up at her sister Ruth with a genuine smile on her old face. “I don’t know. Never did. But it must have been a doozy.”

  Oh, no! That hateful sound. Dum-dum-dum-dum, on and on until DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM-DUM. Five! It was finally five in the morning

  Ruth shoved her chair back violently, crashing it to the floor, and rushed to the chiming Regulator, opened the front case and grabbed the swinging pendulum by its neck. I was certain she was going to murder it, rip its throat out. I would have. But she just stilled the irritating thing then returned, righted her chair and sat, feigning normalcy. As if the moment of madness had never happened. I expected her to make eye contact with me, but she didn’t.

  I guessed the railroad clock wasn’t digital after all.

  Her sprint to silence the demon clock had turned my attention enough to take note of the windows behind us. At first, I wasn’t sure if I could really see things on the other side of the glass, so I returned to the task at hand--but a short while later I looked back over my shoulder. Through them now I could just make out a faint light creeping across the sodden landscape. The chill air wafting off the windows also caught my attention. Day break may be here, but so was winter. Two months early.

  So I’d made it to the end of the quilt. The last few hours I didn’t think I would.

  I hoped the rising sun would soon dispel the dismal mood we had all been shoved down into, like kittens down a midnight well.

  A fuzzy-headed fatigue had silenced us for almost two hours.

  The quilt rack was again fully extended, so we could see the whole of our work. It was beautiful--charming little houses of individual styles, in colors ranging from purples and blues through maroons and dark reds, all arrayed in a village scene from an earlier century. I felt honored to have been a part of top stitching it. And more importantly, my stitching had been just fine. No grave errors, even and straight.

  Gerry interrupted my mental celebration in a sweet, sing-song voice, “Okay, Victoria. When are we going to hear one of your wonderful secrets? It’s your quilting bee and we’ve been waiting all night for you to come out with it.”

  I groaned inwardly. Please no more insipid childhood secrets.

  Victoria pushed herself back and sighed. “I’ve told you all my secrets. A woman my age doesn’t have any secrets left. Unless you
count the ones I share with my doctors.”

  But there was a sudden wildness in her eyes as if she saw something coming at her that she’d only heretofore glimpsed.

  “Nonsense. New secrets occur every day of our lives,” Geraldine Patrone coaxed gently.

  “Okay, fine. I’m old and getting older. How’s that?”

  “Won’t do. You know the rule. The secret can’t be anything we already know.” Gerry.

  Abigail giggled, a bit nervously I thought. But Victoria just returned to her final stitches, a bowed and determined silence her response.

  “Okay, if you won’t share your own secret, why don’t you tell us a story from Ada’s early childhood? In honor of her memory. Surely she must have shared one with you over the years,” the billionaire’s wife suggested.

  Was her voice growing smaller as she talked, or was it my imagination?

  Victoria’s fleshy face pinched into her worst scowl yet. She stubbornly continued to work for a moment more, then tied off a stitch and buried the thread inside the layers. She cut her needle free. She’d finished every one of her rows. Bleakly I looked down at my own slow progress, still a few inches to complete on all lines. I wasn’t alone. All the stitching fingers had come to a halt near--but not at--the end of their work. I was almost too tired to take in the sense of danger in the room.

  But not completely. Something more was going on. Something I slowly understood was the purpose of this whole night.

  And Victoria went straight to the heart of it.

  “I know why you’ve brought this woman into the group. Well I’ll have none of it.” Victoria shoved her chair back, a storm playing on her face to match the sky outside. Her eyes bored into Gerry’s.

  This woman?

  This was a new Victoria for me. She’d suddenly grown paranoid, defensive.

  Meanwhile, I felt Gerry grow smaller next to me.

  But then Victoria seemed to accept. But this new Victoria didn’t last long. Perhaps exhaustion had robbed her of her determination.