by Mav Skye
As they took off their jackets and dried out by the fire, Chev talked non-stop about the game and the two goals he scored. Both Chloe and Tanya oohhhed and ahhed and giggled when Chev took a bite of pizza without slowing down, and he sounded like he was talking another language entirely.
Shayla sat on the floor directly in front of the fire, her hair a fluorescent blue in the light, texting on her phone and nibbling on pepperoni she plucked from her pizza slice.
Chloe worried the girl wasn’t eating again, and told herself to keep a better eye out for Shayla’s eating habits.
Chev lay down his fourth piece of pizza. “Aunt Tanya, can I have some quarters for the arcade? Pleeeeeease.”
He blinked his eyes like an innocent lamb, which he knew would win over Tanya every time. She laughed as she searched through her purse and finally emerged with quarters and a couple of dollars to make change.
He ran over to Shayla and grabbed her arm, yelling, “Come on! Come on!”
“Leave me alone.” Shayla yanked her arm back, but finally gave up to Chev’s pestering. “Fine!”
Chloe said, “Chev tell your Aunt thank you.”
“Thank you, Auntie!” he said, and both he and his sister wandered up the spiral staircase.
Chloe and Tanya sneaked looks at one another, both quiet until their tall waiter with a Mohawk interrupted them. “Can I get you ladies a refill on root beer?” He flexed his arm muscles which made Tanya giggle.
Chloe noticed the Insane Clown Posse tattoos on his inner forearm and briefly wondered if he was on her list of parolees that she hadn’t met up with yet.
Chloe met his eyes and said, “I think I’ll take a Bud Light.”
“No problem,” he said, “Bottle or Barrel?”
“Barrel.”
Tanya glanced at her glass and said, “Better bring me one, too.”
“Alrighty, two Bud Lights coming up.” He left the women alone.
Chloe played with her napkin, trying to think where to begin or even if she wanted to have this conversation. She needed to talk with Tanya, but didn’t want to. The fire was at her back and warmed her from her feet to her head. It was comforting.
Her Aunt spoke first. “The clown at the hospital. He a friend of yours?”
Chloe shredded the napkin in long strips. Her Aunt hadn’t bought the story after all. Chloe had no doubt that Wes had told her about their conversation before she had chased the clown down the hall. She decided that she wanted some of her own questions answered before she satiated her Aunt’s curiosity. “When I first started seeing Doctor Morgan, you were my legal guardian, and you made the best decisions you could for me, but when I turned eighteen, I was no longer in your legal custody. It was my choice to continue the medication or quit it when I did. Not yours. Not only that, it was illegal for Doctor Morgan to share my information with you without my consent.”
This time it was her Aunt’s turn to squirm in her seat.
Chloe said, “You’re a lawyer, Aunt Tanya. You already know all this. You also need to know, that you didn’t just break the law, you broke my trust. I trusted you, Elogi.” Tears threatened to fall, but Chloe held them back and waited for her Aunt to speak.
Tanya patted her graying hair that was swept into a bun. “If you had any idea what condition you were in when I gained guardianship of you… Doctor Morgan made it very clear. You couldn’t just stop taking the medication he’d started you on. It’s a lifetime thing.”
The waiter set down both their glasses on the table. “Is there anything else I can get for you?”
Neither of the women glanced up at him.
Chloe continued to shred the napkin. “I think we’re good.”
He left silently.
Chloe took a sip of her beer, but she couldn’t taste it. “What kind of medication, Auntie?” She gave her Aunt a sarcastic, Pollyanna smile.
“Don’t be like this, Nvda,” her Aunt sighed. “Look, I don’t know if this is the right time.”
Chloe’s jaw locked, “If not now, when? When is the right time, Tanya?”
Her Aunt was used to being the questioner, not the one being questioned. She squirmed in her chair, then finally sipped her own beer. “I don’t know. That’s the thing; I didn’t think there was ever going to be a right time.”
Chloe pressed, “Is this really how you want me to live? Constantly looking over my shoulder for clowns? Always in a state of panic. I need to know why I see them, dream them. I want to know about my Etsi, your sister. Why after all these years do you not even mention my mother’s name? I’ve never seen so much as a picture of her.”
Her Aunt swallowed hard, folded her hands on the table, and gazed down at them. “I had a decision to make when I came down here to get you all those years ago, Nvda Ayita. Either I leave you in a vegetative state for the rest of your life or let them use a clinical trial drug on you.” Tanya reached her hand out and clutched Chloe’s. Tears slid down her cheeks. “And it worked. Look at you: All grown up, happily married with children of your own. You’d still be in the hospital bed if I didn’t let them try.”
Chloe leaned her face into her free hand, thinking. “I can’t even remember the name of it.”
“Of what?”
“The medication.” Chloe could see why her Aunt did what she did then. But what about now?
Tanya was still withholding something from her. Chloe said, “Okay, so they gave me a drug when I was younger to make me forget, and it erased the trauma so I could move on. I get that. But what I don’t understand is… why don’t I remember now?”
Her Aunt said, “Remogene. It makes you forget your entire life before the pill. It erases the past, sort of speak.”
Chloe repeated, “Remogene.” She’d never looked it up, never thought to. When she was younger, she’d taken what the doc and her Aunt had given her without question. It still didn’t answer what she truly wanted to know. “I understand that, but why can’t I remember now?”
Tanya squeezed her hand, desperate to get her point across. “Because, Nvda, one has to stay on Remogene for the rest of their life for it to continue to work. There’s a part of the brain that loops the bad memories in circles over and over, trying to make sense of a horrifying situation. A person with PTSD is caught in this Dante’s Inferno, where the worst moments of their life replay over and over. Remogene blocks that process. It blocks those replayed loops entirely. The clinical trial results even suggested that those memories were entirely erased, but in a small percentage of patients, the memories were stored in another part of the brain. Until the medication stopped it was impossible to tell who was which.”
“Wow.” Chloe touched the scar on her head. The brain was a mystery. The sole function was to protect and provide. Based on what her Aunt just said, Chloe wondered if the brain could perceive that the medication would remove memories, so it stored them elsewhere. Perhaps those memories were needed to survive, to sense an existing threat.
Her Aunt continued, “The project was shut down years ago from too much tampering. At first, they used it for war Veterans, abuse victims, and then they were given permission to use the drug on rehabilitating criminals. On criminals without a conscience, the trial failed, because memory storage works differently in their brains.
“At some point, money changed hands. A plot emerged that it could be put into water sources, soda, beer… you name it. The FDA pulled back, and the project stopped dead in its tracks. However, it was approved to continue for patients already on the trial due to possibly devastating results pulling them off it, and for future studies.” Chloe waited while Tanya took another big swig of beer. “And?”
“And?” She met Chloe’s eyes with a steady gaze.
Chloe said, “Am I still on it, Tanya?”
Her Aunt broke eye contact and looked away.
“Has Wes been giving it to me?”
Tanya put a hand over her face.
Chloe stood. “That’s what I thought.”
Tanya
reached across the table and grabbed Chloe’s hand. “Chloe, I… you need to understand that what you’ve been through is horrendous. People don’t recover from that. You can’t recover from it. It’s better this way.”
Chloe yanked her hand away and said, “Is that what you truly believe or is that what Doctor Morgan told you?”
Her Aunt’s cheeks bristled red. “Chloe, I…”
“I’m going to get the kids, and we are going home.”
“But I promised Chev I’d take him to the library tonight.”
Chloe tried to shake her clouded mind jumping from her Aunt’s confession to a casual occurrence such as taking a child to a library. “Fine. Okay. Take him to the library. I’m going to be out for a while. I’m not sure when Wes will be home.”
“Oh, I already talked with him, he’ll be home in an hour or so when I drop the kids off. You should talk to him, Chloe. He’s really upset with you.”
“He’s upset with me?” Chloe asked incredulously, pointing at herself. When she began to shake, she didn’t know if it was from anger or a deep sense of betrayal that had settled into her bones, causing her blood to burn.
Her Aunt nodded. “Go ahead, honey, you look like you need a moment.”
Chloe said, “It’s not a moment I need. I need all those years you stole from me. I need my Etsi. I don’t even remember her name!”
Aunt Tanya’s quick intake of breath told Chloe she’d gone too far.
She swiped her coat and purse in one quick movement and left, pausing by the spiral staircase when Chev and Shayla came flying down. Shayla had done a double take when she saw Chloe. “Are you okay?”
Chloe said, “Yes.” Then. “No. I gotta go. Watch over Chev, will you?”
“Yeah, sure.”
Chev said, “Mom, Mom, my friend was here in the arcade just now. He left, but when he comes back will you meet him? Huh?”
Chloe frowned at the reference to the friend again. Who was he? She’d have to investigate later. “Maybe later, honey, okay? I’ve got to go.”
“Sure, Mom.” She went to leave and felt his arms around her waist.
Chev said, “Love you, Mom.”
Chloe hugged him back. “I love you, too.”
And then he whispered, “You don’t have to be afraid of the clowns anymore. I know they aren’t in Shayla’s closet, my friend told me so.”
Chloe didn’t know why but she felt uncomfortable with this friend of his. Perhaps it was because she hadn’t met him yet. He was probably in the same classroom and lived just down the street.
Chev said, “Clowns aren’t scary. They are really funny. That’s what my friend said.”
Chloe hugged him again and said, “Sometime soon, you and I will sit down and have a chat about this friend of yours. I’m glad you aren’t afraid anymore.”
Chloe left the restaurant dazed and unsure of where to go. She considered going to the office like she had the night before, but her mind was not on her parolees.
Diana held the book club at the library tonight, but Chloe couldn’t remember the time. Besides, that was where her Aunt was taking the kids.
She thought about visiting the Pratt sisters, but Chloe didn’t want the memories right now.
Not yet.
An onslaught of rain trampled the windshield; Chloe could barely see, even with the wipers turned on high. She tapped her brakes and looked right, then left as she left the restaurant’s parking lot.
Which way?
Chloe found herself going left, and a few minutes later pulling onto the highway. She took the next exit and pulled into the parking lot of Wes’ restaurant that was still under construction. It had previously been a Chinese restaurant, and there had been red beams and silk like panels lining the walls. He’d stripped them out and put in new drywall with sprayed texture.
Through the windows, she could see Wes opening up a can of paint while a pretty young woman in Daisy Duke shorts and a paint splattered tank top rolled Navy Blue on the walls. Who the hell was that?
Chloe bit her lip when the young woman suddenly turned and tapped Wes’ sleeve with the roller, leaving a huge gob of blue. She giggled and quickly turned back toward the wall when he looked at his sleeve and waggled his finger at her.
When he brought her the fresh can of paint, Wes dipped his pinky in it and drew a Navy blue pentagram on her arm. She giggled the whole time and pushed him away when he finished.
Chloe gripped the steering wheel, feeling like she’d hit the roof of the car if she let go. A swarm of emotions rushed her.
She threw the car into drive, flipped her blinker on and drove back onto the highway heading back toward Spindler.
The rain let up, and mist eagerly spread its tendrils across the highway. Chloe could barely see three feet in front of the car after she exited the off ramp. The lamp poles faded out on Main Street, and she kept thinking she’d see someone walking on the sidewalk only to have them disappear.
As headlights approached and passed, the remnants of a burnt down apartment building drew her eye. A sign on a three-foot brick span of leftover building spelled out Spindler’s Roost. She slowed, wondering why the city hadn’t knocked down the remaining wall remnants. Mist snaked around the walls, and when headlights once more approached, Chloe spotted something squatting in the shadows. It was dressed brightly.
Chloe’s stomach dropped and she stepped on the brake. As the car passed, she saw its white painted face, the other half black. The jagged scar down the middle. The old pink bunny ears.
Mr. Jingles waggled his fingers at her—Hello!— and then she heard brakes screech.
Chloe started and realized she was sitting in the middle of an intersection. Her light was red, and the man who had stomped on his brakes gave her the finger as he drove around her.
She turned back to where the clown squatted amongst the broken bricks, but either he had already gone… or he had never been there.
Chloe frowned, shook her head and continued. When she saw the Sara’s Diner sign warmly lit up on the street corner, she knew where she wanted to go. The fog swirled away from the door of the restaurant as if the place itself repelled it.
Sara’s was a place of clarity and good coffee, and that was exactly what Chloe needed right that second.
Chloe parked under a street lamp and sat back in the seat. She pulled out her cell and checked messages. There were none. Slipping her phone back into her purse, Chloe got out of the car. She walked straight to Sara’s, her shoes making eerie, clear clicks on the sidewalk. The sound carried and echoed. It was so loud that at one point she stopped and looked behind her to see if someone was following.
There was no one.
Frowning, Chloe glanced toward the bricks where the clown had been squatting. There was nothing to see except the fog.
Rushing to the diner door, she swung it open. The bells on the handle rang gently. Chloe stepped into the light and headed to the counter to sit when she heard her name called from the corner of the restaurant with the booths.
Chloe turned.
Two identical young women ran toward her with open arms, squealing her name, just like they had done when she had babysat them all those years ago.
14
Angels and Devils
THE PRATT SISTERS EACH WRAPPED AN arm in Chloe’s and marched her over to a booth in the corner of the diner where Diana was sitting with a man who looked to be about Chloe’s age. He had dark wavy hair, wore a loose-fitting gray hoodie and jeans. He was typing on his cell, a pained expression on his face. There was a familiarity about him.
The girls squeezed into a booth with Chloe in the middle as if they were young again. How three grown women fit on a single booth seat, Chloe didn’t know, but she didn’t mind.
Diana clapped her hands together. “Chloe! I’m so happy you decided to join us tonight. It appears you’ve already met the Pratt twins.”
Sharon nibbled on a French fry. She pulled it out of her mouth long enough to say. “More like w
e know her.”
Diana raised her eyebrows.
“She’s still remembering us,” assured Erin, and patted Chloe on the arm.
Diana jutted her thumb at the man in the hoodie. “And this is Trooper Hanks. He joined our book club several weeks ago.”
Trooper Hanks glanced up from his cell. Chloe was taken back by his dark brown eyes and gentle smile with a very familiar looking dimple. He stuck his hand over the table, avoiding knocking over the Pratt sisters’ milkshakes.
As Chloe reached to shake his hand, he said, “You can call me Donny.”
Chloe froze with her hand halfway over the table. Donny Hanks.
He paused at the look on her face, and recognition filled his eyes as well as surprise.
Erin patted Chloe on the shoulder. “He was at the pool that day that I—”
“Shhh….” Sharon said. “You’ll make her go catatonic again.”
Donny grasped her hand and instead of shaking it, patted it with his other hand. “Hey, are you all right?”
Chloe just stared at him. Her mouth open slightly, memories shifting in and out of her mind like photographs.
There was a loud clank! And then Diana saying, “Oh my, so terribly sorry!”
The noise—together with the ice-cold water on her lap—jolted Chloe out of that moment. Her hand parted with Donny’s, and the Pratt sisters shrieked as Sharon scooted out of the booth seat, tugging on Chloe’s left arm while Erin pushed her from the right.
Sara rushed from behind the counter with napkins and towels.
All the women talked and laughed as the mess was cleaned up, ice cubes whisked onto an empty tray and dish towels shared to dry the water off coats and pants.
Chloe stood and watched them all bustle about when Sara tugged at her arm. “Chloe! So lovely to see you again. Oh, you are soaked. Let me take your coat.” Chloe unbuttoned her coat and gave it to Sara as Sara handed her a towel. “How about a nice cup of coffee? On the house.”
