The Good Daughter

by Alexandra Burt

  Bobby’s phone rings and I hear his voice in the background, talking, pausing, talking.

  “Dahlia,” he suddenly calls out to me from the porch, his voice urgent and serious.

  I don’t answer—I’m almost annoyed by the disruption.

  “Work. I have to leave.”

  I suck in the aroma of the wood and the walls to enhance the images but it doesn’t help much. I struggle—maybe it’s the fact that I’m cueing into someone else’s life—but then I get an image of an upstairs room. I know better, know I’ve never been here before—and maybe the house reminds me of passing through for a borrowed moment in time and the scent of dry cardboard turning to dust, something I seem to remember from the moves during my childhood.

  He’s asking me to let the house go and move on but I can’t. It’s less than a memory but more than a dream.

  —

  At home, I stare at the papers on the wall—my Jane, the composite—and as if I’m seeing them for the first time, I recognize a familiarity in the image tucked under the wall mirror. The composite. I stand still and stare at the face. It’s a juxtaposition of individual facial parts—lips, nose, cheeks, chin, forehead—and as I stare at myself in the mirror, my face and the composite merge into one. The same dark hair, full lips, large teeth, thick eyebrows. I look like her. No one can deny the similarities. Or do I just see myself in her?

  This has to stop. I recognize the madness in all this, this preoccupation with Jane and this nameless woman who is no one, really. Am I replacing my Jane with a composite that I believe to look like me? My entire life is a spiral, nothing leads up or down, just in circles—coming here was a mistake, maybe having left in the first place was too. I’m exactly where I was fifteen years ago, as if I’m incapable of choosing a wiser way.

  I take down the papers off the wall, bundle them up, tempted to rip them in half. Just when I’m about to tear a newspaper article to shreds, I pause. I don’t know why, but my eyes skim over it. There, those words. They catch my eye. That name. I see the letters and then they blur. My hands steady, and I read it again. Creel.

  MAN BOOKED FOR RESISTING ARREST AFTER REPORTING DISAPPEARANCE OF A WOMAN

  Aurora, December 12, 1985

  A man by the name of Delbert Humphrey appeared at the Aurora police station claiming his girlfriend, a woman known to him only as “Tee,” had gone missing after he looked for the woman at the Creel Hollow Farm in Aurora. Two deputies questioned Humphrey extensively but even the police chief, Griffin Haynes, was unable to make sense of his story. Questioned further, Humphrey admitted he was not licensed to drive a vehicle and he was also unable to produce a photograph of the missing woman. He did, however, offer a pencil drawing of her. When the police doubted his story, he insisted on a sketch artist. A composite was rendered of the mystery woman . . .

  Creel Hollow Farm. My mind flips. It’s like I’ve stepped onto a staircase but every time I start to climb, I end up in the same place: Creel Hollow Farm. There’s no further mention of any residents being questioned. No mention of anything but a farm that is in my mother’s name.

  I can’t make sense of it. I stuff the composite and printouts in a nearby box. I take one more look around—there’s no need to spend another night here. Followed by Tallulah, I grab the box from the counter.

  On the ride to the farm, I look over at her, curled up on the passenger’s seat. Something stirs inside of me. She was abandoned and dumped, minutes from stretching out on a cold concrete floor with a needle in her vein to stop her breathing. Maybe it’s not just her, but also Jane and the forgotten woman without a photograph: they are special to me because they are lost. Do I collect the forgotten to make them relevant somehow? Because in a twisted way being lost feels familiar to me?

  I snap out of my thoughts and reach for my phone. I need police files, about my Jane and the composite. Just as I dial Bobby’s number, I see that I have eight missed calls. All of them from the same number.

  —

  “I’m glad you could make it on such short notice,” Dr. Wagner says between mouse clicks, the privacy screen making it impossible for me to make out anything, especially with that angle. Dr. Wagner’s features are tense; he’s making less eye contact than usual. “I’m not going to sugarcoat this, Dahlia. The MRI showed some suspicious activity. The EEG confirmed you had a mild seizure during the test.”

  “I don’t remember any seizure,” I say and fight the urge to turn the screen toward me and study the test results myself.

  “The easiest way to explain this is that damage to nerves in a specific area can cause the brain to incorrectly function, creating odors that are not there. A phantom odor, hence the name phantosmia. It is connected to seizure activity. You told me you fell in the woods and hit your head. The smells you experience, the passing out, the”—he pauses slightly as if he’s unsure—“the visions, Dahlia. We need to talk about your visions.”

  “What about them?”

  “They could be related to your injury.” He leans forward in his chair, pushing files and pens and paperwork out of the way. “Phantosmia is a condition that results in olfactory hallucinations, a sensory perception of something that has no basis in reality. The perception of a scent in the complete absence of any odor. And sometimes visions.”

  “All because I hit my head?”

  “Possibly. I’m only going to talk to you about this in general terms. I need you to make an appointment with the neurologist before you leave here. You have to promise me to follow up on this? I was worried when you didn’t return my calls.”

  “I was busy. I’m still confused though—”

  “For one, please always return my calls. Second, I’m writing you a prescription for anti-seizure medication. Go to the nearest water fountain after you leave the pharmacy and take the meds immediately. The neurologist will be able to answer your questions in depth. Third, let me explain the basics, okay? One of the most common and well-documented causes for phantosmia are seizures. During seizures patients usually recollect having phantosmia just prior to blacking out.”

  I just look at him, puzzled.

  “Your olfactory bulb produces odors and those odors cause your brain to seize. While some of them feel like a simple shadow or movement out of the corner of your eye, it is much more serious than you might feel during those moments. There will be a progression as to the severity of the seizures. They are going to get worse, culminating in a temporal lobe seizure.”

  The scents. The snow. The ghostly woman at the farm. It felt real. Like sitting here feels real. I can feel the chair beneath my body, my feet on the ground, the car keys in my hand. “Because I fell?” is all I can think of asking.

  “That’s the thing. We are not sure. It seems that way.”

  “Okay?” There seem to be consequences beyond what he’s saying. There is more. I can tell.

  “We can’t really confirm the injury from the fall, not at this point. What I’m trying to say is we know you fell, you hit your head, and you chipped your tooth, but how that’s related to the scents and the visions you told me about, we can’t be sure about that.” A slight pause. “The second leading cause of phantosmia are neurological disorders such as schizophrenia, with well-documented cases of hallucinations, most commonly visual and auditory.”

  Schizophrenia.

  I watch Dr. Wagner, transfixed; his mouth is moving, but I can’t hear him. My ears ring, tune out everything else. A realization hits me. Not like a brick, but more like ten thousand bricks all at once. I want to laugh out loud, from the gut, the kind of outburst that makes you throw back your head and just bellow out I’m not hearing voices. Not like that, not like voices telling me what to do. I don’t care what he says. This is happening for a reason, and mental illness isn’t it. I seem to understand what he’s saying now—no, not seem to, I understand him just right. His words no longer reach me but there’s a
logic and a torrent of implications. It’s because of my mother. I turn it any which way I can. Finally. The words escape my mouth in the form of a croaking sound.

  “You say this because of my mother.”

  “In no way does your mother—”

  “If you didn’t know my mother, would you still tell me what you just told me? From falling in the woods, from seeing and smelling things to schizophrenia, that’s a leap. I think you’re assuming there’s a possibility that I am schizophrenic because of my mother.”

  “I did not say that, Dahlia. I’m not making a diagnosis as to your mental state in relation to your mother’s behavior. But the fact that you regard this as a ‘gift’ gives me cause for concern.”

  “There’s much more you need to know. I haven’t told you everything yet. I found this article about a man who reported a woman missing, decades ago. There’s no picture of her, but they drew up a composite, well, maybe not a drawing but like they combined facial features—anyway, I had her picture on a wall, not just hers, Jane’s too, and this composite woman, and get this: I look just like her. I should’ve brought the papers but I’m moving and they are in a box, you know the fire I told you about? I’ve had lots of memories lately, lots. About growing up, moving, taking off in the middle of the night, but the more everything comes back to me, the more I believe that . . .” That what?

  I’m just making this worse. Dr. Wagner’s eyes are wide and borderline empathetic. Look at the crazy woman rambling on, they seem to say. Did I just mention visions and that I favor a woman who disappeared decades ago? I take a deep breath in and gather myself. I even feel my spine straighten, as if better posture is going to make him believe me.

  “Look, I’ll be happy to see a neurologist, but for now I need to stew on this for a while.”

  “I understand.” He checks his watch, then takes off his glasses and starts polishing them with a cloth. “Get those meds and take them immediately. Make an appointment on your way out, okay?”

  “I will,” I lie.

  I go by the pharmacy and I get the meds but I don’t make an appointment. Not just yet.

  As I make my way across the parking lot, I feel more determined than ever. There’s something there, I just know it, and I’m not giving up. Any other day I would have dwelled on what he told me, but today I’m not. Funny how quickly I can overwrite schizophrenia and just push it aside. I’m not one of those people who stand on a street corner yelling about Jesus or demons chasing me. I am not a maniac running around with no consideration for tomorrow. I’ve been living on my own since I was eighteen. I don’t believe there’s a serial killer on the loose, I don’t believe there’s some secret society enslaving women, I just happen to believe that certain people around me are less than forthcoming with the truth. Like my mother. And there’s nothing crazy about that.

  Nineteen

  MEMPHIS

  MEMPHIS had time to collect herself during the last stay in the hospital. She’d made mistakes. First she had lost the purse, and then there was the fire. All those papers, random photographs and documents, she couldn’t keep them in order, didn’t know which to burn, which to keep. The yellow flames were obedient in the beginning, barely singeing the papers’ edges, but then she became impatient and doused them in nail polish remover and it splashed across the floor and the orange flames went out of control. The curtain caught fire, black smoke started to choke her, and she helplessly watched the flames leap around her. She became oddly tranquil then, pondered locking the door, letting it all go up in flames, including herself. But then Dahlia pulled her out of the smoke and managed to open a window. Fire trucks came and Memphis never was able to check on those papers, which ones had been consumed, which ones had survived.

  And now Dahlia is taking her to the farm. Memphis stares straight ahead with all the indifference she can muster. If it wasn’t for the pills keeping her even-keeled and mellow, Memphis wasn’t sure what she’d do. Her body recognizes every turn, every inch of every road, every pothole. Mile marker 78 will come up in no time. Dahlia must have done some digging, found out about the farm. That was Dahlia’s way, a constant inquiring and digging to get answers.

  If it hadn’t been for the crickets, those godforsaken crickets—last year’s toad plague hadn’t stirred up anything, even though the roads had been dotted with their flattened bodies like large pieces of gum—she wouldn’t have panicked, wouldn’t have lost her purse and her cool, she would have gone back home without Dahlia noticing, but no, that night the crickets chirped, like fireworks they started exploding all around her. As she stared at the cypress tree, the chirping ripped at her eardrums and it all came back and panic started festering and by then it was too late. She had already begun to fall apart. The moment she had arranged the dead crickets on her living room floor to hear intruders step on their parched and barren bodies, she knew there was no turning back.

  In the daylight Memphis realizes that the area looks the same but is also different; it’s all there, all of it, yet the roads have changed, there are white lines now, not the gravel and pothole road it used to be. I’m in a time machine, Memphis thinks, yet it’s nothing like one would expect, no tunnels, not like she’s squeezing through something too small for her body. Just a simple blink of the eyes and poof.

  Memphis hears a voice reaching her from afar. Dahlia has been nagging lately, asking questions, going on and on about things she knows nothing about. Kids are cruel that way, greedy and selfish, only remembering what they want to.

  Memphis isn’t worried about Dahlia at all. The girl is strong, strong as an ox. She had raised her that way, to be tough and robust and sturdy, fending for herself. Resilient is what Dahlia is. Memphis wonders how much she had to do with who Dahlia is today, the girl who had left Aurora without so much as looking back, making a life for herself. But then she’d returned, out of the blue, after years of snubbing her nose at the town. That might be a remnant of those years they had traveled—the kindest word for dragging her across the country, really—and how they’d always left one place or another behind, and maybe one can only run for so long, leave so many times. Isn’t Memphis herself proof of that, how there must be an end to all that running? Dahlia’s return has caused the messy part, as if their separation was merely temporary: this child has called on fate to stomp its foot, determined to resolve itself.

  Mistakes she’d made, at every turn it seemed like. They had left the farm behind so long ago, had left the town of Aurora, left Bertram County, and eventually she had put state lines between the farm and her—first New Mexico, then Nevada. Eventually they had ended up all the way in California. Only when their lives became unsustainable had she decided that they’d go back to where it all began.

  Memphis has been on the run for so long, in hiding, cloaked, out of sight—all those words Dahlia would use if she still were the young girl lugging the old encyclopedia around, reciting definitions day in and day out—that this farm literally feels like coming home. The irony isn’t lost on Memphis. It was done now; no more looking over her shoulder, no more flinching when the doorbell rings, no more arranging crickets so the crunching announces a visitor. None of that.

  When the dirt road appears on the right, just a few yards farther down and behind the old wooden bench, Memphis can hardly make out the specific spot, even though she must had driven down that road hundreds of times. But the road is narrow now, overgrown, and all but invisible from the street. As the farmhouse appears at the end of the driveway, Memphis feels as if she’s burning from the inside out and she scrambles to get her head in a better place. Any moment she’ll crack and the voices she hears will stoke the fire she’s been keeping at bay for all these years. She can only rein in those thoughts for so long, but her hands give it away, they are trembling and that’s something new altogether. With each tremor there is a creak of the bones, and she fights to hang on.

  Dahlia stops the car and kills the engine.
She turns to check up on the dog and Memphis can’t help but think that Dahlia is to blame. Not in a fault-assigning way, but by default—a flash of clarity combined with a dissipation of confusion—Dahlia is a reminder of deeds done, crimes committed, a constant token of all her wrongdoings. This very moment, on this farm, has been in the making, as if every breeze, every drop of rain, every falling leaf, over the past thirty years has led them here to this place today.

  They get out of the car and the dirt underneath Memphis’ feet seems more forgiving than it used to be, more cushioned, as if the years without any living soul setting foot on the property have softened the soil, made it more pliable somehow. She expects a dust devil to appear, the way they used to; unexpectedly there’d be a brown blur of dust, swirling about. Some say the dead appear that way to the living, transparent in a bronze haze. Memphis wants to chuckle but it’s not a laughing matter. Boldly she turns.

  There’s the shed.

  Suddenly she is not Memphis any longer, but the woman she used to be a lifetime ago, the way she was so eager to please, and that woman allows Dahlia to drag her toward the shed. “Come on,” Dahlia says and takes her mother’s hand, pulling her from the car, “let’s have a look around.”

  Don’t go in there, Memphis wants to say to Dahlia, don’t go in that shed. It’s haunted. But the words won’t drop from her lips.

  And she sighs, unbeknownst to Dahlia, a sigh that signals the end of a deliberate effort on her part to remain vigilant—an effort she had been holding on to like pruney hands to a lifesaver at sea—and her true deterioration begins.

  Memphis feels a layer of herself crack, hairline thin for now, but soon she won’t be able to contain all that has been cooped up inside of her for all these years. Suddenly she sees the way the world is, some sort of divine epiphany has been bestowed upon her—the farm isn’t just a decrepit old house but a state of being. And it will do her in.