Dead Boyfriends

by David Housewright

  “Merodie—”

  “I know I have a problem, McKenzie. Okay? I’ve had this conversation before with other people. So many people. And I’ve tried. God knows I’ve tried. I’ve tried so hard to get straight, but. . . I don’t know. I’m tryin’ to explain it all to this woman and she’s not listening, you know? Instead, she gives me this piece of chalk. I’m like, ‘What’s this?’ And she says, ‘Chalk.’ I can see that, okay? And the woman, she points at this large blackboard mounted on wheels and she tells me to write down my history. She wanted to see my history of alcohol abuse, when I started drinking, how much I drank, the people I met while drinking, the things I did while drinking, the things that happened to me while drinking. And I’m laughing. I’m like, ‘Got a few weeks?’ And the counselor said she did, and so I start writing.

  “At first my letters are tall and wide and I fill a whole line with only a few words, but then the letters become smaller cuz I’m trying to squeeze it all in. The counselor told me not to worry about chronological order, just write it down as it came to me, and I did, starting with a party in junior high school when I drank my first beer and the kegger at the river where I got drunk for the first time. And I kept at it, going through half a box of chalk, filling one side of the board and then the other, writing until my hand hurt—and that wasn’t even half of it!

  “The first time I had sex I was drunk. And the second time. And the third. And the fourth. I was drunk at the homecoming dance and at my junior prom and on the day I dropped out of high school. I was drunk when I fell down a flight of stairs and broke my collarbone. I was drunk when I drove my car into the fence that surrounded my mom’s house. I was drunk when the doctor told me I was pregnant. . .”

  Merodie began to weep. It should have been easy for me to say, “Hey, you brought it all on yourself.” I couldn’t manage it. Instead I found myself wishing I could reach through the phone and wrap my arms around her. That’s what friends are for, right?

  “McKenzie, you gotta help me. You gotta help get me out of here.”

  “We’re trying, Merodie.”

  “I hafta get outta here so I can make it all right. Make it right for Eli. I was drunk, McKenzie, drunk when that beautiful man bled to death in my living room. I coulda done somethin’ if I wasn’t drunk.”

  “Don’t say anything more, Merodie.”

  I had so many questions for her, but I was afraid to ask them for fear that the attorney-client privilege didn’t extend to me, that anything she said over the phone really could be used against her.

  “Please, McKenzie.”

  “It’ll be all right. We’ll get you out.”

  “Please.”

  One question I had to ask—nothing I had learned online had even hinted at it.

  “Merodie? You said you were pregnant. When—”

  “That’s another reason you gotta get me out. I can make it all right, make it all right for everyone, I know I can. I can make it so no one else gets hurt, but I gotta be out to do it.”

  “Merodie . . .?”

  “I just gotta be.”

  “Tell me about the child, Merodie . . . Do you hear me . . .? Merodie . . .?”

  The phone went dead.

  G. K. Bonalay kept me on hold for nearly seventeen minutes, which was bad enough. Being forced to endure several Muzak versions of early 1970s bubble gum rock songs while I waited, that was just plain wrong. Trust me, you don’t want to listen to an extended, all-strings cover of “Sugar, Sugar” with a hangover unless you have plenty of Pepto-Bismol at hand. I told G. K. so when she finally returned to the phone. She apologized profusely for making me wait—she was rushing from meeting to meeting. As for the music: “At my law firm, the Archies are considered cutting-edge.”

  I thought she might be joking, but since she didn’t laugh, I didn’t, either.

  I told G. K. about my conversation with Merodie Davis, and she made a note to tell Merodie to stay off the goddamn phone, but said she wouldn’t be able to deliver it until later. Her firm had saddled her with a number of billable meetings that promised to last until later that evening. However, she did manage to find time to get me access to Merodie’s house.

  “Someone will meet you at 1:00 P.M.”

  “That’ll work fine.”

  “What can you tell me so far?” G. K. asked.

  “Not much. We know that Merodie owned the house—”

  “How do we know that?”

  “I checked with the Anoka County Division of Property Records and Taxation. She’s listed as fee owner. She owns the house, she pays the taxes, only here’s the thing—as far as I can tell, she has no job, and she’s not receiving welfare or unemployment.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I asked.”

  “The county welfare department told you?”

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  “They’re not supposed to divulge that information.”

  “You’re not supposed to have Merodie’s file. Should we move on?”

  G. K. took a deep breath and said, “Let’s,” with the exhale.

  “Merodie has no income. However, there is this.” I quoted the crime lab report. “ ‘One white, number ten envelope, blank, containing one personal check dated Saturday, One August, in the amount of four thousand, one hundred sixty-six dollars and sixty-seven cents made out to Merodie Davies and drawn on an account owned by Priscilla St. Ana, Woodbury, MN.’”

  “The envelope seized by the crime lab,” G. K. said.

  “Two things. The first is the date. August first. That’s when most people get paid, the first and the fifteenth of the month. Second, the amount. Forty-one hundred sixty-six dollars and sixty-seven cents is an odd number. It doesn’t really fit anything unless you multiply it by twelve, and then we have a nice round figure. Fifty thousand dollars.”

  “From that you deduce what?”

  “Priscilla St. Ana is paying Merodie’s way.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know, but I think we should find out, don’t you?”

  “Merodie won’t like it.”

  “We won’t tell her.”

  “What do we know about Priscilla so far?”

  “We know that Ms. St. Ana has a master’s degree in chemistry from the University of Minnesota and a master’s in business from the University of St. Thomas. She’s an active partner in a property acquisition and investment firm. Apparently, she and her partners identify under-performing businesses, buy a controlling interest, turn them around, and then sell them for obscene profits. Sometimes they’re invited to do this by the company’s directors; sometimes they’re not. In addition, Priscilla is on the boards of several charities and nonprofit organizations. She’s not married. However, she is the guardian of a sixteen-year-old niece named Silk St. Ana, who has a good shot to make the U.S. team in the next Summer Olympics as a diver. There’s a nice piece about both of them in Women’s Business Minnesota from a couple of months back.”

  I glanced at the magazine article while I spoke. In the photo I’d downloaded Priscilla appeared very regal, very proud, with golden hair piled high on her head like a crown. There was also a shot of the girl. She was sitting on a diving board, hugging her knees to her chest. The cutline read Olympic hopeful Silk St. Ana enjoys a quiet moment at the family’s backyard swimming pool.

  “Apparently, Priscilla inherited St. Ana Medical, a pharmaceutical company, when her father drowned in his swimming pool about eighteen years ago. Her mother died a year before her father. Traffic accident. Priscilla took over the company and ran it for a couple of years. She sold it after her younger brother—what’s his name? Here it is. Robert St. Ana. Priscilla sold the business after her brother died in another traffic accident.”

  “She’s taken a beating, hasn’t she?” G. K. said.

  “Seems so. Anyway, she went back to school to get her MBA, helped found the investment firm, and is now flying high. Makes you wonder what you’re doing with your own life, doesn�
��t it?”

  “No, but it does make me wonder why a woman like her is involved with the likes of Merodie Davies.”

  “I’m working on it,” I told her.

  People outside Minnesota think of the Twin Cities as just two municipalities—St. Paul and Minneapolis—sitting across the Mississippi River from each other. In reality, it’s a sprawling amalgamation of 192 cities interwoven into a single tapestry by an intricate and occasionally overwhelming system of U.S., state, and county highways. There were over 2,950 miles in all the last time the Department of Transportation bothered to count, and the 2.7 million people who drive those roads slip from one city’s limits to another so frequently and so casually that over the decades the borders have become blurred. It’s the reason I became lost in Anoka while looking for an address in neighboring Coon Rapids; it’s why I now live in Falcon Heights when I had vowed never to leave St. Paul.

  It’s also the reason why I carry a Hudson’s Twin Cities atlas in my car. I know St. Paul and Minneapolis well enough, but when you start getting into our sprawling suburbs, you either use a map or suffer the indignity of stopping at gas stations for directions. I used the Hudson to find the address of Merodie’s mother in Mounds View, and even then I got turned around.

  As it turned out, Sharon Davies lived at the far end of a dead-end street in a one-story pale green stucco bungalow located on a bluff overlooking Highway 10. The house and a spotty, weed-infested lawn were both surrounded by a three-foot-high Cyclone fence. There was a front door, but there was no sidewalk leading to it, which was just as well since the only opening in the fence faced the back door. Before I could reach it, a voice rumbled out through the screened window.

  “What do you want?”

  “Mrs. Davies?”

  “What do you want?” Her voice was louder than necessary.

  “Mrs. Davies, my name is McKenzie. I work for the attorney who’s helping your daughter.”

  There was no reply.

  “Mrs. Davies?”

  “Leave me alone.”

  “May I speak with you?”

  “No.”

  “Your daughter, Mrs. Davies, she needs—”

  The door opened abruptly. I was startled into taking a tentative step backward. The woman who opened it was six feet tall and so enormously broad she filled the doorway—I doubted she was able to squeeze through it. Her eyes were narrow and without color, and her hair was stringy and unwashed. She wore a garish housecoat fastened with a safety pin at the throat. The housecoat reminded me of one of my grandmother’s quilts pieced together with whatever cloth was at hand.

  “I don’t want any part of that slut,” Sharon Davies shouted. “I ain’t had no part of that slut for sixteen years and I don’t want no part of her now.”

  “She’s your daughter.”

  Sharon Davies slammed the door and screamed, “Get out of here or I’ll call the police,” through the window.

  My own mother died when I was twelve, and over the years my memories of her have become soft around the edges. I was no longer sure what was real about her and what might be what the psychologists call a false memory. Nor did I remember what she looked like. I only remembered what the photos I have of her look like, and that’s not the same thing. Still, I always knew I was loved. I felt it in the brief years before her death and the long years after. I feel it even today. It has always been a comfort to me; there have been times in my life when I drew on it the way a thirsty man draws water from a well.

  That’s why seeing a mother or father disown a child, degrade a child, or abuse a child, do anything but love a child totally and unconditionally, leaves me feeling both angry and sad and thoroughly helpless. You can take children out of an abusive environment. You can force parents to obey the law. When no one is looking you can even beat hell out of them. But you cannot make parents love the people they should love the most, who need their love the most, and nothing is ever going to change that.

  I got in my Audi and drove away without looking back and prayed what I always pray when I meet someone like Sharon Davies—that one day she will get exactly what she deserves. That she’ll die alone.

  I met Eli Jefferson’s sister—her name was Evonne Louise Lowman—at the Mueller Funeral Home in Coon Rapids. The building seemed unnaturally cool and still. The ruby-colored carpet was thick, and I could barely hear the sound of my own footsteps. They piped organ music throughout the place, but somehow that made it seem even more silent. In the distance I heard voices speaking softly. I followed them, stopping outside a small conference room that was adorned with examples of flower arrangements, headstones, and urns.

  Evonne and the director of the Mueller Funeral Home were inside. Listening to their conversation, I learned that Evonne had decided to have her brother cremated. Considering the condition of Eli’s body, what with the autopsy and all, an open coffin just didn’t seem like the way to go. The funeral director agreed even though he muttered something about losing money on the disposition—immediate cremation, no services, no obituary, just the minimum that the state required, you’re talking seven hundred bucks compared to the average disposition of five thousand.

  “What do you wish done with your brother’s ashes?” he asked.

  Evonne didn’t care. What did he suggest?

  “There’s some vacant property owned by the crematorium. We could just scatter his ashes there.”

  “Sold,” Evonne said, slapping the tabletop like an auctioneer.

  The director produced some forms. Evonne signed them. She was in and out in ten minutes flat, which suited me right down to my toes. Funeral homes made me nervous. On the other hand, Vonnie Lou—she told me to call her Vonnie Lou—found the place quite comforting. Nice tunes, she said.

  Vonnie Lou was a tall woman with coarse, disorganized hair and a woodenish body, all straight angles and no curves. Her eyes were small and dark, and she spoke with a pleasant, melodic voice, her sentences going up and down the scale.

  “I’m an office temp,” she told me. “That’s why I asked you to meet me here during my lunch hour. I really can’t afford to take the time from my job.”

  I told her I appreciated her agreeing to meet with me.

  “Anything new on Merodie?” she asked as we moved from the sedately lit funeral home into bright August sunlight.

  “What do you mean?” I asked

  Vonnie Lou shielded her eyes with her hand. “Has she been charged with murder yet?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Good.”

  “Good?” I was surprised by her reaction. “You don’t want them to lock her up and throw away the key for killing your brother?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I kinda feel sorry for her. I’ve known Merodie a lot of years, going way back before she even met my brother. The sweetest woman you’d ever want to know. Kind. Generous to a fault. When I was going through my divorce—I was married for about a week to a loser named Mike Lowman—you know what she did? She brought me chicken soup. Do you believe that? Poor girl never seems to catch a break, especially with men. She’s just the nicest person, too.”

  “Nicest person? The cops think she killed your brother.”

  “Yeah, but it’s not like he didn’t deserve it.”

  That stopped me.

  Vonnie Lou took two more steps and pivoted on the asphalt toward me. “He was cheating on her,” she said. “Didn’t you know that?”

  “No.”

  “Merodie didn’t tell you?”

  I shook my head.

  “Huh. I figured she would.”

  “Did you tell the police?”

  “Tell the police what?”

  “That Eli was cheating on Merodie.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “For one thing, they didn’t ask. For another, I don’t want to get Merodie into trouble.”

  “Will you talk to me?”

  “You work for Merodie’s attorney, right? You’re trying to help he
r, right?”

  “Right.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Was he cheating on her?” I asked. “Do you know that for a fact?”

  “He was using my home.” Vonnie Lou shook her head as if she still couldn’t believe it. “Something you have to know about my brother Eli. When he was drinking, every woman looked good to him, he wanted every one he saw, and for a few months before he died, it seemed like he was drinking nearly all the time. It didn’t matter if the woman was pretty, ugly, married, single, young, old—Eli, he’d see her, he’d have to hit on her. It was like a compulsion. He didn’t have much trouble picking up the women he went after, either. He was so good-looking. Charming. He’d say these incredibly goofy things and women would laugh. They loved him. Especially young women, if you know what I mean.”

  “You said he used your house?”

  “I came home early from a job. Eli had a key to my place, so I wasn’t surprised when I found his car there. I come inside and there he was, doing it with this, this slut, on my bed. My bed. I was pretty upset.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “So I threw the two of them out. My bed. God. This was, I don’t know, a month or so ago.”

  “Do you think Merodie found out?”

  “If not about her, then about someone else, yeah.”

  “Tell me about the woman.”

  “I don’t know, some bimbo. Good-looking, I suppose. College age.”

  “What was her name?”

  “We weren’t formally introduced. Besides, what did I care what the bimbo’s name was? I just wanted her out of my house.”

  “Did she give you an argument?”

  “Eli gave me one, that’s for sure. Kept saying, ‘Ten more minutes, ten more minutes.’ I guess he hadn’t actually done it yet. Like I cared. The woman, she just gathered up her clothes and left. Never said a word, which was fine with me cuz I kinda had my hands full screaming at Eli.” Vonnie Lou shook her head, smiling slightly. “Eli could be such a piece of work. I gotta be honest, though. If he hadn’t been my brother, I probably would have been hot for him, too.”

  “Tell me about Merodie.”

  “We go back some,” Vonnie Lou said. “We met, I don’t know, years ago. We met at a joint called Dimmer’s off Highway 169. We used to play softball, and Dimmer’s was the sponsor. We’d start playing at six, finish around seven, be at Dimmer’s by seven fifteen and close the place down. God, I still don’t believe I survived those days.”