“Does she know who she is? Does she know about me?”
“That’s kind of a problem, Doc. We tried to tell her that she’s not Dolly Garner, that she’s Rachel Harrison, but now she’s so confused that she doesn’t really know who she is. Maybe if you talk to her…”
“Like she’s going to know me after over thirty years, Andy?” Doc yelled at him. “Look at this face, look at this body. I was six years old the last time she saw me as her brother. There’s no way she’s going to see anyone familiar in me. Besides, she already knows me as one of the policemen who has been interfering with her life for all these years.”
“Aaron kidnapped her, Doc, not me. I’m just the messenger here,” Andy explained as he moved to ease out the door.
“Just the messenger,” Doc repeated. He parked himself in his chair and threw his head back with his eyes closed. “Does my mother know yet?”
Andy made a pained face. “You’re the first one I came to, of course. I knew you’d want to know as soon as we got confirmation.”
“You must have suspected this for days and didn’t come to me!” Doc banged his fist on the desk. He was furious at himself for not recognizing his own flesh and blood on so many occasions in the past when he could have stepped in and made a difference. He didn’t want to be the one to tell Anna that he had been in and out of Rachel’s life for years without lifting a finger to help.
“We’ve been busy, Doc. This was a murder case; you remember that, don’t you? She stuck him like a pig and he bled out before he reached the hospital. While we were chasing our tails trying to positively ID her, we were also dealing with a homicide. It wasn’t easy to ferret out the contact number for the lady detective in Spokane that worked the original kidnap case. She retired out on the Oregon coast and it took a while, Doc.”
“You’ve got excuses for everything, Andy.” Doc was angry that this tragedy was unfolding for days behind his back. “Why didn’t you call me the minute you had some idea that she was Rachel instead of cowering in your checks and double checks? Where is she now?”
“There’s another problem, Doc. She was transferred to the psych unit at Strongview Memorial the night of the murder. When we went to take her statement, she backed into a corner of the interview room and started shaking and screaming and wouldn’t stop for anything. Not words, just ear piercing screams like a trapped animal. She just kept on and on. EMS took her to Strongview where they shot her up to stop the screaming and now she just lays in the bed slipping in and out of sleep. We went back up to let her know that the DA wasn’t going to file on her. We tried to tell her that she was Rachel Harrison from Spokane thinking that it might come back to her, but it just didn’t seem to register. Can’t get her to talk at all now.”
Doc was overwhelmed by the problem laid at his feet. Over thirty years he had grown accustomed to living with the fact that he was the six year old who dropped the ball and lost his sister. He could still live with that, but not with figuring out how to put this house of cards back together.
The worst was yet to come as his thoughts turned to calling Spokane. Anna had just turned 68 last fall, but was suffering mightily under the blanket of early winter in the Northwest which always left her depressed until spring. Doc predicted that she would not handle the news well.
Already Jack and Steve were essentially missing children from the ages of 17 and 18. Jack was dead, but Anna was only assured that Steve was still alive at whichever military post he was stationed when she received belated birthday and holiday cards. Just like with Rachel, she was resigned to believing that they were never going to return to be her children again. At least Rachel remained her precious little kindergartener, alive in Anna’s heart for all those years.
Now Doc was forced to tear the loving memory from her heart and replace it with an emotionally damaged stranger who would likely drain Anna and John emotionally and financially for the rest of their lives. Doc reckoned that Anna deserved one more peaceful night and resolved to call her in the morning.
When Doc went home in the morning, he set an alarm for ten o’clock to account for the time difference in Spokane. He drifted off to sleep a couple times with his feet up on the couch, but awoke with a start each time to find the minutes leisurely ticking by. He shut the alarm off before it rang.
His dingy one-bedroom apartment was a step down from Skyview Village where he and Amelia and Ben lived when he was in the military. Half of his paycheck was sent up north for Amelia and the kids. He didn’t fight her for money - she could have it all including the equity from the Fort Worth house that sold a couple months after her departure.
His thoughts returned to his mother as the clock clicked over to the appointed time. It was just a year ago that he called her to introduce Will into their lives. He picked up the telephone and punched in the numbers with a steady rhythm. As the telephone began to ring, he realized that he had precious little information other than what Andy told him the night before. Anna answered before he could hang up and drive over to Strongview psychiatric ward to see Rachel for himself.
As Doc expected, John and Anna’s next call was to book a flight to Fort Worth and a nice hotel room for an extended stay. Since John was retired after selling the real estate office in Spokane, he and Anna had all the time in the world to devote to Rachel’s recovery. Doc was relieved to be a minor player in that drama, especially when John and Anna took Rachel back to Spokane after a couple weeks. Doc found a myriad of excuses for not flying back to Washington for the rest of the winter. When July rolled around, he flew home to finalize the divorce.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Doc executed a two week trip home to Spokane in July. Ben and the girls came over to John and Anna’s during the day on the Fourth of July weekend, but spent their attention on their grandparents. Doc felt like a distant relative at a large family reunion; everyone seemed obligated to make the idle chatter, but was quick to take the first opportunity to escape him. Amelia avoided him by spending the holiday with her parents or staying home when their kids checked in to eat or sleep or watch television.
Rachel had moved into her old room at John and Anna’s although she changed her surroundings to fit the needs of a woman who just turned forty. She looked younger and more alive than Doc had ever seen her. She stopped smoking and the related discoloration of her teeth and fingers was receding. She was still a stranger, but she was desperately trying to fit in to her reclaimed family. Anna was her ever present shadow as if ready to catch her baby daughter if she fell. Doc couldn’t shake the physical image of Dolly Garner when he looked at Rachel.
On Tuesday afternoon he set out an hour early for Amelia’s lawyer’s office to sign the divorce papers. He didn’t want to risk being a minute late since he was paying the lawyer’s billable hours, so he planned on stopping for a specialty coffee near his destination. Spokane was much larger than when he was a teenager. The two lane blacktop road with dirt shoulders was now a four lane equipped with directional arrows wherever he remembered a stop sign. Businesses replaced the pastures and new names were on familiar buildings. The neighborhood where he grew up began to look ragged around the edges.
Doc was aware of George Clark High School coming up at the next light and turned his gaze slightly as the dry brown grass of the athletic field came into view. The four foot cyclone fence was still standing guard between the busy boulevard and the acres of yard where they played flag football and ran laps in gym class. On impulse he made a left at the light and turned into the student parking lot on the far side of the building.
The school was only six years old when he entered tenth grade. Portable classrooms were added in the intervening years and a low red brick addition had spontaneously sprouted from the side of the gym where the boys’ locker room door used to open up onto the playing field. The asphalt parking lot was rife with chuck holes amid fading lines of demarcation and faded pinkish fire zones painted along the curbs.
Doc parked close to the building in the nearl
y empty lot and walked to the west end where the angle of the new addition ended the existing sidewalk. The doors to the main gym were open to vent the summer heat while the new crop of cheerleaders invented their choreography for the coming year. The open doors to the boys’ locker room in the new addition allowed the cavernous room to air out before the fall football lineup came in for practice later in the afternoon.
Doc felt the sticky heat from a gentle breeze which carried a hint of the smoke and haze from the nearby forest fire. Vintage bombers laden with water and fire retardant buzzed overhead every half hour or so to be restocked at the airport north of the school.
The glass and metal doors leading to a small concession area behind the box office were propped open in invitation. It was noticeably cooler in the shaded tile and brick hallway. Athletic pictures and trophies lined the walls and filled the glass cases which greeted visitors, but none of them dated back to Doc’s high school days. His name and picture would not have been there anyway. The planter along the choir room had been filled in with flagstone and mortar leaving a cold, businesslike aura to a once friendly corner of the school. It had been a favorite place to hang out with Beth before school and over lunch. At some point during the day almost every student passed by that spot at least once.
He walked on further to the hallway outside the main office which was across from the counselor’s enclave. There was a row of two dozen eight by ten photographs of the middle-aged men and women who molded young minds, but Doc didn’t recognize any of them. Across the hall he examined a taxidermy cub in the new diorama of the Lewis and Clark Expedition that had been added by a subsequent class since his sojourn.
He noticed a blond haired woman in casual attire shuffling papers on a long table inside the office and elected not to disturb her. Chances were that most of his teachers were retired or moved on after twenty years, so he didn’t bother the busy lady. When had the bright and polished new school become worn and musty?
There was no point in exploring anymore hallways as the classrooms themselves evoked no residual nostalgia. George Clark High School had provided a strong and extensive preparation for adult life and he was supremely grateful. But high school was just a snapshot in time. The building he was in had no relationship to that magic time and place. Everyone had his own thousand days of Camelot before reality barged in.
Sunlight washed the courtyard adjacent to the main office. Doc ventured out on one of the sidewalks that formed an ‘X’ in the courtyard. The grass was green and fresh in contrast to the exterior of the school. Pulsating sprayers convulsed in two corners of the courtyard, each covering a triangle of precious turf. Doc timed his walk to the center of the yard to appreciate the effect of the afterspray without being pelted by the leading edge of the sprinkler jet.
A tall, weathered metal sculpture of a grizzly bear mascot reigned from the intersection of the sidewalks. The sculptor had taken pains to cut fine ragged patterns of metal fur hanging from the arms, legs and torso. It stood at least two feet taller than Doc when he stood inside the animal’s grasp. The metal was not corroded or rusted, but intentionally weathered much as the lives of the many students who passed under its grasp over the years. Doc was no exception.
Except for Gar and Amelia, he had lost track of all those friends and acquaintances from long ago. Anyone in town who was closing in on forty could easily be prey that escaped from the bear during his years at George Clark. After a last look around the courtyard at the double stacks of classroom windows, he turned to go. His marriage to Amelia was a product of the era when George Clark High School was fresh and vibrant.
It was only now that Doc finalized his doubts on whether those ties had been severed long ago. He slowly paced his way past the office, down the corridor past the planter, through the hallway behind the box office by the gym, and out to the tattered parking lot. He examined the photo walls and posters for a hint of familiarity before he left, but it was futile.
The sun was still warm for late afternoon as he pointed the car toward Amelia’s lawyer’s office. He had decided to sign the papers without reading them. Whatever Amelia needed was fine with him. He was already trying moving on.
Although John sold the real estate office on Quebec Street, he still kept his hand in a few deals now and then. He threw in the towel for the day when the sale he was working on fell through and rushed home to set the table for Anna. When Doc arrived home, Anna had a meatloaf in the oven. It was not a celebratory dinner, nor was it a consolation dinner. It was an evening of quiet reassurance that Doc was loved and that his world had not come to an end.
Rachel was resting upstairs in her room feigning a headache. Since Doc arrived in Spokane, her health seemed to deteriorate in minor skirmishes when he was around. Doc had a suspicion that she was embarrassed by his knowledge of her past with Aaron and all the rancid memories it dredged up. He was a reminder that her life had been stolen and abused. Doc ran his fingers along the bottom of the mahogany frame of the oil on canvas in the dining room. That was the Rachel he wanted to remember.
John was surveying the table for adequate plates and utensils. “Doing OK, tiger?” John did not look up to force a reply.
“Pretty much as expected,” Doc closed. He plopped down in the dining room chair at the far end of the table.
“It’s good to have you home for a few days. Your mom and I have missed you.”
“I’ve missed you, too,” Doc lied. He loved John and Anna, but his compartmentalized life did not allow him the indulgence of sentimentality.
Anna came out of the kitchen with the chunk of steaming meat on a platter and set it within reach of the three place settings. Doc rarely visited as he did not enjoy towing Amelia and the kids cross-country to Washington State. Patty and Rose would meet Anna downtown for lunch on the occasional afternoon off or bring the family around for cake on holidays, but it was easier for John and Anna to meet the grandchildren on their own turf where they could escape to their rooms or to the television.
Every once in a while Steve made reference to a future visit in a card, but Anna had given up hope after so many false promises. Visiting him at his station in Japan was cost prohibitive. Moreover, there had never been an invitation issued.
“Have you heard from Steve, Mom?” Doc already knew the answer.
“He sent a lovely card on my birthday.”
“Is he still with the new girl from back East. New York, New Jersey, New Hampshire, New Something?”
Anna didn’t have a clue who Doc was talking about. Steve never included more than a couple generalized lines above his signature. “He didn’t say.”
“I didn’t think she was a keeper,” Doc assumed. “He doesn’t keep any girlfriend long enough for the warranty to run out.”
John and Anna paused at Doc’s bluntness.
“Can’t help it if it’s the truth. I got a quick e-mail from him last Christmas, but he really didn’t say much about her, so I figured she was either getting the boot or leaving him. Same difference in the long run.”
“I’m sure she was very nice,” Anna offered.
“That’s probably why she left him,” Doc returned.
John was long accustomed to steering clear when family conversations started downhill.
“So is my darling grandson ready for his senior year at college?” asked Anna to change the subject.
“Which one?” Doc asked lifting his head slightly to see if he had succeeded in making his mother squirm.
“Both of them, I mean,” she recovered defensively. After watching Ben and his sisters grow from babies to teenagers, it was easy to misplace the newly discovered Will as her eldest grandchild by Doc. Anna and John were gracious in accepting Will as family, but he was still a stranger who exploded into their lives a year ago.
“Will is finishing up at Gonzaga this fall and Ben will be with me in Fort Worth for his last year at TCU.”
“We’d like to have Will over for dinner whenever he can come by so we can ge
t to know him,” Anna replied. “I’m afraid that he hasn’t come over because he doesn’t want to upset his parents.”
“Which ones?” Doc challenged.
“Seems like a nice young man the couple times we’ve met him,” John agreed.
“No thanks to me,” Doc answered as if spoiling for a fight. Anna would not take the bait. Anna cleared the empty plates leaving John to fend for himself while she took refuge in the kitchen. John pushed his chair back from the table about six inches and let out a long breath before he dove into the relationship rapids with Doc.
“I’ve loved you as a son and I’m sorry that your life is a mess. We’re here to be supportive in any way that you need us, but you are not going to displace your anger and aggression into emotionally abusing your mother. Not gonna happen. I’m not going to allow it.”
“You’re not my father.”
“That’s a cheap shot. I have thirty-five years of experience that proves you wrong. I carried you home the morning Rachel disappeared, I cheered at your ball games and watched with pride at your high school graduation. There has not been a single moment in your life that you could fault me as a father.”
Doc stared intently at the Caribbean lace tablecloth with its intricate, predictable knots and loops. John waited a respectable moment, got up and moved behind Doc’s chair, resting his forehead on Doc’s matte of fading red hair for a moment and placing his hands on Doc’s hunching shoulders.
“This divorce is a scar that will never go away, but your heart will heal. Life will go on. Someday you will figure out what happened, why it happened, and what you’ll have to do to fix your life. For now, just hold on and let the healing start.”
The words of Gar’s father did not ring true this time. A cheap imitation of love did not pass for the real thing. After twenty years together, Amelia had become the real thing.
Living in Quiet Rage Page 17
