Saving Tess

by J. Lynn Bailey

  “I remember a lot of things, Case. I just choose to keep those memories behind me.” She takes a sip of her own coffee. “Look, I didn’t mean the comment I made last night before I went to bed. You have every right to be with another woman. I guess …” She pauses. “I guess it’s just never been in my face like that.”

  I listen. Take another sip of the bitter coffee. “What’s on the list today?” I motion with my eyes to the piece of paper on the counter.

  “Well, since you’re here now, I suppose I need to buy some real food. Soy milk is still not one of your favorites, I guess?” She looks up at me.

  I grin. “Still not my thing.”

  I remember her words when I used her old nickname. “It hurts too much.” The last damn thing I want to do is hurt her.

  “Emmitt, the contractor, will be by today to give us an estimate of the work that needs to be done on the house. I was also thinking we might need Wi-Fi, so we don’t use all of our data on our phones. So, how about you meet with Emmitt, and I’ll go to the store and work on Wi-Fi?”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  There’s a stillness between us, and it’s interrupted by the house, which makes a long-drawn-out sound deep within the walls.

  “What’s that?” I ask.

  “She’s been doing that a lot lately.”

  “She?”

  Tess shrugs. Looks around the house. “Yes.”

  But I catch her eyes as they move from my torso.

  Her cheeks turn pink again when she grabs her coffee mug from the counter, turns to the sink, washes the mug.

  I smile as I watch her backside.

  Her hourglass shape. The hips I’ve taken between my hands before. I remember every square inch of her body. Men don’t forget bodies like Tess Morgan’s.

  “Tess,” slips from my mouth before I have time to catch it.

  “Yeah?” she says, scrubbing the cup for what seems like a long time.

  “It’s all right if you look at my body.”

  She feels the tension between us. I can tell from the way she carries it in her shoulders. I feel it too.

  A knock at the door makes her jump. Quickly, she dries her hands.

  “I got it,” I say.

  “A shirt, Casey. You need a shirt.”

  “Right.” I walk back to my bedroom and grab a T-shirt from my bag.

  I hear Tess at the door.

  I walk up behind her and see a man who looks to be about in his mid-seventies. Surely, this can’t be the contractor. He seems too delicate to be doing contractor work. If he fell off a ladder, he’d break every bone in his body.

  But his handshake is firm when he reaches for mine.

  Emmitt stares at Tess for too long. I’m not sure what to make of it. It’s not like it makes me feel uncomfortable, but it’s not normal either.

  “Well, it’s very nice to meet you, Emmitt. My business partner will take it from here.”

  Business partner. One thing I never thought Tess and I would be.

  The rain has stopped for the moment.

  She grabs a jacket from behind the door and her purse and leaves. “Call me if you need anything,” she says.

  Emmitt stands in the middle of the living room and takes it all in, like he’s been here before, just collecting memories.

  11

  The Ladybugs

  Was it yesterday that I paid the insurance or the day before? Did I pay it at all?

  She looks back at her bank register and can’t find the entry, so she drives down to the water department to pay her bill.

  “To what do I owe this pleasure, Mrs. Brockmeyer?” Craig says from behind the counter.

  “Hello, Craig. I’m here to pay my water bill,” Erla says as she retrieves her checkbook from her purse.

  Craig cocks his head just a tinge. “Already taken care of.”

  “What?” Erla stops digging through her purse and looks at Craig.

  He pulls up her account on the computer and moves the monitor so that she can see it. “See, paid in full.”

  She drops her head. “I could have sworn all I did was call you to see if I paid it.”

  Erla now is too scared to ask if she walked the check in or mailed it in, for panic that if she asks the question out loud, it will make her fears become a reality.

  Erla says, “Well, Craig, it was nice visiting with you. Tell your mother I said hello.”

  “Certainly will, Mrs. Brockmeyer.”

  As Erla leaves the water company, the pain in her chest returns, and it almost stops her in her tracks.

  But through her pain, Erla keeps on walking.

  Keeps on breathing.

  And keeps on going.

  It’s a wonder she doesn’t drop dead on the spot. She gets into her Cadillac and drives home.

  Her resignation letter for The Ladybugs is still on the counter.

  That, she remembers.

  She remembers Mabe coming over and the two of them eating a gallon of ice cream. She just remembers.

  But she doesn’t remember paying the water bill.

  Strange.

  If she calls Dr. Cain and he requests to see her, the whole town will know that Erla Brockmeyer is losing her marbles. She need not cause worry.

  It’s heartache, she tells herself, as she walks inside her house.

  The house phone rings, drawing her attention elsewhere.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello, Erla. It’s Clyda. Please, just hear me out before you say anything. Now, I’m sorry I haven’t called. I was trying to allow you some space before breathing down your neck, but, we—no, I—I could really use your help with planning The Ladybug holiday fundraiser. There’s so much to be done, and I’m afraid that Delveen and Pearl work slower than two snails in a rat race.”

  Erla has to giggle to herself. Clyda doesn’t put up with nonsense, and she is a workhorse, so Erla could only imagine her patience with Delveen and Pearl.

  Erla glances over at her resignation letter on the counter. Does she really feel that way anymore? Was it the heat of the moment, the aggression, her grief maybe that caused such hostile words? Unprofessional? She sees the word underlined. Really, how could five women in their mid-seventies be unprofessional? They all work for free and do good for the community, and they all meet at the pizza place once a month. Unprofessional might have been a strong word.

  “That’ll be fine, Clyda,” Erla says, but Clyda doesn’t hear her because she’s rattling off the consequences of high blood pressure and the rate of death, directly related to stress, among seventy-plus-year-old women.

  “Clyda,” Erla says again.

  “What?”

  “I’ll do it. I’ll help.”

  “Oh! This will be great, Erla. We have a planning meeting tomorrow at Dillon Creek Pizza at noon sharp.”

  Erla writes this down. She doesn’t want to forget, and she thinks, only for a moment, about mentioning her chest pain to Clyda but decides not to. Clyda has enough stress as it is.

  “See you tomorrow, Clyda.”

  “See you tomorrow, Erla. And, Erla?”

  “Yes?”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Erla can tell Clyda is relieved when she hangs up the phone. She reaches for the resignation letter on the counter, reads it one last time, and thinks Mabe was right. Sleeping on it, even if it was longer than she planned, really does take the power of these awful words because, now, Erla doesn’t feel this way.

  Today, she is willing to deal with the bullcrap of Delveen and Pearl.

  She’s about to throw the letter in the trash when the phone rings again. It’s Scarlet. She tosses the piece of paper on the counter before she picks up the phone.

  Down on Main Street, Mabe is going to meet Patty at The Rusty Nail. Mabe chose the place in Dillon Creek so that they both could be less conspicuous. Besides, there is no way in hell that Mabe is going to bring Patty back to her house without a thorough and proper interview f
irst, just to make sure this Patty isn’t two bricks shy of a load.

  Before Mabe approaches, she sees a woman in the window with a hat, scarf, and sunglasses and knows immediately that it’s Patty.

  Mabe looks down at her own attire and wonders if Betty L. might be on to something. Mabe meets Patty at the window table. Mabe removes her own sunglasses, hat, and scarf.

  “You must be Patty?” She sits across the table. She notices the slight tremor in Patty’s hands.

  Patty looks nice enough. A slim figure in her late twenties, early thirties maybe, perfectly well put together. A soccer mom, maybe a PTO mom. She doesn’t look like Patty C. or Sharon B. No, this Patty looks sad, maybe a little lost, and lonely.

  Patty removes her sunglasses and her hat. “You must be Mabe? Betty said you’d look just like me.”

  Mabe can’t help but chuckle to herself.

  Merry approaches their table. “Mabe, good afternoon. Can I get you two something to eat?”

  “Just iced tea for now, Merry, thank you.”

  Patty shakes her head. “I’m fine, Merry, thank you.”

  When Merry leaves, Patty looks out the window, and Mabe sees the shame in her eyes, so she reaches across the table and touches Patty’s hand. Patty isn’t quite sure she’s an alcoholic or not, but what Mabe recognizes in the woman who sits across from her are the same feelings she feels inside her heart. Mabe feels Patty’s hand shaking in hers.

  Tears fill Patty’s eyes. “I drink at night until I don’t remember.”

  Mabe drank her beer to subside her feelings—her deep, dark feelings that lived inside her. She tried to bury her grief, her fear, her sadness, her loneliness and mask it with late-night shopping, television dinners, and her beer.

  “Do you work?” Mabe asks.

  “Not outside the home. I’m a stay-at-home mom. My kids are at school.”

  “How old are your children?”

  “Eight and nine.”

  Mabe is transported to a simpler time when Francine was that age and John was still alive. Back then, she drank but not like after they both passed on. Nothing was lonelier than that.

  “How much do you drink?”

  Patty shrugs, too afraid to make eye contact with Mabe. “Box of wine at night.”

  “Where do you hide all the boxes?” pops out from her mouth because this was Mabe’s routine too.

  Patty brings her eyes from the window to Mabe, and Patty knows that Mabe absolutely understands.

  “After my husband and children go to bed and before I start to drink, I set my alarm to three in the morning. I wake up, take the box out into the garage, stomp it down flat, and put it in the bottom of the recycle bin, and then I go back to bed and sleep until six in the morning when I get up, choke down a cup of coffee because that’s what good mothers drink in the morning, and start my day.”

  Mabe starts to say something, but Patty speaks instead, “And sometimes, when the wine isn’t enough, I tap into my husband’s vodka that he keeps in the freezer.”

  And Mabe sees it—Patty almost smiles.

  “Turns out, however, that when you try to replace the missing vodka with water in hopes to hide what you’ve consumed, hard alcohol does not freeze, and water does. My husband was quite surprised when he went to pour his vodka and the top was frozen solid.”

  Mabe lets out a big laugh.

  Patty does too.

  “What about you?” Patty asks.

  Mabe would rather not tell her story because it’s awfully sad, but like she learned in the meetings, in order to keep what she has in her sobriety, she has to give it away. Mabe knows that most people don’t react the same way that she and Patty do in the world when it relates to booze.

  “My drinking really took off when I lost my husband and my daughter.”

  “Did you find them?”

  Mabe’s eyebrow rises. She begins to wonder if Patty might not be as quick on the uptake. “No.”

  “They left?”

  Mabe shakes her head. “They both died.”

  Patty freezes and stares at her new friend from across the table. “Oh … I’m so sorry.”

  Mabe sees the tinge of shame that lingers on her face for too long, as if Patty shouldn’t drink because she hasn’t lost anything yet.

  “Honey, in my short time in AA, I’ve seen people wander in and out, searching for answers to life’s troubles. What they don’t see is that they have a drinking problem, which has contributed to their difficulties and that alcoholics drink because they like the effects that alcohol produces—no matter life’s problems.”

  A moment of quiet passes between the two women.

  While others carry on at their tables, laughing and telling stories and sharing love, Patty says, “Last week, I put whiskey in my coffee.” Her lower lip starts to shake. “I told my husband that I wasn’t feeling well and couldn’t drive the children to school, so he did.” Patty’s eyes meet Mabe’s. “I … I’m afraid, Mabe. I’m afraid that if I continue on this path, I’ll make a decision so reckless and stupid that my children will have to pay the price. And I think like this when I’m sober. But the second I put alcohol in my body, I don’t care about anything. How … how does that happen so quickly, Mabe? All the regret, the humiliation, the remorse go out the window. I … I’m afraid that when I put alcohol in my body, I can’t control what I’ll do or what I’ll say.”

  Mabe reaches into her purse and gives Patty a tissue to dab the tears that are beginning to fall.

  Mabe is taken back to that night when Tripp and Conroy were killed.

  She was the first on the scene.

  When the two boys in the field cried out for help, Mabe simply left.

  Truth be told, she isn’t so sure she drank over the loss of her husband and daughter or if it was more so to mask the fault of what she hadn’t done that night.

  Maybe it’s all of it.

  To her core, Mabe identifies with the embarrassment, the penitence, the guilt that Patty talked about.

  Mabe gives Patty the truth about herself that she hasn’t given in a long time. “Me too.”

  “What did you do about it?”

  “Well, there’s a meeting on Mondays at seven thirty in the evening at the Catholic church here in Dillon Creek. Would you like to go with me?”

  Patty shrugs. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt.”

  12

  Tess

  The cold rushes into my lungs as I make the brisk walk down to Creek Street.

  My heart is thumping against my chest, and I can’t tell if it’s from the walk or Casey Atwood.

  Anna is working today, and I don’t want to interrupt her.

  Things have drastically changed in the past twenty-four hours.

  How could you, Ike? I think to myself.

  I think about all the things I’d tell Ike right now if I could.

  Forgiveness?

  Hope?

  It’s all a crock of shit, Ike. All of it.

  I stop at the ATM Olive pointed out and get cash. Then, I head back down to Olive’s. Inside, it smells like freshly brewed coffee, and instead of immediately shopping, I take a seat at the bar with Olive.

  “Coffee?” she asks.

  “It smells divine. Please.”

  She smiles. I can see how she’s related to Emmitt. They have the same eyes. They twinkle when they smile.

  She pours me a cup. “Did my granddad make it by?”

  “He did. He’s there now.”

  She sets the mug of steaming hot coffee down in front of me. Hands me creamer in a small silver tin and packets of sugar.

  “Is someone at the house with him?”

  “Yes, my …” I pause, thinking about how I used the term earlier. “Business partner.” It sounds much clearer, less convoluted than childhood boyfriend who really wasn’t my boyfriend.

  “Oh.” She wipes down the counter, waiting for an explanation but also not wanting to pry.

  “It’s a long story. What kind of time do you h
ave on your hands?” I smile.

  “A lot.”

  “Well …” I take a sip of coffee and revel in its thick, rich goodness. “Now, this is a cup of coffee.”

  “You’ve got to make it strong here in Alaska, or most people might not survive winter.”

  I set my mug down. “Casey Atwood is his name, my business partner and”—I’m not quite sure how to describe our past—“longtime friend. And, well, Ike left us his house in his will.”

  Olive places her hand on her hip, thinks on it. “Casey Atwood—that name sounds so familiar.”

  Could be his bull riding. Could be Ava, which makes my stomach grow queasy as I remember the photos of them, or it could be the video with him and the little boy. But I don’t say any of this.

  “Anyway, we’re here, trying to fix up the house so we can sell it.”

  “Sell it? Why would you want to do that?”

  I’m taken aback by her question. Why wouldn’t we want to sell it?

  “Would you keep it?” I ask, curious.

  “Oh, if the walls could talk in that house, they’d have stories to tell.”

  Curious, I ask, “What kind of stories?”

  “It’s housed presidents. Famous movie stars. Writers. Great tribal leaders. And some secrets.”

  “Really?”

  “The Isner Inn was the premier place to stay in Ketchikan back in the late 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s—when Ike’s parents ran it.”

  I make a mental note to Google the Isner Inn.

  “I’m almost certain that the Isners were going to turn the house into a historical landmark before Ike’s father fell ill. So much history of our town exists in the Isner residence. Ike’s great-grandparents, when they had the house, took in natives who didn’t want to conform to the American way back in the 1800s. I know the state of Alaska has wanted to purchase the house for quite some time, but the Isners weren’t willing to sell.”

  “What?”

  Olive nods. Leans on the counter. Takes a sip of her coffee. “You know, Esther could give you more information on this.”

  “She works down at the Tlingit Visitor Center, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  I finish my coffee and pull out a hundred-dollar bill. “For groceries yesterday and today and coffee this morning.”