Raveled

by McAneny, Anne

  I’d ventured into Libby’s Salon only twice. I’d always worn my wavy hair long so it needed little maintenance but my mother took me in for a shampoo, cut, and blow dry on my thirteenth birthday. There was a school dance that night and she’d been hoping I’d go. I didn’t. The other time, I got an updo for my aunt’s wedding. Never before—and certainly never since—had I felt so gorgeous. But I do recall the toxic chatter flying back and forth at full volume among the women. I figured they’d forgotten I was there because surely, they’d never talk that way about the grown-ups in town if they knew I could hear them. At one point, Mrs. Laird, my former sweetheart of a preschool teacher, proclaimed in a confidential but booming voice that the butcher’s wife had slept with one of the Westerling clan. The way the other women pounced on this news reminded me of starving vultures scrapping over a pile of squirrel guts. My mother never took me again.

  I let Charlie revel in his hair parlor memories while I squirmed in mine. “So,” I said, “you don’t think the Kettricks reached out to Jasper, even after Bobby’s death?”

  Charlie went silent, a most uncommon condition for him. “Hmm,” he said, then paused again.

  “What? What are you thinking?”

  “Well, now you’ve changed the timeline on me. You said after Bobby’s death.”

  “So?”

  “I never met the mayor in person, but from what I heard, the guy loved his name. Would defend it to the death and probably did on several occasions. After the murder, he wasn’t going to let anything besmirch that boy’s name.”

  “And?”

  “Well, you were never around, but in the years after Bobby died, people talked about the future he’d been destined to enjoy, his angelic looks, his athleticism and charisma that the gods themselves must have bestowed upon him. Honestly, Allison, you’d have thought the kid was the second coming. Teachers suddenly remembered insightful things he’d said. Football coaches memorialized him and held up his team-first attitude as an example to future generations. They even retired his number.”

  “I seem to remember a rather different Bobby.”

  “It was sickening, but I tell you, after a few years, even I started to think back on the guy more kindly.”

  “What does Bobby’s sainthood have to do with Jasper?”

  “Well, if Jasper knew anything about Bobby that could dethrone him, the mayor would have seen to it that that information never saw the light of day. Maybe he did pay off Jasper to keep him quiet. But I’m probably wrong on that.”

  “Why?”

  “’Cuz if Jasper knew anything, and they thought he might spill the beans, Mayor Kettrick would have done that boy like a sow too old to birth anymore.”

  I knew what happened to a sow whose uterus was spent after years confined to a pen doing nothing but birthing and suckling. She’d show up for breakfast the next morning, on a plate next to the fried eggs.

  On a whim, I asked Charlie if he had a date for the reunion.

  “Allison, please. Lavitte barely tolerates the fact that one of their own has gone out into the world and sucked cock. I’m sure they’re not ready for me to crash a reunion with my hot piece of the month.”

  “Poetically put, Charlie. Listen, would you mind a reunion date with old goody-two-shoes here?”

  “Ooh, now that could be interesting.”

  “Excellent. We’ll touch base tomorrow.”

  Charlie would kill me when he found out that I hadn’t shared the news of Jasper’s death. But my association with Jasper needed to stay a secret. After all, I didn’t want to end up at the Kettricks’ kitchen table.

  Chapter 24

  Allison… present

  The lighted sign for Ravine Psychiatric Hospital shined in the night as if advertising a vacancy at a cheap motel. Room available. Continental breakfast. Complimentary Lobotomy included.

  It felt good to be back in a place with artificial lighting. Roanoke wasn’t New York, but it provided some of the metropolitan security I craved. City lights fell differently than country ones. Sure, the lights came on in both places, but the sources couldn’t be more different. For as many stars as a country sky boasted, a New York City bar had a light to match. Recessed, dangling, twinkling, flashing, accent, strobe, neon, spotlight, blacklight, illuminated ice cubes, green halogen to say order up, red to say a liquor bottle needed changing, LED’s on the registers, fiber optics on the dance floor, electric cigarettes, even battery-powered pink lights in strippers’ bras. When they all dimmed at 2:00 a.m., life became a little less bright. In the country, just the opposite. The deeper the night fell, the more the lights commanded attention. Stars grew brighter the longer you stared at them, commanding attention from the bed of a pick-up, through the skylight in a barn, or above a soft patch of grass. Even the fireflies seemed to multiply with each chime of the clock. A country moon couldn’t hide behind skyscrapers or play peek-a-boo between buildings because the tallest thing around was the church steeple, providing its own special glow to those who sought it. Even fire burned differently in city and country. City fire, the steeliest light of all, so blistering and authoritative, seemed cold in its power, prompting calls to 9-1-1. Country fires inspired calls to friends… a bonfire of fallen branches, a little kindling, maybe a broken-down wood bench, with marshmallows roasting, cold hands rubbed to warmth, and teens telling stories. A city fire mesmerized but often denoted tragedy, while a bonfire, by its very definition, meant good fire, at least to country folk.

  Me, I preferred city lights. They could be turned on for distraction and off for privacy. Even a uni-named bartender could disappear after 2:00 a.m. with the flick of a switch. Besides, I knew the real etymology of the word bonfire. It meant to use bones as fuel, and while the bumpkins might argue that bone fuel represented the full circle of life, there might also be the occasional circumstance where the burning of bones came with an ulterior motive.

  I pulled into Ravine’s parking lot where the visitor spots stood empty. Still feeling the chill of the ideas Charlie had sparked in my head, I parked quickly and hurried to the front door, glancing around like a lost jogger in Central Park at nightfall. I waved at the sensor above the front door, but it didn’t open. I tried to tug it apart like Ray had, but it didn’t budge. A panicked anxiety kicked in and a vision of Mayor Kettrick’s craggy face loomed up in front of me on the other side of the glass. I sucked in enough air to let out a wallop of a yell, but the image quickly morphed into Ray’s pudgy cheeks. My heart rate began a slow descent to normal.

  Ray fiddled with the keys and finally unlocked the doors and pushed them apart.

  “Ray,” I said like we were old buddies, “I’m so happy it’s you.”

  “Who else would it be?” Ray said. “No one else is breaking into patients’ rooms for you, pilfering through their belongings, and meddling with visitor logs.”

  I really did owe this guy. In thirty-six hours, I’d managed to decimate the ethical standards of this rarest of creatures—a decent human being. But hey, he’d probably only worked a lifetime to build them up. “You’re a good guy, Ray. I mean it.”

  He huffed, but I caught the shallowest hint of one of his dimples looking pleased that a woman—a mostly sane one, at that—was indebted to him.

  “Do you have the yearbooks?”

  He gestured for me to follow him to the back of the lobby and gave me a shush signal with his finger to his lips. He buzzed us through a set of double doors by holding his badge up to a blinking green light. Order up! We walked down a set of stairs into some sort of partial basement, a short, clammy hallway with black, concrete flooring and three doors. The silence closed in around us like a threatening embrace. Ever so gently, Ray unlocked and opened a chintzy door that I could have punched my fist through. He pointed to a box in the far corner of the dark room.

  I flicked my eyebrows at him and pointed to the box to make sure it was okay for me to retrieve it. He nodded and I entered, but as soon as I did, he slammed the door shut. For an insta
nt, I stifled a scream of fear, the kind you let out when you realize you’ve been locked in the damp basement of a psychiatric hospital, unbeknownst to anyone, left to rot forever with your pathetic treasure trove of old yearbooks. Stifling be damned, I was poised to pound on the door and scream bloody murder when I heard Ray’s voice.

  “Dr. Graft,” he said, “I had no idea you were still here.”

  “Needed some files from the archives,” she said. Her voice sounded tired but cheerful. “Turns out Mr. Lacy’s threats to bury his parents alive weren’t as idle as we’d hoped when we released him. Luckily, they were able to claw their way out before he skipped town.”

  “Such a shame,” Ray said. “I enjoyed playing Scrabble with Mr. Lacy, though I should have been suspicious when he played TOMB every game.”

  Dr. Graft and Ray shared a gentle chuckle. Is this what passed for light banter at Ravine?

  “Well good night, Ray. I’m going to read these notes at home.”

  “Good night, Dr. Graft.”

  I heard no footsteps. She was either wearing sneakers or she and Ray were going at it in the hall. After three solid minutes of fighting mental demons inside that dark room, along with unbidden images of Ray humping Dr. Graft, I began to empathize with prisoners in solitary confinement. Imaginary spiders crawled up my legs and I calmed myself by thinking of Detective Barkley and his arachnophobia. I reached out to tap the door when Ray opened it.

  “What took you so long?” I said. “Do you have any idea how creepy it is in here?”

  Ray flicked on the light inside the room. “What? It’s just a conference room.” And it was. A very pleasant one, at that. “I had to make sure she was gone. Half the time, she forgets something and comes back.”

  “Okay,” I said, a cynical part of my brain wondering if Ray had been punishing me for all the favors. I grabbed the box of yearbooks. “Mind if I look at these in here for a moment?”

  “You can sit in the lobby, as long as no one realizes what you’re looking at, but I’ve got to get back to the front.”

  A few minutes later, I sat on the lobby’s musty sofa that smelled like someone had donated it after leaving it in their flooded basement. It carried a musky odor, too, as if a ferret had taken residence in it at some point, but the odor could just as easily have been the cheap cologne of a frequent Ravine visitor. Who cared? I opened the yearbook that contained my freshman picture. It was the last year I’d spent at Lavitte High. There it was, page 83. Allison J. Fennimore in her brown and maroon plaid shirt. Eh, not a bad shot, at least what I could see of it beneath Jasper’s shaky scrawl. Ray was right. The message made no sense. But I also knew how Jasper’s brain worked. I stared at the letters written in block format, four words of three letters each across my face: TSL, HTA, IYD, RAD. I analyzed it for a solid ten minutes, working anagrams in my head, treating it as an acronym, wondering if they were stock exchange symbols. I couldn’t come up with anything. I needed the internet. Maybe Ray would let me use his computer. Then suddenly, I saw it. I read the columns of letters vertically and it all made sense, at least to me: Thirsty Al Add. Of course!

  Jasper and I had been lab partners in chemistry. I was the only freshman in the class of juniors. During one lecture on the Periodic Table of the Elements, Jasper had leaned over to my stool and whispered, “Poor Claire, she’s so misunderstood.”

  “Claire?” I’d said.

  “Yes. Al’s girlfriend. Because if she’s true to herself, then Al is very disappointed every time he goes for a slurp.”

  I’d looked into his eyes to make sure he hadn’t dipped into the wacky weed he was rumored to grow as pain-relief medicine for his mom. Nope, he’d looked surprisingly normal that day. But there’d been a challenging spark in his eyes. The gauntlet had been thrown and accepted. He’d drawn back then, sitting attentively in his stool while I pondered. Three minutes later, disappointed in myself for having taken so long to decipher his riddle, I’d whispered into his ear. “Yes, but Claire is a gas at parties.”

  His pleased grin had sealed our strange bond. “And when things really heat up…”

  “… so is Al,” we’d finished together.

  He had lit up like a teacher puffing with pride at a student’s accomplishment. “You are surely one of the Noble Gases, Miss Fennimore. I tip my hat to you.”

  I looked at Jasper’s message again, THIRSTY AL ADD, and wondered if I’d be up to the challenge this time. I had to be. It might reveal the missing elements of that night’s events. The message referred to the Periodic Table. In the table’s upper right hand section, the elements aluminum, silicon, phosphorous, sulfur, chlorine, and argon sat in a horizontal row because their atomic numbers were sequential, beginning with aluminum at 13 and ending with argon at 18. Their symbols were Al, Si, P, S, Cl, and Ar, which spelled Al Sips Clar. Each element on the chart took the form of either a gas, a solid or a liquid at room temperature. Chlorine and argon were gases, thus making the imaginary Clar a gas, in turn making it impossible for Al to sip her. But when heated up, almost all the elements became gases, thus Jasper’s and my mutual conclusion that when things heated up, Al was a gas, too—making Al and Clar quite compatible, I always liked to think.

  Yeah, so Jasper and I were total geeks. But I was never able to look at a Periodic Table again without thinking about thirsty Al and misunderstood Clar at a party—Al with a straw in his mouth, of course. The question remained, what were Al and Clar doing in the yearbook of my dead lab partner? Had he written it recently or scribbled it long ago to remember me by—maybe during his senior year when I’d moved to Brooklyn with a scarlet MD on my chest. Murderer’s Daughter.

  Since I only appeared in Jasper’s junior yearbook, I opened the remaining three to see if he’d written anything on his own picture or anywhere else. Nothing obvious popped out at me, although I did stop at one page in Jasper’s senior yearbook where Blake Barkley’s name caught my eye. One year behind me, Detective Barkley was a freshman during Jasper’s senior year. There he was. The same neat haircut, strong jaw and clear blue eyes, but in a young boy’s face. The caption beneath his small photo listed other pages on which he appeared: pages 61 and 108. I flipped to them. Page 108 included the basketball team photo. Short but apparently scrappy, Blake had played point guard on the Junior Varsity team. An action shot showed him with one knee high in the air, his leg trailing behind to balance his extended arm as he laid one up to the basket. A cheerleader in the background stared at him with unabashed ardor. Wonder if she ever got him.

  Page 61 offered up the tacky Most Likely To and Best pages for each grade. Blake Barkley garnered two mentions, pretty impressive given his class size of 150. In the photo, he and a ridiculously attractive girl with a heart-shaped face sat on opposite edges of a single desk, leaning into each other at the shoulders. Their arms were crossed in front of their chests as they both flashed impressive choppers. The award, of course: Best Smile. The second award didn’t include a picture but indicated that Blake’s classmates had big plans for him: Most Likely to Become President. Ah well, not everyone could live up to Lavitte expectations.

  Embracing the very definition of his Converse footwear, Ray sneaked up behind me and made me jump when he spoke. “That make any sense to you? What Jasper wrote?” he said. “Or was it nothing?”

  I shifted my body around and took in Ray’s innocent mien. I hadn’t worn an expression that wholesome and sweet since age twelve, and even then, it had been rare. To tell Ray the truth might be to put him in danger, especially if Mayor Kettrick was involved, and I just couldn’t do it.

  “No, it doesn’t mean anything to me,” I lied. “Probably someone else got hold of his yearbook and was messing around.”

  “Maybe,” Ray said. “But if anyone was going to write to you in code, Jasper would be the one to do it. Smart guy, very bright.”

  The sentiment echoed Ray’s thoughts from our first conversation and suddenly, the rest of his and Jasper’s words came back. Ray had said that Jasp
er was very popular, and Jasper had told me he couldn’t meet me in the morning because he was busy. With what? Another visitor? Jasper had also said the ball was in motion and that my call couldn’t be a coincidence. He was linking me to someone else—someone whose visit might be to my benefit or detriment.

  “Ray,” I said, “on Thursday afternoon when I was here, you said Jasper told you I was coming, and you mentioned that he was popular.”

  “Yup,” Ray said. “That’s right. I did.”

  “What did you mean?”

  “He had two visitors that day. Told me about one of them the night before. He mentioned you the next morning. Said you were arriving mid-afternoon.”

  “Who was the other visitor, Ray?”

  “I don’t know. He didn’t say and I never saw. I was probably in back making copies. Paperless society, my tush. Julia would have been covering the front desk.”

  “The visitor would have signed in, right?”

  “I suppose, but when I crossed out your name on the log earlier, I didn’t see another visitor for Jasper on there.”

  We walked over to the visitor log. Twelve signatures preceded mine. None of them indicated Jasper Shifflett’s room as their destination.

  “Oh, that’s odd,” Ray said. “Look at this one.” He pointed to a name, Shawn Smart of Brissel Pharmaceuticals who’d signed in at 10:15 a.m. to see Dr. Graft.

  “That’s the doctor I met, right?” I said. “Liza Graft, Jasper’s doctor?”

  “It sure is. But she’d called to say she was working at home Thursday morning because she didn’t have any appointments. She does that sometimes. Has a little girl, you know.”

  “Maybe this Shawn Smart just dropped something off for Dr. Graft?” I said.

  “No idea. I’ll have to ask.”

  I glanced at the remaining names. “The rest of these look okay to you?”