Elementary, My Dear Watkins

by Mindy Starns Clark

  At least Uncle Rick, who was usually a real pushover, had finally reached his limit. The last time Alexa’s mom snapped at him for no reason, he told her there was an AA meeting in the basement of a local church at 9:00 PM, and they were going there even if it killed her.

  Alexa knew her mom needed more than just Alcoholics Anonymous. She needed Everything-That’s-Addictive Anonymous.

  More than anything, the woman needed a dry out clinic, a place that would basically keep her prisoner until she got through the worst of it, and then help her to heal.

  The food arrived, and as the waitress slapped their dishes on the table, Alexa looked up at Rick and spoke.

  “Monday or Tuesday,” she said, hoping her mom could hold on that long. “At the soonest.”

  He nodded, understanding.

  “Monday or Tuesday what?” her mom asked.

  “That’s when Consuela will be giving me cooking lessons,” Alexa lied easily, picking up her spoon. “I’m going to learn how to make soup just like this.”

  Jo had managed to calm down somewhat by the time she neared the carriage house. She was done with her parents, finished talking, finished listening to excuses. Finished being a part of this family, if that were possible.

  Oh, how she wished she had two good legs! She would strap on her skates and take off down the street and keep rolling all the way to the bay, if possible.

  Just thinking of a physical release, she went into the carriage house and tried to find some piece of equipment that would allow her to work out without using her legs. Rejecting the treadmill, the bicycle, and the rowing machine, she turned to the universal and started lifting weights. After she had exhausted the options for arm lifts, she got down on the mat, laid on her back, raised her injured legs into the air, and started doing crunches.

  Though she wasn’t dressed for it, she didn’t care. It was the burn she was after, the focus and the pull and the pain, good pain. After 75 crunches, she was breathing heavily. At 150, she was hurting. Finally, at 200, she collapsed onto the floor and just lay there, catching her breath.

  She closed her eyes, wondering among other things if the bodyguard thought she was nuts. When she opened her eyes, however, he was standing over her, holding out a towel and smiling.

  “Sorry to interrupt, but if I were you, that’s exactly what I would’ve done. Too bad you can’t go running or something.”

  She took the towel from him, sat up, and dabbed at her neck and chest. Strangely, she did feel a lot better. Exercise always helped.

  “Did you ever wonder how you could possibly be related to your own parents?” Jo asked, tossing the towel across the mat and into the hamper.

  “Every time my father picks his teeth in public.”

  Jo burst into a laugh. It felt good to laugh.

  He helped her up and from there she decided she was going back to the studio to work on her toasters. On the way, she detoured over to Chewie’s pen, feeling guilty that she’d left him out there in the dark for so long. She released him, and he gladly ran alongside her as she went to the studio, his new bone clenched tightly in his teeth.

  The piano was playing as she neared the building, a boogie-woogie sort of tune, and Jo smiled as she opened the door, expecting to see Alexa. Instead, Jo’s smile faded as she realized that the person at the piano was Ian.

  “Hey, cuz!” he said, ending the song with a flourish. “Gran said you’d end up out here eventually. Nice pooch.”

  “Where is everyone?”

  “The doctor showed up to look at Dad’s leg, so I made a quick exit. I don’t do well with blood or pain.”

  Jo wasn’t surprised. She released Chewie’s collar and he ran straight to Ian, gave him a few sniffs, and began wagging his tail. True to form, Chewie was eager to make a new friend. As Ian reached out to pet him, Jo hobbled over to the toasters and started back in where she had left off. Soon, Ian joined her, across the table.

  “Your parents were out here looking for you when I showed up,” Ian told her, “but they only hung around for a few minutes and then they left.”

  “Good,” she said. “I’m glad they’re gone.”

  Jo wasn’t thrilled that Ian was there, either, but if her uncle needed stitches, as she suspected he would, then they would have to leave soon anyway to get to a clinic or ER.

  “You used to like me, Jo,” Ian said. “When we were kids. What happened?”

  She put down the rag and looked at him.

  “I still like you, Ian. I just have to take you in smaller doses. You’re a little…much for me.”

  “Yeah, I’m a little much for everybody. Even myself sometimes.”

  Jo glanced at the row of toasters, wondering if she could simply work on them all night. She missed her own home, where she could use cleaning as the perfect antidote to stress. Around here, they had people to do those things. If Jo got down on her hands and knees and started scrubbing a floor, everyone would think she’d gone mad.

  “Well, I won’t hang out and interrupt your work,” Ian said. “I just had one thing to tell you before I go. Something I thought you’d like to know.”

  “What’s that, Ian?”

  “The real reason that your father is opposing the announcement about Fibrin-X. The motivation that is making him stand firm even at the risk of his own daughter’s life.”

  At least he had her attention now. Jo met her cousin’s eyes, seeing the family resemblance in the vivid green there. Ian pointed a thumb at the bodyguard.

  “Does he have to be here for this?”

  “Never leaves my side,” Jo replied. “But whatever he overhears remains strictly confidential.”

  “Yeah, right,” Ian said, rolling his eyes. “Whatever. Here it is. You want it?”

  “Yes. Actually, I’d love to hear what you have to say.”

  “Your father doesn’t just hope to postpone the announcement about Fibrin-X. He hopes eventually to squash the research completely. He doesn’t want that drug ever reaching the market.”

  “Why not?”

  Ian leaned back again, propping his feet on the table.

  “Ever heard of Lambremil? The drug?”

  “Sounds familiar.”

  “It’s made by our pharmaceutical company, the same folks who are behind the Fibrin-X. Lambremil is the number one ADHD drug in the world. It helps manage the symptoms.”

  “Okay.”

  “Do you know the statistics, Jo? Depending on who’s counting, right now there are eight million adults and maybe as many as four and a half million kids with ADHD. More of them take Lambremil than any other drug. They take it every day. Every single day, many of them for their entire lives. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  It took a minute, but finally Jo began to get it. She looked at him, eyes wide.

  “He doesn’t want there to be a cure.”

  “Bingo.”

  Ian sat forward, tapping a finger against the table.

  “Even if we charged a hundred bucks a pop for the Fibrin-X, even five hundred, a one-time-use drug is pretty limiting in its earning potential. Just think of all the cash flow problems when the Lambremil well trickles dry. As your father likes to say, the financial consequences of that would be astronomical.”

  Ian was telling her the truth. Jo knew it, in her heart, knew that her father would place his bottom line against the health of millions of suffering people, as well as the safety of his own daughter.

  Jo felt sick to her stomach.

  “Well, I’d better get moving,” Ian said, standing. “I can see my work here is done.”

  He started to leave, but as he walked away, Jo realized there was still one thing that didn’t add up.

  “Ian.”

  “Yeah?”

  “No offense, but you love money more than anyone in the whole family, and you’re not exactly a well of compassion for the hurting people of the world.”

  “Gee thanks for that insult. Nice seeing you too.”

  “Wait,�
�� she said, stepping toward him. “I’m just saying, knowing you as I do…why are you against my father in this? Loyalty to your own dad is one thing, but it makes no sense why you, of all people, would support the less economical choice in this matter.”

  He stood there for a long moment. Then he smiled, but it wasn’t his usual fake happy smile. It was real and kind of sad.

  “Can’t you guess?”

  She shook her head.

  “Like all ADHD drugs, Lambremil has side effects. All drugs have side effects. I was never able to tolerate any of them.”

  Jo suddenly realized that Ian had ADHD. In a flash, she realized he always had.

  “I’m sorry, Ian. I didn’t know.”

  “Yeah, well, I wasn’t even diagnosed until a few years ago. People thought I was just incorrigible. Wild. Way out in left field. I suppose I am, but I suspect that’s mostly thanks to my disorder.”

  “You want the cure for yourself.”

  “Yes, I do. The moment the Fibrin drug trials go into the next phase, my name is at the top of the list.”

  22

  Danny couldn’t believe that he was actually standing on American soil. The last hour of the flight had been torture, watching out the window for the sight of New York City. Landing at JFK and getting off the plane and going through customs had been positively surreal.

  Now he was standing beside his rental car, a little white Chevy, wondering how quickly he could get to Jo. Depending on the traffic, Danny figured he might be able to make it to the estate in about an hour.

  That meant that in about an hour, he would say hello to Jo and probably give her the shock of her life. He would look deeply into the eyes of the woman that he loved and tell her that he was there for her, for however she needed him.

  His biggest question was why she hadn’t told him that she did need him or what was really going on.

  After Ian left, Jo decided to go online and check her e-mail, to see if Toaster Man had responded yet to the note she’d sent him last night. He had not, but there were plenty of other e-mails waiting for her, mostly business matters and reader letters.

  She worked on them for a while, taking a break when a contrite and red-eyed Consuela showed up with a warmed-over dinner plate, asking if she was hungry. She had also brought out some dog food for Chewie, which he devoured in a matter of seconds. Jo’s dinner was wonderful, and as she ate, she tried to calm any concerns Consuela might have about the chandelier incident.

  “The biggest person to blame is myself,” Jo said. “I should’ve told you that the crystals can be tricky to put back in place.”

  Consuela seemed to feel better by the time she left.

  Alexa returned soon after that from her outing and asked if she could join Jo in the studio. The girl spread some books out at the next table for studying, but as she worked, she seemed upset and listless, and Jo wondered if she always got that way after time with her mother. It couldn’t be easy to live such a strange life, standing with one leg in each world and not really feeling a part of either.

  Jo tried drawing the girl into conversation, and it didn’t take much to get her talking. In fact, she seemed relieved to be able to unburden on someone. Alexa talked about her mother’s drug addiction, about the need to find a rehab and then accomplish the more difficult task of talking her mother into actually going into it. Alexa seemed so hopeless that Jo thought she might talk to her grandmother later and find out if they could help financially in some way.

  Mostly, Jo just let Alexa go on about all of her mother’s faults and weaknesses, expressing feelings that had probably been building up for a while. The picture she painted as she talked was of a highly unstable woman, severely addicted to drugs and men, who did not seem capable of parenting a teenager or holding down a job or even making it through one day without a fix of some kind or another. Jo could only imagine how relieved the woman must have been when her daughter underwent a medical miracle and was taken off of her hands by some rich lady across the river.

  “The sad thing is,” Alexa said, “all afternoon I kept looking at her and thinking that’s how I would have ended up. That’s what I would have become, if Dr. Stebbins hadn’t fixed me and pulled me out of there.”

  “Somehow I doubt it. You’re made of stronger stuff.”

  Jo thought of her own situation, of the petty, materialistic people her parents were. She might have become like them too, she supposed, if not for the love of her Tulip grandparents, who showed her a better way to live, not to mention the One to live for.

  “You know, my mother’s not such a piece of cake either,” Jo added. “When I was way younger than you, I made the decision that I was not going to grow up to be like her. And you know what? If we didn’t have the same last name, you wouldn’t even know we were related, that’s how different we are.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Is she a drug addict?”

  Jo smiled.

  “No. But she’s not a very good person. Lately, I’ve started to realize that in a lot of ways she’s a very bad person.”

  “But she loves you, right?”

  “In her own way, I guess. I think she loves herself too much to really love anybody else.”

  “That’s sad.”

  Jo shrugged.

  “God made sure that I had a lot of other people to love me instead—grandparents and friends. And, of course, God loves me most of all. Having Him in my life fills up all of those other empty spots inside.”

  “Sometimes I talk to God, but I’m never sure if He’s really listening. I went to a youth group at a church once, and they said He hears everything everybody says, but I’m not so sure if that’s true.”

  Jo looked at the young woman in front of her, praying for wisdom and all the right words.

  “God hears you, sweetheart. He’s listening—and He loves you more than you could ever imagine.”

  Somehow, that news seemed to reach some hurting place deep in Alexa’s heart. Her eyes slowly filled with tears.

  “You know that for sure?” she whispered.

  “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”

  Jo didn’t want to overwhelm Alexa with information about God and faith, but as they talked it became clear that the girl already understood plenty—and that, in a way, she had started down that road toward her Creator a long time ago, all on her own. They talked for a while, Jo answering Alexa’s questions, and then they even prayed together. Afterward, both of them seemed much more settled and at peace.

  Danny put on his blinker, hoping this was the right place. For the last ten minutes, he had passed estate after estate, most of them hidden by iron fences or high, ivy-covered walls. This one had a little guard hut at the entrance, with a man in a uniform sitting inside. Rolling down the window as he pulled to a stop, Danny asked if this was the Bosworth home.

  “Name?” the man said, not bothering to answer Danny’s question.

  “Danny Watkins.”

  The gate swung open, allowing him to drive through. When he reached the massive house, another guard was standing there, and he also verified Danny’s name against a list. Danny wasn’t sure, but somehow he doubted that all of this security was the norm around here.

  What was going on?

  Finally he stood at the front door and knocked.

  Back at her own table, Jo closed out her e-mail, glad that almost all of the reader questions had been simple ones, as she had managed to polish off several days’ worth of blog entries, along with a week’s worth of columns. This time of year, the same sorts of things popped up again and again: bugs, gardening, stain removal for mud and grass. Easy stuff for which no testing was required.

  She decided to work on the toasters some more, so she made up a solution at the sink of warm water and vinegar for her first pass.

  “Can I help?” Alexa asked, looking up from her books.

  “Sure. Do you want to do the scrubbing or the note taking?”
r />   “I’ll take notes.”

  Jo gave her the notepad and showed her where to write as she dictated. Switching to the dirtiest toaster, Jo dipped a toothbrush in the water and was about to start on the inside of the toaster door when Alexa spoke.

  “Shouldn’t you unplug it first?” she asked.

  Alexa pointed, and Jo followed the cord with her eyes from the back of the toaster down to a floor outlet.

  She hadn’t plugged it in.

  A chill starting at the base of her neck, Jo walked around to the back of the table, to see if any of the others were plugged in also. They weren’t.

  Was it a simple mistake? Had someone misunderstood and thought she wanted it plugged in?

  Jo stood there, trying to give someone the benefit of the doubt, trying to figure it out. She looked at the toaster again and gasped, realizing that the cord in question had been scraped bare near the top, and the exposed wires laid flush against the metal frame. Little black flecks littered the table under the cord. If Alexa hadn’t stopped her from touching the appliance with the wet toothbrush, Jo might be toast herself by now.

  Someone had tried to electrocute her.

  Danny was shown into the study by a maid and left there alone for a few minutes to wait for Mrs. Bosworth. In that time, he thought about simply tearing through the house and calling Jo’s name until he found her. Standing here like an idiot waiting for her grandmother was ridiculous.

  Finally, he saw the older woman coming toward him. She was walking slowly, with a cane, looking pale and exhausted. He ran forward to help her, and as they walked together to the nearest chair, she leaned on him heavily.

  “You made it,” she said softly.

  Her eyes were shiny, though Danny wasn’t sure if that was because she had tears in them or because she was old. He looked at her, trying to figure out why she seemed different from the last time he’d seen her last fall, and finally he decided it was her face. It looked strange now, almost puffy and swollen.