They Call Me Crazy (13 page)

Chapter Twenty

Cass

T
he cracks don’t seem to have changed much since yesterday morning. I sense that there have been hairline movements, but there’s nothing I can see from here. I wonder if I asked for a ladder and a measuring tape, if anyone would really care that I’m monitoring cracks in the ceiling. There is a new one. I’m sure it’s not really new but one I didn’t pay much attention to yesterday. Something came to me the minute I saw it—Maryanne.

Years ago, Grams asked what happened between the two of us, and I said Maryanne went off to college and got too uppity for me. That’s an easy way for me to blame her. But that’s not entirely true. Sure, she came back a lot smarter, but all the college in the world won’t make her smarter than me. We both know that. She also came back with a baby. That was the first problem.

In the beginning, I treated that kid as if she were my own. I loved those pretty dark curls and the way her pudgy little fingers curled around mine. I felt a kind of love I’ve never known in my life. Maryanne trusted me with Shaylene, too. There really wasn’t any reason why she wouldn’t. Maryanne knew me better than anyone. She was my friend. My only one, really, other than Roland. And Clay.

Maryanne dated Clay for a while when she first came back. I’m not sure “dated” is even the right word, but he’d just gotten home from the Army, and she’d just moved back to town with a baby, and Roland and I were married, so we all hung out together. That’s when Clay started talking about adopting Shaylene. He loved her, too. Maryanne took hold of the idea of having a respectable man her baby girl could look up to, and when the time came to make it legal, she didn’t even flinch.

It got to the point that I wanted that kid with me all the time. I couldn’t have any, and I figured, in a way, she was mine, too. Maybe I went too far. Maryanne started pulling away from me, and before I knew it, she wasn’t around at all. I spent a lot of nights crying about that, hating her for taking my baby away. Our baby.

I saw Shaylene a few weeks ago when I went into town with Roland. We were at the Safeway, and she bounced right up to us and said hello. She’s a nice girl and smart, really smart. She favors Maryanne, so much that it stung my eyes. I didn’t say anything, just turned and walked away. Roland never mentioned it. Shaylene was over, in the past.

Staring at the crack in the ceiling, I realize how much I miss Maryanne. I miss having someone to talk about boys with. I miss having someone to sit with and throw rocks at the river. I miss having someone who would dance with me on the back porch at Grams’s house. I really miss having a friend.

Benny must be sneaking down those stairs, because again, I don’t hear him until he’s standing outside my cell clanging those keys.

“Damn it, Benny, can’t you be quiet? I’m trying to sleep here, asshole!”

He opens my door and throws a sack on my bed.

“Get dressed. Your grandma is on her way.”

I glare at him then throw off the scratchy blanket, showing the wrinkled green scrub set I was assigned when I got here. “I am dressed. Now leave me alone.”

He talks through gritted teeth. “Street clothes. I don’t know how he did it, but that fancy lawyer of yours got you bail. You’re out of here.”

It’s good to be home. My real home. Grams’s home.

I’ve been living as a wife for too long, expected to take care of a house that I don’t want, to clean things that I have no desire to clean, to cook food I don’t eat, and to be there whenever Roland decided to grace the porch with his presence. I was living in someone else’s home—Roland’s home maybe—but somewhere foreign, somewhere I don’t belong.

When we lived in town, things were different. I really loved that cottage on Wyandotte. Sure, the house was small, but it was just Roland and me, and we knew it would always be just the two of us. I was proud of that cottage. It was mine. Ours. I could sit on the porch and drink lemonade and wave to the people who walked by. I didn’t have to talk to them. I felt normal. I felt included in the town, that I wasn’t some outcast who had a witch for a grandma and a mother who killed herself.

But that shack out on the hill was exile. No one ever walked by.

Grams’s house has a smell that’s hard to describe. She loves to bake, and the aroma of blackberries fills the air. But she also has an array of herbs strung through the house, from the front porch to the back, and their scents mingle and accumulate in the curtains. That, along with the candles she lights at various times during the day, makes for a cornucopia of odors unlike any other.

I lie on the couch, the woven cloth cushions worn from years of use, and try to nap before my appointment with the doctor from Springfield. I know the questions he’s going to ask, and for once, I think I’ll be honest. I haven’t always been. I enjoy seeing certain things, but I’m smart enough to know that if I told Doc Kenney about some of them, he’d give me another pill to make them disappear. I’m not sure I want it all to go away. But maybe it’s time to say goodbye to my ghosts.

“Sweetie, you need anything?” Grams is the kindest woman I’ve ever known. I hate that people in town call her names. They don’t give her a chance. She wants to help people, and she knows how, but they think what she does is some kind of voodoo that will cost them an eternity in Hell. I think a lot of them are on the road there anyway.

I guess that’s the way it is with most people, though. The town, the state, the world has one view of them, and those closest to them have another. That’s why Grams, Lola, and Clay stick by me, because they know the real me. That’s why I killed Roland, because I knew the real him.

I smile at her. “Can we listen to the Doors, Grams?”

I know that makes her happy. She saw Jim Morrison once in a concert in Kansas City, and she got close enough to read his colors. Bad things, she said, but not death. She’s convinced he lives in Asia now, that he opened an orphanage in Turkmenistan. I used to laugh at the idea, but now I’m not so sure. She’s been right more often than not, and who am I to decide what is real and what is fantasy?

Of course, she’s wrong about Roland. I killed him and buried him in the yard.

I loved Roland. Still do. Actually, I love him more now. Memory is always so much better than the reality. I think of us lying in bed, cuddled up under our goose-down comforter, talking about our hopes and our dreams, building our lives in our cottage in town. We didn’t have much money, but we had what we needed. And it was enough.

But then there were the past five years: the alcohol, the screaming, the accusations, the money, the isolation, the condoms. Things didn’t get better. They got worse.

The money.
My
money. I know that cash he was burying had to come from my checks. I started keeping track of when he’d plant and noticed how it was always around the time my checks were supposed to hit the bank. I didn’t kill him for the money, even though it was mine. It
is
mine. And no one knows about it but me. I think of Lola and Richard down at the bank, digging around in nothing, when if they really want to find the loot, they would have to get their manicured hands pretty dirty.

I should tell someone about it. Not the doctor or the lawyer, of course. Maybe Grams. If I wind up in prison or worse, she could use the money. I can’t picture her out there digging it up, though. She’s getting old, and her eyesight is failing.

Clay. He’s been right here with me through this. He even brought books and spice cake to the jail. Clay would understand.

When we first moved out to the hill, I had this dream that Roland and I bought a travel trailer, one of those big Winnebagos with a TV and a mini kitchen, and we just took off one day and drove. We stopped where we wanted, saw what we wanted, then climbed back into that RV and drove some more. We never looked back, never came back, just left everything right here in Deacon. I tried to keep track of how much money was going into the ground, but I lost count. I convinced myself that Roland was saving for that Winnebago, and I even thought about what kind of curtains to buy for the windows—something without little yellow ducks.

I finally mentioned it to Roland one day, convinced that once he heard my idea, he would see the light, and things would be as they were when we were younger. We could have a cottage again, a cottage on wheels, and wave to the people who drove by.

But he laughed. He laughed and called me crazy. Then he told me I better get used to this hill because it was as far as I was ever going to go.

We’ll see.

I could do what my daddy did: sneak out of here in the middle of the night, go dig up all that money, and run off somewhere and get a Winnebago. Or I could follow my mama and just check out, give up and hang myself in the back bedroom of Grams’s house.

What I am not going to do is go to jail, or worse, some funny farm where they put all the crazy people. I was born in one, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to die in one, too.

Richard is turning out to be one hell of a lawyer, and I haven’t even talked to him yet. Grams said he was at the bank when they opened this morning to check on Roland’s and my finances. I’m sure that was a short trip. He also went to the judge and got bail set for me and somehow paid it. One million dollars and Richard simply wrote them a check. I can’t run away; I can’t do that to Lola. I guess I’ll let him do his thing and hope it all works out for the best.

Richard has a friend who’s coming to see me: a real head doctor. A shrink, all the way from Springfield. I’m a tad bit anxious about talking to him, but I hear some people say they feel a lot better after they do. We’ll see. For now, I want to lie on the couch, listen to Jim Morrison sing to me about the other side, and inhale the smells in the air.

Yes, this is home.

Chapter Twenty-One

Babe

T
he smell of fresh blackberry cobbler fills the house. Cass has her face almost pressed against the window on the oven door, watching the crust turn golden brown and waiting to take the first bite, like when she was a teenager after school. She couldn’t do her homework until she’d had a taste of sweetness in her mouth. But she is far from a teenager now, I have to remind myself. She’s a grown woman charged to me while she’s on bail for murdering her husband.

She didn’t do it.

The first thing she said when we left the jail was, “Grams, how about some peach cobbler?”

Sure, some would say that was a funny thing to think of the minute you’re released from jail, wearing the same clothes you were wearing when you were caught trying to push a body into the Spring River. They’d been washed, but they were wrinkled and smelled of city jail mold. But her words weren’t that strange to me. I figured that was coming. She needed something sweet so she could think. I knew that.

“I picked some fresh blackberries the other day. I think you need blackberries.”

She thought for a moment then nodded. She knew there was evil amongst us, and the best way to send it back where it belonged was with blackberries.

Lola and that man of hers are on the front porch, talking in whispers, as if I care to hear what they have to say. I made them go out there. I don’t want any talk about Roland or death or court or anything else in this house. But of course, I know exactly what they’re talking about. I’ll forgive them because I also know they’re trying to help. I’m helping, too. I sprinkled some crushed calendula flowers on Richard’s hat when he wasn’t looking. Nothing will help you win in court like calendula flowers.

Richard’s got several years on me, and Lola takes a lot of talk for marrying him. But not from me. He takes care of her and takes care of her kin, too. I can’t imagine what a lawyer of his caliber would cost if we needed to hire one, and he’s doing all this for free. He got to the judge early this morning and had bail set. He even posted it before the dead rolled over for their daily sunning. So I don’t care if he’s old, but I sure hope he lives long enough to see this through.

“Grams? I think it’s done.” Cass rubs her stomach and smacks her lips.

I shoo her away from the oven and grab my mitts. After opening the door, I let the hot steam pass before reaching in and grabbing the cobbler. The dark liquid is bubbling over the sides of the crust, and I set the pan on the counter to cool. Cass is already getting glasses down and placing them on the small kitchen table. She has the forks and hands me a stack of four bowls on her way to the refrigerator for the milk.

“Sweetie, we gotta let it cool for a minute. It will burn your mouth.”

“I’ll blow on it.” She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. “It smells delicious.”

Lola and Richard walk in as I’m starting to dish the cobbler into the bowls.

“I want a small piece, Grams,” Lola says.

Cass and I glance at each other and wink. That’s Lola, always taking “a small piece” as if she’s watching her figure. That means she’ll be back several times during the day, picking and getting another bite or two.

“Not me. Load me down.” Cass has always been a healthy eater. She needs the blackberries, though, and the sugar.

We sit at the table and talk about anything but the obvious. It’s easy for me. I enjoy having the girls around, and Richard is a nice man. He even asks for seconds on the cobbler.

Cass sits back and pats her belly. Her eyes are focused on the ceiling, and I can tell her mind is working in its strange way. She sees things, which is part of a family curse or blessing, depending on how you define it. I channel it for good. Her mama… well, it drove her insane. Cass takes those pills that are supposed to keep the visions from coming, as if the gift is something to be ashamed of. Those pills don’t work, though. I know. She’s got too many other things going on in that head.

But her mind is definitely fired up now. I can feel the energy running off her, and she’s getting that glow back. It’s amazing what a little blackberry cobbler will do for you.

“What are we doing this afternoon, Richard?” Cass asks. She has a dark purple blackberry smudge on her chin and a milk moustache, reminding me of when she was girl.

Cass is being nice to Richard. Come to think of it, she’s been nice to Lola, too. Sometimes, her mouth gets her in trouble. Never with me, though. She just speaks her mind, that’s all.

Richard takes a long swallow of milk and dabs his mouth with a paper towel. He looks at me, not wanting to disrespect my rule of not talking about the charges, and I give him the okay. It was nice while it lasted, but there is a task at hand.

He turns to Cass. “Dr. Button called and said he’s coming to talk and go over your medical records. He should be here by noon.”

Cass nods. “
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
. Got it. Saw the movie. What else?”

Her abruptness doesn’t seem to rattle Richard at all. I guess in his profession he’s seen this quite a bit. “I’ll need you to sign a few more things for me. And I need to go to Roland’s job and start gathering some information on life insurance and whatnot.”

“I thought you weren’t charging me, brother-in-law.” Cass peers at him in that sideways way she has.

“I’m not. But he worked two jobs, and all you have is a check coming in every month. You don’t live high, but it would be nice to know if there’s going to be something for you after I get you out of this. Besides, I always look for the money first. Saves time later.”

Richard doesn’t tell Cass about his trip to the bank this morning. I think that’s odd. I know he went—Lola told me he was going after he talked to the judge—but he doesn’t say a word. Yet here he is, talking about money. I would guess Roland and Cass don’t have much money. They don’t have much of anything.

Cass flinches. The movement is subtle, and I’m sure Lola and Richard don’t see it. But I do. She knows something, but she isn’t hurrying to say.

“Then what?” Cass asks.

“I have my investigator coming down this afternoon to start interviewing people, and the coroner won’t have his report back until tomorrow. So the one thing left to do today is for you to chat with Dr. Button. Then you and I can sit down and talk.”

“We’re doing that right now.”

Richard stares her dead in the eye, something not a lot of people can do. “Cass, even though I’m married to your sister, I am your lawyer. You don’t have to tell me if you did it, why you did it, or what exactly you did, but if I ask, you have to be truthful. What you can’t do is talk to anyone else about it. Only me. You understand?”

She thinks for a moment, those bright green eyes going up and her forehead wrinkling. Then she nods.

Richard reaches across the table and pats her hand in a grandfatherly way. Lola starts gathering the bowls and glasses to put them into the sink. I sit there, watching everyone, seeing their auras and the light in the room merge and divide. Richard glances at his watch, then stands and gives Lola a peck on the cheek before turning to leave.

I follow him out on the porch. “Richard.” I don’t know what to say, so I just blurt, “Thank you.”

He tilts his head and gives me a polite nod.
What a nice man.

“Oh,” I say. “Don’t forget your hat.”