Whispers of the marrow, p.5
Whispers of the Marrow, page 5
“We talked about your regression therapy with Dr. LaConte a little more. You mentioned how having someone there from your past could make the whole thing easier. So, I agreed to go with you. Apparently, it’s why you wanted to meet up to begin with. Then you left and, you know... you disappeared.”
Zee peered across the parking lot to where Khaki stared back at her from behind a parked car. Had he known of her reaction to Aryn’s engagement? Had he been standing there, watching her through the bedroom window while she pissed herself for days on end?
She wondered and wondered and—
“Zee!” Taylor’s hand gripped Zee’s wrist. “Did you hear me?”
Awakened from her staring contest with Khaki, Zee turned to find worry lines between Taylor’s eyebrows, lines that seemed to be a permanent result of either herself or her two nephews. She definitely wouldn’t mention Khaki hanging out. That would not bode well for Taylor’s worried wrinkle.
“My bad. What did you say?”
“I asked what time is the session tomorrow?”
Zee nodded slowly. “Two o’clock.” She directed her gaze back to the parking lot, relieved to discover that Khaki was nowhere to be found, but he’d be somewhere close by. He always was. “Did I mention anything else?”
“I told you to talk to Ma about Fairville. She and Granny So-So would obviously know more than I would,” Taylor said, picking up Zee’s new phone to check its progress.
“I’ve tried. You know I have, Tay, but Ma’s pretty fucking adamant about dropping a subject. Remember your birthday party last year? As soon as I brought it up, she flipped her shit for twenty minutes about how I’d end up committed if I didn’t stop dwelling on the past.”
Zee patted her pockets in search of her cigarettes. She had left them in her car. Fuck’s sake, she thought, then said, “Come to think of it, that’s probably the nicest thing she’s ever said to me after I came out. Do you know this year was the first time she even bothered to send me a birthday gift in years? Albeit it was late. And I guarantee you she only did it because Aryn and I were broken up.” She smiled sadly, tucking the cardinal charm beneath her shirt. “I never take it off, even if Ma does hate me.”
“Don’t be dramatic.” Taylor’s refute sounded forced. Whoever said parents shouldn’t play favorites obviously didn’t send Beverly Talbit the memo. It was even noticeable by those outside the family circle. “What about Grandma?” She ventured instead.
“Don’t even get me fucking started. Granny So-So is ten times worse than Ma. There’d be no discussion. No yelling. Just a backhand.”
A moment of silence passed before they both broke into light laughter.
“True. The ol’ girl loves to lay the palm down,” Taylor said fondly. “But in all seriousness, just because you and Ma can’t get on one accord doesn’t mean she hates you, Zee. And they only live thirty minutes away. Why don’t you go see her and Granny So-So more often? To be honest, she’s not bothered by the fact that you’re gay... anymore.”
“If I can’t even get her to return my calls, I doubt she’d be cordial if I was to turn up for an impromptu house visit.”
Again, Taylor couldn’t refute the argument. Zee retrieved her journal and pen from the leather messenger bag by her feet. “Did you remember anything else about Fairville since I’ve been gone? You know, anything, however small or irrelevant?”
Taylor reared back, eyeing Zee critically. “If we’re doing this, then I get to know where you’ve been. You owe me that at the very least.”
“Really?” Zee asked incredulously. She rolled her eyes at Taylor’s resolute stare. “On a bender.” She shrugged and turned away, unable to meet the disappointment on her sister’s face. “I woke up this morning with little memory of anything.”
“Fuck, Zee.” Taylor exhaled. “I called the bar like twenty times looking for you. They told me you were completely out of it when you came in on Friday night. Funny enough, they mentioned you had worked for a few hours, but drank more than a few drinks, then left with no explanation. No one could reach you.”
Her voice cracked at the end, probably at the thoughts she’d been entertaining during Zee’s disappearance. They probably went something like:
What if Zee overdosed in her car? What if Zee’s been murdered by some psychopath she met for sex? What if Zee got drunk and choked on her own vomit?
“God, I even called Aryn.”
Zee’s head whipped around. “You did what?”
“Don’t turn this around on me!” Taylor shrieked. “I thought you were dead! I-I stopped by your house, but of course, you’d changed the locks. Thanks for letting me know my key no longer worked, by the way. The only reason I didn’t call the cops was that I realized you were alive on Saturday when Grubhub charges started appearing on my credit card. You owe me like two-hundred dollars, by the way. And how are you still signed into my Grubhub?”
Serves her right, Zee thought. Calling Aryn was almost unforgivable. She absolutely would not be reimbursing Taylor for the deliveries.
“I can’t believe you really called her,” Zee grumbled. She took a moment to steady her breathing. “I’m sorry, Tay. I promise to not scare you like that again. I’m here now, all right?” To her sister’s reluctant nod, she continued: “Listen, I just need to focus on this before the appointment tomorrow. I gotta give Dr. LaConte something cohesive to follow.”
“Fine.” Taylor sighed, foregoing a comment on Zee’s avoidance, most likely realizing that tabling the addiction discussion would be for the best, at least for now. Dwelling on the past probably seemed less dangerous, considering the alternative was Zee focusing on Aryn. “Where should we start?”
Zee ran her fingertips over her last written words. “Do you know a Sarah Murdoch?”
“Uh-uh. Why?”
A nagging sensation to search for Khaki beckoned Zee, but she refused the pull. She wouldn’t give the asshole the satisfaction.
“Just curious. What are some of your earliest memories?”
“Graduating elementary school, I guess. That was when I was about ten.” Taylor paused. “Then, Fuquay onwards.”
“That’s it? Nothing else?”
“Besides what I told you at the coffee shop, Zee, that’s all I...” Zee looked at her desperately. She couldn’t help it and the look must have triggered Taylor to try just a little harder; to dig a bit deeper. “There’s one argument I remember between Ma and Granny So-So. I was still in elementary school; probably around nine, I guess. And you couldn’t have been more than five, definitely too young to recall it. We were playing in the living room while they were talking in the kitchen. I made you go with me and eavesdrop. They were fighting about Aunt Maggie, before... before she left.
“Aunt Maggie...” Zee repeated. Her mind twitched, triggering her to recollect the smell of witch hazel and turpentine mixed with cocoa butter, Maggie’s unique smell. “It’s been a long time since I thought about her. I can’t even remember what she looked like. Can you?”
“Not really.”
“Aunt Maggie died right before we moved to Fuquay, right?” Zee asked, rolling out her stiff shoulders.
“Yeah. It’s been over twenty years,” Taylor answered, her fingers twisting in her lap.
Zee’s eyes widened, struck with a flash of a worn smile against smooth dark skin. Her mind flooded with the muted glow of fluorescent lighting in a waiting room. A memory. “Did we go see her in the hospital?”
Taylor’s lips thinned. “You’re right. We went to visit her one Christmas.”
“I think I remember that...” Zee contemplated the hazy memory. “I can’t remember where we were, but it was a long drive from the house. And we brought her a gift.”
Too many times had Zee tried recalling growing up in the back swamps of Fairville, North Carolina, a town forever preserved in time, one which still held to the state’s old nickname as the Rip Van Wrinkle State. She could never bring herself to drive there, but online research provided intel into its failing economy once the lumber and tobacco industries had left. Her life had begun in that decrepit place and she finally felt a ghostly spark when plucking those barely visible strings. Thus, Zee starred the page in her journal, adding a small note near the binding:
Maggie.
CHAPTER FOUR
December 25th, 1995
Zee shifted under the weight of the gift resting on her lap as sunlight streamed in through the car windows, casting a shimmer of green and red across the back of the driver’s seat in front of her. A metal spring from the torn cloth seating poked at the back of her dress-covered thigh. She prayed it didn’t rip her only pair of stockings. Under normal circumstances, she would’ve first placed down a towel to sit upon, but in all the excitement of the day, she had forgotten to grab it.
Although she rode in discomfort, along with the expectation of incurring her Ma’s wrath over her ripped hosiery, her mood wasn’t dampened. Anticipation bubbled in Zee’s chest and she could barely contain the smile on her face, or the fidget in her limbs.
She was going to see her Aunt Maggie again.
Taylor had been born a carbon copy of their mother, a child for whom Beverly had fostered an innate fondness, while Zee, on the other hand, seemed to have only ever brought about disappointment in some form or another. Maggie was the only person who had taken a genuine interest in her, often showing her the love and regard any child deserved.
Young Zee had always preferred to play alone rather than make friends her own age, and much like herself, Maggie too had found herself labeled an oddball in her youth—at least that’s what she told Zee. By no means was it a strange occurrence for Zee to find her great aunt conversing with herself or playing in the loose dirt, discerning very quickly that other adults didn’t behave in such a manner.
But Zee never minded the eccentric behavior, even if others thought it was a bit odd. Maggie quickly became her best friend, her only friend, and the light at the end of a very lonely tunnel. With their camaraderie, she no longer felt the taunts from other children about her shoes riddled with holes and the dollar store clothing she wore. No longer did their jibes about her weirdness hold any emotional sway for her fragile young psyche. In Maggie’s presence, Zee could be herself without worrying at all about what others would think.
The summer leading up to Maggie’s committal had been the happiest time in Zee’s life. She learned about farming, working the soil as Maggie called it, the definite hands-on experience most took for granted. They spent hours in the fields, planting on the cusp of spring the snaps and blueberries that would not be harvested until mid-summer.
At night, they hovered around the fire pile that they used for burning trash, Maggie recounting the most astonishing stories from her and Granny So-So’s fortune-telling days, the elder’s eyes sparkling with nostalgia in those lost moments. But Zee’s favorite activity was when the pair listened to old records Maggie found at the rummage sales in the next town over.
Maggie had vehemently refused to let Zee listen to tasteless music, and thus all her spare coins went to purchasing the likes of The Stylistics, Peter Frampton, Smokey Robinson, and Dionne Warwick, artists with far greater talent, and far greater meaning.
Then with a gust of wind, Maggie was gone. It had been nearly four months since Zee’s mother and grandmother had her taken away for reasons they refused to share with the members of their small family, causing a young Zee to burn with resentment.
But all would be forgiven when she embraced Maggie once more.
Leander, the newest addition to the Pace and Talbit clan, gnawed on a blanket, paying no attention to his ten-year-old sister Taylor who was instigating a game of peek-a-boo in front of him. And who could blame him for his lack of interest?
Zee watched her mother smile in the rearview mirror as she drove the squealing cerulean Chevy Lumina down the nearly deserted stretch of road. Then she turned up the radio to better hear The Temptations sing Silent Night.
In the distance, Zee spotted a looming building with smoke rising from several chimneys. She anxiously flicked at the corner of the wrapping paper. She had never seen the place to which they had sent her great aunt, but that building had to be it.
“Stop that!” Taylor smacked Zee’s hand away from the gift. “You gonna mess it up, stupid.”
“You ain’t the boss of me!” Zee screeched, pushing her sister’s head, starting an all-out war in the process. But at least it drew Leander’s attention.
Any woman who made less than minimum wage while raising three kids and dealing with a philandering husband would’ve been broken long ago, yet Beverly Pace remained unafflicted. She still possessed a youthful beauty and her eyes reflected defiance, never sorrow. But now, her expression was cold and a thing of true nightmares as she gave her daughters the eye, the one mothers gave that warned of horrors to follow if whatever caused the glare were not curbed.
She pulled the car to the side of the road, garnering immediate silence from the two girls. She leaned toward the passenger window, pointing out at a stretch of trees.
“You see that tree over yonder there?” Beverly asked Taylor.
The girl nodded, looking to the one her mother must have meant, the one with the lowest branches. “Go fetch me a switch and it better be a good one.”
Taylor obediently left the passenger seat to venture out into the cold toward the wooded edge. Beverly ruled with an unwavering certainty that spanking a child meant control and halted all behavior deemed unsatisfactory. And having experienced this specific certainty many times over, Taylor and Zee had already bloomed into young experts in the art of switch picking.
Taylor scanned the lower portion of branches, spotting a viable candidate about two feet from the lowest shelf. She carefully tucked her forest green dress between her leg and began to ascend.
“Ya better not mess up that dress either,” Beverly threatened through the car window.
Zee watched her older sister snap the thin tree extension, praying that a limb didn’t snag her dress in the process. Once safely back on the ground, Taylor tested the flexibility of the rod by bending it in her small fingers. No snap. She whipped it repeatedly through the air.
All whoosh and no break. Then she trailed back to the car, presenting the switch to Beverly with a Stockholm Syndrome-type pride.
The car was silent as it pulled back onto the road, remaining so until they finally reached an iron rusted gate that read, The Shiny Hymns Clinic.
Like many institutions of its kind, Shiny Hymns resembled a prison without the intense social flare, rows of winterberries highlighting the landscape but doing little to make up for the barred windows and high fences surrounding the grounds.
“Zee, get your brother’s stroller from the trunk. Taylor, you carry your aunt’s gift,” Beverly ordered, leaving the driver’s seat to unhook Leander from his carrier next to Zee.
Zee was quick to retrieve the wheeled contraption, though she had no idea how to set it up.
“Bring it closer.” Zee pushed the stroller closer to her mother and Beverly popped it open with one hand still holding her baby boy.
Strapping Leander in with a makeshift buckle, the Pace family gathered their belongings, hurriedly crossing the parking lot to escape the biting cold. They reached a paved ramp leading to the entrance of the building, Leander squealing with joy as Beverly made the steep climb in jerky movements resulting from the chipped wheels of the secondhand stroller.
They made it to the empty platform right as solid gray double doors were thrown open and a naked man sprinted out. His head swiveled back and forth like a caged animal finally freed after years of distressing captivity. His red, frantic eyes darted around the grounds before landing on the unsuspecting mother and her three children to his right.
Taylor screamed and clenched onto her mother’s wool coat, terror stricken by the strangeness suddenly befallen them.
Zee held steady, studying the bloody scratches covering the pale man’s chest. She tilted her head and took a curious step forward, not fathoming danger in his presence.
Something familiar beckoned her to his madness.
“Zee, don’t move,” Beverly whispered desperately, easing in front of the stroller.
The man’s gaze swept to Zee and a spark of recognition appeared. He pointed an accusing finger, bellowing, “It’s all over you!”
His booming voice sent shivers up Beverly’s usually steel spine, causing her and Taylor to startle back with Leander as a wave of discomfort washed over them.
Zee remained unfazed—calm even, so very still in the presence of such a confusing accusation.
Then the man pounced and Beverly’s motherly instincts kicked into high gear. “Zee!” She lunged forward to pull her youngest daughter away from harm. Two massive orderlies in all white came storming through the open door, seizing the man by the arms, a nurse promptly wrapping a blanket around his flailing form before he could grab onto the mother and daughter. The taller of the detainers turned his attention to a trembling Beverly, motioning toward the entrance.
“We’re sorry ‘bout all this,” he offered to Beverly and the children.
Beverly gave an absent nod as she clutched her children close.
“Can’t you see her? Can’t you see?” the crazed man begged of the staff. However, his pleas fell on deaf ears as they continued dragging him away to an annexed building off on the left. “It’s all over her! Can’t you see?”
Zee felt a release once the man was out of sight, shaking the daze from her bones.
“Ma, I—I don’t wanna go in there,” Taylor whimpered into Beverly’s sleeve.
“It’s gon’ be alright, Tay,” Beverly replied, trying desperately to eliminate the consternation from her voice.
Taylor shook her head defiantly. “Ma, please!”
“But I wanna see Aunt Maggie, Ma,” Zee pleaded softly. She peered into her mother’s eyes as tears began to cascade down her cold-tinged cheeks. “W—we gotta see her. She needs us.” The young girl pointed to her own heart. “I feel it right here. Please...”
