Accidental Happiness (36 page)

He talked some more about her paranoia, one in particular involving Ben, where it appeared that he’d been getting close to the truth about her illness, her real illness, and instead of seeing that he was right, she became fearful that he was making it up to shut her out of Angel’s life. It made sense. She’d taken off that last time without telling him for a reason. No wonder she hadn’t wanted to explain to me what those reasons were. It had to get confusing for her, keeping all the fantasies intact.

“Was she like this when she was married to Ben?” I asked, wondering how long Reese had managed to keep it hidden from people in her life.

“It’s likely this is a long-standing problem,” he said. “I can’t say for sure. These tendencies are often inherited, and her family history is sketchy. There’s some indication through medical records that her father was seen for problems, but it isn’t well documented.”

“Have you talked to her father?” I asked.

“He died several years back. But there was a restraining order on file from years ago, keeping him away from Reese from about the age of fourteen. An uncle took custody of her after she was apparently molested. I spoke to the uncle and he told me what little I know.”

“Her father molested her?” I thought of her story about her father, the bizarre revival.

“No, but there were issues of negligence, child endangerment. Her father may have been party to it in some way. She didn’t pursue charges once her father agreed to give up parental rights.” He shifted in his seat and the wooden chair groaned under the stress of his movement.

“Oh, my God.” So many demons. Had Ben known about any of it? “I had no idea.”

Dr. Harris looked at his watch. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but I’ve got clinic in a few minutes.”

“That’s fine. You’ve been really helpful.”

Dr. Harris paid the check and I sat staring at the patterns in the grain of the wood floor. All I could think about was Angel. I could see her face every time a question was asked of her. She’d look over at Reese, try to sort out the puzzle, come up with the right response. She’d been covering for her mother for so long it must have been second nature to her. And exhausting. Dear God, it had to be exhausting.

“I don’t know what else to say,” I told Dr. Harris.

“See if you can find her, I suppose. Then get in touch with me and I can either continue my work with her or recommend someone close to Charleston.” He pushed his chair back and got up, towered above me when he stood.

“But do let me know if you find her,” he said.

As an afterthought, just as we walked out the door into the cool mountain afternoon, I asked, “How did she pay you?”

“In addition to my practice,” he said, “I do work at the county hospital. As a county resident, she qualified for care. And I wanted to help her. It’s not often, in a small area like this, that we see those kinds of cases.”

I put out my hand. “Well, thank you again.”

He shook my hand and we left each other, walked in opposite directions down the storybook village street.

I found Derek waiting in the gazebo across the street.

“Did you have a chance to hike around?” I asked. I was still reeling from the doctor’s news about Reese. It sounded too bizarre to even repeat. But it was true.

“I went to
the
Blowing Rock, and there is, indeed, a rock.”

“Did it blow?”

He smiled. “It was quite nice, actually. I hiked some trails around the park. It’s gorgeous out there. I thought we might go back together this afternoon and . . . but, no. You’re shaking your head. What’s wrong? Okay, Gina, you look pretty freaked out. What happened?”

“Let’s just sit down for a second,” I said, realizing that I felt too shaky to stand. We sat on the steps of the gazebo, looked at the Disneyesque charm of the downtown street. The movie-set quality of the place only exaggerated the information all jumbled up in my brain.

“So, did he have any ideas about Reese?” Derek prompted.

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “But not about where she might be.”

“What, then?”

“This is really hard to believe, Derek. I mean if the guy wasn’t a doctor, a real one with an office and everything, I just wouldn’t believe it. But here goes . . .” I launched into the details of Reese. Of her real illness. And the few details I knew about her exodus from the hospital.

While I talked, I saw children begin walking through the park. School had let out, the essence of the space changing with their sounds. Angel had experienced a week, maybe two, of a normal existence like theirs. All the children in the park would wake up tomorrow and take the sameness for granted. I lamented so many things from my childhood, but even I had barely considered the notion of a home as anything extraordinary. Lunch money, ballet class, and spelling bees. The pictures Angel drew at school elevated normal childhood to a holy place.

“She made up all those problems with her leg?” Derek tried to make sense of what I told him. “The trouble with her hand?”

“She didn’t make it up in the sense of a lie,” I said. “Her mind invented it and then embraced it completely as the truth. She believes it, Derek.”

“What about when this guy told her something different?”

“That’s the strangest part. He thought he was getting her to come around with therapy, that he had new meds that he wanted to try. But she came back from a trip to Charleston all convinced that Ben had gotten to him, that there was some conspiracy to help Ben pass her off as crazy.”

“Did Ben figure out what was really wrong with her?”

“I’m thinking he must have,” I said. “And if he did, he wouldn’t agree to let her go anywhere. So she took off again.”

“Did you get any of this from Ben before he died?”

“Only how urgent he was getting, talking about kids and needing to change my mind.”

Derek lay back on the cool floor of the gazebo. I followed him, stared up at the underside of the roof.

“Where to now?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Andrew said she was going for medical help.”

I pulled out my cell phone, scrolled down the numbers I’d dialed in the last few days. I got to the one that looked familiar and pushed the button.

“Hello, Mt. Sinai,” Martha Mincey answered. I asked for the preacher. One last check with Andrew and then I had a hunch to follow.

“Hello.” Andrew came on the phone.

“Listen, Andrew, did Reese say anything about how she was going to pay for the medical care she needed?”

“No, not when I saw her last,” he said. “We’d talked about county medical services one time before; about how establishing residence made her eligible. But that’s about it.”

I thanked him and hung up.

“Car registry. A local address on your driver’s license. Would that count for establishing residence in an area?” I asked.

“Some places would take that, I guess,” Derek said. “Others might require a power bill or something. Why?”

“Reese has to be driving with a license issued somewhere. She’s got South Carolina plates. Let’s go to the local DMV before we take off, see if we can get somebody to look her up for us. They’re bound to have a national database. If they won’t help, I need to sweet-talk a state trooper.”

39

Reese

R
eese remembered when arcade games at the beach pavilion only cost a dime. A dollar would buy ten games, even the ones that lasted a long time, like baseball. She’d loved the paperdoll-like figures that ran the bases on a curved track. The sound of the dense silver balls as they jumped the field and landed in the home-run section. She’d won a bear once on that game. Her uncle had brought her up from Charleston, gave her a stack of dimes the size of the Eiffel Tower.

“Did you ever bring me here before?” Angel asked.

“Yeah, do you remember? You were pretty young. Four or five.”

“I remember, but not so much.”

Reese had lived here for about a year with Angel, then just kept coming back to renew her tags and license. Her old landlord had let her switch her mailing address to the office, was nice enough to hang on to any mail that looked official. She’d gotten the upcoming year’s registration from him the day before. That would be due soon. Something else to pay for. But it had to be done somewhere if she was going to keep a car, and she didn’t stay in many places very long. Myrtle Beach was as good a place as any to technically call home.

Reese gave Angel five dollars to go buy tokens. That was a fortune, considering what she had ahead of her. But a kid ought to play arcade games at the beach. The anticipation of winning seemed to be a birthright, of sorts.

“Mom?” Angel’s voice sounded small. “Is it okay if I buy two tickets on the roller coaster instead? We could go together.”

Reese could hear the coaster, the Swamp Fox, outside the arcade pavilion. Rickety jerks followed by all-out squeals.

“You’re kind of little,” she told the child. “I don’t know if they’ll let you on or not.”

“I’m just tall enough. I checked before.”

Reese considered the ride, wondered if the hard shaking and rattling would be the best thing for her. She’d had more problems with her legs, particularly the left side. She’d paced back and forth in the motel room when she first got up, pushing through the spasms, and that had helped some. Thinking of the walk back to the motel, she suddenly wished she’d driven the short distance to the arcade. Tomorrow she would check in with the doctors at the county clinic. But that could wait a day, and the ride looked like fun. What the hell.

“All right,” she said. “Let’s go.”

They bought their tickets and climbed on, second from the front, so they would see the car tipping over the crest of the rise before the fall. Below, Reese could see the hot dog stand that sat beside the coaster. Picnic tables offered a vantage point for watching the ups and downs that continued all day and through the night.

Traveling higher, Reese felt a fall of another kind would come soon. She’d felt it for several days. Her bones, her skin, every nerve told her something was close. She wondered if her body would betray her. Would she wake up unable to move, barely able to smile at her daughter? Or would it be someone like Gina to bring her down? Police at her door with talk of credit card fraud, passing off false prescriptions? Maybe something else, something she’d never anticipated. But one thing she felt was certain—the fierce tumble, when it came, would be nothing like the safe thrill of an amusement ride. She put her arm tight around her daughter, held on as the world dropped out from beneath them both.

40

Gina

W
e didn’t reach Myrtle Beach until midmorning the following day. We’d planned to drive straight through, get there at some godawful part of the night, and crash at a cheesy motel. But after a few hours of driving, we realized that neither of us had the stamina.

“You’re only twenty-six,” I said to him the night before as we pulled off at an interstate Holiday Inn. I winced a little at the sound of his actual age. “You’re supposed to be able to do weeklong road trips with no sleep at all.”

“Old ladies bring you down,” he said, grinning as he got out of the car.

We ate pizza in the room, then slept solid before getting up to hit the road again.

I hadn’t been up to the Strand, the main strip at Myrtle Beach, in a few years. It looked cleaner, had a whitewashed sort of quality to it, like a grand old house with new shutters and paint.

“They’ve cleaned things up around here,” I said. “It got really seedy for a while, but now it’s all bright again.”

“It’s the Disney mafia,” he said. “First Times Square. Next the world.”

“That’s weird. I was just thinking yesterday that Blowing Rock looked like the set of a Disney movie.”

“Life is a Disney movie, darlin’. We’re all extras,” he said.

It was after season along the beachfront strip, which made for fewer cars and easier searching.

“Any idea where you want to check first?” Derek squinted, then pulled down the visor.

“Let’s try cruising through motel parking lots. I’ve got to hope she’d pick someplace familiar, so that leaves out the newer hotels farther out.”

“You really think she’s here?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “She and Ben came here to get married, then she ran away here when she left Ben. She told me that. With her license and registration here too . . . I’m hoping. I need to call the county clinics again today, see if she’s been in.”

“Is it really called Horry County?” Derek chuckled. He could become twelve years old in an instant.

“Silent
H,
” I told him.

“I can see why.”

We’d gone to the address listed with the DMV for Reese. I wanted to cover all the bases, but I knew she wouldn’t be there. At best, I thought some acquaintance might have taken over the place and maybe she would have gotten in touch with them. Too many maybes and no such luck. The old lady who talked to us through a crack in the door had “no recollection of a name such as Reese,” and I wasn’t sure she had much recollection in general. I thought of talking with the landlord, but he had dozens of rentals and lots of turnover. I didn’t figure it was worth the time.

“This is the tip of one end of the main strip,” I said. “Let’s start here. We can cruise the beachfront motels first, then travel the opposite direction and try the places across the street.”

“And that’s your best idea?”

“That’s it,” I said.

He pulled into a motel lot and drove slowly, both of us looking for the maroon Plymouth with plates that read, “
DOG-MAA
.”

“Why do you think she got those plates?” Derek asked.

“She told us once about some weirdness with a televangelist when she was a teenager. Maybe it has something to do with that. I mean, she’s mentally ill. I’m not sure anything with Reese has to make sense anymore.”

We finished the first parking lot, moved on to the next one down.

Nearly two hours later we saw the Plymouth, parked in front of a row of rooms at The Sandy Bucket, a motel with a neon sign in the shape of a child’s beach pail. It occurred to me that Angel would have picked the place. It was the kind of decision Reese would indulge.

“I’ll be damned.” Derek shook his head. “We actually found her.”

Only after I saw the car did I realize what a tremendous shot in the dark it had been. Thank God Reese was somewhat predictable within the context of her bizarre life.

I felt myself shaking. Scared? Relieved? I didn’t know which. Maybe the confrontation alone was enough to give me the jitters. I thought of having Derek go in first, but that would have been just wrong. I had to do it.

“Ready?” Derek asked.

“God, no.”

“I don’t blame you.”

“Listen,” I said. “This is going to be really confusing for Angel. Maybe you should take her for a walk or something. You know, once I get to Reese.”

“You’re the boss on this one.”

I got out, walked down to the office at the end of the building. A youngish guy, about Derek’s age, sat smoking, watching a black-and-white TV.

“Need a room?” he asked when I got to the counter.

“No, I’m looking for my sister-in-law.” That seemed a lot easier than explaining Reese in detail. “Reese Melrose.”

“Funky lady with a kid? Wears hippie skirts and dangly jewelry?”

“That’s the one,” I told him.

“She ain’t registered under Melrose, but I remember the first name. She says she’s Reese . . . let me see here . . . Reese Hanes.”

Nice. She’d married herself off to a preacher in her rich fantasy life.

“That’s her,” I said. “She’s using her married name.”

“Room 14.”

I went back out into the afternoon. Wind off the ocean smelled of seaweed and salt. The postseason shore appeared nearly deserted. It went on forever out there. Looking at it, I remembered all the vacations my family had taken at Virginia Beach. Elise was terrified of the ocean, so she played in tidal pools, calm and warm as bathwater. Then I thought of her calling to me, jumping into the deep end of the pool. She must have been scared. Water higher than her head always terrified her.

“What’d he say?” Derek startled me.

“Room 14.”

We walked back around to the row of rooms. They would be the cheaper options along that side. The rooms that looked out on the parking lot, where a view of the ocean meant a sideways glance out the window.

I knocked on the door to the room. After a while, I knocked again, but no one answered.

“We’ve got to stay someplace tonight anyway,” Derek suggested. “Why don’t we see if one of the rooms next door is open? We can hear them when they come in.”

Sometimes the boy was sharp, I had to admit.

I don’t know when Reese and Angel got back to the room. Derek and I had both fallen asleep. When I woke up, the day had moved into early evening, and opaque sky made it seem even later than that. But when I got next door, I could see Reese, asleep on top of the bed, through the open curtains. Angel lay beside her, lying on her back, eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling. Reese shifted, tugged at herself as if pulling a sweater or covers tighter around her. Angel got up, folded the bedspread over so it covered her mother; then she sat down in a chair opposite the bed and watched. Kept a vigil, of sorts.

It occurred to me how responsible the child felt for keeping her mother safe. It should be the other way around, but the way Angel sat guarding her mother . . . was like a parent standing watch over the sickbed of a baby. And I thought again of all the times Angel had looked over at her mom for cues, hints at what she should say, whether she should speak at all. Angel was the keeper of Reese’s reality. Angel’s confirmation made Reese more normal, more okay.

The AC unit had been turned off and the windows opened, so that only slight screens separated me from the two of them. I stood there, staring in, trying to decide whether to say something or to knock, when Angel turned her head. As she saw me her eyes opened wider, but she stayed absolutely still, didn’t startle or make a noise. I put my finger to my lips and she slowly stood up, so as not to cause a lot of noise. She came over to the door and opened it carefully, and I motioned for her to follow me.

I hadn’t thought of talking with Angel first, hadn’t known I might have the chance, but it felt like the right thing to do. Once Reese saw me, the world could flip on its end pretty fast.

Angel and I walked over to my room. Our curtains were closed, so I told her to wait outside while I got Derek. He could stay with her mom while we had a talk.

We left Derek sitting in the lawn chair outside Reese’s door. He could hear her calling for Angel if she woke up, and he could explain, then try to calm her. I didn’t envy him. I walked with Angel out to the beach. We sat on the stone wall that separated the hotel property from the sand. Out on the water, a shrimp trawler rounded a sandy point at what looked to be the end of land. In reality, the jutting piece of beach was only a curve in the coastline, one of so many stretching along the South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida shores.

“Did you bring the police?” This was Angel’s first question after we sat down. Poor kid, she was juggling all of Reese’s heavy baggage; had been doing it, most likely, for as long as she could remember.

“No, Angel, I didn’t bring any police,” I said. “Did your mom think that’s what I would do?”

She nodded, kept her eyes in direct contact with mine as if to detect the slightest hint of deception. “That’s why we had to leave. She was scared you would tell them about something she did.”

Reese had her problems, but, paranoid as it was, at least that particular fear held some logic—which I found somehow comforting.

Angel paused for a second, never taking her eyes from me, then said, “I told her you wouldn’t.”

“You were right.” I reached out, took her hand. “I wouldn’t. I don’t want to get your mom in trouble. I’d like to help her, Angel.”

“She says that when people tell you that, sometimes it’s a trick.”

“She’s right, sometimes it is, but I promise I won’t ever try to trick you. Do you believe that?”

She didn’t answer, ignored the question, best I could tell. Instead she told me, “Mom says I’m supposed to go with you if something ever happens to her and she gets real sick and can’t take care of me.”

The wind blew her hair across her face, so I put my hand up and brushed the strands behind her ear. “That’s right. But she’ll be okay, your mom. It just might take a little while for her to get better.”

“I know, sometimes she can’t walk or pick up a bag of groceries and—”

“But she’s not that kind of sick, honey.” I had no idea how to explain mental illness, delusions, to a child who should still be playing pretend all the time. Her mother’s make-believe had taken that option from Angel years ago.

“You know how sometimes your mom says things that you know aren’t right?” I asked. “And then you go along with them just like what she said was true, but you know it wasn’t?”

“I didn’t want to be bad. I used to think it was our secret game,” she said. “But now I don’t.”

“It isn’t a game to your mom, Angel. And she’s not trying to tell a lie either. It was okay to protect her.”

Angel looked confused, and I realized how hard this was for an adult to understand, much less a child.

“The sickness makes her believe things that aren’t right. But she really believes them, Angel. And I’m going to try to get her help so that she doesn’t get so mixed up anymore. There’s medicine that can help her.”

I watched her. She dangled her feet off the wall, looked out at the water. I thought I almost saw her smile. Maybe hearing it made things easier for her. Maybe having an adult say it meant that she didn’t have to work so hard to protect her mother.

“Medicine costs a lot of money,” she said. “She doesn’t have enough, I don’t think.”

Did I have
all
the answers? God knows, she knew all the questions. I couldn’t believe she’d just turned eight. She had the worries of a senior citizen. Money, lies, illness . . . Being left alone. Being ripped from one life and deposited in another. Could I even begin to bring a childhood back for her? But at the cottage, with Lane and even Derek, she’d let herself be a kid. I’d seen it. She played with Barbie, got tickled over a Disney song coming out of a watch. She could do it if she had half a chance.

“There’s money,” I said, realizing what the words meant. Another check had come in the mail. I had two of them on the desk at Derek’s apartment. I’d been trying to decide. “It’s money from Ben.” Her eyes all but begged me to be telling the truth.

“Ben?”

“Ben always helped your mom when she needed something. There’s money he would want me to use to help her too. I can pay for doctors and medicine. We’re going to make sure she gets okay.”

“Are you sure?” It must have seemed like another cottage to Angel. Another school with a me-apron and a pretty teacher. It must have seemed like something she was scared to want again. To have and lose.

“I’m sure, Angel. The minute Ben laid eyes on you, he made a promise, I think, to look after you and your mom. How about I make good on that one for him, okay?”

“The money . . .” she began, and then stopped.

“Yeah?”

“You should use some of it too,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“Ben wanted to look after you too.”

“Yeah, he did,” I said. “He really did.”

The scene with Reese was going to be worse than anything I could have dreamed up. Angel and I heard her just as we stood up to go back to the room. Screeching and ranting.
Fuck
this, and
goddamn
that, something breaking with a shattering sound. And all this at a volume that the shrimp trawler, now a tiny speck on the horizon, could probably hear carried out over the water. The handful of people walking on the beach all stopped and stared. Angel looked as if she would cry.