Chasing Sophea: A Novel Page 13

  “Well, what makes you think you understand now? I told you before that you’re not going to be able to just patch me up and expect a miracle to happen. And I’m not sick either, got it? Dahlia was sick, and you had your chance to help her. All of you did. Why can’t you accept that she’s gone? If Dahlia didn’t want to disappear, do you really think I’d be here? Accept your failure and get a life.”

  “No. This is not the natural order of things. This is not the way it’s supposed to be.”

  “Blah, blah, blah. Look, lady, I’m here to stay, and there’s nothing you or any doctor can do about it.”

  “I’m not afraid anymore, Phoebe. Did I mention that? I’m not meeting my maker with fear etched on my heart for you or anybody else, you hear me? I’ve got to always be able to say that I did my best in every situation, and honey, my best is yet to come. So grab your empty bag and do whatever it is that you have to do in the next twenty minutes. We’ve got an appointment to keep.”

  Defiant, Phoebe snatched her purse from the floor and headed toward a room with heavy doors. She needed a moment to compose herself and rewire her brain. Being dragged to a shrink was not part of the plan. She had to think quickly and change course, set a new agenda and get back on track. She needed plan B. She opened her journal and began writing furiously. Something brilliant would come to her. It always did.

  Tuesday • December 5 • 4:52p.m.

  Shit, shit, shit. This old broad is trying to ambush me, force me out, and I’m not having it. I am in control, and she hates me for it. She’s always hated me, but so what? I don’t need anyone’s fucking approval to exist in this world. I’m an island, dammit. Hate me or love me, I’m still here in this life and in this body. Poor pitiful-ass Dahlia is just about gone, anyway. What’s left of her is hanging on by a thread, and she doesn’t have the strength to hold on much longer. I can feel her melting away little by little. It’s almost sad, really, that it had to come to this. Bottom line, dammit: I am stronger now than I have ever been, so Baby and that quack doctor can eat me. I can’t believe she stole my keys and took my shit. Who knew she had it in her? She has balls after all. It’s funny how some old people decide to become useful before they die.

  Where the fuck is Milky and that kid, anyway? If I could just have a few minutes with him alone, I know that he’d love me, and in time, he’d want me more than he ever wanted her. I deserve this life. I deserve to be loved, and more important, I deserve to be free. He’d make Baby go away if I asked him to—send her back where she came from. I need to find him and show him how good we could be together. Convince him that I was the one he should have chosen in the first place—screw his brains out until he gives in. He’s a man. He’ll succumb. They all do; it’s in their blood.

  In the meantime, I’ll go to this stupid-ass session with the shrink and play crazy. Ha-ha. Of course, I know it’ll be a complete waste of my time, but she and four-eyes will figure that out eventually. Both of them are going to analyze me to death until I find Michael, my husband. My husband—yeah, I like the sound of that. My husband, my husband, my husband. How in the hell am I going to sit through all this psychobabble bullshit without losing precious brain cells? Jesus, I’m going to throw up in his office—blow chunks right on his rug. That’ll end the session in record time. I know. I’ll make them think that there’s a chance to get Dahlia back. Yeah, baby, that’s it! It’s time for me to call the shots here. Now who’s outsmarting whom? They don’t know who they’re messing with. They don’t know what I’ve been through to get here, and dammit, they don’t know me. I am a survivor here, now, and always.

  Shit. I need a mojito bad, and I wish to God Pocahontas would stop banging on the door.

  “Breathe, girl, breathe,” Mercy told herself. How could her life be unstable, so much more complex in the span of a few short hours? Nothing would ever be the same again. She came to that realization when it was over, when he’d left her. Change scared her more than most, and she could admit that to herself now without fear of being exposed. Lucius would know soon enough that she’d betrayed him. He’d sense the gospel of it and smell it in the air. He was creepy that way, just like his aunt.

  She slipped underneath the water in the bathtub and contemplated staying there submerged until warm liquid inched up her nose and flooded her lungs. She could drown quickly and take the easy way out. In the end, who would miss her? Her parents were dead, and she was too vain to have any girlfriends who gave a damn about her. It would probably be days before Lucius even realized that she was gone, and that would be just as well. It was, after all, what she deserved, and no one knew that better than she. Still, in spite of an impending violent depression, her nipples hardened and her insides throbbed with the memory of him. Him who loved her, him who touched her, him who said he could forgive her anything. She came up for air and discovered her hands nestled between her legs rubbing, prodding, and searching for that feeling that had finally set her free.

  Mercy was forty-one years old and had just experienced her first orgasm, with a man who wasn’t her husband. She was scared and confused at the same time and wondered how she was going to get through the rest of the night without screaming his name. She couldn’t say it at all, couldn’t wrap her mouth around the syllables, for if she did, Lucius would know with certainty that her soul had flown open as easily as her legs. What was she going to do? How was she going to exist in a house that was growing tired of holding multiple confidences in its walls? In the beginning, the house had been loyal to her, guarding her secrets, protecting her sins. But now she feared she had given it one sin too many, and it, like everyone else, would turn on her in due time.

  Maybe if she avoided him, stayed as far away from him as possible, erased the memory of his tongue dancing with her clitoris, she could survive here. Mercy reached for a towel and shook her head in resignation. Who was she fooling? She knew her survival depended on whether the matriarch returned. The mere thought of being in Aunt Baby’s presence caused her face to spasm in protest. She accepted that her twitching would most likely give her away the moment Aunt Baby glided through the door. The woman would see right through her. She always had, and this would be no different. She leaned against the wall for support and sank toward the cold linoleum. There was nothing she could do, no place she could go, and no one who could understand. Truth was stalking her. She could feel its breath lifting the hairs on the back of her neck. She knew that she should turn around and confront her enemy and finally rid herself of the lies that confined her, but running was all she knew how to do.

  Dante Culpepper replayed the day’s events in his head repeatedly. His world had changed drastically in the span of a few hours, and the day wasn’t even over yet. With his mind stuck in constant rewind and his heart beating faster than normal, Dante struggled with simple duties and strained to shift his focus to other matters for fear of going insane. But much to his dismay, no matter what he did, he couldn’t stop thinking about their time together, and he couldn’t figure out how he was going to get through the rest of the day without her. Concentration eluded him, and common sense was long gone.

  He was a nervous ball of conflicting emotions, and he vacillated between what he yearned to do and what had to be done. Anger, regret, and a multitude of other feelings assaulted his state of mind, and he was immediately ashamed. His brain hissed that he’d made a horrendous mistake, but his heart pleaded with him to run up the stairs and find her, comfort her, and sink inside her all over again. Instead, he’d waited outside the preparation room clenching and unclenching his fists, wondering how he was going to face his brother. He’d felt the music reverberating on the other side of the sterile white doors and knew instinctively that Lucius wanted to be left alone. He’d stepped forward, paused, and reached for the door several times. He didn’t know what was going to come out of his mouth once he was in there, but he did know that if he didn’t face Lucius at that moment, he’d never be able to. Somehow, someway he had to salvage what was left of his
honor. He had to try to redeem himself.

  The exchange had been normal and strange at the same time. Lucius had focused on his work, and Dante had waited for the right moment to confess what he had done. The moment had never come, and Dante was relieved. Perhaps nothing needed to be said. Perhaps he and Mercy could exist in the same house and behave as if they’d never been wrapped around each other. Or perhaps he, too, was finally succumbing to crazy. He was going straight to hell for this. He just knew it.

  Now he stood in Percival Tweed’s house prepared to interrogate the old albino and a man he didn’t know. He thought some fresh air would help clear his mind. There had to be some kind of resolution between him and Mercy before his mother returned, or a plan of sorts, because Aunt Baby would know, plain and simple. She would take one look at both of them and smell betrayal. In time, maybe his mother would forgive his transgression and his brother would learn to trust him again. He inhaled deeply. He didn’t want to think about what Aunt Baby would do to Mercy. His mama said once that she’d put aside her Choctaw ways and sell her soul to the devil to wreak devastation on anyone who hurt somebody she loved. After all this family had done for him, he couldn’t be the one who destroyed it, and he had to make sure no one else did either.

  He walked the grounds until his heart rate returned to normal and ended up standing on Percival Tweed’s doorstep. The stranger whom he’d seen earlier was listening intently to what the albino had to say. Dante heard his name and knew that his problems were just beginning.

  Milky jumped when he heard the voice behind him. He immediately stood and offered an introduction, but the man speaking didn’t seem to notice. He continued to address Mr. Tweed, and it was obvious they knew each other.

  “Please continue.”

  “I think I’m done talking now. I’m plum tuckered anyhow, I’ll tell you that.”

  “It doesn’t seem like it to me. It looks like you’re bent on stirring up some trouble here, Percival.”

  “No,” Percival Tweed responded calmly, “you’ve done enough of that for everybody.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Boy, you know exactly what I mean.”

  “Excuse me,” Milky interrupted, “can somebody tell me what’s going on here?”

  “Sir, I don’t know who you are or how you became involved with Mr. Tweed, but this is really a family matter.”

  “Then that’s a good thing. Michael, looks like you got here just in time for a family get-together,” Percival said. “I guess it’s up to me to make the acquaintances here.” Percival Tweed walked toward the two men and leveled his eyes on Dante. “Michael Chang, this is Dante Culpepper, Lucius’s only brother and your wife’s uncle.”

  “I see. I think under the circumstances I need to go back to the hotel. I’m tired and I’ve heard enough for one day.” Michael sighed. “I need to call Isabel, anyway.”

  “We’ll speak again,” Percival added, and watched Michael walk toward his car. And then he looked at Dante for a long time. Neither of them spoke or moved. Each assessed the other methodically and without hesitation. Dante opened his mouth first, but Percival silenced him with a look.

  “Sit down,” Percival commanded.

  “Mr. Tweed, I don’t have time for—”

  “I said, sit down.” Percival spoke sternly and retrieved a letter from his desk drawer. “I have something for you.”

  Buried alive. That’s how she felt—entombed under layers and layers of emotional concrete. She was on the outside looking down at herself pounding on triple-pane glass while watching her mouth move. She was a life-sized dummy, a real live ventriloquist act, but who was pulling the strings? Who had their hand thrust up her spine bending her every which way, manipulating her mind? She screamed a thousand soundless screams and no one heard her, no one who mattered. “Help me,” she’d sobbed from wherever she was, and after a time, there was only one reply. “Go away,” the voice hissed. “There’s nothing left for you here.”

  She’d heard that voice lately, weaving in and out of her brain, but it was usually a whisper, a faint murmur that she’d thought she’d heard. Now it was deafening, and it brought with it a cacophony of vibrating noise. In the space she clung to, the voice taunted her and dared her to lose her mind. She tried to remember when her relationship with the voice had morphed into something twisted and acrimonious. It hadn’t always been this way. The voice used to help her, soothe her, and tell her she was precious and worthy. The voice had always promised to protect her and keep her far away from the people and places that frightened her the most. But now the voice had abandoned her, and she struggled to make sense of it all. “Why?” she asked, and trembled at the immediate reply.

  “Because,” the voice yelled, “I don’t love you anymore.”

  Dahlia could feel herself shrinking and was humbled by the experience.

  “Leave me alone,” Dahlia whispered, suddenly very confused. “Just please, leave me alone.”

  There were doors where she was, and some doors were thicker than others. The thickness represented pain and suffering. She didn’t know how she knew that, but she did. And these doors beckoned to her to open them, lured her by name, and enticed her with freedom. Still, she retreated from the emotion that tempted her, dangled agony in front of her face as if she were supposed to embrace it and hold on for dear life. “No. No!” she shouted, and slipped further from a reality that she could see but not touch—feel but not grasp. As she hoped, the first door seemed to be moving away just out of her reach, and as it moved in distance, she experienced a welcome sense of alleviation. Breathing even became easier and required less effort. The doors led to somewhere she was in no hurry to go, and contentment and fear seemed a better option. Here wasn’t really so bad. Here was comfortable, here was safe, and here was where she’d stay.

  Although she’d told herself this nonsense before, her conviction to abandon herself never lasted. No matter how long she stayed in that dark place that protected her from what was authentic, she knew the floating doors would eventually return and she would have another opportunity to make a decision. Stay or leave. Sink or swim. She’d visited this place so many times that it had begun to feel like home—a welcome illusion. Even in the deep recesses of her mind, where she felt anchored but held on to nothing, truth resided strong and alive, pulsating inside of her. There was a way out, but it was she who had to take it—she who had to fight for her life. Her life waited on the other side of those doors, and the only way out was to reach up and open them all.

  Dr. Kelly flipped through his notes. He’d read them repeatedly, and each time, he marveled at the complexities of the human psyche. In all his years of practice, he had never encountered a patient quite like Dahlia. He had, of course, reviewed other cases of dissociative identity disorder—or multiple personality disorder, as clinicians like to refer to it—but he hadn’t experienced one up close until now. Dissociative disorders were once considered a rare and mysterious psychiatric curiosity. And some practitioners in the field of psychiatry refused to believe such an affliction existed at all, even after the release of The Three Faces of Eve and the much-better-known Sybil. Now, after years of scientific scrutiny, dissociative disorders were understood to be fairly common effects of severe trauma in early childhood.

  Dr. Kelly still didn’t know enough about Dahlia’s life to ascertain exactly what had occurred, but something had traumatized her—something or someone terrifying enough to shatter her very foundation and splinter her mind into unrecognizable pieces. He was committed to helping her rediscover herself and put the fragments of her life back together. All he needed was time and cooperation.

  He’d canceled all his previous appointments. He’d done that a lot this month, and he informed his lovely wife that he would be otherwise occupied with a patient emergency. She wasn’t thrilled but she understood, and he adored her for it. He glanced at his watch, anxious to begin. Dahlia or Phoebe was due to arrive momentarily. He took a deep breath
and prayed that his $100,000 Harvard education, years of experience, and two failed marriages had prepared him for this session. Everything he had learned and all he had become led him to this exact moment. If he wasn’t ready now—if he couldn’t help cure her—he wasn’t worth the paper his degrees were printed on, and worse yet, Dahlia would be lost forever, and he couldn’t let that happen. And it’s not like he hadn’t had to commit patients before, because he had, but this one, this one had to be saved from herself.

  He was strangely drawn to her, and it pained him to acknowledge his emotional attachment, but he could now admit why he felt obligated to cure Dahlia Chang. He’d had a daughter once, Gweny, from his first marriage years ago. She’d wrestled with mental illness as a teenager and eventually died from an overdose of meds when she was only seventeen years old. He’d blamed himself for years for not recognizing the signs sooner, for not being a better father, a better therapist. He lost his Gweny, his marriage, and his own sanity for a while. If it hadn’t been for Lionel Durbin, he’d have been running around Trafalgar Square like a loon in his knickers. If Gweny were still alive, she’d be the same age as Dahlia right now. Maybe she would have married a nice bloke and followed in his footsteps. Maybe he would have been a grandfather by now. Maybe. He knew it was unhealthy to dwell on the past and become personally involved in an ongoing case, but Dahlia needed him. When he looked into her eyes, he saw Gweny—strong, sassy, terrified Gweny. He saw a scared little girl reaching out to him, begging him to help her. And he would help her this time, by God, or die trying.

  Aunt Baby dialed home on her cell phone. Dante had gifted her with the shiny silver contraption last Christmas, and she could count on one hand the number of times she had ever used it. People at home always knew where to find her, she’d said then, so why the hell did she need a cell phone, anyway? She still couldn’t believe that she could call somebody from the middle of nowhere without wires and a jack. Good Lord, what were they going to think of next? She’d been so busy fussing with Loony Tunes sitting next to her that she’d forgotten to call home and tell her family that she’d arrived safe and sound smack dab in the middle of the twilight zone. Funny, though, no one had called her. God only knew what was happening in that house without her. She shook her head and stared out the window. For all she knew, the world was coming to an end. If she smoked, she’d be on her second pack by now. She sat next to her grandniece in the Yellow Cab and felt no connection to her at all. To some, she thought, her feelings would seem preposterous, but Dahlia was gone for now, and the woman eyeballing her was a stranger.