Black-Eyed Susans by Julia Heaberlin Page A

hello.
    “The day got away from me,” he
     says. “I just want to be sure you remember to be at the UNT lab tomorrow by 9:45,
     fifteen minutes before the techs start the process on the bones.”
    How could I forget?
I want to shout
     it at him, but instead say: “I’m driving myself.” This has to be the
     reason he called. He seems determined to pick me up.
    Bill lets a couple of seconds elapse.
     “Joanna wouldn’t tell me what over the phone, but she says the forensic
     anthropologist has already found something.”

Tessie, 1995
    “How is the drawing at home
     going?” He asks this before my butt hits the cushion.
    “I forgot to bring any of them with
     me.” A lie. The drawings, nine new ones, are right where I want them—in a
     red Macy’s shirt box in my closet labeled
Xtra Tampons,
sure to dissuade
     my nosy little brother.
    The phone on his desk suddenly buzzes. The
     emergency buzz, one of my favorite sounds in the world because it sucks minutes away
     from me.
    “I’m sorry, Tessie,” he
     says. “Excuse me for just a moment. I’ve just checked in a patient at the
     hospital and was expecting a few questions from the nurse.”
    The doctor’s voice travels over from
     the other side of the room. I can make out a few words.
Elavil. Klonopin.
Shouldn’t he be doing this privately? I’m really trying hard not to hear
     because I don’t want to imagine a person like me on the other end and get
     emotionally involved. So I focus on other things, like trying to match the
     doctor’s lazy drawl with Lydia’s description of him.
    It was Lydia’s idea. Yesterday, with
     my blessing, she had hopped the bus to the TCU campus and sneaked into one of the
     doctor’s lateafternoon summer classes:
Anastasia Meets
     Agatha Christie: Exploring the Gray Matter About Amnesia.
    When she told me the class title, I cringed
     a little. Too gimmicky. But then, I was looking for reasons to be critical.
    If Lydia stuck on the big rounded plastic
     frames she wore when her contacts itched, she could easily disappear into a crowd of
     college students. Lydia’s father told her once that she was one of those people
     born thirty, and repeated it often, which Lydia carried around like a mortal wound. Me,
     well … I can’t tell Lydia but I feel a little uncomfortable around her dad
     these days.
    Through our formative years, Mr. Bell
     concocted a kick-ass chili recipe, and hauled us to the shooting range, and whipped us
     around Lake Texoma in the unsinkable
Molly
every Labor Day and July 4th. But he
     was moody and known to strike out. And, since I turned fourteen, his eyes sometimes
     hesitated in the wrong places. Maybe he was just being more honest than most men greeted
     with puberty in bloom. Probably better to know, I reasoned, and wear longer shorts at
     her house.
    Last night, after her successful day of
     spying and some of my dad’s leftover Frito pie, Lydia had been in especially good
     spirits. “Did you know that Agatha Christie went missing for eleven days in 1926
     and no one had a clue where she was?” she had asked me breathlessly, from the
     corner of my bed.
    I had her pictured in the usual position:
     legs pretzeled into an easy lotus, her pink-flowered Doc Martens lost somewhere on the
     floor, a hot pink scrunchy holding up a mountain of black hair. Pink was Lydia’s
     color.
    A recap of the day’s events in the
     O.J. trial buzzed in our ears as background. It was impossible to get away from it.
     Daddy didn’t like a TV perched on top of my dresser, certainly didn’t like a
     bloody soundtrack, but he had relented instantly when I told him the constant noise made
     me feel less alone. That I wasn’t really listening to it.
    It was only a half-lie. I
     found something soothing about Marcia Clark’s methodical voice. How could anyone
not
believe her?
    “Agatha kissed her daughter goodnight
     and disappeared,” Lydia had continued. “They thought she maybe drowned
     herself in this