Dead Boyfriends (9 page)

“It's this weather,” she said. “It's been so hot everyone's got their air-conditioning running full out and you go from the real cool air to real hot air and then back to the cool air and you get a cold.”

“I'm okay.”

“You should put some Vicks on it.”

“Vicks?”

“VapoRub. Put it on your chest and a little dab under your nose, it'll clear you right up.”

“You're in jail, yet you're worried that I might have a cold. That's kind of amazing, Merodie.”

“I don't know why. Just cuz you have problems doesn't mean you can't worry about your friends, right?”

“Right.”

“You're my friend, aren't you, McKenzie?”

“Yes.”

“That's good, cuz a girl, she can't have too many friends. But really, you gotta get some Vicks. You gonna get some?”

“I will. I promise.”

“McKenzie?”

“Yes, Merodie?”

“I did therapy today. I think I told you. It was so early. You wouldn't believe how early. Up at six, shower at six fifteen, breakfast at seven. It's like—I know it's a jail but, my God. At seven thirty they bring me to this room, kinda like a classroom, you know, in school, and this woman was there, this chemical dependency counselor, a woman I've never seen before who was asking about my drinking problem. And I'm like, I don't know this woman, so I tell her, ‘I don't have a drinking problem,' and she says, ‘You were in a house for two weeks with a dead man and didn't even know it. That suggests you have a drinking problem,' which I guess is true enough. But I didn't kill him, McKenzie. I swear. I didn't kill Eli. That's what I told the counselor, and she just
shakes her head and says, ‘That's not my department,' and I'm like, ‘What is your department?' ”

“Merodie—”

“I know I have a problem, McKenzie. Okay? I've had this conversation before with other people. So many people. And I've tried. God knows I've tried. I've tried so hard to get straight, but. . . I don't know. I'm tryin' to explain it all to this woman and she's not listening, you know? Instead, she gives me this piece of chalk. I'm like, ‘What's this?' And she says, ‘Chalk.' I can see that, okay? And the woman, she points at this large blackboard mounted on wheels and she tells me to write down my history. She wanted to see my history of alcohol abuse, when I started drinking, how much I drank, the people I met while drinking, the things I did while drinking, the things that happened to me while drinking. And I'm laughing. I'm like, ‘Got a few weeks?' And the counselor said she did, and so I start writing.

“At first my letters are tall and wide and I fill a whole line with only a few words, but then the letters become smaller cuz I'm trying to squeeze it all in. The counselor told me not to worry about chronological order, just write it down as it came to me, and I did, starting with a party in junior high school when I drank my first beer and the kegger at the river where I got drunk for the first time. And I kept at it, going through half a box of chalk, filling one side of the board and then the other, writing until my hand hurt—and that wasn't even half of it!

“The first time I had sex I was drunk. And the second time. And the third. And the fourth. I was drunk at the homecoming dance and at my junior prom and on the day I dropped out of high school. I was drunk when I fell down a flight of stairs and broke my collarbone. I was drunk when I drove my car into the fence that surrounded my mom's house. I was drunk when the doctor told me I was pregnant. . .”

Merodie began to weep. It should have been easy for me to say, “Hey, you brought it all on yourself.” I couldn't manage it. Instead I
found myself wishing I could reach through the phone and wrap my arms around her. That's what friends are for, right?

“McKenzie, you gotta help me. You gotta help get me out of here.”

“We're trying, Merodie.”

“I hafta get outta here so I can make it all right. Make it right for Eli. I was drunk, McKenzie, drunk when that beautiful man bled to death in my living room. I coulda done somethin' if I wasn't drunk.”

“Don't say anything more, Merodie.”

I had so many questions for her, but I was afraid to ask them for fear that the attorney-client privilege didn't extend to me, that anything she said over the phone really could be used against her.

“Please, McKenzie.”

“It'll be all right. We'll get you out.”

“Please.”

One question I had to ask—nothing I had learned online had even hinted at it.

“Merodie? You said you were pregnant. When—”

“That's another reason you gotta get me out. I can make it all right, make it all right for everyone, I know I can. I can make it so no one else gets hurt, but I gotta be out to do it.”

“Merodie . . .?”

“I just gotta be.”

“Tell me about the child, Merodie . . . Do you hear me . . .? Merodie . . .?”

The phone went dead.

 

G. K. Bonalay kept me on hold for nearly seventeen minutes, which was bad enough. Being forced to endure several Muzak versions of early 1970s bubble gum rock songs while I waited, that was just plain wrong. Trust me, you don't want to listen to an extended, all-strings cover of “Sugar, Sugar” with a hangover unless you have plenty of Pepto-Bismol
at hand. I told G. K. so when she finally returned to the phone. She apologized profusely for making me wait—she was rushing from meeting to meeting. As for the music: “At my law firm, the Archies are considered cutting-edge.”

I thought she might be joking, but since she didn't laugh, I didn't, either.

I told G. K. about my conversation with Merodie Davis, and she made a note to tell Merodie to stay off the goddamn phone, but said she wouldn't be able to deliver it until later. Her firm had saddled her with a number of billable meetings that promised to last until later that evening. However, she did manage to find time to get me access to Merodie's house.

“Someone will meet you at 1:00
P.M.
”

“That'll work fine.”

“What can you tell me so far?” G. K. asked.

“Not much. We know that Merodie owned the house—”

“How do we know that?”

“I checked with the Anoka County Division of Property Records and Taxation. She's listed as fee owner. She owns the house, she pays the taxes, only here's the thing—as far as I can tell, she has no job, and she's not receiving welfare or unemployment.”

“How do you know?”

“I asked.”

“The county welfare department told you?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“They're not supposed to divulge that information.”

“You're not supposed to have Merodie's file. Should we move on?”

G. K. took a deep breath and said, “Let's,” with the exhale.

“Merodie has no income. However, there is this.” I quoted the crime lab report. “ ‘One white, number ten envelope, blank, containing one personal check dated Saturday, One August, in the amount of four thousand, one hundred sixty-six dollars and sixty-seven cents made out
to Merodie Davies and drawn on an account owned by Priscilla St. Ana, Woodbury, MN.'”

“The envelope seized by the crime lab,” G. K. said.

“Two things. The first is the date. August first. That's when most people get paid, the first and the fifteenth of the month. Second, the amount. Forty-one hundred sixty-six dollars and sixty-seven cents is an odd number. It doesn't really fit anything unless you multiply it by twelve, and then we have a nice round figure. Fifty thousand dollars.”

“From that you deduce what?”

“Priscilla St. Ana is paying Merodie's way.”

“Why?”

“I don't know, but I think we should find out, don't you?”

“Merodie won't like it.”

“We won't tell her.”

“What do we know about Priscilla so far?”

“We know that Ms. St. Ana has a master's degree in chemistry from the University of Minnesota and a master's in business from the University of St. Thomas. She's an active partner in a property acquisition and investment firm. Apparently, she and her partners identify under-performing businesses, buy a controlling interest, turn them around, and then sell them for obscene profits. Sometimes they're invited to do this by the company's directors; sometimes they're not. In addition, Priscilla is on the boards of several charities and nonprofit organizations. She's not married. However, she is the guardian of a sixteen-year-old niece named Silk St. Ana, who has a good shot to make the U.S. team in the next Summer Olympics as a diver. There's a nice piece about both of them in
Women's Business Minnesota
from a couple of months back.”

I glanced at the magazine article while I spoke. In the photo I'd downloaded Priscilla appeared very regal, very proud, with golden hair piled high on her head like a crown. There was also a shot of the girl.
She was sitting on a diving board, hugging her knees to her chest. The cutline read
Olympic hopeful Silk St. Ana enjoys a quiet moment at the family's backyard swimming pool.

“Apparently, Priscilla inherited St. Ana Medical, a pharmaceutical company, when her father drowned in his swimming pool about eighteen years ago. Her mother died a year before her father. Traffic accident. Priscilla took over the company and ran it for a couple of years. She sold it after her younger brother—what's his name? Here it is. Robert St. Ana. Priscilla sold the business after her brother died in another traffic accident.”

“She's taken a beating, hasn't she?” G. K. said.

“Seems so. Anyway, she went back to school to get her MBA, helped found the investment firm, and is now flying high. Makes you wonder what you're doing with your own life, doesn't it?”

“No, but it does make me wonder why a woman like her is involved with the likes of Merodie Davies.”

“I'm working on it,” I told her.

 

People outside Minnesota think of the Twin Cities as just two municipalities—St. Paul and Minneapolis—sitting across the Mississippi River from each other. In reality, it's a sprawling amalgamation of 192 cities interwoven into a single tapestry by an intricate and occasionally overwhelming system of U.S., state, and county highways. There were over 2,950 miles in all the last time the Department of Transportation bothered to count, and the 2.7 million people who drive those roads slip from one city's limits to another so frequently and so casually that over the decades the borders have become blurred. It's the reason I became lost in Anoka while looking for an address in neighboring Coon Rapids; it's why I now live in Falcon Heights when I had vowed never to leave St. Paul.

It's also the reason why I carry a Hudson's Twin Cities atlas in my car. I know St. Paul and Minneapolis well enough, but when you start getting into our sprawling suburbs, you either use a map or suffer the indignity of stopping at gas stations for directions. I used the Hudson to find the address of Merodie's mother in Mounds View, and even then I got turned around.

As it turned out, Sharon Davies lived at the far end of a dead-end street in a one-story pale green stucco bungalow located on a bluff overlooking Highway 10. The house and a spotty, weed-infested lawn were both surrounded by a three-foot-high Cyclone fence. There was a front door, but there was no sidewalk leading to it, which was just as well since the only opening in the fence faced the back door. Before I could reach it, a voice rumbled out through the screened window.

“What do you want?”

“Mrs. Davies?”

“What do you want?” Her voice was louder than necessary.

“Mrs. Davies, my name is McKenzie. I work for the attorney who's helping your daughter.”

There was no reply.

“Mrs. Davies?”

“Leave me alone.”

“May I speak with you?”

“No.”

“Your daughter, Mrs. Davies, she needs—”

The door opened abruptly. I was startled into taking a tentative step backward. The woman who opened it was six feet tall and so enormously broad she filled the doorway—I doubted she was able to squeeze through it. Her eyes were narrow and without color, and her hair was stringy and unwashed. She wore a garish housecoat fastened with a safety pin at the throat. The housecoat reminded me of one of my grandmother's quilts pieced together with whatever cloth was at hand.

“I don't want any part of that slut,” Sharon Davies shouted. “I ain't had no part of that slut for sixteen years and I don't want no part of her now.”

“She's your daughter.”

Sharon Davies slammed the door and screamed, “Get out of here or I'll call the police,” through the window.

My own mother died when I was twelve, and over the years my memories of her have become soft around the edges. I was no longer sure what was real about her and what might be what the psychologists call a false memory. Nor did I remember what she looked like. I only remembered what the photos I have of her look like, and that's not the same thing. Still, I always knew I was loved. I felt it in the brief years before her death and the long years after. I feel it even today. It has always been a comfort to me; there have been times in my life when I drew on it the way a thirsty man draws water from a well.

That's why seeing a mother or father disown a child, degrade a child, or abuse a child, do anything but love a child totally and unconditionally, leaves me feeling both angry and sad and thoroughly helpless. You can take children out of an abusive environment. You can force parents to obey the law. When no one is looking you can even beat hell out of them. But you cannot make parents love the people they should love the most, who need their love the most, and nothing is ever going to change that.

I got in my Audi and drove away without looking back and prayed what I always pray when I meet someone like Sharon Davies—that one day she will get exactly what she deserves. That she'll die alone.