Shades of Eva (5 page)

“My people?” I replied cracking a nervous
grin to go along with the nausea welling up in me. “You better
start telling me what you want, or I’m calling security.”

I tried unsuccessfully, again, to sit up,
and started reaching for my call button.

Amelia just laughed. “I am security. You
have about thirty stitches in your back so don’t start yelling or
you might pop. I’m a private investigator. My aunt was a patient at
the Coastal State Asylum with your mother…and I rent your mother’s
childhood home.” 

The Asylum Amelia was referring
to
was the River Bluff State Mental Institution—otherwise known as the
Coastal State Psychiatric Hospital in my old hometown. It was the
mental institution where my parents had met, the place where my
mother was lobotomized. It was all part of that complex I called
the past, something I had been trying to forget, if not
amputate.

And I thought Amelia just said she rented my
mother’s childhood home.

All I could muster was a pensive, “I don’t
know what you’re talking about,” and proceeded to insist that she
call me Mark Engram.

Amelia didn’t take my denial, or my
stubbornness, so well. She threw something at me. I remember the
weight of it because it hit me where Meade must have punched me in
the ribs. I’d say it weighed about two pounds. I let out a pathetic
ow
and reached down for the object.

Amelia stood up. It looked as if she’d just
unsheathed a knife and was coming at me with it. I thought for a
moment I was hallucinating, or flashing back to Meade pulling a
knife on me in the street. But I wasn’t imagining this. Amelia had
a knife in her hand.

I sat up as best I could and instinctively
threw my arms up.

She reached the blade out toward the thing
she had tossed at me and cut a string that wound around it. I guess
it was more like a quarter-pound of bundled papers she’d hit me
with. A wad of pictures, letters, and postcards rolled out in a
sort of timeless indifference upon my lap.

“What are these,” I said fumbling to take up
one of the photographs. I could barely see its details in the dark,
but I could see enough. The picture was a picture of me sitting on
the floor at my mother’s feet holding a stuffed toy dog. I was
about five-years-old. I was smiling, but somehow I didn’t look
happy. I looked drunk.

“Some things your father gave me,” Amelia
explained.

“Oh, you’ve met my father, have you?”

Amelia nodded.

I hadn’t seen my father in almost as long as
Mom had been dead. In fact I had seen him only once since, and that
was at her funeral twenty-five years ago. “How did you find me? Did
the old man tell you where I was?”

“No.”

“Alright, what does he want then? He’s
obviously sent you.”

Amelia giggled. “Don’t flatter yourself!
Brad didn’t send me.”

“Then who?” I said.

Amelia took in another long draw of smoke.
“My mother, before she died, asked me to look up an old friend of
her sister’s from the Asylum. That friend was your mother. But
unfortunately your mother is dead, and so is mine, and so is my
aunt.”

“So that leaves us!”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“Well, sorry about the losses,” I said. I
was talking about her mother’s and her aunt’s deaths. I must not
have sounded too sincere, for Amelia didn’t acknowledge the
condolence. I sat the picture down and didn’t bother to look at any
others. I turned my attention to something else Amelia had
said.

“So you rent my mother’s childhood
home?”

“That’s right.”

“So you’re looking for something, and you
need my help, is that right?”

“Partially.”

“So what do you want then? What brings you
this far west looking for me?”

“Inheritances, Mitchell: yours and
mine.”

“Inheritances?”

Amelia was nodding.

“Well, my inheritance was doled out a long
time ago, Ms. Hawkins. I inherited a bottle of whiskey, a shitload
of pain, and a ton of fucking grief.”

“Is that right?” Amelia said. She turned her
back to me and walked to the window to look out into the night.
“Was your mother that indifferent that she didn’t leave you
anything else?”

Mom wasn’t indifferent. That’s not how I’d
describe her, but I was too tired to get into those kinds of
descriptions.  I said, instead, “What’s your game? You said
our inheritances. What do I have to do with your inheritance?”

Amelia continued to stare out the window.
“You’re a bit in the dark, aren’t you?” I could almost sense her
grinning.

“Do my best work in the dark,
sweetheart!”

Amelia then turned around. She was looking
at me like I was some curiosity, like some animal on exhibit. She
didn’t acknowledge my wit, but it did wipe the presumed grin off
her pretty face. “You know, things change, Mitchell. A few weeks
ago I could have cared less about any of this, but things come to
light.”

“Someone leave me some money?” I said. “Was
it my rich uncle Ully?”

Again, Amelia just shook her head, and said,
“No, Ully’s alive and well; but he hasn’t left you anything.”

I nodded, impressed somewhat by her
diligence, though admittedly disappointed. I was secretly hoping
old Ully was dead, whether or not he left me anything. Amelia had
done her homework. She’d talked to my father, and had at least
checked in on Ully the Terrible.

“Then what?” I said. “Someone else left me
something?”

“You could say that.” Amelia said as much
with a cryptic flare that was beginning to annoy me.

“What kind of inheritance are we talking
about then?”

“That depends!” And of course it does, I
thought. Things always depend on something else, and there are no
straightforward answers in this stupid world. Again, Amelia turned
to look out the window.

I changed the subject back to her aunt. “Who
was this aunt of yours—this friend of my mother’s?”

Amelia seemed pleased. She turned back to
face me. “Her name was Emily White.”

“And your mother sent you because your aunt
Emily wanted her to investigate my mother?”

“Yes.”

“But they’re dead, your mom and your
aunt?”

“That’s right.”

I still wasn’t getting it. “Am in some sort
of legal trouble?”

“No.”

“Did I inherit some money?”

“No.”

“Did your mother want you to find me?”

“No.”

“And no one in my family sent you?”

“No.”

“So you just looked me up?”

“Yes.”

“How’d you find me then if I might ask? I
pride myself on not leaving much of a trail back to that
place.”

The place I was referring to was River
Bluff, Michigan, the center of a pentagon whose points were
Traverse City, Mount Pleasant, Muskegon, Kalamazoo, and Coldwater.
I was assuming that’s where this stranger had come from, the center
of the pentagon.

Amelia then gestured to the bundle of past
sitting on my stomach. I’d almost forgotten about it. “You send
your father a postcard once in a while from the towns you grace,”
she explained.

I reached down and reluctantly took up a few
of the cards. Their postmarks brought back some old whiskey-laden
memories: Boise, Anchorage, Bozeman, New Orleans. One, a pretty
recent one, was postmarked Neah Bay.

“For some reason he saves them,” Amelia
said. “He must care about you.” She said that with a tone of
sarcasm that, admittedly, made me laugh. “In your last card you
told him you were a lumberjack. It had a Neah Bay postmark on it,
so I sent a contact out this way. You do leave a trail even if you
aren’t aware of it. There are quite a few Marks and Marcuses around
here, but you haven’t aged much. Your high school picture and your
savory barroom reputation gave you away.”

“What contact?” I said. “There are more of
you wandering around here?”

Amelia ignored the question, extinguished
her cigarette, and turned a lamp on. It dimly lit the room and I
was finally able to see her face.

Her eyes were dark green, almost emerald,
much like my mother’s used to be. Amelia was pretty in a serious
sort of way, though a bit over-wrapped for her age. She had a black
leather coat on and blue jeans tucked into a pair of black
knee-length boots. She showed no skin, save the skin on her face
and hands. She looked to be about twenty five years old, and overly
thin, if you’d ask me. She had full lips and prominent cheekbones,
dark hair, shoulder length, and beautiful eyes, no matter the
color.

She hadn’t yet holstered the knife she had
withdrawn, one not quite as magnificent as John Rambo’s, but a hell
of a jump from Meade’s little switchblade—and a fright more
imposing. Amelia’s knife looked something like a knife the Army
might give a soldier.

“That was nice of you to step in at the
bar,” I said.

“You already thanked me. That was nice of
you to reach out to your dad like that.” She finally re-sheathed
the weapon. She slipped it into a holster tied to her hip and sat
back down to amuse herself with my discomfort.

I hadn’t considered the postcards an
outreach to my father. I always considered them more of a thumb in
his eye, an I’m okay and I don’t need your fucking last name
anymore, either, sort of a gesture. I signed all of those cards
with one of my many aliases just to goad him: Mitchell Towns,
Mitchell Parks, Mitchell Hall, Mike Hall, Mark Towns—and most
recently, Mark Engram.

I often wondered if the gesture worked. But
I didn’t want to talk about names or Brad Rennix or old times. I
put the cards in a pile near my knee, and said, “Do you mind
telling me what exactly I can do for you then, so as I can get back
to sleep?”

True to form, Amelia only indirectly
answered my question. “My aunt wrote a poem that your mom—that
Eva—really liked. Do you want to hear it?”

I nodded, indifferently, and she recited
it. 

Thick layers of gauze,

Its contents, my heart.

A clinical perspective for friends,

Enough so the blood does not drip.

Only at the solitary presence of his tiny
grave,

Do I sit and unwind all the layers

And view the deep gash.

It will never heal…I will only wrap it
differently with time.

She spoke slowly. A sadder poem I’d never
heard. “Is that supposed to cheer me up?” I asked her, lowering one
cheek to the pillow and closing my eyes.

“Wake you up, maybe,” Amelia replied.

“How’d you know she liked that?” I said.

“It was in her diary.”

I nodded. “Well, who was it for?”

“It was for mothers I suppose, and lovers,
and for children.”

“Mothers and lovers and children!” I echoed.
“That just about covers everyone—including Amethyst?”

I was eying Amelia’s arm, the one with the
tattoo, assuming Amethyst was a name. I vaguely remembered the
unmistakable outline of a child’s smiling face about the word. I
wasn’t sure if Amethyst was a name, but I was curious about what it
meant.

Amelia stared at me for a moment and then
nodded, but again she didn’t answer my question as to who—or
what—this Amethyst was.

The poem and the name Emily White didn’t
ring a bell—as if they would. Mom never mentioned an Emily White,
or anyone from the Institution for that matter. Not that I could
remember. And she couldn’t remember much anything about the place,
anyway, or that time. Lobotomies and electroshock will do that to
you.

“It’s a nice poem,” I said, “but what does
it mean for me?”

“It means I know you had a brother,
Mitchell. And I know your mother liked the poem because it made her
think of him. It also made her think of you. You asked me what I
want. I want what my aunt wanted for your mother. I want your
mother’s rapist brought to justice, and I want her sons found—the
both of them. I want you to come home, Mitchell.”

I didn’t answer her. I couldn’t even look at
her. She had just invoked three concepts that frankly scared the
hell out of me: River Bluff, a brother, and rape! Those subjects
were definitely part of the past.

I gathered the postcards into a pile and
handed them back to Amelia. I was appreciative she’d shown up and
probably saved me a few hundred more stitches, and perhaps my life.
I thanked her again, and then closed my eyes. I told her I needed
to sleep. The past was a door I needed to close, and shutting my
eyes that night seemed the best way to close that door.

But closing my eyes that night wasn’t
working. Closing my eyes with Amelia Hawkins sitting there staring
at me like some curiosity brought me no peaceful sleep. She just
stared at me from her chair, blowing a cool, past-like smoke over
me.

“Recite that poem again…your aunt Emily’s
poem,” I said, closing my eyes in hopes it might sedate me. Poetry
always did seem to put me to sleep.

Amelia complied. “Thick layers of gauze, its
contents my heart. A clinical perspective for friends, enough so
the blood does not drip….”

Amelia’s voice trailed off as if someone had
just turned down the volume on my world, and then, all at once, I
was five again, back in River Bluff, and Mom was still alive.

***

Be
still and know that I am God! ~Psalms 46:10

Shadow Journal entry

August 14, 1995

In the way many people dream of their first
kiss, I sometimes dream of my first drink. I think every drunk
remembers that first time. For some it’s a stolen nip from a bottle
in Dad’s liquor cabinet. For others it’s a drink swallowed under
pressure from peers. Mine just happened to have been a birthday
present from my father, one he gave me inside an old, rundown
toolshed. What a wonderful gift to give! And Dad wondered why I was
so cruel to him! ~ Mitchell Rennix

August 28, 1970, 25 years ago