FOXTAIL LANE THE street in Bixby listed for Thomas R. Worthy on the tattered scrap of phonebook I stole. I’m thinking, as I drive down it, that it’s probably a mistake showing up at the house of a sheriff’s deputy who thinks I’m mentally awry, who last saw me screaming his name hysterically as I was being dragged back to my ward after he told me about Paul’s omission.
Paul. The repatterned part of me is aching to go home right now, beg Paul’s forgiveness, and face the consequences. It’s laid out a reasoned, compelling argument:
Yes, it’ll take time to win back my husband’s trust and its privileges. But that beats the repercussions that will surely come from this visit I’m about to make: a call from local law enforcement informing Paul that his wife drove a stolen truck to the home of a sheriff’s deputy, where she proceeded to ramble on to the officer and his wife about truth and bourbon and all manner of utter fuckery before being subdued by said deputy.
Talk about burning bridges.
But does all this reason stop me? No.
I park the truck behind some bushes in a nearby patch of woods, just short of Worthy’s house, and am tucking my hair into the knit hat when my mind finds its way back to that day in Hanover’s visitors’ room. Those fraught, chaotic minutes after he told me Paul knew all along about the woman in braids on the bus.
Then, just as my emotions were skyrocketing, him reaching out and holding my hand. How warm and safe his touch felt amid my frenzy. That was the moment I realized the nature of our relationship had fundamentally changed. I started calling him “Worthy.” We were no longer arresting officer and perp; we’d become—what? Concerned acquaintances? Maybe even friends—
Pull your head out of your ass and get what you need from the guy. That address in Washington.
Fine. I cut silently across Worthy’s front lawn, already dusted with snow, passing his patrol car parked off to the side of the driveway. Other than that, there are no signs of life.
Maybe they’re out in the family station wagon—do he and Missus Deputy have kids?
I walk around to a side window, look inside, and see an empty living room lit only by the dim, flickering light of a TV—
“Freeze! Hands up high, where I can see them.”
Worthy. He managed to sneak up behind me. Despite the ambush, an odd brew of adrenaline, relief, and glee is flowing through me at his proximity. I raise my hands.
“Turn around slowly,” he says.
I obey and find a .45-caliber Smith & Wesson aimed squarely at my chest—which should bother me but does not. He’s in street clothes, a plaid flannel shirt under a wool car coat. It’s funny seeing him out of his sheriff’s deputy uniform, naked of all the law and order. Except for the gun trained on me. There is that.
“Dorothy?” he says, shock on his face. And something else there, too. Relief? Joy? Something. He turns, eyes the street for clues about my transportation, but I’ve hidden the truck well.
Of course you have. One of your many skills.
“How?… How did you get here?… Get out?” he asks.
“Lower your gun first. Please,” I say, and his face breaks out in that crooked grin. I’d forgotten about his grin.
“Your speech … It’s … You’re better. Recovered,” he says, sliding his gun back in the holster.
I nod, shivering just the slightest bit. My sweater is no parka. “Come, get out of the cold,” he says, and I follow him into the house.
The living room’s been decorated in good taste by Mrs. Worthy: floral drapes with fancy tassels, a couch and chairs with velvet throw pillows, a coffee table, and a television in a carved wooden cabinet. But at some point she seems to have turned the space over to a fraternity. On the coffee table are stacks of unopened mail, a half dozen empty beer bottles, peanut shells, and the remains of a couple frozen dinners.
Worthy turns on a lamp and leads me through the living room, snapping off the TV as we pass by it.
“Your wife, is she here?” I’m thinking Mrs. Worthy has left her husband and tasteful living room for greener pastures.
“My wife died last year,” he says, and keeps walking.
Mrs. Worthy is dead?
“I’m … so sorry,” I say as I follow him, wishing my words weren’t so anemic, that I hadn’t kidded him about whether his wife knew what he did with his free time that day in the visitors’ room. We walk past a dining room table. On top of it sits what must have been his late wife’s sewing machine, surrounded by sewing boxes and piles of fabric, all shrouded in a sad, thin layer of dust.
The kitchen, on the other hand, is aggressively sunny. Everything’s yellow: cabinets, floral curtains, refrigerator, stove, wall telephone. Even the table in the middle of it is yellow. Less cheerful is the ample collection of liquor bottles on the counter.
Worthy moves a tackle box off the table and pulls out a chair for me. “Tea?”
“Yes, please.”
He turns on the burner under a kettle, and I gladly drop into the seat, exhausted from my adventure after weeks of vegetation. There’s a small space heater under the table, glowing orangey-red and giving off that oddly comforting smell of roasting dust. The warmth feels good on my feet and I’m filled with a sense of safety I don’t think I’ve experienced since waking on that transport bus back in November.
I want to close my eyes for a moment and rest, but Worthy’s impatient. “So, how did you get here? You didn’t … You couldn’t have—”
“One question at a time, Worthy.”
He smiles. “Okay, should I be expecting the arrival of Dr. Sherman’s men in white at my door, wanting to take you back?”
He’s asking if I escaped the Unit. It’s flattering. He clearly has no idea what the security is like in that place. “No. My husband made them release me when the protocol … didn’t go as planned.” I don’t elaborate. Pretty sure that after seeing me dragged kicking and screaming away from the visitors’ room, Worthy’s got some idea what “didn’t go as planned” means.
Worthy’s expression now turns serious. “I need to apologize for what happened that day I visited. It was never my intention to make things worse for you there, set back your recovery in any way.” He shakes his head. “Don’t know what got into me, that bullheaded certainty that I needed to tell you about Dr. Sherman and your husband keeping the existence of that vagrant woman on the bus from you. I overstepped my bounds. So after that visit I resolved to keep my distance, not cause any more upset—”
“No, I’m grateful you told me. Trusted me.”
“I’m just glad you’re better. So, did the shocks make you forget my visit? What I told you?” he asks, and I nod. “Christ.”
“But today, pieces of memories started coming back. About you seeing the woman on the bus, about Paul and Dr. Sherman not telling me.”
“And you came here … How?” he asks.
“I borrowed a truck.”
I can see Worthy’s wondering at the meaning of “borrowed.” “Does your husband know where you are?” I don’t answer. “He’s got to be worried. Probably already called the sheriff’s office. We should let them know you’re safe—”
“No … We can’t. Not yet. I need your help first. There’s an address in Washington, D.C., a place I would go to. I was picked up by the police there many times when I was sick. It must be listed in the Metro Police’s reports.”
“What is it about that address that’s so important?” Worthy asks.
Can’t tell him I need to find a stranger who can positively identify me as Dorothy because I don’t trust my husband. No, that would be a bit of an overshare.
“It’s … It’s for closure,” I say.
“What do you mean, ‘closure’?”
Damn. “Closure” must be one of my made-up words. “What I mean is I want to see the place … now that I’m recovering … to better understand my illness. Can you call, ask someone there for the information?”
I think I was convincing. But pity’s once again overrun Worthy’s face like ants at a picnic.
“Honestly, I’m not a big fan of your husband and the choices he’s made,” Worthy says, “enrolling you in that ‘protocol’ of Dr. Sherman’s, not telling you about the woman on the bus. But according to the law, he is your legal guardian—which means he gets to decide if you can see your records. I’m so sorry, Dorothy.”
So, permission from my husband is required to pursue information that could tell me if I even need his permission?
That’s some real patriarchy bullshit.
Worthy looks pained but resolute. The Lone Ranger’s not budging. Mary was right about him: chock-full of integrity and principles.
And I’m pretty sure Paul’s not going to be okay with granting permission to his runaway wife.
Which means I’m out of leads and time.
Worthy sits down across the table from me. “How about we have some tea and then we’ll call Paul? Talk to him together about you seeing your records. Getting your ‘closure.’”
It’s becoming a familiar scenario, waiting with a well-meaning man for Paul to come collect me, convince me to stop my pursuit of some alluring conspiracy and accept the less sexy truth: that I have a protective husband who sometimes lies to me for my own good—because I am Dorothy Frasier, and I have issues.
In the words of Wallace that day on the transport bus, I’ve come to the end of my yellow brick road.
My eyes begin filling with their ridiculous tears.
Get a goddamn grip.
Worthy sees and takes my hand just like he did that day in the visitors’ room. But I was halfway to regression then, already enveloped in its thick blanket that dulled my thoughts, dampened my emotions.
Now is a different story—I feel this charge at his touch. There’s a tight, twitchy feeling sailing through me, and my heartbeat has kicked up a notch.
Not the time for this.
I’d wager it’s never the time for this as far as she’s concerned. But the voice needn’t worry about any inconvenient feelings burbling up between the deputy and I. Worthy’s eyes have already drifted down to my wrist—and the scar where doctors mended me.
I look closer at the thin, pink line and notice something I hadn’t before, something that doesn’t make sense:
The scar—it’s blood vessel adjacent.
It runs not over the radial artery, where I should have cut, but on the other side of my palmaris longus tendon. Hmm, those are some pretty specific medical terms my mind’s tossing around. I’m definitely someone with knowledge of the local anatomy.
Here’s another definite about me—I’m a closer. Getting myself straitjacketed and locked in a padded cell in order to escape, breaking into Sherman’s files, pissing myself to fake a seizure, my recent excursion out the window—I’ll do what it takes to get the job done. If I was serious about killing myself that night in the church, I wouldn’t have failed.
So, was I after something other than death in slitting my wrist? Maybe it was a cry for help, for needed attention, and I purposely cut in the wrong place.
But cries for attention? That doesn’t sound like me, feel like me—at least the me I’ve experienced these past few weeks.
Maybe it wasn’t about killing yourself or attention.
“So, tea first and then we call Mr. Frasier?” Worthy asks.
“Okay,” I say, nodding. “Can I use your bathroom?”
“Sure.” We walk into the dining room, and he points down a hallway. “First door on the right,” he says, and leaves me to make my way.
It’s funny, I think as I step into the bathroom. Worthy, my arresting officer, trusts me more than my own husband.
He shouldn’t.
I lock the door, quietly ease the nearest medicine cabinet door open, and get to work.