Chapter Twenty-Two

When Celeste was growing up, her mother used to fret endlessly about how the girl spent her free time.

She’d eye the Lois Duncan and Stephen King books warily, as though they were weapons or, worse, cigarettes. The VHS copies of “A Nightmare on Elm Street” and “Jagged Edge” troubled her so much that she wouldn’t even read the plot descriptions. Celeste spent her evenings glued to cop shows, murder mysteries and Lifetime movies.

“Looking at all that stuff is going to warp you,” Mama would say. “No wonder you’re depressed. All that violence and sadness.”

Celeste didn’t think there was any danger in stories warping her any more than the world itself would, same as it does to everyone. But Mama didn’t want to hear any arguments. She would just worry that her daughter wasn’t “normal.”

Mama spent her nights reading Harlequin romance novels filled with happy endings and great kisses, Celeste thought, but those books never taught her mother how to pick a good man. So there.

Celeste believed that violence in media didn’t create a violent, abusive or sad world. It just reflected it back. And Celeste was fascinated by the darkness of the world, the secrets that “normal” people had to hide. Thus, she took it all in, the shows and the books and the movies. She found it an easy way to experience situations and relate to feelings without having to actually suffer through them. Stories teach compassion, Celeste learned. But her mama wouldn’t hear it. Reading anything darker than Nancy Drew was going to ruin her.

“Good girls don’t spend their time studying these monsters,” Mama would lecture, which would just cause Celeste to turn up the volume on “Cagney and Lacey.”

If what her mother believed was true, Celeste had been preparing to kill a man since middle school.

Sitting in Max’s hospital room, staring at him as he writhed and muttered, Celeste wondered if she could actually kill a man, if it came down to it. She wondered if she could commit a perfect murder, if the media had taught her any way to get away with it.

The way Max was now, Celeste could easily off him, damn the consequences. She could just take his pillow or the plastic bag she’d carried out from Waffle House to smother him. She considered the irony of smothering someone with a bag that had carried Waffle House hash browns and smiled. Even Max would’ve appreciated that joke, she thought. Hash browns all-the-way were his cheat carb.

But Celeste couldn’t kill Max, even if she knew he wasn’t a good guy. Even if she knew Wade wasn’t the first teenager he’d seduced. There were too many variables to consider, too many strings attached. Celeste had Marcus to think about. He was her priority.

Killing Max would not only endanger Celeste’s life and freedom, it would also put a serious crimp in her job security. Keeping Max’s office meant keeping Max’s secrets, and Max paid her too well to keep those. She knew all his little habits. She knew the times he “accidentally” went into some irritating bitch’s mouth when she wasn’t numb enough. Celeste knew when he’d take his opportunity to “check out” the abs on some unconscious basketball star getting a root canal. Max was loose about ethics, but Celeste understood what motivated him. He took out his grievances while helping people at the same time, he told her. And that made it OK.

“If I help someone, what does it matter how I help someone?” he asked her when she complained, early in their working relationship, maybe three years ago.

Celeste kept her mouth shut and kept cashing checks. And she kept her son fed, clothed, housed and in a good school. All the money she saved for Marcus. He was going to be better than everybody, better than some deadbeat dad, better than some dental assistant, better than some jackass dentist. The world wasn’t going to warp her son. Marcus would be well-equipped. He knew he was loved and supported. And her son read James Baldwin, Time Magazine, poetry and science books.

In spite of herself, Celeste liked Max too much to personally kill him. She liked his jokes. It’s hard to murder someone who makes you laugh, even if this whole town would be better off if Max never left this room again.

“Damn you for being nice to me, you son of a bitch,” she said to him as he rested, all bandaged, sunken-eyed and pathetic.

Instead of murdering her boss, Celeste began unpacking all of the waffles she’d bought. She opened the door to his hospital room, letting the smell of fresh baked treats waft out into the hallway while they were still warm. After that was done, she unpacked the marked-down Whitman’s Samplers and Hershey’s Kisses she’d bought from the hospital drugstore. Celeste knew—from all her mother’s surgeries years back—that patients with food got the best attention.

And Celeste wanted one nurse on Eight West in particular to come by Max’s room an awful lot. Celeste thought she and Mary Harrell might have a lot to discuss once they got to know each other.

The waffles got Mary to the door, chart in hand, hunger in her eyes, within two minutes. “This is my last stop of the night,” she explained. “I’m just checking in.”

Noting the hunger in the nurse’s eyes, Celeste smiled, gestured toward the other chair in the room and said, “Have a seat.”

Twenty minutes later, the last crumbs of Mary’s waffle soaked in syrup on the adjustable tray, and the nurse and the dental assistant gabbed like friends, washing down the food with miniature cans of ginger ale snagged from the dining cart.

“You think Max is going to make it out of this all right?” Celeste asked.

“He’s not out of the woods yet, but it’s good that he woke up once already,” Mary said. “The next few days are key.”

Celeste shook her head in pity.

“How long have you worked with him?” Mary asked.

“It feels like forever,” Celeste said. “But I guess it’s been several years now, ever since his last assistant just walked out without warning.”

“That sounds like a story,” Mary said.

“Whatever she saw couldn’t have been nearly as bad as walking in on him lying face down in a pool of blood this morning,” Celeste said. “I can tell you that right now.”

“Yeah, that’s going to be a hard sight to forget,” Mary said. “What do you think happened?”

“He slipped and hit his head on the marble countertop, I think,” Celeste lied.

“Jesus,” Mary spat. “That’d have to be a pretty bad fall. I thought maybe somebody didn’t like their bill.”

Celeste tried to laugh it off.

“I mean, he’s not the best guy sometimes, honestly,” Celeste said. “But that whole sight was just scary as fuck.”

Mary nodded.

“Sorry for my language.”

“Oh please, I’ve heard it,” Mary said. “I have a teenager.”

“I know,” Celeste said. “So do I.”

“Oh really? How old?”

“Marcus is 14, going on 30,” Celeste said.

“You have no idea how much I relate,” Mary said, smirking. “My boy’s already made me a grandmother.”

“You don’t look like a grandmother,” Celeste admitted.

“I shouldn’t be one yet,” Mary said. “But I shouldn’t be a widow either.”

Mary’s voice trailed off, then she sighed a moment. Trying to compose herself, she muttered, “At least Lydie is cute.”

Celeste touched Mary on the hand.

“It sounds tough,” Celeste said. “I know raising a boy on your own is hard. I can’t imagine if Marcus was a daddy.”

Mary tried to compose herself, though she felt like crying. She took a sip of ginger ale. It was too much.

“Wade’s life is so complicated,” Mary said. “I never wanted that for him. But he had to grow up quick. And I don’t know what’s going through his head most of the time. I swear, today was the first time we’d had a real conversation, and I don’t even know where that came from.”

“Wade’s life is complicated,” Celeste agreed.

“Hmm?” Mary said, puzzled that this woman would know much of anything about Wade.

“Oh, I’ve met your son, remember?”

“Oh right, Wade was in the hallway with you this afternoon,” the nurse remembered. Celeste’s eyes bugged a little bit.

“That wasn’t the first time I met Wade,” Celeste said. “Or you. You don’t remember me driving him home from our office after that surgery?”

“You did what?”

“We called you from the office to see if you could pick him up,” Celeste explained. “But you were stuck at the hospital. I just drove him to your house and left him with that girl and her baby.”

Mary rolled her eyes at the mention of Jessa.

“That girl just put him under a blanket, probably, and went back to watching TV,” Mary said.

“Yeah,” Celeste said. “She wasn’t much from the looks of her.”

“How do you remember all this stuff, Celeste?”

“I just have one of those brains,” the assistant said.

Mary shivered and said, “Sorry. I meet so many patients myself. I just figured it was the same way with you, that you wouldn’t remember everybody, even after a couple months.”

“Oh, Wade was memorable,” Celeste said. “I think I still have the video from that car ride on my phone.”

“WHAT? YOU’RE KIDDING ME.”

“Oh yeah, he was babbling from the painkillers,” she confessed. “I couldn’t help but film him. Boy was hilarious. Zonked out like a baby but talking about the craziest stuff like Elmer Fudd.”

Mary laughed, then said, “You know I have to see it now, right?”

Celeste knew. Celeste knew all too well that Mary needed to see it. It’s what Nancy Drew would have done.

Celeste pulled up the video on her phone, leaned it against the ice pitcher in front of Mary and pressed Play.

Δ

The video opened on Wade, slouched and sleepy-eyed in the backseat of his own car. The baby seat was next to him. He petted it like a cat while he looked out the window. He drooled.

“What you were saying about the dentist?” Celeste said in the recording, snickering.

“Doctowww Emmetttt isss beauwwwtifuwww, and I wanna smoooooch his face,” Wade said, his mouth all amush. “Daaaah dennisssss. Daaaaaaaaaah. Dennisssssss. Whooooo arrrrre youuuuuu? Whewwwe awww weeee? Your bwwwaids are pwwwweeeeetttty.”

“I’m his assistant,” Celeste told Wade. “I’m driving you back home.”

At this, Wade dozed off for a moment, then roused himself.

“Whooooo are youuuu?” he asked again.

“Honey, keep talking,” Celeste said. “You’re hilarious.”

“Whooo are youuuuu? Isss thiss really happeningggg?”

“We’re going to put this on YouTube,” she said to him. “I’m driving you home. This shit is gold, baby.”

“Whaaaat? WHOO ARE YOOOOOU?”

The nav system spoke up, telling Celeste that she was approaching the house. Wade looked puzzled, confused and scared. He started crying.

The video ended abruptly.

Δ

Celeste turned to Mary as it ended. As Celeste suspected, the nurse was not laughing at all. Instead, her face was white. Mary looked at the dentist, alarmed.

“What?” Celeste asked her.

“Huh,” Mary said. “I’ve never found Dr. Emmett that beautiful.”

Celeste smirked, “Especially not now.”

Mary took a breath.

“I wish I’d seen that video months ago,” she admitted, turning to Celeste. “It would’ve made today’s conversation with Wade so much easier.”

Celeste confessed, “Dr. Emmett told me not to show that video to anyone after he saw it.”

“He saw it?”

“Oh yeah,” Celeste admitted. “I thought he’d find it funny. But instead he went to talk to Wade about it.”

“What are you talking about? Why would he talk to my son?” Mary asked.

“I thought you knew about all this,” Celeste said.

“Dr. Emmett came to my house? Wade never said anything about that.”

“Nah, he talks to Wade at the grocery store,” Celeste said in a deadpan voice, careful at how she tossed the metaphorical grenade. “Max shops there almost every night.”

At that admission, Mary’s eyes fixed upon the dentist and would not leave him. Her eyes grew wider and wider. Celeste watched the nurse, saying no more about it.