Sunflower Street Page 4

  “Psychotic break, they called it,” Ed said.

  “It’s just too much for him to process,” Claire said. “He’s been sheltered his whole life. Everything’s regimented for him. He needs to be back at home where everything’s familiar, where he can get back on schedule. With time, I’m sure he can come out of it.”

  “But who’s going to advocate for him?” Ed said.

  “Not Jillian, that’s for sure,” Hannah said.

  “I will,” Claire said.

  “That’s nice of you to offer,” Ed said. “But only his next of kin will have the opportunity to petition for a conservatorship. If they get a judge to grant them medical and financial control over his affairs, no one else can do anything.”

  “Gigi said she’d found out something disturbing about those people,” Claire said. “She had a lawyer there at the house when I got there. I think she changed her will.”

  “What do you know about Chippie?” Maggie asked Ed.

  “We called him Chippie,” Ed said. “But his real name is Chester McClanahan, Junior.”

  “He’s Cheat’s son, then,” Claire said.

  Ed nodded.

  “After his mother died, Gigi basically took him to raise, paid for his college tuition, convinced her husband to hire him on at the hospital,” Ed said. “They treated him like a son.”

  “Probably more so than Eugene,” Claire said.

  “He goes by ‘Chip’ now,” Ed said.

  “The better to fit into high society,” Hannah said.

  “What passes for high society in this county would be laughable anywhere else,” Maggie said.

  “It’s a small pond,” Ed said. “At one time, Eugene Senior and Gigi were among the biggest fish.”

  “She had photos of Chip and Jillian on her vanity table,” Claire said, “but not one of Eugene.”

  “Jillian’s a committee junkie,” Maggie said. “She’s got her fingers in every nonprofit pie in the county. She’s always trying to put donation cans on my counters or get me to sponsor something.”

  “Hah!” Hannah said. “Maggie’s so tight she makes Scrooge look good.”

  Maggie threw a chip at Hannah, which she caught and ate.

  “Their son goes to Pineville County Consolidated,” Ed said. “He’s the same age as Tommy and Charlotte.”

  Tommy was Ed’s adopted son and Charlotte was Ava’s daughter; both were sixteen.

  “Talk to Ava, ask her what Charlotte says about him,” Hannah said to Claire.

  “There can be no more investigating,” Scott said. “You need to let me handle it.”

  “Yeah, like that’s gonna happen,” Hannah said.

  Scott sighed and looked at Ed, who grinned.

  “It’s pointless to boss us around,” Claire said.

  “He knows,” Maggie said.

  “Just please don’t break any laws,” Scott said. “I can only protect you as long as you don’t do anything illegal.”

  “We’ll tell you everything we find out,” Hannah said. “You need us to help figure this out.”

  “It’s Sarah’s case,” he said. “I’m just the local errand boy.”

  “Constable Cougar doesn’t care unless it gets her name in the paper,” Hannah said. “If we don’t look into it nothing will happen.”

  “Please be careful,” Scott said. “If someone murdered her, you could be next on the list just for being nosy.”

  “We’ll be careful,” Maggie said.

  “Thanks for backing me up,” Scott said to Ed.

  “I’m planning to pick my battles very carefully,” Ed said, with an affectionate look at Claire. “This is not going to be one of them.”

  Claire leaned over and kissed Ed.

  “Get a room!” Sammy said.

  “That’s my boy!” Hannah said. “You all really need to cut that crap out. It’s demoralizing for us old married people.”

  “Me marking you,” Sammy said.

  “What are we up to?” Maggie asked him.

  “Me not know,” Sammy said. “Me can’t count.”

  Chapter Three

  Claire woke up tangled in the sheets, sweating, her heart pounding. It took her a few moments to figure out where she was. In the dream she’d been having, she was in the house Scott owned, up on Sunflower Street, fooling around in bed with Laurie Purcell. It had been so real, so intense, and so, well, enjoyable, that she awoke disoriented and confused. Her first inclination was to go back to sleep, with the hope that they could take up where they left off.

  She heard the front door close and it broke the spell. There was no escaping the fact that she was in her childhood bedroom in her parents’ house, and Laurie had died three weeks previously. With that realization, her emotions zoomed downward and the tears came. She covered her face with her pillow and cried until it was over, when the numbness of the new day settled in its place.

  “Claire,” her mother said softly at the door. “Are you awake, sweetie?”

  “Just getting up,” Claire said. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

  “I’m going to the IGA to buy groceries,” her mother said. “Your dad’s at the station.”

  “The station” meant her Uncle Curtis’s gas station, where her father spent most of his mornings. He had vascular dementia, and could not be left alone for even a minute, lest he wander off or set the house on fire. He had attempted both in the past week.

  Claire had been back in Rose Hill since spring, having quit her job working for a famous actress. Her career may have only amounted to twenty years of catering to an abusive boss, but it included high wages and fabulous first class travel. She had every intention of making her trip home a short visit, but events had conspired to keep her here, and here it seemed she was doomed to stay.

  Claire dragged herself out of bed and checked her phone. It was noon, and she had twenty-four text messages. They were all from her cousins, Maggie and Hannah, whom she loved, but not enough to participate in their ongoing text conversation, augmented by phone calls, which they started at the break of dawn and concluded some days after midnight.

  It was exhausting, for one thing. Maggie was perpetually irritated by everything and everybody. Hannah was hilarious, but her constant refusal to take anything seriously could also be annoying. Those two had had twenty years to build their relationship as adult friends, and Claire was still trying to catch up.

  Claire avoided the mirror as she left the bedroom and made her way to the bathroom. After a shower and some serious make-up and hair maneuvers, only then would she allow her thirty-nine-year-old face to be seen in public.

  Which would be forty, come Saturday. Ugh. Forty and still living at home with her parents was more than anyone should have to bear.

  The doorbell rang as she came out of the bathroom, and it was Ed Harrison.

  Ed was the closest thing Claire had to a boyfriend, but that term seemed too lighthearted and juvenile to describe what he was to her. He was her best friend, first and foremost. He knew her better than anyone; her checkered past, her conflicted feelings about being back in Rose Hill, and her current paralysis when faced with what to do with the rest of her life. Ed saw her for who she really was, and he loved her with all his sweet, loyal, honorable heart.

  He was also her lover, a few times per week, when they could find the time and a place where her parents and his son, Tommy, were unlikely to show up. Claire refused to do it in a car, like a teenager, so Ed’s office after hours had become their unofficial love shack.

  A couple weeks earlier, Ed had started a new job with the local private college, Eldridge, as their journalism teacher.

  “I’m their whole journalism department, actually,” he had told Claire. “It’s a dying liberal art these days.”

  He was enjoying the challenge of introducing students to the newspaper business, via the Rose Hill Sentinel, of which he was owner and editor. As part of the deal he had with the college, the students were learning the day-to-day functions of creating a
nd managing a small town weekly paper, with Ed as their teacher, mentor, and editor-in-chief. They, in turn, were showing Ed ways in which he could utilize social media to communicate with a broader, younger audience.

  Ed seemed so happy and excited about his new adventure that Claire sometimes had a hard time being around him. It only exacerbated her rootless feeling of not having anything to do, or anywhere to be every day. Three days per week she did volunteer at the hospice in nearby Pendleton, but that was just a way to keep busy and take a break from her self-pity, guilt, and grief.

  “Good morning,” he said, as he came in.

  He wrapped his arms around her. He felt warm from having been out in the sunshine. He had grown a beard and mustache over the past few weeks, and it was coming in reddish. He rubbed his beard against her neck and she pushed him away.

  “That beard’s getting full,” she said. “You look like the mandolin player in a folk rock band.”

  “I’m considering a handle-bar mustache,” he said, as he looked in the entryway mirror and twirled the ends of his mustache. “What do you think?”

  “I think your students will love it,” she said.

  “I have forty-five minutes left for lunch,” he said. “We can grab a bite to eat or fool around, but not both, so make your decision and make it snappy. I’m hungry and horny but I can’t be late.”

  Claire flashed back to her dream of the morning, and piano music began to play in her head. It was “The Very Thought of You.”

  “I can’t,” Claire said, before she’d thought of a reason why she couldn’t.

  “Too bad, your loss,” Ed said. “I’m going to run up to the diner and get something to go. I’ll see you tonight, then?”

  “Sure,” she said, feeling guilty about lying. “I’ll come by the office.”

  He kissed her quickly and sailed out the door and down the sidewalk, whistling.

  ‘I could never abide a whistler,’ Laurie said in her head.

  He’d taken up residence in there since his funeral, and Claire couldn’t decide if she was crazy or haunted.

  ‘Not now,’ she said to him in her thoughts.

  ‘That beard is ridiculous,’ he said. ‘He’ll have an owl tattoo and a porkpie hat by the end of the semester.’

  ‘He’s happy,’ she said. ‘Leave him be.’

  “It’s perfect for him,’ Laurie said. ‘Teaching an antiquated profession to spoiled, rich hipsters. They’ll have the printing press back to work before you know it. They can make the paper, too, out of their canceled trust fund checks.’

  ‘At least he has a job.’

  ‘You don’t have to work, you know,’ he said. ‘If you’d quit buying enormous handbags and insanely elevated footwear you could live off your dividends.’

  ‘I’ll thank you to stay out of my financial affairs,’ Claire said.

  ‘Can’t be helped,’ he said. ‘Your consciousness is like a house full of thin-walled, drafty rooms, and your money worries are like wallpaper.’

  ‘I don’t know what to do,’ she said. ‘I’m stuck.’

  ‘Just enjoy being alive on Earth, why don’t you?’ he said. ‘Go outside and lie down in the green grass, look up at the blue sky, feel the sunshine on your face and the wind in your hair, take a swim in the river. You’re living like a dead person, Claire Rebecca Fitzpatrick; you might as well be here.’

  ‘Shut up,’ Claire said.

  The piano music started again. This time it was, “Cast Your Fate to the Wind,” by Vince Guaraldi.

  As Claire got dressed, her phone rang.

  “We’re going down to the pond,” Hannah said. “Sam’s got Sammy so we’re putting the tubes in the water and the beers on ice.”

  “I just did my hair and make-up,” Claire said.

  “Criminy, you’re prissy,” Hannah said. “Here, Maggie wants to talk.”

  “Get your ass out this holler and play with us,” Maggie said. “We have maybe two days per summer when we can do this and I know for a fact you don’t have anything else to do today.”

  “The water’s too cold,” Claire said.

  “Wah, wah, wah,” Maggie said.

  She could hear Hannah saying, “Give me the phone.”

  “Listen,” Hannah said. “I’ll give you a dollar.”

  “We shouldn’t have to pay her to have fun,” Maggie said in the background.

  “I’m going to start smoking again, I can just feel it,” Hannah said. “If you don’t come out here and stop me, I’m going to take up smoking again and it will be all your fault.”

  “I don’t have an appropriate bathing suit,” Claire said.

  “Where were you raised, Paris, France?” Hannah asked her. “Put on some tennis shoes, shorts and a T-shirt. This isn’t the Fountainhead in Miami, Florida.”

  “The Fontainebleau,” Claire said.

  “Whatever,” Hannah said. “Come on, Claire. I’ve got cigarettes hidden in lots of places and I’m starting to remember where.”

  Claire had a sudden inspiration.

  “I’m going to go see Eugene in the hospital,” Claire said.

  Silence.

  “What’d she say?” she heard Maggie ask.

  “She’s going to go see Eugene,” Hannah said.

  “I’m worried about him,” Claire said. “I think one of us should go, and since I don’t have anything to do it might as well be me.”

  “All right,” Hannah said. “Permission granted. Hey, Maggie and I have some things we want to send with you for him; we’ll leave them on the kitchen table.”

  “Okay,” Claire said. “I’ll catch up with you guys later.”

  Per the directions of a cheerful gray-haired volunteer at the information desk, Claire followed the yellow stripe painted on the gray linoleum floor as it wound through the labyrinthian hallways of Pendleton General Hospital, to where it ended as an arrow at a nurse’s station. There, an irritated-looking woman in green scrubs with a stethoscope draped around her neck glanced at Claire, frowned, and then summoned up a semblance of a smile.

  “Can I help you?” she asked.

  “I’m here to see Eugene O’Hare.”

  “Are you family?”

  “I am,” Claire said.

  “Just a moment,” the woman said.

  She typed something on a keyboard and studied a flat screen monitor. A brief look of concern flashed over her face before she covered it with a bland, give-away-nothing expression.

  “I need to call somebody; do you mind to wait?”

  “Not at all,” Claire said, as she set her gift bag, which contained some comic books picked out by Hannah, a new Tolkien bio provided by Maggie, and a purloined bag of Claire’s father’s favorite butterscotch candy, on the counter.

  “Someone is here to see Mr. O’Hare,” the woman said into the phone. “Says she’s family.”

  She listened for a brief time and then hung up, saying to Claire, “The doctor will be right with you.”

  A few minutes later, a short man in a white lab coat approached Claire. He was dark-eyed, with a friendly, elf-like quality about his features. Claire half-expected to see pointed ears sticking out from beneath his dark, curling hair.

  “I understand you’re here to see Eugene?”

  “Yes,” Claire said. “I’m so worried about him. I’m afraid no one will understand what he’s been through and why he’s acting like he is.”

  “I’m Dr. Schweitzer,” he said, and held out his hand.

  “Claire Fitzpatrick,” she said as she shook it. “For real, that’s your name?”

  He laughed, and showed her his I.D.

  “At least my parents had the good grace not to name me Albert,” he said. “Are you related to Eugene?”

  “Not really, not by blood,” Claire said. “But I’ve known him my whole life, I was a good friend of his mother’s, and he’s very dear to my family.”

  “I can’t talk to you about Eugene’s medical condition, but I would like to hear what you have
to say. Would you mind coming to my office?”

  Claire followed him through more maze-like hallways until they reached a tiny office in a corner intersected by two hallways. There was barely room for the desk and two chairs, but there was a wrap-around window with a beautiful view of the neighboring mountains.

  “You see why I put up with this small space,” he said, gesturing to the view.

  On one wall, from floor to ceiling, shelves were filled with books and stacks of papers, and his desk was covered in medical file folders. Multiple coats and a messenger bag hung on the back of the door. A bicycle was parked in the miniscule bathroom, its front wheel sticking out through the doorway.

  Claire handed him the bag of gifts and he gestured as if to ask if he could look.

  “Of course,” Claire said.

  He took out the comic books, the Tolkien bio, and the candy.

  “This is interesting,” he said. “I’ve learned a little bit more about Eugene just from these thoughtful gifts.”

  “How is he?”

  “I have to be very careful not to violate HIPPA laws,” Dr. Schweitzer said, “but I can say I’m concerned about him. Please tell me anything you think might help me understand him a little better.”

  Claire took a deep breath and let it out.

  “Do you have time for this?” she asked.

  “I’m making the time,” he said. “His psychiatric hold will expire the day after tomorrow, and I’ll need to make a decision.”

  Claire started with her earliest recollection of Eugene on the first day of kindergarten, when he clung to his mother and then wept inconsolably when the teacher finally pried him out of her arms.

  Hannah had made friends with him first, mostly because she was curious about this sobbing, prostrate creature, but soon she adopted him as her own, just like all the stray animals she collected.

  “Hannah has always had a soft spot for lost causes, both two-legged and four-legged,” Claire said. “After we started elementary school, Hannah and Maggie’s brothers took to him as well, and no one was allowed to bully him when any of us were around.”