Cast into Doubt

FOURTEEN

Shelby did her best to enter the house quietly, taking off her shoes and leaving them in the vestibule. But she had no sooner crossed through the living room when she heard a voice from the top of the stairs. ‘Shelby, is that you?’

‘Yes,’ said Shelby, striving to keep a light and friendly tone in her voice. ‘Sorry to disturb you.’

Rob came down a few steps and leaned over the banister. ‘I wasn’t asleep. How did it go today?’ he asked.

‘Exhausting,’ she said truthfully. ‘Jeremy asleep?’

‘Oh yeah, he’s out.’

Shelby nodded and avoided his gaze. ‘Well, good. It’s the best thing for him.’

‘Good night,’ said Rob. He did not wait for her reply. He turned and headed back up the steps.

Shelby walked through to the kitchen, and poured herself a glass of water. Then she sat down on one of the kitchen chairs and looked around the room. If I were Chloe, she thought, where would I write it down? Chloe’s gadgetry was minimal. Unlike her mother, she didn’t have a BlackBerry or an iPhone. She was nostalgic for simpler times, as evidenced by her quilting.

Shelby tried to put herself into her daughter’s head. Rob had said that she deliberately chose an AA meeting that was far from their neighborhood, at some church in Old City, so that no one would recognize her. But which church? And how did she choose it? Shelby wasn’t about to ask Rob. She could not forget the shudder that ran through her when Glen suggested that perhaps it was a story designed to make Chloe look like an alcoholic. That perhaps, in reality, she was being drugged. Was it possible? Shelby couldn’t stand to think about what that would mean about Rob. What reason could he have for doing such a thing? It would mean that he was a monster. She didn’t want to think about it.

There was a calendar hanging on the wall with dates and times scribbled on it. Shelby carefully pulled out the pushpins that held it to the wall and leafed through the months past. Everything was abbreviated. She was able to discern some of Chloe’s shorthand. Q was clearly for quilting evenings. J – no preS. was pretty simple. But there was no AA anywhere in evidence. She looked for a pattern of repeated times without any other abbreviations, and noted that she often had 12:30 a.m. written on the calendar. But nothing else.

Shelby looked around the kitchen. Everything was in its place. Chloe was something of a neat freak. The only place where she wasn’t . . .

Shelby felt suddenly galvanized. The only place was her car. Was it possible that she had left some sign in the car of which AA meetings she attended? If she attended them.

Shelby was tempted to find a flashlight and go out on the street to look in the car right now. But as sure as she did that, someone would probably call the cops. A person rooting around in a parked car with a flashlight would alarm everyone on the block. No. She would have to wait until morning to look. After she took Jeremy to preschool, she would begin her search. She had to find out. She would start in the morning, with the car.

Jeremy was mopey in the morning, and made it clear that he had not appreciated her being gone all the previous day. Shelby cajoled and indulged him, giving him extra kisses and cookies in his lunch. As soon as she dropped him off, she drove to the playground near Chloe’s house and parked the car between a trash can and a recycling bin. She didn’t want to park on the street. Neighbors might ask questions if they saw her rummaging through the car, even in broad daylight. Here, at the park, she could sift through the detritus in Chloe’s automobile without attracting attention.

A knot-like headache was forming in Shelby’s forehead. She had to get started, no matter how frustrating the task. Shelby drew in a deep breath and climbed out of the car. She took out with her an armful of empty plastic water bottles that she dumped into the recycling can. Then, leaning into the back seat, she began to sort through the trash accumulated on the floor. There were notices from Jeremy’s school, and bags with a few rice crackers still left in them. Shelby tossed them out after looking them over. She put the scattered change into her pockets, and collected a couple of Jeremy’s socks for the wash.

The more trash she threw out, the more she thought this might be a hopeless quest. There was no way she could check out every AA meeting at churches in the Old City of Philadelphia. She had searched the internet last night and found a listing for AA meetings almost every hour of the day in one church or another.

Maybe, she thought, as she moved up to the front seats, the reason she was not finding anything was because there was nothing to find. Perhaps Glen was right and there was no AA meeting. That would certainly make her task impossible, she thought, as she lifted the driver’s side floor mat. There, folded underneath the dusty mat was a church bulletin. This was not a bulletin from Rob and Chloe’s church. This came from a Methodist church in Old City.

Shelby felt a fleeting thrill of discovery. She leaned against the car, and examined the bulletin. It was an ordinary Sunday bulletin. Hymns to be sung, numbers of readings. There was also a list of services provided by the church. A food closet, rummage sales, church retreats and, on the back page, the notice she was seeking. A discreet announcement that the parish hall hosted a chapter of AA, and a phone number. Shelby’s heart started to pound when she saw that the number was underlined in ink. Shelby pulled her phone from her bag and called. The church secretary answered, and assured her that AA did indeed have a twelve thirty meeting and all were welcome.

Shelby looked at the time on her phone. She could make it in plenty of time.

The Old City of Philadelphia was a neighborhood where one could see the layers of time written in bizarre architectural juxtapositions, the old jostling the new and nothing quite fitting together. Grimy industrial buildings coexisted on the same streets with discount stores and historical brick homes. Within a block, one could buy custom-made canvas awnings or an orange update of the zoot suit and matching shoes, or a tenderly buffed Noguchi wooden table, too beautiful to use.

Shelby had always liked the Old City. When she was a teenager, the Old City was a kind of bohemian mecca, dangerous and artistic. In recent years it had become chic, the result of having spacious lofts ripe for renovating, and an abundance of tin-ceilinged, tile-floored bars and restaurants. Shelby parked in front of one such bar, not yet open for the day, and walked back down the block to the Methodist church, a red-brick bastion of historic days in Old City. She pulled open the heavy, white wooden doors, and slipped inside.

The interior of the church was painted a soft tint of robin’s egg blue, the moldings eggshell white. There was no one visible in the nave as Shelby glanced inside. A makeshift sign in the lobby pointed to a stairwell and proclaimed that the AA meeting was being held in the basement. Shelby clutched to her chest a framed photo of Chloe, which she had taken from the house, and hurried down the stairs. The smell of fresh coffee wafted up the stairwell. At the bottom of the steps she rounded a corner and found herself in a large, open room filled with chairs and oblong tables. There was a stage at one end of the room that was flanked by desiccated velvet curtains and a window into a bright kitchen at the other end. About two dozen people were gathered there, talking in small groups. They were all adults, of varying ages. Several people were gathered around two brewed pots of coffee on a hot plate, carefully customizing their Styrofoam cups of steaming coffee with packets of sugar and a container of half and half. Halfway down the room an exit was propped open, letting in the spring sun, and the dissipating plumes of smoke from the cigarettes of those who were standing outside, having a few last drags before the meeting started.

Shelby felt conspicuous, standing on the periphery, clutching her photo. She was thinking of getting herself some coffee, just for something to do, although her stomach was far too knotted for her to have any hope of drinking it.

She edged toward the coffee drinkers. A tired-looking man in a tracksuit with a brown crew cut was talking to a tall, bony woman with a stringy gray braid, and a surgical gauze bandage over one eye. She had covered it with a silky black eyepatch. Her face was lined from too much sun, but her clothes were youthful. She wore jeans, a gray t-shirt and a black bomber jacket with paint-spattered sneakers. She was sporting about a dozen silver bracelets and large hoop earrings.

‘What happened to you there?’ the man was saying.

‘Scratched my cornea. I was helping the block association clean up a vacant lot. No good deed goes unpunished, right?’ She turned and smiled ruefully at Shelby.

‘Hi,’ she said. ‘How are you doing?’

Shelby smiled. ‘Fine. Well, I’m a little nervous,’ she admitted.

‘You’re new here,’ the woman said.

‘I . . . haven’t been,’ Shelby said. She extended her hand. The woman shook it. ‘I’m Shelby,’ she said.

The woman nodded. ‘Barbara,’ she said. ‘This is Ted.’

The man in the tracksuit nodded a greeting.

‘You on your lunch break?’ the woman said.

Shelby frowned. ‘No. I’m off today.’

‘At least you’re working,’ said Barbara. ‘A lot of folks here have lost their jobs.’

‘Including yours truly,’ said Ted. ‘I used to teach gym at a junior high.’

Shelby could easily imagine this man with a whistle around his neck. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

Ted shrugged. ‘I’m doing some work as a personal trainer. The money’s pretty good. If I could just get benefits . . .’

‘No kidding,’ said Shelby. ‘It’s hard to manage without benefits these days.’

‘I’ve gone without benefits my whole life. I’m an artist,’ said Barbara.

‘What kind of art do you do?’ Shelby asked.

‘I paint.’

‘So, you gotta pay for that out of your pocket?’ asked Ted, pointing to Barbara’s injured eye.

Barbara shrugged. ‘Emergency Room at Dillworth. Wasn’t too bad.’ She turned to Shelby. ‘Where do you work?’

‘I’m a buyer for . . . a department store. I’ve been there for years.’

‘I haven’t seen you here before,’ Barbara said.

Shelby suddenly felt uncomfortable and conscious that she was attending this meeting under false pretenses. She didn’t want to start explaining about Chloe just yet. She needed the attention of the whole group, although there was something non-judgmental about Barbara that made Shelby want to confide in her. She resisted the temptation. ‘It’s my day off. I was in the neighborhood,’ Shelby said.

Barbara clearly required no other explanation. ‘It’s nice out today. Good day to be off,’ Barbara said, sipping from her steaming cup. ‘Do you want some coffee?’

Shelby shook her head. ‘I’m fine. Yes. I guess spring is coming at last.’

‘Been a tough winter?’ Ted asked.

Shelby almost had to smile. She had been thinking how tired and worn out he looked. Apparently, she looked the same. ‘Yes, it has,’ she said.

‘Oh, we better sit,’ said Barbara. ‘Our fearless leader is calling the meeting to order.’

Shelby looked up and saw a red-faced middle-aged man with white hair, wearing a spiffy blue blazer, standing at the front of the room. ‘Everyone,’ he said. ‘Can you sit down? We’re going to get started.’

Barbara picked her way to a seat near the back. As Shelby watched her, she noticed that Barbara’s silky black jacket was a Christian Audigier creation with the distinctive Ed Hardy tattoo-like images of skulls and hearts that shouted goth teenager. Expensive, and inappropriate, she thought, automatically thinking like the fashion buyer that she was in her work life.

Shelby turned and looked around the room. She wanted everyone to be able to see the picture when she held it up. She needed to be sure that anyone who might remember Chloe would have an unimpeded view. ‘I’m going to sit up there,’ Shelby said, pointing to a seat on the side, halfway to the front. She did not wait for Barbara to agree. She edged up to that seat and sat down, smiling anxiously at the man beside her. He gave a curt nod, and directed his attention to the meeting leader who was making some announcements at the front of the room.

‘Now,’ said the leader, who had identified himself as Harry. ‘Would anyone like to share?’

The room was silent except for the sound of people clearing their throats. Finally, a man stood up and said, ‘My name’s Gene and I’m . . . uh . . . an alcoholic.’

‘Hi Gene,’ the crowd announced as one.

Gene, an overweight young man who was sweating profusely, began to tell about how many days he had been sober and working the program, and the difficulty he had encountered in the past week while looking for work. He admitted that he had nearly slipped, but that his sponsor had helped him through it. The people at the meeting listened with compassionate interest to what he said. Shelby was distracted and hardly heard him. She knew that she needed to stand up and speak. Normally, Shelby had little trouble with public speaking, but in this instance, she felt guilty, as if she were invading a secret society under false pretenses. The people here seemed to be eager to support one another, and she hoped that they would greet her question in that spirit, but she was not at all sure. Harry was thanking Gene, who sat down with visible relief.

‘Anyone else care to share?’ Harry asked.

Heart hammering, Shelby took a deep breath and stood up. Everybody swiveled in their chairs to look at her. ‘My name is Shelby,’ she said.

‘Hi Shelby,’ said the chorus of voices.

Shelby held out her framed photo of Chloe at arm’s length and made a slow arc so that all could see it. ‘This is my daughter, Chloe Kendricks. She was a wife, and a mother, and the best daughter you could ever . . .’ Shelby choked up, and had to stop for a moment. The room was completely silent. ‘Recently, while she was on a vacation, she . . . went missing. She was on a cruise and apparently she fell overboard.’

A shocked and sympathetic murmur ran through the group.

‘I have since been told that Chloe was an alcoholic. I have reason to think that she might have been coming to this meeting. I’m just wondering if anyone here recognizes my daughter and can tell me if that’s true. That she came here. That she belonged to AA,’ Shelby said in a rush.

A disapproving hum seemed to vibrate in the room.

Harry, the leader of the meeting, did not hesitate. ‘I’m sorry, Shelby, but the answer is no.’

Shelby looked up at him. ‘You don’t know her? You don’t recognize my daughter?’

Harry shook his head impatiently. ‘I mean, no. What you are asking is not possible. The anonymity of this group cannot be broken. Even if we did know your daughter, we wouldn’t be able to say so.’

‘Oh please,’ said Shelby. ‘All I need is a yes or no answer. I don’t want to know anything she said in a meeting or anything like that.’

Harry’s red face seemed to get a little bit redder. ‘You don’t seem to understand. We cannot give you that information. Not even a yes or no answer. The anonymity of this group is absolute.’

‘But my daughter is dead. You wouldn’t be betraying her,’ Shelby pleaded. ‘And it may have some bearing on how, or why, she died.’

‘Shelby,’ said Harry in a tone that brooked no contradiction. ‘I’m going to have to ask you to leave our meeting. I’m very sorry about your daughter, but these rules governing anonymity are the foundation of this organization. They still apply after death. There are no exceptions. Now please . . .’ He gestured toward the exit.

Shelby looked from face to face, trying to glean some hint of an answer. Some sign of recognition. There were such a variety of expressions in the room that she could not get any coherent sense of their reaction. Some people looked shocked, and others seemed angry. Others still were wide-eyed and puzzled. Shelby looked back at Barbara, who averted her gaze and lowered her head. Was that a yes, Shelby wondered? There was no time to decide. Harry was walking toward her, repeating that she needed to leave.

She wondered for a moment if he was going to physically hustle her outside.

He stopped short of that, but his unsmiling gaze left no room for doubt. She pressed her lips together, and, clutching her photo to her chest, she hurried out of the meeting room. One of the men in the back row followed her to the stairway exit and closed the door behind her. She heard it slam as she started up the stairs.