After having inhaled several cups of gloppy, pale potato salad, I head back upstairs. I feel like a teenager as I pretend not to hear any supplications for me to join the party on the balcony; I stubbornly put my head down and let my hair swing in front of my face as I storm for my bedroom.
Instinctively, once I’m in my room, I check the phones. Nothing. Something is niggling at me, something I forgot to do. I grope for the memory, but it’s just out of reach. Like that feeling you get when you’re leaving on a long trip and you know that you’ve forgotten something important—of course, you don’t remember what it is until you’ve already traveled too far to turn around and go back for it. After we talked to Kyle…I wanted to go look for…But my mind is empty. I can’t remember. We’re up to W. Or, rather, V. V wasn’t Victoires. I text Wyatt, wondering if he’ll remember.
We were going to go check something, after we talked to Kyle. But we got the phone call and ended up at yours etc. and it didn’t happen. What were we going to do?
I strip off my bathing suit as I wait for a response, reaching over to hang it on the hooks I installed when I was thirteen. One set on the back of my door, for towels, and one near the closet, for my bathrobe. I was very precise about never swapping their function. I liked everything to go where it belonged. I pause momentarily, wondering which hook my bathing suit should go on: Is it more towel or more bathrobe? Then I remember my sarong, which complicates things further. It’s a garment, sure, but it’s shaped like a towel….I hang it on a towel hook, my bathing suit on the bathrobe hook. Then I realize what a preposterous amount of time I’ve spent on that gripping internal debate and toss them both onto the floor, as Zelda would. But I almost immediately pick them back up and rehang them, this time on the opposite hooks. I feel better.
Her medications? You wanted to see if she’d been prescribed anything.
Ah, yes. I wanted to see if Zelda was really sick or if she was just flipping out over nothing. I suppose the best place to start would be the trailer. I wish I’d looked more thoroughly when I was hunting for her stash. But I gave up after finding the Valium and heroin. I know there will be more.
Clothed in a lightweight shift dress and sandals, I scuttle out of the house again. The day is heating up, and I consider taking the truck to Zelda’s trailer, but that seems absurd, so I walk, dust coating my feet and ankles. My hair is drying into a strange frizzy creature with a life of its own. The door of the trailer sticks briefly, and I nudge it open with my shoulder. Heat gusts out. It is stuffy inside and smells overly ripe, stale. I open a few windows and light a stick of incense before settling onto Zelda’s bed and hunting through her usual hiding places, the dark crannies of her home.
Thirty minutes later, I’m left with a few wads of cash and a dildo but no more drugs. I’m baffled. Zelda typically hoarded a pharmacy: uppers, downers, hallucinogens. So far, I’ve not even been able to find a joint squirreled away in any of her usual spots. Something niggles at me, something I’ve ignored or overlooked. Would she have hidden something in her bedroom? I doubt it—there aren’t enough hollow places, not enough surfaces to be pulled back in order to reveal what’s underneath.
With a jolt, I remember the letter we found on Wyatt’s truck. I fish it out from my bag and look at the cryptic final sentence: Underneath these carefully constructed surfaces we conceal our missing pieces. The letter U, for something concealed underneath a constructed surface. Not unlocked, after all.
I walk outside to the deck, Zelda’s long-ago summer project, jump off the edge, and peer below. There’s a tiny crawl space beneath it, and I’m just able to cram myself in. I inch along, scanning. In the corner, I see a zip-lock bag taped where two pieces of wood meet, lurking like a spider’s tight ball of eggs. I tug it down and edge back out from beneath the deck.
A playful hand has labeled the bag with permanent ink: U found U!
Inside, I find Zelda’s variety show of mind-altering substances. A bag with some pot (it smells like the terrifically strong stuff they grow locally), a depleted eight ball of coke. Mom’s name is on a few prescription bottles: codeine for the rheumatism in her hands, some more clonazepam. The only prescription in Zelda’s name is for Ritalin, and the bottle is mostly untouched. I wonder if she was selling the tablets; Zelda certainly doesn’t need any more energy. There’s no sign of any pills like the others my mother takes, nothing that indicates Zelda was ever diagnosed. Then I remember that she mentioned stealing prescription pads from Whitcross—she wouldn’t have needed a diagnosis for the medications.
But there’s nothing in her name. No SSRIs, no meds to help neurological symptoms like tremors and shakes. Maybe she wasn’t certain enough of her self-diagnosis to forge a prescription. She was paranoid, for sure, but probably very aware of the fact that paranoia and delusions are symptoms of dementia.
As I pull out one of the last bottles, a piece of paper tumbles from the bag. Zelda’s handwriting.
What’s missing, sweet sister mine?
I frown. Well, the rest of the alphabet, obviously. What can she mean? How on earth would I know what isn’t here? I crumple up the paper and sit back on the deck. She sent me snooping around her stash. And she wants me to look for something that’s supposed to be here. She has every pharmaceutical under the sun, except for the ones I came looking for. Does she know I came hunting for proof of her illness? Or does she want me to look for something else?
In irritation, I take the bags back out and sift through the semitranslucent orange vials again. I read where each prescription was filled, look at every name. I check for generic as well as brand name. I have no idea what she wants from me. I uncrumple the note and read it again. This time, I flip it over and see that she has written on the back too.
You’ll find it in Mom’s room, where it ultimately belongs.
Still doesn’t mean anything to me, but at least I know where to go looking. I pack all the pills into the grubby bag again and slap it back into the corner of the crawl space. I leave the Airstream and mosey on toward the house, thinking.