The Secrets on Chicory Lane: A Novel(34)

I made Eddie’s bed and started to straighten up the room. I picked up his dirty clothes, which were piled in a corner, and put them in the laundry hamper he kept near the stairs. The toilet behind the partition was pretty disgusting, so what did I do?—I cleaned it. Call me crazy. That’s when I noticed the concrete slab in the floor—Davy Jones’s Locker—that had been Eddie’s secret hiding place. I wondered if he still kept treasures in there, and I considered if I should try lifting the lid to see.

“What are you doing?”

His voice startled me, and I yelped. “Jesus, Eddie! You scared the shit out of me!”

He stood behind me and laughed. “Sorry. What are you doing?”

“I just cleaned your filthy toilet! It was gross, Eddie. What if I needed to use it? I wasn’t about to sit on that thing.” I got up off my knees and moved past him around the partition. “So, have you noticed what I did? How do you like the way your room looks?”

He looked around and nodded with approval. “Very nice. I think I’ll keep you.”

“You didn’t act like it last night.”

“I’m sorry. I was drunk. I was stoned. I wasn’t in a good frame of mind.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I get that way a lot these days. Come sit down, I have a birthday present for you.” He took my hand and led me to the bed, asking me to sit. He went to a bookshelf and retrieved a small box that was wrapped in blue paper and a ribbon; I hadn’t noticed it before.

“Geez, what’s this?”

“Open it and find out.”

I was surprised to find a pair of beautiful black pearl earrings in gold-plated settings. “Oh, Eddie, I love them!” I took them to the only mirror in the shelter and put them on. “Wow, they’re gorgeous. Thank you!”

“You’re welcome.” He put his arms around me and kissed me. The previous night felt like it had never happened. Things were as they were. He checked again and asked if I was still on the pill. I told him I was. We fell into bed and spent the rest of the day there in decadent, blissful ecstasy. Looking back, I find it ironic how I didn’t know at the time that I would never have children. That nightmare would come later.

The memories are hazy, of course, but I’m sure at least a couple of weeks went by in this fashion. Things were pretty good between Eddie and me, as I recall, although he was drinking and getting stoned a lot more than before. I indulged only a handful of times during this period; I found I actually appreciated reality over the haze of euphoria. Eddie was very persuasive, though. It was very easy to follow his lead, do what he wanted, and go with the flow. I figured the summer would be a rather selfish and lackadaisical break from graduate school—I would do nothing but enjoy myself and wallow in the pleasures of the flesh.

By the middle of June, things started to turn sour. I’m not sure exactly what happened. Eddie stopped making me laugh. He grew morose and moody, retreating into the dark recesses of himself, which he kept secret from me and the rest of the world. When I asked what was bothering him, he answered with the usual, “Nothing,” but I could tell otherwise. The demons he drew on paper were haunting him. The ghost of his father? I had no idea. While being with me certainly was the most important thing in his life, he was terribly unhappy. As I grew older, I started to wonder if some people just have a melancholic nature, and they’re not happy unless they’re unhappy, if that makes any sense. Now I wonder if it might have been an early sign of the illness that hit him full-on in the eighties.

One night we went to one of the shadier nightclubs that was on the highway leading out of town. It was populated mostly by cowboys, oil field roughnecks, and women I would call less than chaste. An older crowd. I believe Eddie and I were the youngest patrons in the joint. The thing was, a lot of people knew Eddie, at least the bartender and some of the women did. There were two older ladies who actually flirted with him in front of me. The men stared at us, particularly at him—Eddie had long hair and was unlike any of them. Eddie ordered beers for us, and we sat at a table near the jukebox that was blasting out a Fleetwood Mac song from Rumours, which was the album you heard everywhere that summer.

“Do you come here often?” I asked him.

“Sometimes.”

“Why? It’s not your—it’s not our kind of place, is it?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s seedy and full of white trash. It suits me fine.”

“I don’t much like it. You know those women?”

“Sure.”

“How?”

“Are you jealous?”

“No, but they acted like they know you pretty well.”

“We’ll leave after we finish our beers, if you like.”

“All right.”

It wasn’t easy to talk with the music pounding next to us, so we sat quietly in the smoke-filled bar and chugged the beers. But just as we were about finished and ready to leave, a man sauntered over to our table. He wore a baseball cap and greasy overalls and appeared to be in his forties or fifties.

“Ain’t you Charlie Newcott’s kid?” he shouted over the music, looking at Eddie.

“What?” Eddie asked.

“You’re Charlie Newcott’s kid, ain’t you. I recognize you. You were there at the rig when he fell.”