So Betty hadn’t forgotten that promise they’d made in Wilmette, to cast their lots in together. All this time, these years she’d been alone in this shithole, she’d been thinking of her daughter.
Audrey started to flip another page in the album, but knew that whatever she saw next might start her crying all over again. She snapped it shut and put it back into the box with the rest of the clothes and papers, then looked around the empty room. “Trade,” Saraub said, and handed her Dr. Burckhardt’s papers, then made as if to carry the box and clothes out the door.
“Just a sec,” she told him, because she knew this room would haunt her. It would burn into her memory like that butterfly had burned her eyes. She wanted to make sure she saw every detail, so her guilt didn’t fill its unseen crevices with images even uglier than the truth.
She started with the mattress. It had been flipped recently, so she turned it over again and found urine stains. Then she ran her fingers inside the places where the fabric had ripped, but found no roach droppings nor red pinprick evidence of bedbugs.
Next to the door was the closet. She dragged a chair over to it and ran her finger along the plywood, looking for hollowed-out hiding places. Found one on the sweater ledge. Obvious if you’re looking for it, which meant nobody had cared enough to look. Her hand came back with a fistful of 5mg Valium, which she pocketed.
“Shit,” Saraub said.
“Yeah. But I could have guessed. Betty hid things for rainy days. I want to make sure there’s not a note. If it was a suicide, she’d hide it and expect me to find it, because she wouldn’t want anyone else to read it. I’m not getting high enough to see this ledge. Give me a boost?”
Saraub bent down, and offered his joined hands. She took off her black flats and stepped into his palms. With a grunt he lifted her up above the ledge inside the closet. She ran her fingers along the dusty edges in search of a note. Nothing. He put her down. She walked the perimeter of the room, peeked under both beds. The old woman sat, hands clasped and smiling, like she was waiting for her big close-up. Audrey climbed up on the desk chair, and unscrewed the glass light fixture in the ceiling. Pills fell like rain. They hit the floor and bounced, then rolled in all directions.
Pills from heaven! she thought.
“Why so many places?” Saraub asked as the two of them got down on their knees and played 52 pickup with Valium and lithium; neither wanted Betty’s roommate playing monkey-see monkey-do and following Betty’s lead after they were gone.
“It’s what prisoners do. They hoard, because it’s the only way they can have any control…Actually, that’s why people with OCD rearrange, too. To control the unknown.”
He peeled off his wool jacket and tied it around his waist. It had been a while since he’d had the money for a custom suit, and she saw that its lining was full of moth holes. “That’s a terrible way to live,” he said.
“Can’t have everything,” she said, then handed Saraub some of the pills she’d swiped from under the bed, so they both had a handful. “Now we can be drug dealers.”
She was about to leave but spotted one last hiding place. The desk screwed into the wall—she pulled out the middle drawer and flipped it over. A sealed white envelope was taped between wooden slats. On it Betty had drawn a young woman with a half grin. Prettier than Audrey, with a warmer, more symmetrical face, but then, about certain things Betty had always been kind. Beneath it she’d written in neat cursive:
Audrey Rachel Lucas
Audrey’s face burned. Her breath came fast. Just then, the old woman leaped up from the bed. She was surprisingly agile. In one fluid motion, she and Audrey were nose to nose. “That’s mine!” she shouted. “I’ll cut your throat!” Reams of spit flung from her mouth. “Go away! This is my house now!”
Audrey made a fist. Saraub almost charged. Then they remembered; this was an old woman.
Her socks were brown support hose. Betty’s muumuu fit her like a loose Hefty Bag. “Mine,” she snarled. Drool hung from her chin, and dandruff drifted in the air like snow. She’s got no soul, Audrey thought. That’s why she’s acting so strangely. Ever since the surgery, there’s a hole where