Crazy Love You (16 page)

I have always preferred to work alone. But it's a hard and lonely effort at the best of times. And this book was practically a Sisyphean effort, every page and panel a slog. I am sure that a shrink would have had a field day with why I was having trouble separating Fatboy and Priss, leading them to a final conflict in which Fatboy might free himself. But I wasn't thinking about any of that. I couldn't; I was just trying to get the words down, the images on the page.

And I must have hit the wall that night. The drugs wore off, and there wasn't enough caffeine in the world to keep me up. My abused body and mind took the rest they needed—without my consent.

When I came to, Priss's face was staring at me from the screen. She looked angry. And the sun was glaring in my windows. My face was wet, as it was lying in a pool of my own drool. I jumped up.

“Oh, crap,” I said, reaching for my iPhone.

The screen was a virtual catalog of my fuckups. It was one thirty in the afternoon. I had slept nearly ten hours—missing the Big Meeting at Blue Galaxy with my editor, the marketing and sales department, and the company president, who had all gathered to talk about the exciting finale of
Fatboy and Priss
. I'd shown the outline to Zack and they were all jazzed. There was a voice mail, a couple of texts from my editor:

Hey, buddy, we're all waiting.

Hey, Ian, hope everything is okay. Joe has another meeting; he can't wait much longer.

Okay, I guess maybe we'll need to reschedule. Hope everything is okay. I told everyone you had the flu. It was kind of hard to put this together; you know how schedules are these days.

But worse even than that—and that was pretty bad—I'd missed my appointment with Megan and the wedding planner.

From Megan:

Hey, where are you?

Megan got really pissed when I was late—and I was late a lot. She said it showed a lack of respect for others.
It's like saying that your time is more important than everyone else's.
Plus, I had already stood her up once that week, missing dinner because I lost track of time. She'd waited at DBGB's on the Bowery for forty minutes. She knew I was working, so she showed up at the loft with carryout. She was cool about it but I could tell she wasn't too happy.

You're fifteen minutes late. I'm starting without you. Which means you'll have to accept my decisions about some of this stuff.

P.S.—I didn't really care about the
wedding
per se. I cared about marrying Meg—but as for food and cake and flowers and music and all of that—I was happy with whatever made her happy.

Next text:
Wow. You're really not coming, are you? Did you turn your phone off?

She attached a picture of some kind of flower. Calla lilies? Isn't that what they used at funerals?

Then there was a picture of a three-tiered cake—decorated with roses.

Then:
My mom is here and this is embarrassing. Why do I think you're passed out on your desk?

Final text:
Seriously, Ian????

“Ah, fuck!” I yelled at no one and nothing. I stared at the offending phone. “Why didn't I hear you?”

The weird thing was that my phone had been right next to my head. No one's ever that sound asleep, right? I tapped my way to the settings screen. The ringer
had
been turned off—but not completely. Someone had set the phone to block calls from Megan and my editor only. Had it been me? Would I have done that? No. Why would I? If there were two people in the world I wanted to talk to, it was Megan and Zack. But if I hadn't done it, then who?

In my hand, the phone started ringing. The caller was blocked, and I couldn't bring myself to answer. A kind of panicked paralysis had set in. A few minutes later—as I
still
sat in a stunned, angry stupor, trying to figure out how to lie my way out of this mess—the apartment phone started ringing, a number very few people had. I moved over to the kitchen, where the phone hung on the wall. The caller ID read:
SHADY KNOLL PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL
. I answered even though I didn't want to.

“Mr. Paine?”

I felt like the room was spinning suddenly. My race to get to the phone, the drugs mucking with my system, fear—who knows why. But I felt horrible, and had to lean against the wall for support.

“Yes.”

“This is Dr. Jameson from Shady Knoll.” I'd met him before. He was an annoyingly nice, attractive man who seemed to be making quite a bit of money off the mentally ill.

“What's wrong?” I said. The words sounded thick and slow even to my own ears.

“I am afraid we have a problem,” he said. He had a soft, pleasant voice. “Your mother is missing.”

It took a few seconds for the words to make sense to me.

“I don't understand,” I said. “How?”

“Your mother has some freedoms here at the hospital, as you know. She's allowed to take the bus into town, etc. But she didn't come back last night for dinner. We've been looking for her since last evening around six thirty, along with the local police. But we have not located her.”

“Why am I just hearing about this now?”

“We tried to call last night,” he said. “Several times. Did you not get our messages?”

I looked at the phone in my hand, tapped to recent calls. Three messages from Shady Knoll. No idea why I didn't hear those calls either.

“Mr. Paine,” he said. “Do you have any idea where she might have gone?”

“No,” I said. “I don't know. But I'm coming up.”

•  •  •

I am an asshole; I can admit that. I used the situation with my mother to get me out of the deep shit I was in with both my publisher and my fiancée. Within twenty minutes, I was in the Scout heading toward the FDR. I called Zack first, because he was going to be easier to deal with.

“Hey, Zack, I'm so sorry, man. My mother, you know she's mentally ill? She has been missing since last night. I'm so sorry; I just got slammed with this.”

He was all “Oh my God” and “Is there anything I can do?” So that was easy.

Megan on the other hand was
not
easy, not buying it, and didn't understand at all.

“Why didn't you call and tell me?” she said. I could hear her mother in the background, the sound of traffic. She was breathy, as if she was walking. “I'm going to be your
wife
. This is not something you have to handle on your own. You get that, right?”

“I'm sorry.”

She let go of a little sniffle. The whole wedding thing really made girls crazy; she was much more emotional than usual. There was an unfamiliar edginess to her.

“Where are you?” she said finally.

“Out looking for her.” A lie. But a white lie, right? I
was
on my way up to The Hollows to look for my mom. I could still hear Megan breathing at the other end of the line, rhythmic with her walking. She didn't believe me. Or she wasn't sure if she should.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I'm sorry I let you down today. And that I didn't call sooner to share this with you. It's just that it's embarrassing. I don't want this to be a part of your life.”

That part was not a lie. It
was
embarrassing that all I had to bring into Megan's life was pain and trouble.

“Do you need me to come up?” There was an eager note to her voice. “I could take the train.”

I could tell that she
wanted
to come, that she truly wanted to help me shoulder this. I don't know if I've ever felt that from anyone before, not since my dad died. I was my mother's caretaker. And Priss was always running her own agenda, using whatever was going on with me as an excuse to act out. But Megan selflessly wanted to help. Why couldn't I let her?

“No,” I said. It's so mean not to allow someone who loves you to take care of you. “Not yet. I'll call you if I need you to come.”

“Okay, Ian,” she said.

I felt like crap as the city whipped past and the East River snaked gray and cold beside me. I could have easily admitted my lie, pulled off the highway, picked her up, and taken her with me. By the time we got to The Hollows, she would have forgiven me. But the truth was that I didn't want to.

“I'll call you later,” I said. “I love you.”

And I hung up before she could answer me. I know. I know. I was a horrible person and I was going to be a terrible husband. And I think it was just starting to dawn on both of us at about the same time. Just know this. I really did love Megan, with all my heart. But that doesn't count for much, does it?

•  •  •

When I arrived, I could tell that my mother had been at the house. The front door stood ajar. There was a glass on the counter, half filled with water. In my room, I could see that someone had been lying on the bed. There was a slim indentation on the spread; the pillow had been hugged. I had come straight to the house, sort of unthinking. I couldn't imagine anyplace else she might go. I hadn't told her about my plans to tear it down. But maybe she knew, somehow. She was tuned in like that. Or maybe she had just overheard it somewhere. People gossip in The Hollows, for lack of anything better to do. And everyone knows everyone.

I walked through the kitchen, and headed out the back door, which also stood open. It was a gorgeous day—the sun warm on my skin, the air dry with a light breeze. I was counting the seconds until this place was an empty lot.

The Whispers called me into the woods—their energy was teasing, a little angry. And then I was walking, quickly moving through the trees. I hadn't been there in years but I knew the way, knew where I was headed. I walked and the birds sang. I moved past the old house that wasn't there. I tried not to look at it, didn't want to see what was there or wasn't there. Pretty soon a bulldozer would come and tear out whatever was left.

I walked the rest of the way to the small graveyard. I had read that The Hollows Historical Society had plans to restore the site, rebuilding the church and fixing up the graves, but it hadn't happened yet. And there was some really dull-looking spray-painted graffiti—
GONZO WAS HERE
and
AMY AND LAURA BFFS
—marring the stone walls since I'd last visited.

My mother sat on the ground, linking flowers together, singing to herself.

Little flowers in the garden

Yellow, orange, violet, blue

Little angels in the garden

Do you know how I love you?

Little flowers in the garden

Growing tall toward skies of blue

Little flowers in the garden

Oh, your mama so loves you.

She turned as I approached, and smiled. I felt like I was nine again, before Ella, before my mother went away and didn't come back.

“Mom,” I asked her. “What are you doing here?”

Her smile faded as I drew near to her. She had aged so badly, looked ten years older than she was. She was frail and gray, her face marred by deep lines. Her eyes were dark hollows of fatigue and sorrow.

“You called me, Ian,” she said. “You told me to meet you here.”

I felt a catch of fear in my throat, a notch that I tried to swallow but that stayed lodged where it was. It was tricky, because my mother was crazy and I had been messing with my own brain chemistry. Had she imagined the call? Or had I, in some drug-addled state, indeed rung her and asked her to meet me? Or had it been someone else, someone fucking with us?

“Didn't you?” she asked. She looked so sad suddenly. “I've been waiting for you. Do you remember how much fun we used to have out here?”

It had never been fun. This place was a
graveyard
. It was sad and creepy and always had been. But I always loved being with her. There were few people as unfailingly kind, as unconditionally loving as my mother was before she became ill. I missed that woman, even now.

“I remember,” I said.

I sat beside her and saw what she was doing. She was weaving wildflowers together and then hanging them on the graves of children who had died long before she herself was ever born. Pastel links—blue, violet, rose, tangerine, buttercup—were draped carefully on gray stone.

It had been Priss. She'd set my phone to block those calls. She'd lured my mother out here, thereby luring me back home. She was the agent for this place, always playing tricks, keeping tabs. And here I was, back in The Hollows Wood—the Black Forest, as the locals call it.

“Who was she?” I asked out loud even though I didn't mean to.

My mother tilted her head and regarded me quizzically, then she hung her flower chain on the grave of Priscilla Miller. It was the grave my father had shown me that day long ago. It was the reason he didn't think Priss was real. He thought I'd come out here with my mother and seen her name, used it unconsciously to create an imaginary friend. Or at least that's what I imagined he thought. After he'd pulled back the weeds and showed me the gravestone, we'd returned home in silence.

“Don't you know?” she asked.

“No. I really don't.”

She stood and dusted herself off. There was pollen in her hair and on the sleeves of her T-shirt, a bright yellow dusting.

“Do you know what's odd?” she said. “The reason I can't come back here or anywhere?”

“What's that?”

“I can still hear her crying,” she said. “I'll never stop hearing her.”

For a moment I thought she was talking about Priss. But she was talking about Ella.

“I know, Mom,” I said. “I'm so sorry.”

“No,” she said, looking at me with a concerned frown. She put her hand to her heart. “
I'm
sorry. So deeply, forever, impossibly sorry.”