The Tea Series Page 40

  I started to shake.

  “Oh, my little lovely, I’m sorry you are so upset.”

  I didn’t say anything, but my mind raced, trying to find an escape.

  “You are my special one. Of all the family. You know that, do you not? You are more special than Seamus. More beautiful than Teagan. You are the healthy one. You are the one I can trust. You are special, my little lovely.”

  I could feel the tears run down the sides of my face, but I couldn’t say anything or move.

  “Remember how special you are to me. Remember that no one else can know; they will all want what you have, lovely.”

  When the phone rang I jumped nearly out of the bed.

  I was breathing so hard I couldn’t catch my breath.

  Tears were running down my face.

  I hit the button and said, as calmly as I could, “Roland, I’m fine.” And hit the button to hang up.

  Then I called Teagan.

  “Dear God, I know. I know!”

  Teagan was completely confused.

  “Teagan, I know! I know everything.”

  “Cara, are you okay? What are you talking about?”

  “I’ll talk to you later.” I hit the button before she could respond.

  I allowed myself to slide to the floor and get lost in the memories.

  Dark Tea

  ONE

  THE PHONE WOULDN’T stop ringing, but I couldn’t bring myself to pick it up. I know that’s mean, especially since Barry damn near killed me. Even though he is in jail, my family still panics every time they can’t get ahold of me for a few minutes. I didn’t have the energy to move.

  I couldn’t cry anymore.

  I just sat and remembered.

  I asked myself for the four hundredth time why Bernie would get a little girl involved in all of it. Why Bernie, a religious woman, a woman who went to church every Sunday and poured soup in the bowls of the less fortunate thought it would be acceptable to put a child in the middle of such chaos. Such sickness.

  Even back then there must have been some hint of what was to follow. For me. For the rest of my life.

  Didn’t she give me any thought at all? Was I just a prop to make her world a bit safer?

  How did my mother not know?

  How did my mother allow it to happen?

  Why didn’t anybody step in?

  I tried to remember any other O’Flynns being there. In Bernie’s house. All those times.

  I could remember being dropped off.

  I could remember being picked up.

  I could remember Bernie coming to my parents’ house to pick me up and my mother dressing me in my Sunday best for my “Bernie visit.”

  Maybe that’s why I don’t really care about clothes. When I looked my best, weirdness happened.

  Maybe that’s why I’m such a clean freak. Erase every bit of chaos.

  Maybe when you boil it all down, all the things that make you you are things that happened to you in your childhood, and you blocked them out.

  I struggled to my feet and walked into the kitchen, put on the kettle, and sat in a chair, waiting for it to boil. When it did, and made the noise I usually found comforting, it scared me back to the present time.

  I made my tea, shortcut style, where I dunked the tea bag repeatedly instead of letting it steep naturally. A minor sin. Suddenly it really didn’t matter to me how many O’Flynn traditions and rituals I followed.

  I sat at the table and drank my tea in stunned silence.

  The knocking on the door got my attention. I ran for it. Didn’t bother looking out the peephole.

  Teagan flew in the door before it was open all the way.

  “Dingleberry, I swear to God, someone better be dead. How come you didn’t answer the flippin’ phone?” Then she looked at me. “What? What happened?”

  I allowed myself to fold to the floor. I didn’t cry. Not really. Mostly I just slowly shook my head. “I don’t want to talk about it. I need some time. I need to figure this out.”

  “I thought you said on the phone that you had figured it out. All you said was that you knew. Knew what? Know what? Cara, you can’t do this to a person. You need to use your words.”

  When she saw she couldn’t use all our regular catch phrases to get me talking, she sat down on the floor and got serious and quiet.

  “Cara, are you alright?”

  “Not really.”

  “What happened? What did you remember?”

  “You know what, Teagan? I already told you I am not going to talk about it. I am so freaking sick and tired of doing everything that everybody else wants and not ever what I want. I’m not going to talk about it, so just go home.”

  “Cara, you’re scaring me. Is it what I think it is?”

  “I really don’t give a crap if I’m scaring you, Teagan. I told you, I’m not going to talk about it. And, no, it isn’t what you think it is. If you don’t know what it is, then you sure as hell aren’t going to guess, and I’m not going to play guessing games with you anyway. I’m sorry if that doesn’t make you feel better, but for once, just once, I’m more concerned about what’s going to make me feel better, and I’m not going to talk about this to an O’Flynn, because there’s a really good chance I’m never going to talk to an O’Flynn again. Go home, Teagan. I dealt with all of this alone the first time; I can deal with it alone this time.”

  “Cara, I know you’re upset about something, but please just tell me what it is.”

  I stood up. Felt strong for the first time since I opened the trunk and almost passed out. Opening that stupid trunk by myself was either the biggest mistake of my life or the smartest move I’ve ever made. It seemed like when there was an O’Flynn around, there was something between me and all that the trunk signified, but when I was alone and opened it, that’s when the ghosts came rushing out.

  Wait, is that right?

  Had I opened the trunk alone before?

  My brain wasn’t working.

  “Teagan, go home.”

  “Dammit, Cara, I’m not leaving until you tell me what’s going on.”

  “Fine.” I grabbed my purse and ran out the door, and before she could stop me, I was in my car and gone. She was smart enough not to follow and turn this into a quasi-car chase.

  When I was sure she wasn’t following, I relaxed a little but stayed to the backstreets. Even in my current state I was aware enough not to want to drive on roads with lots of other cars. I wasn’t playing driver bumper pool, hitting things on either side of the road, but I wasn’t exactly a safe driver either.

  I pulled over and texted A.J. It wasn’t exactly a lie, but it wasn’t the whole truth.

  Roland called. They got the bad guys. More details later. Teagan is driving me insane. Turning off my phone. See you tonight. ILY

  I turned off my phone, took several long breaths, felt light-headed again, and decided I’d get something to eat and that would fix everything. Well, not everything, but maybe the light-headed thing.

  In the past, what I would have wanted was a cup of tea with my mother so that she could tell me what was going on and how to deal with it. She wasn’t home, and even if she were, I wasn’t sure she could fix this.

  How could she not know what they were doing to me?

  How could she just keep bringing me back to Bernie’s if she knew?

  Was she so busy with all the other kids that she just didn’t have time to think about what was going on with me?

  She told me all my life that what happens to you before the age of eighteen is your parents’ responsibility. What happens from eighteen to twenty-one is a transition period, and the responsibility is equally divided between parent and child. What happens after twenty-one is all on us, the individuals.

  So, what happened to me as a kid is her fault. If not her fault, it’s certainly her responsibility. That’s what she always said. She can’t back away from it now.

  I pulled back out onto the street and tried to decide where to go. I
didn’t want to run into anyone I knew, and although I could have gone out and run around all day long and never seen a soul I recognized, when I am having a bad day or my hair looks like it is inhabited by a small enclave of psychotic elephant shrews, I run into at least one guy I dated and was confused when he never called again or that girl from high school who always looked perfect. Karen. And she was so freakin’ nice that you couldn’t even hate her.

  I drove around thinking about several of the girls from school, wondering whatever happened to them. Had an ongoing conversation with myself. Out loud. People probably thought I was talking on Bluetooth if they looked in my car, but my phone was turned off, and the ear thingy was in the middle console.

  There’s something to be said for technology. It can make you crazy, but when you get there, it can help to disguise your craziness.

  There was a time when people walking around talking to themselves was a really bad sign. Now it is assumed they are talking to someone else and they’re just rude.

  I kept talking to myself anyway.

  It kept my mind busy so that I didn’t think about the whole thing with Bernie and run my car — accidently of course — into a tree.

  I thought about Jeanie. I used to walk to school with her in kindergarten. My mom would cross us at the big street, and then we would walk the rest of the way by ourselves.

  They’d probably put you in jail for that now.

  I checked on Google once; it said it was a twelve-minute walk, but I know it took us at least a half an hour.

  Jeanie always had to stop in front of the Lewis’s house and smell the big white flowers when they were in bloom, and when they weren’t, she had to stop in front of the Jones’s and pet their yappy dog. I hated that dog. It nipped at my ankles, and it jumped on my yellow dress and left a mark.

  By first grade, the older kids would walk about two hundred feet in front of us, and we’d all walk in a group, with Richard walking in the gutter, always. We’d try to keep up and never would, and my mom would give me the eye when I got home.

  That brought to mind when Mrs. Barnerker, our PE teacher, made us tumble in fourth grade. My tumbling skills topped out at somersaults. Never did get the hang of a cartwheel. That was the year we played crack-the-whip in the courtyard and I got thrown into the brick wall and had about a million stitches in my head and Mrs. Barnerker made me tumble even though I had a doctor’s note that said I didn’t have to.

  For some reason, every injustice I’d ever suffered was bubbling to the top, and I couldn’t help it; I felt sorry for myself.

  I hate that. Some people think it shows weakness to cry. I think it shows weakness to feel sorry for yourself.

  Why?

  Think about it.

  I live in this country. I’ve never had to walk war-torn streets or spend hours looking for water just to survive. I’ve never had to face real oppression or even fake oppression. I live in a country where our ninety-nine percent lives like the one percent of lots of the world. If not exactly, close enough. I know there are people who are hungry and need help, but our worst have it a lot better than other countries’ worst, and I’ve always had it a lot better than our worst. I have no reason to feel sorry for myself. I’m healthy. All the kids in the family are healthy. Barry didn’t actually kill me; he just tried. No reason to complain at all.

  Right?

  While I was having this internal mental breakdown that vacillated between a pep talk and a pity party, I drove, which I know is totally stupid, but I did it anyway.

  When I stopped, I was in front of Bernie’s little house.

  Her storybook house.

  The one that looked like Hansel and Gretel once lived there.

  Why did I never see it before? If Hansel and Gretel lived there, doesn’t that make Bernie the witch?

  That’s not fair.

  What Bernie did wasn’t the same as eating little kids for breakfast. She was completely messed up, but she wasn’t evil. Not intentionally, anyway.

  I parked across the street, under a huge, old gnarled tree, which seemed appropriate for my mood.

  It was like an out-of-body experience on steroids.

  I could see myself as a little girl.

  Daddy was dropping me off. He was driving the gold station wagon. He loved that car. Was so proud of it. He paid cash. When he got home with it he took us all for a ride. He even honked the horn so that the neighbors would see.

  In my mind’s eye, I was wearing my favorite dress. It was like a white t-shirt with black trim around the neck and short sleeves with a black and white skirt, kind of like a kid’s pencil skirt, attached with suspenders. It had splashes of bright colors all over it, like someone stood back and shot me with bright paint through a straw.

  I know that’s how you can get the effect, because Seamus did it to me once, but that’s a whole different story.

  I had on my white ankle socks and black shoes and a big pink flower on my headband.

  I was stylin’. Even in hand-me-downs that were a little outdated and didn’t quite fit. I thought I was beautiful. My mom had pulled all my hair up to the side, and it was curled, and it looked thick, which rarely happened, even as a kid.

  Daddy didn’t even get out of the car. He pulled in the driveway; I got out; he drove off. That seems strange to me now, but at the time, I never gave it a thought. There’s nothing villainous about dropping your kid off to a treasured and trusted friend of the family without going inside.

  I’ve had family drop their kids off to me, and they didn’t come inside.

  Not everything is part of an evil plan.

  There’s that word again. Evil.

  I really need to stop framing this that way. I needed to take a step back and look at it logically. Make sure my memories were real.

  Of course the person who would have to confirm or deny my memories is dead, and all she left me to figure it out is a stupid trunk with a bunch of stuff in it that makes me go bat-crap crazy, but that shouldn’t worry me. Right?

  I am proud to say that when Teagan slammed her hand on the window of my car — and scared me so bad that I actually thought I’d blanked out for a second, stunned into a time-warp hiccup — I didn’t put my car in gear and simply run her over. I thought about it. Just a nanosecond-flash kind of thought about it, but that nanosecond flash did make me feel a little bit better.

  “Dingleberry, what the hell? I called and called. You need to stop this. You need to calm down and talk to me.”

  I thought about rolling down my window so that I could talk to her without shouting, but knowing Teagan, she would reach in and grab something, like my head, and not let go until I agreed to go somewhere and talk to her or let her in the car so that she could talk to me, and truthfully I would have rather yelled my lungs out than deal with Teagan right then.

  “Don’t even think about it, Cara. Do not drive off. At this point I’d call somebody and have you Baker-Acted.”

  “I’m not the one they would put on a psychiatric hold, Teagan. I’m allowed to not talk to you. I have that right. I don’t have to do every single flipping thing the way a good little O’Flynn would do it. You know that?”

  “Now you really are scaring me. Cara, please, tell me what’s going on.”

  “Teagan, can’t you once, just this once, let it go? Let me deal with all of this the way I need to deal with it.”

  “Cara, you shouldn’t have to deal with it alone. Whatever it is. I’ll help you.”

  “Not this time.”

  “Then promise me that you’ll talk to someone. A.J. or that counselor.”

  “Teagan, I promise that when I am ready to talk to someone, I will talk to someone, and I will do it in my own time and in my own way, and if you don’t go away, I’m going to do something stupid, so just go away.”

  “Cara, you basically didn’t promise anything, but that’s okay.”

  “Gee, I’m glad I have your permission.”

  “I hope you know how much you are lo
ved.”

  “Go home, Teagan.”

  “You know what, Cara? You might want to take a step back from all this and think about your reaction. You said you weren’t molested.”

  “I didn’t say anything. That’s the point. I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “I asked you if it was what I thought it was, and you know damn well that’s what I thought it was, and you said that it wasn’t. So I assumed that what you said was that you weren’t molested. You were molested?”

  “Right. Bernie saved me a bunch of stuff, a trunk full of stuff, from people that molested me. Are you insane?”

  “So if you weren’t molested, and I don’t remember you being physically damaged when we were kids, no unexplained broken bones or burns or anything like that, if it isn’t anything like that, how bad can it be?”

  Before I could say anything or punch her, she continued, “And no matter how bad it was, it wasn’t me who did it to you, so why are you shutting me out? You’re saying things and acting like it’s the fault of the O’Flynns that Bernie did something bad to you, or with you, or whatever, but even if that’s the case, that Bernie did something to you and it’s not some kind of created lost memory, that’s still Bernie; that isn’t us, so why push us away? Especially at a time when you need the most help.”

  “Maybe it’s because you just told me you don’t believe me, jerk.”

  “What?”

  “Some kind of created memory? Isn’t that basically a lie? Go home, Teagan. You aren’t helping. And for the record, I don’t have to tell you anything. I don’t have to run to the O’Flynns. I’m a big girl, and I can do whatever the hell I want.”

  “Then act like it.”

  “What?”

  “You’re running around acting like a spoiled little kid, Cara. I’m sorry something bad happened to you a long time ago, but running around like a lunatic and accusing me of crap and not just sitting down and talking it out, that’s acting like the very kind of people you always say you hate.”

  “Fine, I hate myself. Add me to the list. Go away, Teagan.”