The Devil Always Collects Read online

  “Good morning, Jean, thank you for seeing us on such short notice.” Sarah then turned her eyes toward me and said, “This is Jean, she’ll be assisting us today.”

  Jean was the perfect mix of excitement and serenity, wearing a pair of navy blue slacks, striped silk blouse and tastefully glittering jewelry to accessorize her look. It was quite obvious to me that she was comfortable in her environment. She didn’t seem to have fangs primed to suck the blood from Broussard’s credit card, but I could tell that she certainly knew how. I learned that she had been dressing Sarah for some time and knew where her boundaries lay. Like everyone else, she respected and loved Sarah. Good thing Sarah was here. Jean would have eaten me alive.

  “I’ve laid out some spectacular gowns in size 8 that I know you’ll love. Would either of you two ladies like a mimosa while you shop?” she asked.

  We both passed on the drinks, and Sarah began the process of transforming me from a hand maiden into a princess. Jean and Sarah made me try on what seemed like a hundred gowns and paraded me in front of the same mirror. They spun me around to view me from every angle. I wondered for a while if a person could wear a mirror out, but finally decided that since it had no moving parts, it was safe. I, on the other hand, had moving parts that were getting tired and a little discouraged, my fingers developing zipper blisters. Then I put on the perfect red dress. The paperwork read:

  Carmen Marc Valvo White Label

  Beaded-Neck Toga Gown, Red

  Carmen Marc Valvo White Label crepe gown with beaded collar.

  Twisted halter neckline; cascading ruffle front.

  Sleeveless.

  Loose fit.

  Thigh-high center slit.

  Back zip.

  Polyester; acetate lining.

  Imported.

  I loved it and the two oracles agreed. This was to be Cinderella’s dress. All that was left was to find matching shoes. Neither of the two sages wasted any time. They scurried me over to the shoe department and went straight to the Jimmy Choo selection. Within minutes they had a pair of black and silver Abel Studded Point-Toe Pumps with four-inch heels on my feet. They were perfect. Not glass slippers, mind you, but even better, Jimmy Choos. Surprisingly, we weren’t done. The fleet-footed Jean, like a dart headed for a bull’s-eye in a British pub, retrieved a Jimmy Choo Reese L Black Patent Clutch Bag. Black. Finally done.

  I didn’t know if my feet or Dan Broussard’s credit card took more of a beating, but it didn’t matter, I was walking on air and didn’t need my feet anyway. Now, all I needed was a date. Zach would take me, I knew he would. He was sweet and reminded me of my dad. But Tom was the guy I really wanted to go with. He was a mystery to me, and I wanted to explore that chemistry I felt. That warm feeling that circulated through me making my toes tingle when he fixed those baby blues on me and said my name. Also, he really needed to see me in this dress. It made my boobs look huge but I was OK with that – and so were they. My boobs were always happy to show off. Take that, Tom, I thought, standing up a little straighter. My boobs wanted another crack at captivating him. He’d have to notice them sooner or later and they had never let me down.

  More than half of the day was gone. Sarah and I ate salads and gumbo at small place she was fond of. Then we headed to Laplace, LA, a bedroom community about 30 miles west of New Orleans. Sarah and I seemed to have bonded even more closely today. She had become a second mother to me. I lost my own mother to cancer when I was 14. Her death left a hole in me that I hadn’t been able to fill. That was one of the reasons I wanted to leave my Indiana home. My father was 18 years older than my mother and was already showing early signs of Alzheimer’s disease when Mom died. I had to place him in an assisted-living home in my senior year of high school. He didn’t recognize me by then. No wonder I needed to get away. I despised the farm life anyway, always had, even before the tragedies. I wanted to be a city girl.

  Sarah broke the silence. “Would you like to know where we are going?”

  Holy shit, I was so tired it never occurred to me to ask. “Yes,” I said.

  “We are going to a battered women’s shelter where I volunteer,” she said.

  This woman was full of surprises.

  “Alex, you know I was married to Mark Stevens for a few years, right? He was so handsome and charming when I met him. He filled a void in my life left by the death of my first husband. He was so interested in the world, so knowledgeable – I thought we were soul mates. But after I married Mark, he changed. It started with him staying in Baton Rouge when the legislature was in session. His job as a lobbyist for the oil industry required him to entertain legislators and their staff. He began drinking too much, staying out late. When he came home, he would be abusive to me verbally. Eventually, the abuse became physical. One night he woke me from a deep sleep and insisted on tying me up for some rough sex. I was scared. He grabbed my hands and forced them behind my back. I struggled to stop him, and he hit me with his closed fist on the side of my face. I was almost knocked out but remained semi-conscious. He tightened zip ties around my wrists, tore off my panties, pushed me face down on the bed and raped me. All the while he was screaming, ‘you like this, don’t you, bitch! You know this is what you like! You are my slut. Say it, bitch!’”

  “Oh my God, Sarah, I had no idea. Are you OK?” I was shocked.

  She gave me a warm smile. “I am now. But that night I was completely powerless. I couldn’t speak. All I could do is silently pray to live. He finished, cut the ties and left me bloodied. He went to find an open bar. I called the police, and they suggested I stay at the battered women’s home in Laplace. Its location was kept secret. Some of the police officers knew where it was, but not many. I vowed to never be helpless like that again. I wanted to help other women in the situation I was in. I eventually became a member of the center’s board of directors and a counselor. The center is sacred to me. That is where we are going. Alex, in many ways, you are the daughter I never had. I want to share this part of my life with you.”

  I was speechless. No matter what I might have imagined today would bring, this was not part of it. I was touched that Sarah trusted me enough to bring me here, but I was also a little freaked out. Luckily we pulled up to the center at that moment. The director, Susan McAllister, a rather portly woman, greeted us. Susan is one of those people you immediately love. She is warm and caring – like a fairy tale grandmother, I thought. We spent the rest of the afternoon talking to the ladies and playing with their kids. Sarah was so dedicated to these unfortunate women. She loved them and they loved her. She told me that spent two nights a week at the center and every Saturday or Sunday. She brought clothes and make-up for the women and toys for their children. She helped them mend their broken lives.

  I found out on the drive home that Mark had been arrested. He claimed he and Sarah were having consensual rough sex. The District Attorney said it would be a tough case to prosecute, especially since Mark hired a hotshot lawyer and had no prior offenses of any kind. Mark agreed to plead guilty to simple battery. In exchange, he received probation and the court issued an order prohibiting him from being within 100 feet of Sarah. She divorced Mark. She redefined herself as an independent woman and vowed never to be his victim again. She was truly amazing.

  I arrived home and laid out all of my Cinderella clothes to admire. I thought, I’m not that hick farm girl anymore. I’m a real princess. I imagined myself in a horse-drawn carriage with servants preparing my bath and laying out my clothes.

  I was dragged back to reality by the ringing of my cell phone. It was the assisted living center back home. My father had taken a turn for the worse. I was told he would be lucky if he made it through the night. I had to take the earliest flight to Indianapolis tomorrow morning.

  Chapter Five:

  Bad News

  My plane touched down at the Indianapolis International Airport that Sunday on a warm and sunny day for
February in Indiana. The temperature was 30 degrees, and there was a biting wind blowing in from the north. No one met me at the airport. There was no one to meet me. My father and I were the only two of my family left. Soon my economy-sized rental car scooted along the bleak landscape toward Silbee, my hometown. It was about 20 miles south of the metropolis of Middleton, Indiana, which had a population of over 2,000 people; more than double that of Silbee. Soon familiar sights brought back memories, some pleasant and others long buried in a deep place where they could not be easily unearthed. I had attended high school in nearby New Castle, Indiana, another small farming community with a population of less than 4,000. It wasn’t too bad as far as high schools go. The school was small, classrooms arranged around a rectangular hallway, no football, so jocks played basketball or wrestled. We all grew up together. Life was calm, predictable, serene, and mostly BORING.

  Back then, I was full of confidence and spunk. My teachers wrote comments on my progress reports complimenting my inquisitive mind and my communication skills. Comic books were one of the mainstays of my life. Not just any comics though. I loved Superman. But it wasn’t Superman with his great strength, his ability to fly, or x-ray vision that impressed me. Lois Lane was my hero. She embodied what I hoped to be someday. Lois didn’t have any of Superman’s super powers but, even without them, she feared nothing. All she needed was the scent of a story and she sniffed the details out like a bloodhound on the trail of bad guys in television crime dramas. She was a fearless warrior for publishing the truth. Maybe escaping into the comic book world was my way of dealing with my parent’s health troubles. I left the Shakespearian slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and entered Lois’ world. A place where strong, gritty truth prevailed and heroes won.

  Inspired by an issue where Lois exposed a plot by Lex Luther to bribe a public official, I decided to do an investigative piece and publish it myself. I chose our fiercely despised school lunch program as my target. I’d seen an empty can of beans in the trash and suspected that the school wasn’t checking the dates on the food they were serving. I bamboozled the janitor into letting me into the storeroom/pantry. To my surprise and my Lois Lane-ish joy, I discovered that of the canned goods were out of date. All of them – and they were serving the obsolete food to us helpless kids. I had struck journalistic gold. I wrote the first edition of The Daily New Castle World. The headline read, “Dangerous Meals Served to Students.” I detailed the whole out-of-date beans and soup story. I made copies of my Pulitzer-worthy masterpiece at the library and handed them to everyone at school early in the morning before classes began. Beaming with pride, I walked into homeroom, my first class of the day. There sat the guidance counselor, red-faced and mentally pacing. She escorted me to the principal’s office, not saying a word, much like they walked the condemned to the gallows in old black and white movies. There, I discovered what hell must be like: an angry, red-faced man shouting, lecturing and threatening, all at the same time. I begged him not to call my sick mother, a plea which fell on deaf ears, which were as red as a firetruck. The call to my mother was mercifully fielded by my dad, who, in his dementia, couldn’t understand what the principal was bitching about. The principal sent me home only after he paraded me around the school to apologize to the lunch ladies, who secretly winked at me and collect all copies of my scandal sheet. I was further humiliated by having to serve food in the cafeteria for one month as punishment, none of it any longer out of date. I suppose the principal was teaching me a lesson. What I learned was an honest story constituted a direct route to punishment, not reward. Truth, justice and the American way did not triumph. No one came to my aid. None of the other kids were impressed by what I had done. They just thought I was weird. I was in the eighth grade when the investigative report incident occurred and shortly after, my mother lost her battle with cancer. One day I came home from school, and she was gone. She was my rock, and she was gone. I slowly retreated inside myself, dropping no breadcrumbs along the way to find my way back.

  I drove into the white lined parking lot of the Henry County Hospital, fearing I was too late. I was not. My father’s physician for most of his adult life, Dr. Casey, greeted me. Dr. Casey was also our family doctor. He tended to my measles, chicken pox and other ailments. He was a kind man, an old-school doctor. He had had the bushiest jet-black eyebrows I’d ever seen. We sat in the hospital coffee shop and one of his now gray eyebrows raised as he told me that my father’s condition was not good. My father was a diabetic who refused to regulate what he ate. He loved sweets of all kinds. Dr. Casey admonished him every visit but dad just didn’t listen. He had developed a severe case of insulin-resistant diabetes.

  “Your father used to tell me after I lectured him on his diet, ‘Hell, Doc, everybody’s got to die of something. I could get killed crossing the street. I might as well go from something I enjoy. Besides we grow corn and high fructose corn syrup is made from corn. Corn is from nature, and nature is good for you. That shit’s putting money in my pocket too and paying my bills. Got to support the ones supporting me.” And, Dr. Casey had learned not to argue.

  “Alexandra, he’s had a massive stroke and I’m afraid there isn’t much time left. I am glad you could get here today.”

  Dr. Casey escorted me to my father’s room, down a wide white hallway, lined on either side with private rooms. My father lay in bed breathing heavy, throaty breaths, the kind of deep breaths I used to take before I dove underwater to swim the length of the community pool. He looked at me and I hoped the disease that had imprisoned his mind would free him for a moment to recognize me. He looked closely at me for an eternal few seconds but did not react. I hoped at some level he knew me and his heart would feel the love that I had for him. I clung to that thought all through the night as I dozed on the plastic-covered couch at the foot of his railed bed. As the morning sun broke through the darkness, the labored breathing stopped. The silence was ear-shattering. I knew what it meant. He was gone. I was alone now. I was not Cinderella. No handsome prince was going to take me away to his castle to live happily ever after. I was on my own.

  I thought I had prepared myself for this moment, but I guess preparation for such things is impossible. I sat in the dark of the room, with the slight smell of disinfectant filling my nostrils, in complete silence, knowing that death had entered the room and taken my father. I thought about the good times like when he took me riding in his old truck, windows down, radio blaring country music and my bottom bouncing up and down on the unpaved country roads. He always had an old truck, proud that he never wasted money on a new one and he would take me with him to go to the co-op or hardware store. We would always get vanilla ice cream at the Dairy Queen on the return trip. I thought about the love he had for me and my mom. I thought about how much I had wanted to run away from the pain of his loss. Fear gripped me and held me motionless. I was truly alone now. The tears flooded my cheeks, and I wailed. A startled nurse entered the room and looked at the beepless monitors. Their rhythmic movements had ceased. Their lights just blinked uselessly. She knew what that meant. She grabbed my arm and led me from the room, saying, “Come with me, dear, let’s get you some water.”

  After I had composed myself, I headed to the New Castle Garden Inn Hotel. I sat in silence in my room, once again remembering all the sights, sounds, and smells of my childhood. My father loved chocolate cake, marble cake, fudge and just about anything else with sugar. He gained weight steadily but Mom didn’t care. She loved him and baked him the cakes he loved. I remember coming home from school and seeing her frost a three-layer devil’s food—nobody’s birthday, just because. They were happy. I wondered if they were sitting on the porch swing in their home in heaven drinking a cup of coffee and eating cinnamon rolls at this very moment. It was a comforting thought. I decided to keep that image in my mind as I called the funeral home to make the necessary arrangements. The director said he could see me immediately.

  In small towns, everybody knows ev
erybody. The funeral home director/owner knew my family as I did his. His recommendations were exactly what my father would have wanted, simple coffin, and no fuss service. I confirmed his choices and happily returned to my hotel room, relieved that that gruesome task was behind me. Exhausted, I slept a healing sleep.

  At the wake, nearly all the townspeople of Silbee and New Castle stopped by. The conversations were awkward because neither they nor I knew the right things to say. What can you say to comfort someone who’s lost their last living relative? Sugar-laden treats, cookies, cakes, pudding, and pies were brought and deposited in the kitchen. Comfort food, I suppose. My father would have sat in the kitchen telling stories, laughing at jokes and eaten it all. Maybe they brought the food to honor his memory. After the funeral, I was approached by three plump women, dressed as fashionably as Wal Mart could allow. I vaguely remembered them all being close friends of my mother. I’d noticed them watching me at the wake and the funeral as if they were afraid I would leave before the whole ordeal ended. They must have been reading my mind because running away was exactly what I wanted to do. They asked if they could come to my hotel room after the services concluded. They had something to give me. I met them in the small lobby. We sat on a patterned green flowered couch and chairs which was swallowed by their black dresses. The women evoked memories of a high school literature class where our teacher dissected Shakespeare’s Macbeth into infinitesimal pieces. Were these the three witches who represented the evil side of mankind? Not hardly. They were just grandmothers, fat and frumpy.

  Julie, the group’s spokeswoman, her neckline swooping a bit lower that the others said, “Your mother was a dear friend of ours. She gave us something to give to you.”