Murder Is Forever, Volume 1 Read online

  She gestures to the small white house with the long, trellised wheelchair ramp.

  “It’s generous and exceptional acts like this one that make a community. As I always say, if we can’t live for each other, then why live at all?”

  Dee Dee forces a smile, but she feels embarrassed—not because she’ll be seen as some kind of parasite, but because people don’t understand how hard she’s worked: raising a disabled child alone is just one of her full-time jobs; the other is soliciting help.

  “All right, then,” Anne-Marie says. “Without further ado, let’s see the inside.”

  The three-man camera crew follows close behind as Dee Dee wheels Gypsy up the ramp. Anne-Marie takes the lead, playing tour guide.

  “Notice how the ramp and the floors are made of the same light pine,” she says as they enter the home. “It’s like the inside is a continuation of the outside.”

  Dee Dee stares down at the floorboards, eyes wide, hands covering her cheeks.

  “Goodness, how they shine,” she says. “You can almost see yourself in them. Isn’t that right, Gypsy?”

  She nudges her daughter’s shoulder.

  “They’re so fancy,” Gypsy observes, tugging at one of her hat’s pompoms. “I feel like a movie star.”

  “The furniture is all top of the line,” Anne-Marie says with a sweeping, Vanna White gesture. “Donated by the Springfield Emporium’s downtown location.”

  Dee Dee lets her jaw drop as she takes in the long mahogany dining table, the wraparound sectional facing a large-screen TV.

  “Magnificent,” she says, though in truth the space feels cramped, and she is just now noticing the lack of natural light.

  “Magnificent,” Gypsy parrots.

  Anne-Marie leads them into the kitchen (stainless steel can’t disguise the matchbox size), then back through the dining area and down the hall (barely wide enough for Gypsy’s wheelchair or Dee Dee’s girth—they might have thought about that) leading to the bedrooms and bathroom. The cameramen follow like hungry puppies. It’s clear from the way they dress—baggy jeans, patchy facial hair, T-shirts advertising their friends’ rock bands—that they have no intention of ever standing in front of the camera.

  “Feel the mattress,” Anne-Marie instructs Dee Dee as they take their positions on opposite sides of the king-size bed. “It’s memory foam. I have the same model chez moi. Trust me, you’ll sleep better than you ever have before.”

  Dee Dee leans forward, presses down with both hands, watches the foam rise up around her fingers.

  “Oh, I’ll be hitting the hay early tonight,” she says.

  Anne-Marie smiles, gives a little wink as if to say: You’re doing great! Dee Dee looks the room over, thinks: Why’d they put the damn window where all you can see is the neighbor’s rotting fence?

  They move to Gypsy’s room, the home’s crown jewel. It has to be the crown jewel, of course, because Gypsy is the real charity case here. Anne-Marie’s audience will want to believe that a canopy bed and pretty wallpaper make up for a lifetime of paralysis and eye surgeries and needles and crumbling teeth and brittle bones from a diet that’s more pills than food.

  Poor girl, Dee Dee thinks.

  They’ve reached the climax of the tour, and anything less than pure joy will mean that they never see another dime from Springfield Methodist. This time, Dee Dee asks the question herself. She steps in front of her daughter, crouches a little, puts on a wide smile.

  “So,” she says, “what do you think?”

  Gypsy does not disappoint. She looks up and, through a grin that shows more gum than teeth, says:

  “I must be the luckiest girl in the world.”

  The cameramen hold her in frame, then turn to Anne-Marie, who is absolutely glowing with compassion.

  Chapter 4

  The Mornings with Anne-Marie crew has transformed Dee Dee’s living room into a TV studio. There are bright lights on tripods pointed at Dee Dee and Gypsy where they sit side by side on the extra-long couch. A makeup artist gives them both a quick touch-up before the cameras resume rolling.

  Anne-Marie sits across from them in an armchair that wasn’t there before and isn’t theirs to keep. Her skin is barely visible through all the blush and powder, and she’s hitched her skirt to show more leg. Dee Dee wonders why the bother: it’s not like she’s competing with the cast of Charlie’s Angels.

  A crew member steps forward and yells “Action,” just like in the movies.

  “I’m back with Dee Dee Blancharde and her daughter, Gypsy Rose,” Anne-Marie tells the camera before turning to her guests. “If you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to give my viewers a bit more of your background. Your journey has been a harrowing one, but at its core it’s also an uplifting story that speaks to human love and resilience.”

  Journey…harrowing…uplifting… Dee Dee checks off the clichés in her head. Not that she minds: she’s learned how to make clichés work to her benefit. More importantly, she’s learned to make them work to her daughter’s benefit.

  “Tell me,” Anne-Marie says, “when did you first learn that Gypsy was ill?”

  Dee Dee, who approved the questions in advance, tilts her head as though searching her memory for the exact moment it all began.

  “When she was still a baby, I noticed she couldn’t hardly breathe and took her straight to the emergency.”

  “This was in New Orleans?”

  “Yes ma’am. Everything was in New Orleans till Katrina hit.”

  “So it started with—”

  “Sleep apnea,” Dee Dee says. “I knew a little something about it ’cause I’d started training to be a nurses’ aide.”

  As if to confirm the diagnosis, Gypsy adjusts the tubes in her nose.

  “From there,” Dee Dee says, “it just all went downhill at a million miles an hour. She’d get one ear infection after another after another. By the time she was six months it was clear her eyes were no good. I’d shake a rattle right in front of her and she wouldn’t even look at it. She wasn’t a year yet when she had her first eye surgery.”

  “As a mother,” Anne-Marie says, “I can only imagine how frightening that must have been.”

  A cameraman points his lens at Gypsy, then quickly turns away. Her eyes are drifting around the room and she’s fiddling with a clump of fabric on her hat. It isn’t that she’s stopped listening: it’s that she’s heard this all before and is waiting for her cue to tune back in.

  “I was all-the-way terrified,” Dee Dee says. “And from there things just kept getting scarier and scarier. She started having seizures. About one a month, maybe more if she had any in her sleep when I couldn’t be watching. Her little body’d start shaking like she was about to speak in tongues. That’s when I knew she had epilepsy.”

  “Epilepsy?” Anne-Marie asks, resting her crossed forearms on one knee and doing her best to look sympathetic.

  “Oh, yes,” Dee Dee says. “But that wasn’t hardly the worst of it. By the time she was eighteen months and still couldn’t so much as stand on her own two feet, I figured for sure there had to be something wrong deep in her bones. They did every test on her you could imagine. The tests themselves was the worst part. Gypsy wouldn’t cry, she’d wail. One time I just lost it. I screamed, You’re killing my baby. A nurse brought me to the cafeteria and bought me a chamomile tea to calm my nerves.”

  “You must have been beside yourself,” Anne-Marie says. “Any mother would be.”

  “I wished it was me lying in a hospital bed, getting poked and prodded and having all kinds of dye injected into my veins. I’d have given anything to trade places with her.”

  She takes a handkerchief from her pocket and dabs beneath her eyes. The cameras zoom in.

  “Please, take a minute,” Anne-Marie says.

  Gypsy places a hand on her mother’s knee.

  “I’m all right,” Dee Dee says. “It’s just…we’re coming to a part I don’t much like to remember.”

  Anne-Marie tunes her vo
ice to its most somber pitch: “The test results?” she asks.

  Dee Dee nods.

  “Muscular dystrophy. I was prepared for that. It made sense with the way she couldn’t walk right. But then they came back with leukemia. That melted me. I thought it was a death sentence. I never would’ve believed I’d be sitting here with my baby all these years later.”

  She leans over, gives Gypsy a little peck on the cheek. Gypsy bats her eyes.

  “I have to ask,” Anne-Marie says. “How is it possible for one child to suffer so many afflictions?”

  “That was the question I kept asking,” Dee Dee says. “I can’t explain it the way the doctors did, but Gypsy has what they call a chromosomal defect. That’s the source of everything she’s got wrong with her.”

  She runs the handkerchief over her face: those TV lights are hot like the sun. She’s in the zone now. She’s almost forgotten who she’s telling her story to and why. As if Anne-Marie weren’t there. As if the cameras weren’t there. As if there was no one in the world besides her and Gypsy.

  Chapter 5

  “Did you have any help during this period?” Anne-Marie asks.

  They are back and freshly powdered after a final commercial break.

  “The government helped us a bunch,” Dee Dee says. “I didn’t hardly pay a dime to any doctor or hospital.”

  “What about emotional support?”

  “Who was gonna look out for me?” Dee Dee asks. “Except for Gypsy, I was on my own. It’s just been me and her from the very beginning. Her daddy don’t even know her name. And to tell you the truth, I’ve just about forgot his.”

  “But you were married?”

  “For a heartbeat. I wasn’t seventeen yet when he got me pregnant.” She almost said knocked me up. “He thought he’d do the right thing, but the marriage didn’t last half as long as the pregnancy. Kids having kids, I guess. Not that I regret a thing. Gypsy is my world.”

  “You’re lucky to have such a devoted mother,” Anne-Marie tells Gypsy.

  Gypsy sits up straight, comes suddenly alive.

  “I don’t hardly look on her like she’s my mom. It’s like we’re the same person. I think something and she says it. We’re two peas in a pod.”

  It’s the first time she’s spoken at length, and her voice—high pitched and bursting with energy, like a young child’s—startles Anne-Marie.

  “A brand-new pod, as of today,” she points out.

  “We’re truly blessed,” Dee Dee says. “The people of Springfield have been so good to us. I just hope I can repay them somehow.”

  “I don’t think you have to worry about that,” Anne-Marie says. “Speaking of Springfield, what brought you here? It’s a big country, and from what I understand, you don’t have any roots in Missouri.”

  Dee Dee detects a hint of accusation in her tone, as though Anne-Marie’s real question is: “How exactly did you come to prey on our community?” Careful how you answer, Dee Dee tells herself.

  “Katrina darn near killed us,” she starts. “It destroyed our home. Washed it off the face of the earth. Destroyed Gypsy’s medical records, too. We wound up in a shelter with no money and just enough medicine to keep Gypsy alive. It was a female doctor at the shelter who suggested a clinic in Springfield. She grew up here, I think. She’s the one put me in touch with Pastor Mike. She arranged it all. I owe her everything. Sometimes I break down thinking on just how much I owe.”

  “But isn’t it natural,” Anne-Marie asks, “for people whose lives are relatively easy to want to help people whose lives are hard?”

  And now the Oprah moment, Dee Dee thinks. Free counseling, if you call spilling your guts on television free.

  “Well,” she says, “if things was reversed, I’d like to think I’d do the same.”

  “You would, Mama,” Gypsy says, resting her head on her mother’s shoulder. “I know you would. I know better than anyone.”

  * * *

  That night, neighbor after neighbor drops by. They come bearing Crock-Pots and casseroles full of piping hot food. A little later, the dessert brigade shows up with ambrosia, German layer cake, pies of every kind. Dee Dee and Gypsy live at the end of a cul-de-sac in a small neighborhood: some of these smiling, well-dressed women must have driven a long way to catch a glimpse of the new local attraction.

  By eight thirty, the doorbell has quit ringing. Dee Dee sets two plates at the end of a table loaded with more food than she could eat in a month.

  “Our first meal in our new home,” she says, wheeling Gypsy over.

  “It all smells so good,” Gypsy says.

  Dee Dee ties a bib around her daughter’s neck.

  “Here’s hoping none of it is poisoned,” she says.

  “Mama!” Gypsy scolds. “People are being real good to us. You know they are.”

  “Only takes one,” Dee Dee says. “Might be some kind soul wants to put us out of our misery.”

  She walks into the kitchen, comes back carrying a large bowl, a can of Pediasure, and a banana. She fills her bowl to the brim with lamb stew, places the can and banana in front of Gypsy.

  “But Mama,” Gypsy says, “my stomach’s good tonight.”

  “And we want to make sure it stays that way.”

  “Just this once? If this ain’t a special occasion, then what is?”

  “Let’s see you keep that down first.”

  “But Mama—”

  “That’s enough now.”

  Dee Dee drops her hands flat on the table, gives Gypsy a look that says negotiations are done for the evening.

  “Sorry, Mama,” Gypsy says. “You want me to say grace now?”

  “I think God’s answered enough prayers for one day, don’t you?”

  Dee Dee stabs a piece of lamb with her fork, plunges it deeper into the gravy, then pulls it out and swallows it whole. Gypsy takes a sip of her chocolate drink. It tastes like chemicals and coats the roof of her mouth with what feels like chalk. She eyes the lemon meringue pie sitting just out of reach, suppresses a little whimper.

  Chapter 6

  Dr. Dan Ryan’s office is large and modern, the walls decorated with posters listing the signs and symptoms of a dozen different diseases. Dee Dee reads them over while she and Gypsy wait for the doctor to make his entrance. Psoriasis causes joint pain. Hypoglycemia causes excessive sweating. Dee Dee takes careful mental notes.

  “Well, I’ll be,” she says. “No matter how long you live, you just keep learning.”

  Gypsy, who is busy tearing a callus from her right palm, refuses to quit pouting.

  “I still don’t see why I’ve gotta wear this dumb bandana,” she says.

  “There’s nothing dumb about it,” Dee Dee says. “Light blue compliments your eyes. Besides which, you can’t go around in that silly hat every day of your life. A doctor’s office is a dignified place.”

  Gypsy starts to protest, stops when the door swings open and Dr. Ryan steps into the room.

  “How are we doing today?” he asks.

  “Good,” Gypsy tells him.

  “Oh, you’d say ‘good’ if you were drowning in quicksand,” Dee Dee says. “Let the doctor decide how you are.”

  Dr. Ryan grins at Gypsy.

  “Well, good isn’t a bad place to start,” he says. “What brings you here today?”

  There’s something about him that Dee Dee instantly dislikes. She doesn’t approve of his grass-stained tennis shoes, the gel in his spiky white hair, the metallic-smelling aftershave. A doctor should be plain, neutral. You shouldn’t notice anything about him at all.

  “Oh, you’re going to earn your money today, Doctor,” she says.

  She lists Gypsy’s ailments, from asthma to cancer, eczema to paralysis. Dr. Ryan’s eyes grow wide. Dee Dee wonders if he saw yesterday’s episode of Mornings with Anne-Marie.

  “Well, let’s have a look at you,” Dr. Ryan says, adjusting his stethoscope. He listens to Gypsy’s heart, looks inside her ears, sticks a tongue depressor in her
mouth and asks her to cough, does a double-take when he sees her blackened, crumbling teeth. He has her push against his hands with all of her might, turn her head as far to the left and right as it will go.

  “Any of that hurt?” he asks.

  “Nope,” Gypsy says.

  “She’s been in pain her whole life, Doctor,” Dee Dee says. “She wouldn’t know the difference.”

  Dr. Ryan jots a few notes on Gypsy’s chart.

  “She has quite a history,” he tells Dee Dee. “We’ll need her full medical records.”

  He must not watch Anne-Marie, Dee Dee thinks. Probably out getting in an early round of golf.

  “That’s the problem, Doctor. We’re transplants. Maybe ‘refugees’ is the word. All her records got washed away in Katrina. But I got every detail stored up here,” Dee Dee says, tapping her skull. “Anything you want to know, just ask.”

  “Sounds like the two of you have been through the ringer,” Dr. Ryan says.

  “And we’re stronger for it, God willing.”

  Dr. Ryan runs the backs of his fingers over his clean-shaven cheeks while he considers his next step.

  “Do me a favor, Gypsy. Stand up for me.”

  “But I told you, Doctor,” Dee Dee says, “the girl’s paralyzed.”

  “Still, I’d like to see her try.”

  Dee Dee moves to Gypsy’s side, places a hand under her elbow.

  “No, no,” Dr. Ryan says. “I need her to do it alone.”

  “My girl hasn’t stood on her own two feet since…since forever.”

  Ryan crouches in front of Gypsy, pats her arm.

  “Why don’t you try it for me?” he says. “I’ll catch you if you fall.”

  “All right,” Gypsy says. “I’ll try.”

  She’s trembling, biting at her lower lip.

  “Good girl,” Dr. Ryan says.

  He positions himself behind the wheelchair. Gypsy pushes on the armrests, rises without so much as wobbling. Dee Dee, tears in her eyes, lets out a little gasp.

  “Excellent,” Dr. Ryan says. “Now, can you turn so that you’re facing me?”