Echoes of Family Read online

  ADVANCE PRAISE

  “Claypole White’s gift is her ability to put us into the troubled minds of her characters in a way that helps us not only understand them but fall in love with them as well. We discover that while their minds may be different from ours, their hearts are the same.”

  —Diane Chamberlain, USA Today bestselling author of Pretending to Dance

  “Echoes of Family is a masterfully written novel that is both difficult to put down, and difficult to forget after the final page. In this powerful novel, Claypole White weaves that narrative that draws the reader into a personal relationship with the characters and has you rooting for them, in spite of their many flaws. This book kept my attention until all secrets were revealed in its dramatic conclusion. I look forward to many more from Claypole White.”

  —Sally Hepworth, bestselling author of The Things We Keep

  “Barbara Claypole White has done it again—created a quirky cast of characters and then taken us along as they go on a journey through madness and out the other side. Music, England, love, loss, and nature all collide in this beautiful exploration of how the echoes of our past can sometimes drown out the present. Matthew Quick fans will feel right at home.”

  —Catherine McKenzie, bestselling author of Spin and Hidden

  “Echoes of Family is emotional storytelling at its best, crafted, as always, with Barbara Claypole White’s signature wit and charm. Filled with riveting characters and the poignant unraveling of long-buried secrets, White’s latest is both lovely and gritty, heartrending and heartwarming; a story about tragedy, resilience, and the one thing that ultimately holds us all together—family.”

  —Barbara Davis, author of Summer at Hideaway Key and Love, Alice

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2016 by Barbara Claypole White

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates

  ISBN-13: 9781503938137

  ISBN-10: 1503938131

  Cover design by Shasti O’Leary Soudant

  For my aunt Elizabeth Claypole White, who lived and died in an era devoid of understanding

  For my old pal Carolyn Wilson, for a thousand reasons only she and I know

  For my childhood vicar Rev. Peter N. Jeffery, because I’m still learning the lessons he taught me

  CONTENTS

  Start Reading

  She came home…

  UNC MEDICAL CENTER, NORTH CAROLINA

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  FORTY-ONE

  FORTY-TWO

  FORTY-THREE

  FORTY-FOUR

  FORTY-FIVE

  FORTY-SIX

  FORTY-SEVEN

  FORTY-EIGHT

  FORTY-NINE

  FIFTY

  FIFTY-ONE

  FIFTY-TWO

  FIFTY-THREE

  FIFTY-FOUR

  FIFTY-FIVE

  FIFTY-SIX

  CARRBORO, NORTH CAROLINA

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  BOOK CLUB DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  A CONVERSATION WITH THE AUTHOR

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  My malady doesn’t belong to me: it weighs on all those who love and depend on me.

  —Melody Moezzi, Haldol and Hyacinths: A Bipolar Life

  We are all differently organized.

  —Lord Byron

  She came home

  clutching the ghost

  of autumn melodies

  to her chest

  and all the trees are gone

  the highway sings on

  and the cars never stop

  for a hitchhiking song

  memories pour down

  lost in the holy sound

  of mortality and moonless nights

  no one

  no one

  could ever rewrite the summertime

  no one

  no one

  we’re just lost in the b-side.

  —“Summertime” by the Arcadian Project

  UNC MEDICAL CENTER, NORTH CAROLINA

  MARCH

  If purgatory exists, it comes without sound. Nothing to deaden thoughts.

  Marianne had long believed that to be true, and the handful of compliant crazies in the waiting room proved her right. No one spoke; no one moved; no one exchanged glances.

  No one reacted when ice pellets began to fall on the skylights like beans tinkling inside a rain stick. Nature could be so deceptive, conning you into believing that the start of severe weather was a harmony meant to soothe. And passive insanity must be contagious. What would happen if she yelled, “Let’s make noise and be heard. Who wants to sing?”

  She turned to Jade, who was frowning at the workbook on dialectical behavior therapy. DBT to insiders. A wonderful gesture from her baby girl—who was neither a baby nor hers—but Jade didn’t need to learn emotion regulation so she could help Marianne. What Jade needed was a gloriously messy life of her own.

  The door to the offices clicked open and Dr. White jerked his chin in greeting. He’d nicked himself shaving again—but he didn’t trust her with a razor?

  Jade looked up. “Need me to come in with you, Mama Bird?”

  “As if, sweetheart. The shenanigans you’ve witnessed, when you felt as if you were watching my moods explode on a 3-D IMAX screen?” Marianne stood. “Nothing compared to the way I used to be. No way I’m handing you or Darius VIP tickets to the extravaganza of my past.”

  “Yeah? Let’s get real. What could I possibly not know about you after thirteen years?”

  “Has it been that long?” Marianne raised her eyebrows. She knew exactly how much time had passed since she’d taken in the teen runaway with the secondhand fiddle. Every string broken.

  “Marianne?” Dr. White’s voice rattled with the goopy phlegm of year-round allergies.

  Another psychiatrist appeared. This one didn’t have to call for his patient.

  “Gotta go before Dr. White starts the stopwatch. Love you, baby girl.”

  “Can we ditch the baby part on my thirtieth birthday?” Jade said.

  “Nope. Not happening.”

  Without a backward glance, Marianne followed Dr. White down the pale corridor that stank of new construction. He shuffled more than usual. Either the weather or his patients were taking a to
ll.

  He eased his door shut, sealing them inside. On the other side of the window, gray nothingness swallowed the white blossoms of the Bradford pears.

  “Nasty weather brewing. If this keeps up you’ll be my last patient of the day.” He settled in his favorite chair. “How’s the head?”

  Marianne sat on the edge of the scuffed-up, marked-up two-seater—to avoid the indentations of strangers’ backsides, not their stains—and touched her scalp, still sore from the impact of skull on metal. “Not bad as head injuries go. Guess I’ll live.”

  “And your moods? Has anything shifted since we last met?”

  As if the prospect wasn’t terrifying enough—better the mood devil you know—he kept warning her that a bonk on the head could annihilate an established pattern: the tendency to mania in the spring and darkness in October. No major incidents for five years, and she’d been asymptomatic for the last two. Until Valentine’s Day.

  February 14. Why did the cosmos have to pitch that echo forward through time?

  “I feel pancake flat, just the way I like, Doc. Bring on the kickass drugs, I say.”

  He smiled, clearly mistaking truth for irony. But then she’d never been honest with him, had never confessed that she wanted all those supernova emotions smothered in Bubble Wrap—no sharp edges. No edges, period. Anesthetize her with mind-numbing benzos; forget the hand trembling and give her the highest dose of lithium that wasn’t toxic. If she’d shared that information, Dr. White might have put her back on his addicts watch list.

  Full disclosure had never been her thing. Except thirty years earlier with Gabriel. Before she’d participated in a whopper of a lie and broken his heart. Before she’d won the Olympic gold for teen drama. Before the bipolar monster had claimed her as his. Before.

  “I’m doing fine for a recovering nutjob responsible for the deaths of her former lover and two unborn babies.” She paused. “One of them my own.”

  Dr. White shifted but failed to take the bait. It was too early in the session for the big guns. He would, no doubt, proceed with the warm-up questions. “I see Jade drove you here again.”

  “She insisted, once the weatherman mentioned the possibility of trace amounts of ice. We’re hitting up the supermarket on the way back. Doing our bit to contribute to panic food shopping. Want us to buy you some bread and milk?”

  He glanced at his watch as if to calculate how long before he could kick her out and rush to the stripped shelves of the nearest Harris Teeter. And then he straightened the eclectic mix of pens in his penholder. “Last week we talked about driving that new Miata. Have you taken it out for a spin?”

  “No.”

  “Then I suggest a trip to the Maple View Farm Country Store, with Jade. After the weather warms up. I’m quite partial to their Carolina Crunch.”

  “I have a childhood aversion to ice cream. Zero tolerance for the brain freeze.”

  He smiled again. Smiley Dr. White, who didn’t see a contradiction in a conversation about ice cream while a late winter storm swirled. She knew what was coming next. The most robotic question of all when dealing with the deranged: cover your bases by establishing if they’re about to off themselves.

  “How’re the suicidal thoughts?”

  Yup. There it was, like stinky kitchen garbage you forgot to dump the night before. “You think I have the energy for suicide with the drug regime you’ve got me on, Doc?”

  “Is that yes, you’re thinking about suicide, or no, you’re not?”

  “No. I’m not suicidal.”

  That last attempt when she’d welcomed the millennium by swallowing enough lithium and Prozac to fell T. rex—the dinosaur, not the British band her mom used to crank up on the radio—should have taken Marianne Stokes out of the game for all eternity. According to the ER doc, her recovery—as opposed to death—was miraculous. But the true miracle had been surviving the previous decade as a medical dartboard: “Let’s throw everything we’ve got at the wackadoodle and see what sticks.” Madness was such a waste of life.

  “And how’s Darius? Things between you are still good?” He broke eye contact to scratch the back of his neck, and Marianne smiled. She may have overshared last time.

  “Bringing me coffee in bed, massaging my feet, folding the laundry. Running my recording studio.” She looked at her lap. “Being the devoted husband.”

  “And this is a problem because . . . ?”

  “I’m scared.” See? I can be honest, Dr. White.

  “That Darius loves you?”

  “No.” Her head whipped up. “The last five years together have been like Love Story meets The Sound of Music but without all the kids.” Without any kids. Jade was right, it was time to drop baby girl. She should have dropped it when Jade turned eighteen.

  “So what is scaring you, Marianne?”

  Ice pinged against the window. Was it getting worse? Should they not have left the house? Had she put Jade at risk?

  “Me.” Marianne stared at her huge engagement ring. “I’m terrified of me.”

  “You’re manic-depressive, not a monster.”

  “That homeless guy everyone avoids, the one who wanders up and down Weaver Street in his socks yelling? Take away the meds, forget the psychotherapy and enough mindfulness to turn Jack the Ripper into a world-famous orchid collector, and that could be me. I’ve seen what happens when I’m full-blown Marianne, and I have crap impulse control, even on the meds. What if I become violent?”

  “I would like to point out that Eric, the homeless guy, is not violent. And neither are you. Have you ever been violent? No. Have you ever hurt anyone except yourself? No.”

  Tugging down her sweater sleeves to cover the scars, Marianne curled her fingers around red cashmere.

  “You’re back on your meds, stabilized, and what happened last month with that stomach virus was unfortunate, but—”

  “Unfortunate?” She slid back into the dip in the seat cushion. “I haven’t messed with my meds in over a decade, and after thirty-six hours of hugging the toilet, they’re out of my system, I’m high on mania and a freakishly warm day, and an unborn baby is dead. Let’s agree that’s a little more than unfortunate.”

  “I understand that last month’s accident is a painful reminder of all that happened when you were sixteen, but you were not behind the wheel of the car when your teen lover died. And as for last month’s incident, the other driver slammed into you after a herd of deer ran into the road. Sadly, a common hazard around here.”

  “For a shrink with a wall of accolades, you’re one poor listener. I told you last time, the deer bolted because I screamed at them through the open window. I should never have been behind the wheel of a car that day. And thanks to my behavior, a baby was stillborn at seven months. Don’t you think the parents had already redecorated the nursery and ordered I’m-a-big-brother T-shirts for their little boy? I was five months along when I lost my baby, and it sent me into intergalactic lunacy for at least a decade. Seven? That poor family.”

  “Marianne, the mother made a tragic error by swerving.”

  “She wouldn’t have needed to swerve if I’d slowed down, flashed my lights to warn her. Been someone other than Ms. Manic Road Warrior.”

  In the corridor outside the office, a photocopier whirred. Error—she imagined the word printed over and over on a piece of paper. When she screwed up—made an error—she got restrained and stuck with a sedative. Once or twice handcuffs had been involved.

  “I was manic for the first crash, too. When Simon died—”

  “Yes, Simon. Sorry. I blanked on your lover’s name.”

  Sometimes she wished she could, too. “And Gabriel was practically roadkill, and I lost my baby. Two fatal car wrecks thirty years apart, and manic Marianne is the common denominator.” She paused. “What do you know about mockingbirds?”

  “Are your thoughts racing?” His voice tightened. Now she’d gotten his attention, but for the wrong reasons.

  “No. My thoughts are jumbled b
ecause I’m tired, not hypomanic. I know the difference.”

  “Of course you do. I can give you something to help with the sleep.”

  She waved him off. “Mockingbirds are nature’s imitators. They steal songs and sing them again and again. Over the weekend a mockingbird flew into the deck door and died in my hand. And I couldn’t help but wonder: What if I’m stuck repeating the same song? Because if those two car crashes don’t scream repetition, what does?”

  “Tragedy often repeats for no reason. You’re trying to find logic where there is none.”

  “Shit happens, that’s your theory, Doc? Here’s mine: I have an unpredictable disease. What if it’s evolving? If I can’t trust my own mind, how can I protect Jade and Darius? And no, that’s not grandiose thinking. That’s a mother and a wife saying, ‘I love my family; I would die before putting them in danger.’”

  “So you are thinking about death?”

  Marianne slammed her hands against the side of her head. Round and round it goes. Where it stops nobody knows.

  ONE

  JADE

  “Jade!” Darius screamed. “Where the fuck is my wife?”

  She held her phone at arm’s length and counted: One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four. Jade put the cell phone back to her ear. Nope, he was still swearing at full volume, his venting pitched higher than usual.

  She flicked a kamikaze no-see-um from her right eye and eased the driver’s door closed. Poor Ernie. Her duct-taped 1989 VW Bug, the love of her life, was overdue for an oil change and a tire rotation, a state inspection and a fluids flush. She never messed with Ernie’s maintenance, but this latest Marianne crisis was siphoning off her ability to function in the real world. That damn car wreck five months earlier. Of all the body parts Marianne had to bash, why her head? Wasn’t it damaged enough?

  Jade sucked in Carolina humidity—thick as grits—and waded into Darius’s monologue. “You done losing your shit, boss?”

  “Sorry. I’m putting a dollar in the I’m-the-studio-douche jar.”

  “Whoa, time-out.” Jade fanned her black gauze top against her turquoise bra. What she wouldn’t give for a good tropical storm. “I stopped counting at four Mississippi. You owe me five bucks minimum.”