Ollie Clark—Saturday, June 22, 2019
Cindy sighed and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. Ollie thought her stepmom had quit, but she wasn’t one to judge. They were outside, anyway, in the gazebo, just the two of them since Dad and Len Wilcox went up to the Wildlife Refuge Cabins to get him settled in. “I know, I know,” Cindy groaned, lighting up. “But I bought the pack because I figured between the nineteenth and this week, I’d be doing a whole lot of holding my tongue.”
“How was it when he was at camp?”
She shook her head, exhaling a stream of smoke. “I worked my normal schedule. He called from Darrin’s every night just to check in, but …” Cindy debated, then turned to prop her feet up on the bench, too, and really settle in. “I think he thought it was a kindness. Telling us no, no, don’t come. Don’t worry about him. And then being out of touch so I couldn’t text or call and ask him how he was doing.” She paused and seemed to run that through her head again. “So he wouldn’t have to figure out what to tell us about how he was doing. Which, well. You know.”
Ollie shook her head, not contradicting the fact that she knew, but holding up a finger. “I was born into this. I’m stuck. You chose him.”
“Knowing that he’s the type of guy to shove the people who love him away when he’s going through a hard time?” Cindy sighed and nodded. “Yeah. I guess I just kind of hoped, you know, after the two of you had it out about how he made you couch surf after the murders so he could distract himself with home renovations, and how you didn’t actually care if he doesn’t like Eli because you love him, that things would … settle.”
Groaning, Ollie decided to lie down on her section of bench. The sides of the gazebo weren’t long enough to stretch out on, but she fit if she put her feet flat on it and let her knees stick up. “We all know Jared’s the favorite.”
“Olls.” But Cindy knew that was part of the fight, too: Dad had been there in so many ways at all times of day for Jared, so why not his own flesh and blood? The only daughter that remained. “Your grandparents …”
Thank God Cindy was the sort of person she could do this with. Ollie held up her hands and started ticking off on her fingers. “Alcoholic, so of course he wants to save Jared. Gramps died young, so hey, another Jared. Sick mom. Clingy mom. Made him into the awkward outsider kid at school.” She interlaced her fingers and dropped her hands onto her stomach. “He only ever talks about them when they’re an excuse for his own behavior.”
Cindy made a noise that meant she agreed but didn’t actually want to be heard agreeing.
“He’s being sucked in by Len Wilcox’s sad eyes.”
“He is a good listener.”
Ollie turned her head. “What’s he think he’s going to get from you? You weren’t even living up here back then.”
“A perspective on your father.”
She raised an eyebrow.
Cindy blushed but forged ahead. “The victims aren’t only the dead. There are living victims, too, and in this case, it matters what sort of person your father is because he’s the central witness to your mom and sister.”
“What, so Len Wilcox isn’t just going to trust what Dad says?”
Cindy grimaced. “Your mother was kind of a shut-in.”
Ollie stifled a laugh.
“All right, fine: she barely left the house. When she did, it was all four of you. Everyone knows the daughter weekends meant one of you was out with Randy and the other was home with Wendy, because Wendy was always home. So. If he’s the only one who’s going to talk about Wendy … not that I’m trying to guilt you into it …”
She looked up at the dark ceiling of the gazebo like maybe the answer was written there in spiderwebs. “Did you ever read ‘The Body’? The Stephen King novella that got turned into Stand by Me?”
“No. I haven’t seen it, either.”
“There’s a character whose brother died, and he says something like he can’t give any pieces of his brother away because he has so few to start with. Len’s metaphor is great, I guess, the idea that people get lit up from all sides and become whole, but why should I give up all of mine just so it can be a tiny part of what he’s writing?” At Cindy’s silence, Ollie turned her head again, but her stepmom was looking across the path to the backyard behind theirs.
Cindy finally shook her head and seemed to notice she still held a cigarette, quickly tapping ash into one of the ornamental flowerpots she had spread around the yard. “Your dad’s not thinking of it that way. I guess he’s going a bit Coco and thinking that he needs to pass on their memory so they don’t die with him.”
Ollie chewed on her lower lip but hey, if she couldn’t say this now, it would never come out. “He’s never tried sharing his parts of them with me.”
“Olls …”
“Look.” Sitting up, she angrily swiped at her eyes. “There are parts of the past we can’t get back and things we can’t undo, okay. Sometimes we act in our own grief and anger in ways that make sense to us but look completely different to someone else, okay. Jared and Eli come from basically the same background but Jared’s the beloved son and Eli will never really be accepted here … not okay, but manageable. But, if he really wants to talk about them? Keep them alive? Why not do that with the people who actually knew them and loved them?” She shook her head, leaning forward to try to get Cindy to look at her. “Jared. Does he talk about them with Jared?”
Her stepmother shrugged.
“So why not? Why not share them with us? What is it about Len Wilcox that makes him so special?”
Cindy looked at her before looking away again, but at least it meant neither of them had to say it out loud: What makes Len Wilcox so much better than me?
Interview excerpts, Len Wilcox with Randy Clark, January 6, 2019
RC: You can’t anticipate your kids. Wendy and I talked about that a lot: how we thought Ollie would be one kind of kid, based on who we were as kids, and we got Ollie instead. It’s not a bad thing—it’s just not what we thought. They get their own personalities so early, even as babies. She was Ollie almost from the start, you know? But then, when Wendy got pregnant again, we had this different set of expectations. We’d been through it once so we figured hey, okay, we can do this a second time. But Birdy was Birdy, not Ollie, and she wanted you to know it. She refused to sleep through the night, she refused to take a bottle, she’d barely sleep without one of us holding her. And all of that kept on, you know? Their teachers all said so. Ollie’s this, that, and the other thing, and Birdy’s none of those. She’s her own things.
LW: Like what?
RC: Oh, you know … Ollie was the kind of kid teachers liked. She was quiet, she did her work, that kind of thing. Able to fit the mold. Naturally, maybe. Birdy … Birdy had energy and wanted attention. If the spotlight wasn’t on her, she’d do something to make sure it came back. She had all these ideas—not always good ideas, or smart ones—but she had them, and she’d want to do them. She was very physical. Ollie’s more mental. Birdy had the friends who’d egg her on, too, and encourage her. On her own she was a firecracker, but get them together and all of a sudden you’ve got four of them doing it, pushing her further. Sometimes literally, you know? Birdy didn’t often get second thoughts, but sometimes she did, and this one time … I don’t know what she’d been watching, maybe MythBusters, but you couldn’t tell Birdy not to try something at home. She got a bunch of our sheets and cut them up and taped them into a parachute. I don’t know how long it took her, but she could concentrate when she wanted to. When it mattered to her. Then she took it up a tree, so she could test it, and her friends were with her. One of them was up there with her, and I’m not going to tell you which one, but all of a sudden I’m getting a call that my kid’s hurt. She’s got a broken arm. Not because she jumped out with her parachute—because the other kid pushed her. Birdy got second thoughts, realized that maybe this wasn’t going to work, but … peer pressure. From the two on the ground, sure, and the other one in the tree gave her a shove, and there we were, heading to the hospital so she could get a cast.
LW: And she still hung out with the same girls after?
RC: Oh, yeah. They were friends. And it wasn’t like she had much of a choice of who to hang out with, you know? A small class to start with, and the district’s so spread out. You can hang with kids in Atlantic Mine or Painesdale if you’ve got something for the trails, a four-wheeler or a snowmobile, but otherwise you’re stuck with the locals. The really locals. Those girls all lived within a couple blocks. Well, you’ve looked at a map, right? South Range isn’t that big. But if Birdy was going to leave the house at all, she’d run into them, and it wouldn’t have helped to tell her not to. If she wanted something, she did it. She was all about today, to hell with tomorrow. Like most kids, I guess. She wasn’t the one paying for the cast. Birdy knew what she wanted, so go on, get out of her way.
LW: Is Jared Chapman another example of that?
RC: Jared … well. He didn’t have a good start. Sports star in high school, could’ve had any girl he wanted, but … troubled. I’m not going to get into his dad, but his mom tried her best, and she was trying to help raise Eli, too, so that was just another part of the struggle. And then, after high school, he kind of floundered. Still a good guy, love him to pieces, but he wasn’t going anywhere. Except he was still the guy at high school, and Birdy liked the attention.
LW: From Jared?
RC: From everyone. It didn’t matter if you were trying to talk her out of something, as long as you were paying attention to her. That college in California thing? I don’t think Birdy actually wanted to go. She just picked something she knew Wendy would argue against every chance she got. I tried to tell her Wendy, honey, give it a rest. Maybe take a day off from sniping at Birdy about her clothes or her hair or her boyfriend or college, you know? You’ve already got one kid following the plan, you know? So maybe the second one doesn’t have to be a carbon copy of the first. She’s never been. Birdy was Birdy. But they were so alike that way.
LW: Birdy and Wendy?
RC: Yeah. They each knew what they wanted and expected everyone else to do it their way. Stubborn, both of them. My way or the highway, except they weren’t on the same page. Some days they weren’t even in the same book. They clashed over so much, and sometimes …
LW: Take your time.
RC: Sometimes I worry, you know? That Ollie didn’t get enough of her mom. Birdy needed so much attention, and Wendy was always willing to go toe to toe with her, but Ollie didn’t clash with her the same way. She blended into the background, you know? Kept her head down. Did what she was supposed to. Hung out with the kids who liked books and nature walks, not dares and peer pressure. So they didn’t clash, and I’m not saying Wendy’s parenting style was “clashing,” but … it means most of her time, her energy, was about Birdy. Ollie got on well enough on her own, so Wendy left her alone, except … maybe that’s not good parenting. Maybe she could’ve used more of a mom herself.
Bury the Dead 8 – coming April 8
Rebecca Frost 