Ollie Clark—Sunday, June 23, 2019
Eli was the sort of person who could sleep through a fire alarm. As far as Ollie was aware this theory had never been tested, but she knew she didn’t have to worry about making noise if she got up before he did. Maybe she didn’t want to go so far as to start packing something loud, like the dishes, but she didn’t have to worry about getting the coffee going—using water from the fridge pitcher—and then transferring Eli’s books from the plank-and-cement-block shelves into some of the waiting boxes. Liquor boxes. He might’ve gotten them from one of the stores or maybe just from Jared.
There were plenty of places to buy alcohol around here. Out-of-towners were generally taken aback by the selection in the grocery stores, and that didn’t even count the party stores like the Shottle Bop. The day Birdy finally realized it was just Bottle Shop with the first sounds swapped, the way it might come out if you were drunk, she’d laughed so hard she cried. That at least meant Ollie smiled at the current carton instead of getting stuck with worries about Jared’s liver.
She’d argued more than once—to herself and herself alone, since it hadn’t come up with either Eli or Cindy—that Dad latched onto Jared like that because Jared was so clearly, so publicly a wreck after Mom and Birdy died. He showed up at the courthouse every day for the trial, sure, dressed well enough if red-eyed and with a bit of a thousand-yard stare, but things collapsed after that. Markedly. Maybe Dad just needed to know that at least he wasn’t that bad. That he could survive without Mom and Birdy, even if surviving was all he did. And yeah, he’d been both guilty and defensive when he told Ollie about Cindy, but Cindy was cool.
Cindy was also another buffer that meant Ollie didn’t feel so bad about leaving Dad on one peninsula while she lived in another, even if Dad had done his fair share of putting his foot down about her going back to school for her sophomore year and then finding A Good Job. All kids grew up and clashed with parents over it, but come on. This couldn’t be the norm.
And then Eli … he’d drawn the line at ever living with Jared, sure, but you walked out of this apartment building and could look across an abandoned lot to Jared’s duplex two streets over. Eli couldn’t abandon his cousin because his cousin was bound to him by blood and couldn’t escape anyway. Plus somehow Jared had already escaped, being the good Chapman kid. Ollie was just supposed to run away and forget about Eli so she didn’t have to keep being tarred with the same brush.
Okay and now her thoughts were definitely back to the negatives. Try remembering the time Birdy got hold of the entire package of Fig Newtons, her favorites, and made herself sick eating all of them. Mom had laughed until tears streamed down her face, apologizing through the gales but unable to stop, collapsed on the floor outside the locked bathroom door and repeatedly knocking on it while Birdy yelled at her to just go away. She hadn’t been a little kid then, either. Thirteen years old and she still didn’t have second thoughts. Dad must’ve thought something was seriously wrong when Mom called—she just wanted him to pick up a bottle of Pepto on his way home from work, but Birdy kept wailing in the background.
Ollie had a couple cartons packed when Eli emerged, arms crossed over his bare chest as he frowned. “You hate packing.”
“I do,” she agreed, “but I’m trying to keep good thoughts in mind.”
“Such as?”
“Well …” Ollie grinned as she added more books to the current carton. “Once you get packed and moved and unpacked, we’ll be living together, so I can basically have sex any time I want.”
“Huh.” He tilted his head. “You mean that, if we’re in the same domicile, with easy access to each other, I can basically get some at any hour of the day?”
She nodded. “Yep.”
“Okay, so …”
Ollie grabbed another handful of books.
Eli sighed as he came over and took the armchair so he’d be closer to where she sat on the floor. “Olls, you know I love you.”
This time she gave him a raised eyebrow.
“Wearing anything,” he expounded. “Saying anything. In any, you know …” He spread his hands. “Any physical position.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Any,” he repeated, nodding. “All of them. All good. It’s just that some are extraordinary.”
“Yeah?” It was getting harder to fight a grin. “Such as?”
“That beach at sunrise.”
Ollie laughed, leaning back on one hand as she looked up at him. “That was fast. There’ve been a lot of beaches.”
He held up a finger. “Sunrise. There’ve been a lot of beaches, but … sunrise.”
“Ah, yes. True.” She thought her grin might be turning wicked. “So that’s on your mind?”
“Distracting,” Eli agreed. “Utterly distracting. And I figure it’s like an earworm, right? You get part of a song stuck in your head, you have to sing the entire thing to get rid of it. So.” He spread his hands and shrugged.
“So you get the distraction out of the way and then you can focus on helping me pack your stuff?”
“Sure. If that’s what it takes to convince you.” He stood again.
Ollie accepted his hand and let him pull her to her feet. “I mean. Just keep grinning like that.”
“Can’t grin and kiss you at the same time,” he teased, lips brushing hers.
She laughed and pulled him back toward the bedroom, which wasn’t a beach, but she figured they could make do.
Interview excerpts, Len Wilcox with Serena Chapman, April 22, 2019
LW: Could you start off by clarifying something for me? Your relationships to Eli and Esther?
SC: Eli’s my nephew. Esther’s my sister-in-law. We married brothers. Not that it worked out well for either of us. Well, better for me, maybe. But there’s no blood. It’s just marriage. Wait, don’t say it that way. With the “just.” It’s through marriage, full stop.
LW: Right, through marriage.
SC: And I—can I just talk or do you need to ask questions?
LW: Go right ahead.
SC: Okay. I just … okay. I felt bad for Eli. Not for Esther, she put up with too much and should’ve gotten him out of there long before she did, but I felt bad for Eli. Because he was a kid. And I thought—I mean, I still think—he grew up really well despite all that. I’m not saying it was me, or Jared, but I think we helped. And Ollie, of course. She was so sweet. Quiet, but polite. And always so calm. Eli had a temper, we all knew he had a temper—the family, I mean. He had a really long fuse, but there was a temper there. He’s been working on that. Or was working on it? He did therapy, after the trial. I don’t know if you recover from therapy or what, but … I’m rambling.
LW: You’re doing just fine.
SC: You’re cute when you lie. Okay. The temper thing came up during the trial. Eli got into trouble with men, mostly. The ones Esther would introduce as “uncles,” like he didn’t know what that meant. The ones she was sleeping with, to be blunt. And they didn’t want a girlfriend with a kid. Especially a teenager. So he avoided going home a lot. He slept over here a lot. I don’t know if Wendy ever let him sleep over there—on the couch, maybe—but I’m pretty sure he’d sleep out in the woods sometimes. Anything to get away from them and how they made him feel. But that’s the thing you have to understand, Mr. Wilcox.
LW: Len.
SC: Len, then. Eli exploded when he was pushed, but you had to back him into a corner and push him. Left to his own devices, he literally left. That’s what he’d do. He’d walk out, walk away, and figure it out without hurting anyone. And the thing is, Mr.—Len. He never got that way with Ollie, or because of Ollie, or because of anyone in her family. Gosh, he even got along with Birdy, and that’s something to brag about.
LW: Could you explain what you mean by that?
SC: Just that … well, Birdy was sweet, too. She didn’t mean to hurt people, but … she did. She was just so headstrong. And her little friends … well, they couldn’t stand up to her, could they? The way I heard it, she pushed them out of trees and bullied them into ridiculous dares and honestly, it’s a surprise none of them needed more than the emergency room. When that girl got an idea in her head, you’d worry one of them would end up in the morgue, Mr. Wilcox. On a slab. Thank the lord Ollie wasn’t like that, or else I might’ve had to say something to Eli about it. Now it’s all such a shame, but … good gracious, you can’t tell anyone I said that. Forget myself and let my tongue run loose …
LW: You’ll get a transcript of this interview, Serena. You can delete anything you don’t want me to use at all or let me know which sections shouldn’t be attributed to you.
SC: Oh. Right. You said that. Because … well, I can’t imagine I’d be the only one saying it, but I don’t want the family to know I was saying it, know what I mean? Birdy was a terror, and it’s a wonder she kept her friends. They kept forgiving her and going back to her, even when she had sex with their boyfriends. Which happened. You can’t quote me, personally, but I know it happened. Which is why I didn’t want Jared dating her, lord no, but we weren’t in a good place that year. He did it to get back at me, and then, after … well.
LW: After?
SC: I just meant … [sigh] After Birdy and her mother were killed, Jared got all the attention. Birdy turned into this little angel and he was like a martyr. Then his own cousin got accused of the murders, and it just … well. Jared’s grown up since then, we’ve mended some fences, and he knows I think he milked it. The mourning for this girlfriend who cheated on him and it never would’ve worked, but they didn’t get to find that out for themselves. They didn’t have that time.
LW: How long were Birdy and your son dating?
SC: Oh, weeks. Only a handful of weeks. Since after she turned eighteen, at least. Not that her parents could’ve told her not to, anyway, but I think she waited at least that long. And she only picked Jared to irritate them. I think she told them she’d either go to college in California or marry Jared, and I’m sorry to say it, as his mother, but back then that was a real threat. He wasn’t working, he didn’t have his own life in order … and at that age a three-year difference is a lot, you know. Eighteen to twenty-one. I never asked him if he bought her beer, but I’m guessing he did. We all make mistakes. He was a young twenty-one. But then she was killed, and he had to grow up.
LW: Jared told the police that Eli wasn’t with him the whole night that night.
SC: Yes, he told them that.
LW: You don’t think it’s true?
SC: I think they took it the wrong way. So Eli wanted to get out for a bit, maybe go for a late night walk—he’s done that before. I told you, spending the night in the woods? That’s what he did when things got heavy: get out in nature. So he was gone, and Jared said it, and as soon as he realized what they thought he meant, he got right back on the record: it couldn’t have been Eli. Eli would never.
LW: They were nineteen and twenty-one and staying with you instead of in their own place?
SC: I don’t know how things work down in Chicago, Mister Wilcox, but there aren’t the jobs here. Or the apartments. Tech students grab all of those and there’s nothing left over for the local kids. Jared hadn’t found his calling yet, and Eli … he was struggling. But then, most of us are up here, all the time. Struggling. Maybe you can’t relate, because this isn’t city life.
LW: Can you explain?
SC: No, I don’t think I will. We’d all like to put this behind us. It was a terrible thing in the middle of a bad time, and now we know it had nothing to do with my nephew, so I’d really like to get past it and move on.
Bury the Dead 10 – coming April 10
Rebecca Frost 