Old Buildings in North Texas

by Jen Waldo

Genres: General Fiction

Synopsis

Olivia is thirty-two and living back home with her mother in Caprock, small-town Texas. Her therapist is a girl she went to high school with; her promising career in journalism has dwindled to nothing, and she spends her days hawking jewellery in a Mall following a favour from a friend. Life is back on an even-keel after her descent into drug abuse, but it's a far cry from the one she imagined ...Then, under pressure to take up a hobby, she decides to try urban exploration. Soon she's poking through derelict homes, churches and schools across North Texas. But Olivia knows her therapist would disapprove. What began as a harmless distraction soon becomes a lucrative business as she collects and sells antique fittings and fixtures online.Her new-found freedom starts to spiral out of control. Victimless trespass is fast evolving into criminal behaviour, and the path her rehabilitation is taking leads Olivia to question her own moral code. She's not supposed to withhold information from her therapist - yet she does.Nor is she supposed to be stashing money in a secret account when she owes so much to so many - and although she's supposedly prohibited from communicating with people from her past, old friends keep showing up, making demands and threats. To add to it all, her baby sister has turned up pregnant, the question of their absent fathers has once more been unearthed, and her prescribed medication is inducing an unnatural detachment that makes her feel as though she's not present in her own life.Tackling difficult subjects with a warmth and humour, and creating an unforgettable protagonist, Jen Waldo brings an electrifying tone to fiction - she is an astonishing new American voice who will stop you in her tracks.

Release date: October 13, 2016

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 264

Sample

The Situation

Before they’d let me out of rehab someone had to agree to act as my legal custodian. There it is, the snappy truth about why, at the age of thirty-two, I live with my mother. She now has control over every aspect of my life, from my finances to my laundry. One little cocaine-induced heart attack and it's back to my childhood to start over.

Jane, my therapist, says I need to acquire a hobby. Apparently deep introspection while smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee doesn’t count. So far I’ve dabbled in eschatology, zombie lore, and, just lately because it's an election year, politics.

“Maybe you should look into something a little less doomsday, something that doesn’t make everybody around you wish you’d go somewhere else,” Jane says. She disapproves of my libertarian leanings.

“Give me a list, Jane,” I tell her. “Give me a list of hobbies that’ll be acceptable to absolutely every person who has a say in every choice I make every single minute of every day.”

Beth Ann, the neighbor across the street from the house I grew up in and have returned to, makes quilts, vivid intricate quilts with evocative names like log cabin, nine patch, and saw-tooth stars. She ran out of people to give them to years ago and now when she finishes one she stores it in a mid-sized room that holds nothing but quilts, from floor to ceiling, from one side to the other, from back to front.

Her husband, Jerry, builds birdhouses — delicate abodes all decked out like human homes with tiny porches, painted shutters, and tile roofs. They, too, take up a lot of space — two whole walls of shelves in the garage, which Jerry turned into his work area in the early nineties. As to their purpose, I’m dubious. Quilts I can see a use for; decorated bird-houses, not so much.

Another result of addiction is court-mandated counseling. It’s hard for me to take my assigned therapist, Jane Gilley, seriously. We whispered and giggled together during two years of Mr. Finch's AP English. Now she looks at me with eyes so empathetic and wise that I want to throw something at her. She's gained weight and her hair is lighter than it used to be. On her desk sits a family portrait — Jane and her husband posing behind their two fair-haired children, each parent with a hand on the shoulder of a child. She keeps the picture turned toward us as we have our session, glancing at it every once in a while, seeking relief from my overflowing bitterness.

“Are you writing in your journal?”

“Every day.” This is a lie. Why would I want a record of this hell?

“Good. I’d think, as a writer, you’d find it cathartic.” She shifts, glances toward her lap, offering body language I can’t interpret. “We need to examine the background of your addiction.”

Convinced that there's some complex and profound neurosis behind my dependency, she brings this up every session. At her suggestion, I’ve contemplated my life before my fall into the abyss. Was I feeling empty? Was I seeking solace for some heartbreak or failure? Was I depressed and self-medicating? No. I was happy, climbing in my profession. My call on this is a simple one — I forgot who I was. I lost control. I wasn’t vigilant. When I’ve shared this insight with Jane, she's been unsupportive and disbelieving. She wants me to dig deeper, to present her with some long-buried pain or lack of fulfillment. Stubborn, she persists in her conviction that I am a bottomless well rather than a shallow pond.

“I hate the pills.” The two medications I’m on are standard — Xanax regulates my mind while Propranolol regulates my heart. Both make me feel exhausted and both give me insomnia. The result is a feeling of constant detachment, like I’m not even present in my own life.

“You really need to stick with the regime,” she says. “But for today, time's up.”

And I’m out of there. All the money I had in my bank account three months ago is gone. What didn’t go up my nose went to medical and legal costs, and I’m still deeply in debt. But I was lucky enough to implode before losing my car, a Honda Accord that I bought new three years ago. Now, because it's all that belongs to me in the whole world, I’m excessively appreciative. I wash and vacuum it weekly, check it daily for scratches, talk to it as though it's my only friend.

I wonder if car care counts as a hobby. I’ll ask Jane at our next session.

In Dallas I worked as the regulars’ editor for Dallas Flair, a local fashion magazine. It was my dream career, a grand life in the making. Here in Caprock, with my background (and I am impressive — BA in English from Rice, MA in Journalism from Columbia, magna cum laude in both) I should’ve been able to get a job on the newspaper, the Caprock Chronicle, which, as far as I can tell, is none too choosy. And there's a local magazine here, too, that I’m well-suited for. Called Caprock Comfort, it has more to do with home decorating than fashion, but still, its work I could do, a theme I could get behind. I like comfort as much as the next person.

Oddly, the reason I’m not working for one of these publications isn’t because I’m an addict or that I’m unqualified. It's because I left the area.

“Tech not good enough for you?” asked Stanley Mason, editor of the Caprock Chronicle. “Most of our staff went to Tech. Or Pan UT.” Located two hours to the south, Texas Tech is as far as most people from Caprock go for their higher education. And Pan UT, the panhandle branch of the University of Texas system, is even closer — half an hour to the southwest, in Gorman.

“Columbia? Isn’t that in New York?” asked Susan Riley, editor of Caprock Comfort. “Why’d you go way up there? That must have been horrible.”

One of the requirements of addiction recovery is gainful employment so, because I couldn’t get a job in my field, my mom imposed on her oldest and best friend, Zachary Palin, who has been a surrogate father to my sister Chloe and me. A famous jewelry designer, Zachary has a store in the mall and he's quite happy for me to stand behind the counter and wait on people when they wander in.

“Please, please, protect me from the public,” was his entreaty when I went to talk to him about the job.

I love Zachary. He's eccentric, self-absorbed, and composed primarily of affectations — a scrawny white pony-tail that hangs from the back of his tall Stetson; a classic red bandana knotted at his saggy throat; a plaid shirt with pearl snaps; a wide belt with a massive buckle he designed himself; faded Levi 501s; and brown hand-crafted boots with worn heels. And beneath the cowboy artifices, his heart is huge and loyal and generous. Giving me this job is only one of the million things he's done for me since I was a child.

I rush into the store, racing the second hand to the twelve. There are no customers. It looks like Zachary hasn’t completed opening shop — the recessed lighting hasn’t been turned on and the air is still stale. Perched on the elevated stool behind the central register, Zachary is talking on the phone.

“I won’t make them without meeting the two of you as a couple,” he says. Watching my arrival, he rolls his eyes, communicating how difficult it is to be so wonderful, so in demand. “Of course I’ll come to you, just like last time. Let me know well in advance because my schedule is very full.”

It's not unusual for Zachary to take off for distant shores to discuss wedding rings with celebs. It's a lucrative business. Zachary owns three Cadillacs and the largest house in Goodnight Hills, the affluent residential estate west of town. In contrast, this store in the mall makes no money whatsoever. When I asked him why he keeps it, he said it's because he needs a place to go when he isn’t at home or at our house. His daily routine is a triangle.

I stuff my purse into the box safe in the back room, clock in, and return to the front. Zachary's off the phone.

“Who's the latest client and where?” I ask, flicking the switch for the showcase lights and scanning the area to see what my first chores will be. There are fingerprints on the glass case over by the door. I grab the cleaner and cloth from beneath the counter and aim myself toward the offending smudges.

“Costa Rica. Grace Alonza and Burnett Tow.” A movie star and an NFL player.

“I thought they were both married to other people.”

“Not for long. I did the rings for both their marriages, so they’re repeat customers, which says something, I suppose. But I’m disappointed the first rings didn’t take. I’m going to design the next ones with fidelity as the first priority.”

That's Zachary's gimmick — he claims to contemplate the combined aura of the couple and infuse the metals of the rings with the spiritual qualities most conducive to a successful relationship for the individuals involved. What a lot of hooey. Only superstars can afford to be so gullible.

“Jane says I need a hobby,” I tell him.

“Everybody needs something to pass the time until they die,” he says.

“Do you have a hobby?”

“I design wedding rings for rich people.”

And with this irritating assertion hanging in the air, he meanders out into the mall, scuffing the heels of his cowboy boots toward the food court where he’ll flirt with the new hire at the cookie place, a pretty seventeen-year-old boy with golden hair, clear skin, and tight glutes.

Why Me?

I miss cocaine. I miss the way it made me feel intimately connected to the most distant corners of the universe. I miss the way it made me more than what I was. I worked better, moved quicker, looked classier, sounded smarter. Everything I did was thrilling and brilliant.

And if occasionally I felt jittery and angry, or if every once in a while I caught the shadow of a monster dancing at the edge of my periphery, it was worth it. I told myself that I wasn’t addicted — right up until I was seized by a pain in my chest so powerful and terrifying that I thought I was dying. And I was.

Now instead of using, I long to use. Instead of flying, I’m grounded by the dull drag of the earth's core. I was told the need would grow less intense with time. And it has. At first I felt like I was missing half my soul. Now I only feel like a quarter of me's gone. A few months ago the craving was constant. Now I can go five minutes at a time without hearing the seductive sigh of my most cherished friend.

And these days my paycheck goes straight into my mother's hands rather than into the hands of various friends; and by friends I mean dealers. In an effort to avoid the humiliation of bankruptcy, and also because she believes that honorable people meet their financial obligations, Mom sits down with me weekly and goes over my finances, meticulously” allocating and writing out checks to all the people I owe. Most of the debt is medical — eight hundred for the ambulance, twelve thousand to the hospital, thirteen thousand to the rehab facility. Also there's about ten thousand in unpaid credit card debt and a couple of thousand I borrowed from friends. Debt is an insurmountable wall between me and my future.

Mom also organizes my doses of medication into small click-top containers, doling them out daily, not even able to trust me with my own stupid pills. Her fingers are thinner than they once were and the blue veins on the back of her hands are more prominent, but she is still youthful and strong, still in complete charge of her world.

I wasn’t the only one who used. I didn’t know a single person who didn’t amp on a regular basis. Co-workers, friends I went out with, people I saw occasionally, people I saw every day — they all used. Now I’m forbidden to communicate with any of them. Am I resentful? Hell yes. Why did this happen to me and not Mary, who won’t even get out of bed until she has, as she puts it, found her center; or Erik, whose feet haven’t touched the ground in five years? Why does one person fall hard when another doesn’t stumble at all? This is one of the issues I’m supposed to be dealing with in therapy, but so far Jane seems to be mainly focused on replacing my bad habit with a healthy one.

“I think Jane's on the right track with her hobby idea,” my mother says. “But my theory is that when you’re depressed you should do something for someone else. Helping people lends perspective. Why don’t you volunteer at the shelter on Fillmore?”

“A high percentage of people at shelters are addicts. Jane would not approve. And I’m not depressed.”

“Sure you are. Look at all you’ve lost. Just thinking about your life depresses me and I’m not even the one living it.” She's confused and disappointed. What happened to her golden daughter? Her misplaced expectations make me ache all over.

We’re sitting on the patio in back of the house. Evenings in Caprock can be pleasant this time of year. Around seven o’clock, after a day of oppressive heat, a playful breeze begins to push the air around and the temperature drops several degrees. During the full light of day everything looks brown and dry, but when the pink sun sinks to the edge of the sky the teasing shadows can fool a person into seeing the leaves of the trees and the blades of grass as vivid green; it's an illusion, but an enjoyable one.

Mom's having a glass of wine and I’m having herbal tea. No wine for me — doesn’t mix with my meds. With my laptop open on the table, I’m clicking through internet sites looking at hobby possibilities.

“Skydiving,” Mom suggests. “That’d give you the rush you seem to crave.”

“Looked into it. Can’t afford it.” She doesn’t seem to comprehend that it doesn’t matter what I do, there will be no rush for me. My mood and heart rate are so pharmaceutically regulated these days that nothing gets me excited.

“How about starting a collection?”

“Of what? Spoons? Stamps? Shouldn’t a collection be something you care about?”

“Well then, what do you care about?”

“Candycaine, gutter glitter, wacky dust, rail.” When did I become so snide? I clarify— “Cocaine, Mom. I care about cocaine.”

“You’ve been down that road and look where it got you.”

I’m being bitchy and she's losing patience. I light a cigarette, inhale deeply, release a cloud. There are issues between us that we don’t address. She feels helpless, which she hates; so there's resentment. She wonders where she was when I was getting in too deep. She thinks she failed as a mother, that if I was unprepared it's because she didn’t prepare me; so there's guilt. Also, my weakness has made her overly protective. She's a hawk and I’m her chick.

“I hate that you smoke.”

“One vice at a time,” I tell her for the hundredth time. I, too, hate that I smoke. The only place to smoke at work is outside in the cruel sun, in an allocated square of sidewalk fifty feet from the north entrance. People glare and circle at a distance, offended by the smoke. I’m ostracized.

Also, Mom's a nurse in the pulmonary unit of the hospital, which means she's more aware than most of the damage cigarettes cause.

“Look at this one,” I say. “If that's not a worthwhile hobby I don’t know what is.”

I turn the computer toward her. Two overweight bearded men gaze proudly from the screen. They’re standing behind a replica of the bat cave they made out of Lego, a project that, according to the accompanying article, took an eight-hundred-hour chunk out of their lives.

“Hello? Ya’ll back here?” Zachary's voice reaches us only seconds before the gate creaks open and his head pops through.

“Olivia needs a hobby,” Mom tells him.

“So I heard.” He comes fully through the gate and pulls it closed behind him. He's changed his cowboy shirt for a vintage Grateful Dead T-shirt, but the jeans, boots, bandana, and Stetson remain. Approaching, he holds out a bottle of cabernet.

“So far we’ve got Lego and collecting street names for cocaine.” Mom accepts the wine, rises, and crosses to the door to go inside and uncork it.

Zachary collapses into the third seat, leans back, and crosses his ankle over his knee. He comes over most evenings.

“Karen . . .