Marilyn Peake - The Other

Clutching the edge of my parents’ quilt, I lay down on the bed and sobbed. I’d experienced too much loss that day.

My new job at Archer-Knight involved two weeks of training and two weeks of following a Senior Social Worker into the field before I could visit homes on my own.

I was assigned to Andy Wheeler. He emailed me the name of the first client we’d be visiting together and told me to read up on the file.

It amazed me that records were still kept on paper, placed in manila file folders, and housed on metal shelves. I wanted to tear the whole system down and computerize it. Instead, I walked down a series of hallways from my office to the front desk and requested the folder on Max Davenport.

The secretary, a young woman with blonde hair swept up into a ponytail and a faerie tattoo on her upper arm, pulled the file from the series of metal shelves behind her. When she turned around, I noticed that the hair under her ponytail had been dyed into rainbow-colored stripes. Returning, she slapped a notepad down on the counter, plopped a pen down on top of it and said, “Just sign the file out here. Every time you take or return a file, you mark it down here. By the way, my name’s Aubrey. You’re the new girl, right?”

Yup. That was me.

She extended her hand and we shook. Then she smiled and said, “Good luck with Mr. Davenport.”

Andy drove us out to Max’s place in his cramped Volkswagen Beetle. It was blue with rust spots, the floor covered in papers and discarded wrappers. I was thinking he should really clean that up if he hoped to convince clients that hoarding wasn’t in their best interest.

When we pulled into Max’s driveway, a somewhat emaciated dog with matted fur lumbered over to greet us.

Andy rubbed his hand back and forth over his own shaved head as though for good luck. He said, “Don’t mind him. He’s friendly enough. I’m going to give you some advice you might find useful when you’re out on your own. These clients don’t know how to take care of themselves, never mind the animals they keep. If you think the animals could use food, bring some with you. That way, they’ll consider you a friend, rather than an intruder.”

I said, “The clients?”

Andy laughed. “No. The animals. Just feed them. Sometimes you have to do it when the clients aren’t looking. I have one client, Frieda Knapp… I’ll try to arrange for you to go out to visit her with me… she’s convinced people are trying to poison her and her animals. It’s a sad case, actually. She’ll only eat food from one particular store and, even then, she questions who their suppliers are and throws out a whole lot of their stuff. She’s gotten very thin, as have her cats.”

Unlocking the car door, Andy hopped out. Reaching into the back, he grabbed a bunch of dog biscuits out of a bag.

Throwing them up into the air, he yelled in an encouraging voice, “C’mon, Lucky, catch it!”

Lucky looked exhausted. He waited until the biscuits hit the ground, then hobbled over to one and started crunching away.

Grabbing his notebooks out of the car, Andy said, “And that, Jade, is how you make friends with the animals.”

Stepping out of the car, I took a moment to study Mr. Davenport’s property. It had a great deal of potential. Although the house was in serious need of a fresh coat of paint and some of the roof tiles were missing, it was a large turquoise-and-lavender Victorian-style house with gingerbread trim. At either end of the house stood a turret and there were a couple of stained glass windows.

Old willow trees with long sweeping branches grew in the front yard. The grass was overgrown, the lawn filled with weeds and patches of dirt here and there. It looked like there had been a garden running the length of the house at one time. Now, the rose bushes had weeds climbing their branches and choking the life out of them.

When we reached the porch, I saw more signs of neglect. A few boards had rotted straight through. As he rang the doorbell, Andy warned me to watch my step.

At that moment, a car drove up the driveway and parked behind Andy’s. A fashionable woman wearing tight jeans, a black-and-white checkered shirt rolled up to the elbows and flat yellow shoes hopped out. She yelled to us, “Hello, there! Are you here to see my father?”

Andy said, “If your father’s Max Davenport, yes, we are.”

As the woman walked toward us, her long black ponytail bounced from side to side. With her red lipstick, matching nail polish and perfectly applied makeup, she looked like a model.

Getting up from his comfortable spot in the shade next to a willow tree, Lucky trundled over to greet her. As soon as she saw him coming, the woman dropped to her knees and yelled, “Lucky!” When he finally reached her, she hugged him and ruffled his hair. He in turn wagged his tail and barked.

Turning her attention back to us, the woman said, “I’m Maggie Davenport, Max’s youngest daughter.”

Andy stepped down from the porch, walked over to Maggie and extended his hand. He said, “Nice to meet you! Thanks for answering our request to meet with family members. You have an older brother and sister, is that right?”

Standing up, Maggie replied, “Yes. Mike and Molly. All our names start with M.” Absentmindedly petting the dog, she added, “My mom’s name is Mary. I think both my parents having names starting with that initial is how the whole thing started…”

Andy asked, “Can you tell us exactly what happened to your mom? Your dad hasn’t been very clear on that.”

I had seen something about that in Mr. Davenport’s file, a paragraph or two saying that his wife was missing, along with her photograph and a brief description. Where she was born, her age: sixty-three years old, her education: high school. She was a thin, taut woman with brown eyes and gray hair. That’s all I remembered. Basically nondescript. I’m not sure I’d recognize her if she walked right past me, even after seeing her picture.

Sadness came over Maggie’s face. She said, “We don’t know. Dad said she left. I worry about her every single day. She’s not well. She has diabetes and we’re pretty sure she’s suffering from an early stage of dementia. The police looked for her for months. Our family organized a search as well. We never found her. We thought we had some great leads, but they went nowhere.”

A question flew out of my mouth before I even knew I had planned to ask it. “How long has she been gone?”

Maggie said, “Over a year now. Last week was the anniversary of the day she went missing.”

I wondered what that was like, when they first discovered she was gone. I had a bazillion questions, but I didn’t know if it was my place to ask them. Maybe Andy already knew from talking to Max. I figured I’d ask him when we got back in the car.

Andy asked, “Will your brother or sister be joining us today?”

Maggie scrunched her face up, as though thinking hard about the question. She said, “No. I’m hoping they’ll come out and meet you another time. They’ve been through this kind of thing before. It never goes anywhere. My dad won’t part with his stuff. I’m hoping you’ll be different. Archer-Knight has a lot of great reviews.”

Ah, yes. Evaluating a mental health center by popular vote on the Internet.

Andy said, “Our center has a lot of success. Is there anything else you’d like us to know before we meet with your dad today?”

Maggie said, “No, I don’t think so. My dad can be… difficult. It’s worse now that my mom’s gone.”

Pulling a cell phone out of her back jeans pocket and punching in some numbers, she said, “My dad doesn’t like to answer the door, so I call him when I get here.” A few seconds later, she spoke into the phone. “Hey, dad, I’m here with the Social Workers… Oh, come on, Dad…Archer-Knight is one of the best. Please, dad… I drove all the way out here… I had to get a babysitter…”