Hooligans

by Chloe Garner

  He shook his head.

  “You don’t want to see hooligans in Las Vegas.”

  “Didn’t think of that, either. We should do something.”

  “Like what?” he asked.

  “Invite my dad,” she said. “Have a little celebration or a ceremony here. Just so he gets to see…”

  “I’d run that one past Robbie, first,” Trevor said. “And I don’t think you’d like what your father had to say about any of us.”

  “But Robbie is doing so much better. And you’re normal. Well, ish. Maybe we wouldn’t invite anyone else.”

  Trevor shook his head.

  “You need to talk to Robbie.”

  “So you wouldn’t celebrate at all?” she asked. She heard his wide grin.

  “Oh, I’d celebrate, but you won’t like it.”

  “What would you do?” she asked.

  “I’d stir up a bunch of furlings just to see them go nuts.”

  She turned to look at him, feeling snug and warm.

  “You really would,” she said, and he nodded, yawning.

  “I really would.”

  ***

  She got up late the next morning and walked down the hallway stretching. Trevor was still stark naked, asleep under half a sheet on the other side of the bed, and she didn’t bother waking him.

  “Look, I know you aren’t happy with it, but I’m not planning on giving you a vote,” she said, then got to the kitchen.

  An exquisite blond woman looked up from her cup of coffee.

  “Good morning,” she said.

  Lizzie’s breath stopped.

  Intellectually, she knew what she was looking at, but her visceral reaction was to the sight of Lara sitting at the counter.

  “H.. Hi.”

  “Just make sure he doesn’t come out here naked,” Robbie said from between open refrigerator doors.

  “He wouldn’t do that,” Lizzie said. Robbie leaned back to look at her, and she frowned. “Would he?”

  “Which one have you taken to bed?” the woman asked.

  “Um,” Lizzie said.

  “This is Lara’s mom,” Robbie said.

  “I know,” Lizzie said, shaking her head. “Oh. I’m sorry. Yes. I know that. I’d recognize you anywhere. When did you get in?”

  “Just this morning,” the woman said, adjusting her coffee cup on the counter. At least it was clean.

  “What…” Lizzie started. The ashes in the back of her car. Oh, please, oh, please don’t be here to visit Lara’s remains. “I didn’t know you were coming.”

  The woman gave her a quick little smile that might have been warm. Lizzie couldn’t tell.

  “The house looks well,” the woman said.

  “Thank you,” Lizzie said. “It hasn’t been easy, but I think I’m finally on top of it.”

  The woman nodded, taking another sip of coffee.

  “Lara came to visit us for a week when her nephew was born. She said that the monsters had done quite a lot of damage in just that much time.”

  Lizzie blinked. Had someone told her that Lara’s parents knew about furlings? She couldn’t remember.

  “Oh.”

  “Robbie tells me that you’re the new angel.”

  Lizzie looked at her brother’s back where it was still visible around the refrigerator door. He didn’t move.

  “Yes,” Lizzie said. “I’m… I’m a little surprised he told you.”

  The woman smiled into her coffee cup.

  “Is that the ice queen herself I hear out there?” Trevor called from down the hallway. Lizzie winced at the rudeness, but he came catapulting down the hallway and Lara’s mom only got to her feet just in time to have him tackle her in a hug.

  “Good to see you, demon,” the woman said, then leaned away to look at him. “I’ve got to say, you weren’t the one I was expecting.” She looked at Lizzie. Trevor raised an eyebrow.

  “Never thought I’d get one of the straight-laced ones, did you?”

  “Never thought an angel would put up with you,” the woman said, then hugged him again. “How are you?”

  “I’m engaged,” he said, putting his arms out with a wide smile.

  “To who?” the woman asked, and Lizzie was, just for an instant, insulted before she realized it was a dig at Trevor, not her.

  Trevor laughed and hugged her once more, then went to lean against the couch as she returned to her coffee.

  “They aren’t,” Robbie said from the refrigerator.

  “That’s got to be cold, Robert,” the woman said. “Close the doors and face me.”

  He did it.

  That might have shocked Lizzie more than anything yet this morning.

  She put her coffee mug back down between her fingers and there was a pause.

  “Why are you here, Michelle?” Trevor asked. The woman nodded.

  “It’s about Lara’s estate,” she said.

  “No,” Robbie said. The woman nodded.

  “She wanted you to have everything, and it takes work to make that happen, Robert.”

  “No,” Robbie said. “No. I don’t want it.”

  “I’m not going to dishonor my daughter’s wishes because you can’t sit at a table and talk to me. You have to do this.”

  “No he doesn’t,” Trevor said, standing and clapping his hands. He pointed at Lizzie. “She can manage the worst of it. We’ve got someplace to be.”

  Robbie bolted, and a quick motion from both Trevor and Lara’s mother kept Lizzie from snagging him on his way past her, on the way to the door. She held out her hands, and Trevor grinned.

  “I’m not letting the two of you run off without me,” she said. “I need to learn.”

  He winked.

  “Not today,” he said. “You get to talk about the ice princess with the ice queen. Not everyone gets to do that.”

  He gave her a quick little salute and hopped over the couch, escaping.

  And Lizzie was alone with the woman.

  She cleared her throat.

  “Didn’t see that one coming,” she said. “Can I get you anything else?”

  “No,” the woman said. “Please. I’ve interrupted your morning. Do what you need to.”

  Lizzie frowned, wondering if that was some kind of statement about her state of grooming, then shook her head, going to the fridge and pouring herself a glass of orange juice.

  “I’m not sure how much help I’m actually going to be able to be…” Lizzie said, and the woman nodded.

  “We can at least have everything set up for him to sign. I understand that you’ve been his guardian at points in the past, so you should know his relevant information.”

  Lizzie swallowed.

  “I don’t really like how… much you know about me, when I don’t know you at all.”

  “I’m afraid that’s just how it’s going to be,” the woman said. “I know quite a lot about you, because my daughter spoke of you from time to time, and because I probably know more about who you are right now than you do, yourself. Who I am is completely irrelevant.”

  “Michelle?” Lizzie asked, and the woman nodded.

  “We met at the wedding,” she said.

  “I remember.”

  “I expect Trevor doesn’t want a wedding,” Michelle said, and Lizzie nodded, looking at the ring.

  “We haven’t figured it all out, yet.”

  The woman pinched a smile and looked down at her coffee.

  “You have quite an adventure ahead of you, my dear.”

  Lizzie felt her eyes widen, but the woman was unashamed.

  “That doesn’t matter, either, though. I had my lawyer draft up the relevant documents. I’m going to go get them out of my car and we can go over them. I have a flight tonight, and I expect to take them back with me to get finalized.”

  “Oh,” Lizzie said, and Michelle gave her a tight little smile.

  “In another time, I would sit with you and tell you everything Lara ever told me, but this isn’t the kind of th
ing you learn by having someone tell it to you. You have to work most of it out for yourself.”

  “That’s what Trevor said…” Lizzie said, choking back the ‘last night’ part. The woman smiled.

  “He and I… I imagine we get along in much the way he got along with my Lara. I understand him quite well, and yet… I don’t ever feel like I know him. Or could trust him, much as I like him. I’m surprised that you’ve chosen each other.”

  Lizzie felt a sudden, sharp pang of missing her mother. She had no one else to talk about it with, and here she sat with a woman who had just lost her daughter, wanting to bare her soul to her.

  “I can’t explain it, either,” Lizzie said, and the woman held up her hand.

  “You don’t owe me anything, and we have a lot of paperwork ahead of us. Let me go get it. Maybe we can talk a little once we’re working.”

  Lizzie nodded, steadying herself against the counter. Michelle came back and started spreading folders across the counter, then lay a pen between them.

  “Shall we begin?”

  ***

  Michelle found a stack of menus and called for delivery at lunchtime. Lizzie had been reading forms for hours, and her eyes were beginning to cross. She was less than halfway through the paperwork that Michelle had brought with her.

  “I think we can take a break there,” Michelle said, going to sit on the center couch. “The food will be here in a minute. Do you want to wash your hands and come sit with me?”

  What she wanted to do was go take a shower and dress herself properly, but for some reason, Lizzie did exactly as she’d been asked.

  As she sat, Michelle settled herself primly into her seat and tipped her head.

  “All right,” she said. “I understand that your mother died a few years ago.”

  “She did,” Lizzie said. “Cancer.”

  “I expect Robert blamed himself for it, no matter what Lara said to him about it,” Michelle said.

  “When did you know that Lara was an angel?” Lizzie asked.

  “From when she was very young,” Michelle said. “She told us about the monsters. I think she was seven or eight. We thought she had a lively imagination about the world around her, and we entertained the fantasy for a few years, and then we put her in therapy, but…” She smiled at a distant memory. “One morning she came to me before school and she put her hands on mine…” She folded her hands in her lap, looking at them. “She put her hands on mine and she said, ‘mommy, I don’t need someone to help me know what’s real’. And I said okay, and she never went back. We just figured out what it meant from there.”

  “Just like that?” Lizzie asked, and Michelle nodded.

  “I don’t think it was at all like what happened with your Robbie. He felt out of control, and he was seeing terrible things. The monsters never terrorized her the way they did him.”

  Lizzie shook her head, wrapping her hands around her knee.

  “We never even… considered believing him.”

  Michelle looked at her for a long time, finally pursing her lips.

  “I can’t take away the guilt of anything you might have said or done in his life, but I know that he never blamed you. You now know as well as anyone, I think, how unlikely it is that someone would believe you, without seeing what you saw.”

  “But you did,” Lizzie said.

  “Yes,” Michelle said. “We did.”

  Lizzie rubbed her throat, feeling a tightness there that she had a hard time swallowing around.

  “So, I think we’ve got the house about sorted away,” she said, motioning at the paperwork they’d gone through. Insurance, ownership, what would happen to it if Robbie died. Lara’s car. What happened to her more valuable possessions - Lizzie was glad she’d had the diamond earrings and pendant that Michelle had expected to find. “What’s the rest of it?”

  “Trust,” Michelle said.

  “I’ve been hearing that word a lot, lately,” Lizzie said. “Is it really that big a secret?”

  Michelle laughed.

  “No. I mean the trust.”

  “The trust.”

  Lizzie was ashamed of how long it took her to figure out what those words meant. She tipped her head.

  “You mean…”

  Michelle nodded.

  “My father was a commodities trader,” she said. “A very good one. When he died a few years ago, he’d set up a trust for all of the grandchildren, and Lara left her portion of it to Robbie.”

  Lizzie sat back against the back of the couch.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that you don’t have to worry about your brother,” Michelle said, giving her a small smile. Lizzie found tears in her eyes.

  “He can’t take that,” Lizzie said. “I appreciate it, but you have other children, children with children. Ones who don’t live like they’re in a crack house. Who are going to do important things.”

  Michelle’s face had been soft the entire time, but it grew very suddenly rough and cold.

  “You don’t get to make that decision,” she said and Lizzie felt her eyebrows shoot up. Michelle shook her head. “What Robbie does, what Lara did, it’s important. You may not be able to see it, yet, but believe me, Lara believed in what she was doing with every fiber of her being. If she hadn’t, do you think we would have let her come out here? We did our research. We knew the expected lifespan of people in this life. Lara warned us that she would probably die young. They often do.”

  Lizzie swallowed, and Michelle gave her a hint of mercy with a nod.

  “It’s true, as far as I know. We were prepared. All of the paperwork has been done for years, in case this happened. Robbie is going to be okay for the rest of his life. The will reverts ownership of the trust to my son and my other daughter after he… if he dies, but we will make sure that he doesn’t ever have to live… the way the rest of them do.”

  Lara had loved him.

  Lizzie had always known that, but it was just stark, knowing the lengths the woman had gone to, to make sure he was okay. She wiped her palms down her cheeks, trying to get rid of the tears as gracefully as she could.

  “Lara believed,” Michelle said, smoothing her skirt carefully and giving Lizzie a firm look. “I would ask… that you consider what you believe. Because this isn’t an easy life.”

  “No,” Lizzie said. “I know that already.”

  Michelle nodded, then got up. Lizzie hadn’t heard the knock at the door, but Michelle paid the delivery boy and gave Lizzie her lunch, going back to sit in her seat on the center couch.

  “Robbie’s not very good with money,” Lizzie said. “He can’t even write a check.”

  “I’ll go through the terms with you, but the intent is that my husband continue to manage the trust, as he has since Lara moved out here. We will, with your permission and Robbie’s signature, take over his recurring bills and make sure that they get paid, and we will continue to fund an account for his daily needs. As long as you are staying here, I have no problem with your personal expenses coming out of those funds.”

  Lizzie shook her head.

  “I thought Lara had a job. That that was how they afforded the house.”

  Michelle smiled, taking a dainty bite of her sandwich and chewing for a moment.

  “Lara had her pride,” she said. “She insisted on doing both, holding a position with a company to use her degree and being the angel for her beloved hooligans. I don’t expect you to do that, unless you choose to, and we both know that Robbie can’t.”

  “He has a job,” Lizzie said, simply to say it. She was reasonably sure that Michelle wouldn’t hear defensiveness in that. The other woman nodded.

  “I know,” she said. “Lara was so proud of him. It isn’t easy to maintain a face in a situation with that many people around, when he experiences what he does. But I also think we both know that it isn’t for the money.”

  Lizzie nodded, crossing her legs and devouring her sandwich. When she finished, she found M
ichelle watching her.

  “Do you want a ceremony?” she asked.

  “For what?”

  “For your wedding.”

  Lizzie shrugged.

  “I didn’t dream about one. Never really had time.”

  “You’ve been watching over Robbie for so much of your adult life.”

  Lizzie nodded.

  “My dad…”

  “Lara explained the basics of the situation to me,” Michelle said. “I choose to believe the best of him, as did Lara.”

  “Thank you,” Lizzie said. Michelle gave her a small but warm smile.

  “We don’t all have the same strengths. I know that you love him, and I believe that he loves Robbie. He just ran out of things that looked like options.”

  Lizzie pressed her lips, feeling tears behind her eyes again. Michelle smiled back.

  “Now is the time to think about it,” she said. “Before Trevor tells you all the things he won’t do.”

  “He says I need to talk to Robbie.”

  Michelle laughed.

  “And I won’t presume to say that he means for the best. But he also isn’t wrong. He can’t give you your dreams, though.”

  Lizzie sighed, wadding up her trash and throwing it onto the coffee table.

  “I don’t know what I want.”

  “Yes you do,” Michelle said. “You just haven’t ever figured it out. Think. The morning of your wedding, you wake up and what happens next?”

  She shook her head.

  “A dress. I think. Friends I don’t really have… My mom…”

  She looked away, shocked at herself.

  “Okay,” Michelle coached. “Where are you?”

  “Here,” Lizzie said. Her apartment was a fading idea. How had that happened so quickly?

  “There you go,” Michelle said. “Who is here?”

  “Just me. And Robbie.”

  “Okay. And that night. Where are you?”

  Lizzie closed her eyes.

  “Here.”

  “That’s the beginning and the end,” Michelle said. “You just need to figure out the rest.” She laughed. “And get Robbie on board.”

  She raised her eyebrows, and Michelle nodded.

  “It isn’t for the faint of heart, but I don’t believe that’s what you are. You’ll figure it out. Let’s finish the contract work. Robbie will cut it as close to the last minute as possible, so I want everything laid out for him, just need him to sign.”