by Morgan Rayne
“It sure is, Regis.”
“Have it your way then.” Stella shrugged like she didn’t care either way then whistled in the direction of the bedroom door.
Victoria thought about calling her sister’s bluff, but she had played poker with Stella enough times to know that she didn’t have much of a poker face. So when Alex appeared in the bedroom seconds later Victoria wasn’t too surprised.
“You wouldn’t dare.” Victoria hissed at her sister when Stella’s intentions became clear, but Stella ignored her completely. Instead turning to Alex who was apparently waiting for instructions because as soon as Stella nodded Alex walked over to the bed and scooped Victoria up.
“Put me down Alex, or I swear to God you will live to regret this.” Victoria shouted and kicked her feet, but Alex didn’t cower in the face of her threats. He just held tighter as she tried to wiggle loose and entered the bathroom and then the shower. Plopping a fully clothed Victoria down on the bench at the back of the shower and left.
“This is for your own good.” Stella said just before she turned the handle and water began shooting out. Soaking Victoria and her pajamas in a matter of seconds.
“Alright.” Victoria screamed while trying to block the spray of water from hitting her face. “You’ve made your point. Now let me out of here.” Victoria gave the glass door a couple of shoves, but with Stella standing against it like a soldier the damn thing wouldn’t budge.
“No.” Stella said “You’re taking a shower, getting dressed, and then we are going for a drive.”
“I can’t go for a drive with you Stella. I have to get to work.” Victoria wasn’t sure exactly what time it was, but she knew without a doubt she was late for work.
“I already called Michelle and told her you wouldn’t be in for the rest of the week. You may need to answer a few e-mails, but other than that she’s taking care of everything.”
“Damn it, Stella.” Victoria smacked the glass. “You had no right to do that. I can’t just take a week off. I have clients, and…” But before Victoria could list all the reasons she needed to go to work, the shower door flew open and Stella was towering over her.
“I have every right to do what I did.” Stella snapped, catching Victoria even more off guard. “I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit by quietly as you spiral out of control and self-destruct. This stops here and now. So shut up, take a shower and get dressed because like that day I was at the salon, I’m not giving you a choice. I’ll be waiting in the living room when you’re done.”
And then just like that, Stella shut the glass door and disappeared. Leaving Victoria alone to digest everything Stella had just thrown at her. Her pajamas still hung heavy on her body, but even though she was fully clothed Victoria felt more exposed than if she were standing there naked.
Not doubting for one second that Stella was serious about not giving her a choice, Victoria stripped out of her drenched pajamas and tossed them in one corner of the shower. Her body ached all over and the water falling on her head felt like tiny pieces of hail falling from the sky, but Victoria endured the pain and let the water wash away the stench of her own stupidity.
Once she was sure she no longer smelled like the morning after a party at Charlie Sheens, Victoria wrapped her body in a towel and went to the sink. Getting rid of the God-awful taste in her mouth went a long way in calming Victoria’s unhappy stomach, and by the time she got dressed she felt almost human. The pain in her head was a dull ache, but Victoria no longer felt like she would need sunglasses to open the refrigerator so she figured she was somewhat on the mend.
Picking up her phone, Victoria scrolled through over thirty missed calls and even more text messages from the last two days. Answering the most pressing ones, Victoria was just hitting send on an e-mail to Michelle when Stella came into her room.
“So are we going to do this the easy way, or do I need to call Alex to come back and carry you to the car? Because you know I will.”
“Did he leave?”
“Him and Lindsay, but they can be back with one phone call. You’re choice.”
Victoria held her hands up in surrender.
“No, no. You win. I’ll come willingly. I just need to check a few more emails and make some calls. I should be done in about an hour.” But Victoria should have known better because Stella took the phone out of her hands before she could open the next e-mail.
“What part of ‘vacation’ did you not understand?”
“You mean forced vacation.” Victoria gave her sister a look that dared her to deny that fact, but Stella just shrugged.
“But it’s a vacation none the less, so that means no calls, texts, or e-mails unless it’s an emergency. In which case I will give this back to you.” Stella held up the phone then slipped it into her back pocket. “Now that that’s taken care of let’s go to your kitchen.”
“My kitchen? I thought we were going for a drive?” A drive Victoria could handle. Hair up, window down, shades on. That sounded like a perfect day to Victoria. Put her in a kitchen for any reason and it became a recipe for disaster.
“We are, but there’s something that needs done first.” Stella said as they entered the kitchen. “While you were in the shower I took the liberty of doing a little cleaning. I thought you would want to do the honors.”
Stella handed an unopened bottle of vodka to Victoria. It was just one of a dozen or so other liquor bottles that Stella had lined the counter with.
“I get it, Stella. I really do. I lost control very briefly, but I’ve seen the error of my ways so there’s no reason to dump out perfectly good alcohol.” Victoria placed the bottle back on the counter with its friends, but Stella wasn’t having it. Picking up the same bottle, Stella unscrewed the cap this time and handed it back to her.
“You think your back in control, okay, then take a drink.”
Victoria looked at Stella like she had lost her mind.
“It’s” Victoria found a clock then looked back at her sister. “It’s ten o’clock in the morning Stella. I’m not going to have a drink.”
“Why not? It’s just one. What’s one little sip going to hurt?”
Nothing. It would hurt nothing Victoria wanted to say, but she knew what Stella was trying to get at and she didn’t want to give her sister the satisfaction.
“Fine.” Stella said when Victoria didn’t make a move to take a drink or dump it out. “I’ll do it.”
Stella tried to take the bottle back, but Victoria tightened her grip. Just thinking about Stella pouring out the alcohol had little drops of sweat breaking out on Victoria’s forehead, and it was then that Victoria got it. Got what Stella was trying to beat into her head. It wasn’t about taking the drink; it was about being able to stop after one.
Whether Victoria wanted to admit it or not, she wouldn’t be able to stop at just one. And that was the problem.
Pushing past her sister to get to the sink, Victoria turned the bottle in her hand upside down and waited for it to empty before she moved on to the next one until one by one every bottle was emptied until there wasn’t a single drop of alcohol left in her condo.
“How do you feel?” Stella asked once the last bottle was emptied and back on the counter.
Victoria stared at the line of empty bottles and realized that’s exactly how she felt.
“Empty. That’s how I feel.”
The hardest part wasn’t admitting it; it was seeing the sadness that shadowed Stella’s eyes as she pulled Victoria into a hug.
“I know you do big sister, but I promise you’re not.”
Victoria hugged Stella back and for a while they stood just like that. Each comforting and taking strength from the other like they had been doing since they were kids. Eventually though Stella pulled back, discreetly wiping her eyes and grabbed a set of car keys off the counter.
“We should get going. You’ve got a busy day ahead of you, and I’m afraid the items on our to-do list only get harder from here.”
&nb
sp; Victoria’s first thought when Stella said that was now would be a good time for a drink, but she refused to take the easy way out. Picking up her purse, Victoria walked to where her sister was waiting and opened the door.
“Lead the way. I’m ready.”
****
Chapter 18
Ready may have been a premature statement on Victoria’s part. When Stella said things were only going to get harder Victoria never could have imagined just how hard it would be.
After stopping for a quick bite to eat at a fast food joint near Victoria’s place, Stella drove west out of Chicago until they were passing landmarks that Victoria hadn’t seen in almost fourteen years.
“What are we doing here, Stella?” Victoria asked when Stella pulled up to a curb in front of a rundown apartment building with boarded up windows and graffiti on the walls. Victoria glowered at her sister, but Stella said nothing.
Weeds and debris covered the sidewalks, but Victoria could remember them being occupied by drug dealers and prostitutes while her and Stella walked as quickly as they could from the bus stop to the apartment they shared with their mother. Of all the places they had lived, this was the one place Victoria could have done without ever seeing again.
She scanned the front of the building, and even though the numbers had long ago been stripped away, Victoria’s eyes found apartment nine immediately. Without the numbing effect of the alcohol the images of her past in that apartment began playing on one continuous loop without a way to pause them.
“Why would you bring me here?” Victoria spun in her seat to face her sister once again. “Why?”
“Whether you like it or not it was here, in this place, that your life changed forever. And no matter how many times you tell me that you’re over it, I know the truth.”
“And what’s that?”
“That before that night you were one of the most open and loving people I’ve ever known. That even though our lives weren’t the greatest, you still believed in love and happiness. But after that night it was like the light inside of you died, and you became as closed up as this boarded up building. Protecting and preserving everything inside while making sure the world can’t get in.”
“Did you ever think that maybe me keeping the darkness inside is my way of ensuring everyone else around me doesn’t lose their light as well?” Victoria had never given that much thought herself, but now that she was it made sense.
No one could hear a secret like Victoria’s without losing a little bit of their own light, and that was a kind of burden Victoria didn’t want to bare. She had already seen the effect it had on Stella and Cooper. Why would she want to afflict that kind of pain on anyone else if she didn’t have to?
With Stella sitting silently in the driver’s seat, Victoria finally looked back at the old building and tried to imagine what other secrets were locked inside. Not just hers, but secrets the rest of the world was more than happy to pretend didn’t exist so they could sleep soundly at night.
Thankfully it seemed nothing more needed to be said because a few minutes later Stella put the car in drive and pulled away from the curb. Leaving the building and its secrets to waste away in a cloud of dust as they took off to an equally haunting location. Only in this place, the ghost weren’t just a metaphor for painful pasts.
The gravel crunched beneath the tires on Stella’s Malibu as she navigated along the narrow roads that wound in and out of different sections until she slowed down and eventually stopped near a row of headstones.
“I haven’t been here since the day we buried her.” Victoria said as she looked out over the stones trying to remember where they laid their mother to rest. “To be honest, I never thought I would come back.”
“I’ve only been back once.” Stella sounded like she had more to say, so Victoria turned to give her sister her full attention.
“When?”
“Right after we found out about the baby. Alex thought it would help with the nightmares I was having.”
“What nightmares?” Victoria thought she and Stella shared everything, but it seemed her sister now had Alex as a shoulder to cry on and an ear to listen. She knew that’s how it should be, but it didn’t make Victoria any less sad.
“I can only remember bits and pieces, but what I can remember is pretty bad. Like in one of them I left the baby alone in the bathtub while I fell asleep on the couch, or another one the baby was lying in its crib and roaches were crawling on its skin. Things like that.”
“Stella. I had no idea.”
“How could you? I didn’t tell anyone but Alex, and he swore he wouldn’t say anything. Plus, what were you going to do? Fight my nightmares for me.” Stella had a point. When it came to her sister Victoria tended to go a little overboard in her efforts to protect her, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t help.
“You said Alex thought this would help. What’s this?”
“Well after a lot of talking and going back and forth, the only thing we could both agree on is that it must be my minds way of working through my fears. Fear of being a bad mother, fear of harming the baby, and all that fear could only be coming from one source.”
“Mom.”
“Exactly. So one day Alex brought me here. It took us awhile to find her grave because I couldn’t remember exactly where it was, but once we did Alex told me to tell her everything I didn’t when she was alive. Good, bad, it didn’t matter. He told me to take my time and get it all off my chest, and that he would be in the car whenever I was ready to go. So I did. I yelled, I cried, I lashed out, and by the end I was so drained, but you know what I felt better.”
“And the nightmares?”
“I haven’t had one since.” Stella said proudly. Victoria must have looked skeptical because Stella started to laugh. “I’m not saying yelling at a plot of dirt was a magical pill that fixed everything, but I will tell you this. Getting all of those things out, things I didn’t even know were buried deep in my heart, was one of the best things I could have done.”
A light wind kicked up outside making the colorful flowers loved ones had left on the different graves blow in the breeze. Victoria didn’t know if she believed that this sort of thing would help her personally, but after the last three days she would try just about anything.
“So what do I say? Didn’t you feel silly basically talking to yourself in the middle of a cemetery?”
“You do at first, but look around. Who’s going to judge you? Everyone here is dead.” Stella’s ability to point out the obvious had always had a way of making Victoria feel better, and this time was no different.
“Good point.”
“I’ve been known to have a few of those.” Stella said smugly then she became more serious. “As for what to say, only you can decide that. All I can tell you is to make sure you lay it all out there because that’s the only way you’re going to start to heal.”
Heal. Victoria was starting to wonder if her wounds were too big to be healed with a simple ranting session with a ghost, but that didn’t stop her from getting out and shutting the door. She heard the window roll down and Stella told her where to find the headstone, then the window rolled back up.
Victoria walked past stone after stone reading birth and death dates as she went and realized once again just how short life can be. One in particular was of a small boy who was only six years old when he passed away. On his headstone was a carving of a baseball with the words Beloved son, hitting grand slams with the angels for eternity. Jonathan Thomas Smith June 26, 2001-April 10, 2008.
Fresh flowers and a grave blanket covered the plot where he was buried. Clearly his parent still came to visit there baby whom, for whatever reason, was taken away from them way too soon. Something about this boys grave stuck with Victoria as she continued to walk the grounds until finally she found the headstone she was looking for.
Only six months had gone by since Tina Howe chose to get behind the wheel after who knows how many drinks and took her own life by col
liding with a semi head on, and the grass was just now starting to grow over the rectangle spot she was buried.
The stone marking her mothers grave was one of the smallest ones on the grounds. Simply saying Tina Howe August 19, 1964-February 8, 2013.
It wasn’t that Victoria and Stella couldn’t afford a bigger stone, but there really wasn’t any point. There was no special quote or picture that would have been appropriate so together they decided simpler was better. Not to mention easier to live with than a lie like writing ‘Beloved mother’ or something equally false would have been.
The late afternoon sun was beating down hard on Victoria’s back, but even though she had been standing there for ten minutes at least she still had no idea what to say or where to even begin. Victoria scanned the area around her and when her eyes landed on Jonathan Smith’s grave she had her answer.
“You know it makes me wonder. If that was me or Stella lying in the ground over there and you were still alive, would you be decorating our grave with fresh flowers? Wait, I don’t need to ask that question because I know the answer. Of course there would be, but it wouldn’t be because of you. It would be because of dad and Penny or our friends. You probably wouldn’t even have made the funeral. Either too drunk or high to remember you even had a child, let alone that they died.”
Talking to a dead person was a little strange to say the least, but once Victoria got started she couldn’t seem to stop. Screaming so long and so hard that by the time she was done her throat was raw and her legs could no longer hold her up, but Victoria had done exactly what Stella said. She left nothing unsaid, no demon un-exorcised, and for the first time since she was sixteen Victoria felt a little bit of that light come back inside her.
Since her legs still felt a little shaky, Victoria decided to lie back in the grass and watch the clouds as they floated through the sky. She didn’t know how long she laid there, but if it hadn’t been for Stella getting out of the car and coming to check to make sure she was okay, Victoria could have probably laid there all day.
“So, how do you feel?” Stella asked. She had asked the same question this morning, and then Victoria’s answer had been empty. Now as she pushed herself into a sitting position and then to her feet, Victoria didn’t know exactly what she felt, but she knew for sure it wasn’t empty. She also knew where she wanted to go next.