Pretty Bad Things

by C. J. Skuse

  The audience “aaahed” in chorus and Oprah asked, “And what about Paisley? How are you doing, little miss?”

  The camera zoomed in on my sister, dressed in her little white smock and tights, hair in silky blonde pigtails. She smiled at Oprah and nodded.

  “I’m fine, thank you.”

  And the whole audience just melted. Then Pais started squinting. She developed it not long after we moved to California. Ten years later, I still have my own nervous tic where I can’t look anyone in the eye for longer than two seconds when they’re talking to me, but Paisley’s only lasted a couple of months. It was pretty bad, though, and the camera wasn’t on her for long.

  “She’s just wonderful,” said Virginia, smiling widely. “Yes, she’s a very happy little girl. They’re both very much loved. I just feel so … so blessed that we’ve been able to make the most of what was a terribly tragic situation.”

  I then looked up at Virginia and said, “What’s tragic?” Oprah clapped and laughed, and there was another round of applause from the studio audience and a pastel-colored cutaway to commercials and a whinnying saxophone. After the break, Team Oprah had wheeled in our new bikes, but that segment of the show wasn’t available for download. Virginia didn’t let us keep those, anyway. We’d already won bikes on All-Star Kids Fun House.

  Virginia made sure she got to tell everyone our story. We had interviews on ABC, CNN, 60 Minutes. Appearances on Ricki, Montel, Regis and Kathie Lee, Rosie O’Donnell. We did endorsements for Chunky Chips Ahoy, Lucky Charms, and Wonder Gummies. She even got us invites to the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards as guests of ‘N Sync.

  Wonder Gummies was this healthy kids’ candy that was supposed to contain all these vitamins. When we were lost in the woods, all we ate for three days was a packet of them that Paisley had in her pocket. So there was all this hoopla about this miracle candy, and the company wanted us to be the “spokeschildren” for their new campaign.

  I clicked on the Wonder Gummies thumbnail.

  I remember being taken down to the TV studio with Paisley, both of us dressed in nasty white overalls with these pink and blue bubbles on the pockets. The ad was pretty corny, even then. We had to pretend we were walking through this plastic forest, rubbing our tummies like we were really hungry. And then we’d come upon this house made of candy and start gnawing on it, like Hansel and Gretel and the gingerbread house.

  Then Paisley had to say, “Gee, Beau, this Wonder Gummy house is delicious.”

  And then I had to lick a wall and say, “Sure is, Paisley. And did you know Wonder Gummies are fat free and give us essential vitamins and minerals, too?”

  Except I couldn’t say “essential.” I kept saying “senshal,” and Virginia would shoot daggers at me from off-set every time I messed up. It took about twenty takes, and even then the director wasn’t happy and changed it to “vital.”

  “Enunciate, Beau, there’s a good boy,” Virginia would say. “Big smiles, Paisley Jane. Come on, you can do better than that.” And she’d do this quick clap after every order, like we were performing seals or something.

  And then this voice-over would announce, “Wonder Gummies are helping keep America fit and healthy. Did you know that a child’s daily portion of Wonder Gummies contains as much calcium as a glass of milk? It also provides essential daily nutrients including Vitamins D and E, folic acid, and zinc.”

  And then Paisley would be licking a gummy window and she’d say, “Hey, try the window, Beau. It’s made of Wonder’s New Honey Gummy. It tastes good.”

  Virginia would be screaming at her from the sidelines, “Rich in potassium!”

  By that time I’d be sitting on the roof of the house, chewing on the chimney and saying, “I’m not done up here yet. Mmm, raspberry flavor. You gotta try this.”

  And then the voice would come on again and say, “Give the kids what they love and what they need—” (cue kids shouting) “Wonder Gummies!”

  I laughed. I remembered Virginia storming onto the set, pulling my sister’s overalls down, and smacking her across her bare legs. I stopped laughing.

  “You WILL get it right. You will stay here ALL NIGHT if you have to.”

  It was good to think of us as kids again, me and Paisley, remember the good times. But the remembrance of every good time was tainted with bad.

  I’d always been afraid of Virginia, more fool I. But she didn’t scare Paisley at all, even when she hit her. Paisley would always just stare up at her. Whenever she sent Paisley to her room without food, I’d go up afterward and sneak her some Apple Jacks or something, and we’d sit in a little blanket cave on her bed and eat straight out of the box. I knew when she’d been crying. I always knew when Virginia had gotten to her. And there’d sometimes be a new hole she’d kicked in her closet door or a tear in the wallpaper behind her headboard. But only I would ever notice these kinds of things. Nowadays she and Virginia didn’t speak to each other at all if they could help it. She was allowed home for the holidays if she was lucky, but that was it.

  Paisley always used to say our grandmother was a vampire ’cause she hated garlic, always wore dark shades in sunlight, and didn’t believe in God. Virginia did have a reflection in our mirrored hallway, though, which I called Paisley out on, but Paisley told me it was because our grandmother was the queen vampire so she could have a reflection. Once, a bird or something crashed into my bedroom window at night, and when we looked outside it was gone. Paisley convinced me it had been Virginia, flying up to check on us, and I didn’t sleep right for days after. I hated all that kind of stuff: vampires, werewolves. Paisley’s not afraid of things like that. Ghosts and gargoyles. “It’s the living you wanna be scared of, Beau, not the dead,” she’d say. And I knew she was right. But that’s just the way I am. I think when we were babies she won the good genes lottery: She’s cute, quirky, blonde. And badass. I’m short, dark, scared. And superfluous.

  I clicked on the Regis and Kathie Lee At Home With special and scrolled through it. I’d watched it a bunch of times, but I wanted to see the last shot again, of us jumping in the pool. The rest of the clip was just our grandmother standing in our mirrored hallway with a backdrop of her shiny gold-plated Daytime Emmys for Outstanding Supporting Actress, 1984 and 1986.

  “We’re looking forward to Christmas and, as you can see, the twins are doing great,” she said. And then she looked deep into the camera and said, “And may I just take this opportunity to thank every single person who has sent cards and donations to the twins. We still receive gifts from all over the country, and it is heartening to know that America thinks so highly of them. We are investing in their future and have set up a trust fund for them, which will pay for their education and care. We try to respond to every single letter we receive, but are sometimes a little overwhelmed. We thank you all from the bottom of our hearts.”

  I laughed. We’re looking forward to Christmas. Which Christmas was that? The Christmas she left us with Connie’s family to go skiing with the raisin millionaire? Or the Christmas she left us with Connie’s family so she could get wasted on Scotch at home because she’d been dumped by the raisin millionaire? I could see through her like she was one of those hallway mirrors. We are investing in their future. New pool. State-of-the-art fire pit and sauna. New furniture. Bathroom fixtures. Carpets.

  On one particularly brave Saturday afternoon a couple of years ago, I searched Virginia’s desk and found the details. Me and Paisley had over ten million dollars coming to us when we were eighteen.

  Ten million dollars!

  I couldn’t believe it. People had been so kind, sending us money when we’d been found, knowing full well that we had nothing else to look forward to. No Mom, no Dad. No home. I checked the desk often when I knew Virginia would be out. The latest correspondence from the bank said they were “looking into the misuse of finances issue” and putting a lockdown on all withdrawals from now on. Since we’d lived with her, she’d creamed off three million dollars of what had been sent f
or us.

  The total then stood at just under seven million.

  The day we were sent to live with Virginia was scary for us. You have to remember that we were only six and we were fresh out of a group home, where we’d been placed after leaving the hospital. We thought it was gonna be like Annie, when the little curly orphan goes and stays with that bald gazillionaire. We thought we’d walk into the mansion and there’d be footmen twirling around on mops, maids folding silk sheets, and a happy dog padding around all covered in soap suds. What we got was a ramshackle bungalow in West Hollywood, a part-time Mexican housekeeper, a gardener named Popeye who had two fingers missing from his right hand, and a grandmother whose sole preoccupation was to get us in the papers. It was better than the children’s home and Connie was always good to us, but she had her own family. It never felt like home.

  And while the cameras were there, we could never be ourselves. We had to be the children our grandmother wanted us to be. Clean, cute angels with rictus grins and well-rehearsed waves, always happy or studying. Not the kids we were. Me, who sucked on wet washcloths until they were gray and stank like wet dogs. And Paisley, who talked back and stole food for us when Virginia wasn’t looking so we could have midnight feasts in our blanket cave on my bed.

  When the cameras were gone, we were just messy kids, naughty kids, disgusting kids. We’d chew up cookies, then spread out the chewed mix on top of other cookies and eat them. We’d spit on the back of our grandmother’s padded velvet coat when walking behind her in a store and draw patterns in the trails. Once we drew all over ourselves in black marker and pretended we’d gotten tattoos. We broke the lock on the booze cabinet and took sips from all the bottles. We cut each other’s hair with gardening shears. We’d wash stray cats in talcum powder. We’d pee in the pool. We’d pee in the fire pit, too. Our knees were always bloody and scraped, and we always had the best time when we were doing something we shouldn’t.

  In the end, Virginia realized that spanking our butts or locking us in our rooms was no deterrent. She found the hole in the wall between our rooms, the hole Paisley had bored with one of Virginia’s own stilettos so we could talk to each other. That was when she lost it and decided to send Paisley away.

  It was always new and fun and exciting being a kid. I liked being disobedient. I can’t bring myself to do the fun, naughty stuff anymore. I hate being a teenager.

  I’m supposed to be shoplifting beer and notching up my STD count. Hanging out behind the bleachers after dark, smoking weed and snorting eight balls. Getting bong flu or getting shit-faced in strip clubs on Hollywood Boulevard or at frat parties in the Valley. I’m supposed to pack a knife and rob old ladies or be planning a shooting on my blog. But that’s not me.

  I like simple things. Reading. Observing. Watching the green parakeets up on the pylon wires outside the house. I like the cool breeze on my face through my bedroom window when I’m writing at my desk. I like French movies, pop music, pomegranates. I’m reading Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir and trying to teach myself French using a four-CD kit I got at a thrift store. I want to live in Paris someday.

  That’s why I get called “nerd” or “pussy” and dunked in trash cans. I try not to look them in the eye anymore. I hide behind my hair. But I can’t change. I won’t change.

  I closed my laptop and stared out the window. I had a bag of peanut M&M’s on the desk, and I reached over and plucked one out, a blue one. I carefully crunched away the blue shell and licked away the chocolate until just the peanut remained. Then I split open the two halves.

  And there inside was the little bunny that lives inside every whole peanut.

  Paisley taught me that.

  And then the phone rang.

  PAISLEY

  FIVE

  TERMINAL 4,

  LOS ANGELES INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT,

  CALIFORNIA

  “Hey,” he said, with a thin smile and a lift of his eyebrows.

  “Hey,” I said, dropping my bag. He picked it up and we headed for the exit. I hate airports. “There’s too many fucking people in this world.”

  “It’s good to see you, Pais,” he said, all puppy dog eyes.

  “You, too.” We hugged. I’d seen him, like, a month before during summer vacation, so it wasn’t one of our usual squeezes, full of unsaid God I missed yous. He was definitely fatter since the summer. The Skankmother had been feeding him up. But I didn’t mention it. It was too soon to go into that old brother-sister repartee, and I knew he’d get all worried and start going on and on about diets he should try, so instead I cut straight to the chase.

  “Did you bring the letters?”

  “No, they’re at home. I hid them under my bed.”

  “Good job.”

  We walked through the automatic doors, and I took my first breath of California air. It felt good. Then we played cab dodge to cross the road to the parking lot where Beau had left the Skank’s red Pontiac Fiero.

  “D’you wanna grab something to eat? I didn’t have breakfast yet, so …”

  “No. First things last. I wanna get back and see the letters. How many are there?”

  “I don’t know.” Beau started the car.

  “She hasn’t treated you to your own wheels yet, then?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t mind. The Fiero’s a sweet ride.”

  “Not yours, though. I thought you were looking at Subarus.”

  “She said they were too expensive.”

  “Can’t bear the thought of you having a little bit of freedom, can she?”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “It so is.”

  He clearly wanted to change the subject. “So, good flight?”

  “Not really,” I said, looking out the window at the palm trees. “Didn’t sleep.”

  “You’re officially expelled?”

  “Yeah. So what else did Dad say? Where is he?”

  “Paradise.”

  “Where the hell’s Paradise?”

  “Just south of Vegas.”

  “Why there?”

  Beau shrugged. “Remember Eddie from The Roosevelt Hotel? He’s staying with him. He’s got a place there.”

  “Oh. So why not come see us first?”

  “Maybe he wants to get his soap business up and running again. He talks a little about heading for the Las Vegas Strip. You know, for the hotels …”

  “But why can’t he do all that in LA? We have hotels here. God, we’re so close to him, Beau.”

  He changed the subject. “So what was it this time, why’d they expel you? Demolished another Steinway? God knows you tried everything else to get outta there.”

  “I punched a girl. And I liked it.”

  Beau laughed. “Why? What did she do to you?”

  I shrugged. “Stuff.” That was our code for Don’t ask me about this under any circumstances.

  “Something pretty bad, then,” he said. “So I guess Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul fell on deaf ears?”

  “Just get me back home.”

  “As you wish.”

  Beau eased the Fiero onto Cahuenga and up the slope until we came to the paved driveway of the house. She’d had the outside painted again, white this time, and there were more palm trees out front. It was something different every time I came back; it never looked like the same place. New pool, new downstairs, new dining furniture. Same old Skankmother, though, if you didn’t count the injections.

  She wasn’t home, thank God. Out at the salon having her landing strip de-fuzzed, apparently. Connie wasn’t there, either. She had finished for the day. The place was spotless and I could smell chocolate as soon as I walked in. She’d baked one of her special chocolate pizzas for us and left it on the kitchen counter. It said Welcome Home Paisley in marshmallows. We both tore off a piece and went upstairs to Beau’s room. He slid out the shoe box from under his bed and emptied it onto the carpet.

  “I can’t believe they’re from him,” I said, yanking one of the letters from its envelope.
“But why’d Skank hang on to them? If she never wanted us to have contact …”

  “Virginia didn’t keep them. Connie did,” said Beau, munching on his pizza, watching me riffle through the envelopes like a monkey ripping open bananas. “Hey, be careful.” He had read through all the letters before, at least twice. I picked up one of the earlier ones.

  “This the first?” I asked. Beau nodded. The postmark was EJSP. East Jersey State Prison. Where he was sent after the robbery. I knew the history of the place from the Internet. Beau gulped down the last of his pizza and took the letter from me. He read it aloud.

  I never stop thinking about your mom. She was beautiful. I have this necklace of hers that I carry with me all the time. It was almost taken away from me in jail, but I still got it. I know she put you through some stuff, but she was sick. I should have gotten her treatment. But I kept following this big dream I had of getting some money together so we could all get out of Jersey. Make a better life somewhere else. Do you know she taught you both how to swim? I’ll tell you all that and more when we’re together again. I’ll make that my job. To tell you both about your mom.

  I listened with my mouth open, like some special-needs kid at group story time. I didn’t remember Mom being “beautiful.” She was older than Dad and she had short bleached hair, always raked back. Her blue eyeliner looked like it had been dug into her face, and no matter what she was doing she’d have a cigarette between her fingers. But Dad said she was beautiful. I wished to hell I could remember the beautiful part. And the swimming lessons. All I remembered was the screaming and the smell.

  Beau read out five more letters. The word “love” came up a lot. I was glad.

  “Did he put kisses on the bottom?” I asked. Beau showed me the page in his hands. Two kisses. I touched them with the tip of my finger.

  “Are you finished with that?” he asked, noting my untouched pizza slice balanced on my knee. I nodded. He took it and started picking off the marshmallows.