My Name Is Venus Black

by Heather Lloyd

  Inez returns with an open bottle of wine and a ruby-colored goblet like the one she’s already using. The glasses are so familiar, and it seems bizarre that after all these years I’m going to get to drink from one. Inez sets it down on the oak coffee table, which is also weirdly familiar. I could have told the story of every water ring I made because I didn’t use a coaster.

  It seems that while I’ve spent the last six years going out of my way not to trigger old memories, Inez has found a way to be at home among them.

  She turns the black recliner so it’s facing more in my direction. In the awkward silence, I watch her fill my glass and top off her own. She sits in the chair, takes off her ratty slippers, and pulls her bare feet onto the seat, curling up like she’s trying to feel safe. “I’m so glad you’re here, Venus,” she says.

  “I’m not glad to be here,” I tell her. “And I’m not really here to see you.”

  Given her pained expression, I might as well have slapped her face. I know I shouldn’t be so mean, especially since I’m here to ask for money.

  “Okay,” she says softly. “That’s fine. So how can I help you?”

  “I changed my mind.”

  “About…?”

  “About the money. I want to take you up on your offer.”

  “That’s great,” she says with a genuine smile. “Does this mean you’re going to enroll in college?”

  “I already told you why I can’t go to college, especially around here,” I answer.

  I take a sip of the wine. It’s probably really cheap, but I wouldn’t know. The extent of my drinking at Echo Glen was a few gulps of contraband liquor someone snuck in—and I hated it. I never drank, because I didn’t want to be like Raymond and Inez, who both drank too much.

  “But I want to get a car and move to California. And that takes money,” I continue.

  “Oh. California,” Inez says, clearly disappointed. She’s wearing absolutely no makeup, but she is still pretty for her age.

  “Where are you moving?” I ask. “I saw the COMING SOON sign out front.”

  “Yes. That. I don’t know where I’ll land. Here in Everett, most likely. In a smaller place. I have friends here….”

  She finally reaches for her glass and takes a couple of swallows.

  “So, are you going to make me ask how much you can…?” I wasn’t about to say give to me. I figure she owes me this money.

  “Oh. I’m sorry. I hadn’t really thought about it yet—”

  “It seems like five grand is the least you can do,” I say.

  I can tell by her face that she’s taken aback. “I can’t do that, at least not yet,” she says. “First I have to sell the house….”

  “Surely you have some savings,” I prod. “And since you never had to pay a single dime to raise me from the age of thirteen up, I would think you could spare at least a thousand?”

  That was a low blow. I gulp some wine so I don’t have to see her reaction.

  “I can probably give you around eight hundred right away,” she says. “Every month I put some money in savings. I could go to the bank tomorrow. Is that enough for now and I’ll give you more when I sell the house?”

  Of course it is. It’s actually more than I’d hoped for—I was bluffing by demanding so much.

  I set my glass on the coffee table, reaching for a coaster at the last second. The coasters are painted with seagulls, and I bought them in a shop in Mukilteo to give Inez for Mother’s Day one year. Why on earth hasn’t she tossed them?

  “I guess I can make that work,” I say. As soon as the words are out of my mouth, they sound stingy and ungrateful. Damn. I wanted to come off more dignified and mature. But when she acts all meek it brings out my mean.

  Now I’m anxious to go. I get to my feet, saying, “I’ll come back tomorrow for the money. I can get my own coat.”

  “But you just got here!” she exclaims. “Please don’t leave yet.” She is still sitting in her chair, as if by not standing up she can make me stay.

  “Why not?” I ask. “What else do we have to talk about?”

  “Can’t you stay for a while, Venus?” She gazes up at me with familiar gray eyes, and for a brief flash I see my mother as I used to—more of an annoyance than the source of all evil—and I soften in spite of myself.

  “I won’t smoke,” she promises. “I’m trying to quit. I have to,” she adds with a nervous laugh. “Did you know that pretty soon you won’t even be able to smoke in bowling alleys? Isn’t that ridiculous?”

  What is she babbling about? Smoking was never the issue. I stand there for a second too long, and she takes that for hope and launches into a speech about how she knows I’m still angry, but she loves me, and who knows when we’ll ever see each other if I move to California. She seems desperate, on the verge of tears—and I’m so scared that she’ll cry and I’ll feel sorry for her that I sit back down. “Okay, I’ll stay for a few more minutes.”

  I settle back into the couch and try to pretend Inez is not Inez. I ask about her friends, the only safe subject I can think of at the moment. As she rattles on about Shirley—the woman she should hate for losing Leo!—I continue to sip on the wine. I decide I like the way it tastes and the way it feels to be sitting here drinking.

  “What about your job?” I prompt, which seems like another safe topic. She complains about it, but not too much. It’s a boring job at the school-district administration office.

  Just hearing about her dull life makes me want to stick a fork in my eye. I’ve decided by now that I really like red wine, especially the way the color of it perfectly matches the bitter berry taste. I think of Leo and how he likes food that is the “right” color. I wonder if he also likes food that tastes like the color it is. Like rice tastes white and peas taste green.

  Inez continues to rattle on, clearly desperate to keep me here. As she talks, she keeps refilling my glass when it’s half empty. With each sip, it gets harder to resent her or keep a hostile attitude. Soon, my lips feel both numb and buzzy.

  We finish the bottle, but Inez keeps up a nervous stream of chatter. She tells me more about Shirley—clearly her only real friend—and how Shirley loves dumb-blonde jokes even though she’s a natural blonde herself. “She must know at least two hundred of them,” Inez says, smiling.

  “Tell me one,” I challenge.

  “A dumb-blonde joke?”

  “Yeah. Why not?” I’m only half serious, but to my surprise she says, “Okay. Let me think for a minute.”

  I’m starting to realize I could ask Inez to do just about anything tonight and she’d say yes. She tucks her hair behind her right ear, a habit she’s always had. “Okay,” she says, smiling. I see the familiar crooked incisor that always looks too sharp. She sits up straighter, tucking her feet beneath her like this is going to be a performance. “I guess this is a good one.”

  “Okay, so tell it already!”

  “Okay,” she says again, wiping her hands on her jeans like she’s nervous. “Okay. It goes something like: Why did the blonde stare at the can of orange juice for such a long time?”

  I couldn’t think of an answer. “I give up,” I say. “Tell me.”

  “Because the can said, ‘Concentrate.’ ”

  The joke is so lame that I smile and shake my head. I take another drink of what’s left in my glass. “Try again. Another one.”

  “Oh no,” she says. “I don’t even know if I can remember any more. Shirley is the one who—”

  “C’mon!” I encourage. “One more. If we can’t go after blondes, what else are we going to talk about?” It’s an awkward moment, because I just pointed out how much is off-limits between us.

  “Okay!” she agrees. “Okay, I thought of another one: How come blondes always like to wear their hair up?” She suddenly gets out of her chair. “You think about it wh
ile I get another bottle.”

  Another bottle? She’s that desperate to keep me here. Or else she’s truly turned into a drunk. While she’s gone, I realize two things: I must be what you call tipsy, and I’ve heard the joke before. Inez returns with the open bottle.

  “So they can catch all the stuff that goes over their heads?” I ask.

  “Yes!” cries Inez, actually laughing, which makes me laugh, too.

  It must be true that alcohol will make you do things you normally wouldn’t do, since that’s the only possible explanation for what happens next, which is that I agree to stay and eat dinner with the person I’m supposed to hate most.

  * * *

  —

  INEZ TELLS ME to relax while she makes spaghetti. She turns on the TV for me and then heads down the hall to the bathroom, and I realize my own bladder is about to burst, too. The nightly news is on, but I’m not the slightest bit interested.

  When Inez emerges from the hall, I take my turn in the pink-tiled bathroom. After I’m done, I can’t resist the urge to peek into Leo’s old room. I don’t flip on the light, but in the dim glow from a streetlamp, I can see it looks exactly the same, like Inez has found a way to freeze the past in place. If I didn’t know better—aromas can’t possibly last six years—I’d swear it still smells like Leo. A combination of sweaty sleep, Ritz crackers, and the faint tang of a mattress wet one too many times.

  As my eyes adjust to the low light, I walk over and touch his painted-blue dresser. It reminds me how I used to open these drawers every morning and pick out Leo’s clothes for the day, which were all as close to primary blue as possible.

  For a fleeting moment, I wonder what happened to my planets, if they’re still hanging downstairs in my room. Or did Inez clean my room all out?

  I pick up one of Leo’s cars from his shelf. I spin the wheels; I’m still amazed how long Leo could be content to stare at them.

  On impulse, I open the door to his small closet. His favorite blanket, the purple one, is lying on the floor. I hear Inez in the kitchen, making noise with pots and pans. I think of Inez passing Leo’s empty room night after night, and an unexpected wave of horror and sadness washes over me—on her behalf.

  It must be the wine, or maybe it’s that I worked so hard to hate Inez I never allowed myself to imagine what it would feel like to lose a child into thin air.

  Now, because of Piper, I almost can. And it’s just too much.

  I make my way into the kitchen, afraid to be alone. As if on autopilot, I offer to set the table, since that was always my job. “Sure thing,” she says.

  It freaks me out a little that I know exactly where the plates are, where the silverware drawer is. And the bouquet pattern on the flatware I could have drawn by heart. I’m careful to ignore the door at the end of the kitchen, the one to the basement stairs.

  When I go to the freezer for ice, I find the same blue cracked ice trays from before. Probably lots of people keep ice trays this long, but it just seems wrong somehow.

  I decide I need more wine.

  It’s time to sit down to the familiar meal of tossed garden salad and Inez’s idea of spaghetti—Ragú sauce mixed with hamburger and onions over pasta. As I awkwardly dig in, I notice the familiar painting of a sad old man praying with folded hands over his soup and bread. It has always hung on this wall. Inez was never a religious person, but it must have seemed to her like the kind of art that one should hang near a kitchen table.

  Once, when I was ten or so, I asked her why we had to eat near such a depressing painting. She said, “He is praying over his food because he is grateful.”

  “Well, we don’t pray over our food,” I challenged.

  “You’re right, Venus,” she said. “Maybe we should.”

  “No thanks,” I told her. “Besides, I don’t think he is grateful for his bread; I think he’s praying for some butter and jam to put on it.” I remember this detail because Inez laughed so hard, and she often repeated the story to friends.

  “I see our man is still praying for jam,” I say now, nodding toward the art.

  She turns to see and breaks out laughing. “Oh my God!” she exclaims, “I almost forgot about that.”

  I almost forgot how much I used to love her laugh. “Have you had any bites on the house?” I ask.

  “Not really,” she says. “It’s not even for sale yet. Officially. But actually, I did show it for the first time this afternoon. Right before you showed up. You practically passed each other on the porch.”

  “Really? How did it go? Pretty cool if you get a buyer before you even have it on the market.”

  “It went okay,” she says thoughtfully. “But it was kind of weird, too. Normally my realtor would show it. You remember Melissa Lansing? She went into real estate.”

  “I think so.” I vaguely remember a brassy friend of Inez’s who had a large mole above her lip, and not the pretty kind.

  “I wouldn’t have showed the house without Melissa, but this guy said he was from California and going back tomorrow and it would be his only chance.”

  “Well, how did it go? Did he like the house?”

  “I suppose so, but he acted kind of weird about it.”

  “What do you mean, weird?”

  She thinks for a second. “One weird thing is that he didn’t ask to look at the garage. And don’t most men really care about that? Then again, I didn’t offer…and maybe by then he knew he didn’t want it, so it didn’t matter.”

  “What else was weird?”

  “Now that you ask,” she says, “he was weird about Leo’s room. Like it made him really sad.”

  I feel a flutter of alarm. “Keep talking,” I say, setting down my fork and moving the wine bottle out of reach.

  “He said he got my phone number off the sign in the yard, but I don’t think it’s on there—I haven’t checked.”

  “Seriously?” I ask.

  “I didn’t have a chance, because you showed up!”

  “Please excuse me for a minute.”

  I go to the closet, grab my coat, and go out the front door to check the sign. When I sit down again at the table, I tell her, “The only number on there is the realtor’s.”

  “Why would he lie?”

  Okay, now I’m getting a little mad. “So you’ve got a strange guy from California who gets your number from somewhere and takes a tour of the house and doesn’t look at the garage and acts sad in Leo’s room. Doesn’t that all add up to super suspicious to you?”

  Inez looks hurt. “Now that you say it that way,” she says.

  I couldn’t believe it, but then again I could. “What did he look like? What was his last name—surely you got that,” I pressed.

  Her hand went to cover her mouth, and I knew she didn’t. “I got his first name! It was Tony. He seemed so nice. His name was Tony and he was really handsome.”

  “Okay. You got a first name. Handsome. Didn’t it occur to you that maybe he’s related to Leo’s disappearance? What if the milk carton flushed him out?”

  Our eyes meet and something sparks in the air. I can tell she feels it, too. We both know what I just suggested could so easily be true.

  Who knew I was such a great detective? God knows I’ve been grilled enough times in my life, but now I turn every instinct I have toward getting what I can out of Inez.

  “What about a phone number? Did you get it?”

  “It never occurred to me. He said he’d call….”

  I heave a sigh of frustration. “What kind of car did he drive?” I demand.

  She thought for a second. “It was a black truck, and there was a business logo on the side—but it wasn’t just letters; there was a fancy design.”

  “What did it say?”

  “It was too far away to read out the window, but I recall it being all scrolly and pretty,
like the words were part of the art.”

  “What make or model of truck? Like a Ford?”

  She looks at me blankly. “I don’t pay attention to stuff like that. It was a plain truck, older model, I’d guess. Not huge, only one-seat-up-front type. I think…”

  “What about him? What did he look like besides handsome? Did he have any distinctive things about him?”

  She perks up, relieved to have something more to add. “He had dark hair cut short and styled all nice. He definitely had tattoos. I saw one on his wrist when we shook hands goodbye. And one peeking out above his collar. But he wasn’t the kind of guy you normally associate with tattoos.”

  “Tattoos of what? What did they look like?”

  “I have no idea,” Inez says, shaking her shoulders. “It was just brief flashes of color I noticed.”

  “Okay,” I say, frustrated. “So what else? What about his hands? Were they rough or dirty like a labor person or soft like a desk job?”

  “His hands were nice,” she says. “Normal. I don’t think he had any rings on, either. He wasn’t like some biker dude.”

  “Didn’t you ask what he did for a living down in California?”

  Inez takes a deep breath. Clearly the answer is no. “I’m sorry, Venus. I didn’t think of it. I didn’t want to be nosy because I didn’t want him to get nosy.”

  She looks so sheepish, I almost feel bad for her.

  “But wait! Oh my God, Venus! I remember in the bedroom when he saw my messy closet, he mentioned something about being creative. He said he was some kind of artist, or maybe he said he was kind of an artist.”

  “That’s good!” I exclaim. “We’re putting together a lot here. We are calling the police. Right now.”

  “And I can already tell you what they’ll say,” she says. “Without a license plate or a last name or anything to go on other than an artist in California named Tony— Wait!” she screeches. “Oakland! He was from Oakland!”