by Brent, Cora
“What are you doing?” she demanded. “I thought you were in your room with your nose in one of your books.”
She couldn’t know that I’d watched her be disgraced at the hands of Ryan Jedson. She’d never forgive me. Steering clear of my mother’s bad side was a daily battle and I knew the consequences of losing.
Willing my shaking hands to cooperate I casually reached for a glass from the cabinet and filled it with water from the fridge dispenser. The clock above the door ticked loudly. It was the ugliest thing in the house, a customized gift to Luanne from her adoring husband. The clock itself was an art deco rendering of Luanne’s face. Generally she loved images of her herself but she hated that clock. She’d laughed at its sheer tackiness often enough. I was sure she only kept it hanging on the wall to serve as a reminder who mattered the most in this house, who was queen.
“I walked to the Mart,” I said. “I wanted a soda.”
“I don’t see any soda.”
“I drank it already.” I swallowed a few mouthfuls of warm water, pushing away the surge of extreme nausea that had appeared the second I saw my mother’s mouth on the boy I loved.
With effort I finished the glass of water and deposited it in the dishwasher. “I think I’ll go to bed,” I said even though my bed was just about the last place I could imagine sleeping after the ‘We fucked in Leah’s bed’ revelation. When did that happen? How long ago? I must have spent hundreds of nights since then innocently sleeping beneath my purple comforter without a clue about what had occurred there. Ryan was right. She was fucking sick. They both were. And now they’d made me sick too. I was sick just thinking about them.
“You’ve been crying.” She left her chair to examine me more closely, blocking my exit from the kitchen in the process.
I met her eye beneath the harsh glare of the kitchen light that hid nothing. “So have you.”
“I was just having a moment.” She cleared her throat and swiped at her painted cheeks, far closer to sober than she’d been when she took her clothes off in the yard.
My mother appraised me again, more carefully than she’d done in a long time. “I wish you’d learn how to dress but you are getting so much prettier, Leah.” She said it like she was more than a little surprised.
The compliment was startling. “Thank you.”
A smile lifted her lips and exposed the fact that she remained as gorgeous as ever. “We should take a day and drive to Phoenix, get you a new wardrobe and give my credit card some exercise.”
The way she kept smiling told me she thought this was the nicest proposal in the world. She wasn’t always vicious. When Daisy and I were little she would often take a drive up to the valley and come home with bags of pretty dresses that would awe any little girl. And she’d fix our hair and take us for professional photographs twice a year. She even tried to enter Daisy in a few beauty pageants but my sister would have none of it, tearing bows and frills off her dresses and burning them in the gas fire pit. A change came when we reached adolescence. First Daisy, and then me five years later. My mother didn’t want much to do with these lanky, awkwardly plain things we’d transitioned to. I had no memory of her ever referring to me as pretty.
“Thanks, I have enough clothes,” I said, remembering her on her knees in front of Ryan Jedson.
Her smile evaporated. “Have it your way.”
We were at a standoff.
Me, wishing she’d move so I could escape.
Her, craftily beginning to snap a few awful pieces together.
“When did you come back from your walk?” she wanted to know.
“Just now.” If I’d managed to keep my voice from catching she might have believed me. But I wavered, scraping the words out and then ending with a cough.
“Just now,” she repeated, searching my teary face, my dusty sneakers. She gripped my chin in her fingers without warning, a fingernail grating my skin in a deliberate way. “And what made you cry on your walk home from getting a soda at the Emblem Mart?”
“Just…” I grasped at straws. “Something that happened at school today. This guy was being a jerk.”
“All guys are jerks.” Her breath was acrid, her lipstick smeared. She’d kissed Ryan with those full lips, probably left traces of her Parisian Red lip color on parts of his body where her lips had no business being. A tear squeezed out of my eye. I felt it slide down my cheek, unable to stop it, unable to breathe.
“You’re not crying over any high school boy, are you?” The question wasn’t gentle but sharp. Accusatory. As if I was the one who’d done something wrong here.
“No. I’m not crying over a high school boy at all.” I paused, about to say something terribly reckless. I said it anyway. “Ryan Jedson was here.”
She read the fury in my face and she knew. For a few seconds her mouth went slack with horror over this new development and then pursed into a thin line.
“That boy is nothing but gutter trash like his father. I did Celeste a favor, letting them live here all those years when they had nowhere else to go.” She shrugged. “He’s been after me for years and he came here trying to make something happen. He got angry when I told him he didn’t have a chance.”
So she was going to rewrite history. And she was betting I was weak enough to go along with it.
“That’s crap, Mom. I know he didn’t come here to see you.”
She laughed. “And do you think he came here to see you?”
My face burned. “Of course not. He was only here because he was confused and in trouble and-“ I bit my own words off. I wasn’t going to defend Ryan Jedson. Hell no. Not after everything I’d seen and heard.
My mother seized on my mistake. “What kind of trouble?”
Her eyes had a sudden brightness that I didn’t understand. Yet I sensed that she was in search of a weapon. She’d been rejected. She’d been humiliated. She’d been shoved away and called pathetic and she suspected I’d seen every moment. Telling her about the blood on Ryan’s shirt and the mystery of a man named Harry who may or may not be dead would not end well.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Leah.” She was going to play the adult now, be stern. “You need to tell me everything Ryan said to you. If he came straight here after doing something illegal it could hurt our family.”
As if anything Ryan Jedson could do would hurt our family more than she already had. Her bony fingers sifted through the strands of my hair, not a maternal gesture. Something else. And I shuddered because of the threat implied. My hair was finally long again.
“Think about your father, Leah. He’s already working himself half to death for that sake of that ridiculous bar. Don’t make his life worse than it already is.”
“Can I please go to my room?” I hated the pleading whine in my voice.
Her cold lips kissed my forehead. She would win. She knew it. “You’re tired. I can give you one of my Percocet to help you sleep. But first you need to tell me what Ryan might have done.”
“I don’t know,” I said, my back against the wall, a familiar fear curling in my gut and an equally familiar silent plea broadcasting to my father to hear me, to abandon the damn bar for a minute and walk into his kitchen in order to see this version of his wife. He wouldn’t do either. He wouldn’t leave the bar for a moment on a Saturday night. And he wouldn’t notice that the woman he loved was more venomous than any deadly creature thriving in the desert. My father had remained willfully blind to Luanne’s true nature for twenty years. He wasn’t about to discover it now.
“Leah.” Her eyes narrowed. “Nobody will thank you for protecting a man like that. So don’t.” A lock of my hair was in her hand now, being twirled slowly around her forefinger and the message was clear. Protect him. Or protect yourself.
As for Ryan, I couldn’t think of a single reason why I owed him anything.
“Leah, we’re friends, aren’t we?”
No. We were not. Friends don’t fuck other friends’ mothers.
> Still, I was no tattletale snitch. And in spite of all my rage and confusion I’d get no joy out of seeing Ryan in trouble. I had one more card to play.
“I’ll tell Daddy.” The words were nearly inaudible. “I’ll tell him about you and Ryan.”
Peals of laughter resulted. “Little girl, your father knows I like to have fun.” She jerked my chin up so I had to look at her, see the victory in her amber eyes, the same color as my eyes, the color of a reptile’s eyes. “Sometimes he even wants to watch.”
Whatever fight was inside me deflated. I didn’t know how to do this, how to fight her. I’d lose every time. I didn’t consciously open my palm but I heard the medal with a saint’s image clatter to the tile. She immediately bent down to swipe it off the floor.
She rose and pinched it between two fingers as if it was filthy. “What’s this?” she asked. I watched her face transform as she got a good look at it. She recognized the medal. Ryan said he used to wear it on a chain underneath his shirt. So yes, she’d seen it. She’d seen everything underneath his shirt. Everything. Everything. Fucking everything.
“Did you steal this, Leah?”
“No.” I was not prepared for the accusation. “Ryan gave it to me.”
The medal disappeared into her hand, trapped by her red talons, probably never to be seen again. If I was stronger I’d snatch it back but I wasn’t strong. I wasn’t much of anything.
“Tell me why,” she ordered.
“No. Give it back to me.”
“Leah. Tell me why Ryan Jedson gave this to you and I’ll make sure to return it to him. I promise. I’ll take care of everything.”
She wouldn’t let this go, not until I told her what she wanted to know. When Ryan gave me that medal he’s also given me a piece of advice. He said I should look out for myself first.
I would start now.
I repeated my entire conversation with Ryan, beginning with the moment he arrived when I watched from the shadows, not daring to leave anything out because my mother would know if I was lying.
She always did.
Chapter One
Ryan
Someone had hauled the broken down old bastard all the way out here for target practice and then abandoned the mangled remnants.
I knelt down to examine the damage and ran my forefinger over a thick layer of dust that could have been accumulating for a month or five years. There was no way to tell.
“Fuckers,” I muttered before I got to my feet and snatched one of the empty beer bottles scattered around the perimeter.
No respect, that was the problem.
Zero fucking respect for the desert and everything that lived in it. I walked twenty paces with the ancient Winchester in hand and then spun, captured the target in the sight and fired three quick shots. The sharp echoes pierced the quiet, probably startling anyone who was at home in one of the grungy trailers I saw clustered together closer to the road. Then again, anyone who lived there had to be used to the sound of gunshots. People had always come out this way to practice their aim and test their weapons. That was no excuse for dragging this wreckage out here to die under the sun.
I noted with satisfaction that all three of my shots had hit right where I wanted them to. Clean holes replaced the metal dials that were relics from another decade. I’d avoided shattering the center because then I’d be stuck retrieving all the glass. Leaving broken garbage behind for someone else to clean up was a shitty habit to get into.
Slinging the antique rifle to my shoulder, I doubled back to my pickup truck and drove in reverse toward the abandoned television that had probably been quite the prize in someone’s living room fifty years ago. My mind was on the detour I’d be making to the town dump where I could put the appliance out of its misery and I managed to nearly mow down Burk McGraw.
“The fuck, man?” he howled, outraged. Like I should have expected him to materialize from the spiny arm of a saguaro cactus.
I threw the truck into park and stuck my head out the window. “Where the hell did you come from?”
McGraw scowled. Or at least I think he did. He had Yosemite Sam facial hair and a river toad’s body. If that sounds like a weird combo it’s because it was. We went way back and the first time I ever got shitfaced was on his dad’s stale malt liquor collection. By senior year of high school he’d knocked up three different girls, or so he claimed. I’d believe it the day I saw a pack of little redheaded bearded fuckers terrorizing Main Street.
“Do I need to show you my fucking papers or something, Jedson? That’s my place over there. I should be asking what the hell you’re doing shooting up my neighborhood.”
The guy always had a flair for the dramatic. “Calm down. I know how to hit my targets. I didn’t know you lived here.”
“Yep. Unless my girl finds out her cousin rode my dick last Friday. Then I guess I’ll have to find somewhere else to sleep.” He hopped into the passenger seat without an invitation. “I’m thirsty.”
I dangled my water flask in front of his face. “Care for some of my backwash?”
Teeth appeared in the red bearded forest. “I was thinking of something with more of a bite.”
There weren’t a lot of watering holes within a twenty mile radius. A pantry-sized bar called Copper existed on the north side of town beyond Main Street. Mostly you had to drive to Grande if you wanted to sit down and suck back a beer without your elbows hitting a wall. Or there was another option.
I jerked the truck backwards until the bumper was two feet from the ruined television. “Are you the one who threw that out?”
He swiveled back and took a look. “Seriously? Looks older than we are.”
I cracked the door open and hopped out. “I’m sure it is. Help me toss it in the bed.”
McGraw didn’t argue. We wrangled the thing into my truck and McGraw decided to come along on the trip to the dump, probably in the hopes he’d be rewarded. And he was. I drove to Grande and treated him to a fried chicken dinner. By the time we were back inside the Emblem town limits the October light was waning.
Tomorrow would mark one month since I’d been back. Sometimes I could swear I had never left at all, like the past six years hadn’t happened and I was still the arrogant twenty year old who assumed nothing he did would ever catch up with him. Getting chased out of my hometown for helping the wrong guy at the wrong time and then trusting the wrong girl had been a hard lesson and it only got harder. I’d been forced to seek my uncle’s help to adopt a new identity in a tropical place that was a world away from my home. And that chain of events would indirectly kill the only love I’d ever known in the world.
Part of that story was my fault.
A larger percentage of responsibility belonged to someone else.
That was a topic due to be addressed very soon.
In the meantime I’d been busy getting all my chess pieces in order.
McGraw had yakked his head off all the way to Grande and back without requiring any input. To hear him talk he had a wild life packed with near death experiences and women begging to sit on his face. I’d estimate at least two thirds of his tales were total bullshit and the remaining portion was a very loose adaptation of reality. But that was McGraw, same as he’d always been, and it was nice to know that some things remained the same.
Speaking of things that remained the same, my gaze drifted to the flash of metal in the distance, the high fences encircling the frightful carnival known as the Arizona State Prison Complex at Emblem. How long would I have been trapped in that hell? An assault became a murder. A few people wearing important badges were eager to close the door on the question of who should be punished. If I’d stayed I would have been arrested. I could never have afforded a good lawyer and I would have been a dumbass to take my chances on the nearest exhausted public defender. Blaming law enforcement wasn’t enough, not when they’d been fed a litany of lies.
Nothing about Luanne should have shocked me. I figured her out even before she cornered me in t
he empty trailer one spring afternoon, dropped her dress to her ankles and offered to give me a free sample if I saw anything I liked. If I’d had any brains back then I would have run for the hills. But two things horny teenagers aren’t famous for are: 1. Good judgment 2. Refusing a free fuck. Luanne was a serpent wrapped in a hot body with great tits. She may have fooled everyone from my mother to her husband to the social sphere of greater Emblem but she didn’t fool me.
Leah was another story. She wasn’t part of my life after moving out of my mom’s place but I still believed her to be a sweet kid whose tender heart was forever exposed on her pinched little face. It hurt to be so wrong about Leah. She’d inherited the worst of her mother. And thanks to the vindictive Brandeis women I’d lost everything; my name, my family and my home.
I loved Emblem, a stubborn town crammed with battle scars and struggles. 'Like the Emblem prison? That Emblem?’ people would say and yes, they were the same. The prison was here. The prison would always be here, linked to the majority of the populace in some way. But the prison was only a piece of Emblem’s definition. Decade after decade the town doggedly endured until a drug crisis and a real estate collapse sapped much its lifeblood. Then it was like the spirit of Emblem sighed with resignation and lapsed into a coma. The people who could leave, left. The ones who stayed fought an uphill battle. A drive down Main Street to count the boarded storefronts became a miserable activity.
McGraw and I were stopped at the traffic light in front of the hundred year old pile of bricks that still served as Emblem High School.
I pointed. “Check it out, the old shithole looks a little more festive than usual.”
He regarded the streamers and shimmering garnishments tacked to the brick face of the building and shrugged. “Yeah, they had their homecoming dance last weekend and I guess they left all their crappy decorations up. Not sure what they’re celebrating since the team has been stinking up Friday night football. Tina’s kid sister was there and posted all kinds of pictures.” He paused. “That’s not the sister I’m fucking by the way. Swear I’m not dumb enough to dive into high school snatch.”