He should’ve considered himself successful. Last year he’d been commissioned to do an oil painting for the Miami Museum of Art and the earnings for it alone were stellar. Better still, his gallery showings were always well attended and always profitable. But his scale for weighing success was tilted and broken—after all, he was the son of Daichi Tanaka. Short of morphing into Picasso, Van Gogh, or his father, success was all but unattainable.
DEENA ARRIVED AT her grandmother’s house in time for breakfast. There were grits on the stove alongside sausage links, eggs, bacon and flapjacks. Coffee brewed in the percolator while orange juice waited on the table. But Deena could stomach no food. Not for what she had to do.
She stared at the flimsy slab of door that stood between hers and Anthony’s rooms. White and peeling, he’d slammed it in her face in exasperation, anger and annoyance. What she wouldn’t give for him to slam it one more time.
Deena brought a hand to the brass knob and hesitated. Never had she walked into Anthony’s room unannounced. There was something so final about presuming to do so, so irreversible, that her body seemed unwilling to do it. She turned the brass knob and the door slipped open. There. It’s done.
The room was stale; the white curtains drawn and already gathering dust. Air Jordans were strewn about—an orange and red one near the entrance, its match near the window, a purple one at her feet, the other absent. As Deena stared at those shoes, her brother’s pride, a bitter sort of amusement washed over her. How many times had Anthony declared that his shoes were off limits, that they would be touched only over his dead body? And how right had he been?
Deena moved to open the lone window. The heat and smell of old shoes threatened to smother her. The window caught, refusing to open, and she abandoned it. Looking around she realized she’d neglected to bring a box or bag for mementos. She headed for the kitchen and returned with a fistful of Glad bags.
Deena worked slowly, gathering and folding his shirts and his pants, giving them the attention that he never did. Her mind was on autopilot, processing data and giving orders through a fog of melancholy. She bagged shirts, shoes and sneakers for Goodwill before digging out a pair of Jordans for herself. They were his first pair, as gleaming as the day he’d bought them. Varsity red and white, the sneakers were a vintage tribute to originals released two decades earlier. Deena set them aside. They would join a fitted Miami Heat cap and a bracelet he used to wear, now in her closet at home.
She moved on to his dresser, an old oak hand-me down with five drawers, and stopped at the sight of his keys. Air eluded her. Silver and unassuming, the keys sat, forgotten.
Deena lifted them with trembling fingers and closed the keys in her fist. He’d forgotten them that night, left there on the dresser as he went to his death. Would he have returned had he remembered? Would he have lived had he remembered?
Deena brought the keys to her heart and with a sob. Never would they be used again. Not at her house, or her grandmother’s, or anywhere. Ever.
In the end, it was the keys and that single, unforgiving word that brought her to her knees. Never would she see her brother again.
Ever.
DEENA REACHED UNDERNEATH the leather bucket seat and felt for a lever. When she found it, she adjusted her chair so that the back was bone straight and her knees brushed the steering wheel. With a deep breath, she turned and looked at Tak.
“You can’t drive like that.”
Deena frowned. “But I want to be sure I can reach—”
He leaned over and yanked the handle. Her seat shot back.
“I said, you can’t drive like that. It’s too close. Plus, you look ridiculous.”
She pursed her lips. “Fine. But can I at least get close enough to reach the steering wheel?”
“Steering wheel yes, headlights no.”
She rolled her eyes. “You exaggerate, as always.”
“Probably. Now come on. Hands at ten and two.”
Deena swallowed. “Can you give me a sec? I mean, I’m wrestling with nerves here. You’re teaching me to drive in a Ferrari.” She stared at the instrument panel. The car had six speedometers.
“We’ll go slow, I promise. But we’ve got to start to go at all.”
She nodded. “Ok. What first? I’m all yours.”
“Don’t tempt me, Deena Hammond. I’m but a man.”
He smiled at her blush.
“Tell you what. Let’s practice changing gears. Foot on the clutch as you push in shift from first to second.”
Deena nodded, her left foot sliding to the clutch as her right hand found the gear shift.
“Do that up to six, then back down to one a couple of times.”
“But this feels silly.”
“Good. Let me know when it feels natural.”
She sighed.
After absentmindedly whistling ‘Sakura, Sakura’, a song he’d told her was from his childhood, he turned to Deena again. “Put the car in neutral.”
“Am I going to drive now?”
“That’s the plan.” He sat up straighter. “Now push the clutch in, start the car, and slowly take your foot off the clutch.”
She smiled weakly, but stayed planted. There’d been no driver’s ed, no uncle with an old jalopy, and certainly no dad to teach her to drive. In fact, at twenty-four, this was her first time behind the wheel of a car. She just wished it wasn’t a Ferrari.
“It’s okay. I promise, I’ve paid the insurance,” he said.
She knew it wasn’t okay if she wrecked it, and that he was just making her feel better, and she appreciated the effort.
“Okay,” she whispered.
He placed a hand over hers, warm and strong.
“Foot on the clutch?”
“That’s the one on the left, right?”
“That would be it.”
“Then yes.”
A hand over hers, he turned the key in the ignition. She glanced at the hand, larger and lighter, and exhaled at the slight pressure he applied. They were the hands of a painter—nimble, skilled, practiced. His livelihood depended on the preciseness of his touch, the softness or hardness of the pressure he applied, the stroke that he used.
Deena exhaled noisily. That was enough of that kind of thinking.
“Okay now, shift to first then off the clutch. Easy does it.”
She inhaled and her foot inched until it pained with the careful, creaking way she moved it.
“It’s moving! What do I do?”
There was a wide-open parking lot before her and beyond that, a fence.
“Give me a little to the left.” He covered her hand on the steering wheel and used it to turn.
She gripped the ten and two o’clock positions, and attempted to turn the wheel. The result was an awkward twist of the body that made Tak laugh.
“What?” Deena said. But she was smiling. He didn’t laugh at her the way Aunt Caroline or Keisha did. When he laughed at her, it made her want to laugh too.
“You can’t keep your hands there, Dee. It’s just a starting position.”
Dee. He had begun to call her that lately, and she liked it. She’d never had a nickname before.
She glanced at him. “I knew that.”
“Liar.” He turned his attention to the parking lot. “Start turning left. We’re just going to circle this thing until you get the hang of it.”
“And until I can go straight?”
He grinned. “Yeah. That too.”
There was driver’s ed at her high school, but with one teacher and 3,600 students, enrollment was near impossible. Likewise, when she was a teenager, there’d been no one in her family with money enough for a car, let alone private instruction. So here was her first lesson.
After stalling the car three times in a hasty abandonment of the clutch, Deena now inched around the near-empty parking lot of a Miami Beach retirement home to the backdrop of a setting sun. A slung-low chain fence circled the property, accented by a series of low and manicured hedges.
Three cars were parked at the front—an old white Chevrolet, a green Ford pickup and a red Toyota Camry. Behind them were six rows of empty spaces—spaces that Deena weaved through pitifully.
“You’re doing great,” Tak said.
She grinned. It wasn’t true, of course, but she couldn’t remember the last time someone had lied to spare her feelings.
“Thank you for that,” she said. “And by ‘that’ I mean the lie.”
“Well, progress is great in my book. And moving is progress.” He patted her knee. “Besides, you’re way too harsh on yourself.”
She concentrated on the asphalt between the front row and the empty spaces. He was right, but his intuition with her was unnerving. “You can’t possibly know that. You don’t even know me.”
He glanced at her. “You don’t believe that. At least not the way you’re saying it.”
He was right again, but he needn’t be so damned confident about it.
“You want to say something?”
He grabbed the wheel and sharpened her turn to avoid a slow collision with the chain link fence. She snatched her foot from the clutch and, again, the Ferrari shut down.
“Sorry,” she said.
“Relax. No harm done. And anyway, it’s just a possession.”
She grew up in a carless family. She knew what it was to need a ride, to miss a bus, to find a place inaccessible because of the public transportation route. A car was not just a possession.
“Spoken like a true rich kid,” she said as she started the car again, foot on the clutch.
“I wasn’t always rich,” he said. “But you’re right, I’ve never been poor. Not even close. Unless you count the time I called my otosan an asshole and he emptied my bank account.”
“What’s an otosan?” Deena asked.
“Hmm? Oh, it means ‘dad.”
“You called Daichi an asshole?” She’d seen his father fire someone for accidentally calling him Mr. Tanala, so she couldn’t imagine he’d have much threshold for profanity.
“Yeah, he took it about as well as you’d expect. Told me he’d show me what an asshole was, and he did.” Tak grinned.
“I can’t believe you have your teeth. Boy, my grandma doesn’t even allow backtalk, let alone cursing at her.”
He glanced at her. She was circling the parking lot again.
“What?”
He shook his head. “I thought you told me your family was kind of rough. Jail, teen pregnancies, that kind of thing.”
Deena nodded. “Yeah? So what?”
“So, I’m thinking, maybe backtalking is the least of her worries.”
Deena burst out laughing. Those were her sentiments exactly.
GRANDPA EDDIE USED to say that everything had a beginning, middle and end. Lizzie’s beginning was in the sixth grade when her math teacher offered to pass her if she showed him her tits.
Mr. Carson was his name, and he was a pudgy, pale-faced man who sweated all the time. He’d locked the door to his classroom that day and pulled down the shades, before turning to an eleven-year-old Lizzie.
“You just—you just want to see them?”
Carson nodded and his eyes darted about briefly. “If you don’t want to, you don’t have to, you know.”
Lizzie shook her head. She knew a good deal when she heard one. “So, let me get this straight. I take off my shirt and you’ll fix my grade?”
Carson swallowed. “Not for the whole year. That would be too suspicious. Just…a couple of test grades.”
Lizzie’s hands faltered at the hem of her pink t-shirt. “But I could still fail.”
Carson shook his head. “I won’t let you. Your grades won’t be the best, but I’ll pass you.”
Lizzie nodded, satisfied with the answer. She pulled her pink tee up and over her head to reveal two rounded breasts, clad in a tan bra.
“That too,” Carson said. He glanced at the door, then led her away from it, despite it being locked and the shade pulled. “I want to see everything.”
Lizzie shrugged, and then reached around to unsnap her bra.
“Slower.”
With a sigh, Lizzie peeled away the bra.
“Now let me see it.”
Carson held out a hand and Lizzie handed the bra over. He inspected the seams, ran a finger along the clasp, raised it to his face and sniffed. There was a bulge in his pants.
“Is that all?” Lizzie demanded when he handed her back her bra.
Carson nodded. “That’s all.”
With a shrug, she pulled it back on, surprised by how easy it had been.
Mr. Carson had been her beginning. He’d taught her that men lived for their cocks, and that if you knew that you knew everything. So she returned to him again and again, for more than just grades. And Mr. Carson obliged, at first for a peek, and then for a grope, and finally, for no less than a blowjob each time.
For Lizzie, it was a short leap from swallowing cock for a good grade to swallowing cock for most anything. No man, it seemed, was immune to a young and willing girl with a wet and willing mouth.
ARCHITECTURE. IT WAS order in a world of chaos, sense in a world of madness. It relied on math and science instead of grievances and emotions, and rewarded hard work, dedication and achievement. For Deena, it was the only thing that made sense.
Some days she felt like her grandmother loved her. Those were the times when she would welcome Deena, fix her breakfast and fawn over her. They’d talk whatever projects Deena had planned and the day she would open her own firm. Her grandmother would be so proud of her, tell her how smart she was—as smart as her father.
Then there were the other days. The days when she looked at her with disgust, spitting venomous words about the similarities between Deena and her mother.
She hated those days.
Standing in her grandmother’s kitchen with the sleeves rolled up on her crisp white blouse, Deena grated cheddar for the mac and cheese. She and Lizzie were alone this Sunday, chatting as they waited for their aunts and grandmother to return from a run to the store. She was careful to keep the conversation light—no school, no family, no expectations for the future. They stuck to music and movies and things that didn’t matter. As they talked, their cousin Keisha arrived with two of her four children, and the father of the eldest, Steven “Snowman” Evans.
Deena’s back was to the entrance of the kitchen—a gaping squared-out hole in the middle of puke green walls. She didn’t see Snowman until it was too late.
“Deena, my favorite girl,” he said, his voice throaty and intimate at her back. She cringed.
Snowman was a tall and brawny creep with a pool ball head and deep toffee skin. His moustache and beard looked penciled-in, while his front teeth glittered with diamonds. Most days he wore an oversized white t-shirt with a hem near his knees and jeans he was forced to hike up. He was the sort of guy that a girl kept an eye on, unsure as to why, but certain it was needed.
“Steven,” Deena said. She could feel the eyes of Keisha on her back. Whenever Snowman was around, she clung to him like asphalt to earth.
Snowman inhaled. “Damn. You always smell so good.”
Deena swallowed. Her skin wanted to flee her body. And she could smell his breath, too, beer and tobacco early on a Sunday afternoon. Either it or he made her stomach turn.
“Please move.” She closed her eyes, desperate to control the tremble in her voice. “Please.”
These were the times when she hated herself. When her body shook and fear kept her from doing what was right. Then, more than ever, she hated herself.
“You want me to beg for it. I know you do.” He released a tremulous exhale, and God help her, he touched her—fingertips at her arm. “And you still a virgin, ain’t you? Yeah.” He trailed icy fingers along her elbow as though they were the only two in the room. “Tight like a virgin.”
There was nothing but a flimsy aluminum grater in one hand, knuckles blanched from clenching, and a nub of cheese she’d shredded to nothi
ng.
Finally, Keisha spoke.
“Snow?”
Nothing.
“Snow!”
“What?” he barked.
Deena kept her eyes on the sink. But before Keisha could answer, they were interrupted by the clamor of Hammond women returning from the store. Deena finally turned to face them—and Snow.
It was no surprise to her that Emma, Caroline and Rhonda were met by a wholly re-imagined Snowman, who greeted them with hugs while taking their bags. He called Caroline “Mom” and Deena’s grandmother, “Grandma.” The exchange with Rhonda was stiff but civil.
“’Lizabeth, there’s a girl outside asking after you,” Grandma said, still glowing from Snowman’s affections.
Lizzie stood. “Did you catch her name?”
Emma shook her head and Lizzie dashed out.
Deena’s grandmother turned on her. “Put these here groceries away. I need to get off my feet.”
No sooner did Deena turn than did Keisha grab her wrist.
“You better learn your damned place when it comes to Snowman.”
Deena stared back at her, wide-eyed. Her grip was tight on her arm. “I don’t want him. And you shouldn’t either.”
Keisha’s gaze narrowed. “Stay away from him, Deena. Last warning.”
“I will. You don’t have to worry.”
Keisha heaved Deena’s arm aside. “Worry? You’re the only one who should be worrying. The last time a girl was here to see that slut of a sister of yours it turned out to be a fifty-year-old man.”
Deena stared, trying to blink her way to comprehension. When it came, she dashed out, after her sister.
A cherry red Escalade with custom spinning wheels, a scantily clad teen in a scoop neck tee, and, as Keisha had predicted, a paunch-bearing, middle-aged man with a receding hairline, were all before Grandma Emma’s house.
Lizzie leaned against the door of the Escalade and giggled as he ran a finger down the crease between her breasts. Deena stormed them, outrage without surprise, disgust without disbelief, fueling her every step. Down the walkway she tore, shouting her sister’s name, and when she reached them, she snatched her.
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