by Cora Brent
Suddenly I’m eager to get this first hurdle over with so I spill out the rest of my coffee, plant a kiss on my little nephew’s forehead and head down the hall. Before I go I wave out the window to Bree. She doesn’t see me. She’s trying to gracefully wrench her heel out of the mud while a chicken pecks at her lime green toenails.
The Blue Room smells, strongly, oppressively, of freesia. One quick glance around and I see the culprits; a cluster of of those benign jelly-like air fresheners that gradually dry up and wither into a hard crust. It’s an unpleasant odor to me because it reminds me of Lita. Her signature scent was an expensive freesia-based perfume and she always wore too goddamn much of it. I grab the air fresheners in a hug and and chuck them out the door into the hallway before settling into a wide papasan chair. I feel like I’m sitting in a cereal bowl.
There is a laminated piece of paper sharing a table with a camera. I nearly topple out of the papasan chair as I reach for it. Silently I scan the list of questions. There are five of them and most don’t seem so bad.
What was it like growing up in a famous family?
How do you feel about returning to your childhood home?
How would you describe your relationship with each of your siblings?
What was your life like immediately prior to returning to Atlantis Star?
What is the biggest regret of your life?
Surprisingly, talking is easy. I don’t really mind that there’s surely some dude holed up in front of a screen somewhere, absorbing every word I say. I’ve spent my life grappling with my family’s legacy and it’s almost a relief to say the words. I know there are a lot of people who would roll their eyes over the complaints of a so-called privileged little rich girl but there are a lot of people who don’t know shit. They can assume whatever the hell they want. I’m here for the sake of my family. If anyone needs to despise me, or all of us, for the spectacle we’re making, then so be it.
It’s not until I reach the final question that I find myself stumbling. I repeat it out loud.
“What is the biggest regret of my life?”
He’s there, unbidden, unwanted, and my tongue loses the will to function. For a long time I had nursed a secret fantasy that he would find me. The fantasy never got any further than that. How could it? I’d made it cruelly clear that I never wanted to see him again. For all I know he isn’t even alive. He left here a penniless, furious boy. The world doesn’t have patience for a boy like that.
In the end I leave the question unanswered. Better people than me have tried to put words to the agony of lost love. They usually fail.
After rolling out of the papasan chair and switching the camera off, I stand in the center of the Blue Room for a moment, listening to the silence. Somewhere in the distance I hear the bark of my brother Monty’s voice, then the burst of a car horn. I don’t especially want to leave the Blue Room. The remainder of the day yawns in front of me like a blank canvas I’m expected to populate one molecule at a time. Not for the first time I wonder what will happen if Gary and friends fail to extract their pound of tabloid flesh. After all, a bunch of wayward siblings wandering around a former movie set and trying to think of things to say to one another doesn’t make for compelling programming, no matter whose blood runs through their veins. Just a little while ago Ava had argued with me that this is real life, but people won’t tune in for tedious breakfast exchanges or to watch Brigitte skipping around with chickens. They want shouting and hair pulling, scandal and sex.
It’s kind of funny to think of your daily life turning into channel surf bait. Picture some bored married couple lounging on opposite ends of a faux leather couch and flipping channels to find a distraction from the fact that they’d rather do just about anything than have sex with each other. Maybe if there’s nothing on television one will wander into the bathroom, iPad in lap, playing Free Cell on an endless loop while sitting on the toilet while the other one composes a completely fictitious Facebook post.
I don’t know how much time I’ve been sitting here in the Blue Room. There’s no clock. Eventually someone will be obliged to come hunt me down so I decide to save them the trouble.
The hallway is quiet. There are three bedrooms in the old house. I’ve got one and my sisters have the other two. I heard from Brigitte that during the planning phase of the show there were plans to add a few rooms on to the house but Spence had a fit and wouldn’t cooperate. Apparently Gary knows when to pick his battles because he gave up on that one. Spence was gallant enough to give me his bedroom and he’s decamped to our father’s old paneled study. Monty could spare one of the closet-sized rooms in the old caretaker’s place, but he and Spence still don’t mesh well together so it’s probably better if they stay apart.
After wandering around the house, nearly tripping over another stupid cameraman, and feeling like the walls of the brick house are pushing inward, I step outside into the yard. The sunlight is harsher than a tanning lamp. A fat brown chicken darts in my direction and collides with my legs, causing me to unleash a shrill yelp and jump back about six feet.
“Jesus,” Spencer scolds as he stalks past with a saddle slung over a wide shoulder. “You girls will jump at the sight of your own damn shadow.”
“Sorry,” I mumble, “I’m not accustomed to being assaulted by poultry.”
My brother pauses, looks me up and down with the same inscrutable gaze that he was born with. When Spencer looks your way you can’t help but feel vaguely inadequate. It’s annoying. I don’t really need anyone’s help to feel inadequate.
I roll my eyes at his silence. “Good morning to you too, little brother.”
He issues a Spenceresque grunt and loses interest in both me and the livestock.
“Hey!” I have to trot a little to catch up to him.
He turns around and waits.
“Uh, you need any help?”
There’s no expression on his face. I’m sure I’m boring him. “With what?”
I resist the urge to lean over and unleash an ear-splitting shriek right in his face, just to see whether it’s possible to rattle his cool cowboy composure at all.
“I don’t know, anything. Sponging off the horses? Shoveling manure?”
“Nah,” he turns away. “I’ve got it covered.”
“Spence!” I shout. I want to ask him not to leave me here in the dusty yard with nothing to do. Ava can keep herself busy with the baby. Brigitte is surely off somewhere coordinating her next staged camera appearance. I don’t want to think about what Monty is doing because it’s probably disgusting. I’ve got to find something to keep busy.
“Can you rebuild an engine?” Spencer asks.
“Huh?”
“I’ve got a ’75 Mustang in the barn.”
“Oh. Why?”
“Restoration project. The owner lives in Phoenix, was a friend of August’s. Which I’m sure is why he sought me out. Lord knows there are closer places he could have gone.” The saddle on Spence’s shoulder is thick, expensive. It looks heavy. He doesn’t even shift his weight though. He holds it there casually as if it’s a wad of cotton.
I fall in beside him and he resumes walking to the barn. “Can’t help you with that,” I say. “But I need to do something.” I lower my voice, hoping that maybe the mic doesn’t pick up everything, then figuring it doesn’t matter anyway. “Please, Spence.”
Spencer walks in long strides. The soles of his leather boots make rhythmic crunching sounds in the dirt. At first glance he’s not as striking as Monty but there’s a rugged surety about him. I’ve seen the way women drool when he’s around. Spence isn’t one for relationships though. That might be the only thing he has in common with Monty. He does whatever he wants and shrugs over the fallout. He’s a born loner.
“If you want to clean out the stall I’m fine with that.”
“Good,” I breathe, oddly relieved to be granted permission to mop up horse crap. “What about that?” I point at a tiny red house sitting in the middle of t
he yard. It sits several feet above the ground on raised wooden stilts and a plank runs from the ground to the cutout door.
Spence curses and glares at the thing. “Chicken coop. They dumped it here with those fucking birds. Pain in the ass to keep chickens alive out here. Now I’ve got to enclose the damn thing with barbed wire or else the coyotes will be rolling in a bloodbath an hour after sundown.”
The chickens, unaware as to the precarious nature of their fate, bob around the yard and peck and the dirt.
“I can help,” I offer.
“Maybe,” my brother answers.
Spence slides open the barn door and I’m met with a breath of cool, musty air flavored with just a hint of shit. It’s a nice barn, as barns go. Spence razed the dilapidated structure that had been eroding since the mid fifties. He built something sturdier and more functional in its place. No one would ever accuse the boxy structure of being aesthetic but it’s not supposed to be. There is wall separating the attached garage where Spence works on cars to pay the bills. Out of the four simple stalls on the other side, three are occupied. There is the soft rumble of an exhaling animal to my left and I’m nudged by a large brown nose.
Spencer heaves the saddle from his arms and holds out a wide palm. “Easy, girl. Easy there, Pet.”
“Pet?” I squint in the darkness at the gentle brown mare. “This isn’t the same horse.”
“Nope.”
“But you gave her the same name.”
“Yup.”
I nod in toward the horse in the neighboring stall. “His name Pet too?”
“No.”
Spencer doesn’t seem like he’s in the mood to talk, which is pretty well par for the course. Words and Spencer have never gotten along real well.
I grab a wide broom off the wall and start sweeping the floor in front of the stalls, even though there’s nothing much on the floor for me to sweep. Out of the corner of my eye I see Rash creep silently through the door, camera in hand. I’m startled to realize there are at least three other cameras mounted in the beams of the barn. For a few seconds I’d forgotten about them.
“How are ya, Ren?” Spence asks and he gives me a frank look.
I swallow. “I can’t complain.”
“You could. But you won’t.”
“What does that mean?”
“I didn’t think you’d show up. I really didn’t. Figured this place was full of too many ghosts for you.”
“I can handle the ghosts of Savages past.”
“All of them?” Spence has turned his face away and I’m not sure I heard him right.
“What?”
He looks me in the eye. “You heard me.”
I lower my head. “I did. It’s time I got around to thanking you for what you did that night.”
“I didn’t do nothing. So don’t thank me.”
A long, silent moment passes and then Spence produces carrots for the horses. Silently he hands a few over, watching as I offer them to the animals.
“And how are you, Spence? I worry about you out here you know.”
“I know. You shouldn’t.”
“Do you have a girl?”
“Whenever I need one.”
The earlier gloom has passed and I laugh. Spencer isn’t bragging. He just tells the truth and doesn’t care what anyone thinks about it, not unlike Montgomery in that way. Both of my brothers are hard characters. At this point they might get along if either of them decided to give a half ass effort. Perhaps that’s one thing that will wind up coming out of these odd circumstances. Maybe it will bring us together.
Or tear us apart.
Spencer soothes the horses for a few more minutes and then retreats into the garage. After sweeping up the stalls, refilling the horse troughs and straightening some odds and ends I can’t think of anything else to do in here. Despite the fact that there’s sweat trickling down my back and a gritty sensation all over my skin, I feel good. There’s a certain satisfaction that comes with work, any work. Now if I only I can spend the next eight weeks sweeping out the barn, I might make it through all this.
Spence has his head in the guts of a car and I don’t want to disturb him. The sun is hotter than it was when I ducked into the barn. I wish I had some sunglasses as I briskly cover the distance between the barn and the brothel. There’s no answer on Monty’s door, meaning he’s either sleeping something off or he’s out somewhere searching for trouble.
After giving up on Monty and walking around the south side of the property, I pause at the ruins of a rose garden once kept by my grandmother. Hell only knows how she managed to keep delicate roses blooming in a fierce climate like this or why she would even have bothered when she and her husband only averaged a few months out of the year here, but she did. I’ve seen the pictures. Enormous lemon-colored roses that looked as if they were painted with a Technicolor brush.
My nephew is asleep on a leather chair in the living room, curled up like a cat with a small stuffed dog wedged in the crook of an elbow. He’s precious, this little boy. I need to make an effort to spend more time with him. I touch his sweet face as I pass by.
I hear Brigitte’s voice coming from somewhere, echoing throughout the narrow hallways. She’s having a biting argument with someone via speaker phone, interrupting every six seconds to talk over the guy on the other end. The man she’s yelling at sounds as if he’s had enough of her. Brigitte has a flair for provoking moods like that.
Ava is softly at my side before I hear her coming.
“Did Monty take off?”
“I don’t know, did he?” she wrinkles her nose. “I thought I heard an engine gunning a little while ago so it’s possible. Where have you been?”
“Capering around in the manure with Spence.”
“Spence likes manure.”
“Of course he does. Manure doesn’t talk back.”
Ava laughs lightly and brushes a hand across her sleeping son’s cheek. Alden’s father was cut from the same cloth we were. Child of celebrities, privileged and fucked up since birth. He’d already been hitting the party scene pretty hard when he and Ava hooked up. Costars on a short-lived family sitcom, they were bad for each other; a wild and entitled pair who behaved as rowdily as they pleased. The paparazzi had a field day with them partying all over Hollywood and Lita, goddamn her, encouraged it. Of course it couldn’t last. All Ava got out of it was a broken heart and early motherhood. She told me once what Lita had demanded upon the news of her pregnancy. “Get rid of it.” Ava refused. After that Lita was pretty well done with her. She’d been done with me for a long time already.
Ava follows me when I head to the kitchen. My hands are dirty. All I can find in the way of soap is an ancient trial sized bottle of dishwashing liquid. It takes me a full minute to realize there’s a crew member in the room. It’s Elton, the guy Monty apparently had a rough time with yesterday. He doesn’t make a sound. He’s just parked there in a corner, like an appliance. For all I know he’s been glued to the wall.
“You know,” says Ava brightly, “I think it would be fun to have a nice family dinner tonight.”
“You do?”
Somewhere there are families who habitually sit down together at a certain hour and avoid eye contact as they slice their way into fried pork chops. At least I think there are. I’ve never actually seen one. Savages don’t do sit down dinners. When we were kids we would just kind of forage handfuls of cereal or a bag of chips from the pantry because Lita couldn’t even boil water. Even when I learned to cook, meals were somewhat haphazard because no one could seem to sit down in the same place at once.
Ava is rooting around in the cabinets, which are magically stocked with things that seem to puzzle her.
“What do you do with tomato paste?” she asks.
“Glue bananas together,” I say but she doesn’t seem to hear me.
“I’ll make spaghetti,” announces my sister loudly, as she grabs some cans and a box of pasta.
I don’t buy it. Sure, A
va’s calmed down a lot since her party days but she doesn’t fool anyone as the domestic type. Last time I visited her she agonized over how to puree carrots for Alden’s dinner. Someone must have put the idea in her head that all of us squished around a table for an hour might light some fireworks.
When I open the refrigerator I am surprised to see it as well stocked as most restaurants. No way was that Spence’s doing.
“You know,” I say, “I bet it wouldn’t be too tough to grill up some of those steaks later.”
Ava looks down at the ingredients in her hands, sets them on the counter and twirls a troubled finger around a strand of hair. “Maybe I could make a salad or something.”
I close the fridge. “I love salad.”
Not true. I’m a meat lover, always will be. A bowl of green stuff is about as desirable to me as an enema.
Ava’s looking kind of desperate though. I understand. We have instructions. We’re supposed to keep things interesting. And if that means making asses out of ourselves in the kitchen and then suffering through an uncomfortable family meal then so be it. My sister looks nervous and for a second I just want to hug her and tell her everything will be all right. My other sister is screaming for someone to go fuck himself and the noise causes Alden to start howling for his mother.
Ava rushes back to the living room and when I get there a minute later she’s got her little boy in her arms, rocking him back and forth while his small hands grip her shoulders. The sight of them, mother and son, makes my heart hurt a little.
When have I ever loved anyone like that? Have I ever really loved anyone at all?
Of course, I love my brothers and sisters. The affection I had for my father seems vague at this point. Lita was impossible to love.
And beyond that…friendships weren’t strong, the relationships short and unfulfilling. I’ve said them before, the words. I’ve said “I love you” and meant it completely. But that was a long time ago, when I was someone different.
I try to picture what he would look like now. He was nearly a grown man when I knew him. His arms, he had the strongest arms. Once they carried me a distance that had to be well beyond a mile.