Wild Child

by Molly O'Keefe

He was trying not to get angry. Not to rise to her bait, because clearly she just wanted to fight. “Look, if you’re mad about your mom—”

  “Not everything is about my mom.”

  “Well, that certainly wasn’t about us.” He pointed to the desk, where everything had been scattered in their haste.

  She yanked on her tank top, pulled her black hair back, and started to tie it up in a ponytail. “It was about sex, Jackson. That’s all.”

  “Bullshit.” He wasn’t an idiot and he wasn’t going to be treated like one. “You want to be mad at someone, be mad at your mother. Or better yet, do what you said you were going to do and go talk to her.”

  “Oh!” she cried, stepping toward him, and honestly, he had no idea how this had happened. How in less than twenty minutes he’d gone from being so happy to see her, to bending her over his desk like a whore, to fighting with her. “Really, you’re the expert on talking.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked. He thought they’d been really honest in their relationship. He’d talked to her more than he’d talked to anyone since the shrinks after his mom and dad died.

  Monica grabbed her bag and unlocked the door. Jackson could see Ms. Watson in the hallway, trying very hard to appear busy and as though she hadn’t been listening.

  “It means talk to your sister.”

  The door, that stupid door, slammed shut behind her.

  Two hours later Monica sat at her desk, her world in shambles around her, staring at an email.

  While the writing is strong, its tone is problematic. I understand if it isn’t possible to create an emotional distance between yourself and the events of that night, or between yourself and your parents, but for the sake of the book, and success of the venture, you need to try. These three chapters are intriguing, but they sound like they were written by an angry teenager. I want the woman we met at the end of Wild Child to write these books. I want the woman I know you are to write these books. Can you try again?

  Monica closed her eyes and slouched back in the chair. Uncomfortable fucking desk chair, she couldn’t get a good slouch on. She tipped sideways and crawled up onto her bed.

  Worst. Day. Ever.

  How did I get here? she wondered. How did I get so empty?

  The scene with her mother. The scene … oh God, that awful, angry scene with Jackson. She had no idea how she was going to make that right. How was she going to explain that being unloved by the people she loved made her angry? Made her want to hurt herself.

  And that was why she’d gone to Jackson’s like that—to hurt herself. To prove to herself that she didn’t deserve happiness, that it wasn’t for her.

  She thought of how angry she’d been today seeing her mother, how it had driven her to act like the child she’d been and not the woman she was. And she was suddenly so angry at herself for always reacting. Always bouncing off and away from people, instead of being a fixed object secure in who she was. Secure in the rightness of her feelings.

  Her love for Jackson had been so clean just yesterday—it was the best thing she’d ever had—and then she’d gone and messed it up, dragged it down through the dirt. So that at the inevitable end, when he left her hurt and miserable, she could comfort herself with the idea that it hadn’t been all that special anyway.

  But it was special.

  In the drawer of the bedside table was a note from the only person who ever really knew her, all the i’s dotted with circles, and Jenna knew she was special.

  She was special.

  And she deserved some goddamn happiness.

  Enough.

  Right now, right here, she fixed herself to solid ground. She tugged and tore and pushed and pulled the anger away from the love she felt. The person she was.

  Spurred to action, she grabbed her laptop and started making some notes.

  What happened in his office with Monica haunted Jackson all day. He felt dirty and angry and worried, and when he went home that night he was ready to pop that bubble between him and his sister forever.

  “Gwen!” he shouted as he pushed open the front door. “We need to talk.”

  Silence greeted him, but that wasn’t strange. He went upstairs to her room, but it was empty. So were the den, the TV room, and the kitchen. He even checked the never-used sleeping porch. But she wasn’t there.

  He grabbed his phone. Where are you? He texted.

  At pageant practice. Going out with Jay after. Will be very drunk, so be sure to wait up.

  Furious, bent over the sink, he ate pork chops left over from who knows when.

  At eight o’clock he texted her again. No going out with Jay. Come on home.

  He stared at the screen, waiting for her angry answer, but it never came.

  Bullshit, he thought, and he walked around his empty house getting more and more angry. At his sister. At Monica. At his parents for dying in a car accident. At the world for not being controllable.

  At nine o’clock he found himself outside his sister’s bedroom door.

  Knowing he was crossing a line, but somehow unable to stop himself, he opened the door.

  What exactly he was looking for he didn’t know. Something. Anything. A small clue into what was going on with Gwen.

  Parents do this all the time, he told himself as he stepped over the threshold.

  Her room was a mess. Maybe every teenage girl was this way; he didn’t know. But it bothered him to see it now. She constantly complained about not having clean clothes to wear, but if she never put them down the laundry chute, how were they supposed to get clean? He grabbed the first few things off the floor, a tee shirt and her cut-offs, and stuffed them in the hamper. But as he did so, something fell out.

  It took a second for him to even recognize the silver strip as condoms. Condoms in his sister’s shorts. He picked them up off the floor.

  Lubricated, ribbed, magnum, and the dead giveaway … glow-in-the-dark.

  It had been a joke a week ago when Monica had pulled out these condoms. Glow-in-the-dark seemed dubious. But they worked, and at the time they found that out, he hadn’t been laughing.

  And maybe Gwen just happened to have the same kind. But he didn’t believe it.

  Monica was giving his sister condoms.

  His sister was having sex.

  It was enough to make him light-headed. Light-headed and furious.

  Chapter 22

  It was close to midnight when Monica knocked on the screen door of her mother’s house. The light clicked on over her head and all the small moths leapt into action.

  Turtle Man pushed open the screen door, wearing a robe and a disgruntled expression.

  “You know what time it is, don’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  “You want to speak to Simone?”

  She nodded.

  “Come on in. I’ll make some coffee.”

  The inside of the farmhouse was a surprise. Richly decorated. Homey, even. One room was filled with a big brown leather couch with bright orange pillows facing a big-screen television. A knitting basket sat on the floor near the edge of the couch. Knitting needles skewered red and yellow balls of yarn. There were beautiful rugs on the polished wooden floors and decorative tables with knickknacks.

  Must have come decorated, she thought. But then in the hallway filled with pictures she saw photos of her mother. Turtle Man. And two young men.

  “My kids,” Turtle Man said, watching her from the kitchen on the other end of the hallway. “Jake and Charlie.”

  Stunned, Monica looked back at the picture of Simone with her arms around one of the boys. Simone was smiling. Beside the man was a young woman. A pregnant young woman.

  “We’re expecting our first grandchild.” Turtle Man watched her carefully.

  Her throat throbbed, ached.

  “What’s your name?” Blind to the rest of the photos, she walked down the hallway. “I can’t keep calling you Turtle Man.”

  That he smiled was surprising; she was doin
g her best to piss him off. “Charles.”

  “Chuck?”

  “Charles. Why don’t you have a seat and I’ll go get Simone.”

  He pointed to the white chairs surrounding a circular distressed wooden table.

  It was the kind of table that spoke of family dinners and happy memories. She couldn’t imagine what Simone was doing with such a thing. Perhaps the version of Simone in those pictures out there, but not the one she knew. Not her mother.

  Monica sat, then took out her recorder and notebooks. Her three favorite pens. When she was organized, she reached out a hand for Reba, who jumped up in her lap and licked her chin.

  Monica was immeasurably comforted.

  “Hello.” Her mother’s voice, rough with sleep, preceded her out of the shadows from the stairs. But then she was there, in the white kitchen, a splash of green. Bright green. Monica blinked, disoriented. It had been so long since she’d seen her mother in anything but white, but now here she was in a bright green jersey robe.

  Her hair was a mess. A wild, white-blond cloud around her head. She wore no makeup and was still beautiful.

  “Charles made coffee?” Simone asked and as if in answer, the coffeemaker on the counter gurgled and hissed. “Would you like some?”

  Monica shook her head, her lips shut. Locked against the river of questions that were suddenly filling her mouth. This had to be calm, had to be controlled. She had to be removed and distanced. Not the girl she had been, but the woman she was.

  Simone poured her own coffee into a china cup with pink flowers and then sat at the table, carefully crossing her legs, pulling the green robe closed around her kneecaps.

  “What’s all this?” She pointed to the recorder.

  “I’m going to interview you,” Monica said.

  Simone nodded, as if everyone who showed up at her door at midnight did the same thing. Maybe they did; Simone’s life was a mystery. “All right.”

  Monica pushed Reba down onto the floor and pressed record on her machine. The click was epic, the sound of something big and irreversible starting.

  “How old were you when you met JJ?”

  “Monica, you know this.”

  “I’m not …” She was about to say “I’m not Monica,” but that would sound ridiculous. So she just said, “Answer the question.”

  “Fifteen.”

  “How old was JJ?”

  “Twenty. He was playing in a band down in Masonville. I snuck out of the house every weekend for a month to see him.”

  Monica created a timeline in her notebook.

  “And how old were you when you got pregnant?”

  “The first time? Fifteen.”

  Monica’s head shot up and Simone smiled, sadly. “You didn’t know? Well, I had a back-alley abortion that nearly killed me. When I got pregnant with you two years later he wanted me to get another abortion, but I couldn’t do it. After what I’d gone through before, you seemed like a miracle.”

  Simone had been seventeen and pregnant. For the second time.

  “How old were you when he first hit you?”

  Simone set down her china cup with a small thunk. “Seventeen. He didn’t like that I wouldn’t terminate the pregnancy.”

  Right. She took a deep breath that shuddered at the top. The cold, hard facts didn’t feel all that cold and hard. They felt hot, searing and alive. “Why did you stay with him?”

  Simone pursed her lips and tilted her head as if trying to find the answer where she’d hidden it. “I was alone. Daddy wouldn’t have me back—he made that clear when I ran off with JJ in the first place. I had no money. And, after you were born … well, my body changed. I was curvier, womanly. While still looking like a little girl. And people seemed to notice. A talent scout saw me at the Santa Monica pier with you one day and asked me to come in to see him. JJ was on tour at the time and I had a girlfriend look after you and I went in. Within two weeks I was booking national commercials. Print work. Playboy had contacted me.”

  “JJ didn’t like that.” It wasn’t a question; it was a memory, and Simone’s eyes flared.

  “No. He didn’t. His career was a … disappointment to him. And the constant touring was very difficult. And watching me start a career with a little success made him crazy. But he liked the money.”

  “So, he’d let you make the money and then knock you around when you got home.”

  “I had always hoped you didn’t remember that.”

  Monica shrugged, her notes consisting of scribbles at this point. “It would be nice not to.” Simone blanched at her words, lifted a trembling hand to her hair, and Monica had to look away from the chinks in her bright armor.

  “What made you finally decide to leave?” Monica asked.

  “I’d left a few times when you were smaller. But he always talked his way back. JJ … JJ was good at that. At promising that he’d be different. That he wouldn’t hurt me again. And I was good at believing him. But when you were six, you tried to stop him one night from hitting me and I realized … I realized I had to make a change.”

  “That’s when you decided to come back to Bishop?”

  “I took all the money I had saved and got us on a bus. I thought … I thought I’d buy us a house. Something small, and you could have a regular childhood.”

  Monica ignored it—the allure, the vision of a regular childhood.

  “Did you think he’d come after you?”

  Simone stared into her coffee cup. “I’d hoped not. It was naive of me to think that, I realize.” She shook her hair back, managing to pull herself back from some dark internal brink.

  “What do you remember from that night?” Monica asked.

  “What do you remember?”

  Stay under the bed, honey. Don’t get out for any reason.

  “Nothing,” she lied.

  “I remember hearing him on the steps. I remember putting you under the bed and then …” Simone ran her hand over the hem of her robe, over and over again, as if there were something there she couldn’t wipe off. “I remember grabbing Dad’s gun and thinking, ‘Oh, Simone, you’re overreacting. You’re being ridiculous.’ But … I’m glad I had that gun. The second he walked through that door, I was sure he was going to kill me. I was sure he was going to hurt you. I was … I was just sure of it.”

  “The people there that night agree with you.”

  Simone nodded, still so regal, and though they were long gone, Monica imagined the bruises and the scratches and the blood on that perfect face. It was as if they were still there, just beneath the surface.

  “What do you remember from afterwards?” Monica asked. “From London and Greece and France?”

  Simone smiled. “I remember you were so fierce in London. So protective. A guard dog. Pouring out all the booze, hiding the drugs.”

  “Your friends didn’t like it.”

  “My friends.” Simone waved her hand, dismissing the women, the notion of their friendship. “I remember being so glad that you were strong. That you could bark and bite at those women, not just because it was on my behalf, but because I had no bark and bite. None. I never did. And I thought it would protect you, that fierceness.”

  Monica almost said that it did. That it both saved her and got her into a lot of trouble. But this was an interview, not a conversation.

  “I don’t remember Greece at all,” Simone said, and Monica blinked. Astounded. “I was … in hindsight, it’s easy to see that I was dangerously depressed. I didn’t ever think about those months there until Charles …” Simone smiled, glancing over her shoulder to the shadows and the stairs. Monica wondered if he was listening. “Charles told me if we were going to be together, I needed to see a shrink and talk about some of the things I liked to pretend didn’t matter. Greece was one of the things we talked about.”

  Monica remembered with photographic clarity the sight of her mother’s hand slung over the side of that thin bed. Mom, she remembered crying, Mom, please get out of bed. Please talk to me.r />
  “You must have been terrified,” Simone said.

  “It was a blast.” The sarcasm didn’t make her feel better. “What about France?”

  “France was … scary.”

  “Really?” Monica asked.

  “You didn’t think so?”

  You had come back to me. You smiled, laughed, held my hand as we walked along the river. Monica found herself unable to say those words. “I’m interviewing you,” she said instead.

  “We had no more money. I’d spent all our savings. Used up everyone’s goodwill. And I knew we had to go back to the States. I’d been hiding for three years. We got back and I struggled to get work, crappy sitcoms and B movies, and game shows. And then Playboy called, and after that success, my agent told me about a reality TV show and I agreed.”

  “Did you like doing Simone Says?”

  “No. God, no.”

  “Then why the hell were we doing it?” she yelled. She hadn’t meant to yell. She picked up a pencil, put it down. At loose ends inside of herself.

  “I was thirty-three years old, Monica. I didn’t even have a high school degree. We had no money. None. The only other job offers coming my way with any real money attached were for adult films. I was just trying to make a living for us. A home. I wanted a chance to start over.”

  “It must have been a relief when I left,” Monica said. The interview was slipping away from her, devolving into memory and accusation, and she was trying to rise above her feelings, but there was no getting away from them. She started to gather her things, ready to leave. To find Jackson and punish herself on him. To make this bad feeling acutely more painful.

  This is what you do, a quiet voice whispered. When it gets too painful, when it gets too hard, you run away. Or you make things worse. It’s what you did with Jackson yesterday. It’s why you will never be happy.

  Simone slipped her hand over Monica’s and she was so stunned, she didn’t move.

  She forced herself to stay, to sit and be there in this painful, awful, honest moment. It was like holding her hand in a fire. She had to open her mouth to breathe through the pain.

  “In a way, Monica, it was. I know how that sounds, but I was scared and you were so angry. And I made a lot of mistakes. More mistakes than I can count, but I should never have let you go.”