I’m looking up towards the sky. The drainpipe sticks out from the side of the villa. It sways in the wind. Massive, angry storm clouds float overhead.
I’m jumbled on a pile of bodies in the garden next to the abandoned orchestra’s stage. The bodies belong to the group of publicists that came over to see what a suicided Hollywood star looks like, all splattered on the ground. They’re the only reason I’m alive. They broke my fall. One publicist holds his arm as another helps him from the ground. The guy with the ulna sticking out refuses to move. It’s a moment before I realise that none of the breaking or cracking belonged to me. I pick myself up and the guy below me screams as I grab his leg to steady myself.
‘Who are you?’ the publicist holding his arm says.
‘He’s not my client. Who cares?’ the shoulder guy answers. ‘Where is my client?’
‘Can we focus here?’ the ulna publicist grits from the ground. You can see his marrow dribble from his split bone. It looks like dried meat sauce. ‘We’ve got to decide who we need to pay off to make this go away.’
Priorities.
All around us people are running and screaming and looking guilty.
When I stand it feels like the whole world is moving. The sky is grey as clouds swirl and a loud wind howls from over the cliffs. The tables in the garden slide like they’re pucks on an air-hockey table. They slide, then pause and slide again, before completely blowing over on the lawn. China dishes and crystal glasses and food and real silver silverware go everywhere. Even the statue of the princess has been knocked over; she’s landed between her evil stepbrother’s legs. How embarrassing. The Party of the Year is a disaster. Celebrities flee like children as their PR handlers shout at them. A martial-arts hero pushes a Best Actress winner to the ground and dives into her limo, which speeds down the gravel drive without her.
I hear thunder, but it’s only in my head. I look up to the third-floor window, the one in the west wing, the one where I saw Emma. There’s blood on the pane now.
My head reels. Emma? No. Not Emma…
In my mind it feels like it’s a cold November night in California. I stumble into the grand foyer. I catch a glimpse of myself in one of the large mirrors. My tux jacket is shredded where it caught on the drainpipe’s retainer. My face is beaten.
On the grand staircase there’s blood that dribbles up the stairs. I follow it to the second-floor art gallery.
‘Did you see the gun she had against his head?’ a woman shrieks as she passes me on her way down the stairs.
‘The gun?’ the man guiding her by the arm says. ‘Did you hear her say she was going to pull the rest of his cock off?’
My head thumps like someone’s put a pressure cooker inside it. Every floor of the villa is in chaos. Public relations people bark orders at their celebrities like they’re scolding five-year-olds.
‘You were never here!’
‘You had the stomach flu and couldn’t make it!’
‘We’re going to have to release a sex tape to get the public interested in something else! We’ll anal it if we have to!’
The celebrities, some look more culpable than others.
The trail of blood continues to the third-floor ballroom, which was once buzzing with Hollywood’s hottest stars feeling self-important and admiring all the movie props that sit in glass cases. Now the room is abandoned. One of the buffet tables has been knocked over. Food is everywhere. A horrible smell emanates from the corner of the room by the Breakfast at Tiffany’s poster next to the bathroom door that’s been forced open. It’s the smell of Nico’s shit.
My head throbs. The window. It was on the third floor – this floor. I race from the ballroom to the west wing. But this floor of the west wing, it’s just another gallery. A very narrow gallery. Where the room should be, the one that owns the window where the girls are, there’s a wall. Muffled screams come from behind it. The wall, I pound on it. I yell, ‘Emma! Emma!’ I don’t know what else to call her.
I claw and pull down every painting in the hall. None of them are hidden doorways. Then a muffled shriek comes from behind the wall. And me, I see myself sitting in the cold Hollywood hills on that November night. I see myself letting Emma die again.
I dash back into the ballroom, past the cinema. Maybe the roof? I start towards the stairs leading towards the rooftop and that’s when I notice them: a pair of legs wiggling from behind the tipped-over buffet table. He’s lying right underneath the poster of my dad’s favourite actress.
‘Phineas!’ I yell. I kneel by his side. I clutch his shoulders. ‘How do you get to the girls?’
On the Breakfast at Tiffany’s poster there’s a streak of blood running down from Audrey’s knees to just behind Phineas’s back. His white shirt is cranberry red. His head lolls side to side as he speaks. He says, ‘It’s her, you know? Jonathan’s girl. She’s here…’
I ball my shredded jacket into his stomach to try to stop the bleeding. ‘Phineas, please. I need to get to the girls. My sister. How do you get into the room?’
‘I was in the room … She came in and shot me. Not going back,’ he says with a far away look in his eyes. ‘Came up here to hide.’
I say, ‘Please…’
He says, ‘Epiphan … after all these years…’
‘Phineas, please. The girls–’
Phineas’s eyes are bleary. ‘Your dad gave her that name, you know? Always called her “my little epiphany”.’ He gurgles a little laugh. ‘I thought it odd, but Jonathan said that’s what she was to him – an epiphany. He said he realised that she was saving him from a life of hurt.’
‘Phineas–’
‘When he had brought me in he said that when he first found out what Matthew was up to … noticing really young girls at private parties … he confronted him. But Matthew made him feel complicit. So instead of going to the police … he tried to manage the situation. He told me, “I was trying to keep the girl problem under control”.’
My throat tightens. ‘Phineas, how do I get in to the room? Is it the roof?’
Phineas’s face pales. ‘No room on roof…’ His eyes shift. They look like they’re staring at something only he can see.
‘When I told Matthew I met you in the bar, he told me to lie to you and not reveal that he asked me to invite you here.’ A laugh of shame weakly escapes his lips. ‘He was being so secretive … I feared he might be thinking of giving you my job, like your dad always wanted.’
A succession of quick inhalations shakes his body.
‘This world keeps you paranoid about everything,’ he says. ‘But the thing about all this – the most frightening – everything we’ve done … I can’t remember when it stopped bothering me.’ He breathes deep. ‘It’s troubling how quickly you can get used to anything … join in on it, especially when the people around you think nothing of it.’
‘Phineas–’
But Phineas, he doesn’t speak after that. He doesn’t breathe after that either.
My whole body feels like it’s being attacked. Like I’m losing to that November night again. Thoughts swirl in my brain like snow in a globe. I look at Audrey on the movie poster. Her face is so confident, so knowing. Her eyes look to the left as an orange cat balances on her shoulder.
Then it hits me.
Phineas said he came up here to hide from Epiphany. He came from the room.
I follow the trail of blood with my eyes back to the staircase. The blood going to the third floor: it was Phineas’s, not Mann’s. All that snow swirling in my head, it freezes in place now. I know exactly how to get to the room.
I race back down the stairs to the second-floor art gallery. Sure enough, there’s a trail of blood leading towards the west wing where Hugh Fox was. I enter through the Degas painting and stumble along the padded passageway until I find the ladder I saw earlier. Its rungs are wet now. The dim red lights mix with the liquid’s true colour, making it look like maple syrup.
I climb the ladder until I’m on the thir
d floor. The ladder leads to a platform the size of a phone booth. I press against every wall until one of them gives. The room I stumble into has racks full of clothes – everything from evening gowns to nurses’ outfits to Sunday church-wear. Beneath the blood-stained window, the one that overlooks the garden, Matthew Mann mutters incomprehensibly, his pants still down around his ankles. His penis sits at an odd angle on his thigh, barely attached to his groin by a thin flap of skin. Just out of his reach is the gun Epiphany took from one of the security guards – the gun she shot Phineas with when she forced Matthew up here.
‘Jonathan’s son…’ Matthew says, when he sees me.
He’s dying from the blood loss.
Hiding between the racks of clothing, behind the tables full of makeup, are little girls in various stages of dress. Some already sport the gowns that resemble what you’d wear to your First Communion service. The girls – the older ones, they look like robots. No expression. No emotion. It’s the younger girls – the seven-and eight-year-olds – that’s where you see the despair.
I look around wildly. Where is she? Has Epiphany taken her? Then I hear a sniffling and pull a rack of clothes out of the way. Behind it, in the centre of the room, a girl is clutched in Epiphany’s arms. This girl, she looks like she’s just gotten the shock of her life. And Epiphany, the look in her eyes is the look of twelve years of longing, twelve years of pain, seeping away.
‘My baby,’ she cries. ‘Mojo dorogaya malishka, bog soedinil nas vodno celeo.’
I’ve never heard her speak Russian before.
I stare at my sister like it’s the first time I’ve seen her; like she’s not the same girl Hugh Fox had in that room. I want to grab her tight, just like Epiphany. But I don’t. My hands are covered with blood from the ladder. I don’t want to scare her any more than she already has been. And as Epiphany embraces her – my sister lets out a tiny smile. And I crack. Pools of water form in my eyes. I see so much of Emma in her now.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ my voice breaks the air.
Epiphany wipes her red, puffy eyes. I think it’s the first time she’s noticed I’m here.
‘Would you have believed me?’
I shake my head, but I know Epiphany already knows my answer.
Somewhere in the background, Matthew Mann mutters, ‘My cock…’
Epiphany whispers to her daughter, ‘Eto tvoiy brat.’
Matthew mutters, ‘You bitch…’
‘Brat?’ her daughter says. Epiphany nods and my sister looks at me. Epiphany’s just told my sister who I am.
I don’t know what to say. I stare at her with dopey eyes and smile the kindest smile I can.
‘My cock, you bitch,’ Matthew yells. This time his voice is so loud we all turn.
The gun is in his hand. It wavers between Epiphany and my sister. Matthew’s face flushes with fury and vitriol. The raw chill that seizes my body lights up every nerve in it. And in a moment of fear and hope, love and redemption, I push Epiphany to the ground and snatch my sister from her arms. I clutch her to my chest and spin around, using my entire body to shield her in its embrace. I squeeze my eyes shut. The sound of the shot is deafening. And in this instant everything, my failure with Emma, my cowardice in the Hollywood hills – everything is absolved. This sacrifice is the second chance I’ve always needed. And my sister, I feel her heart beat against my chest. And as I wait for the bullet to sting my body like a molten bee, I smile.
And even though time feels differently in intense situations, causing dramatic events to slow for the person experiencing them, the sting has still not come. I force my eyes open, suddenly fearful that physics has failed and the trajectory of the bullet has curved around me and hit her. I pat my sister’s body. I push my fingers through her hair looking for a wound. She’s in shock, but her body is fine. Then I feel my chest and my stomach and my back. There’s no wound anywhere.
Behind me, Epiphany stands upright, facing Matthew. There’s not a mark on her.
But as I’ve said before, guns act differently when they’re around Epiphany Jones. And I breathe a smile. I smile because this is a genuine miracle.
‘We’re fine,’ I whisper with relief to my sister as I kiss her forehead. ‘We’re fine.’
I turn to Epiphany. She’s still facing Matthew and I begin to wonder what she’ll do to him. She’s already grabbed the gun from his hand and thrown it clear across the room.
‘We should get out of here,’ I say. ‘Call the police. Let them handle the other girls.’ I look at my sister. ‘But we need to get her out of here now.’
But Epiphany, on the side of her little tea-dance-twenties dress, a dark blotch grows.
‘Epiphany?’
She turns to me. She smiles slightly. The front of her dress looks like a red ink blotter. And as she collapses, I hear myself stammering ‘No, no, no…’
Behind her, Matthew Mann is saying, ‘Got, you … bitch … my cock…’
Then there’s a scream and, Matthew Mann, he’s begging me to stop. I don’t even remember starting. I’m straddling his stomach, beating his face with my fists. His begging only causes me to thrash harder. I pound his face even after a knuckle cracks and a sharp pain splinters through my hand. Spasms run across my face. I beat him for what he made my dad become; for what he’s done to my sister; for Epiphany. When it hurts too much to hit anymore, I club him with the bottom of my joined fists like I’m hammering a stake into the ground. Matthew struggles to raise his meaty hands to my face. He pleads with me to stop. ‘Please,’ he gurgles, blood pouring from a gap where some of his front teeth used to be. Only then do I catch a reflection in the window of the looks on the girls’ faces. Only then do I relent. And only when I relent do I realise how hard I’m crying.
On the floor, my sister, she cradles her mother’s head in her lap. Tears stream down her young face. But Epiphany smiles. She smiles as she strokes her daughter’s cheek.
I scuttle to Epiphany’s side. My hands lap around the pool on her damp stomach. And through her crimson dress, I find the entry hole right next to her belly button.
‘Bitch–’ Matthew gurgles. The window behind where he lies clatters as grey clouds and wind and rain mix with the stormy sea.
I say, ‘Epiphany–’ and apply pressure. My finger tries to plug the hole in her stomach. It’s so tiny, the hole is. It’s no wider than a pencil. How can this much blood be coming from such a little hole?
Again, behind me, Matthew mutters, ‘Bitch.’
I think, ‘Saviour.’
He mutters, ‘Devil.’
I think, ‘Godsend.’
He mutters, ‘Whore.’
I scream, ‘Shut up!’ and I swing my blood-soaked finger at him, smattering droplets across the floor. ‘Shut up!’ I snarl. My voice is so frightening the other girls in the room stifle their sobs. And Matthew, his eyes fall to his side, like an old man in a nursing home afraid of punishment.
Epiphany’s bleeding isn’t stopping. I wipe tears from my face, staining them with her blood. ‘Epiphany, we gotta get you out of here, OK?’ I look at my sister. ‘Can you – can you put your hands where mine are?’ I show her. ‘We need to stop your mom’s bleeding. I need to call an ambulance.’
And my sister, she nods her head hesitantly.
‘You can do this,’ I smile through blood and tears. ‘You’re strong like your mom here, OK?’
‘O-OK.’
‘Good. See how my hands are? Just put yours like mine when I move–’
But Epiphany, she rests a pale hand on my bloody ones before I can remove them. ‘They say I can go now, Jerry,’ she smiles weakly. And her eyes, they’re wet too.
‘No.’ I shake my head. ‘No–’
‘They say I can go…’
I swallow hard. ‘Don’t listen to your voices anymore–’
It’s not up to me, her smile says.
‘But, your daughter–’
Her daughter fights against tears. She’s dealing as best as she c
an, but it’s so much for a child to take in: a mother, a brother, freedom.
‘You need to stay for your–’
‘Sister, Jerry. Your sister,’ Epiphany says, stroking her daughter’s face. Then Epiphany, she looks at me and says, ‘You need to take care of her now. That’s why you’re here. My voices said you need to be the one to look after her. That’s why I couldn’t let you take the bullet. It’s her brother that she needs…’
And a dam bursts inside me. Seventeen years of repressed pain and loneliness and guilt flow from my mind like a thunderous river. I don’t try to block it; I don’t try to hurry it. I let it surge through my body; I feel every part of it. Pain, regret, anger, hate. I feel them all – in an instant. The teasing and bullying at my grade school; the fighting between Mom and Dad; the self-hatred over Emma’s death. More comes. Being laughed at behind my back by my co-workers; the loss of Bela; the hatred of Nico; the revenge that burned in my chest. The years wasted looking at porn; the anger at my mother for cheating on my father; even something as small as the anger I felt over the raise they gave to Roland instead of me – I feel it all flow out of me. And as the torrent ebbs, as the feelings slow to a trickle, my soul feels lighter than it has in two decades – like someone’s taken the Amazon River and sprayed me clean of the planet’s worth of mud that’s been caked to my body.
I look at my sister and when I do, Epiphany’s eyes glisten and she smiles. And I swear she can see what’s happened inside of me. I swallow and take a breath. ‘How long have you known?’ I lose my voice for a moment. ‘How long have you known you were going to die today?’
‘Since the ride in the car this morning,’ she says, a tear escaping her eye. ‘They told me you wondered if it would help me if you apologised for your father,’ she smiles weakly. ‘Then they told me what was to happen to me. They said this was always the plan.’
I shake my head in regret of everything I’ve ever thought about Epiphany. I say, ‘Why didn’t you tell me, in the car?’
And Epiphany, she says, ‘Because sometimes we need to discover things in our own time and on our own terms before we can believe.’
Epiphany Jones Page 37