by Lila Veen
“I’m fine. Are you alright?” he asks me. His voice is like dark brown velvet, smooth and soft and encasing my brain in warmth. My head begins to pound. He looks concerned yet he is smiling simultaneously, curving his mouth into an expression that shouldn’t even be legal. It makes me feel dirty just thinking about where I want that mouth to be right now.
“Not really,” I say, not able to hold back the tears. Oh god, what the hell am I doing? “Get. My. Purse.” I am trying to breathe but it’s not working out, and I begin flailing my arms and waving them in my face, wanting to wipe the tears away but wanting to keep my face uncovered in order to get as much air as possible. The man delicately moves me out of the way and goes through my driver’s side door to grab my purse off the passenger seat. He holds it open in front of me so I can grab my inhaler and puff twice. “Okay,” I say, steadying my breath. “That’s better.” I look at him standing in front of me still holding my purse. He looks pretty silly with a purple leather knock off Prada purse, and I attempt to avoid smiling, but I can’t help it. “Thanks,” I tell him.
“You’re welcome, Miss…?”
“Holt,” I say. “Leah Holt. I’m so sorry about your car.”
He shrugs. “I’m sorry about yours. Should we exchange information?”
I nod and reach into my purse. Luckily, car insurance isn’t dependent upon employment so I still have that, though I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to pay the bills on it. Plus it’s a Chicago company, and I wonder how terms will apply outside of the state of Illinois. I find a piece of paper and pen and write down my phone number and insurance information on it and give it to him. Then he does the same for me on my notebook and hands it back with his information and phone number. “Ash Lavanne,” I read. He even has a hot name. Welcome home, Leah, I think to myself. “Nice to meet you, Ash. I’m…sorry about your bumper.”
“Nice to meet you too, Leah,” he says. The corners of his mouth are twitching slightly, threatening to make me think naughty thoughts again. “Sorry about your car and your asthma attack. Are you okay to drive?”
“I should be,” I say. I notice I’m still shaking a little bit but I feel a bit better and calmer. I realize that it’s probably just getting colder outside as the sun is setting and my jacket is still in the car. “I’m fine.”
“Good,” he says. “I’ll call my lawyer and he’ll contact you immediately.”
“Lawyer?” I gasp. “Are you kidding me? My insurance should take care of it. No need to take this to court or anything.” Oh god, where was my inhaler?
“I’m kidding,” he says, holding his hands up. “Horrible joke, I know. Don’t have another attack.” He grins to reveal perfectly even teeth, then he turns and walks back to his car, letting himself in. I stand in shock and watch as he waves with one arm out the window and drives away. I decide to do the same so I don’t block any more traffic at the “Worst Traffic Light in the World”. Besides, it’s cold out and I have to pee.
“Well Betsey,” I say out loud like an idiot once I am back in my car. “This is probably just the first shit storm of today that I’ll have to go through, but I’m sorry you got the worst of it.” In response she comes to life with a twist of my key in the ignition. “Thanks for that,” I tell her, grateful she is still drivable.
Carlton howls at me. “Oh shut up,” I say grumpily. “We’re almost there and you’re totally fine.”
And now off to deal with my mother.
Chapter 2
The house I grew up in is a two story Tudor on the corner of Amethyst and Sinistro. From the front it looks like an average sized house, though if you view it from the side it seems to stretch on forever. The mass of weeping willow trees in front shield the view of the sides. It’s a huge house that my dad bought on a police chief’s salary. The Holt family stretches back a long way in Blackwater and hasn’t always been blue collar, so the term “old money” applies to us. My memories of the house are twisted up in my brain into something that the house no longer is. I remember it being warm, with dark hardwood floors and large leather sofas. I remember a place where Heidi and I would climb on my dad and he would tickle us and give us bear hugs. Persian rugs covered the floors everywhere, heaped upon each other in no logical fashion or pattern, but it made the décor all the more unique and cozy. Our live in housekeeper, Isabel, took care of Heidi and me as children and well into our teenage years. She was always baking something from scratch, from fresh bread made in a Dutch oven, to cakes, brownies and cookies. It’s a wonder I’m not four hundred pounds, but thankfully my height and frame prevent me from gaining weight too visibly.
Since Dad left almost fifteen years ago things have changed. The dark hardwood floors have been bleached to “California Blonde”. The masculine leather furniture is now white microfiber and looks like it shouldn’t be used. The Persian rugs are gone, the bleached hardwood bare and gleaming, refinished in the places where the rugs wore down the wood. The entire freezer is packed full of Lean Cuisines and the fridge and garage have at least a month’s supply of Diet Coke, since my mother no longer needs Isabel to cook for a family of four and my mother never learned how to do it herself. Everything has been painted over in white. Family pictures with my dad have been removed and replaced with forced family photos of my mother and Heidi and me, all taken from when I was fifteen to seventeen. In them, Heidi and my mother’s smiles are forced and look almost plastic and painful. I don’t smile at all. I’m a horrible liar.
I am here unannounced and my mother is sipping a glass of white wine across the counter from me in the kitchen. Her unlined face says it all. “Why are you back?” Besides the occasional phone call home on my part for holidays and birthdays, contact with my mother has been practically nonexistent for over ten years. She looks the same as the last time I saw her, with platinum hair pulled back in a waved upsweep that any 1950’s housewife would have envied. She never changes. She even wears an apron over her beige silk dress as her Lean Cuisine spins in the microwave. Her eyes are the same ice blue as Heidi’s, and I tower over my mother and sister by a half a foot. All of my height and looks are purely my father’s side of the family. My mother refers to our looks as “Black Dutch”, which is her politically incorrect way of saying we’re dark. My dad and I always tanned easily, have dark brown hair and the same coffee-with-cream-brown eyes. Heidi and my mother are Barbie doll blonde, except the Barbie height and boobs are all mine.
The microwave beeps and my mother pulls out a container with butternut squash ravioli and broccoli that smells like burned plastic. She carefully peels off the plastic that covers the steaming processed food and obtains a plastic fork from a drawer. She has perfected the art of housekeeping by making everything in the kitchen disposable. “Are you sure you don’t want anything to eat?” she asks me.
“I’m fine,” I tell her. “I ate not too long ago on the road.”
“Hopefully not fast food,” she says, as though her Lean Cuisine is so much better. “Do you know the other day I was watching the ten o’clock news and they were talking about how a woman found a beak inside of her chicken sandwich? Can you imagine?”
“I stay away from fast food,” I tell her. “Remember it makes me sick?”
“Well it’s not obvious to me,” she says, stabbing into some ravioli with her plastic fork. She eats standing up. “It looks as though you’ve let yourself go a bit. You’re so tall, it’s amazing I can see any weight gain at all on you.”
I glare at her. “Mother, I’m currently at a healthy BMI. I’m just not a teenager anymore.”
She ignores me. “I know you’re having a rough time, but it’s important that you eat well and stay active now that you’re planning to be single again.”
“Mom, I’m a size six. That’s hardly fat. And I run practically every day if I have time.” My mother never seemed to understand that while she and Heidi are wispy women, I’m actually curvy. It definitely shows in all of the right places, but clothes have always been a problem t
o fit correctly. Running sometimes requires multiple bras, depending on what time of the month it is.
She points her plastic fork over to the wall where a wedding picture of Heidi and her husband Jack hangs. “Your sister is two years older than you and can wear a size two! Imagine that!”
“Mom, Heidi is anorexic. She doesn’t get points for that.”
“Leah,” she says in a warning tone. “Your sister does not have an eating disorder. It’s not her fault she has a sensitive stomach.”
Coincidentally after every meal, I think to myself. I know it’s futile to argue with her, though, so I keep my mouth shut. It’s as though she’s purposely trying to drive me crazy. She always seemed to antagonize me when I lived at home, and it’s apparent that as an adult, she won’t treat me any differently. Carlton rubs himself against my legs, purring and letting me know that while I am not in the mood for dinner, he would prefer not to skip a meal. I help myself to a dish from a cabinet and reach in my purse for a can of cat food and pop it open. My mother’s nose turns up instantly.
“Honestly Leah, with your asthma, it’s a wonder you don’t get rid of that cat,” she points out. “It’s almost like smoking a cigarette.”
“Carlton doesn’t bother me, do you Carlton?” I say, stooping down to give him his dinner. I tip the solidified gelatinous blob of wet food onto the plate from my mother’s cabinet. He lets me pet him for a few seconds as he digs in but gives me a “bitch, I’m hungry” look with a low growl and I leave him alone. “I know how you feel about cats, Mother, and I promise that first thing tomorrow I will be looking for my own apartment.”
“Oh, you don’t have to do that, Leah,” she says in a hollow way, but I’m secretly relieved to hear it. I’m flat broke and I’m not too sure about my job prospects right now. “Stay as long as you need to. Why get something as permanent as an apartment when you might not stay in Blackwater for very long?”
I glare at her, immediately suspicious. “Why wouldn’t I stay in Blackwater for very long?”
She fidgets with her hair in the back of her head, even though it hasn’t moved since 1986. “Your divorce isn’t final, which means Michael might take you back.”
I sigh loudly and do everything in my power not to reach across the counter and slap her. “Mother, I will be signing divorce papers within the week. Michael doesn’t want me back and has it occurred to you that perhaps I don’t want him back? Why does it seem like you’ve never wanted me to stay in Blackwater?”
She freezes. “Leah, I never-“
“You’ve been driving me out since before I left, and it worked once, and I was happy, but guess what? I failed. I failed at marriage, like you did with Dad.”
“That’s enough, Leah!”
I pause, chewing on the inside of my cheek in frustration. “I’m sorry Mother. I’m tired. I’m upset. I should probably just go to bed.”
“Perhaps you should,” is all she says, which makes me want to throw her Lean Cuisine at the white wall. Avoiding conflict as usual, I can always count on my mother for that. “Why don’t you set up in your old bedroom for tonight and you can decide whether it’s comfortable or not. Heidi’s mattress is nicer, I know, and since she’s not using it, perhaps you might want to switch to her room.”
“My old room is fine,” I say, shuddering at the thought of spending a whole night in Heidi’s baby blue bedroom of dirty little secrets. She probably still has a binge stash and laxatives in there somewhere. “I’m pretty tired, and I think I’ll turn in now and catch up on sleep.” She nods, relieved I’m dismissing her for now and I scoop up Carlton and make for my old bedroom. Carlton hisses because he hasn’t finished licking the microscopic pieces of cat food off of the plate. I realize that my mother will actually have to wash a dish and feel smug about leaving it behind.
My bedroom has been kept as a shrine to me, I note, and I’m reminded of how young and angsty I was when I left Blackwater. I take in the Misfits and Descendants posters, the purple curtains I covered my windows with and the matching purple shaggy rug that has definitely seen better days. Even the hardwood underneath the rug has been left alone, unlike the rest of the house. My bed is the same, the duvet cover silky and familiar against my hand as I stroke the material nostalgically. I can practically smell the cheese popcorn I used to eat in this bed, a favorite habit of mine I’ve still maintained. It annoyed Michael to no end when he’d find kernels in the sheets.
I roll over my suitcase and toss Carlton down on the hardwood floor. He lands with a “thud” and looks at me, annoyed, and lumbers up to the bed to do his favorite thing – take up space. I can’t help but laugh at how he attempts to gracefully jump onto furniture but usually gets stuck midway and has to claw the rest of the way up. He leaves a few nice holes in the duvet and I laugh even more. “Make yourself at home,” I tell him as I unzip my suitcase and eye the few contents I bothered to bring with me. I strip down and throw on an oversized t-shirt advertising a bar I’d been to once in Chicago, and a pair of Michael’s old boxer briefs that I adopted as my own for sleeping purposes.
Not even three hours back home and I’m already having difficulty breathing. It’s not asthma related, either. It started with the accident, and that man…Ash. I lay back and close my eyes and try to picture him. I see his dark eyes, his full lips, and I smell him. It’s a sulfur kind of smell, actually, weird and unpleasant. My eyes pop open, my vision disturbed by Carlton’s ass trying to plop down on my hair. “Get off,” I say, shoving him over a bit. He howls but complies. Monday I intend to get a job and a place to live and get the fuck out of here. My mother isn’t even trying to get along with me, and we can only take so much of each other before an explosion occurs. It won’t be pretty. I plan to try my best to make sure it doesn’t come to that, and that means finding my own place and a job to pay for it. Perhaps I can stay with Heidi, except now she’s married with a husband and I’m sure they don’t want me around either. Besides, it’s not as though I ever got along with Heidi any better than my mother. They’re like peas in a pod, so alike in looks and attitude. It’s horrible to feel unwelcome pretty much everywhere you can go in your own hometown.
As for a job, I have no idea what to expect in that department. I spent four years as a claims adjuster for a small local health insurance company in Chicago but doubt I could find something like that here. Chicago is a big city full of jobs and opportunity. Blackwater is a black hole of becoming a Stepford wife or wishing you were someplace else.
I hope my mother still gets a newspaper. First thing tomorrow I’ll be checking the classifieds, if Blackwater even has those. Oh, and calling my insurance company about Betsey. Poor Betsey. I’m so tired I can’t even cry about it, so instead I just decide to pass out and care tomorrow.
Chapter 3
I wake up to the sound of vacuuming, which is odd since my mother’s domestic skills are completely nonexistent. Then it occurs to me. “Isabel,” I whisper, throwing my legs over the side of my bed and running out the door of my room.
There she is in the hallway, all of five feet tall, with dark blonde hair to her waist that billows in a silken curtain with each thrust of the vacuum. She wears a lime green velour track suit with “ISABEL” written down the leg in dark green rhinestones. Her feet are bare and her toenails are pedicured to match her track suit, completely “blinged” out in lime green rhinestones. She turns at the sound of my door opening and grins, showing even white teeth and sparkling green eyes.
Isabel is a Romanichal gypsy and told me once that she ran away and married her third cousin when she was fifteen. She has also never had a drink of alcohol, which I find more appalling than marrying her cousin. She came to work for our family when she was nineteen and had run away from her husband, who apparently used to beat her. Ours isn’t the only family she cleans for, but when I was growing up I considered her mine since she mainly lived with us from since I could remember up until I was twelve. Now she has her own apartment in Blackwater. Even though her h
air and eyes are light, her skin is a golden brown. When I was younger, I thought she was the most beautiful woman alive. She’s never been married again since leaving her husband, saying that her community shuns girls who leave their husbands and won’t marry a girl who isn’t “pure”. Frankly, I don’t think Isabel is the kind of person who needs to be married. She’s wonderful as she is.
We embrace like old friends. Even though she’s twenty years older than me, she practically looks my age. I tell her this and she laughs. “Gypsy blood,” she remarks, holding me at arm’s length and looking up at me. “You never stopped growing,” she says. “I told you to stop, and you didn’t listen.”
“I can’t help being tall,” I laugh, thrilled to see her again. “You should have started growing. You make my neck hurt looking down so far.”
“You make my neck hurt!” she exclaims. “Oh, but something has changed in you,” she continues, her mood sobering almost instantly, her green eyes darkening.
“I left my husband,” I tell her. “And I’m filing for divorce.”
She shakes her head. “No, no, that’s not it,” she says. “That’s a weight off your shoulders. I know it is. Best thing I ever did was leave Paul. It’s something else.” She takes my hands in hers and holds them to her forehead and I sigh. I know where this is going.
Isabel has the gift of “sight”. It’s hard to explain, but the best way I can is to call her a fortune teller. She does cards and palms and tea leaves, but she says that’s all for show, mostly. It made for some interesting ladies’ lunches at our house. I believe she can read tea leaves and tarot cards and palms, but I don’t think she actually needs them. I think they’re just props or extra confirmation of what she already knows. Before I left for Chicago, she said I would be back, but not for a while, and she was absolutely right. But it’s other things. She always knew whether Heidi and I would do well on a test. She knew if someone we knew would be in an accident, or sick, or hurt. She knew my father would leave before we did, or maybe even before he did.