Three Chords, One Song

by Beatrice M. Hogg

  “I’m not paying to have that shit hauled away. You better give me some money.”

  “Take it out of her security deposit.” This bitch was getting on her nerves.

  “No, honey, that ain’t how it works.”

  Soleil brushed past her and went up the stairs. “I’ll be back.” She was sure the bitch had already stolen some of her mother’s things.

  When Soleil opened the door, the smell of blood mingled with the smell of cheap carpet cleaner. There were still visible stains on the brown carpet. That bitch didn’t get no carpet cleaned. She wondered how much Mariah had paid her.

  She stepped over the large dark patch near the window and went into the bedroom. The room still smelled like Faith—cheap cologne, stale cigarettes and Jack Daniel’s. She looked at the rumpled bed. There was a smell of sex in the room, too. She wondered how Eve felt about the fact that her ex-husband had fucked her mother. Poor Eve, now she had so many issues involving sex that she would probably never fuck again.

  She looked in the closet. There were more than a few empty hangers. The Dolce and Gabbana leather coat was gone. She knew Faith had kept a mink jacket that Mik had given her back in the day, but it was gone, too. She knew to not even look for the Louis Vuitton bag that Faith was so proud of. Nothing remained in the closet but old jeans and some soiled sweaters.

  She looked on top of the dresser. Faith’s bottles of cologne were gone. She looked in her jewelry box. There was nothing in it except some cheap earrings. Faith’s wedding ring was gone. Soleil knew she would never sell that, so it must have been stolen, too.

  She started opening the dresser drawers. She dumped Faith’s underwear onto the floor. Something peeked out from the pile. She picked up a picture. She knew that the four people in the picture were Faith and three of her cousins. By the look in her mother’s eyes, she could tell that the little girl’s abuse had already started. The older bronzed boys were smiling in the picture. Did they also smile as they used their little cousin as a sexual plaything?

  She put the picture in her knapsack. The next drawer contained tee shirts. When she threw its contents on the floor, she was startled when a baby rattle rolled across the floor. Soleil picked it up and shook it. What the fuck was that doing in there?

  In the bottom drawer, she found some other pictures. One of them was the same picture she kept framed at home, the picture of her, Faith and Mik taken when she was a little girl. The other pictures were nude pictures of Faith, back when she was in her early twenties. She couldn’t help but admire the shapely woman with the waist-length hair. But the eyes of the woman matched the eyes of the little girl in the other picture. Soleil blinked back tears, and her hand automatically went to her head. But she no longer had hair to run her fingers through.

  She got up and went into the kitchen to find some garbage bags for the clothes. Some of the cabinets were opened. The empty liquor bottles told her what the apartment manager refused to tell her. She had cleaned out Faith’s apartment, helping herself to her booze, her clothes and whatever else she found: drugs, money, jewelry. Security deposit, my ass, she thought.

  When she went back into the bedroom she noticed the dreamcatcher in front of one of the windows. It was the only thing in the room related to Faith’s Native American heritage. Soleil took it down and put it in her backpack.

  She looked in the nightstand drawer. She found a program from her graduation ceremony at the Musician’s Institute. Had Faith been there?

  Soleil added a few more things to her backpack stash and stuffed everything else in the garbage bags. She took the some of the bags downstairs and loaded them up in the truck.

  As she got ready to make a second trip to the truck, she heard someone at the door.

  “Faith, you got my money yet?”

  She looked up at a tall, beefy bald man. “What the fuck do you want?” She didn’t know his name, but she knew he was one of Faith’s drug dealer friends.

  “Where is Faith?” He glared at her.

  “She’s dead.”

  “What?”

  She dropped the plastic bag that she was holding. “I killed her.”

  He continued to glare at her. “I know who you are, you’re her daughter Sunshine, ain’t ya?”

  “And who the fuck are you?”

  “Gimme the key. Faith said if something happened to her, I could have the girl.” He looked her up and down.

  “What girl?”

  “The girl in the storage unit.”

  He was talking about Lucy. “What do you want her for?”

  He grinned, showing crooked, yellow teeth. “I’m gonna fuck her to death, what else? Just like I tried to do in San Francisco.” He hiked his pants. “Dead pussy’s the same as live pussy to me.”

  Soleil tried to push down the bile rising in her throat. She shouldn’t have eaten lunch. This piece of shit had hurt her sister.

  “Well, she’s gone. She escaped. And if I don’t talk to her, she’s going to the police. And you are the only person she can identify.” She suddenly remembered his name. “Isn’t that right, Louie?”

  His face turned red. “Hey, Sunshine, don’t you fuck with me.” He started towards her.

  Soleil reached into her knapsack. She knew it was there, even though she didn’t know how it got there. She pulled out Mariah’s gun and pointed at his groin.

  “Don’t you fuck with me, Louie Maggione. You need to leave and forget all about this job, and I’ll make sure that Lucy forgets all about your ugly fucking face.”

  He shook his head, but he backed up. “Fine, just fine. You’re a bitch, just like your crazy nigger mother.”

  Soleil kept the gun aimed at his groin. “I’m worse than my crazy nigger mother.”

  Louie turned around and started down the steps. Behind him was the apartment manager. Her mouth was hanging open.

  Soleil pointed the gun at her. “What do you want now?”

  The woman looked at her. “What are you gonna do?”

  Soleil lowered the gun and walked over to her. She towered over the short woman. “I ain’t doing shit! Puta, you already stole half of my mother’s stuff!”

  “Hey, bitch, I ain’t stole nothing from your whore mother! She owed back rent.”

  “Bullshit! I was paying her rent!”

  The woman started cussing her out in Spanish. Soleil answered her back in Spanish.

  She waved the gun in her face. “I ought to call the police. I know you stole my mother’s clothes. And you didn’t get no carpet cleaned, either. You just sprayed some Woolite shit down and vacuumed. What you do with that money you were given?”

  “I had that carpet cleaned, you fuckin’ cunt!”

  Soleil picked up the keys and threw them on the floor. She put the gun in her backpack and grabbed the last few bags. “Keep the security deposit.” She pushed the woman out of her way and walked down the stairs.

  She took one last look up at the window of Faith’s apartment. She got in the truck, brushed glass off of the driver’s seat and headed for the nearest Goodwill. She didn’t care if it was after hours. She would drop the shit in the middle of the street if she had to.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Lucy

  “Do you want me to kill Louie Maggione for you?”

  Lucy jumped at the sound of someone whispering in her ear. She was fast asleep and didn’t even hear Soleil come into the bedroom.

  “Who? What? What are you talking about?” But as she shook her head to clear the cobwebs, she knew who Soleil was referring to.

  “Tall Italian guy, bald head. Fucked up freak of a bastard.”

  Lucy could feel the color draining from her face. “How do you know him?”

  “He was one of my mother’s dealer acquaintances and a hit man. When I was at Faith’s apartment, he stopped by, wanting the money Faith promised him to kill you.”

  Lucy could feel her dinner churning in her stomach and willed it not to reenter her esophagus. “He said that to you?” She whispered
so Mariah couldn’t hear her in the next room.

  She could see Soleil nod, even though the room was dark. “He also said Faith told him that if something happened to her, he could have you. He wanted to finish what he started in San Francisco.”

  Before she realized what was happening, Soleil had the wastebasket up to her mouth. Lucy felt the filth again, creeping up her arms and legs.

  Soleil brushed Lucy’s hair back from her face. She pulled a tissue from the box on the nightstand and wiped her mouth. Lucy looked up and was relieved to see Soleil had closed the bedroom door when she came in.

  “He hurt you bad, didn’t he, Lucy?”

  Lucy just nodded.

  “He killed Ricky?”

  “He helped.”

  “Just give me the word and I’ll hunt him down and kill him like the animal he is. I’ll go to jail for the rest of my life if it means taking down that motherfucker.”

  Soleil’s breath was hot on her face. She had no doubt Soleil would and could carry out her threat.

  Her stomach churned. Now everyone knew. Everyone except Mariah. And maybe she knew, too.

  Lucy shook her head. “No. No more killing. No more deaths.” She rubbed Soleil’s shorn head. “Your life means more to me than his death. He will get what is coming to him when the time is right. I need you here, Soleil. We all do.”

  Soleil hugged her. “Well, remember, I’ve got your back.”

  “I know.”

  “And I better give your mother’s gun back to her.”

  “I wish she didn’t even have one.”

  “I wish no one ever needed one, but we do in this world.”

  “I don’t have one.”

  “I’m not surprised. The girl that everyone wants to kill doesn’t have a gun.”

  Lucy could hear the sarcasm in her voice. “My days of being a victim are over. And I got two pistol-packing sisters I can call.” She tried to lighten the mood.

  “Does Eve know what happened?”

  “I told her when we were coming back to LA. I never told Mariah, though, and I told Eve not to tell her. But Eve has a big mouth.”

  “She has a big heart, too. But don’t tell her I said that.” Soleil picked up the wastebasket. “I’ll clean this out. Good thing that you had a plastic liner in it.” She squeezed her shoulder and slipped out of the room.

  If we can get though the next few days, we’ll make it, Lucy thought to herself. We will make it as a family.

  Soleil

  After cleaning out the wastebasket and taking it back to Lucy’s room. Soleil went outside to sit in the backyard.

  Lucy had fallen back to sleep. She hoped it would be a peaceful sleep. She had meant everything she had said. She was willing to kill if it meant Lucy stayed safe. Lucy was her family now, just like she had tried to be when Soleil was a little girl. She would do anything for her big sister.

  Soleil decided to have Faith cremated and have her ashes interred in the same cemetery where Marilyn Monroe was buried. She didn’t want to keep the ashes, and she didn’t want them scattered. She wanted her mother’s name to be on a slab of marble.

  When Soleil had looked in the bathroom at her reflection, she had seen the same haunted look that she had seen in her mother’s childhood photo. But Soleil wasn’t going to end her life, she was going to reinvent it. As soon as she said goodbye to the past.

  Lucy

  Lucy heard Mariah’s private bedroom phone ring. She heard her mother on the phone. Soleil had left the door open when she returned the wastebasket last night. The conversation was over quickly. She heard Mariah go into her bathroom and turn on the shower.

  Soleil had to make the funeral arrangements for Faith today. She vowed she would be at her side. Faith was gone and couldn’t hurt any of them any more. And she wasn’t going to worry about Louie, or Brad, or anyone else.

  She started to get up and then heard someone go into the hall bathroom. She figured it was Eve, as Soleil never liked to get up until noon. But today might be different.

  She shuddered to think that one day she may have to make arrangements for her mother’s burial. None of them had any say-so about what happened to their father, but their three mothers would be their responsibility.

  Lucy thought about how much she had taken her mother for granted all of her life. Tomorrow, she was going to get up early and fix breakfast for everyone. But today, she had something she needed to do.

  Lucy went down the hall to her mother’s room. On the way, she noticed that Soleil’s door was closed and Eve’s room was empty.

  She sat on her mother’s rumpled bed, listening to her hum from the bathroom. She could smell the scented bath gel and soap her mother used. It was a peaceful room, decorated in browns and creams. She looked at the portrait of her mother, Mik and her, painted by an artist friend when she was little. She looked at the Sheffield Steel gold records and her mother’s master’s degree, large frames covering the other walls. The vase on the small table in the room was empty. It was usually filled with fresh flowers that her mother got every morning or had delivered. She vowed to get a big bouquet today.

  Mariah came out of the bathroom in a robe with a towel wrapped around her braids. She jumped when she saw Lucy on the bed.

  “What’s wrong, honey?”

  Lucy loved looking at her mother’s strong, brown face.

  “Nothing. I just wanted to come in and tell you I love you. Thank you, for everything.”

  Mariah wiped her face with the towel. “You’re welcome. I love you, too, Lucy. You’re my heart. But you already know that.”

  Lucy got up and hugged her mother. She clung to the firmness, the steadiness, and the warmth that was Mariah Williams. “You are my heart, too,” she whispered. “I love you, Mom.”

  Lucy had never called her mother “Mom.” But it felt like the right thing to do.

  Mariah kissed her cheek. “Now shower and get dressed. Lieberman’s office called with some exciting news for you girls.”

  She reluctantly let her mother go. She winked at her as she left the room. Mariah winked back.

  Eve was coming from the bathroom as she walked back down the hall.

  “Is something wrong?”

  Eve was getting tanner. “No. Mariah got a call from Lieberman’s office this morning. She has some news for us. Wake up Soleil for me, will you?”

  Eve looked at the closed door. “She won’t bite my head off, will she?”

  Lucy laughed. “I can’t make any promises.” She lowered her voice. “She is making the funeral arrangements today. We have a long day ahead of us.”

  “But there is light at the end of the tunnel, isn’t there?” There was hope in Eve’s voice.

  Lucy nodded. “And it’s not a train, either.”

  Eve

  By the time Soleil got up, Mariah had picked up breakfast from a local restaurant and set it up outside on the table. It was a warm, beautiful morning. Just another day in this twisted paradise, Eve thought.

  “So what is the big news?” Soleil asked.

  “The will is going through. Sally has given up trying to contest it. Pretty soon, you girls will get your money. Lieberman’s office should have partial payments from the royalties by the end of the week. The rest of the money will be dispersed when everything goes through. Eve can go back to Pittsburgh next week.” Mariah looked over at her as she buttered a biscuit.

  Eve looked back at Mariah and smiled. Back to Pittsburgh. The words she had been waiting for since she arrived.

  “You still want to go back to Pittsburgh, Eve?” Soleil looked over at her as she grabbed a biscuit. She looked strange in her almost-bald state.

  “Sure do. Do you want to come with me?” She smiled at the thought of her and Soleil being roommates.

  “And do what?” She took a bite out of her biscuit.

  “They have recording studios in Pittsburgh.” As soon as she said it, she realized how dumb it sounded. LA was the music capital of the rock world.


  Soleil rolled her eyes. “Thanks, but no thanks. But I may go away for a while. Maybe I’ll go to London.”

  “London?” Lucy was daintily cutting up a piece of sausage. “I haven’t been there since I was a little girl.”

  “Well, I have never been there at all.” She pointed her butter knife at Eve. “And they have recording studios there, too.”

  Eve decided to say the first thing that came into her mind. “Smart ass.”

  Soleil grinned.

  “I have some old friends in London. I could get in touch with them for you if you would like.” As always, Mariah tried to be accommodating to everyone.

  “I’ll think about it.” Soleil looked at her watch.

  Mariah watched her. “Oh, I almost forgot. Soleil, Lieberman wants us to come to his office. I told him that we would come on Wednesday, if that is all right with you. I’m sorry I didn’t ask you when he called, but I didn’t want to wake you.”

  “What does he want?” Soleil put her fork down.

  “He wants to go over Faith’s will.”

  Lucy’s breath caught and she looked up from her plate at Soleil. Eve followed her gaze. A flush came to her face.

  “Her fucking what? Faith didn’t have anything to leave. I went by her apartment yesterday. That bitch of an apartment manager cleaned out her place. Everything was gone—her jewelry, her clothes, her booze, all gone.”

  “Maybe she had something you didn’t know about.”

  Soleil snorted. “Like what?

  “We’ll find out when we get there. After we lay her to rest.”

  “I’m having the bitch cremated. I’m giving her a slab at Pierce Brothers. She can do pills with Marilyn.”

  “At least you will have her ashes. Who knows what Sally did with Mik’s ashes? She could have snorted them for all we will ever know.” Lucy rolled her eyes.

  Eve looked at Lucy as if she had grown another head. She had to, to say something like that about the father she adored. She looked over to see Mariah’s reaction.

  Mariah crunched on a piece of what must have been fake bacon. She didn’t look at Lucy.

  Soleil leaned back in her chair. “I want all of you to go with me tomorrow to the cemetery. I’ll sing a song or something.” She looked at each of their faces in turn.