She's Lost Control

  Raised a lady though she’d been, Odessa scoffed at the pills and retreats, laughed in the face of any suggestion to normalize.

  Except the nose job.

  But she only underwent the knife because her polyps truly were painful.

  Her surgeon, bless his incendiary, world-renowned heart, did a marvelous job keeping her famous beak sharp.

  The society pages ran shots of her, bandaged, leaving the clinic; a week later perched on a stool at Calypso toasting the bartender, bruises still dark beneath her lively eyes. She came home to Zee and Maude’s pointed looks and went straight to her room. They tried—they really did—but in their off hours, she knew they brought out the vaporizer and regaled each other with her antics. She’d taken them around the world, she’d filled their already flush bank accounts—they’d borne a star, with a voice that belonged in the history books—what, really, was there to be concerned about?

  ***

  Well, Warren, for one. The man in his worsted, double-breasted, three-piece, opening doors—a gambler, a mobster, that smooth Colt pressed into her hip when they kissed—he lavished her with sideways compliments and promises occasionally broken, his eyes bluer than the Caribbean ocean he took her yachting across, his adept fingers knowing every tender, yearning button.

  Until Warren, Odessa tossed boys over her shoulder with all the care of gravity knocking hatchlings from a nest, strewing the sidewalks with crumpled little sacks of skin. Until Warren, Odessa never relinquished control.

  Warren was a too-clean-to-be-true window knocking Odessa from the sky: dizzying stars and concussion and, not long after she canceled a world tour on account of exhaustion, a daughter as red-haired and Roman-nosed as Odessa herself. Warren took one look at his daughter—Ophelia; Little O—and muttered, Genes, with a tone that could only mean indifference.

  With Little O in her arms, the scales fell from Odessa’s eyes. She’d married a cad. A dapper adulterer. A snake-oil salesmen. The society pages ate it up—why had she discounted their bold headlines before? A truth is a truth, no matter how garishly exposed. Perhaps divorce would have freed her. Perhaps, if she wasn’t so tired, she would have considered the risk.

  ***

  Little O grew and outgrew her onesies, footie pajamas, frilled pink party dresses. A walking, talking mini-Odessa: skittering away from Warren in private, smiling between her parents when society required their family presence.

  Odessa ignored the paparazzi’s cheap shots, refused to do a damn thing about the crow’s feet gathering around her eyes or offer explanation for her prolonged hiatus. She told Little O the stories of her youth—champagne and red velvet and jets—not exactly standard-issue bedtime stories, but fairy-tale enough to keep them both alive.

  ***

  Not until Odessa caught fifteen-year-old Little O singing along to her first album—recorded when Odessa was barely older than Little O was now—did Odessa consider leaving. Warren was on another “business” trip, the rooms of their spacious pre-War blissfully peaceful, and there was Little O in the living room, warbling out the window so her mother wouldn’t hear.

  Odessa called on Zee and Maude, who served her coffee with too much cream and heard out her plea before saying, “We’ve waited years for you to ask.”

  Odessa nodded. They’d all been rooting for her, she realized—her parents, her long-gone friends, even the society pages. Why hadn’t she understood?

  “Warren won’t take kindly to your disappearance,” Zee warned. Maude rolled her eyes.

  “I don’t love him,” Odessa said. She’d never been so abject, even with her parents.

  “Hallelujah,” Zee said.

  “How do you feel about Nevada?” Maude asked. Nonchalant as ever, barely glancing up from the coffee as she poured more.

  ***

  The little adobe-style house blended with the landscape—west-facing deck, no neighbors for miles. Nevada glowed with salvation. After a long day of hushed, rushing travel—each airport a new identity, a change of clothes, until they touched down in Las Vegas where Odessa wondered if her old pal Andy would be game for a visit, and deciding against it, white-knuckled the three-hour drive northwest, their first sunset—brought tears to her eyes. The sky like fire, like space, like air filling her lungs, so real she wanted to fling herself into it. She wanted to sing.

  How long had it been?

  Little O said, “Ma, what’s wrong?” Odessa could not speak the words for freedom, not yet, so she wiped her face and said, “Just happy, my canary. Come, let’s go make dinner.”

  They heated baked beans and frankfurters and Odessa taught Little O the words to “O My Darling, Clementine” and the rules of harmony, which Little O interrupted with, “How long will we stay?”

  It was the first time Little O had asked a question since Odessa had roused her that morning with a finger to her mouth and the whisper to leave everything.

  Odessa surveyed the spare kitchen, their unwashed dishes perched on the edge of the sink, her daughter’s slumped shoulders—she must be worn out.

  By now Warren would have the search out for them, not because he cared but because it would look suspicious otherwise. He’d have invented a kidnapper, a plot against him, sympathy he did not deserve.

  “A while yet,” Odessa said.

  Little O nodded. Was it resignation or relief?

  A lizard raced across the floor. Neither flinched, nor screamed. They were too tired for that.

  Tomorrow would be a better day. Tomorrow their new life would begin.

  ***

  Odessa rose before dawn. Little O slept, her red hair plastered with sweat to her forehead, a riot across her pillow, but she had never seen her daughter’s face infused with such peace. Leaving her to dreams, Odessa stepped out into the cool, sandy yard and examined the house as the sky lightened. Earth-colored. Soft. Triple bolts on every door, the windows bulletproof. Both Eden and fortress. Her parents did the best they could to protect her.

  She heard chickadees but could not locate their whereabouts. When she trilled they answered. She did not yet know if she missed the cacophony of the city, the tuneless hum her life had become. She touched her nose and wondered how the society pages were reporting her absence.

  Against the subtle landscape, her hands and bare arms appeared infused with pure light. Her skin prickled. She cleared her throat, ready to hum—but what?

  They needed groceries. New clothes. Little O would need lessons, a library of books, voice coaching. IDs with their fake names were to arrive by post—a PO box in town.

  She coughed, rubbed her eyes—perhaps she needed to go back inside, escape the plumes of dust. But there was no breeze. She turned looking for the whirlwind’s source, and there sat—a turkey vulture, ten feet, maybe twelve, away, regarding her with suspicious (or was it curious?) eyes. Did she look that bad?

  She caught her breath. The sun already hot and high. Her first day on her own in years and here she was, locked in a staring contest with an oversized carrion-stalker. It did not feel like bad luck, only something uncanny, to be this close to oil-slick feathers, the sharp beak and red head set in wrinkles.

  “You could be my twin,” Odessa finally said. She laughed and the bird dipped its head and she did not know what to do. Stay or run? When had she become so indecisive, so tame? The old Odessa would have crept closer—but now she stayed put, her eyes riveted to the enormous bird.

  Little O called from the deck, “Ma?”

  The vulture rose with a magnificent swoosh, blowing air across Odessa’s face. Little O squealed. “What the f—?”

  “Watch it,” Odessa said.

  All day, as Odessa and Little O came and went, the bird circled, a persistent shadow orbiting the sun.

  ***

  When the phone rang, they did not answer. Unless it rang twice and exactly 180 seconds later rang again. Zee and Maude, calling as aliases from phone lines that couldn’t be tapped—diners, dinner clubs, once the theater on 96th Street where Odes
sa performed her first gigs.

  News like bursts of flash: Warren declaring an exorbitant reward, ransacking Odessa’s old haunts, interrogating former lovers, showing up unbidden to ramble half-soused bile over Zee and Maude’s Oriental rugs.

  “He doesn’t miss me,” Odessa said.

  “He misses your name in the paper,” Maude said.

  “Some reassurance.”

  “He is who he is, always has been.”

  “You’re supposed to be on my side.”

  “I am.”

  Across the room, Little O worked on a crossword, her lips pursed in concentration. How serious her daughter was. Had Odessa been so self-composed as a teenager, so grave? Would she ever have submitted to long days alone in the desert, all this quiet? Maybe before she found her voice, maybe after she lost—

  “It doesn’t feel that way.”

  “Well, goodbye then.”

  Someone must have come into the room, wherever Maude was. She hadn’t mentioned her location.

  The dial tone sounded before Odessa could return the farewell.

  No trace, her parents promised her. But still. Odessa worried.

  ***

  Each morning the vulture landed in the yard, folded its great wings and stared. At first, when Little O joined her, fresh from bed and smelling like sleep, the thing lifted and returned to the sky. But the morning Little O brought a plate of rancid hamburger (how hard it proved, cooking for only two; how did her daughter know?), the bird stayed.

  “What do you think it’s trying to tell us?” Little O asked. They watched the tender, bare neck bob up and down to the Fiestaware. Dawn slashed the horizon with rust and crimson.

  “Perhaps it imprinted on us?” Odessa would never say this to anyone but her daughter.

  “I read they have no syrinx,” Little O said. “They can’t sing.”

  “Not here for lessons then.”

  Little O laughed and the vulture raised its head and hissed.

  “But we’d make such a striking trio.”

  The vulture hissed again and took off for the sky.

  ***

  They started with scales. Little O proved a natural, needed little correcting for her posture and breath; Odessa recognized the potential, the power of her baby—could see the faints and screams and the glittery jewels held aloft by shaky hands—she’d break hearts as naturally as she coasted over fa-so-la-ti-do.

  Odessa’s throat ached. It’d been so long. She yearned for slippery elm lozenges, their cardboard-y softness, the little box in her pocket. Little O showed no signs of discomfort as she worked on “Water is Wide.” Oh, to be young, to be limber and learning.

  Each night at dinner, Little O put away double portions. Over rice and beans, or Shepard’s pie, or steak with peppers and onions, Little O peppered Odessa with questions: What was your favorite venue? Your favorite song? Then one night, Why did you stop?

  Odessa thought of the newspaper and magazine clippings she’d left behind. It wasn’t as if Warren forbade her from continuing—he merely made it difficult. Meetings in St. John, Aruba, Fiji; hosting dinner parties for twenty twice a week; the fistfight with her agent. She didn’t dare read the society pages after that incident, and when she discovered she was pregnant it felt easier to cancel her remaining shows and comfort the masses with promises to return to the stage soon. She couldn’t sing while throwing up; she couldn’t face arguing with Warren’s refusal to hire a nanny.

  Not until now had she been allowed to admit she missed it.

  “Little O,” she said, whenever the questions bubbled, “don’t get carried away.”

  Little O rolled her eyes, or stuck out her tongue, or sighed huffily. “You never tell me the truth.”

  “I’ve told you everything,” Odessa said. “There’s nothing left to know.”

  “Bullshit,” Little O said.

  “Watch your—”

  “Oh, please. Who’s here to hear?”

  She had a point, Odessa admitted. Later, alone, she’d remember the moment and laugh—Little O’s frank stare, her narrow, haughty shoulders—given the space to breathe, Little O had found her voice, and fast. Genes.

  ***

  The papers had called Odessa the Cardinal—because of her hair—a ridiculous moniker, to Odessa’s young mind. But watching the vulture peck at a plate of spoiled chicken breast, Odessa sighted a brilliant PR move.

  She could’ve been the Vulture. Could still be, considering the refused face lifts. Would she have minded so wild a label? Probably she would have loved it—she studied the power of the bird’s wings, the strange beauty of its fierce face—but maybe hindsight clouded her judgment.

  ***

  The mornings ran together. Out in the desert, a refugee with her daughter, Odessa set about relinquishing her despair, a blotchy cloud marring the brightness of her new freedom. Why would she miss her husband, after what he’d taken from her? How could she?

  When the whir of her thoughts conspired to suffocate her, she sang.

  She could not go back—what was left to her? A devious husband or the disgrace of divorce, an abandoned career, aging parents. Gilded though it was, hers though it had been, Odessa despised the bars of that cage.

  She knew in her heart she’d rather age like fine leather under the harsh sun. She’d rather be the vulture circling the wide sky than a cooped up songbird. Praise and comfort be damned. Watching her daughter read or build Zen rock gardens in the yard, listening to her belt pop sings with a voice that could bring down a coliseum, Odessa tried not to wish she’d played her hand sooner.

  ***

  She and Little O worked through solfège and legato, soft palate, vibrato. Little O didn’t really need it, but Odessa insisted she learn the basics. Odessa’s vocal cords ached—no, they burned, like a brush fire, like how the sun felt on her skin at high noon, like the color of the first leaves to turn in autumn, like she and Little O’s hair, should it ever come to life.

  Watching Little O’s mouth form around the sounds, watching the wistful gaze in her eyes, letting the melancholy fullness—a note Odessa was famous for—of her daughter’s voice wash over her, was both balm and bruise.

  Evenings, after the sun waned, they practiced in the back yard; the acoustics of the hills surrounding the adobe better than any world-famous architectural design.

  To Little O’s delight, the vulture often joined them. “My faithful audience,” she called to the bird. “My first listener.”

  “What am I, chopped liver?” Odessa asked.

  “Ma, you’re my voice coach, you don’t count.”

  Oh, how that hurt.

  “Speaking of, do you think Buzzy would like liver? Can we get her some?”

  “I’m sure Buzzy has no complaints about liver.”

  That night, after Little O fell asleep, Odessa carried her glass of Merlot to the edge of the yard, to the tree where Buzzy roosted. At the sound of Odessa’s voice, the bird’s skinny neck bobbed.

  “How do I tell my daughter that you are not a pet?”

  The bird grunted.

  “What’s wrong with you? Are you lost? Hurt? Don’t you have any—?” Odessa stopped. The bird nested its scarlet head into its body with a faint harrumph.

  ***

  The phone shrilled, went quiet, shrilled again three minutes later. Wine glass in hand, she answered, “Cardinal here.” She’d imbibed too much.

  “Well, that was easy.”

  Odessa slammed down the phone, her stomach in knots. How could she have been so stupid? Of course Warren would find them. He wasn’t the type to willingly divest of goods he considered his own.

  She punched in her parents’ number, held her breath as it rang.

  “Hello, Cardinal.”

  “Please tell me they’re alive.”

  “They are. And they’ll remain so if you and the fledgling stay put.”

  Odessa clicked the phone into its cradle, hoping her silence—though it never had before—might buy her family
some time.

  ***

  She did not know how to prepare her daughter. She did not know how to prepare herself. A gun? She’d held Warren’s, but never fired. The police? Unlikely they’d be of any aid against Warren’s charm or deep pockets.

  Three sleepless nights passed, and as the morning of the fourth day spilled across the horizon, she still could not will herself to gather Little O and return to the city, the plush apartment, the maid, the cocktail parties and incessant, meaningless chatter.

  Indecision weighed heavy upon her. When the vulture landed and grunted what Odessa had come to consider Good morning, she grunted back. The bird reared its fearsome head and hissed.

  “Didn’t have your coffee then?”

  The bird extended its wings, warming them in the sun.

  “Ma, are you teasing Buzzy?”

  To hear her daughter’s voice, the light lilt of drawl in it—how ever could she concede to silencing that song?

  “No, Little O, we’re commiserating.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Partaking in each other’s misery.”

  “What do you have to be miserable about?” Little O crossed her arms. “What good does that do us, marooned on this island?”

  Oh, how she loved her daughter, the petulant diva, the jaded songstress, the secret Siren. Oh, yes. She’d risk it all to keep her free.

  ***

  Because they were out back, they did not hear the car or the footsteps; Buzzy’s sudden departure during “I’ll Fly Away” surprised them.

  “Quite the downgrade in audience.” Warren’s voice seized Odessa’s throat, the words gone dry. But Little O kept singing, her voice as ancient and sorrowful as a harp.

  When Odessa turned, she saw Warren was alone, pistol held casually by his thigh. Little O finished the song before turning to say, “Hello, Father. To what do we owe this pleasure?” Odessa marveled at Little O’s calm.