Children of Vice

by J. J. McAvoy

  “I thought you said you had no more family?” Ethan asked again.

  “I thought I answered this question.”

  “Right.” He nodded to himself then looked at her. “She doesn’t know what you’re talking about.”

  I snickered at that.

  “Ivy, I know you’re upset,” Rory said in this weird, childlike voice. “About Pierce and I really loving each other—”

  “I’ll honestly pay you to stop talking like that.” I cringed then looked at Pierce. “Are you really into that kind of voice shit? Dodged a bullet with that one.” I lifted the beer and tapped it over his.

  “Oh, now that you married into money you think you’re better than us?” She put her hands on her hips. “You think you’re too good for your own family now?”

  “Family?” I said and looked at Ethan, who grinned with the beer at his lips.

  “She doesn’t know what you’re talking about.”

  We both snickered.

  Cillian tried to cut in. “Seeing as Ivy’s memory is on the short end, how about we all just enjoy—”

  “She doesn’t know what we’re talking about?” Pierce spoke up and when he did I groaned, putting my head on Ethan’s shoulder, already knowing where this was going.

  “Forgive him, for he knows not what he does,” I said just loud enough for everyone to hear and soft enough that I could still speak closely in his ear.

  “Oh, pretend now, but seven years ago you were the one begging and crying about how you didn’t know how you were going to live without me. How no one understood you but me—”

  “And I only ever think about having sex with you,” I said aloud, adding, “Oh my God, when I’m with you I see stars…yep, all of those were lines from Katharine Duong’s novel So What, I Faked It.” I spoke up to the rest of the observers, who’d spend the next decade making up shit to add to this story. “It’s a great novel, ladies, especially when you’re dealing with a micro.”

  They couldn’t help it; all of them started to laugh and covered their mouths. Even Ethan snickered, glancing over at him.

  “I thought you liked me jealous. You should have let him at least pretend.”

  “You little—”

  “SHUT UP!” Cillian finally broke his cool, hollering at them. “Goddamn, can I get a word in or are you two buffoons going to keep trying to make a psychopath feel something for you two?”

  Psychopath. I’d been back here less than an hour and the label was already stuck back on my forehead.

  Rory wrapped her arm around Pierce, pulling him closer to her.

  “Now, are you two done pretending as well?” Cillian glared at me.

  “Pretending?” Ethan questioned.

  “Sorry to break it to you, Ethan, but we aren’t as stupid as you think we are. Ivy called us from prison two weeks ago, and now all of a sudden she’s married to you? Why?” He didn’t direct that question to us, but to the crowd he was trying to win over.

  “Do tell,” Ethan interjected, but Cillian overlooked him.

  “For years now some has-been and his has-been family is trying to wiggle himself back into Boston. Trying to make us bow the fuck down. Like his pop. His father’s pop and his great-granddad before him. All to pay taxes out of our own businesses to a family that ain’t lived here for generations.” There were grumbles over that. A few of the older men spat to the left of themselves and stood taller, as if they were ready to fight if needed.

  “All of us getting called up when your family gets itself on the brink of ruin.” His eyes shifted to Ethan. “Pretending to be Irish when we all really know you’re nothing but mutts.” He wasn’t done. No, he had to get a clean shot at me too. “Ivy, I loved you like a little sister. I promised your father I’d watch out for you—”

  “Was that before you killed him? Or did you make that promise in prayer while Rory framed me for a crime she committed?”

  More people began to mutter, but Cillian just rolled it off. “Were you so desperate to get out that you’d believe any lies he told you and whore yourself out to him?”

  My fist clenched and Ethan shattered the bottle in his bare hands, the glass cutting his hands, the little of the beer that was left pouring onto the patchy grass. Eyes narrowed, he glared at him. “If you want to insult someone, keep it directed at me, not my wife. You don’t speak to a woman like that and you sure as fucking hell don’t talk to my woman like that.”

  “The woman you’ve been with for what, three days?” He snickered. “Excuse me if I don’t take your shame seriously. You played her. Fine, but you aren’t—”

  “For some odd reason all of you are under the impression that I married Ivy for Boston.” He took my hand, stepping onto the grass and standing with me. “That I’m so desperate to hang on to all of you, and this city, I married a woman I didn’t know. How arrogant can you all be? I didn’t marry Ivy from Boston. I married Ivy, daughter of Sean O’Davoren, the same Sean O’Davoren, who, when me and my siblings were kidnapped, kept us safe until we could get back home. I married Ivy, who was once the freakishly tall ten-year-old who fed the cats in the basement.”

  He actually laughed, but I was frozen, his grip on me tightening. Just as quickly as he laughed it was gone and he was deadly serious again. “Everyone likes to think my family spends our days scheming and plotting…that is whenever we aren’t taking milk baths and eating with diamond forks. But the truth is, I’m just a guy who married his long-time crush. If you all want the Callahan family out of Boston, fine, that is your right.” He took out his phone and dialed three numbers. “And it’s done. We’ll leave as soon as Ivy finishes up some business and our honeymoon is up. Thank you for the shitty beer.”

  He pulled me along. I could feel my legs walking, but my mind was elsewhere…it was on his previous confession. I knew him? Before now I knew him?

  “Do you really expect me to believe that?” Cillian called out from behind us. “Especially after what you did to Eamon Downey?”

  “Mr. Downey was a personal messenger, but since you didn’t get it, let me be clearer. Neither you nor your shit-faced brother is good enough for my sister. Look at her again and I’ll bust your teeth in personally.”

  BANG!

  BANG!

  BANG!

  BANG!

  I jumped, startled, refocusing on him again only to see the power lines around us start to explode, sparks flying off all of them one by one, raining over us like dying fireflies.

  “That’s going to be a pain in the ass to fix,” Ethan said, unbothered. “But then again that is no longer my problem. So what are a few sparks between neighbors?”

  I didn’t understand what he meant until I walked out from the house, Elroy and his gang sitting on the front porch, some of them lifting their phones, trying to get the signal working, as we walked past the car toward the house across the street. Finally, after holding it in since we’d landed, the sky, as if it knew Ethan was finished with them, unleashed the rain it had been holding back. The thunder rippling through the clouds, the rain beat the earth with a vengeance just as we made it to the only house on the block that now had power.

  Note to self. Ethan has a flair for the dramatic.

  ETHAN

  When we stepped through the door, the light immediately coming on, she pulled away from me gently. In a trance-like state, her blue eyes scanned over the foyer and the horrid wallpapered walls, the old couch, the pink shaggy carpet, and the television…a box television. The whole house was frozen in whatever my mother said the ’80s left behind. It was as tacky as tacky could be, like the house of someone’s dead great-grandmother coming back to haunt them…it was all of that and yet comfortable.

  Turning to the left, she walked into the kitchen, directly toward the sink cabinet, pulling out a bottle of wine. She lifted it up, tilting her head to the side like she didn’t expect it to be there. Blinking a few times, she put it down on the counter then reached up, opening the cabinet and taking out two mugs. The first
had an owl winking and the other what looked to be a drunk cat. She put them down next to the wine and put her fingers against the back of the cabinet until it opened, revealing a hole in the wall from where she pulled out stacks upon stacks of dusty bills. She didn’t stop until she had about half a million sitting on the counter. Something that would have made a normal person happy, but instead she started to tear up when she turned back to me.

  “I remember now.” Her bottom lip quivered. “Everyone called me crazy, they threw rocks at me, and even my father denied it…denied that I ever met a boy in the basement of this house…that boy was you, wasn’t it? This is a safe house, isn’t it? My father hid you guys here, didn’t he…that’s why they died? Because of you…because of me?”

  Before the truth came the painful removal of ignorance…my wife was living proof of that.

  I’d told my grandmother we’d have to tell her the truth and lie to her. Well, the truth was my family didn’t kill hers. But they did die because of me.

  TWENTY

  “The future for me is already a thing of the past.”

  ~ Bob Dylan

  IVY – AGE TEN

  “Why doesn’t anyone believe me?” I yelled from in front of the house. “I do have a friend! He lives here!”

  “Does not!” Rory yelled back at me.

  “Does too!”

  “DOES NOT!” she screamed, pushing me into the fence.

  “DOES TOO!” I pushed her back and started to run. “I’ll show you!”

  Climbing over the fence, I looked back over at them, but none of them were coming. “Come on!”

  “No, we’re going home.” Rory crossed her arms.

  “Yea! We don’t want to be seen hanging out with you.” Megan, one of her friends, along with Rachel, laughed at me, crossing their arms too.

  Smiling, I put my hands on my hips. “Fine, but you have to tell everybody you were wrong.”

  “We aren’t wrong. Look, it’s all dusty!” She pointed out the house behind me. “No one lives there—”

  “I bet you’re wrong.”

  Rory paused, thinking about it. “Bet what? Your earrings?”

  My hands went up to cover my ears. “No! My mom just gave me these!”

  “See, knows she’s lying.” She laughed with everyone.

  “I am not!” I yelled again, stomping my foot. “Fine! I bet my earrings, but when you lose you have to say sorry in front of everyone.”

  “Fine!” she yelled, climbing over the fence with the rest of them.

  Smiling, I ran to the corner of the house where the window was, trying to pull it open.

  “If anyone is here, why don’t you just knock?” Rachel whispered.

  “’Cause she’s lying,” Rory said again, and I wanted to yell, but I pulled harder. It still wouldn’t budge.

  “What are you all doing?”

  They screamed, but I just turned around. There was an old man holding on to a cane with one hand, his black and brown dark dog barking at us, making them jump.

  “She said a boy lives down here.” Rory pointed down at the window. “She told us to come see.”

  The old man frowned. “Sorry, ladies, there isn’t any boy—”

  “YES, THERE IS!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. Why didn’t anyone believe me? “He’s been here—”

  “Sweetheart, I think you’re a little confused. I’d know if someone was living in my own house. I just sold it yesterday and had the whole place cleaned the day before that.”

  I didn’t know why, but I started to cry.

  “A bet’s a bet!” Rory reached for my ears, but I ran. I ran as far away as I could, climbed over the fence, and kept running.

  IVY

  I don’t know how I ended up on the kitchen floor, but I just sat there with my knees tucked to my chest. Ethan sat quietly beside me and began to confess.

  “My brother, sister, and I came to Boston with my uncle Neal when I was eleven. My parents wanted us to be safe while they were handling some issues back in Chicago. However, when we got here, we were attacked. That’s how my uncle lost his leg. We came to this house in the middle of the night. It was pitch-black and they told us to stay in the rooms, stay away from the windows, and don’t talk to anyone. I didn’t listen to any of those rules,” he whispered softly, and I just squeezed my legs tighter. “Your father and another man would often sit in the kitchen or move to the living room, keeping watch. I got bored waiting around day after day, so I snuck into the basement.”

  “Where I snuck off during school,” I added. I picked that place one day after seeing this fat cat fall through the window. I laughed so hard at it but went to make sure it was okay. I started to stay because I thought it was close enough to my house that I was safe and that my dad would stay away because he was allergic. “That’s when I met you.”

  He nodded. “We hung out down here day after day for a week.”

  “Until you just disappeared one day,” I said angrily. “I crawled inside and waited for you to come down, but you never did, so I went up, just as my father was closing the door to the cabinet. He yelled at me for being here. At first I didn’t say anything. I thought you were skipping school too. But when you didn’t come back the next day I thought something had happened and tried to ask my dad, but he said no one lived there.”

  “I didn’t know it then, about the growing issues between Boston and my family,” he replied, taking my hand. “I didn’t know your father was putting everything on the line by protecting us.”

  “So when I babbled about the boy in the basement—”

  “Your uncle figured it out and bombed your father’s car, killing your mother.” He nodded, and I couldn’t breathe…I tried to pull my hand away, but he didn’t allow it. “He begged my parents to set it right. And we helped him kill your uncle. Cillian and Elroy killed your father in revenge and not just for that, they wanted to follow their father’s dreams, making the Finnegan family the new Callahan family. And now they want my head—”

  “A…” I tried to speak, but I couldn’t. I hurt. I hurt so badly my whole body began to shake.

  “Ivy!” He grabbed me when I began to choke, but I didn’t know what I was choking on, my guilt, my rage, the pain, or was it all burning me alive from the inside out. “IVY!” He grabbed the sides of my face, now kneeling next to me. “Breathe! It’s not your fault.”

  It was, though! I shouldn’t have pushed! I should have kept my mouth shut. I knew my father was hiding something back then. But I just didn’t want to be called crazy anymore!

  “Come on, breathe, okay? Please.” He kissed my lips quickly. “Breathe, baby.”

  Inhaling and exhaling, blinking the tears in my eyes away, I tried to push away, but he held on again. He wouldn’t let me move.

  “Breathe in.” I did. “Breathe out.” I did.

  We were like that for God only knows how long before I could finally speak again.

  “Wyatt’s right. It never ends—”

  “WYATT IS WRONG!” he hollered into my face. “The problem is not us! The problem is never us! The problem is those who want to be us! Your mother’s death is not your fault. Your father’s death is not your fault. It’s Keegan’s! There is always a beginning and it started with him. But the ending comes from us. Don’t put your rage anywhere else. Don’t let your need for vengeance burn out. We came here to kill them all, remember?”

  I nodded, still crying but nodding, holding on to his wrist as he held on to my face. “You were my first friend, you know? That is why I wanted everyone to know.”

  “You were the first and only girl I ever loved and the first and only girl to break my heart,” he whispered back, putting his forehead on mine.

  “I thought you didn’t want to love anyone.”

  “I said I didn’t want to be obsessed, not love.”

  “And yet after all these years I’m still the first and only girl you ever loved. Isn’t that obsession?”

  He frowned and this time
when he tried to pull away I held on tighter. “Till I was seventeen I wasn’t with anyone. Then you started to date Pierce Donoghue. When I found out I was so pissed, so jealous…I slept with six out of seven girls on the cheerleading team during homecoming week.”

  My hands and my mouth opened as I sat in shock, and he stood back up. The smirk on his face pissed me off so damn much, I kicked his shin. “You little shit!”

  “Ahh!” He bounced away from me, grabbing his shin before yelling, “What? If you weren’t going to wait for me, why the hell was I going to wait for you?”

  “I didn’t think you existed! I thought you were a figment of my imagination. I was a kid! You knew I was here?”

  He rolled his eyes. “You should have stood firm and remembered me!”

  “Oh, you are—”

  “You forgot me twice!” He shot back, and I froze.

  Twice? “What?”

  “You are the most infuriating woman I have ever met in my life and you’ve met the women in my family, so that truly is an accomplishment.” He shook his head at me, brushing me aside to take the wine off the counter next to the money.

  “When else did we meet?”

  He glared at me, using a knife to uncork the wine, and poured it into the owl mug. I outstretched my hand to take it, but he drank instead.

  “Now you’re just being petty.”

  “Takes one to know one.” He…oh my God, he was pouting. He poured the wine into the cat mug, giving it to me. “I can’t believe you still don’t remember. When I met you in the basement back then, I thought you’d figure it out, but you never did.”

  “WHAT?” He was just messing with me now.

  “You came to Chicago weeks before I came to Boston! We were volunteering once at the shelter, and you came up, unable to choose between the—”

  “Chocolate and lemon cakes.” I remembered, clapping my hands, then pointed to him. “That was you!”