Perhaps my transition is complete. I’m a ‘cold-hearted bitch’ who has finally turned to stone.
Spence shifts his weight around and seems like he wants to say something but Monty interrupts, flinging open the screen door like a cocksure king busting out of his castle. He steps onto the porch, still holding the same bottle as earlier, but in the glint of the moonlight I can see it’s not as full. Nonetheless, the look he gives me is sharp-eyed and suspicious, not dull and drunk. Montgomery could always hold his liquor. He crosses his arms and looks from side to side as if he’s searching for a hidden predator. He gives me a nod. “What’s going on, Ren?”
For a second I try to pat my wild hair down, then give up. I realize that the shoulder of my shirt is torn but there’s nothing I can do about that right now. I can’t make myself care much about appearances at the moment anyway. “Jesus, you guys,” I snap. “Nothing happened.”
“She went for a walk,” Spence pipes up with helpful sarcasm.
Monty leans against the knotty wood porch beam and looks me over. He evidently doesn’t like what he sees. “You fall down the side of a fucking mountain on your walk?”
God, I’m tired. I could sleep for a week. Perhaps when I wake up the dull pain will be gone. “I fell down something.”
“Did that something have a pickup truck and a shitty attitude?”
I lower my head. My hair falls across my vision like a dark veil. “So what if it did?”
Monty spits into the dirt. “Fuck him. I’m glad he’s gone.”
“Oz is gone?” asks Spence.
“He’d better be.”
Spence is looking at me. “I never really understood what he was doing here anyway. Doesn’t seem like the Hollywood type who would fit into all of this.”
Monty laughs. “What about you, fantasy cowboy? You’re not exactly the type either.”
“Shut up, you jailbird piece of shit.”
Monty lights another cigarette. He’s becoming a goddamn chain smoker. “Hey Ren, you let me know the minute that prick shows up here again and I’ll drop kick him to fucking Flagstaff.”
I raise my head and glare at him. “Really, Monty? I have my doubts that assault is encouraged during your parole.”
Monty grunts in response and takes a drag.
Spencer comes closer, really takes stock of my messy appearance and adopts an expression of supreme concern. For Spencer, that means his eyebrows are slightly furrowed. “Hey. He didn’t rough you up or nothing, did he?”
“Oz? Rough me up?” I throw my head back and laugh crazily. I’m laughing because the concept so far from the truth and yet so completely true. Yes, he roughed me up. He told me the truth about myself and treated me how I deserve to be treated.
While I keep cackling, my brothers assume identical macho glowers. They glower at me. The glower at each other. They glower at the darkness and the sky. I’m sick of both of them and their stupid fucking glowering maleness at this point. I stop laughing like a wild hyena.
“Whatever happened out there tonight is my business so let’s knock off the inquisition. Ninety nine percent of the time you don’t seem to give a damn about what I’m doing anyway. So let’s save the show of brotherly concern for the daylight hours when the production crew can get some useful footage out of it.”
On that tender note I slam my way into the house. Brigitte’s startled face is the first thing I see because she’s scooted a chair right next to the door, pretending to be immersed in her phone while discreetly listening to the conversation on the front porch.
She calls my name but I ignore her and head for the kitchen. My mouth feels like it’s layered with mesquite bark. I fill a glass with water from the sink even though the tap water tastes like warm sulfur out here. When I’m gulping it back, ignoring the awful taste, I catch sight of a camera that had been installed just above the sink. I’d stopped noticing it days ago but now the empty stare of the black lens infuriates me so I rip it right out of the wall. A few errant wires trail from its guts so I stuff the whole thing into the very back of the freezer, slamming the stainless steel door shut.
“Like that’ll do anything,” Brigitte snorts from the doorway. She wafts into the room, grabs an apple from a bowl in the center of the table and flashes me a bemused glance. “They’ll just put it back tomorrow. Besides, there are about a hundred and seventy five more of them sewn into the walls of the house. I’ll bet someone will still be picking hidden cameras out of the eaves fifty years after we’re dead. By the way, big sister, you look like the proverbial cat who ate the canary.”
I empty the glass and set it down in the sink. “So I guess you’re speaking to me again?”
She takes a bite of the apple, chews and looks thoughtfully wounded before opting to answer. “I’m choosing to overlook your occasionally aggressive nature. After all, I know this is a stressful environment. I also know that I have the capacity to be a terrible bitch.”
I sink down in one of the hardback chairs. “Cut out the theatrics. You know Bree, I have to wonder if you have to ability to stop acting even if you try.”
Another bite of the apple. “I’m not acting right now. I’m just being your sister.”
“Then just be my sister and stop trying to direct a script.”
She sighs, touches her left palm to her forehead. Bree suffers from frequent migraines, one of the few things we have in common.
“Loren,” she says quietly, “why are you in the habit of forgetting that I’m on your side?”
“Why are you in that habit of behaving as if you are starring in a vivid mini-series about your own life?”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
“Yes you do. It means I have to watch my back lest I get broadsided by your ambitions.”
The hand holding the apple wilts at her side and the flash of genuine confusion in her eyes makes me wish I could take my own words back. I’ve been wishing that a lot lately. Someone really ought to muzzle me.
We’re turning on each other. Or maybe it’s all me, turning on everyone.
She shakes her head, catching onto my meaning. “Ren, I didn’t tell them anything they didn’t already know.”
I close my eyes. “Really?”
“No, I really didn’t! If you want to know how it went down, well, okay. Gary asked. Repeatedly. Like he already knew everything about you and Oscar but was looking for someone to go on record with it. But that someone wasn’t me.”
“You could have warned me, Brigitte. You could have warned me that his name had come up.”
“Ren, why did you ever fool yourself into thinking it wouldn’t?” She sighs. “You’re right though. I should have said something. But I thought if I did-“
“You thought I’d back out of the show.”
She lowers her head. “Yes.” After a long exhale she swallows and meets my eyes. “I’m sorry, okay? But I swear, the day he showed up I was as shocked to see him as you were.”
“Oh, I doubt anyone was as shocked to see him as I was.”
Bree scrunches up her nose and starts to say something before changing her mind and shutting her mouth.
“What do you want to say?”
Brigitte slides her lithe body into the chair across from me. “I never even knew exactly what happened between you guys. None of us really did. I mean, we all knew you were together. We knew Lita was simmering to a slow boil over it. But the things she said about him, they couldn’t all have been true, right?”
The flashback to that night is visceral. The smell of smoke, the feel of Oscar inside of me, my mother’s hand slapping my face hard enough to bring a trickle of blood to my nose. Threats, promises, screaming, desolation. And finally, emptiness.