Five Years Ago: Part 1 7 page

Spencer heaves the saddle from his arms and holds out a wide palm. “Easy, girl. Easy there, Pet.”

“Pet?” I squint in the darkness at the gentle brown mare. “This isn’t the same horse.”

“Nope.”

“But you gave her the same name.”

“Yup.”

I nod in toward the horse in the neighboring stall. “His name Pet too?”

“No.”

Spencer doesn’t seem like he’s in the mood to talk, which is pretty well par for the course. Words and Spencer have never gotten along real well.

I grab a wide broom off the wall and start sweeping the floor in front of the stalls, even though there’s nothing much on the floor for me to sweep. Out of the corner of my eye I see Rash creep silently through the door, camera in hand. I’m startled to realize there are at least three other cameras mounted in the beams of the barn. For a few seconds I’d forgotten about them.

“How are ya, Ren?” Spence asks and he gives me a frank look.

I swallow. “I can’t complain.”

“You could. But you won’t.”

“What does that mean?”

“I didn’t think you’d show up. I really didn’t. Figured this place was full of too many ghosts for you.”

“I can handle the ghosts of Savages past.”

“All of them?” Spence has turned his face away and I’m not sure I heard him right.

“What?”

He looks me in the eye. “You heard me.”

I lower my head. “I did. It’s time I got around to thanking you for what you did that night.”

“I didn’t do nothing. So don’t thank me.”

A long, silent moment passes and then Spence produces carrots for the horses. Silently he hands a few over, watching as I offer them to the animals.

“And how are you, Spence? I worry about you out here you know.”

“I know. You shouldn’t.”

“Do you have a girl?”

“Whenever I need one.”

The earlier gloom has passed and I laugh. Spencer isn’t bragging. He just tells the truth and doesn’t care what anyone thinks about it, not unlike Montgomery in that way. Both of my brothers are hard characters. At this point they might get along if either of them decided to give a half ass effort. Perhaps that’s one thing that will wind up coming out of these odd circumstances. Maybe it will bring us together.

Or tear us apart.

Spencer soothes the horses for a few more minutes and then retreats into the garage. After sweeping up the stalls, refilling the horse troughs and straightening some odds and ends I can’t think of anything else to do in here. Despite the fact that there’s sweat trickling down my back and a gritty sensation all over my skin, I feel good. There’s a certain satisfaction that comes with work, any work. Now if I only I can spend the next eight weeks sweeping out the barn, I might make it through all this.

Spence has his head in the guts of a car and I don’t want to disturb him. The sun is hotter than it was when I ducked into the barn. I wish I had some sunglasses as I briskly cover the distance between the barn and the brothel. There’s no answer on Monty’s door, meaning he’s either sleeping something off or he’s out somewhere searching for trouble.

After giving up on Monty and walking around the south side of the property, I pause at the ruins of a rose garden once kept by my grandmother. Hell only knows how she managed to keep delicate roses blooming in a fierce climate like this or why she would even have bothered when she and her husband only averaged a few months out of the year here, but she did. I’ve seen the pictures. Enormous lemon-colored roses that looked as if they were painted with a Technicolor brush.

My nephew is asleep on a leather chair in the living room, curled up like a cat with a small stuffed dog wedged in the crook of an elbow. He’s precious, this little boy. I need to make an effort to spend more time with him. I touch his sweet face as I pass by.

I hear Brigitte’s voice coming from somewhere, echoing throughout the narrow hallways. She’s having a biting argument with someone via speaker phone, interrupting every six seconds to talk over the guy on the other end. The man she’s yelling at sounds as if he’s had enough of her. Brigitte has a flair for provoking moods like that.

Ava is softly at my side before I hear her coming.

“Did Monty take off?”

“I don’t know, did he?” she wrinkles her nose. “I thought I heard an engine gunning a little while ago so it’s possible. Where have you been?”

“Capering around in the manure with Spence.”

“Spence likes manure.”

“Of course he does. Manure doesn’t talk back.”

Ava laughs lightly and brushes a hand across her sleeping son’s cheek. Alden’s father was cut from the same cloth we were. Child of celebrities, privileged and fucked up since birth. He’d already been hitting the party scene pretty hard when he and Ava hooked up. Costars on a short-lived family sitcom, they were bad for each other; a wild and entitled pair who behaved as rowdily as they pleased. The paparazzi had a field day with them partying all over Hollywood and Lita, goddamn her, encouraged it. Of course it couldn’t last. All Ava got out of it was a broken heart and early motherhood. She told me once what Lita had demanded upon the news of her pregnancy. “Get rid of it.” Ava refused. After that Lita was pretty well done with her. She’d been done with me for a long time already.

Ava follows me when I head to the kitchen. My hands are dirty. All I can find in the way of soap is an ancient trial sized bottle of dishwashing liquid. It takes me a full minute to realize there’s a crew member in the room. It’s Elton, the guy Monty apparently had a rough time with yesterday. He doesn’t make a sound. He’s just parked there in a corner, like an appliance. For all I know he’s been glued to the wall.

“You know,” says Ava brightly, “I think it would be fun to have a nice family dinner tonight.”

“You do?”

Somewhere there are families who habitually sit down together at a certain hour and avoid eye contact as they slice their way into fried pork chops. At least I think there are. I’ve never actually seen one. Savages don’t do sit down dinners. When we were kids we would just kind of forage handfuls of cereal or a bag of chips from the pantry because Lita couldn’t even boil water. Even when I learned to cook, meals were somewhat haphazard because no one could seem to sit down in the same place at once.

Ava is rooting around in the cabinets, which are magically stocked with things that seem to puzzle her.

“What do you do with tomato paste?” she asks.

“Glue bananas together,” I say but she doesn’t seem to hear me.

“I’ll make spaghetti,” announces my sister loudly, as she grabs some cans and a box of pasta.

I don’t buy it. Sure, Ava’s calmed down a lot since her party days but she doesn’t fool anyone as the domestic type. Last time I visited her she agonized over how to puree carrots for Alden’s dinner. Someone must have put the idea in her head that all of us squished around a table for an hour might light some fireworks.

When I open the refrigerator I am surprised to see it as well stocked as most restaurants. No way was that Spence’s doing.

“You know,” I say, “I bet it wouldn’t be too tough to grill up some of those steaks later.”

Ava looks down at the ingredients in her hands, sets them on the counter and twirls a troubled finger around a strand of hair. “Maybe I could make a salad or something.”

I close the fridge. “I love salad.”

Not true. I’m a meat lover, always will be. A bowl of green stuff is about as desirable to me as an enema.

Ava’s looking kind of desperate though. I understand. We have instructions. We’re supposed to keep things interesting. And if that means making asses out of ourselves in the kitchen and then suffering through an uncomfortable family meal then so be it. My sister looks nervous and for a second I just want to hug her and tell her everything will be all right. My other sister is screaming for someone to go fuck himself and the noise causes Alden to start howling for his mother.

Ava rushes back to the living room and when I get there a minute later she’s got her little boy in her arms, rocking him back and forth while his small hands grip her shoulders. The sight of them, mother and son, makes my heart hurt a little.

When have I ever loved anyone like that? Have I ever really loved anyone at all?

Of course, I love my brothers and sisters. The affection I had for my father seems vague at this point. Lita was impossible to love.

And beyond that…friendships weren’t strong, the relationships short and unfulfilling. I’ve said them before, the words. I’ve said “I love you” and meant it completely. But that was a long time ago, when I was someone different.

I try to picture what he would look like now. He was nearly a grown man when I knew him. His arms, he had the strongest arms. Once they carried me a distance that had to be well beyond a mile.

Spence had commented on the ghosts here, my ghosts in particular. My brother is perceptive. Or perhaps I just wear my heart on my sleeve. Oscar stays inside my head whether I want him there or not.

I need some air, even if it’s satanically hot air. There’s a knotty wooden bench on the shallow front porch and once I’m outside I plop down onto it uncomfortably. I know I’m being watched.

The chickens run loose all over the yard. I picture unseen predators nearby, waiting for the cover of darkness as the brainless birds bob their heads and peck at the dirt. Suddenly a few of them squawk and some feathers fly loose.

A rather shabby pickup truck rolls into the yard and comes to an abrupt halt twenty feet away. I’m not especially interested in who’s in there. It’s probably someone from the crew, or maybe Monty. The door opens and a man emerges. He’s broad-shouldered and well built; tall, with a shock of black hair. For a moment I don’t feel a shred of recognition. Then a buzzing begins at the base of my skull and zooms through my entire body.

“Holy shit,” says a voice I recognize as mine. Somehow I’m standing even though I can’t feel my feet. I can’t feel anything.

He’s nothing but casual as he steps from the far side of the truck. He sees me but doesn’t seem surprised.

I, on the other hand, am quite surprised. Even though I’ve fantasized about this meeting six thousand times I’m still stunned. I shouldn’t have been.

“Loren,” he says and his voice cuts me in half. He knows it. His grin is as devastating as it ever was. I can see in an instant that he’s both different and the same. His mouth still tilts into a mocking smile automatically.

But there’s a wide chasm of time between us. Somewhere in that deep gulf we went from being soul mates to being strangers. I know nothing about the way this man’s body would feel under my hands. Whatever agonies he endured after the terrible night he left, the night I coldly ordered him to leave, belong to him alone.

“Oscar,” I whisper. I notice the way he stops walking, and the way his face freezes. Maybe he has an entirely new identity and the sound of the old one is unpleasant. Or maybe he’s hardened by the sound of my voice. It’s probably easy for him to hate me. This could be the start of some elaborate revenge. Obviously it’s no coincidence that he’s here now. While I’ve been wondering how I’m going to make cleaning horseshit look interesting for two months, Gary Vogel, knowing more than he ever hinted at, was scheming behind the scenes, ready to drop a bombshell. The only demand I’d ever uttered was ‘No Lita’. I should have figured out what else was up for grabs.

“I go by Oz now,” he says, rather tersely.

The cameras are here, ingesting every second. I have to say something. I have to do something. I have to not fall to my knees or run into his arms. Especially because he’s done nothing to invite me there.

“Welcome home,” I finally manage to say and it sounds strange to me because this was never home, not really. It’s just a place. That’s all it ever was. It only matters because of the things that happened here.

Oscar Savage stares at me from ten feet away. He looks me over shrewdly and I wonder if he sees more than a pathetic woman who has signed her private life away.

“Are you staying?” I ask him, clasping my hands behind my back to keep them from trembling.

“I am,” he answers and there’s an edge to the words, like he’s daring me to argue, which I don’t plan on doing. He watches me, all six foot two inches of bristling, resolute maleness.

I couldn’t move him if I tried.

My mind scrambles to come up with more words, any words, to fill the void. Oscar does nothing to ease the tension. He doesn’t even seem to notice that we are being filmed.

There’s nothing separating us besides five years of silence that began with a terrible night. So many details remain lost to me, intentionally lost, because I couldn’t stand remembering what it felt like to be in love. All I know is that for a little while we were together.

I know it was powerful, tumultuous, intense.

And then it was gone.

He was gone.

I’ve been keeping all of it buried for so long I don’t know how to sort through it now. But I’ll have no choice because here stands Oscar Savage, demanding either vengeance or acknowledgement. He’s not going to give me a choice about it so I’d better start figuring a few things out.

After all, somewhere in all that buried history is the truth.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 707