Kept Animals Page 23

  “Nah,” she said, pinching chew into her lip, pushing it down with her tongue. “I’m just telling you because we both have to quit our bullshit. Quit swinging at people, Gus. You don’t have to turn into Dad, you know.”

  “I already did.”

  “I don’t see it like that,” Joy said. “Way I see it is we all got a cancer of some kind. Some are easier to curb than others, some of us get choices. Which feelings, which memories we want to feed. You got choices, Gus, and you get to make ’em every damn day.”

  * * *

  “I’M LEAVING,” SONJA said. They were hurtling down the hill. Rory couldn’t read her face; the interior of the van was so dark, and the windows tinted.

  Rory had gone up to the house looking for Tomás, hoping he would drive her home and tell her everything that happened in Colorado, but Sonja had answered and picked up her keys.

  “I have to leave,” Sonja repeated.

  “Have to leave?” Were the Fisks taking the house from her? Already?

  “Jorge’s lawyer—he said la migra are looking into my status.”

  “Immigration?”

  “They could come tomorrow. A month from now. I can’t know.”

  “Where are you going to go?”

  Sonja sighed. “I can’t tell you that.”

  “You don’t know?” No, she knew. Rory saw this on her face, a steeling around her mouth. “You think they’ll get it out of me?” Rory asked.

  Sonja smiled. “No, but you might tell Tomás.”

  “He isn’t going with you?”

  “He is a grown boy.” Sonja’s eyes fell. “And a citizen.”

  “Did Bella give you money?” Rory wanted to know this. Bella had asked Sonja questions, that’s what June had said. And the fact of the paperwork there the night Carlotta fell …

  “Don’t look at me like that, Rory. I’ve bathed that woman for three years. I cleaned her sheets after she was sick. I dyed her hair and cut her nails. I bleached her pinche shoes. They had to be white. Blanco, blanco, blanco, she was always yelling at me. Bella didn’t give me money …” There was knowing in Sonja’s voice. “But I know Mrs. Danvers gave you a few things, didn’t she?”

  Rory looked at her hands. Of course, Sonja knew. Two pairs of gloves, a set of spurs, the whip, the sport watch. There might have been more. Rory couldn’t remember. The world outside was a yellow pall of smog and dust.

  “It’s okay,” Sonja said.

  They’d passed two new signs, handmade with black paint on neon yellow poster board, both of them flapping in the wind, their demand, SLOW DOWN.

  “Gus,” Rory said, realizing. “He’s not coming back, is he?”

  “Rory, you don’t know that. Don’t talk like that. He loves you.”

  “You love Tomás.”

  Sonja gave her a look, like she’d underestimated an opponent.

  “I told you, he’s grown,” Sonja said. “He has an opportunity here. The Fisks need him.”

  Rory thought of Sarah Price, of that term, walkaway mother.

  “What did you say to Vivian?”

  They were driving past the drag mark along the wall, past the gates, where a new rash of flowers had been left outside, their petals plucked away by the wind.

  Sonja fanned her fingers on the wheel. “I asked her not to hurt you. I told her—”

  “You said what?”

  “I told her you were good people, Rory. You are. You’re young, but you’ll know soon—that girl can’t take care of you. She’s not your friend. I don’t know how you got so mixed up in all of this, Rory, but I know you can’t give that girl what she needs.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  Sonja stopped at the stop sign. There were no cars behind and no cars coming up the main road, but Sonja wasn’t going. She was looking at Rory. The same deep-set eyes as Tomás, the same high cheekbones and sallow cheeks. Then she closed her eyes as if trying to locate a pain in her body, willing it to pass. “Tomás had a brother, too.”

  “Tomás?”

  Sonja nodded. “Enrique. He died before Tomás was born.”

  “They never met,” Rory said stupidly. “Does Tomás know?”

  Sonja shook her head. “I am telling you because I know what it’s like to lose a son. And to believe that it is your fault. It makes you want to run away from everything.”

  “Vivian told you about her mother,” Rory said, saying it as quickly as she’d understood it.

  “Yes,” Sonja said. “She knew that her mother had written to Jorge. She wanted to know what she said, if she had written to him again.” Sonja shook her head. “Sarah Price thinks she loves wrong and now her daughter will take any love at all.”

  “You think I am any love?”

  “I think she does not know the difference.”

  Behind them someone leaned on an old shrill horn. Sonja turned onto the main road.

  The streetlights snapped on, orbs of light on the dusk gray turns, flashing in the car as they drove on, one after another. “What happened to him? Enrique? How old was he?”

  “¿Quieres saber?”

  Rory nodded. There was the soft pluck of an insect striking the windshield.

  “Okay,” Sonja said. “I will tell you. Maybe one day you’ll tell Tomás.”

  “He doesn’t know?”

  “In his bones, sí. But not from me. I’ve never even said Enrique’s name.”

  “Why not?” Rory asked.

  “Because you want your children to feel proud.” Sonja cracked her window ever so slightly, as if ensuring she would be able to breathe, and air whistled in, dry as ash. “I waited until Enrique was ten, until I had the money for the coyote, and I thought Enrique was strong enough to cross. We had family and friends who had made it before us, so I trusted we would be okay. I had heard the bad stories, too, but they weren’t as bad as not going. But Enrique walked twice as far as I did. Getting ahead, coming back to me. I told him to stop, take it easy. Eventually he did.”

  “Where was the coyote?”

  Sonja snorted. “He got us across, eleven of us, said we would sleep and then go on, but when we woke, he was gone. There was a family with younger girls—they could carry them so they didn’t get so tired.” She paused. “Maybe I waited too long. First, we ran out of food. When Enrique got this look in his eyes, I tried to pick him up. A hundred pounds of him.” Sonja wiped at her face. “Then we ran out of water. The others were gone by then. It was only us, and I had to carry him across my shoulders. My feet bled. My nose bled. Six miles. Seven miles. He weighed so much. And then I saw the lights. It was a whole city of lights. I had to run. I had to get the help he needed as fast as I could, so I put him down.” Sonja had pulled the van over. The same dirt shoulder where Vivian met Rory before her bus.

  “It wasn’t a city, was it?”

  Sonja leaned her head back on the seat. “It was one bulb—splitting up—” She danced her fingers in the air. “One pinche bulb outside of a barn, but the doors of the barn were open and inside were pigs. Rooting pigs, everywhere. Last thing I remember was a chicken flying up, fat and squawking, and then—no light.”

  “You passed out,” Rory said, understanding.

  “I don’t forgive myself. I want to believe he was already gone. That he died while I was carrying him. I felt him get heavy, like grain. But then the farmer came. It was the sun that woke me, not him. I heard him throwing buckets of corn down. And then he was standing over me. He was an old man. I called him viejito, meaning to be kind. Viejito, please, I said. I had some English to use, but he didn’t like my please. He was old like gringos go, face like a ratty bag. He didn’t smile. And then he—” Sonja made a motion with her hands and swallowed, her head nodding. “He—”

  “I understand,” Rory said.

  “I tried to scratch his face and kick, like I was told. I had been warned. But I had not eaten or had water for days. And those pigs everywhere. Snorting. A man ever does that to you—” Sonja lowered her head and Rory saw the an
ger crawling under her skin. “When he finished, he said, ‘I could have used good help. Not a woman. If you’d had a muchacho with you,’ he said and I remembered Enrique.” Sonja’s voice caught. “I shot up and started running, but I was hurting, and I fell. He dragged me back in the barn. I told him where I had left Enrique, as best I could, and he took off on his tractor. It felt like an entire day he was gone. I drank from the pig water and I picked through their slop. I wanted strength. When he came back without Enrique, he said that the animals had already gotten to him.”

  “That man,” Rory said, afraid, but knowing.

  “I lost my son,” Sonja said. “But, then, Tomás. I was given Tomás.”

  Rory thought of Tomás’s long legs, his thick-knuckled hands. How when Jorge had him laughing, Tomás would smack his own knee, saying, “Papi,” his eyes tearing up.

  “Tell me where you’re going?” Rory asked again. “Give Tomás the choice?”

  “Lo siento, Rory. Sometimes we can only take care of ourselves.”

  * * *

  IT TOOK CALLING five times in a row before he answered, and when he did Vivian could hear that he was on the other side of laughing, the lingering champagne in his voice.

  “Everett Price here.”

  “Daddy?”

  “Vivi, how are you, baby?”

  “I want to come see you, for a visit. I thought maybe this weekend, for the holiday. Halloween? Día de los Muertos. We could dress up, you know, celebrate.” Turn all this upside down, on its head (acceptance, that was the final stage).

  Silence.

  She wanted to believe it was a long-distance delay, but she could hear, in the background, the titter of a small group of people, a gathering in his trailer that she could picture all too well: There was the young makeup artist with a side ponytail, smacking her fruit-flavored gum; the male costar, taking mental notes on how Everett held the room; a cutely nervous PA who’d come with more Evian but had been told to sit, stay, relax.

  “Oh, well, Vivi …” Everett said, his voice trailing off.

  “I’ll arrange all of it, Daddy. You don’t have to do anything. I’ll—”

  “Production is really ramping up here. How about you have Carmen come on the weekends, too? And here I thought you must be loving having the place to yourself.”

  “I’m not, Daddy. Not at all. It’s miserable here.”

  Fires had sprung up in Ojai and Altadena, and the sky was choked with the residual heat and smog that the Santa Anas had swept from the valley into the mountains.

  “How about you throw a party? I won’t tell if you don’t.” She could hear him winking at the minions, their nods of approval (the coolest dad in town!). “I’ll have Bobby help with a guest list.”

  “I don’t want a party. I want to know when my mom is coming home.”

  “Vivian.”

  “Everett,” she said. “Twenty-three down.” It was the first crossword clue she’d ever figured out on her own.

  “You’re breaking up, sweetheart.”

  “You don’t remember, do you?”

  “We don’t always have the best connection down here.”

  “What Ricky says to Lucy, eight spaces, twenty-three down,” Vivian said. “You were so proud of me, Daddy. You used to say that to me, Twenty-three down! Twenty-three down!” She was screaming.

  “It really is hard to hear you, Viv. Please give my love to your mother. Let her know I’m thinking maybe Italy for Christmas.” (This. This was why Mommy had gone crazy.)

  The actress shouted, “You must go to Naples. Capri is so fabulous.”

  “Yes, yes, I’ve been there,” Everett said. “I shot Otto’s Fortune in the castle by—”

  “Is this real? Are you really saying these things, Daddy? Give your love to Mommy? Naples? Can you be real?”

  There was a hum on the line. Vivian held the phone away, looking at the little holes in the ear- and mouthpieces.

  “Everett,” Vivian said. “I want you to listen very carefully. You have one week to either come home or find Mommy, otherwise I’m calling the press and I will tell them that Mommy has been missing for a month. And that you’ve kept it secret because you’re embarrassed. Embarrassed she’s unwell or that you don’t know how to help. Whatever it is, I might even skip the usual rags and go straight to the L.A. Times. No, The Hollywood Reporter!”

  “Vivian. Stop it. Stop this now.” He had no trouble hearing her suddenly. (Int. Studio Trailer: all eyes trained on the Actor) “I’ll talk to Bobby. I’ll see what he says. I’ll get back to you.”

  “You do that.”

  “Twenty-three down, Vivi. I hadn’t forgotten. And I am still proud of you.”

  “We’ll see,” she said, hanging up. Maybe too abruptly (but the scene seemed to call for it).

  She pulled a Zima from the fridge. How did one go about tipping off the press? This is Vivian Price, and I’d like you to do a story on my family? Oh, how the tables had turned in the last three months. The glass in the sliding door had finally been replaced.

  When the phone started ringing, she assumed it was Everett calling back (lemmings ushered off).

  “Vivian Price,” she answered. “Have I got a story for you.”

  “Do you? I could use a good story.” It was Rory. Not Everett, not Cousin Everett, not Daddy at all. “I have an idea,” Rory said. “Somewhere I want to go with you.”

  And Vivian felt the armor she’d barely pulled back on fall to the floor.

  * * *

  AT THE TOP, Rory tried the door. It was locked. She fished inside the Keds still sitting there; Sonja had kept a spare key in one, but it was gone. “Shit,” she said.

  “Don’t give up so easily,” Vivian said. She pulled a Swiss Army knife from her pocket, flicked open the blade, and slipped it between the door and its frame. The lock gave with a click. The wind had died down but its earlier gusting was clear in the strung cotton of the clouds.

  “Clearly I called the right person,” Rory said.

  “I’m the only person,” Vivian said, going in first, her eyes moving over everything as if Carlotta’s house were a cave, alive with potential wonders. Or threats.

  Ordinarily Rory understood Vivian’s various moods and how best to respond to them. But now, now her thoughts seemed in some unknowable stratosphere. Still, she had agreed to come. All was not lost, she was here. And this was somewhere they could be, without the intrusion of Wade or June.

  June had started swinging by Rory’s house uninvited, offering her rides to the barn again. The look on Mona’s face turning from irritation to gratitude, glad not to have to take Rory herself. And each time Rory had gotten into the convertible she felt she was betraying Vivian. Though that was ridiculous. Vivian had taken right back up with Wade; Rory knew this.

  “Kind of gloomy in here,” Vivian said, wandering down the hallway.

  Carlotta’s house was big Spanish tile floors, then high-pile, maroon carpet in the other rooms, a mix of wood-paneled walls and wallpaper, blown-glass chandeliers. There were carvings made from burls of wood, wrought-iron wind chimes in the shape of galloping horses, and, of course, her trophies. Not gloomy, but luxurious, that was how Rory thought of it.

  “So where are all these animals?” Vivian said from the living room.

  Rory had told her about finding more of Gus’s animals here, in Carlotta’s curio cabinet. How Carlotta must have unearthed them from the boxes, arranging them like dolls in a dollhouse.

  “Hold on,” Rory called down the hall. “I’ll show you.” She was in the kitchen, rummaging through the cabinets. The refrigerator had been emptied, but the dish cabinets and the pantry were full. Aha, rum. And tequila! Rory slung her camera back around her neck.

  There was the sound of curtain rings sliding on their iron railings.

  “That’s a little better,” Vivian said, standing in the light.

  Rory felt traces of all the afternoons she’d spent up here, listening to Gus and Carlotta talk horses, gossip a
bout the boarders, Carlotta telling Rory with a wink that this was all between them.

  “Do you like either of these?” Rory asked, a bottle in each hand.

  “I like everything,” Vivian said. “But I’m not drinking alone.”

  “All right, then.” Rory set the bottles on the coffee table, opened both, and took a half swig from the tequila, saying, “That’s not so bad.”

  Vivian eyed her suspiciously. Rory drank again.

  “Look at that,” Vivian said.

  Between the two heavily draped windows was a dark outline on the wall, where a love seat had been, the surrounding wallpaper faded by sun and time.

  “There used to be a love seat there,” Rory said. “A little sofa,” she said, wondering if love seat was the right word. Vivian, the Fisks, they had different ways of talking about furniture. “I used to sit there, looking through Carlotta’s photo albums.”

  “Her daughter came and took it,” Vivian said, as if she’d seen the moving van herself.

  Rory looked around. “That’s all she took?”

  “Not everything means the same thing to everyone else.” She took a pulling swallow off the bottle of rum.

  “You still want to see?” Rory asked. “The animals?”

  Vivian followed her into the dining room. Rory flicked on the chandelier, and the webbing of light fell onto the table again. Rory drew the curtains open, but only partway—Mona was gone, but just to the market, and this was the room that faced their house.

  “Oh,” Vivian said, seeing now. “These are incredible,” she said. She took out the raccoon with its raised paw and the fur lifted, electric, the air was so dry. “Whoa,” Vivian said. “Like it’s alive. Feel it, though—it hardly weighs a thing.”

  “No, that’s okay,” Rory said. “Actually, I was hoping that I could photograph you? Maybe with them?”

  Vivian’s expression turned amused. Smug, even. This was a Vivian Rory recognized. “So how do you want me?” Vivian asked.

  “Like you’re one of them,” Rory said. “Another wild thing but trapped inside this house.”

  “Sure,” Vivian said. She set the raccoon on the table and took another long pull on the rum, then hopped up onto the table, too. Click. “Maybe like this?” She turned and lay back on her elbows, knees bent, toes pointed. Posing. Like the photo in the magazine, on the beach with Wade.