Kept Animals Read online

  Click. “No,” Rory said. “Different.” Vivian rolled to her stomach, staring the raccoon in the face. Click. She reached into its mouth to clear a cobweb. “Leave that,” Rory said. “The web. I like all that imperfect stuff.”

  “And me?” Vivian asked, cocking her head. “How do you like me?”

  “Oh,” Rory said. “I have a joint, too.” She’d almost forgotten. She pulled it from her bra, and the lighter from her cigarettes, and handed it to Vivian. One small benefit of riding with June again, having a joint to share. She drew the curtains closed, only a crack of light, right down the center of the table. She changed the aperture, adjusting for the dim light.

  Vivian was blowing smoke into the raccoon’s face. Click.

  “I want you to move more. To feel, like, more free?”

  They smoked the joint. Vivian drank more. Click. Click. Click.

  The love seat wasn’t the only piece of furniture missing after all. An end table, a wardrobe, and framed photographs from the walls, the same dark ghosts left behind.

  Vivian went around the house tossing the blankets to the floor, sweeping papers off of tabletops, throwing a bowl of potpourri into the air. Rory had to load a new roll of film.

  The owl. She brought it into the living room and set it on the floor beside the fireplace. “Come in here,” she called to Vivian.

  “I feel like you want something very specific from me,” Vivian said.

  “No,” Rory said. “Not really.” But what she wanted was for Vivian to be as roving in the frame as she felt to Rory in life. Falling, twisting, all a blur. This was how she seemed to Rory—like fragments, pieces she couldn’t hold. The animals, the owl, the raccoon—they were focal points, frozen in time, in death. A suggestion of a feeling, an emptiness. But Rory didn’t explain this to Vivian; she couldn’t have.

  “Should I take these off?” Vivian asked.

  Rory nodded and Vivian removed her shorts, leaving her underwear and white T-shirt.

  “These are good,” Rory said. Click.

  She wanted Vivian as vulnerable as she’d been in her kitchen, but she also didn’t want to bring any of that up.

  Vivian fitted into the largest opening of the curio cabinet—her legs and waist within it, Rory had her begin to crawl across the floor. She stepped toward her and moved her hair in front of her eyes, concealing her face, asking her not to look into the lens.

  She asked Vivian to remove her shirt. What about her bra? One, then the other.

  They gathered the raccoon, the blue jays, the crow, a ferret, the owl, an acorn-eating chipmunk, and set them on the dining room chairs with stacks of books beneath them, until they were of equal height. Rory arranged the camera on a stool. The tabletop bisected the lower third of the frame. She had Vivian step up onto the table and run across it. It wobbled beneath her. “It’s okay,” Rory said. “Lighter steps, but just as quick.” Her bare torso, her legs; a pale streak across the frame. A girl, fleeing. Not wanting to be the feast.

  The wind had shifted, and the smoke from Altadena was blowing west; Rory could smell it.

  They set the owl against the wall. A peeling floral wallpaper print. She had Vivian roll herself within the curtains and then twist out of them. The owl was wrong. No more animals. Only Vivian. The curtains center frame and Vivian’s unraveling escape. Click. Click.

  And then Vivian sat down. An energy had left her. Sometimes a certain quiet happened after their fevered pitch of taking pictures, but this was a new roll, still more frames to shoot.

  “I want a cigarette,” Vivian said.

  Rory had an entire pack. “Here, here,” she said.

  Vivian was against the wall, hunched where the love seat had been. The dark outlines a parenthesis on each side. A burrow. A flash would make the contrast starker, but Rory didn’t have one. She drew the curtain open further. Vivian was talking, but Rory had found a light, a frosted bulb that she adjusted until faint shadows fluttered against the wall and the smoke of Vivian’s cigarette was sparkling. Her body was curled and still now, but the flex of her neck over her knees, her breasts against her thighs, her fingers playing at her toes was movement enough. Click. Vivian looked up at Rory then and Rory felt a slight constriction to the air.

  “You haven’t heard anything I’ve said, have you?” Vivian’s chin was resting on her knee now, her eyes imploring. Click. “Stop,” Vivian shouted. “I said, stop.” She raised her hand, as if Rory were paparazzi.

  “Okay,” Rory said. “I stopped. I’m sorry. Are you all right?”

  “No,” Vivian said. “I’m not all right. I haven’t been all right for the last twenty minutes. Or the last three years, if you want to know the truth, but I thought—” She was pulling her T-shirt back on, her shorts, stuffing her bra into her back pocket.

  Rory went to the window, realizing Vivian was about to go.

  “You’re checking to see if your mom is home?” Vivian asked.

  “I just didn’t want—she’s not.”

  “Oh, good,” Vivian said. “Because I wouldn’t want to make you suffer any undue stress, Rory Ramos. We wouldn’t want to put you in an uncomfortable situation.” She picked up a blue jay from the table and said, “I was wrong. These are all completely vile.”

  * * *

  Gus was in the bedroom, lying on the floor—six whole days sober. As hard-won as a bull ride, sore from toe to skull. No pain pills, no booze, no Prozac. The floor felt right to his back and late afternoon naps were making him better company.

  The fires in San Diego, Ojai, Altadena, Chatsworth, and the worst of them in Laguna Beach, had made the local news in Little Snake, of all places. But they were saying the winds were dying down and that all these fires—over a dozen had flared in the last few days—would be contained soon; it was just a matter of time. Gus picked up the phone then, finally calling home, but the line rang and rang. Mona never remembered that you had to turn the machine on.

  That morning Joy had woken him early and they’d gone to fish again. She had caught him staring at the reflection of the pines at the edge of the river and she told him that was all the Prozac he needed to take home with him. He knew he had to go home, but he’d lost the urgency. Shame thickened time. Made it hard to move. To make choices, let alone own them. Still, he had to get the mare back to Rory. That was what was right. And right, he was finding, was a thing you could feel in your body, if you got quiet—and sober—enough to listen.

  Lying this way, he could see under Joy’s bed, the floorboards littered with burls of dust and animal hair. She was downstairs, some country station on the radio, talking to her dogs as sincere as ever. Mona hated dogs, claimed she was allergic, same as with the horses.

  He closed his eyes, remembering when—not so long after she and Rory had moved in with him—Mona came home one night with the smallest plastic bag he’d ever seen. “Cocaine,” she said. Up on her knees on the edge of their bed, her jean skirt riding up her thighs. “Shall we try it?”

  Back then, he had had no suspicions; there’d been no suggestion of duplicity. They were, he believed, in love. She used her magnifying mirror and a dollar bill rolled up, talking as if a friend had shown her what to do. He’d have done anything for her, tried almost anything. Before he even lifted his head up and felt the cool drip down his throat, her clothes had come away. On top of him, he saw her go to a half-exhilarated, half-angry place, while he became anxious, doubting he was pleasing her, overly aware of the contrast of his skin against hers, ten years younger. Afterward, she got up and opened the windows, then lay back down beside him, her skin shiny with sweat. His heart was still racing, a frantic sensation at the end of his fingertips that had him wondering about death. She reached over and touched his face, smiling at him so big, like she’d just won a game of chance, and he’d laughed, exhilarated for the first time that night. Then she said, “You liked it,” and he didn’t disagree. A lie of omission. They watched a movie, one with Wayne or Eastwood. They’d always agreed on Westerns. She got
up once and went to where she’d left the mirror, licking her fingers and rubbing the last of the powder on her gums. By the time the film was over, she was asleep. He gathered her hair and laid it against her back. He wrapped his arm around her and fitted his legs up against hers. How warm she was. “Please,” he said, his mouth grazing the china rim of her ear. “Let’s never do this again.”

  The door opened. The room had darkened around him, a cobalt blue. The hallway light had Joy in silhouette and ever so briefly Gus remembered Sarah Price coming into his hospital room. He had left her letter on his dresser at home. Some part of him maybe hoping Mona would find it, that it might make her jealous. He’d been stupid with spite. “You okay, Gussie?”

  “What time is it?” He pulled himself up to rest against the bedframe.

  Joy snapped on the bedside light: the room, the floor, the contrast of everything sharpened. “Just six now,” she said. “You slept awhile. Still feels better on the floor?”

  “Mostly,” he said.

  “I’m making meat loaf and those instant potatoes,” she said, sitting down on the cane rush chair by the bed. “With milk instead of water. Lots of butter. That’s the secret.” She started to dig for the tin of chew that was no longer in her pocket. “Right,” she said. “Keep forgetting.” They’d made an agreement, both of them choosing health.

  “Did I hear the phone ringing?” he asked, remembering the staccato of it under his dreaming. “Was it Mona?” he asked, rubbing at his knee. “Is everything okay?”

  “No, not Mona.” Joy’s voice went far away. “They left pins in there, didn’t they?” she asked, looking at his leg.

  He reminded himself, she was the sick one, the one who’d been told she had only a year to live. He nodded. “You’ve got more bad news for me, haven’t you?”

  She nodded. “It was Rory,” she said. “She wants you to call back.”

  “The fires,” Gus said.

  “No, not that. It’s Carlotta, Gus. She’s gone.”

  * * *

  “WELL, HELLO, STRANGER.”

  “It hasn’t been that long,” Vivian said, dropping her feet into the water. “A week, maybe.”

  The sky was pink and thick, unmoving, a child’s chalky scribbling.

  “Actually, it’s been three weeks and four days,” McLeod said.

  “But who’s counting?” Vivian said. It was October 28, three days and three months since Charlie had died. And three months exactly before what would have been his second birthday. Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day” was playing from the speakers in her room (for irony’s sake). She was lying on the patio, feeling sweat pool in her navel. “I’m glad you missed me.”

  “Did you abandon me just to make sure that I would?”

  Vivian could hear Carmen inside, counting the empty beer bottles before carrying them to the trash. She would scold Vivian with her eyes, but she wouldn’t say anything. Vivian had worn her down.

  “No, McLeod. My mother went missing, actually,” Vivian said. “If we want to talk about abandoning. She’s gone for a cross-country drive. And I’ve been alone for nearly a month.”

  She heard McLeod’s lighter drop and rattle against the table before he started to cough. “Oh god, truly?” he said.

  “I’m home alone now,” she said.

  “Where is your mother? You can’t be serious, Vivian.”

  “Let’s not traffic in the obvious, Mickey. If I knew where she was, I wouldn’t be here.”

  “You’d go find her?”

  “If you’ve a better offer I want to know. I would love to see your eyes again, McLeod. I think people need to see one another, to really know what it means—”

  “It would be nice to see your eyes.” She heard his breath shortening.

  “I know it would, McLeod. I know you wouldn’t be taking my calls if it weren’t for my eyes, right? Or is it the way I used to forget to button the top of my blouse. Remember the time I wore those ripped jean shorts—with the little cuts at the top of my thigh.”

  “Vivian—”

  “I know you remember those. I’d finger the little denim strings. I could see you getting hard. That’s why you take my calls, isn’t it? Why you wanted to help me catch up in school? I always hear the door locking behind you. I’m why you have that stash of cigarettes in your garage. And is that a sodden towel in your hand? Or do you wait until we’re off the phone?”

  “Vivian, stop—”

  “Yes, let’s stop pretending that this has anything to do with what you saw in me. I’m not judging you. I just don’t want any more lies—no more lies, no more secrets.”

  “Who has secrets?” Wade was there. Standing over her, his legs in the skintight wrap of his britches, elongated by the wet-looking leather of his riding boots. Like a soldier. “Who’s been telling lies here, Vivian?”

  “Hey, baby,” she said, patting the concrete beside her thighs.

  Johnny Naughton was nearby, his Drakkar cologne riding the smoke-thickened air.

  “Who is that?” Wade jutted his chin toward the phone.

  “Nobody,” Vivian said, the patter of her heart quickening. “Just my dad.”

  Wade bent down beside her, his face—that mouth, his nose with its lingering purple. The sky was bruised too, almost mauve. She heard, inside her head, the word surrender. “You win,” she said.

  Wade had the phone against his ear now, asking, “Who is this?”

  She heard the phone turn over into a dial tone.

  “I told you, brah.” Naughton’s Surf Nazi attempt at English.

  Vivian sat up. “You told him what? What exactly have you got to say about me, Trouble?”

  “That you’re a fucking whore.”

  * * *

  RORY TOOK THE cordless upstairs, hoping Gus would call back before Mona turned the blow dryer off, but she was already stomping around the way she did when she was late, that angry energy, her belief that the house was playing tricks on her, hiding her keys.

  When it finally rang, Rory answered, “Gus.”

  “Hi, there, Rory.”

  Mona picked up downstairs. “Oh, you got it, Rag-Tag? Sure picked up awful fast. Is this the boyfriend? Can I introduce myself now?”

  “Mom.” Rory tried to stop her.

  “Mona, it’s me—” Gus said.

  “Of course.”

  “How are you?”

  “How am I? Let’s not play nice. You two have your trip down memory lane about the old bat, but Gus Scott, you better hope she left you something good, because otherwise you’ve got nothing to come home to, you understand?”

  “I know it,” Gus said. “I’ve realized that.”

  “Fuck you. I’m leaving for work.”

  She missed the base, trying to hang up the phone, and Rory and Gus waited, quiet, listening to the rustle of her handbag, then the clink of her keys, and finally the screen door slamming shut.

  “The spring’s all gone,” Rory said, about the door. “Broke right off.”

  “Plenty of things that I shoulda fixed around there,” he said. “About your mom, Rory—”

  “I don’t want to talk about that right now.”

  “I understand.”

  “You saw the news?” Earlier, Rory had seen Vivian lying by the pool, but now she was gone.

  “Yeah,” Gus said. “But they said the winds are dying down?”

  “Seems like it,” Rory said. “Is Chap okay? I should’ve gone with you.”

  “She’s fine. The stitches are coming out tomorrow.”

  “And then you’ll bring her home? You can come back for the funeral, can’t you?”

  “When is it?”

  “Monday. Day after Halloween.”

  “I suppose that’s fitting,” Gus said. Carlotta used to put on a Halloween horse show for the barn’s youngest riders, letting them dress up school horses and giving out prizes for best costume, scariest, funniest. A tradition Gus had failed to maintain.

  “Can you be back by then?”

/>   “That’s soon—”

  “But if you left tomorrow?”

  “Yeah,” Gus said, and Rory saw him taking off his hat and running his hand through his hair like he always did. “Rory, there’s something I need to tell you.”

  She waited. She didn’t want any confessions, not about his drinking, or his having hit Mona, certainly not about hitting Wade.

  “The night before I left, I went to your room to talk to you. I’m telling you this, Rory, because I want to be better—however you need me to be. Honesty, for starters. So, I want you to know that I saw you.”

  “From my window,” Rory said.

  “With the daughter, yes.”

  “Vivian,” Rory said. “Does Wade know?” A sudden clutching at her heart. “Tell me you didn’t say anything to him.”

  “I wouldn’t tell that kid my middle name, Rory.”

  The trees outside began to shift, knocking against the house.

  “I didn’t mean for it to happen.” Rory wasn’t sure how to explain, but she started, “But her dad was leaving and her mom, Sarah, she just took—”

  Gus interrupted. “I know,” he said. “She wrote me a letter—”

  “Sarah Price? She wrote you? From where? You have to tell me.”

  “She was in Nebraska, but she said something about Illinois, too. I didn’t believe it completely. Not at first. I left it there, the letter—”

  “Where?” Rory was running down the stairs.

  “In the bedroom, on the dresser. Just on the top there, I think.”

  Rory was riffling through belt buckles, loose business cards, receipts, random keys, and pins. There. It wasn’t in an envelope. It was folded over three times, so creased and worn it looked like a treasured note from a grade school friend. “When did she send it? September third—”

  “She hasn’t come home, then?” Gus asked.