We Lie Here: A Thriller, page 11
“I’m done.”
She kisses my forehead, then clomps to the porch. “Glad you’re safe. You stink, though.”
“You’re smelling strength and tenacity,” I say.
She shouts over her shoulder, “That guac is fresh made.” She disappears into the house.
“Does she know that Felicia . . . ?” I whisper.
Kayla nods. “She took it pretty hard.”
My pulse jogs in my ears. What will be Mom’s mood tonight? Will we postpone the party? Cece certainly won’t be singing, with her daughter being found in Lake Palmdale.
Kayla dunks a chip into the green goop. “You’re not gonna have any?”
I crunch on a dry tortilla strip. “I hate guacamole.”
“Since when?”
“Since forever. It makes me gag.”
Kayla frowns. “You tell her?”
“Uh-huh, but she demands that I like it since Dom likes it. And she says that her guac is different than other people’s guac.” I skim a chip over the top of the dip, then pop it in my mouth. The slick snot of avocado hits my tongue, and I shudder. “Yep. Still hate it. Just like I hate other people’s.”
“At least your mother lets you be you.”
“Did you not hear what I just said?” I say, chuckling. “About her forcing me to eat this shit? Ugh.” I scrape my tongue with my teeth. I can still feel the slime.
“At least she supported your dream of becoming a writer,” Kayla says.
Did she, though? Mom told me that an English degree was a waste of time and that she wouldn’t pay for it, that I had nothing interesting to write about anyway and that she saw me as an HR manager or a librarian. But I smile for Kayla because I’m supposed to.
Kayla saw the butterfly sunflower seed butter sandwiches and love notes Mom placed in my lunch box—but she didn’t know that, before I’d caught on, Mom had secretly placed notes only in Dominique’s lunch box and had also used cookie cutters on Dominique’s sandwiches. I’d cried to Dad that Mom never wrote me or gifted me with a butterfly- or bunny-shaped sandwich. Dad must’ve said something to her, because after that, I’d sometimes find notes like Do well today and Have a good day in my lunch box, along with butterfly sandwiches that tasted gritty and clumpy from strawberry jam. Even as a child, I could tell that Mom’s heart wasn’t in it, and I told her that she no longer had to make special sandwiches or leave uninspired notes. She rolled her eyes and said, You cried about it, so I’m gonna keep doing it.
Same with this guacamole—I asked her to make it once for a sleepover. She did. I hated it and told her that she didn’t have to make it again. And here we are, fifteen years later.
Sometimes, most times, what I want, what I like, doesn’t matter much to Barbara McGuire Gibson. Unlike Nana Lolly, she won’t throw heavy crystal glasses at the walls, but she will make you duck and run for cover with one perfectly placed moment of silence. She will have her way, and she will love you the way she wants to love you, and you will eat the crummy butterfly sandwiches and force down that slimy guacamole even if it’s less than an ounce on a tortilla chip.
This is the way.
Kayla doesn’t promise anything, but she’ll check into the green Mazda and the vandalization that cost me $1,200. Honestly, though? My tires being slashed is so petty and stupid compared to Felicia’s death.
Drowning.
Wow.
What was going on in Felicia’s life that she felt the only solution would be walking into Lake Palmdale?
The sky turns copper as the sun descends behind the mountains. The neighborhood is coming alive again with the pop of beer cans and the clichéd lyrics of a Morgan Wallen song playing from Mr. Abernathy’s open garage door.
As I wave to Kayla and watch the Crown Victoria slip down Edgewater Court, regret breaks over me like soft waves. Sentiments of you should’ve done more and what would’ve been the harm just to talk agitate me because, yes, I should’ve sat with Felicia and listened to all she needed to share and . . .
No.
I felt threatened around her. Just because someone shows up in your space, do you have to allow them to invade just to make them comfortable? Should I stay in the elevator alone with a strange man leering at me?
I mean, there’s a reason Mom never introduced Felicia to Dominique and me . . . and I’m gonna find out why.
Back in the house, Mom has stopped chewing Nicorette, and cigarette smoke ghosts through the hallways. In the laundry room, she’s on the phone with the athletic director sharing the good news that Pepsi’s tight hamstring loosened and the team placed first, twelfth, and twenty-second in the cross-country meet.
Upstairs in the bathroom, I take out my contact lenses, pull my glasses from the pouch in my purse, and grab the small desk fan.
In the attic, the strange light makes me squint, and squinting brings on a headache. I listen to my breathing. My lungs sound different than they had at the lake. Hell, I couldn’t even hear my lungs at Lake Paz. Up here in the attic, though, I sound like an accordion come to life, all reedy, huffy, and filled with the barest amount of air. It’s hot, but at least the smell of tobacco has been filtered out by the insulation. I pluck the bottle of drops from my pocket. My eyes sizzle from the medication’s instant cooling.
Mom’s off the phone and now patrols the hallway below. Her flip-flops pop-pop-pop against her heels as she marches back and forth with loads of clothes in her arms.
I squeeze my inhaler twice, then renew my search through my family’s memorabilia now living in plastic tubs and Martinelli’s sparkling cider boxes. Some boxes have taped-down tops while others sag beneath the weight of Gibson family precious memories.
I find a small, corked bottle filled with black sand from our family trip to the Big Island of Hawaii. My retainers fell into the ocean that vacation, and Dad miraculously found them on a nearby rock.
I find a luggage tag from my parents’ honeymoon cruise to the Mexican Riviera.
My nose itches and I open my mouth to avoid sneezing, but the sneeze gathers like a storm in my nose and—choo-choo-choo.
Even in Los Angeles, my allergies aren’t this bad. But then my apartment is less than a mile from the Pacific Ocean. The cool air is pure and sweet, cleansed by HEPA filters, and I run the Roomba every other day. I don’t smoke anymore, and I do laundry and change my sheets twice a week.
“It’s the dust from being up there,” Mom shouts from the hallway.
My muscles tense and I growl. It’s more than the dust. “I’m fine.”
“Bring all the boxes down here,” she shouts. “Better ventilation.”
“I’m good—” Choo-choo-choo.
“Yara,” she hollers, “it’s not important to have fancy centerpieces at the damned dinner if you’re gonna be sick. Cuz then you’re gonna have an asthma attack and make everything worse. Please come down.”
Anxiety may live in my head, but my asthma and hay fever are not psychosomatic. I grab one last tub of random things, then head down the fold-down steps.
“Can’t you get hypnotized for that, too?” Mom takes the tub from me. “Your anxiety is making your breathing worse. That’s what the doctor told us a long time ago.”
Dr. Shana Feldman attributed my respiratory condition to pollutants. Including cigarette smoke. She wore her blonde hair in a short, nice-lady mohawk, and the insides of her lips were always cut from braces. After asking Mom to stop smoking, Dr. Feldman never saw me again.
Mom then found Dr. Hollie, a hard man who didn’t know how to smile. He prescribed Cymbalta and psychological therapy. I attended one group session, and Mom yanked me after I described the Feelings Hot Potato Game. Pass the potato, the music stops, whoever’s holding the potato must share a memory, a fear, a skill. “That sounds really stupid,” Mom said. “He has no idea what he’s doing. But you’re keeping the Cymbalta prescription.” Dad squinted at her before squinting at the sun burning over our backyard.
“What are you saying?” Mom spat.
“If you don’t trust Hollie’s approach for group session,” Dad said, “then why—”
“You know what, Robert?” Mom said, hands on her hips. “Right now, there are a million things I can’t stand, and every single one of them involves you.”
“It’s like you’re trying to kill her,” he said.
And then they fought.
Mom grabbed her go bag, then screamed, “Everyone in this house gets to be imperfect except for me. I’m trying to quit, but I guess that doesn’t matter.” Then she and Dominique left the house for two hours. Where did they go? No clue. Dominique wouldn’t say.
Later that night, Dad and I returned home after a trip to the emergency room for my breathing treatment. He also picked up my Cymbalta from the pharmacy and whispered to me that I didn’t have to take them. “It’s your body,” he said. “I’ll never force you to take something that isn’t helpful.”
Ultimately, he lost that battle—but he said something that’s stuck with me.
It’s like she’s trying to kill me. That feeling has never waned. It lives deep within me, gnawing at me like the slowest termite colony.
And now, I blow my nose and wince. The longer I stay in this house, the more my skin hurts. My brand-new comforter has already lost its fresh-out-of-the-bag smell, and a layer of fine dust from yesterday’s storm already coats my vaporizer. Even after I scrub my skin tonight, the stink and grit will remain. I’m a living 1950s bowling alley.
Mom drops the tub on the bed, then studies me with tired eyes. “Long day.”
“Sorry about Felicia,” I say. “Did Kayla tell you anything more than ‘she drowned’?”
“No.” Mom fingers her bee pendant. “Cece is a wreck. She couldn’t even talk.”
“Should we postpone the party?”
Mom places a hand on her forehead, then narrows her eyes. “No idea. Let’s move forward for the moment but give the club a heads-up.” She waits a beat, then asks, “Are you okay? I don’t want you to worry too much. You know how anxious you become.”
I try to smile. “I just need Kayla to figure out what happened. This is way too close.”
“I’ll keep you posted,” Mom says, “and you let me know if you hear anything, okay? Let me know, too, if you need to talk, take a walk, if you feel like you’re losing control.”
I nod.
“Do we need to buy you one of those heavy blankets?” she asks.
I shake my head.
“You’re gonna be fine,” Mom says. “I’ll make sure of that.”
I say, “Okay.”
“Poor Lee,” Mom whispers as she returns to the laundry room.
My phone rings—someone with a Las Vegas number—but I’m not interested in talking to a stranger. Instead, I turn my attention to the first beautiful object I’ve found in the attic: a hand-blown glass vase ribboned with orange, pink, purple, and lime-green dyes. The silver label on its base says Salviati & Co. made in Italy.
A forgotten wedding gift?
It must be worth thousands of dollars. This sure as hell won’t be a table centerpiece. I can already see one of Mom’s older friends wrapping it in loomanum foil and carrying it to her Chrysler 300 along with foil-covered plates of filet mignon and ca-ber-net demi-glock.
I set the vase aside.
What traces of my mother’s life with Felicia Campbell will I find in these boxes? If I attend Felicia’s funeral, will she simply become a memorial program stuffed into the Bible that Mom gave me after high school graduation?
Guilt pings at me like thrown pebbles. This Italian glass vase and that black sand in a bottle should not matter more to me than my cousin . . . but they do. These objects represent family, togetherness, joy, and relaxation, and that means more to me than someone I met on a random day in May.
I sneeze again and wince as I dab my nose. Mom witnesses my deterioration every time I come home. And each time, she tries to change—chewing nicotine gum this time and smoke-grabber ashtrays back in the spring.
You should tell her that you can, like, die, Shane always says. One bad asthma attack and you’re outta here.
But I shouldn’t have to tell her that.
Barbara Gibson ain’t stupid. She knows.
And I’m up in that attic for her.
I’m in Palmdale for her.
My eyes and nose are dripping, and my lungs are straining for her.
But if I say something, we’ll fight. And she’ll say something that cuts me to my core like, I’ll care about your feelings when I’m paid to give a fuck. And Dad will speak up in my defense and say something like, Considerate people stop harmful behaviors, even if it’s only for a week. And then Mom’s eyes will roll back like a shark’s and she’ll say something wild like, Robert, you need to stop talking to me like I’m one of your bitches. Dad will shake his head and whisper something equally wild, like, Hamsters are better mothers than you. Because sometimes hamster mommies eat their hamster babies, the house will explode with words and threats, causing Dominique to glare at me and mutter that she wishes that I’d just shut up since I get to return to Los Angeles while she’s stuck here, picking up the pieces.
My phone vibrates. Whoever called left a message.
I tap the voice mail icon.
In the background, people are crying. The caller clears her throat. “Yara, you don’t know me, but this is your cousin Alicia. What y’all do to my sister?”
20.
Alicia Campbell’s voice sounds like the prickly burrs that stick to your socks every summer. “The police called, and told us the bad news, the awful news. My mama told me that Lee came up there to talk to you. Now, do I know why she went to Palmdale when we both know that you live over in Santa Monica? No, I do not, but you need to call me back as soon as you get this message. It’s the least you can do.”
I listen to Alicia Campbell’s voice mail twice. Both times leave my face numb.
Who are these people?
My bedroom cramps around me. Alicia’s astringent tone has made everything shrink and lose color. How the hell did I become a part of this drama?
I leave the Italian vase and head down to the kitchen. There is more sunshine down here than in my playpen-size bedroom.
Mom, earbuds in and phone on the kitchen counter, is running water over a pack of Newports. She glances back at me, makes a sad face, then whispers, “I’m gonna do better.”
Doesn’t matter if she means it or not. First, she has packs of Newports in her car and packs of Newports in her dresser. And then there are twelve cigarettes in her platinum case. So this “drowning my pack of smokes” is performative.
I step outside to the backyard. Hot and dead—that’s how it feels beneath that dying, yet terribly effective, star in the sky. Some of the swirling dust isn’t dust at all, but gnats and mosquitoes clouding over the dry grass.
Dominique, wearing a satin bandanna top and corduroy short-shorts, relaxes in the lounge chair beneath the pergola. Her fingers tap at her phone, but she stops long enough to look over the tops of her cat-eye sunglasses to say, “Yikes.”
Ransom Andrepont, all sagging track pants and long white T-shirt, sits with his leg over the arm of the second lounge chair. He sips from a can of Mountain Dew, then tilts a bag of barbecue Corn Nuts into his mouth.
“You gon’ say hi?” Dominique asks.
Since neither of us knows who she’s talking to, Ransom and I blurt, “Hey.”
“Yara rockin’ the glasses,” Ransom says, grinning. “Them thangs so thick, you can see the future.” He laughs at the same joke I’ve heard since third grade.
“Don’t talk about my sister,” Dominique says, lip curled.
She sounds like Mom.
“Just playin’.” Ransom holds out his fist to me for a pound.
I let him hang.
Dominique shakes her head. “You must be up in the attic again.” To Ransom, she says, “Yara’s doing this wonderfully stupid project—”
“Oh, it’s stupid now?” I ask, settling on the deck railing.
“I also said ‘wonderfully,’” she says, grinning.
I roll my eyes. “Weren’t you all high-key less than twenty-four hours ago, saying that Mom and Dad were hashtag goals and whatnot?”
“Simmer down, Four Eyes.” She returns to her phone.
“Ransom,” I say, “you hear about Felicia?”
He scrunches his face. “Who?”
“Our tenth cousin or whatever,” Dominique says. “The one who walked into the lake last night and never walked out.”
“Oh, that lady?” Ransom nods. “Hell yeah, I heard. Don’t nothing happen around this city without me knowing about it.”
Dominique lifts her glasses to squint at me. “Did something else happen?”
I shrug. “They’re investigating.”
Dominique cocks her head. “I’m not gonna see this on some upcoming episode of Tough Cookie, am I?”
I grin. “No guarantee.”
Ransom sits up in the chaise. “What else you wanna know?” The hint of anything Hollywood-related turns the most hardened thug into a puppy nipping at your heel.
“Why did she walk into the lake?” I ask.
He grins at me. “Did she wanna walk in, or did somebody force her to?”
“Is that a question or a clue?” I ask.
He drops his sunglasses over his eyes and settles back into the chaise. “You paying me now?” he asks, sounding just like his mother. “Am I a consultant?”
I peer at his ridiculous bleached twists and the misspelled tattoo of his mom’s name—LaRian—on his forearm. He’s had a crush on Dominique since fifth grade. Back then and up until last year, she’d deemed him gross, stupid, flagrantly delinquent, incurious, and “Cringe.” What happened to change all of this, and when? Really, what does Dominique see in this asshole? Aren’t kids supposed to look for someone who resembles their parents in some way?
“Everybody saw her roll in,” Ransom says, head tilted my way. “That purple Benz put a target on her back.”
“She looked rich,” Dominique adds. “She didn’t belong here.”
“And someone took advantage of that,” Ransom says.
