Sing Her Down, page 19
The car is useless. The car is done.
There is no leaving. There is no going away. There is only here until someone comes to find her.
Florida leaves the garage and heads for the pool.
It’s time to lie down. It’s time to close your eyes and relax, let what’s coming down the pike pick up speed and do its worst. It’s time to rest not quite in your own bed but close. It’s time to let the night take you away.
Florida strips, turning away from the stench that rises from her clothes and her body as she removes her filthy garments. Then, naked, she dives into her mother’s pool, feeling the grit and grime release. She runs her fingers through her tangled hair, working the chlorinated water through the knots, tugging and pulling until her scalp aches.
She surfaces and floats on her back, naked to the night sky.
And then she submerges.
The only sound is the seashore echo in her ears and the thump of her heart as she forces herself to remain below. Florida’s lungs squeeze, her throat tightens, and her head feels pressurized to the point of explosion.
Now is not the time, though. She just wants to know what it might be like to give up, toe toward the other side, to chase oblivion should she need it.
But the ultimate dark does not appeal.
So just swim and forget everything for a moment. Forget the blood she drew from the woman on the street. Forget the blood that same woman had drawn out of her. Forget her fists as they flew into Tina. Forget how good it felt to shut her up. Forget the exquisite pain as her knuckles broke skin and hit bone.
Forget the bus.
Forget her stolen debit card.
Forget Dios.
Forget the woman chasing her.
Forget the roadside chicken.
Forget Carter and the fire. Forget the matches.
Just be here, for as long as this now exists.
* * *
It was a lifetime ago that she swam in this pool with Ronna when Ronna’s father’s double betrayal came to light. That’s when the first flush of anger had swamped Florence, blackening her thoughts, storming her heart, drowning her.
It was then she first glimpsed the shadowy nimbus that ringed her soul. And then came another one of those moments—just like the split second when she faced down the lady cop through the conservatory windows a few days ago—a fraction of time with a distinct before and after.
She had broken through the water and seen Ronna on one of the rugby-striped loungers, cradled in Renny’s arms, his embrace sheltering her from Florence. Florence, the evergreen sidekick turned enemy. She looked from Renny to Ronna. Renny, desperate to cling to these young girls. Ronna holding on to anyone who wasn’t Florence.
And Florence losing control, out of control.
She’d sat on the edge of the pool, chewing a nail, watching the scene in the warbling reflection—Renny and Ronna rippling in their stupid, shared grief.
And in the same brilliant sunshine refracted back at her from the crystal-blue water, she saw her own deformity, her defect. She saw what she had done to Ronna.
She knew an apology was possible. Girls will be girls will be girls. And at sixteen, life has no choice but to go on. But she saw a different path to reparation.
He’s an asshole, she said through gritted teeth, loud enough for Ronna to hear. Look what he did to us.
Renny was the one who looked over. Always negotiating a path for himself between the girls.
What would he do to remain relevant? How far would he go?
Right here is where it starts. Ronna crying. Renny clinging. And Florence tiptoeing toward Florida.
She hauls herself out of the pool and dries off in a bath sheet–sized towel. She rinses her clothes in the pool, wrings them out, and puts them down to dry. Florida wraps herself in more towels, turns one into a pillow, another into a blanket, and lies down.
She will sleep and what will come will come. It’s too late to escape. The car can’t take her anywhere. Anyway, it’s nighttime now and there’s nowhere to go.
Florida can sense it’s creeping up on midday when she opens her eyes and sees that the cloud cover has peeled back, revealing a blue skim coat to the sky. The pool catches the color, glinting and winking as it is meant to. And there’s a moment when everything seems just fine—when this is just another day by the pool, the city stunningly quiet and perfectly distant, leaving Florida alone and at peace. Just her and the calm lap of the water as it collides with the smooth concrete. Sinking her so deep inside herself she’s untouchable and unreachable by the birdsong and insect noises. A moment when—squint and you can almost see it—Ronna’s rounding the end of the conservatory and arriving at the pool without passing through the house, as always.
Ronna. Confident and as at ease in Florida’s house as if it were her own. Which is what it became after the attack on her father, when the two girls were bound together in the wake of violence and its aftermath. Ronna’s father recovering in the hospital and emerging with a disordered personality, the result of the beatdown Renny had delivered.
Renny, not Florence. It’s important to remember that.
All she did was make a suggestion.
Tilt your head, so the sun streaks over the roof of the conservatory, over the roof of your bedroom, shooting a shaft of light straight down onto the cobbled path that rings the house. A literal sunbeam through which Ronna will walk, still filled with her teenage spirit. Giddy to be free from her parents, sent to live with Florida until her father is well again. The girls’ friendship healed in the wake of a secret only one of them fully understands.
How much more fun can they have?
How much more trouble can they cause?
How will they distance themselves from Renny, who did what he did for them, though Ronna will never know why?
Florida tips her head farther, squints her eyes tighter, draws Ronna closer. They will jump into the pool, stupid happy, foolish free. Then they will dry off and prepare for the night’s adventure. Because the city is still theirs, a place they can absorb and discard at will. A place that doesn’t stick to them. Not yet. That will happen later, to both of them in different ways. The damage from this time, permanent and indelible.
But for now, here is Ronna, silhouetted by the sun’s backlight, suffused by a radiant glow. Here she is, carefree, her hair sleek and glossy, like she’s ready for what party may come.
She stops in front of Florida’s lounger. Florida holds out her hand.
Ronna’s fingers lace through Florida’s. Florida tightens her grip as if she might pull her through the fucked-up looking glass and back to life. And here is the vision made flesh. So goddamned real Florida can feel it—feel the skin and bone, even the pulse of the other hand in hers.
Florida gasps, her heart thundering into her throat, her eyes widening in shock.
And there, hand in Florida’s, holding tight as if she is never going to let go, is Dios.
“Happy to see me?”
Florida jerks her hand free, then tightens her towel around her body.
“Nothing I haven’t seen before.”
Dios pulls a lounger over toward Florida’s and sits, elbows on knees. Examining.
She looks good, of course. Clean, polished, and dressed in new clothes that don’t exactly seem her style—unremarkable jeans and a striped T-shirt. The bruises on her face are yellowing. Her busted lip is still swollen. Sunglasses hide her eyes but not the extent of the discoloration.
Florida fumbles for her clothes. “Dios, what the fuck did you do?”
“I’ve done a lot of things.”
“You fucking killed that guy.”
“An opportunity presented itself, so I took it.” Dios’s voice is slippery and slick.
“An opportunity?”
“You know what he did to me. You know what he would have done to us.”
“Nothing, if you’d kept your mouth shut. Not a goddamned fucking thing. Instead you fucked me. You made me your accomplice.”
“Oh, Florida, always the accomplice and never the perp.” Dios sits back, crossing her arms behind her head like nothing at all. “But we know that’s not true. And you know that what happened on the bus was only one piece of the puzzle. All of this started with Tina and what you did. But you don’t hear me complaining.” Dios surveys the pool. Her hair is tight up top, loose at the back. Her eyebrows are painted fire. “I know you, Florida. I spent twelve months sheltering with the lies you tell. I know given half the chance you’d have pinned Tina on me just like you dropped those dead hippies on your friend Carter. That’s not a chance I’m going to take. You need to own your mess.”
“But you killed Tina.”
“What are you protecting, Florida? Who are you protecting?”
“Me.”
“No,” Dios says. “You are protecting some phony version of you or a version of you that never existed.” She yanks Florida to her feet.
“You have to go, Dios.”
“We’re both trespassing.”
“This is my house,” Florida says.
“I don’t see the big welcome home sign. From now on, wherever we go, we go together. You and I aren’t just cut from the same cloth, we are the cloth. We’re a whole fucking tapestry and nothing is going to rip these threads.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“It means we run with what you started with Tina and I finished on the bus.” Dios takes a lock of Florida’s frizzled hair and tucks it behind her ear. “I have a plan.”
“No.”
“There’s a bus.”
“No.”
“Another ghost bus. It will ride us out of town, down to San Diego. Down to the border.”
“You’re even crazier than I thought to imagine I’d get on another bus with you.”
“What else are you going to do? It leaves from Olympic and Western at noon tomorrow.”
“I am never going anywhere with you.”
“Yes, Florida, you are. Tomorrow.” Dios wraps a hand around Florida’s wrist.
“Let go and get the fuck out, Dios.”
Dios has her tight by the forearm and is pulling her toward the conservatory. “Or? Or what?”
Florida’s arm goes limp in Dios’s grasp. Or nothing. And that’s the truth.
They are next to the French doors. Dios shades her eyes and peers through the gauze curtain. “Nice place. A little boring.”
Before Florida can stop her, she slams her elbow through one of the small panes in the doors. The glass falls silent to the heavy carpeting. The only sound is the chopper beating time overhead.
Dios reaches through the glass and fumbles with the lock. The door opens. The house alarm unleashes a jarring screech. “Disarm it.”
“I—I.”
“A woman like your mother wouldn’t even think to change the code even when her only kid turns out to be a murderer.”
“You don’t know—” Florida says over the noise.
“I know.”
Florida breaks free from Dios’s grasp and rushes to the front hall. She opens the secret panel and finds the keypad. Her mother’s birthday. Easy.
Dios has a satisfied look on her face when Florida returns to the conservatory. “Home sweet home,” she says. “Happy?”
The sight of Dios standing in the midst of her mother’s cream-and-coral furniture. The sound of Dios’s voice bouncing off the bland tropical fabric wallpaper. The idea of Dios invading this place, twisting it and deforming it. The rage comes unbidden and unchecked. Florida picks up a ceramic egg from a wooden stand and hurls it at Dios.
Dios ducks. The egg shatters against the window frame. “That’s right, bitch,” Dios says. “Tear this motherfucker to the ground.”
And then …
Dios grabs a lamp, drops it, and stomps it. The shattering bulb pops like a breaking bone. Over to a side table and with a sweep of her arm, cleaning all of Florida’s mother’s objets to the carpet, where she tramples them. “What?” she says, giving Florida her serpent smile. “You actually like this shit?” She grabs a sea-glass bottle that never touched the sea and forces it into Florida’s hand. “Go on. Do it. This isn’t your house. It never was. You were never the person your mother pretended lived here.”
“Stop it, Dios.”
“Stop what? Stop letting you pretend you are going to step back into this shit and act like you didn’t kill those fucking drug dealers and nearly beat Tina to death? How long can you keep that charade up? How long can you sip white wine by that pool and make small talk around the truth of the matter? How long can you do that before you explode?”
Florida puts her hands to her ears.
“Just do it,” Dios says. “Just let it out. Like you did with Tina.” She presses her lips to Florida’s ears. “Your mother knows, doesn’t she? She knows the real you. She knows who you are and what you did. And you can’t take that, can you? She lies for you. She lies to you. You are all a family of liars. And in service of what?” Dios looks around the room. “This?” She knocks over a set of picture frames and shatters the glass with her shoe. “Remember, I know women like your mother. Women like your mother made my life hell by pretending they were making it better. They paid for my fancy schools. They paid for me to turn my back on my friends and family. And then you know what? They landed me in jail for giving their sons what they deserved when they fucked with me. Charity has its limitations. But you already knew that. Throw it.”
“No.”
“Your mother never visited you. Nearly three years and she kept away. Because she knows. She knows who you are and she doesn’t like it. She doesn’t want it to rub off on her perfectly manicured life. She stayed away because she knows the real you. And you can’t handle that, can you? I know what you do to people who discover what you are really like. You beat Tina to a goddamned bloody fucking pulp. You want us to know, and you can’t stand when we do.”
It’s over before she knows it. Florida hurls the bottle through a window facing the pool. The glass shatter is a release. A relief.
Her mother. So cold. So at a remove. So entirely aware of Florida but unable to acknowledge her. She knew, didn’t she, that Florida willingly let a man three times her age take her on a two-week road trip in Mexico? She knew that Florida didn’t pay for her jewelry and clothes—that she stole some and accepted the rest. She knew about Renny, about all the time her sixteen-year-old spent hanging with that lowlife. She knew how Florida repaid Renny for access to clubs she was way too young to frequent. She knew about the smaller transgressions and the bigger crimes. She knew about the company Florida kept—the men, the now-expunged juvie record of petty theft and misdemeanor. She knew about the men she introduced Florida to herself, imagining her daughter would be just fine. She knew that at fifteen, Florida didn’t know better. She knew and she didn’t care. What’s more, she knew the score with Carter. She knew exactly what Florida did because she’d seen her grow up. She knew everything, because in order to help Florida hide the truth, she had to know it.
Florida grabs a jade rabbit figurine and hurls it at the pane next to the one she’s just broken. She grabs a brass palm tree. She grabs a ceramic coral.
Dios’s voice is an incantation as Florida throws object after object through the French doors, at the walls, at the sconces, the hanging fixtures, the moldings.
“Women like your mother patronize you. They pay for you so they can ignore you. That’s their right. That’s their goal. Instead of pushing you aside, instead of ignoring you, they pay for the right to hate you because it makes them feel better. Yes—even your mother. Even to you. Their money—their phony charity—it justifies their hate. It allows them to excuse it. Because women like your mother aren’t allowed to hate. They aren’t allowed to have such dirty passions. So they deflect. They lie. They are no better than us. They are worse because they are the ones who make us who we are, then pretend we are our own devils.”
Object after object.
Picture frame after picture frame.
Painting after painting.
Window after window.
Room after room.
The conservatory. The formal dining room. The kitchen with its towering cabinets. The library. The sitting room.
Upholstery torn. Glass shattered. Carpet stained. Everything, everywhere. Trampled. Shredded. Toppled. Smashed.
The pool filled with debris—the stupid, broken detritus of her mother’s self-important life.
Florida is sweaty. She’s breathless. Her heart is in her ears. It’s in her fingertips. It’s everywhere at once. This is better than the MDMA high that propelled her back to that desert trailer, that made her long to dance around that bonfire with a man she marked for death. Because here she is, in lockstep with Dios as they dismantle the prison of Florida’s childhood, as they tear it to the ground so she can be reborn once and for all. Finally.
They are in the kitchen, which opens onto the far end of the pool area from the conservatory. A door swings loose on its hinges. A chair from the kitchen island teeters half in and half out of a broken window.
And then, a voice. A woman’s voice from the hall.
Florida reaches out and grabs Dios’s arm. “Ssshh.”
Hello. Hello.
“It’s her,” she whispers. “The detective hunting me. Lobos.”
Dios narrows her snake eyes. “Detective?” She reaches for a vintage bottle of port that has sat on the kitchen counter as decoration ever since Florida can remember.
Hello?
Florida cannot concentrate over the noise in her head. She doesn’t hear the footsteps coming closer, crunching over everything strewn and scattered and smashed that carpets the already carpeted floor.
Who’s there?
Florida is frozen. But Dios is a live wire at her side, ready, eager to ignite.
Hello?
And then, there she is in the kitchen. A moment. A beat.
How many moments will Florida remember forever? How many inflection points is one lifetime allowed?
The moment she saw Ronna in Renny’s arms and decided to take control?
The moment she lit the cloth dangling from the pipe bomb?
