Bittersweet Wreckage Read online

  I didn’t recognize the local number on my screen. Who the heck was N? Sleuthing was necessary before I handed the phone over to Mom. That nagging feeling that she’d had a hand in the accident refused to take a hike. When had she grown a backbone to set fire to a boat and kill two people? Had she found out he was doing the nasty with the Other Woman and decided to send them to a fiery, watery grave? Why now with this woman, and not her predecessors? Too much fear slung the questions into a crematorium in my mind. I may have to torch my brain at some point. When in Rome…

  I did the next best thing and listened to her voicemail, perched on the red-and-chrome stool at the fifties retro bar in front of the empty garage stall.

  “Alice, last night was brilliant. I wanted you to know I’m here for you. Any time.”

  A tight knot of unease pulled on my intestines. Was the mysterious N Nicholas Legends? The voices had similar baritones. Good dragon lord. Rex vaulted onto the chrome-and-laminate bar, once again snubbing his nose at Mr. Whack-a-Mole pushing up daisies.

  “Jeez, cat. Own the place now?” I buried my face in his fur, his purring vibrating against my cheek. What if Mom had killed my father and the whore? What would happen to her, to me? My parents were both only children and all my grandparents were deceased. I only had Kristen and two far-off second and third cousins who’d stayed clear of my father for obvious reasons. I’d only met them at my grandparents’ funerals.

  “Rex, what should we do?”

  The cat struggled out of my arms. The rattle of cat food in a box and Mrs. Wellington’s, “Here kitty, kitty, kitty,” sent the tabby racing to the front yard and me into languid motion.

  I closed the garage and checked on the parental unit. Mom had face-planted onto her bed, the sheets rolled to the footboard. Two open pill bottles and a half-empty water glass sat on her nightstand. Slurping down special vitamins to mask her guilt? Or her joy?

  “Mom?” I tapped her arm. Nothing. “Hello. Anyone in there?”

  “Ivy?” She groaned into her pillow.

  “You need to get up. I’m taking a shower, and then we’ll have brunch and talk about what we need to do.”

  “Okay.” She slurped up the drool in the corner of her lips to stave off drowning. “I’ll shower too.”

  I shut the door behind me per The Rules. I didn’t know how to move on sans Dad’s rules, they were so ingrained in my routine. But the vacuum sucked less and less as the implications of my liberation took shape.

  Hot steamy water in the Jack and Jill bathroom between Kristen’s room and mine scrubbed away my emotions for a too-brief time. I scanned Kristen’s sink in the dual vanity to make sure I hadn’t left my stuff on her side. She’d snag anything not tied down. Dad only gave her a food pittance. She had to work for her expense money. Mom sneaked her care packages, but they weren’t enough for her voracious department store cosmetics and Beverly Hills beauty salon appetite. Although we lived the rich life to the outside world, we didn’t have everything served to us on a platinum platter.

  By the time I’d cleaned up, another hour had passed. Time to tackle the daunting post-death tasks.

  I rapped on Mom’s door, but not a sound escaped her morgue-silent room. Oh, snap. Cringing, I bit down on my lower lip. Death planted weird things in my mind. Although God had probably added me to the top of his strike-down list, I deserved a slight reprieve. You know, due to my grief.

  “Mom?” No answer. I pushed open the door. She lay where I’d left her in her drooling crack junkie mode. A third prescription bottle sat next to the other two bottles. “Mom!” I sprinted to the bed and shook her not too gently. Her trademark soft snores wafted up, her brain in power-save mode.

  “Don’t leave me to deal with this! You’re the mother.” I yanked her pillow out from under her head. “Wake up.”

  She’d added a sedative to her repertoire of anxiety and antidepressant meds. Dad would’ve had a spaz attack if he saw her pill bottles left out willy-nilly or if he knew she was triple dosing. He usually buried that little problem in the nearest drawer. Drugs didn’t fit the exterior grandeur of the Lynwood family. “Crap. You’re out like National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation lights. No one’s ever turning your switch on.” Leaving the double doors open wide, I left the room to wait for Kristen downstairs.

  I listened to the million voicemails, realizing that a slew of mostly phony well-wishers would descend upon us to offer condolences if we didn’t return calls. I left the messages on the system and returned to the garage. Five minutes later, a bright green cab drove up the circular driveway and parked by the front door. I ceased rubbing a second coat of tire dressing onto the midlife crisis’ rear tire.

  The praying mantis-green car spit Kristen out and she hugged me so tight you’d need a crowbar to peel us apart. We both cried tears of hollow sorrow and awkward joy.

  She untangled her arms from my waist, holding her nose. “What’s that smell?”

  I subtly sniffed my armpits, and then realized I still held the tire dressing applicator, smearing black gunk on the back of the pink, size zero T-shirt hugging her forty-inch rack.

  “Oops.” I tossed the microfiber pad into the open bin of car cleaning supplies. “It’s car wash day. Dad said I needed to work harder on my tire-dressing application.”

  Kristen’s face pulled in all directions until she resembled a prune, including beady eyes and a gaping maw. “You don’t have to do his dirty work anymore,” she whispered, as if I was two cats away from crazy.

  I shuffled my bare feet, kicked at a minuscule weed growing in a seam in the driveway. A freeze attacked my extremities. Weed killer. I needed to walk the grounds and kill, destroy, decimate the weeds. “Yes. I do.” It was routine, atonement for my guilty relief, or a diversion from my thin thread of grief.

  “Oh, Miss Incognito. He’s gone. Live a little now. Break a rule.” She pulled me into a hug, her summery, tropical perfume drifting over me.

  Refusing to acknowledge her, I pushed away. She strolled toward the house and the taxi driver scrambled out of the cab and hollered at her to pay her fare.

  Kristen’s pet name made me giggle. Not the sharpest tool in the shed, it was a wonder she’d made it into college. She believed “incognito” meant hermit. I never had the heart to correct her, as I’d rather be called incognito than a hermit, despite my hermit tendencies. Maybe some incognito ones too.

  Kristen paid the cab driver and looped her overnight bag on her shoulder. “How’s The Mother?”

  “How do you think? Playing in the pharmacy section again.”

  “She should be doing the dance of joy.” She opened the front door and danced a jig in the foyer, eyeballing the house in a new light.

  “Give her some credit. She stayed married to him for a reason. She’s in freakout zone.”

  Her pearly whites glistened from the sunlight glimmering through the upper windows and bouncing off the sparkling marble foyer. Okay, maybe her teeth didn’t glisten, but gold bars danced in her irises.

  “How about a drink?” she asked. “And lunch. I’m starved. Think you can whip up sandwiches?” She dropped her bag at the bottom of the curved staircase. “How ’bout you make one of Dad’s martinis?”

  “Seriously?” I froze, disgusted, stunned, and angry all at once. My tangled emotions blew the top of my skull off. “Make your own lunch. I’m not your slave. If you’re thirsty, the birdbath’s not far.” I glared at her as she licked her fingers and patted her hair down in front of the mirror above the marble console in the entryway.

  She tugged me toward the family room. “Come on, sis. We’ll toast Dad. I need a drink before dealing with her.”

  One Ivy Spitini coming up.

  Chapter 6

  A trip to the Santa Cruz Coroner’s office was next on the agenda for our gruesome day. Neighbors had heard the news and were already knocking on the door, food and condolences in hand. It seemed a good opportunity to escape and I raced upstairs to rouse my mother. I’d left lightweight dr
inker Kristen on condolence duty. One drink and her tears flowed into a raging river, the perfect grieving daughter. I didn’t even spit in her drink. I couldn’t do that to my sister… to anyone else. That was a disgusting Dad thing, payback for all his abuse.

  Mom’s closed bedroom door and the splashing of the shower flashed relief through me. No way did I plan to get stuck on body ID duty alone.

  I walked inside the sumptuous marble bathroom. “You feeling better?” The peach scents of her soap and shampoo curled in the steam fogging the room.

  Cloaked in a towel, she shut the shower door. “Oh, Ivy.” She clenched her damp neck. “You startled me.”

  “We need to go to Santa Cruz.” I crashed in the over-stuffed wing chair between the twin vanities. “I’ll drive.” No way would I let her behind the wheel in her state.

  “Thanks. I knew you would.” Wrinkles fanning her eyes and the dents in her forehead lent her a haggard appearance.

  Of course, you expect me to offer a ride. You’ll flatten half the drivers on the road and get arrested for assault with a deadly lead foot.

  “Kristen’s here.” I picked at a loose thread on the damask chair arm.

  “Wonderful.” Mom smiled. “I can’t wait to see her. Gosh, she hasn’t been home since… when?”

  “Christmas and deaths.”

  She picked out a skirt and blouse from her afternoon-tea-party selection and hung them aside. “That’s not funny.” She squinted in the mirror and expertly began applying a layer of mud, filling in the sunken circles under her eyes. “Have you seen my phone?”

  Let the fidgeting begin. “Maybe you left it at your canasta party last night.” The phone in question jabbed my thigh from my front pocket.

  The mascara brush clinked into the sink, and she quickly recovered it and wiped the black smear off her cheek. “Maybe.” Her hand trembled as she attempted to brush on her mascara, stabbing her eye and giving up.

  Unable to handle the lies we both spewed out, I paced into her bedroom. I picked up the photo of my young parents from their simple Tahoe chalet wedding twenty-two years ago. Mom had worn a pale, opalescent pink evening gown and Dad a dove-gray suit, bought off the rack, a far cry from the custom-made Italian numbers he now wore. Had worn. Young and in love, a beautiful couple beaming and dreaming for the perfect life. Neither ever found that perfection. Dad came closest, only missing a son in his flawlessness. He’d worked his way up from low man on the totem pole to his top-dog position in an up-and-coming Silicon Valley high-tech company. Mom had worked her way from a home interior assistant job into a bottle of pills and a widow’s badge. Two kids, a mansion, a boat, and a garage full of sporty cars later. Scratch that, a crispy charred boat. I hoped we didn’t have to add a murderer’s badge to my mother’s credentials. A shudder ripped through me and my breakfast threatened to make a comeback.

  She enveloped me in her arms from behind, her signature scent suffocating my twist of memories. “Are you doing okay?”

  Swallowing hard, I set the framed photo on the mahogany dresser, careful not to leave fingerprints on the pristine surface. “It’s weird. Nothing feels different. I washed his Porsche this morning.” Never the Porsche. First time I made that mistake, he’d wigged out about how it was his Porsche, not anyone else’s. Heaven forbid anyone touched it without his permission. Mr. OCD even searched for fingerprints every day. I let these negative thoughts overshadow my fears before I crumpled into a ball as they may be the only way to get through the next few days, weeks, and even months.

  Mom rested her chin on my shoulder. “Do what you need to do. No one’s judging you. There’s no rulebook. Grief is as individual as a fingerprint.”

  Wow, Mom had become profound. “What if I can’t cry?” We locked dry, tired gazes in the mirror above the dresser.

  “There’s no law that requires you to cry out your grief.”

  How long would this pseudo-mother stand up? She released me and we straightened the bed covers. I wanted to dive under the luxurious jacquard comforter and bury myself in a fantasy novel for days. Navel gazing had more appeal than visiting the morgue.

  Yakking on the phone, Kristen tromped down the hallway to her bedroom between the master bedroom and mine. She snickered and it turned into a belly laugh as she slung her overnight bag through her bedroom doorway.

  Laughing felt wrong, like breaking those mystical laws of grief, even if the relief we all skirted around diminished our sorrow. Mom’s motions became jerky and repetitive, and her downward spiral commenced.

  I tossed the small square pillows in a haphazard row upon the bigger pillows. Mom tucked the corner of the comforter in, centering it, and then set the pillows in a level line. I tweaked a pillow to break the precision of the Master’s authority.

  Kristen stepped in the doorway, pushing up her ginormous rack spilling over the top of her tank top. “Mommy!” She elbowed between us and threw her arms around our mother. They hugged, cried, and laughed, their liberation so palpable the air of doom lifted around us. It’s sick, but it’s who we are. He made us this way.

  One thing neither Kristen nor I ever doubted was Mom’s love for us and how we rallied together when the four faces of evil paid a visit. Our love was the crazy glue sticking us to one another. I supposed the dangling carrot of a cohesive family unit had also prevented Mom from fleeing the viper’s nest. I crunched on that light bulb moment.

  We left Kristen returning phone calls, greeting the drop-ins, and storing the death food that had begun to arrive. Silence bogged down the trip over the hills to Santa Cruz, the twisty turns yanking my stomach to and fro the closer we traveled to the seaside town. Mom’s second-phase drugs kicked in somewhere between the highway and the Sheriff-Coroner’s office. I had to prop her up on the way inside the building. Appearing the flawless grieving widow, she’d shut down, her face a ghost white sheet of grief, terror, and nerves. Batteries not included.

  Several moments flew by as I braced myself to view my father, or his remains, for the last time. Focusing on his fists gripping my hair yesterday morning bolstered my resolve. The reason behind the Ivy Spitini crowded out the most recent infraction, as the Spitini went so far back for all the nasty words, the demeaning behavior, his stripping my time, my dignity, even my self-esteem, letting me flounder in an antisocial fog, and transforming me into a loner to the point I figured I’d end up a crazy cat lady by my thirties. Every slap, every time he touched me, gave me a nasty look, or spewed garbage out his disgusting mouth. Those were the slights I’d suffered, not to mention what he dished out to my mother, and his pet Kristen, who’d slid by the master tormentor easier than Mom and I.

  I showed the uniformed officer at the reception desk our IDs. Why the IDs? Did strangers off the street waltz in and identify charred bodies every day? A chilled panic settled in my bones. How were we even supposed to identify him? Had they already done dental record matching?

  Deputy Pike, an associate coroner, met us by the steel door to the left of the reception room. Thick red hair framed skin so freckly the spots had morphed into a deep tan. No connecting those dots. He tugged at his strawberry-blond goatee, his appreciative eyes perusing first Mom, then me. Dad used to love the attention his quasi-trophy wife garnered. No slouch in the looks department, ordinary me didn’t possess her classic beauty.

  I gave a silent plea to the gods of speed. I’d rather re-seed the lawn one seed at a time than identify dead bones. Who knew I might wish for a return to yesterday to avoid standing in a morgue? In the end, we only had to accept Dad’s slightly singed and damp effects and sign off on the papers. Dental record matching had indeed already accomplished our unimaginable task.

  “Do you have a funeral home picked out?” Deputy Pike spoke in a low, somber tone, his comforting bedside manner apparently adopted for dealing with the grief-stricken. Had he ever dealt with relieved teenagers who wanted to throw a freedom party? My mind wandered, searching for an answer to Pike’s question.

  OMG. We’re so lame
at death. I hadn’t thought of contacting a funeral home. “Um… I guess we’ll phone one in.” Like the phoning it in we’d done all day instead of dealing with reality. In certain personality traits, Dad’s humanity was purely coincidental, but he’d been a human being deserving dignity in death.

  “Los Gatos Memorial,” Mom interjected strong and sober, her hand steady as she swept her bangs to the right side of her matronly bun. “We’ll have him cremated. It’s what he wanted.”

  Mouth hanging open, my horror unraveled the steel braids in my spine. “Mom,” I whispered. “He’s already…” Oh, wait. I rubbed my temples, confused at cremation protocol.

  Middle-earth claimed my mother’s body and she sank to the floor, silent sobs shaking her shoulders, hands clinging to my ankles. Deputy Pike dove to catch her before she wilted onto the floor completely.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said as he helped her to a chair near the door. She’d gone into a trance, eyes closed, still awake, as pliable as rendered on a daily basis by D-squared—the douchebag and drugs. I rubbed her shoulder and handed her a ratty tissue from my purse. “She’ll be okay. She’s on tranquilizers. To get through the day,” I added, lest he think she took drugs every day. Oh wait, she did.

  Heading toward my own freakout, I tore my finger through a tiny hole near my purse’s zipper, a necessary stinging awakening. “Can you tell me how he, or they, were so dead to the world to sleep through a fire?” I sucked on my finger. “I mean, all they had to do was jump into the ocean.” My ire returned to claim the horror riding my back like an eight-hundred-pound father.

  Deputy Pike’s face grew ten shades of crimson beneath his freckles. Spine taut, demeanor all business, he pulled my father’s file up on his tablet device. “The fire is under investigation. Could have been smoke inhalation, drugs, or alcohol. You’ll receive the full report in a few days.”