The Siren

by Katherine St. John

  I have to admit, though, Ruthanne and Fred aren’t as bad as I’d thought they’d be. If I didn’t know they’d kicked my pregnant mom out and then lied to me about it, I wouldn’t mind them so much. They did take me in when no one else would.

  My dad was a nonstarter. He now runs his family’s chicken farm operation from Dallas, where he lives with his second wife. The social worker didn’t know I could hear his end of the conversation when she called him up to tell him about me. He was very clear he’d given my mom the money for an abortion, so as far as he was concerned, I didn’t exist. Despite evidence to the contrary.

  But Ruthanne and Fred were happy to take me. They claimed they’d been looking for my mom for years, and the fact she hadn’t aborted me led them to believe that she was in heaven. I didn’t tell them about the stripping or the hooking.

  They live in a blue two-bedroom shoebox on a flat two acres with two mutts, a goat, and a coop full of chickens. Fred’s a big man with a love of Penn State football and deer hunting. He drives an eighteen-wheeler, and I think he’s less about Jesus than Ruthanne, who’s a Jesus freak by anyone’s standards, but he goes along with it for her sake. Ruthanne works at the hardware store and has a big garden that provides all kinds of vegetables when the ground isn’t frozen solid.

  The first year was hard for all of us; I had residual hate for them because they kicked Iris out, and they didn’t know how to handle a feisty ten-year-old who’d never had any rules and had just lost her mother. I got a lot of spankings and time-outs, like a toddler. The change came the following spring, when it was time to plant Ruthanne’s garden. Bored, I asked if I could help one day and found I loved turning the soil, trimming the leaves, watching the new plants shoot up. Ruthanne was so pleased that the next morning when we were at Walmart, she took me to the juniors section and let me pick out a new church dress and a pair of heels, my first. It was then that I remembered something Iris had told me once when I asked how she became such a good dancer. “I’m a fine dancer, but what I’m really doing is selling a fantasy,” she’d said. “If you listen, people will tell you what they want. Then all you have to do is give it to them, and you’ll have them eating out of your hand.”

  That evening I helped Ruthanne in the kitchen too, and learned I liked cooking as much as I liked gardening. But what I liked even more was the fact that later that evening, when she caught me reading a copy of Lolita I’d found in a used bookstore in town, she simply shut my bedroom door.

  I discovered that as long as I kept my opinions to myself, didn’t take the Lord’s name in vain, did my chores, got good grades, and went to church, Ruthanne and Fred were pretty okay. Besides the garden and cooking, I still have nothing in common with them except for my mother, and talking about her is hard for all of us, after everything. I’ve always maintained my account of what happened the night she died, but I can tell that even they don’t believe me.

  For years I’ve told my story to the police, to reporters, to anyone who would listen, but no one’s been convinced. Every psychologist agreed: I was a scared kid in a bad situation making up fantasies to dispel the bleakness of her unhappy life. It happens all the time, they said.

  Only, I wasn’t unhappy. They assume that with the lifestyle Iris and I led, I must have been miserable. But I knew no other way to live. And to a ten-year-old, being able to walk to the store on your own and watch whatever show and say whatever bad words you want while eating frozen pizza curled up in the bed you share with your mom is a pretty awesome existence.

  It’s a lot better than huddling under a thin blanket in my cold bedroom with earbuds, watching movies I downloaded via torrent on the contraband iPhone I bought with my secret pile of money, because Ruthanne and Fred don’t allow any entertainment that isn’t church approved. I know all Cole’s and Stella’s movies by heart.

  The secret pile of money and the thought of what I’m going to do with it when I turn eighteen is all that keeps me going most of the time.

  A few days after the accident, Carol-the-social-worker had escorted me back to our apartment to collect my things, with the instruction that I should place whatever I wanted in two black garbage bags; everything else would be disposed of. The cops had already been through the place, and it was a wreck. Drawers were open, clothes strewn everywhere, pillows upturned. And yet somehow the entire apartment still smelled of jasmine. Overwhelmed, I sat on the end of the bed and started to cry. Carol patted my back and offered me a tissue. That woman always had a tissue. Part of the job, I guessed. “Can I help you pick which things you want?” she asked.

  I blew my nose on the tissue and shook my head. “I’d like a minute alone, if that’s okay.”

  “I’ll be in the living room if you need me.” She quietly closed the door behind her.

  The second she was gone, I opened the closet and pushed aside the pile of clothes that hid the safe. I crouched before it and spun the code, then jerked the door open, my heart hammering. To my relief, the money was intact. I knew I probably didn’t have much time before Carol came in trying to be helpful, so I snatched Iris’s satin pillowcase off the bed and stuffed it with the cash. I heard a soft knock.

  I wrapped the pillowcase in a sundress I grabbed from the floor and jammed it into my backpack beneath my schoolbooks right as Carol opened the door. I zipped the bag, trying to act nonchalant. “Just making sure I have all my schoolbooks,” I said.

  She wrinkled her brow in sympathy. “You’re going to be attending a different school in Pennsylvania, so you’ll probably need new books.”

  “But I really like these,” I demurred, panicked she’d try to take my book bag away. “And they’re already paid for. I’m gonna take them with me so I can keep learning.”

  She looked at me funny. “Okay.”

  When your mother dies, people will let you get away with all sorts of strange things.

  She and I packed the garbage bags with a mixture of my clothes and the things of my mother’s that most reminded me of her: her sketchbook and the larger folded sketches she did of me when I was little, the silver heels she bought herself the day after she met Cole, the little Dior saddlebag a suitor gave her, her jasmine perfume, her favorite jewelry, T-shirts, and dresses. It was hard leaving anything of hers behind, knowing it was all I’d have of her; I kept taking out things of my own to make room for things of hers, until Carol stopped me.

  “You’ll need clothes,” she said.

  I took one last look around, then lifted the framed poster of the Eiffel Tower off its hook above the bed, perched her most-loved sunglasses atop my head, and marched out of the apartment.

  Only it wasn’t actually my final time in the apartment. Two days later, when Ruthanne and Fred arrived in a blue Impala to collect me, they wanted to see where Iris had lived, so we went back. They tiptoed as though the floor might fall through if they stepped in the wrong place and glanced around tentatively, afraid to see something they didn’t want to remember.

  Fred spied the open safe first. “What was in here?”

  “Some jewelry, a Dior purse,” I fibbed. “It’s all packed. She kept her money in there too, but there wasn’t any left.”

  They shook their heads, disheartened by what their only daughter’s life had come to. I could tell they were itching to argue about which of them was to blame, but thankfully they were too inhibited to do it in front of the grief-stricken girl freshly foisted upon them.

  I rode all the way to Pennsylvania in silence with the backpack between my feet, next to the urn of my mother’s ashes that now sits on the mantel beneath the big decorative iron cross. One day I’ll take those ashes to Paris and release her into the city she always dreamed of visiting.

  The picture of the Eiffel Tower hangs in my bedroom above the dresser, where an old teddy bear I gutted and packed with my mother’s cash quietly waits for my eighteenth birthday, when I’ll be free. Until then, I’m patient.

  June 24, 2019

  Celeb Spotter

  T
rouble in Paradise?

  Cole Power and Stella Rivers took a break from filming on the beautiful Caribbean island of Saint Genesius Monday to visit the small port of Gen Town. We’d speculated a few weeks ago, when the report came out that Power had cast Rivers to star opposite him in The Siren, that the exes might be rekindling a romance, and Rivers’s post last week, in which a smiling Power had his arm around her, seemed to support the theory. But bystanders say the two appeared to be arguing as they strolled along the port, and newly released video shows Rivers losing her footing and falling ass-first into a puddle while Power looks on, appearing to almost laugh [video]. Whoopsie! Rivers and Power were smiling minutes later as they posed for pictures with fans waiting for a nearby ferry, but the clip of Power watching Rivers drop has become a meme overnight. Sadly, it doesn’t look like we’ll be getting a Stole reprise anytime soon.

  Taylor

  Thursday, June 27

  The greenhouse was set up as a photography studio for the initial seduction scene between Cole’s and Madison’s characters, with plants hung from the leaden glass ceiling and giant scrims filtering light through the walls of windows. Only, the light kept shifting as clouds rolled in. We were already behind, and if we didn’t complete the scene before the storm, we’d be even further behind. It was doubly maddening because I’d been tracking the forecast and suggested we start with this location first thing to avoid this very predicament, but Cole refused to work before noon. Something about switching his body clock, since we were doing a night shoot tomorrow. So here we were, battling rapidly changing daylight for the second time this week and racing to finish before the heavens opened.

  The scene wouldn’t be so difficult if the babies didn’t scream bloody murder at the sight of Madison, but we had to shoot Madison’s coverage with a live baby stand-in, then switch to Felicity standing in for Madison to catch the baby’s coverage. Felicity was now holding a baby on her hip, wearing Madison’s skimpy white sundress and a wig to match Madison’s long black hair.

  On the sidelines I watched the monitor as the camera rolled, captivated by what I saw on-screen. Felicity disappeared into the role in a way Madison never could. There was nothing self-conscious or stilted about her performance; I felt like I was watching a real human being instead of an actor portraying a character.

  Funny, as Stella’s stand-in, Felicity was always professional—and it was clear the camera loved her—but she was too young for the role and must have been holding back, probably out of deference to Stella. She was perfectly cast in Madison’s role though, and she absolutely glowed.

  It was a particular form of sorcery, the ability to become someone else on command; I’d seen flashes of it in Stella’s performance, but it was more that she was playing a role so close to herself that the line between her and her character blurred. Cole used to have the gift but had in recent years become a caricature of himself: every role was a more greatly exaggerated version of what had worked for him in the past, as though each time he reached into his bag of tricks, the tools he extracted became blunter.

  Or perhaps the parts he’d played were somehow compounding inside of him: in real life he sometimes behaved so much like the fictional characters he’d portrayed in the past, I had to wonder whether the tables had turned and the roles were now playing him instead of the other way around. Like he lost a piece of himself and gained a piece of a character every time he stood before the camera, until he became a patchwork of gangsters, lovers, villains, and gentlemen. Regardless, today Felicity elevated him and brought his acting closer to truth than I’d seen yet.

  A flash of lightning too close for comfort drew my eye to the window right as a deafening crack of thunder shook the house. The baby started squalling. To their credit, both Felicity and Cole stayed in the scene, but it was no use. Five seconds later, the lights went out. A collective groan went up from the crew.

  “Cut,” Jackson called.

  “Everybody take five while we get the generator up and running,” Price added.

  Five minutes later, the generator was not up and running. Nor was it ten, twenty, or forty-five minutes later.

  We were into our tenth hour of twelve now, Cole had disappeared, and the repair guy for the off-brand generator that our electrical engineer had never seen before was on Saint Ann and couldn’t come until tomorrow. Price, Jackson, and I put our heads together and decided to call it a day. I sighed, frustrated that weather had cut us off for a second time this week. “I’ll have the repair guy come out tomorrow; someone should learn how to run the generator so this doesn’t happen again,” I said.

  “And I’m taking everyone out for dinner at Coco’s,” Jackson announced. Off my look, he continued. “As in, I’m paying for it. We don’t even have to tell Cole, wherever he went. In fact, don’t. I’d love to enjoy a night with just my crew. And cast. Everybody but my father.”

  Price and I exchanged a glance. “You know Madison’s gonna tell him though,” I pointed out. “She’s been jocking his strap since day one.”

  “Well, they’re both missing, as far as I can see,” he returned.

  It was true. Madison had disappeared as well, around the same time as Cole. I hoped that didn’t mean what I thought it meant. I lowered my voice. “She’s driving me as crazy as she is you, trust me. But you know we have to invite her. And him.”

  He nodded. “Let’s get on it, then. We’ll have at least twenty drama-free minutes before they arrive.”

  Coco’s was an open-air seafood and burger joint situated at the end of the jetty that guided boats into the Gen Town harbor. One side of the thatched-roof restaurant overlooked the dinghies and fishing boats bobbing in the port, and the other side a small ironshore beach. Jackson sought out the manager and negotiated a flat rate for food and drinks while our rowdy group took over the place, swamping the bar so badly that one of the sound guys jumped behind the counter to help. Coco’s was not the type of spot where this kind of behavior was looked down on. In fact, the barman, who seemed to have already knocked a few back himself, quickly poured each of them shots and turned up the reggae.

  The air was misty and fresh once the rain cleared; the waves pounded the last of the storm’s energy into the sand as the light faded from the sky. Someone handed me a beer and someone else handed me a dart. Before I knew it, I was three rounds deep with Price and Francisco, each of us with a win beneath our belt. And then the steel drums started up. I passed my darts to Brian, filled a plate with fried conch, and sat at a table with a red-and-white-checked tablecloth, swaying to the music in my seat. Stella slid into the chair next to me, picking a piece of conch from my plate with her fingers and dipping it into my tartar sauce, then popping it into her mouth.

  “Mmmm…” she said. “I know I should stay away from fried food, but it’s just so good!”

  “Get your own,” I teased, protecting my plate with my arm.

  “Here, you can have some of my salad.” She pushed a sad-looking plate of dry lettuce and tomatoes toward me, and I laughed.

  Tawny sat on my other side with a plate full of conch, shrimp, and peas ’n’ rice. “What’s so funny?” she asked.

  “Stella’s stealing my conch and trying to push her salad on me,” I said. “You better watch out; she’ll steal yours too.”

  Stella snatched a piece of shrimp off Tawny’s plate with a wink, then cut her eyes toward the bar. “Well, look what the cat dragged in,” she drolled.

  Cole sauntered over with a drink in each hand, Madison trailing after him like a schoolgirl in love with the prom king. Yep, they’d fucked. It was written all over her smug face. “Hey,” he said when he reached our table. Tawny was the only one who smiled at him, but he sat down anyway, filling the last seat at our four-top. Madison hovered, staring at her phone like it held the answer to where to park herself.

  Cole slid one of the drinks to Stella. “Tonic for you.” He winked.

  She eyed him, suspicious. “Thanks.” She sipped the drink, her green eyes going
wide as what was surely gin hit her tongue. “That’s some tonic,” she spluttered.

  “Bottoms up.” He chuckled.

  “You have a nice morning off?” Tawny asked.

  “Bought a boat,” Cole replied.

  “Fun!” Tawny looked out toward the harbor. “Is it out there?”

  He shook his head. “Rick has to pick it up for me.” His gaze landed on me. “Have you seen him?”

  “Me? No.” I shook my head. “Is he coming?”

  “You tell me. You’re the one who was eye-fucking him the entire time we were on the boat last weekend.”

  My jaw dropped. “We were just talking,” I said.

  “Sure.” He smirked.

  “Everyone else was occupied. What was I supposed to do?”

  He held up his hands, snickering. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, sensitive, are we?” He leered at Stella as she tentatively sipped her drink. “Nothing wrong with a little action, right?”

  I stood. “I need another drink.”

  Stella rose next to me. “I’ll come with you.”

  “Nice pants, half-pint.” Cole shot a mocking glance at my favorite cargo pants, which I’d cut into shorts only this morning.

  “Pockets,” I snapped.

  “Careful,” he called as we walked away. “You don’t want to end up blackout drunk again.”

  I clenched my jaw as I threaded my way through the crowd to the bar, blind with anger. Fuck him, taunting me like that. Commenting on my personal life and calling me out in public for something that…I was more than unsettled I remained in the dark about what had happened that first night. “Are you okay?” Stella whispered when we were out of earshot.

  “No,” I managed. “I want to kill him.”

  “He’s such a Scorpio,” she hissed. “He always has something up his sleeve. And what was that about blacking out? He’s the one that gave me this drink.”