by Cora Brent
I opened my mouth to say the words I needed to say. Yes, I did it. Yes, I’m sorry. But they stalled somewhere in my throat while my heart hammered and my mother loomed.
Lita wasn’t consumed by love for any of her children but some were tolerated more than others. I was the least of all Savage offspring to her. I knew it. Monty knew it too. That might have been the reason for what happened next. In the midst of the wild scene, of crying siblings and a vengeful parent, he calmly stepped up, that stone-faced ten-year-old kid, and said, “I fucking did it. So there. And fuck you, Lita.”
I look at my brother now - my damaged, prideful big brother - and wonder how different his life might have turned out if he’d been born to a normal family.
I could easily wonder the same about the rest of us. Surely gentle Ava wouldn’t have been swallowed by the scandalous Hollywood party scene, Brigitte wouldn’t be desperately searching for a fame she considered her birthright; I wouldn’t be a skeptical escape artist. And Spence…well, maybe Spence alone had enough strength of character to be who he was always going to be. Somehow I can’t imagine him as anything other than a modern cowboy haunting an obscure desert outpost.
It doesn’t matter now.
We are who we are.
A bubble of anxiety rises in my gut as I realize once again that we have sold our souls with this show. But there’s no backing out at this point. Gary and his corporate minions are expecting a train wreck. And the world will see what it wants to see.
“I’ve guess I should go unpack,” I tell my brother.
Monty nods vaguely and stares out the window toward the house. A few hundred yards away I see Spencer riding a brown mare at a lazy walk, seemingly oblivious to the pair of cameras trained on him.
“Need any help carrying your shit?”
I shake my head. “Nah. I didn’t bring much.”
He gives me a penetrating stare. “You up for this, Ren? I can derail the whole damn thing if you want.”
I do. This is a mistake. I know it. Monty knows it. But I think about Ava and Alden, of Bree and her desperate hopes. And I just can’t.
“Better not. Gary would sic his cadre of lawyers on us.” I gesture out to the yard, where Bree has reappeared and is standing in a wistful pose as the last of the sunlight disappears. “Besides, there are other people to think about.”
Monty frowns as he catches sight of our youngest sister. “That there are,” he says reluctantly and that confirms what I already suspected; Monty isn’t the selfish prick he usually seems to be.
“Stay out of trouble tonight,” I warn on my way out.
“Fine,” Monty shrugs. “But tomorrow all bets are off.”
When I walk outside I see Spence has dismounted and is leading the horse around to the far side of the stable. He sees me but doesn’t stop walking.
“Hey, Ren,” he says as casually as if we just saw one another this morning instead of over a year ago. Then he swings open the stable door and disappears.
Someone, probably Rash, has already been thoughtful enough to carry my luggage from the car to the house. Speaking of Rash, I don’t see him anywhere. The two camera guys who were out here a few minutes ago have disappeared as well. I wonder if they were told to back off for the rest of the night. Either way, all bets are off starting tomorrow, our first official full day of filming.
Bree has returned indoors and the house is silent. I assume my sisters are in there wrangling with their own personal demons. Spence hasn’t emerged from the stable and hopefully Monty will brood alone behind the brothel for the night.
The rubber soles of my shoes are quiet on the rough sand as I wander out beyond all the Atlantis structures. The original two thousand acres have been pared down to barely three hundred over the years as land was sold off to the government at bargain basement prices. The surrounding area is all part of a protected natural preserve and new construction is prohibited. Atlantis was grandfathered in and as private property and may remain as such as long as it’s owned by a member of the original family. If it was sold to the government for peanuts, the buildings would likely be razed immediately and the landscape returned to the authority of the desert.
A faint breeze lifts my hair slightly as I pause and watch the shadows of the mountains disappear into the invading night. I feel funny, a vague wave of dizzy detachment. Maybe it has something to do with where I’m standing. Perhaps some distant part of my genetic makeup recalls that other Savages have stood here before.
Or maybe it’s something else.
How many times had we hiked out here at night, two teens in desperate, frantic love? I might have stepped right in these tracks five years ago, our hands clasped together, my body in a fire to feel his.
I turn away with a shudder and slowly walk back toward the house. The activity has died down now that the crew has departed for the night, having rented out a floor in the only motel in Consequences. On a typical night they’ll wrap up around eight p.m. and return promptly at seven the next morning, unless there’s something interesting going on.
For the hours in between, there were cameras installed all over the property. I didn’t bother to listen too closely when Cate Camp outlined their locations. As I reach the front door where someone has been thoughtful enough to leave the bright porch light on, I expect that I’m being watched in some way.
It’s late. I’m tired. I don’t know what to expect tomorrow or the day after that but I’ve already sentenced myself to being here no matter what.
I wonder if this is how a caged animal feels.
CHAPTER NINE
OZ
Being alone never bothers me. I’m used to it. Maybe it’s a side effect of those fucked up early years. Or maybe some of us are just born that way. It might not be the worst thing. Caves and caverns, forests and deserts, all tend to make for better company than people. People are messy.
I had left the hotel before the sun came up, pausing at a gas station on the way out of town to fuel up and grab some breakfast from a vending machine. Oklahoma bleeds into Northern Texas and suddenly, without any preamble, I’m in New Mexico. My phone might be buzzing like a hive if I bothered to turn it on.
Let Gary and his team sweat about when or where or how I’ll turn up. I said I’d be there. And I will be there.
New Mexico, at least the part I’m driving through, is full of muted neutral colors. There’s a gentler look about things here than what I know awaits in Arizona.
My back is unhappy about being pressed against the seat of the truck hour after hour. I stretch and hear a pop. It’s doubly unhappy because last night was restless. A lot of violent tossing that receded into uneasy dreams of Ren.
Ren straddling me on a public beach, Ren dancing naked in a church, Ren in a YouTube video blowing smoke rings at a desert sky and then winking. None of that ever really happened. But now every excuse I’ve repeated to myself for the last five years seems flimsy. I’ve stubbornly remained in my own exile rather than demand the answer she owed me.
But for crying out loud, hadn’t she already told me to leave? Hadn’t she said the only thing that could make me turn away?
I can remember the way her hair felt between my fingers and the laugh in her voice as she said my name but there’s a big gaping hole between the last time I held her and the first night I spent without her, bitterly alone and resolving to stay that way. Everything else I can see with crystal clarity but I usually avoid thinking about those other details.
She’d pressed some money into my hand. I remember that. Like I wanted fucking money from her. Her pig of a mother lurked the background, acrid smoke hung in the air and Monty Savage punched me at some point. I might have killed him if Ren hadn’t stepped between us. None of that was important. Not the blood in my mouth or the screaming in my ears. There was just Ren saying something I couldn’t hear and then Ren saying something I could hear. Something impossible.
“Go.”
“No.”
“Go, Oscar!”
“You don’t mean it.”
“Yes I do. We are finished. We are nothing. And you need to leave me alone now.”
“Then you fucking say it. Tell me you don’t want me. Ren, you tell me that and I swear to god you’ll never fucking see me again.”
“I don’t want you, Oscar. I don’t want you. I DON’T WANT YOU!”
Because it’s been so long since I’ve thought about that moment, I can’t even be sure it’s right. Except the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach tells me it is. There are some gaps, some puzzle pieces that aren’t quite interlocking; there’s Ren crying, there’s August shaking his head, there’s Spencer chasing me down and urgently pushing the money into my hand, the money Ren had tried to give me before I threw the wad of bills back in her face. Then there’s Spence helping me get a bag hastily packed and stealing the keys to the pickup in order to get me at least to Consequences, where I would have a better chance at finding a ride somewhere else.
Everything still ends with “I don’t want you.”
The hurt feels fresh right now. I know why I’ve kept that particular memory away. And it was a valid excuse for a while, when I was still a kid trying to carve out a way to survive. I’d hitched a ride to Phoenix and the thousand bucks Spence had pushed on me was enough to grab a room in a decrepit motel and get my bearings.
It’s a sad fact that the world isn’t awash with opportunities for a homeless teen with no last name. I told anyone who asked that I was called Oz. I wanted nothing to do with Oscar Savage anymore. He was never real anyway. Acevedo became my last name on a whim when I was watching a local news broadcast and the cute reporter chirped her name at the end of a segment about the toxic desert toads that surfaced in the summer monsoon season.
I started looking for work in the area surrounding the huge state university but didn’t have much luck without any ID. I got turned down flat everywhere I tried, a few would-be employers snottily informing me that they used e-verify and can’t hire those who are in the country illegally. I didn’t bother to argue with them.
During the day I would sneak into the university library for hours at a time, enjoying the free air conditioning and turning the pages of dusty old science books that most everyone seemed to have forgotten about. That’s where I had a stroke of actual good luck when a man walked by, glanced at the book I was reading, and asked me if I was enjoying it.
“Good,” he said, when I warily nodded. “Because I wrote it.”
His name was Dr. Lemon and he was a geology professor. He wasn’t put off by the vague answers I gave to whatever questions he asked. To him, it didn’t matter that I was a rather tough-acting teen with an obvious chip on my shoulder. It was enough for him that I sat in the library hour after hour devouring book after book. He did ask if I had any family who might be looking for me and I said no. Then he asked if I wanted to finish high school and I said hell no. He frowned over that and then searched around in his leather briefcase, withdrawing a shiny brochure. Some friends of his ran a tourism company in Colorado. He told me to wait until the following day and give them a call. They were searching for tour guide trainees.
Sometimes I wonder how the hell I would have managed if Dr. Lemon hadn’t done me that favor. Maybe I would have turned to dealing, or worse. Maybe right now there’s another kid sitting in a library somewhere reading about acid-eating microbes in South American caves as his empty belly rumbles. Dr. Lemon died of pancreatic cancer about a year after that fateful meeting. I hope someday I’m able to pay it forward, the chance that he gave me.
Miles pass and my mind never strays from Ren for very long. I’m not awfully creative and for the life of me I can’t imagine how things are going to go when we’re face to face. I keep myself occupied with the radio so I don’t have to think about what the hell we’ll say to each other when I drive into Atlantis.
“So Ren, what’s up? Been a few years, haha. You look hot. Sometimes I think I hate you. And sometimes I think the opposite.”
I’m starting to wonder if maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, showing up like this. I could have tracked down Ren a long time ago to figure out whether we could wade through the mess of our past. But it would have been harder for her to find me, if she’d even tried. Maybe she had tried and then gave up.
Gary’s oily assurances that the family has no idea I’m part of the production schedule may or may not be bullshit. I don’t give a damn about the rest of the Savage clan; Ren’s sullen brothers or her airhead sisters. I know August has been dead for years and Lita can go eat glass for all I fucking care.
Once I told the girl I loved that she’d never have to see me again. That’s a promise I should have broken a long time ago.
CHAPTER TEN
REN
I remember reading something once about how in olden times royalty would always be surrounded by people. They had all these well-dressed clingers – usually minor nobility - hanging around at all hours to help them dress, to hand them spit glasses, to inspect their piss, to claw wax out of their ears, whatever.
Even though no one has tossed me a chamber pot when I sit up in bed the first morning of filming, I have the feeling I’m opening my eyes inside of a fishbowl.
It gets worse when I open the door.
“Shit!”
The shriek erupts from my mouth when I nearly collide with a prowling cameraman.
It’s the handsome dark-haired one one I’d seen yesterday. He doesn’t say sorry. He doesn’t say anything. He just trains his lens on my wild hair and puffy face.
I cross my arms over the old t-shirt I’d worn to bed and disappear into the bathroom for a while. At least there are no cameras creeping around the bathroom. Well, none that I can see anyway. I decided not to think about that. I have some trouble attaching my microphone and finally just stuff it inside my bra, winding the cord beneath my shirt and attaching the box piece to the waistband of my jeans.
When I finally emerge, the cameraman is gone and I find my sister Ava in the kitchen scooping some hideous orange goo out of a jar and feeding it to her son. Rash is crouched in a corner with a camera balanced on one shoulder. He looks like he was painted there. I wonder if his knees hurt.
“Hey,” says Ava with bright cheer as Alden spits out a blob of orange. I can’t say I blame the kid. I’d spit it out too.
There’s a large country kitchen table in the middle of the room that I don’t remember seeing before. Spence used to have a folding table and one metal chair. It’s probably a prop, procured by Vogel Productions. Brigitte had told me that Spence had gotten rid of a lot of the furniture ages ago. Gary’s team must have arranged a little bit of interior renovation.
I pour myself a cup of coffee, sit on the rustic bench that fits neatly with the rustic table in the rustically repainted kitchen while Brigitte prances around the clearing in front of the kitchen window amid a cloud of feathers. I gulp down some black coffee. I never sweeten my coffee.
“What the hell is Bree doing?”
Ava wipes her son’s mouth. “Feeding the chickens.”
“I don’t remember seeing any chickens yesterday.”
“They weren’t here yesterday. A truck arrived this morning with some chickens and a premade coop.”
“Ah, another prop.” I’m starting to sound downright bitchy.
There’s a low whistle from the corner. I turn and face the source of the noise.
“What’s that? You calling a dog, Rash? I haven’t seen any around. Unless one arrived with the chickens.
“Ren,” Ava whispers. “You’re not supposed to talk to the crew.”
“Then maybe they shouldn’t whistle at us.”
“It was supposed to be a subtle hint.” Rash has lowered the camera and fiddles with one of the dials. The cameras are actually smaller than I expected. I wish this would make them seem less appalling but it doesn’t. “I was just reminding you to stay on track. Any mention of Gary or the show and certainly any direct conversation with the cr
ew will need to be edited out.”
Edited out. Of course. Reality television, what an absurd contradiction.
“Sorry,” I grumble. “I know I’m supposed to pretend this is real life.”
“It is real life,” argues Ava as she lifts Alden out of the high chair. The little boy lays his head on his mother’s shoulder and gives me a winning smile, squeezing my heart in a little spasm. For his sake, I’ve got to keep up appearances.
“You’ll get used to it,” Rash promises. He removes a white square of cloth from his back pocket, rubs it across the camera lens and resettles it on his shoulder. “Hey Ren, the others have already given their fifteen minutes in the Blue Room. You want to get this out of the way now?”
The Blue Room is an appendage to the original house. It juts out of the back like a square hump and spoils the sensible footprint of Russ Savage’s architectural design. It had been Lita’s project, a lavish guest bathroom that August tiredly agreed to build and never finished because there was no money. Now it’s been refashioned into a confessional booth of sorts, with sea-colored walls and neutral Pottery Barn furniture to lounge on while pouring out the contents of your heart. Of course you understand before you start talking that everything you say will be appropriately modified for the show’s needs.
“Why the hell not?” I grumble.
“Camera’s all set up in there. Just switch it on when you’re ready and answer the questions as best you can.”
“What questions?”
Rash or Cate Camp or someone on the Born Savages payroll must have explained it to me already. Nevertheless, Rash patiently explains again. Every week there will be a different list of questions that we are supposed to address during our Blue Room interview. We may choose a crew member to be present for prompts or we can sit there and monologue it all the way. For the life of me I cannot picture my brothers engaging in long winded monologues but apparently everyone’s finished their weekly interview except me.
