The Second Life of Ava Rivers

by Faith Gardner

  “We do look like dorks,” she agrees after a moment.

  She and I crack up. For the first time since we were kids, we giggle together. Mom and Dad watch with proud, faraway expressions.

  Then the four of us talk like normal people—about how I graduated, and how Dad has been really into keeping up a website we built for Ava, and you remember your brother Elliott, well, he’ll be here soon, and Mom is on the board of all these charities . . . There’s a long silence. Dad asks, gently, “Ava, do you have any things you want to do?”

  “I just want to go home,” she says. “And for my brain to stop feeling so fuzzy.”

  Mom nods and puts her hand on Ava’s.

  “Did I have a dog with me?” Ava asks, sitting up straighter. She has this amazing volcano of crimped blond ponytail on the top of her head.

  “We have dogs!” Mom tells her.

  “I think she’s saying she had a dog . . . where she was,” Dad says to Mom.

  Ava squints at something indiscernible. “Where’s my dog?”

  “Do you remember anything else new, Ladybird?” Dad asks. “Because we want to find this guy and keep you safe.”

  Ava has been eating Lucky Charms piece by piece, digging through the tiny box and singling out the marshmallows. Her teeth are yellow-gray. Last night, when she busted open the toothbrush from the kit the FBI gave her, she confessed she couldn’t remember the last time she brushed. “I’m scraping off universes,” she said. “And it hurts good.”

  My sister, oblivious poetess.

  “I remember the attic a little better,” Ava answers Dad. “I had a dog.”

  We pause, listening, watching her face light up with the memory.

  “My dog’s name was Madonna . . . a Chihuahua.” She shakes her cereal box, brow scrunched. “I wish I could remember better. They said it’ll come back—my mind’s not right. I still feel the drugs . . . I hope Madonna’s all right.”

  “What happened to you on that Halloween?” Mom asks, not able to help herself. Although she’s in the same sweatpants and sweatshirt we are, her hair is neatly braided and she’s bejeweled and lipsticked. I couldn’t help noticing Jean-Paul Johnson as he couldn’t help noticing her in the elevator on the way down. And Ozzie, well, I definitely saw him bend in to smell her hair.

  “Halloween?” Ava asks in complete confusion.

  “Stop,” Dad tells Mom sharply. “Let her be.”

  We eat. Out the picture windows, it seems like any ordinary day in the nothing-special Best Western parking lot with suburban sprawl splashed behind it. But then there are the cop cars and unmarked vans parked near the pool. Look harder—six news vans out there with their cranes—and listen for the helicopters. We’re trying to ignore the mayhem, picking at our breakfasts.

  “I wish they had scrambled eggs,” Ava says. “I’ve been wishing for fluffy scrambled eggs with savory ketchup for a long time.”

  Fluffy. Savory. Adorable.

  “French toast used to be your favorite,” Dad says.

  Mine too. We used to ask for it every weekend morning to eat with our cartoons.

  Ava smiles without showing her teeth, shyly, eyes sparkling. “If this is real I’m real happy,” she says. “But I wonder if I’m just on another trip.”

  I chew my pancake with its fake syrup and think, Girl, I wonder the same thing. Days ago I was packing for Portland, I was hanging out with Max—feels worlds away to me now. I check my reflection in the window glass again, superimposed over the parking lot and all its quiet cops, and think, Yeah, there I am. Here we are. Real.

  26

  AVA’S MEMORIES OOZE back hour by hour as the concussion heals and the drugs leave her system. She’ll stop, mute the TV, stare into space. She’ll put down her food. She’ll stop walking and grip furniture for support. She’ll stop mid-word. Freeze. A facial storm brews. Sometimes a new detail will leap off her tongue or a tear will roll. Other times, she swallows, quiet, and will not say.

  27

  TWO DAYS LATER, this is what we know so far and what Ava’s given the police and the FBI: She was locked in Jonathan’s attic for years. She thought she was married to him, but it turns out the man had just printed out his own marriage certificate and told her he was an internet-certified priest and officiated them himself. Ava said she always thought it wasn’t true but wasn’t sure. She said it was hard to tell lies from truth with Jonathan.

  “He could be real convincing,” she said.

  The memories multiply, and she shares them during her nearly constant sit-downs with the FBI and police. But details are lost—and it’s not all her concussion’s fault. She doesn’t know where she was, not a state, not a city name, nothing. Her windows were apparently boarded up, no view. She gives details about Jonathan (who has no last name): “kinda fat,” “goatee,” “fortyish maybe,” “white dude.” Fanatical. Mood swings, on and off pills. Sometimes, she says, he was nice to her and bought her things. The FBI says when they ask about the other times she mostly gets tired and doesn’t want to talk anymore.

  They can’t figure out the timeline of how long she was with Jonathan. Ava’s memory is still so vague. They’re concentrating on trying to get any details she can remember about him, or the house and its features, if she heard trains or bird cries or other identifiable sounds, commercials on TV that might pinpoint location, anything to steer them anyfreakingwhere.

  It’s an inch in so many miles of madness. I know loneliness and quiet aches and long nights with a wild mind and books so good they crack me open and make my insides scream with joy-hurt and beautiful girls and dudes who will never look back at me. I don’t know what it’s like to be kidnapped, imprisoned, raped, manipulated, abused. I am not equipped to understand this kind of nightmare. Now that she’s back I realize I never fully let myself imagine Ava’s torture, though it seems familiar, like it’s been there as a blurry possibility I entertained in the deep, dark depths of my heart.

  When Jean-Paul Johnson briefs us the morning we leave for Berkeley, thirty-six hours after we got into the hotel and many exhausting interviews later, hearing even those scant details makes my eyes feel like they’re bleeding.

  Already, somewhere, law enforcement is working in full ass-whooping force, hunting for fat, white, fortysomething Jonathans.

  28

  THERE’S NO WAY to be prepared for an exhausted homecoming where you’re greeted by a train of news vans and a bunch of strangers with flowers and stuffed bears and signs that say WELCOME HOME, AVA RIVERS. No way.

  “It’s like we’re on reality TV,” Ava says as the FBI van pulls up to the curb.

  “What in the—” Dad mutters.

  The three of us make a run for the front door, paparazzi shouting and snapping pictures. Mom lingers outside to give a statement to the press on the sidewalk in front of the house. I only hear the beginning of her speech. The woman doesn’t need a megaphone.

  “I am Michelle Amini-Rivers, Ava’s mother, and to say we are thrilled to be home is an understatement. . . .”

  Inside, Dad and Ava and I share a moment of complete stunned silence in the foyer. Outside, there is applause.

  “Did you expect it to be like this?” I ask Dad.

  “I didn’t expect any of this.” He puts an arm around Ava, who is still swimming in her Cal sweatshirt. “Welcome home.”

  I really see the place suddenly as I stand next to this wide-eyed stranger I once shared a womb with. The big-bellied Victorian teeming with colorful Tiffany-style lamps, half-wizened houseplants, and Persian rugs. The dusty black piano. The Ernst prints and framed postcards.

  “Remember?” Dad asks.

  Ava nods slowly.

  “Pardon the mess,” Dad says.

  Then he starts crying. Then Ava, then me. It’s Dad’s fault. He gave us the sobs like a sickness.

  We wipe our eyes and walk Ava through the hou
se. She touches the dusty built-in bookshelves in the hall. Pauses long in the doorway of my mother’s room, different from the rest of the house, shining, nothing-colored, and magazine-ordinary.

  “Well, this room is probably completely unrecognizable to you since the remodel,” Dad says.

  “It’s nice,” Ava says.

  Dad doesn’t point out nothing in the room is his anymore.

  We move on upstairs, to my room all half boxed up. There, Dad squeaks out the word “sorry” and fights tears.

  “Dad,” I groan, looking away so I don’t catch them again.

  “I’m okay,” he says hoarsely, and keeps on.

  We move to the guest room, another eerily, lifelessly decorated blip in the house. Elliott’s old room, exercise machines with price tags, blue and shuddering with dust.

  “Looks different without all the punk posters on the wall, right?” Dad asks her.

  Ava emits a small hmmm that I think is supposed to be a laugh.

  “You remember all this?” Dad asks once we get to the kitchen and stand at the sliding glass door looking out onto the backyard.

  “I think so,” she says. “My head’s still . . . weird. But yeah.”

  Dad stares at the yard through the glass door like a man with a movie in his head. I come and stand next to him, whispering, “Dad.”

  “Yeah,” he says with a possibly World Records–heavy sigh.

  Mom comes back inside. “How inspiring to know how many strangers care that you came home,” she tells Ava.

  “Or maybe we’re just ratings to them,” Dad mutters.

  “Don’t be so cynical,” Mom says. “These people really do care.”

  Ava yawn-speaks. “I can’t believe it.”

  “Are you tired?” Mom asks. “You want a bath? Hungry? We can order takeout.”

  “Can I just go lie down and watch TV or something?” Ava asks.

  “Sure. You want to be alone? I can set up the guest room.”

  Ava hesitates. “But you’ll still be here downstairs, right?”

  “Of course we will!”

  “And we’re setting up a security system,” Dad assures Ava. “I’m calling them to come over today. I don’t want you to worry.”

  Ava chews a fingernail with a confused expression.

  “Since they haven’t caught him,” Mom goes on. “If that’s what you’re worried about. Is that what you’re worried about?”

  Ava weighs this info. You can see her brain working behind her eyes as she thinks this through. “I don’t think he’s going to come get me. I don’t think he wanted me anymore anyway. That’s why he left me there.”

  “Well, we want you,” Mom says with a shiny gaze. “And we will protect you.”

  We group hug. It’s weird. We’ve done this more than once already today. We’re like a sudden team, us Riverses. I didn’t realize how much I missed it.

  “I’ll show you to the guest room,” Mom says. “Ozzie’s coming back in a bit. You know how thrilled he is? A dozen years working pro bono—he deserves an award.”

  “Pro bono?” Ava asks.

  “It means free,” Mom says.

  “That’s really nice,” Ava says, surprised.

  “A lot of people care about you,” Dad says. “Haven’t you noticed?”

  Ava nods and starts crying. “I keep feeling like I don’t deserve this.”

  “You deserve this,” Mom says, strong and unflinching, holding Ava’s arm. “You absolutely deserve this. No one, no one deserves this more than you.”

  She walks her upstairs. I follow them and linger in the hallway as Mom escorts her to the guest room. I can hear them behind the ajar door.

  “Are these pillows okay? They’re not very fluffy. I’ll order new ones. Are you sure you don’t want something else to wear? Vera probably has something. Or do you want to just tell me what size you are and I’ll order some clothing for you? Are you sure you don’t want a bath?”

  I can already envision Mom turning today’s miracle into tomorrow’s shopping spree. Time to stop creeping in the hallway. Also, I’m biting my fingernails, a habit I gave up in seventh grade. I have to pull my hand away from my mouth and force my body down the stairs and remind myself that Ava’s home for good now, there’s no need to be crazy. That’s Mom’s job.

  What’s to become of me now? a tiny voice in me dares to ask.

  I go down to Dad’s basement. I knock and hear a muffled “Come in.” The cigarette smoke is fog-thick. He’s perched on the edge of his bed, head in his hands. I touch his shoulder, and he takes his hand away from his face. There are tears running down his neck. I sit next to him and hug him and catch the crying disease.

  After these wet-happy moments pass, we dry our eyes and I take one of his cigarettes out of his pack and light it with his Zippo. Usually he would halfheartedly discourage me from doing so, but right now I could probably tell him I robbed a bank and he’d be okay with it.

  “Is this real life?” he asks, running a hand through his thick gray-brown mop of hair.

  “I think so,” I say. “How about you punch me in the face so we can be sure?”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “Sorry.” I exhale smoke through my nose. It burns. “Are they going to find the guy who did this to her?”

  He squints his crybaby blue eyes at the light. “Hell yes, they will. You see how big this case is.”

  “Mom says the FBI was already showing Ava pictures of men back at the hotel room.”

  He lights a cigarette.

  “Why FBI?” I ask. “Why not the police?”

  “Right now they’re working together. If there’s the possibility of trafficking, it becomes too big for the police.”

  Trafficking. That word is a lie. It sounds too harmless, some minor infraction involving stop signs and red-yellow-green lights. That word is too weak for how vile a crime we’re talking here. But I don’t let myself dwell on it. It’s all blankness. There are so few answers or truths yet, ugly or otherwise. Right now we’re operating in the dark.

  “She’s so . . . sweet,” he says, his voice rising with emotion. “You can see it in her face. She seems younger than she is. Naïve.” He sucks his cigarette, hard. “I want to know where she went . . . but then again, I’m scared to.” Smoke oozes from between his lips. “I just want to know that every person responsible for what happened to her will never live a free day again.”

  “I can’t believe.”

  “Part of me wants her back with no questions.”

  “Doesn’t work that way.”

  “I know that, Ladybug. I’m just telling you what I want. I don’t ever expect to get what I want.”

  I get up and pace slowly, chewing my cheek, and stop at Dad’s wood-paneled wall above his desk. The dusty wedding picture, except for a few smudged fingerprints around my mother’s face. Ava’s baby to toddler to kid pictures arranged in a sunny circle. If you follow it clockwise, you can see her grow. It used to bother me that there were no pictures of me down here. A lot of things used to bother me, but I learned to live with them. I was different than Ava. I didn’t need shrines or websites. I was alive.

  I can’t even begin to think how everything will change now that she’s here. Stop biting your nails, I scream at myself. My fingernails, chewed to the quick, are still painted red from the princessing earlier. Seems like eons ago already.

  “I worked a party earlier this month,” I tell him.

  “Good, good.” He gets up and stubs his cigarette into this ashtray shaped like a foot on his desk. I can tell he’s not listening.

  “It was weird,” I say. “Because they were twins. Fraternal twins. One brown-haired and the other one blond. One loud and hammy and the other one nerdy and quiet.”

  “Huh,” he says, refocusing on me. “Is that how you see yourself?
Nerdy and quiet?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “You’re studious . . . but you’re not a stereotype. You’ve got a sense of humor like a hot poker. And I’m sorry, but sometimes I see flashes of me in you. You inherited my goofballism.”

  I smile. “Not a word.”

  “That’s your studious side talking.” He smiles back. “Ava . . . she was different than you. Loud, high energy. She wanted to be on the move, she didn’t want to sit and concentrate and think the way you do.”

  It’s been years since he took this tone. Meditative, peaceful, nostalgic.

  “But in one way you were always the same.” He points his finger at me. “Hearts too big for your little bodies.”

  I touch my chest, as if that’ll tell me if my dad’s right.

  “I feel like I’ve spent my life wondering where she is,” I tell him. “Now she’s two rooms away. I have a million things to ask her and to say.”

  “We’re going to have to be strategic,” he says. “Not suffocate. Not bombard her with questions. She’s overwhelmed, you can see it on her face. And the concussion thing, and the memory issues . . . it’s really thrown her on top of everything else.”

  I nod.

  “Trauma,” he says with the frankness of a doctor. His expression crumbles into a fatherly grimace of pain. “God, you have to marvel at the human spirit. How can anyone . . .”

  “Therapy.”

  “The best in the field. We’ll get her through this.” He rubs the silvery fuzz on his chin. “Let’s be happy for now.”

  His voice breaks, the word “happy” halved.

  We hug long and hard. It’s like a dozen hugs rolled into one.

  “My girls,” he whispers into my hair.

  When we pull away, we both wipe our damn eyes. As I float upstairs, he says, “Hey.”

  I don’t know what I’m expecting him to say. But not: “Remind me I want to take a picture of you in your Snow White dress.”