The Second Life of Ava Rivers

by Faith Gardner

  I know she’s anti-Ozzie, but I’m shocked at the news about the rest of her entourage, because I was just hanging out with Ava yesterday and she mentioned nothing about this.

  “Ozzie’s suspicious of Ava,” Mom says.

  “Um . . . what?” I ask.

  “He thinks she knows more than she’s letting on. More about Jonathan, more about where she was,” she continues.

  “Bunch of BS,” Dad mutters with a mouth full of pita. “I don’t trust that hack with the—”

  “With the what?” Mom asks, cutting a falafel ball into a dozen tiny pieces. “What are you even saying?”

  Ah. I forgot how prickly the air used to be in here. Missed it, I didn’t.

  “What does that even mean?” I ask. “Come on. She was drugged for years, never let outside, confused by stupid TV shows. Of course the details are going to be a mess.”

  Mom says, “Ozzie asked her to take a polygraph—”

  The anger is automatic, pure heat, a bullet fired from my mouth. “Mom, Ozzie can go to hell. Did you know he’s been following Ava? She says he gives her the creeps.”

  “Following her?” Dad says.

  Mom looks as if I stabbed her with my spork. “I had no idea.”

  “I’ll bet it’s Ozzie’s fault Ava wants a break from the whole investigation,” Dad says. “It happened right after he showed up at the house this morning. She was very upset.”

  I was gone all morning partying, which, when you’re a paid princess, is much less fun than it sounds. So this happened while I was out.

  “Ozzie’s also been chasing ridiculous leads,” Dad says. “Ignoring all the new evidence we have and focusing on hunches and clues he had back before we even found Ava.”

  “Then boot Ozzie off the case,” I tell them.

  Mom shakes her head. “I thought we could trust him.”

  Dad crumples his wrapper violently. “Vera’s right. Ozzie’s off the case. Off.”

  “I’ll tell him at our meeting tomorrow,” Mom says.

  “Good,” Dad says. “Right now we just want Ava to be getting healthier, stronger. The cops can wait.”

  I pick the grape leaf off my dolma, trying to imagine what it would be like to be ridiculed and victim-blamed and asked to take tests like some kind of perpetrator when you’ve been locked in a man’s attic for years and your head is barely screwed on straight. “Yeah, let’s let her have a break. I mean, she’s been doing this investigation full-time every day since she got home. She’s making progress.”

  The details are coming back, albeit slowly. Just from tiny little discoveries about fast food she ate, there are now sketches of That Monster at every In-N-Out and every Domino’s within five hundred miles. Tips are rolling in every day to the feds and the police. We’re all getting impatient. I’m surprised my parents are even open to letting Ava take time off.

  “It took twelve years to find her. Maybe it’s going to take a while to understand the whole story,” Mom says. “But, Vera, tell her she can talk to us and that she has to talk to Shelly. And if she tells you anything, you have to tell us.”

  Man, when she makes eye contact she makes eye contact. I have to will myself to not look away from her, getting flooded with guilt even though I’ve done nothing wrong.

  Right?

  I think of the puzzle pieces Ava has shared with me. The attic, the cigarettes and peanut butter cups, the pictures of flowers.

  Do I know things no one else knows?

  Do Mom and Dad not know the same details? I press my tongue, hard, to the roof of my mouth. Awkward silence, except for Mexico and Canada whimpering beneath the table. My parents’ eyes are on me like they’re trying to see inside my head.

  “Does she share things with you?” Mom asks.

  The desperation in her voice is unfamiliar.

  “You two seem so close,” Dad says. “Do you . . . know things?”

  “Dad,” I say, a guilty smile fluttering my lips. “Dad, I know what you guys know.”

  I know more, a nanny-nanny-boo-boo voice in my head says.

  Shut up, I tell the nanny-nanny-boo-boo voice. It’s not about knowing more or being closer to her. Stop being childish.

  Isn’t it funny how we’re multitudes?

  I love Ava. I love that I’m her favorite. It shouldn’t be a victory. I could tell my parents the few scant details Ava’s shared with me. I could get them to lean in and listen to me and look at me and give glorious attention in ways they haven’t in years. But I would never risk Ava’s trust. And come on—the facts that she smoked cigarettes or ate a certain candy bar aren’t exactly game-changers anyway.

  “I know what you know,” I say.

  “She hasn’t been skipping her meds, has she?” Mom asks me, her brown eyes wide.

  “I have no idea. I’m her sister, not her pharmacist,” I say.

  Suddenly, both my parents seem to realize they’re leaning in like bloodthirsty dogs, and they relax in their chairs and go back to eating their food for a minute.

  “How’s . . . everything?” Mom asks.

  “Great,” I say.

  “Great,” she repeats.

  “Ladybug, you’re a good sister, you know that? Getting her that job, hanging out with her all the time, going on walks, helping her get clothes—”

  “You crack me up in those wigs,” Mom says. “I haven’t even seen a paparazzo in weeks.”

  “It’s getting better, isn’t it?” Dad asks, surprised.

  “You guys have so much fun,” Mom says. “She really loves you.”

  I beam.

  The sun pours through the sliding glass door. Our backyard is a magenta ooze of bougainvillea and dew-licked knee-high grass. Summertime, all of us used to spend days back there together. When the grass was still short, when the garden was lush, when the patio furniture wasn’t peppered with rust. I see us all rise up like vaporous ghosts—Mom planting flowers, Dad snapping pictures, Elliott practicing swinging bats at softballs, Ava doing somersaults, me lying on the grass with a book.

  When dinner was ready, we’d all sit here, at this table, the five of us, and talk—talk so much there were no silences. Talk over one another until Dad had to quip, “Hey, hey, what is this, a pub? One at a time.” We had so much to say. It was so loud.

  Then it was the opposite.

  “After you talk to her,” Mom says. “Do one more thing for me.”

  Mom’s intent. She’s a whirlwind, but when she finally gives you attention, it’s a hot spotlight. “Tell her to stop smoking.”

  So Mom knows about the cigarettes. Of course she does. Maybe Ava and I share no secrets after all.

  But I nod. I thank them for lunch. Mom gets up and grabs her purse. She has a meeting with Ava’s publicist. Dad says he’s going to go on a walk.

  “Excuse me?” I ask.

  This is a man, please understand, who had to eat vitamin D supplements for years because he didn’t get enough sunshine.

  He puts on a scarf and hat that do not match. May I also point out it is sixty-five degrees outside? “I’ve been walking.”

  “I’m trying to convince him to quit cigarettes,” Mom says.

  “The walking helps,” Dad says with a shrug.

  Mom’s been home a lot more. She’s cut back on the charity stuff and is basically a professional mom now. Organizing Ava’s life with her and relaxing at home is her career. Tutoring appointments, police meetings, therapy, manicures, field trips to museums, endless window-shopping. Not to mention the hours Mom spends online searching for clues to help Ava’s case. Her dedication can be intense. Maybe I’m understanding why Dad’s all into walks now. I wave goodbye to them. I watch them go together, through the window, then part to go their own separate ways—she to the car, he to the sidewalk. I feel a swell of love for them.

  In the b
ackyard, I sit in a lawn chair, watching the ghosts. I marvel at the trees, the worlds unknown to me that occupy their branches. It seems amazing an entire universe was back here the whole time, alive, quietly writhing, and I’d ignored it.

  62

  IT’S MID-NOVEMBER AND college applications are due in a couple months. A few months back I told myself I’d reapply to the University of Portland for next year, but Ava’s return still feels so fresh, and That Monster is still out there somewhere with a hefty reward from the FBI over his head, and we have no answers. I can’t will myself to move forward in my own direction—away—until something happens. So I’m here. And that’s fine. It’s where I want to be. Ava seems to be growing up at an exponential rate thanks to tutors and special programs, finding normal again. I’m so proud of her. But sometimes I feel like her shadow, lurking nearby her with no shape of my own.

  Elliott stops by one gloomy morning in a rusted Camaro that’s missing its hood. I’m the only one upstairs, still in my pajamas at 11:00 a.m., and he tells me to get dressed and we’ll go “hustle up some trouble somewhere.” He’s cracking his knuckles and grinning and I have to wonder, I do, but he looks clearheaded, so I go get dressed, happy to hang out with my big brother again, just the two of us. It’s been years. Honestly, I’m giddy.

  I get in the car with him. There are smashed French fries and dirty socks on the floor beneath my feet.

  “Nasty, Elliott,” I tell him.

  “You think this beater is mine?” he asks. “My car’s getting caps right now. A Benz.”

  “Whose car is this?”

  “Eh, this guy I work for, Chucky.”

  “Work for doing what?”

  “Upholstering furniture, stuff like that.”

  “I didn’t know you upholstered furniture. Also, I thought you didn’t have your license?”

  “Got it back. What is this, the Spanish Inquisition?”

  “Um—”

  “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!” he yells in a British accent. He peels out of our driveway and down the street at a speed that turns several heads.

  “How’s life?” I ask him.

  “Oh, it’s the best, dahling, it’s simply the best,” he tells me in a raspy, fancy old-lady voice. Then he drops it. “This is nice, me and you just hangin’ out like old times. Right?”

  “It’s been a short forever,” I tell him. “I miss you, Elliott.”

  The words leave my mouth and linger in the air, the pang of them settling in and realizing themselves. I do. I miss him. He’s been coming around more than ever, and when he does, nobody yells and everybody smiles and we live in the moment of this unexpected togetherness. And yet, I miss him so badly.

  He drives to Lake Merritt, the silvery city pond nobody’s allowed to touch or swim in. We park and grab Mexican food and eat on the grass as other people dog walk and Frisbee. I’ve been here before, of course, but right now it’s fresh. The apartment boxes jutting up. The mirror-shine of the water, the friendly trees. Like if you plopped me here I might not know where I am for a minute. I don’t get out enough. I miss strangeness. I daydream about hopping planes sometimes, starting a life.

  I chew my burrito and consider whether I may be a selfish jerk.

  “I’ve been stuck,” Elliott begins, and I try to place his accent. He finishes his taco and balls up the foil wrapper. “Chugging my engine, never getting ahead. Is that life? I don’t know.”

  Oh. It’s him. Took me a moment to recognize him—no character, no bravado, no affectation. My brother.

  “I guess we all go through dark times,” he keeps going, tossing the foil ball into the nearby can with NBA aplomb. “I was angry and into all kinds of garbage. Since Ava came back, I lifted my head out, was like—huh? Really? Twenty-four, this is what I’m doing? I don’t know if you know, but—but I’ve kinda got caught up in some bad stuff.”

  I perk up, stunned he would ever say such a thing out loud. “No, really?” I ask sarcastically.

  “Yeah,” he says. “Been strung out over and over again. I keep screwing up, same ways, different days. I do good and then nothing seems to stick, you know?”

  “I know,” I say.

  “Been thinking about hitting up a meeting or something. Finding a support group.”

  “A twelve-step?”

  This is not my life. My brother at my side, my captivating, random brother—whom I sometimes give up on or live in fear for, who lies so much you begin to believe nothing and everything he says, who has never once owned up to or even answered a question about anything resembling a problem, who accepts help from no one and famously sabotages any familial support that comes his way—now breezing by “meetings” in casual conversation. This is not my life.

  “Something,” he says.

  He gets to his feet, and we walk through the stomped-on grass to the path. Runners pass us with headphones, middle-aged women power walk in intimate conversation, friends sip coffees on park benches.

  “I admire you,” he says. At least that’s what I think he says. He’s walking so fast I have to hurry to keep up, and I do.

  “What?” I ask, catching up.

  “Staying home, giving it all up to be with the family,” he says. “’Cause you know it’s easy to run away, or maybe you don’t know.”

  “I don’t,” I say, hoping my jealousy doesn’t shine.

  “You’re a better person than me.”

  “No,” I say automatically.

  Although I am. I know I am. But guess what? It doesn’t necessarily make mine the better choice.

  “So what?” I correct myself. “I’ve always been a pleaser. Does it make a difference?”

  He slows down and lights a cigarette and watches me for the first time as if he just truly noticed I’m here.

  “Sometimes I feel like furniture,” I tell him.

  “What’s that mean?” he asks after a moment of staring.

  What’s that mean, brother? Take a look at your life versus mine. How free you are. How you’ve had the chance to actually screw everything up to find yourself just because. You got to escape the ever-sad reality of the Rivers family weepie. Good for you, buddy. Must be nice.

  I bite my tongue so hard I taste metal.

  “Nothing,” I say.

  We stroll again.

  “I feel like if I was really going to do it I’d have to come home,” he says with utmost seriousness, his eyes so bright they are Dad to the everythingth degree. “Like, start again.”

  Oh, crap. He’s crying. My brother is flicking away tears. The last time I saw him cry he hadn’t even started shaving yet. I look around us, as if any oblivious stranger might also go, Oh my God—Elliott Rivers, dry-eyed ghost, he’s here and he’s crying. But no one looks at us. We’re nobodies, like everybody else. Lately, I’ve been shocked by our nobodyness—the photographers and reporters have fast become rarities.

  “I felt guilty is the truth,” he says. “I mean, still do, but it’s different.”

  “You couldn’t have done anything.”

  “Halloween—”

  “You were twelve,” I say, louder.

  I’ve said it many times before. Just not in person, and not when he’s probably sober.

  “I was a kid,” he agrees, as if he’s defending someone else, which in a way he is.

  We’re all strangers to our little past selves.

  “It wasn’t all my fault,” he says.

  I’m shocked. I’ve never heard him say those five words before.

  “I think I’m letting go of some mean demons inside me,” he says.

  “We’ve all been,” I say.

  I give him a side hug, and he wipes his eyes.

  “You ever feel like you’re living in a Lifetime movie?” he asks.

  “Every damn day.”

  We laugh a
nd watch the ducks in the oil-slicked water. I spy chip bags and bottle caps in their sludge and wonder how they make it, how they quack so cheerfully and swim so eagerly.

  We both continue walking and pretend he never cried and all is sunshiney. He jokes about my job and tells me that they should hire his just-thought-up alter ego, Mr. Cactus Man. I tell a story about the time a kid bit my ankle and I had to go get a shot at a hospital. I make him laugh. I don’t care that I’m technically an adult. I still fill up with pride when I’m able to make my big brother laugh.

  It’s times like this that I’m sure everything’s right and staying home is the best thing—not just for them, but for me. I’m getting to know my brother again, whom I only knew via intoxicated random phone calls. He’s talking about meetings and coming home. We’re opening up and saying things we’ve never admitted out loud.

  “I was never really happy until right now,” he tells me in the car.

  “Right now? Right this second?”

  “No, not then. Right . . . now,” he tells me.

  “Like, that second that just passed?”

  “No . . . nnnnnow,” he jokes, clasping the air, as if happiness is a thing we could catch like a fly.

  63

  I LINGER IN Ava’s doorway one night when she lies on her bed watching sitcom reruns.

  “Come in if you want,” she says with the inflection of a robot.

  Her mess is alarming, and I joke that she’s going to be on one of those hoarder shows as I sit on the edge of the bed. Her light is off and she appears completely zoned out as she lies hugging a pillow, eyes glued to the flickering rectangle on the wall, laugh track filling the silence.

  “So how long are you going to do this stubborn not-talking-to-anybody thing?”

  “Not you, too,” she says, annoyed.

  Mom and Dad have been relentless about her returning calls and getting back into the swing of interviews and therapy. Mom’s also been harping on this book deal thing—she thinks Ava should take up a publishing house on a book deal. It’s a lot of money for college.