Something clicked in Kit’s head. She turned to look at her mother. June caught her eye and smiled at her daughter.
Suddenly, Kit’s body started to burn with rage. She excused herself and went to the bathroom, shut the door behind her. She looked at the towels hanging on the door and wanted to punch through them, punch through the door itself.
She had a name for it now. She understood what had been nagging at her, scaring her, unsettling her for so long.
Her mother was a drunk. What if she was killing herself with that stuff?
• • •
The next week, June burned dinner.
There was smoke in the house, a flame in the oven, the smell of burnt cheese settling into the tablecloth and their clothes.
“Mom!” Nina yelled, running through the house as soon as she noticed the smoke. June sprang to attention as her children invaded the kitchen.
“Sorry! Sorry!” she said, pulling her head off the table, where she’d fallen asleep. Her movements were stiff, her processing slow.
Kit clocked the bottle of Smirnoff on the counter. She wasn’t sure if it was the same bottle that had been almost full yesterday, but now there was barely any left.
Nina ran to the oven, put on a glove, and pulled the casserole dish out. Jay ran in and got up on the counter, immediately disabling the smoke detector. Hud opened all the windows.
The macaroni and cheese was nearly black on the bottom, scorched on the sides and top. You had to cut it open with a knife to find the familiar pale orange it was supposed to be. June served it anyway.
“All right, kids, eat up. It’s not so bad.”
Nina, Jay, and Hud all sat down as they were told, prepared to act as if everything was fine. They passed around plates, put their napkins on their laps, as if this were any other meal.
Kit stood, incredulous.
“Do you want milk with dinner, Kit?” Nina said, getting up to serve her younger sister.
“Are you kidding me?” Kit said.
Nina looked at her.
“I’m not eating this,” Kit said.
“It’s fine, Kit, really,” Hud said. Kit looked at Hud and watched his face tense, his eyes focus in on her. He was trying to tell her to drop it. But Kit just couldn’t do it.
“If she doesn’t want to eat it, she doesn’t have to eat it,” Jay said.
“I’ll go make us all something else,” Nina said.
“No, Nina, this is fine. Katherine Elizabeth, sit down and eat your food,” June said.
Kit looked at her mother, searched for some embarrassment or confusion. But June’s face showed nothing out of the ordinary.
Kit finally snapped. “We’re not going to pretend you didn’t just burn dinner like we pretend you’re not a drunk!”
The whole house went quiet. Jay’s jaw dropped. Hud’s eyes went wide in shock. Nina looked down at her hands in her lap. June stared at Kit as if Kit had just slapped her across the face.
“Kit, go to your room,” June said, tears forming in her eyes.
Kit stood there, silent and unmoving. She was awash in a tumbling cycle of guilt and indignation, indignation and guilt. Was she terribly wrong or had she been exactly right? She couldn’t tell.
“C’mon, Kit,” Nina said, getting up and putting her napkin on the table. Nina grabbed her hand gently and led her away. “It’s OK,” Nina whispered to her as they walked.
Kit was quiet, trying to figure out if she regretted what she’d said. After all, regret would imply she felt like she’d made a choice. And she hadn’t. She felt she’d had no other option but to say out loud what was hurting so much within her.
When Nina and Kit disappeared down the hall, Jay and Hud looked back at their mother.
“We will clean up, Mom,” Hud said. “You can go lie down.”
Hud caught Jay’s eye. “Yeah,” Jay said, despite the dread growing within him that it was going to be his job to clean up burnt cheese. “Hud and I have this under control.”
June looked at her two sons, already fourteen. They were almost men. How had she not noticed that?
“All right,” she said, exhausted. “I think I’m going to go to sleep.” And for the first time in a long time, she walked into her bedroom, put on her pajamas, and fell asleep in her bed.
The boys cleaned up the kitchen. Jay scrubbed the Pyrex as hard as he could to get the char off. Hud poured out the full glasses and wiped down the light dusting of ash on the counter where the smoke had settled.
“Kit’s right,” Jay said in a whisper as he stopped scrubbing for just a moment and caught Hud’s eye.
Hud looked at him. “I know.”
“We never talk about it,” Jay said, his whisper growing louder.
Hud stopped cleaning the counter. He took a deep breath and then let it out as he spoke. “I know.”
“She almost set fire to the kitchen,” Jay said.
“Yeah.”
“Should we …” Jay found it difficult to finish his sentence. Should we call Dad? Jay wasn’t even sure how they would do such a thing. They didn’t know where their father was or how to contact him. If they did, Jay would have liked the chance to see him. But once, years ago, when Hud had broken his nose falling off the monkey bars at school and needed surgery to have it straightened, Jay overheard June tell his grandmother, “I would sooner turn tricks off the highway than call Mick and ask him for anything.” So even saying it out loud, even suggesting it, seemed to dishonor his mother. And he wouldn’t do that. He couldn’t. “I guess I’m saying, what are we supposed to do?”
Hud frowned and sighed, searching for an answer. He finally sat down at the table, resigned. “I have no idea.”
“I mean, this whole thing with Mom … She’s just in a bad, like, moment, right?” Jay asked. “This isn’t a forever thing?”
“No, of course not,” Hud said. “It’s just a phase or something.”
“Yeah,” Jay said, assuaged. He picked up the scrubber again, grinding away at the cheese. “Yeah, totally.”
The brothers looked at each other, and in one flash of a second, it was perfectly clear to both of them that there was a big difference between what you needed to believe and what you actually believed.
When they were done, they brought a half-eaten bag of chips and a box of Ritz crackers into Kit’s room, where Nina and Kit were sitting on the floor, talking.
The four of them sat there, eight greasy hands being rubbed off on eight pant legs.
“We should get napkins,” Nina said.
“Oh, no, are there crumbs on the floor?” Jay teased her. “Call the cops!”
Kit started laughing. Hud pretended to dial a phone. “Hello? Crumb police?” he said. Jay got so hysterical, he nearly choked on a Ritz.
“Yeah, uh, Sergeant Crackers here,” Kit said, as if she was speaking into the handheld radio. “We’ve heard reports of loud crunching.”
Something broke inside of Nina too, causing a wild and loud laugh to escape her mouth. The bizarre sound of it made them all laugh harder.
“All right, all right,” Nina said, calming down. “We should get to bed.”
They got up and put the food away. They put their pajamas on. They brushed their teeth.
“Everything’s going to be OK,” Nina said to each of her siblings as she said good night that evening. “I promise you that.”
Upon hearing it, Jay’s shoulders relaxed one tenth of a percent, Hud exhaled, Kit released her jaw.
Despite having long ago learned some people don’t keep their promises, all three of the younger Rivas knew they could believe her.
4:00 P.M.
Nina stood in her bedroom at the very top of the mansion. It had been rendered spotless. The floor-to-ceiling windows that faced southeast to the ocean were so clean that, were it not for the frames themselves, you would have thought you were looking at open air. In still and perfectly clear moments like this, when Nina could see out past the cliffs, across the rippling sea, as far a
s Catalina Island, she had to admit there were things to love about this house.
Her bed had been made with military precision. A birch-wood platform bed with a white quilt spread out across it, tucked tightly under the mattress. A comforter lay folded in a perfect crease at the foot of the bed. Every type of pillow and coordinating sham that you could imagine was displayed at the headboard.
How did she own so many expensive things?
The cleaners had moved on to the downstairs. They were washing the stone tile floors and whitening up the walls. They were getting the cobwebs from the crooks of the high ceilings and the dust bunnies from the far corners of the hallways and bookshelves and cabinets.
Nina could hear them vacuuming her area rugs and she wondered if there was any real point to it. They would be sandy and dingy by ten. By midnight, her whole downstairs would be in disarray.
She walked into her master bathroom to find the vanity pristine, the floor flawless; taupe cloth hand towels were piled in neat triangles.
Nina opened up the double doors to the walk-in closet and ran her hand along the left wall, feeling the textures of her dresses, her pants, her shirts. Cotton and silk and satin. Velvet and leather. Nylon and neoprene.
She had so many clothes—so many clothes she had never wanted, never needed, never worn. She had so much stuff. Lately it felt as if that was supposed to be the whole point of everything—how many things you could buy—as if some magical life waited for you on the other side of all of it. But it made her feel nothing.
When she got to the end of her things, she started on the other side, running her hand along what was remaining of Brandon’s clothes. She could feel the gaps in between the shirts, could see the empty hangers left behind. Brandon did believe in the glory of all that stuff. And now Nina was keenly aware of what wasn’t on his side of that closet anymore. His stiff polos and soft Levi’s and broken-in Adidas. His Lacostes and his Sperrys. The things he loved, the things he felt he needed. They were gone.
It hurt. It hurt so bad that there was a part of her that wanted to get out a bottle of Smirnoff and fix herself a Sea Breeze.
1975
It was late 1975. The kids all had sleepovers planned on the same weekend. It was the first time that had ever happened.
Nina was seventeen and had plans to go out to a party at a friend’s house and spend the night there. Jay and Hud had an overnight with the water polo team. Kit was sleeping over at her friend Vanessa’s.
Before Nina left the house that afternoon, she wondered if it was a bad idea, all of them leaving at once. “I don’t want you to be here all alone,” Nina said to June. Nina was in the kitchen, looking at her mother sitting on the living room sofa.
“Honey, go out with your friends, please.”
“But what are you going to do tonight?”
“I’m going to enjoy myself,” June said with a smile. “Do you have any idea how exhausting you four are? Don’t you think I might be eager for a little time by myself? I’m going to run a bath and sit in it as long as I want. Then I’m going to lie out on the patio and watch the waves roll in.”
Nina looked unconvinced.
“Hey,” June said. “Who’s the mom here? Me or you?”
“You’re the mom,” Nina said, amused. It had become a familiar refrain. She answered the next question before it was even asked. “And I’m the kid.”
“And you’re the kid. For at least a little while longer.”
“OK,” Nina said. “If you’re sure.”
June got up off the couch and put her hands on her daughter’s arms and looked her in the eye. “Go, honey. Have fun. You deserve it.”
And so Nina left.
June settled herself back on the sofa and turned on the TV. She grabbed the TV Guide. She planned out what she was going to watch. And then there he was on the nightly news.
“And in entertainment,” the reporter said, “Mick Riva has married for the fifth time at the age of forty-two. His blushing bride, Margaux Caron, a young model from France, is twenty-four.”
June lit a cigarette and sipped her vodka.
And then she buried her head in her hands and bawled her eyes out. The cry came from her stomach, bubbled over within her, and emerged from her throat in gasps and screeches.
She stubbed out her cigarette and threw herself onto the sofa. She let the sobs run through her body. He was never coming back. She should have listened to her mother all those years ago. But she’d been a fool since the day he’d shown up. She’d been a fool her whole life.
God, June thought, I have to get my life together. For my children.
She thought of Nina’s bright smile, and Jay’s cocksure determination, and Hud’s gentleness, the way he always hugged her tight. She thought of Kit, that spitfire, who might just one day rule them all.
She knew they knew she was losing it. It was clear from the way they doted on her, the way they no longer trusted her to remember what they needed for school, the way they had started whispering to one another in front of her.
But she could change that if she’d just stop waiting for that asshole to fix it all. If she’d just face that she had to fix it herself.
She breathed in deeply. And poured herself another glass.
She put on an old Mick Riva record, his second album. She listened to “Warm June” over and over and over again, and with each go-round on the record player she’d pour herself another glass. She’d meant something to him. He could never take that away from her.
June turned to the vodka bottle again to see she’d emptied it. She went through the kitchen to get more but, instead, found a dusty old bottle of tequila.
She opened the tequila. And then she drew herself a bath.
She watched the bathroom steam up from the heat of it and breathed in the mist. It felt comforting and safe. She untied her robe, stepped out of her clothes, and slipped into the water.
She rested her arms along the walls of the tub, relaxed her head back, and breathed in the warm air. She closed her eyes. She felt like she could stay in this bath for an eternity. And everything was going to be fine.
It was her last conscious thought. Forty-five minutes later, she drowned.
June Riva, that once tenderhearted dreamer, was gone.
• • •
When Nina came home the next morning, she found her mother in the bathtub, slack and lifeless.
She rushed to try to pull her mother’s body from the water, to try to wake her. She could not process her mother’s pallor or stillness. Terror clutched her chest.
She ran through who to call at lightning speed but came up empty. Grandparents (dead), father (deadbeat). There must be someone, anyone, who could fix this.
As Nina knelt there on the bathroom floor, she felt like she was falling, falling, falling, falling. The pain had no limit, the fear no boundary. There was no net to catch her, nothing to bounce off of, no ground floor to end her agony and distress.
The moment Nina fully understood that her mother was dead was the moment she understood there was no one left in the world to count on, to lean on, to trust, to believe in.
She held her mother’s pale hand as she called 911. She held her tighter as the medics rushed over.
Nina watched as EMTs bolted into the house, hurrying to her mother’s side. Nina stood by the door, breathless, as they told her what she already knew. Her mother was dead.
Nina watched her mother’s body being carried away. And she thought, for certain, she would come back. Even though she knew that was impossible.
She called Vanessa’s house and when Vanessa’s mother answered, Nina summoned all of her strength to ask her to send Kit home right away. And then, unsure how to get ahold of Jay and Hud, she paced the floor.
The two boys came home shortly after and when they did, she forbade them from going inside.
“What happened?” Jay said, panicked. “Fuck, Nina! What’s going on?”
Hud remained silent, in shock. Somewhere w
ithin him, he already knew. When Kit got there, moments later, Nina took them all down to the shoreline, just underneath the house.
She knew it was up to her to say what had to be said. To do what had to be done. When there is only you, you do not get to choose which jobs you want, you do not get to decide you are incapable of anything. There is no room for distaste or weakness. You must do it all. All of the ugliness, the sadness, the things most people can’t stand to even think about, all must live inside of you. You must be capable of everything.
“Mom died,” Nina said, and then she watched all three of her siblings fall to the earth.
And she knew, in a flash, that she had to be able to catch them. She had to be able to hold each of them up, as they screamed, as the water came and soaked their socks and squeaked into their shoes.
And so she did.
Do you know how much a body can weigh when it falls into your arms, helpless? Multiply it by three. Nina carried it all. All of the weight, in her arms, on her back.
5:00 P.M.
Kit was trying to get dressed for the party.
The sun was just beginning to set. The blue-and-orange sky was faintly turning purple. The tide was low, the seagulls were squawking down on the shoreline. Kit could hear the waves softly rolling from her opened window.
She was standing in front of the mirror in her bedroom, wearing a bra and a pair of light-wash jeans. She did not know what shirt she wanted to wear and was already second-guessing the pants. But tonight was important.
She was going to kiss a boy. Seth would be there. Maybe she could work up the interest to kiss him. Or maybe someone else. Hopefully somebody else. Surely there would be at least one dude at this party she could … feel something for. And if not, she just had to rip the Band-Aid off and do it anyway. But she should look good, right?
She wasn’t actually sure how to look good, wasn’t sure what she thought looked good on her. She’d never really tried to look beautiful before. That had been her mother’s thing; it was her sister’s job.
Malibu Rising Page 13
