The Siren Page 8

  “See you tomorrow, bright and early,” I said as I turned to leave.

  “Six a.m.,” he confirmed.

  I beelined for the door, breathing a sigh of relief when it slammed behind me. I couldn’t imagine how I’d been drunk enough not only to skinny-dip, but to throw myself at my boss. And now I was stuck on an island with him for six weeks, not to mention the three-year contract I’d signed only a few months ago.

  I should never have taken this job. But my back was against the wall, I rationalized for the millionth time. I was at the end of my savings with no prospects when the interview with Cole came in; I’d thought the opportunity a godsend. Up until now I’d willfully ignored the second thoughts I’d had from my first day in the office, but I’d almost died this afternoon. Perhaps it was time to start heeding red flags. Ha! Literally.

  If the movie did well, I would break contract and leave. The success of the project would prove my worth and improve my optics; I’d no longer be radioactive. I’d cite creative differences and be done with Cole Fucking Power, get a job somewhere else. Maybe I’d even move to New York like I’d been talking about doing for years. Or New Orleans or New Haven…or anywhere new, really. Anywhere I could work. I did love my job. I’d just had the bad luck of being employed by toxic men. There were plenty of people in the film industry who weren’t toxic though, and surely not all of them believed the lies about me—surely I could find some of them to work with. If the movie did well. That was a big if.

  I pushed open the door to my tranquil bungalow and walked straight to the slate and teakwood bathroom, where I stripped off my wet swimsuit and stood beneath the cascade of the rainfall showerhead, staring out at the endless horizon. If only the warm water could wash away the deep disappointment I felt in myself.

  Felicity

  Thirteen Years Ago

  All the way home from school, I grip my report card in my fist as the bus bumps through the rain slower than a snail. I can’t wait to show my mom I got all fours, the highest you can get. She promised if I did this good, she’d take me to see the new Cole Power movie even though it’s rated R.

  But when I let myself in, the apartment is dark, the curtains closed against the storm. I figure Iris has forgotten to pay the electric bill again, but when I try the switch, the overhead light works fine. On the coffee table I notice a copy of Celeb magazine, open to a page showing Cole Power on set, dressed as a cop. I drop my heavy backpack on the couch and pick it up.

  In Bloodhound, Cole Power plays a cop on a mission to find a serial killer who’s been murdering prostitutes and covering his tracks by making it look like the women overdosed by their own hand. Power says the role has been challenging because the idea of violence toward women sickens him, but that’s why he knew he had to take the role…

  I toss the magazine back to the table and quietly knock on the closed bedroom door, my report card clenched in my hand. “Iris?”

  Nothing but the sound of rain on the roof.

  I open the door. The room is pitch black and freezing cold. All the covers are thrown off the bed, and my mom is sprawled across it, naked. I turn off the chugging window unit and sit next to her, allowing my eyes to adjust to the gloom. Her blond hair is dark with sweat, her cheeks flushed. I gently shake her shoulder. “I got fours on my report card,” I say, setting it on the crowded bedside table.

  Her eyes flutter, but she continues to doze. Worried she’s sick, I shake her again. She moans and changes position, one of her arms flopping into my lap.

  I trace the tattoo on her forearm with my fingers: a winged woman rising from flames. My mom loves the magical phoenix so much she named me for it. She sketched the one on her arm herself. She’s an incredible artist. Or, she was. I haven’t seen her draw in forever.

  I fumble beneath the scarlet scarf draped over the bedside lamp, finally locating the switch. A rosy glow dimly lights the room. “Iris,” I say softly.

  She doesn’t move.

  I’m not sure what time she got home from Cole’s last night, but I know it was late because she didn’t budge when I got up and showered this morning. There was nothing in the house I could take for lunch and not a dime of cash in her purse, even though I know Cole’s been giving her lots of money. I’ve seen her put it in the safe I’m not allowed to know the code for. Anyway, it’s almost four now, and I’m starving.

  “Mom.” I squeeze her damp hand.

  It’s then that I notice the bruises. All up and down her forearm in shades ranging from green to purple. And the holes on the inside of her elbow.

  Anger bubbles inside me. I may be young, but I’m not stupid. I know she hasn’t been giving blood every day like Jewel’s mom tried to convince her she was—before she never came home one night. Now Jewel has a foster family. She wrote me a postcard from Tallahassee. She says it’s nice and they have a real house and all, but she misses me and the rest of her friends in Miami.

  How could I have missed this? I see her get dressed all the time; we sleep in the same bed. But actually, she’s been sleeping at Cole’s a lot. She’s been sleeping a lot, period. And I haven’t watched her get ready as much because she’s always in a bad mood lately; she’s no fun to hang out with. I would’ve thought she’d be happy she was dating a movie star, but she’s been super bitchy and she won’t even tell me anything about him.

  Is this his fault? It has to be. She’s been seeing him nearly two months, and in that time she’s stopped dancing or going on dates with other guys, even the ones she used to see regularly—even the one that worked for a film studio and would always send home DVDs of movies that were still in theaters for me to watch.

  All of a sudden I don’t want to see Cole Power’s dumb movie anymore. I want to punch him.

  “Mom, it’s late and I’m hungry. You have to wake up,” I plead. She rolls away from me, taking her arm with her. “Mom! I’m serious!”

  She turns her head slightly, wrinkling her brow. “I’m sleeping.”

  “It’s four. I didn’t have lunch. You have to feed me. I’m your child.”

  She pushes herself up to sitting, confused. “Four?”

  “Yes.”

  “Shit.” She jumps out of bed and crashes into a pile of dirty laundry. “I’ve gotta get ready. I have to be there.”

  “Where? Where are you going?” I chase her into the bathroom. She cringes like a vampire when I turn on the light. There’s a giant bluish bruise on her thigh, a paler gray one on her hip. “Mom, I saw the bruises and the needle holes.”

  She squints at me. “Stop calling me that.”

  “No! You’re my mother and you have to start acting like it.” I stamp my foot, not caring if it makes me look like a baby.

  She slaps my cheek hard, leaving it stinging. “How dare you talk to me like that, you little brat! I gave up everything for you!”

  I stare at her in shock, tears in my eyes. “Oh, Phoenix, honey…” She crumples. “I’m sorry.” She reaches for me, the anger gone from her like a popped balloon.

  I notice I’m crying and run from the room. “I wish I’d never been born!” I yell as she chases after me into the living room. With nowhere to go but out into the storm raging outside, I turn to face her. “Then you’d have the life you wanted, and I wouldn’t have to grow up with a druggie hooker for a mom.”

  She inhales sharply, her jaw slack. I can see in her eyes I’ve hurt her before she collapses in a puddle of tears on the stained carpet. Immediately I’m sorry. I love her. I do.

  But also, I know I’m right. I’m torn between wanting to comfort her and wanting to make her stop this, whatever it is, at whatever cost.

  I grab a blanket from the couch and drape it over her naked body, crouching next to her. “I’m sorry, Mom. But you can’t do this to us. I don’t want you to die like Jewel’s mom. I don’t want to have to go live with your terrible parents.”

  She snorts, wiping her tears with the back of her hand. “I’ll never let that happen.”

  I’ve ne
ver met my grandparents. Never even saw a picture of them until I went to the library a few months ago and did a Google search with their names and hometown. Fred and Ruthanne Pendley, Parthenon, PA. There they were, smiling tightly in front of a dappled blue background in their Holy Cross Evangelist Church directory photo. He was seated, wearing a navy suit and squinting at the camera through rimless glasses, his brown hair thinning on top. She stood behind him in a matching blue flowery dress with her hand on his shoulder, her blond bob curled, the silver cross necklace around her neck lit by the flash. They looked to be in their fifties and were both a little overweight, but what struck me is how normal they seemed—like grandparents you’d see on TV. Not at all the monsters my mom had made them out to be.

  Like me, my mom is an only child. She hasn’t told me much about when she was a kid, except that it was really boring and she couldn’t wait to get out of there. But she does like to tell the story about how I came to be. I’m not supposed to repeat it because she says most people wouldn’t approve of her telling a story with sex in it to a kid, but she never wants to lie to me and also she wants me to know how it happened so I don’t make the same mistakes. This is how it goes:

  Iris was from a small town, and her high school had kids from a bunch of other small towns too. When she was a junior, she started going out with a guy named Danny, who was a senior and the coolest guy in school. He was a football player and drove a red F-150 pickup truck because his family had a lot of money from owning the big chicken farm a few towns over.

  His parents didn’t like my mom because her family was poor, but Danny didn’t care. She was the prettiest girl for miles. They’d been together about six months when he knocked her up. She hadn’t meant to get pregnant, of course, but no one had told her much about how to prevent it—except for not having sex, which she wasn’t interested in. She didn’t live under a rock; she knew about condoms, but Danny wasn’t a fan, so they figured he’d just pull out.

  My mom was raised super Christian and pro-life, so when she found out she was pregnant, she didn’t even think about having an abortion. Besides, she’d always liked babies, and most girls she knew had babies by the time they were twenty anyway, which wasn’t that far in the future. It was summer and Danny was going to Penn State in the fall, only a few hours’ drive. They hadn’t really talked about it, but she assumed they’d stay together, see each other on the weekends. Now she thought maybe she’d just move up there with him and get her GED after the baby came. She wanted to be an artist, anyway. Did you really need a high school diploma for that?

  He was at the Jersey Shore with his family the week she found out about the baby, so she waited till he was back to tell him. They went to their special place on a lake where they liked to park and have sex in the bed of the truck. She meant to tell him as soon as they got there, but he was all over her. Afterward, he said he wanted to break up. He tried to blame it on going to college, but she pulled it out of him that he’d been screwing some other girl behind her back while he was on vacation.

  That was when she told him about me. He was upset she hadn’t been careful enough but said he’d drive her to get an abortion (because he was such a nice guy, he said). This gave her an idea. She told him abortions were expensive, and she couldn’t afford it. He said not to worry, that he was sure his parents would give him the money, because he knew they didn’t want her having his baby.

  She agreed that would be fine, as long as her parents didn’t find out. She knew they would eventually, since she wasn’t really going to have an abortion. But she’d figure that out later.

  As it turned out, she didn’t have time to figure anything out. Danny told his father, who showed up at my mom’s front door with an envelope of five thousand dollars’ hush money for the abortion and a warning to her parents that this was all they’d get from them. Ruthanne and Fred were shocked, embarrassed, insulted, but most of all furious with my mother, not only for getting pregnant, but even worse, intending to have an abortion. They refused the cash and kicked her out.

  So she had a friend drive her and her garbage bag of clothes over to Danny’s to collect the five thousand dollars, then to the bus stop, where she bought a ticket to Miami and never looked back.

  She hasn’t been a perfect mom, but I know how much she loves me, and up until now she’s managed to hold it in the road.

  She gathers the blanket around her and kisses me on the head as she stands. “I’m gonna do better, Phee,” she promises. “I just…He’s giving us so much money, it’s hard to say no.”

  “But can’t you do—what you do—without drugs?”

  She sighs. “It’s complicated. If I can just stick it out with him another month or two, I’ll have enough for a down payment on an apartment of our own. Something nice, that we can fix up just the way we like.”

  An apartment of our own! No scary landlord, no leaks that never get fixed or nasty carpet or roaches. But not if she has to do drugs to get it.

  “Just please, Mom, please don’t do drugs anymore.”

  She nods. “I have to get in the shower. You wanna walk down to the 7-Eleven and get food and stuff?”

  She slides open the closet door and pushes aside the pile of old clothes that hides the safe. I’ve never tried to learn the code because she doesn’t want me to have it, and I’ve always trusted her to take care of me. But I know when people are doing drugs you can’t trust them anymore. I watch over her shoulder as she turns the dial. Seventeen. Thirty-five. Twenty-six. Four.

  Seventeen, thirty-five, twenty-six, four. I repeat the numbers in my head as she opens the door. It’s not a big safe, but it’s completely full of stacks of cash, piled on top of one another. I have no idea how much money it is, but it’s a lot. Seventeen, thirty-five, twenty-six, four. She hands me forty bucks and shuts the door.

  “Thanks,” I say, pocketing the cash. “Need anything?”

  She shrugs. “You know better than I do, little bird.”

  The minute she steps into the bathroom, I run to where I dropped my backpack, get out a pen, and write the code on the back page of my math notebook. Heart pounding, I grab an umbrella and step out into the pouring rain.

  By the time I return from the store, she’s gone. I lock the bedroom door in case she comes back and kneel in front of the safe. Seventeen, thirty-five, twenty-six, four. I don’t even need to look at the notebook.

  Part II:

  Atmospheric Pressure

  April 12, 2019

  Spotlight Online

  Where Has Stella Rivers Been?

  It’s no secret that famed actress and party-girl Stella Rivers had a breakdown (or three) shortly after her split from Cole Power, but where has she been in the decade since? Spotlight learned new details about what she’s been up to recently, and it’s not what you might think!

  But first…a timeline:

  1989: A ten-year-old Stella Rivers appears in her first television show, Meg & Co, in which she plays the spunky title character.

  1997: Eighteen-year-old Rivers plays the star-making role of Mary Elizabeth in Under the Blue Moon.

  2000: Rivers does the first of three Harriet films.

  2006: Twenty-seven-year-old Rivers marries Cole Power after meeting on the set of Faster.

  2007: Rivers and Power divorce; she attacks a photographer outside a women’s clinic in Los Angeles.

  2008: Rivers pays the photographer $200K; releases the universally panned movie Meg Grown Up and goes to rehab amid rumors she was drunk on set.

  2009: Rivers’s midnight tantrum throwing pickle jars at a fan in a grocery store goes viral; she goes back to rehab.

  2010: Rivers gets in a fistfight with the ex-wife of her trainer boyfriend that results in another lawsuit, which she settles for an undisclosed amount.

  2011: Rivers gets a DUI and spends thirty days in jail, followed by another stint in rehab.

  2013: Rivers stars in the reality television show Stella’s River of Wellness, in which she opens a wellnes
s center (that quickly goes belly-up, leaving her near bankrupt).

  2018: Rivers resurfaces in a cult-favorite low-budget horror flick and a Lifetime movie.

  2019: Rivers cast opposite her ex-husband, Cole Power, in The Siren, set to shoot over the summer on the island of Saint Genesius in the Caribbean.

  So where in the world was Stella between 2013 and 2018?

  Sources close to the star tell us she’s been busy working for charity, building homes around the world for those in need. She apparently didn’t want the press to know because she simply wanted to give back without fanfare. Now, that is truly heartwarming. We found this picture of her in Guatemala, and she looks right at home in a hard hat with a hammer in her hand [pic].

  Taylor

  Monday, June 17

  The sun had only just risen on the first day of filming, and we were already running behind. Stella’s fault; she hadn’t shown up until I’d sent a PA to drag her ass out of bed and escort her to set. Felicity apologized profusely for the both of them, saying they’d thought someone was going to pick them up—an offer Stella had turned down the previous evening in favor of walking the half mile to the soundstage for her morning exercise. (I say soundstage, but really it was nothing more than a converted warehouse on the far side of the golf course.) Covering my annoyance, I waved it off as a misunderstanding and assured them a production golf cart would be waiting at the end of the pier every morning from here on out, which seemed to placate Stella.