There’s only one good reason in the world for me to go down this road. One. And I don’t even know whether she wants anything to do with me. Or if she’s even worth the trouble at this point.
Shit.
First love.
Only love.
A strange and turbulent summer that was the best and worst part of my life.
I keep the windows wide open in the pickup as I slowly thread my way down through the cool greenery of the mountain roads. I appreciate it all; the fresh wisps of summer, the fluttering hands of the forest.
Where I’m going will be much hotter, much harsher. There’s no place to fucking hide there.
Thinking about her, even the most fleeting of memories, tends to lengthen my dick. That’s no way to start a long road trip. So instead I think about the long, wandering years since then; a thousand adventures and disasters that blur together and are all equally trivial.
No good. Today it all leads back to her. After all, nobody who spends twenty-three years on this earth is a blank slate. We are the sum of our pains and trials, joys and heartaches. It’s impossible to guess them all. And to really understand anything about what’s happening today you have to go backwards first.
You have to understand what happened five years ago….
CHAPTER FIVE
Five Years Ago: Part 1
Almost as soon as they land in New York they are leaving.
The woman surrounds herself with people who are paid to tend to her belongings, offer her drinks, escort her to the decadent lounge where the wealthy are not required to mingle with ordinary people. She is agitated, clawing at the inside of her palms with her fingernails, as is her habit when the universe has gone out of order.
Oscar suspects the city has bad memories for her. His mother is a collector of bad memories. They are finally overcrowding her mind.
He is disappointed to be leaving so soon. He knew this place once, New York. This was where he lived, although he remembers little about it except bad smells and cold alleys. He looks out the windows and sees nothing of beauty; only the industrial background of a major international airport. It manages to look ugly even in the balmy spell of early summer. But he had glimpsed the legendary skyline as the plane descended and badly wanted to see it up close. Briefly he considers leaving the woman here and disappearing into the throngs of weary travelers.
“Oscar,” the woman croaks and holds out a thin hand to him as a weak smile tries to take custody of her face.
Much of the time she forgets he exists but now she would like him to sit beside her. He sinks into a plush armchair and tries not to look at her face. It’s cracked and drawn, a face of pain, a face that seems even more ugly because for so long it was beautiful.
He decides he must be a complete asshole for even noticing these things.
Oscar searches for things to say to his mother. They should have things to say to one another. But she’s fretful and distracted. Anyway, his mind keeps going in odd directions, thinking about the strangeness of being in his own country again. Then he starts thinking about the girls he knew from his latest school. Some were girlfriends for brief stretches of angst-filled time. Others were just dirty hookups. Oscar doesn’t miss any of them. But he idly catalogues them in his mind because it’s something to do while he sits beside a ruined woman, waiting for their plane to refuel.
“You’ll enjoy being there,” says Oscar’s mother as she rubs at her temples and then slides her large sunglasses back onto her thin face. She has acquired a curious, affected accent from all her years of travel. Oscar has no such accent. He’s convinced hers is deliberate.
She smiles at him again and he sees his distorted reflection in her dark lenses. “I loved Atlantis as a child. My father filmed seven movies there. You’ve seen them, haven’t you, his movies? Yes, I’m sure I showed them to you. When he bought the place he decided to live there part time and had a house built. None of the artificial buildings they added to the set could tame that wild beauty, just as it couldn’t tame your grandfather. I wish you’d known Rex. He was a king. He was…”
Oscar’s mother loses her train of thought as she stares off into the past. Her lip quivers. Oscar reaches for her arm. He knows something is wrong with her, something much worse than what’s usually wrong with her. It seems as if she is decaying into the folds of her Chanel pantsuit.
She shakes off the gloom, pats his hand and smiles another terrible smile. Her voice is a tuneless singsong. “It’s so perfect that August moved the children out there. It’s a magical place for children. I’m glad he remembers that. You will see, Oscar.”
Oscar has only a vague idea what’s she’s talking about. His adopted mother, Mina, is a Savage. Oscar knows that when he mentions this fact to other Americans they will usually understand what he means. Mina was never an actress though. She never did much at all except frolic with rich, abusive men and impulsively adopt a child. The Savages were a legendary Hollywood family, although they’ve been cursed by scandal and heartbreak for decades. Oscar has never met any of them. They don’t even really matter to him.
But now he is caught up in Mina’s latest odyssey. They will be flying to Arizona, to the old film ranch in the desert that was Mina’s childhood paradise. Mina apparently plans for them to remain there for some time, in the place where her brother’s family lives.
Oscar objects to it all, but only in silence. He’s not a child for fuck’s sake. He’s a month past his seventeenth birthday and capable as any man. Usually if bullshit even comes sniffing in his direction he smacks it back with two mighty fists. And this is major bullshit, this bizarre trek to another continent, to a lost era.
He could easily have scoffed at Mina and refused her pleas when she made her announcement two days ago in the bleak confines of the headmaster’s office. She wouldn’t have known what to do if he had.
“Oscar! We are going home! Back to America. You will meet your cousins!”
Home?
America?
Cousins?
These concepts are all strange to him. The headmaster did nothing to dissuade Mina. He was apparently tired of dealing with the parade of heartbroken girls that the charismatic Oscar Savage left in his wake wherever he walked.
Mina had always seemed to hate America. How many times had she insisted to Oscar that the whole nation was nothing but a cauldron of scandal, gossip, and narcissism? Oscar didn’t exactly believe that was true. Mina assumes the world of cutthroat celebrities is universal; that it exists in Pocatello, Idaho in the exact same form as it is exists in Beverly Hills.
Oscar could have dug his heels into European soil and refused to leave. Mina would not have known how to force him. But he didn’t have the heart to refuse her. No matter how careless of a mother she was, she was the only one he had. He could tell immediately that she was sick. He still didn’t know whether it was mental or physical, but she needed him. So Oscar quietly, if resentfully, packed his things and followed his mother out of the Scottish countryside.
Tentatively, Oscar asks if they might remain in New York for a short time but Mina wearily reminds him that their posh traveling arrangements are the result of a favor that is nearly at an end. She will not consider a commercial flight. Moreover, her brother is expecting her out in Arizona. His entire family is expecting her, expecting both of them. According to Mina these Savage people are overjoyed at the prospect of finally meeting a long lost cousin. Oscar thinks about that and pictures them; a herd of displaced socialites squatting in the desert dust and clutching designer bags as their flawless faces expectantly scan the sky.