Vivian Divine Is Dead (19 page)

Chapter Twenty-Eight

O
UR DAUGHTER?

The room spins around me, and I suddenly can’t get my feet steady beneath me. I stagger backward as my body breaks out in a hot sweat.
I don’t believe him. It can’t be true.
It’s like someone took my world and spun it around, and I’m just barely holding on.
My mom couldn’t have been with him. He lives in the mountains in Mexico, and she’s a big Hollywood star.

“You’re lying!” I throw my hands up to shove his lies away from me, and my foot catches on the bed frame. I stumble to the ground, landing painfully on my tailbone.

Looming above me, Marcos draws his eyebrows close together under the tense V on his forehead. I can hear his breath cut angrily through the air between us as he looks down at me. And then, a calm expression settles back over his face, and his mouth contorts into a smile.

My
smile.

A tremor rocks me from head to foot, because that’s when I see it, and every bit of me wishes I hadn’t: the same face I see in the mirror every day. The strong Roman nose that I thought I’d inherited from my deceased grandparents, the square cheekbones, too sharp for a girl’s face, the lips that puff out in the eternal pout my mom has envied for years.
Just like your dad’s
, I remember Mom muttering as she locked my bedroom windows.

My mouth drops open at the shocking resemblance, and I wonder how I didn’t see it before.
I wasn’t looking for it.
I’m trying to take this all in, but my mind keeps getting caught on one horrible thought:
If I’m his daughter, am I a monster too?

Marcos leans down and holds his hand out to pull me up, but I don’t take it. I climb to my feet, holding on to the bedpost to steady myself.

“I didn’t know about you until you were fourteen years old,” Marcos says, shaking his head. “All those years in prison, watching your mom on TV, with that man you call your father, and never knowing that his daughter was actually yours? Can you imagine how lonely I was when I found out?” Marcos asks, his voice distraught. “But when you were nominated for the Oscar—well deserved, by the way,” he adds, “the news showed a special about you, and I did the math.” He taps his temple twice with his index finger. “Your mom and I were in a relationship when she got pregnant with you,” he says. “She hadn’t even met that director yet.”

I look down at Mom’s still body on the bed, watching how the diamonds around her throat rise slightly up and down with each shallow breath.
Can it be true? Why would Mom have lied to me all this time
?
But why else would she be here, with a man who looks more like me than my father ever did?

Marcos awkwardly puts his unhurt hand on my shoulder. I want to pull away, but I don’t: I just freeze in place under his heavy touch. “I’m sorry I was never there for you as a child. I know how hard it is to grow up without a father. I had to do the same,” he says. “But I promise you’ll never have to be without me again.” Marcos wipes his bloody fist on his pants, and the blood just fades into the red silk.
I wonder how much blood those pants have soaked up
. “I would’ve come for you sooner,” Marcos continues, his uninjured hand still resting uncomfortably on my shoulder, “but when I found out that you were
my
daughter, not
his
, I still had two more years behind bars.”

“I don’t believe you,” I say, studying how he nervously chews on his lower lip, and how he half smiles, with just one side of his mouth lifting and the other frowning.
Just like I do
. I shrug his hand off my shoulder. “Why would Mom be with a man like you?”

“I can be very persuasive when I want to be,” Marcos says. “Your mom was almost as young as you are now, new to the movie business, and she would have done anything to become an actress. And I was young, and rich, and connected, and absolutely loved her. We could have been great together, our little family. But at least we’ll get to be a family now,” he adds. “How do you think she got her first role? Sheer talent?”

Mom’s first role was as Medusa, in an Oscar-winning film Dad directed. She fell in love and married him in the first three months of shooting.
But was she dating someone else at the time?

It’s like I’m looking at myself through a kaleidoscope. The girl I thought I was is breaking into bits and floating away, mixing with this person I don’t know, this daughter of a murderer. I suddenly remember a script I read for a movie Mom wouldn’t let me act in. It was about the “killer gene,” the gene that supposedly runs in families, causing several people in one family to become serial killers.
Did Mom not want me to somehow activate the “killer” button?

“When I got out of prison and took her back,” Marcos continues, “I thought I could trust her. But even today she betrayed me,” he says, an angry red flush starting to creep up his cheeks. “She begged me to let her go to the play, and I thought it was because she wanted to be with
me.
But when Scars brought her to the church, she screamed for help. Can you believe that? After all I’ve done for her?”

So that’s how I heard Mom’s voice in the church.

“Scars had to bring her back here, but she should have been here anyway, cleaning
mi madre
up,” he continues. “If your mom hadn’t screamed when she saw you, she would be done by now.” Marcos shakes his head, glancing at the dirty foot bone on the altar. “But now you get to help.”

“I will never help you,” I say between gritted teeth.

“If you’d met your grandmother,” Marcos says, “you’d feel differently.” He picks up the foot bone from the altar, and a clump of mud comes off in his hand. “I guess it’s not too late.” He gets a Q-tip out of the wooden crate and starts cleaning the toes very gently, using the Q-tip to get in all of the little crevices. “You’re a lot like her, you know.” Marcos holds the half-clean foot out to me, but I clasp my hands behind my back and shake my head furiously.

“Never.”

“You know, you can go anytime,” Marcos says. “I’m not keeping you here. The door’s unlocked.”

“I’m not leaving without my mom.”

“Then I can’t help you.” Marcos shrugs and lays the foot on the altar, beside the red box. “But if we don’t clean
mi madre
and get her back in the ground, she won’t have anywhere to come home to,” he says sadly. He carefully lifts the skull out of the box and sets it on the table, and then he takes off his red silk jacket and gently layers the inside of the box with it. “Do you want your grandmother’s lost soul wandering the streets?”

I glare at him. “She’s not my grandmother.”

“Denial doesn’t fit you,” Marcos says calmly, picking up the foot bone and rubbing the last of the dirt off with his red handkerchief. “When your grandmother’s soul returns for the Day of the Dead and sees her bones dressed in new clothes”—he nods toward his red silk jacket lining the box—“she’ll see that she wasn’t forgotten, and she can rest more peacefully.”

“She’ll never rest peacefully with you for a son!” I snap.

My skull vibrates under the force of his hand, and my cheek stings with fierce pain before I even realize he’s slapped me. I clap my hand to my cheek, my skin burning under my palm.

“The bones have to be in the right order,” Marcos says, his voice pleasant again. He places his mother’s foot bone in the red box. “How can she stand up to meet Santa Muerte if she doesn’t have her feet under her?”

Cupping my cheek with one hand, I glance up at his calm face.
It’s like he doesn’t realize he hit me.
The hairs on my arms and legs stand straight up, and the back of my neck prickles with terror.

Marcos lifts one of the wooden crates of shiny white bones from underneath the altar. “The stories these bones could tell,” he says, taking a bone out of the crate and placing it into the red box. “
Mi madre
always wanted a girl, but all she had was me,” he continues, “and I was a constant disappointment.” He places the rest of the bones carefully in the red velvet box, and then reaches for the second crate. “And when I wanted to move to America to be with your mother,
mi madre
refused to allow it. Nobody disobeyed
mi madre
’s orders. But I was young, and I left anyway. The day I walked out the door, she disowned me for betraying her.”

I glance over at Mom. She’s still deathly pale, but I can see her chest rise with each breath.
Did she know all of this? And why didn’t she tell me?

Marcos continues stacking the bones from the second crate into the red velvet box, crossing them like an elaborate puzzle, one on top of the other. “When I moved to California,
mi madre
cut tears under her eyes,” he continues. He draws two long, curved lines beneath his eyes. “Here, and here. So she’d always remember how much I had hurt her.” He shakes his head, and then reaches into the second wooden crate, fishes out the last bones, and places them carefully on top of the pile. “Scars learned that from her.”

I glance at the black-and-white picture of the woman on the altar and try to imagine her with two knife lines cut down her face.
Why would she cut her face? Just to punish her son? And what would that do to him?

“When I asked your mother to marry me,” he continues, “she said no, and then she left me for that director.” Marcos’s eyes well up with tears. “
Mi madre
refused to see me. I had nobody,” he says, picking up the skull from the altar. “I gave up
everything
for Pearl.”

Tears drip down his cheeks, and my heart lurches unexpectedly.
So I feel a little sorry for him. I can’t help it.

“I was arrested a month later, and I never saw
mi madre
again. She died while I was in prison.” Marcos grips the skull so tightly his knuckles turn white. “She died cursing my name, saying that when I abandoned her for an American woman, I betrayed my family,” he says. “I would never betray my family!” Marcos places the skull carefully on top of the bone pile, now almost two feet tall from head to feet. “I would still give up everything for your mother,” he says. “And for you. You’re all I have,” he adds.

Standing there, watching him leaning on his cane, I feel his sadness. He gave up his whole life for my mother, and she ditched him, and took his child with her.
Maybe he’s not all bad.

“So I built a mausoleum, a place where we can all be together, forever,” he continues. He closes the red box, and looks at me. “Family always comes first with me,
mi hija
, unlike that director, whose work always came before you.”

“Maybe so,” I say, staring at the closed red box on the altar. “But at least my dad didn’t lock my mom in some room like a prisoner—”

Marcos grabs my chin and squeezes, so I am forced to look at him. “I’m doing this for you,” he says. “
I
am your father. Me! Not him!” He pushes me backward by my chin until I’m jammed against the altar. “Do you hear me?”

I swear I can feel my jaw cracking.
I was wrong—he’s all bad.
“Let go,” I plead, pain shooting through my skull. “Please.”

Marcos drops his hand from my chin and backs up. He stares at his hands like he’s shocked at what he’s done. “You’ll learn to be part of this family,” he says in a softer voice. “You’ll learn to love me.”

“I’ll never love you!” I scream.

Marcos snaps his fingers and points toward Mom’s bed, and Scars wrenches my arm behind me. He marches me over to Mom’s headboard and holds my arm down while he handcuffs me to the bed frame.

“My little girl,” Marcos says, his stinking cigarette breath hot on my face. “How gutsy you are. How full of life, like your grandmother.” He smiles. “After I lay her to rest,” Marcos says, nodding to the box of bones, “we’ll go somewhere, just the three of us. Somewhere no one will ever find you.”

With Scars behind him, Marcos grabs the box and marches out of the room, leaving me handcuffed to the bed of my beautiful, unconscious Mom.

With my hand locked to the bed, the walls close around me, and the lingering smell of Marcos’s cologne is suffocating, tightening my throat until I can’t breathe.
What do I do now?
Mom lies placid and still below me, her rising and falling chest the only sign that she’s alive.

“Mom?” I whisper, but there’s no answer.

I’m standing handcuffed to the bedpost, wishing Mom would wake up and help me figure out how to get out of here, when I see the flowered bobby pin poking out of her hair. A line pops into my head, one I repeated dozens of times to get the right balance of hope and desperation that the Zombie Killer is known for.
All that stands between me and the end of the world . . . is a bobby pin.

Of course.
The improbable genius of the plan hits me, and I lean over Mom, straining my arm to reach the bobby pin clipped in her hair.

We must have shot that scene two dozen times to make it authentic.

Uncuffing yourself from a mutilated zombie is no easy task. I run my tongue over the tooth I chipped from forcing the bobby pin into the lock with my teeth. After twenty tries, Dad had to bend the bobby pin into a U shape for me to believably pry the handcuffs open.
But does that work outside the studio? Dad insists on authenticity in his films—but is it authentic enough?