What Remains of Me Read online

  “It would almost be sad,” Dave Farnsworth continued, “if that guy hadn’t broken Cary’s jaw and nearly killed him!” Cary Wurst—a 35-year-old accountant from Arcadia—is currently being treated for his injuries at Cedars-Sinai hospital.

  Added another witness, “Murderer or not, I feel sorry for Shane Marshall’s wife. That guy is a hot mess and a ticking time bomb for sure!” Took the words right outta our mouths . . .

  UPDATE: Shane Marshall has been arrested for assault and drunk and disorderly conduct. He has been released on bail—TMZ will provide additional updates as they happen. A spokesperson for the LAPD says Shane Marshall’s blood has been tested. Toxicology results will be available in two weeks. The investigation continues into Sterling Marshall’s death. When contacted by TMZ, Kelly Michelle Lund hung up on our reporter.

  Lead story, TMZ

  Morning of April 22, 2010

  CHAPTER 12

  FEBRUARY 14, 1980

  They just drove, Kelly, Bellamy, and Vee. Drove with no destination, no plan of action other than escape. Windows down, cigarettes lit, Bellamy’s music blasting—Joy Division, Bauhaus, Siouxsie and the Banshees. British bands Kelly had never heard of until Bellamy announced them but still felt as though she knew in a way, those melodies so sad and haunting, those singers, all of them with voices like ghosts. Kelly leaned against the locked door, her hair blowing out the open window, warm air all over her, warm smoke in her throat, easing past her lips, warming them too.

  Before long, the earlier part of the day—that awful phone call at school, that woman laughing at her when she’d asked for Len, not to mention Len himself, his fake phone number—all of it slipped away like a passing thought that hadn’t been important to begin with.

  Vee’s full name was Vincent Vales. He was just sixteen but had already passed the GED. He was a professional actor and lived in his own apartment like a grown man. The apartment was on Gower, near the studios, and it had been built as a place to house starlets back in the 1940s. “It looks sorta like the Sleeping Beauty castle at Disneyland,” Bellamy said. “Only a lot smaller.” Bellamy was the one who told Kelly all about Vee. Vee didn’t seem like much of a talker. But that was okay, since Kelly wasn’t much of a talker either.

  “You want to know how Vee and I met?” Bellamy said as she pulled into the Mobil self-serve station on Robertson and Sunset and turned the car off, Siouxsie’s ghost voice going silent.

  “Yeah.” Kelly imagined the two of them shopping side by side at Fiorucci, slam dancing at The Whisky, sipping champagne with Jack Nicholson on a Mulholland Drive balcony, making out . . .

  Bellamy turned off the car. “He was in a movie with my dad.”

  “Which one?” Kelly said.

  “Would you know it?” Bellamy said. “It’s a western.” She turned around in the seat to face her, Kelly’s blurred reflection swimming in her Ray-Bans. “Oh no, wait. Let me guess. Your mom would, right, because she’s seen all his movies? She’s a big fan?”

  “Umm . . .”

  “Everybody’s mom lusts after my dad. It’s kind of gross.”

  “Actually,” Kelly said, “my mom lusts after bankers.”

  Bellamy tilted her head to the side and regarded Kelly for several seconds, as though she were trying to figure out whether or not she was joking. “Good for her,” she said finally. “Movie actors are dicks.”

  “Hey,” Vee said.

  “Present company bla bla bla.”

  As Bellamy got out of the car, Kelly looked down at her hands. What would Mom say if she knew I was here right now, ditching school with a movie actor and Sterling Marshall’s daughter? She didn’t want to know, didn’t even want to think about it.

  Bellamy started pumping gas and Vee turned around in his seat—the first time she’d seen his face head-on, not in a mirror. He was startlingly handsome—shiny black hair, full lips, eyes blue as gas flames set against caramel-tan skin. He almost didn’t seem real—more a piece of art than a person. Kelly forgot whatever it was she’d been thinking about, and just stared at him. Against her will, her face stretched into a goofy smile.

  “Defiance,” he said.

  “Huh?”

  “Defiance was the movie I was in with Bellamy’s dad. I was just eleven years old. I played Sterling’s son, and I was killed in the first act.”

  She forced herself to stop smiling. “Was that hard,” she said, “pretending to die?”

  “Nah, I just had to lie there.” He grinned. His teeth were pearly. “During most of the takes, I fell asleep.”

  Kelly laughed.

  “Anyway, Bellamy would come to the set—she was there a lot. She was the only other kid my age, and so we got to be friends. Since I was playing her dad’s son, she started calling me her ‘pretend brother.’ The director would let us sit in his folding chair. John McFadden. Ever hear of him?”

  Kelly shook her head.

  “He’s kind of well known.” He didn’t say it in a mean or snooty way. Just like someone making conversation.

  “Pretend brother,” she said. “That’s cute.”

  He shrugged. “That’s Bellamy. She’s still my pretend sister, I guess. When you’re not in school, it’s harder to find friends, so the few you have wind up being pretty important.”

  They’re just friends. Kelly’s heart leaped a little, surprising and embarrassing her at the same time. She felt her cheeks flushing and hoped he didn’t notice. Why did her face keep doing things she didn’t want it to do? “Do you have any real sisters?”

  “Nope. I’m an only child.”

  “Me too.”

  Vee’s smile faded, and he looked at her, really looked at her, those gas flame eyes lasering into hers. “But not always. Right?”

  “No,” she said slowly. “Not always.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I knew Cat. She was your twin sister, right?”

  Kelly squinted at him, thinking about all the times she’d spied on Catherine, all the boys she’d seen her with. She’d never seen Vee. She would have remembered Vee. “Wow . . .”

  “She used to talk about you,” he said.

  “She did?”

  “She always said you were a better person than her—the good twin,” he said. “It stuck in my mind because, you know . . . Cat was a really good person herself.”

  “Wow,” Kelly said again. Such a dumb thing to say. It made her sound like some spaced-out fan, but she couldn’t help it.

  Not many people at school had known Catherine—mainly because she’d barely gone to school. She’d wanted to be an actress, a real one, she used to say, and only life can teach you that. Not school, not books. Living life up to its bendy edge, pressing against that edge, hard as you can . . .

  So the people from school who came out from under rocks in the weeks after her body was found, the kids who talked loudly in the hallways, bragging that they’d known “that dead freshman”—those kids called Catherine lots of things, but “good” was never one of them.

  It was as though she’d become something else in death—“the wild girl,” “the slut,” “that chick who partied way too hard”—a character in everyone else’s story, reduced to just a few, wrong words. Because they didn’t know her, not really. She may have been going through a wild phase, sure, but more than that Catherine was good. She always had been.

  “She was just two minutes older than me, but it always felt like a lot more,” Kelly said. “You know . . . she taught me how to swim.”

  Bellamy was in the kiosk now, paying. Vee glanced at her as she settled up. “I bet you taught her a lot too,” he said. “You just didn’t know it.”

  Wow . . . Kelly stopped herself from saying it out loud again as Bellamy swung open the car door, bangle bracelets jangling as though to announce her presence. “Why the long faces? Jeez, I leave you two alone for five minutes.”

  Kelly forced a smile. “Yeah, well.”

  “What did I m
iss?”

  “Acting,” Vee said. “We were talking about acting. And how you used to call me your pretend brother.”

  “Can you blame me? You’re a hell of a lot more fun than my real brother.” Her gaze settled on Kelly. “That doesn’t explain why you both look like your dog just died.”

  “Wellll,” Kelly said slowly, drawing the word out.

  “Yeah?”

  “Vee knew my sister.”

  Bellamy’s face went still. “Oh,” she said. “Oh Kelly.” Bellamy opened the car door and leaned into the back, where she was sitting. Kelly wasn’t sure what she was going to do at first, but she pulled her close and hugged her with a strength that surprised her. “I’m so sorry.”

  Tentatively, Kelly hugged her back. “I . . . Um . . . I didn’t . . .”

  “I knew her,” she said. “Not well but . . . Everybody knew her. She went to the parties.”

  “I introduced you guys,” Vee said.

  “Right.” Bellamy pulled away. She looked at Kelly. “I didn’t know whether or not to bring it up.”

  “It’s okay,” she said. “It was a long time ago.” It wasn’t. It had only been two years, but neither of them pointed that out.

  Bellamy tilted her head again, watching her, Kelly wishing she’d take her sunglasses off until finally, she broke into a smile. “Hey, you know what, if you want to act, Vee can get you a screen test.”

  Kelly swallowed. She had never thought about acting before, not even once. Catherine had been the actress, while Kelly had been the . . . what had she been? The actress’s sister. “I don’t know if I’m movie material,” she said quietly.

  “Are you kidding? You’re a babe!”

  Kelly blushed—her face betraying her again.

  “You are,” Vee said. Her cheeks burned purple now. Her heart thrummed.

  Vee said, “I can get you a screen test with John.”

  “John?”

  “John McFadden. The director I was telling you about.”

  “You know him that well?”

  “Yep.”

  Bellamy slipped back into the front seat, sighing dramatically. “He’s Vee’s dad.”

  “Oh,” Kelly said. She looked at Vee, who had turned around again. He was sitting perfectly still, the tips of his ears a deep red.

  “His last name’s different because of nepotism,” Bellamy was saying as she started up the car. “He wants to make it on his own. Of course, he doesn’t mind his big shot daddy casting him in his pictures. And paying his rent.”

  “Whatever, Bellamy.”

  “Oh come on. I’m just kidding around.” She ran a hand through his glossy hair.

  “Cut it out.”

  Bellamy cast a quick glance at Kelly. “Let’s not fight in front of the children.”

  Vee said, “Just. Drive.”

  Bellamy screeched away from the pump. Siouxsie began moaning again, but Vee switched it off. “I’m sick of this black-shroud shit.”

  “I thought you liked it.”

  “I like Jack Daniel’s too. But if I drank it all day, I’d puke.” He slipped another cassette in the deck, all horns and fun, the singer shouting, One step beyond . . .

  “Madness,” said Bellamy.

  It took Kelly a little while to realize that Madness was the name of the band on the tape, but she didn’t let on. “I like Madness,” she said.

  Vee smiled at her in the rearview. “Me too.”

  And then Bellamy was pulling up to a red light, calling a Chinese Fire Drill, Vee and Kelly throwing their doors open in unison and jumping out into the street, horns blaring at them from all around, the singer shouting it again: One . . . step . . . beyond!

  “Oh my God, you guys!” Kelly shouted, but she got out too. The three of them circled the red Rabbit once, twice, three times as more horns joined in, people calling them stupid kids, yelling cuss words at them.

  “One more time!” Bellamy screamed.

  Off they went. Kelly laughed until her sides ached. I’m with friends, she thought. And a part of Kelly, a tiny spark of her, felt like Catherine was watching them, watching them and smiling.

  “THIS ONE’S CALLED PASSIONFRUIT SHIMMER,” MOM SAID. “YOU JUST want to put the slightest hint of it on your cheekbones. Any more than that, it looks trashy.”

  Mom dusted Kelly’s cheeks with a soft brush, her breath tickling her skin. She’d gotten a new line in today—the spring line already, even though it was just mid-February—and Mom always liked to practice with a new line before trying it out on the paying customers.

  “Want to be my guinea pig?” Mom had said to Kelly when she’d slipped through the door at the normal time—four o’clock, just like every other day when she went to all her classes and took the bus. Mom had a tone to her, an urgency. Though that could have just been the way she was interpreting Mom, the way Kelly was thinking, the state she was in.

  Everything felt urgent.

  At any rate, yes was the only possible answer to the guinea pig question, and normally, Kelly loved it when Mom made her over—Mom so caring with her steady, cool hands, the authority in her voice as she explained each step. The attention she paid her, as though Kelly were a piece of art she was creating.

  Mom was very good at makeup. She studied faces hard before she chose her shades, and she could turn anyone into a beauty, even Kelly. “Like a princess,” she would say after her makeovers were complete, both of them gazing at Kelly’s face in the mirror—eyes bright, cheekbones defined, lips just the right shade. Kelly would look at herself and the way her mother was looking at her, and she would feel transformed.

  Today, though. Today, Kelly already felt beautiful. Walking through the door, still in the final, glittering lap of her very first cocaine high, Kelly had replayed the car ride in her mind—a ride that had stretched all the way to Venice Beach and back with so much laughter, so much confession, so many secrets, presented like gifts. “I’ve never told anyone this before, Kelly. You’re just so easy to talk to . . .”

  Kelly in the backseat, Vee and Bellamy in the front, turning to her. Friends. “We’re the Three Musketeers,” Bellamy had said, “or maybe Charlie’s Angels.”

  They’d parked in Venice Beach in a spot where the ocean stretched out before them, the sun low in the sky, so many people walking by, shirtless and on roller skates, in patched cutoffs and bikinis, beach tanned and sunburned and heroin pale—all of them beautiful and ugly at the same time. That was when Bellamy had slipped the mirror and the folded-up piece of paper from her purse, Vee rolling up a twenty, Bellamy shaking the white powder onto the mirror, cutting it into lines. Listening to the ritual click of the blade against the glass, Kelly had felt the strangest, most powerful longing—a need for a feeling she’d never known.

  And then the relief—oh, the medicinal drip down the back of her throat, the numbness of her gums, the way her nerves came alive in an instant. And Vee, how he had looked at her. “The first time is always the best,” he had said.

  Like all expensive things, cocaine was better even than Kelly had imagined. It made her feel so much—the tingling of her pores, the sparkling of her eyes. Yes, Kelly could actually feel her eyes sparkling.

  “Mom,” Kelly said.

  “Sssh. Stay still. I have to do your lips.”

  “No, wait a second.”

  Mom heaved out a sigh. “What?”

  Kelly cleared her throat. “Have you ever heard of a director called John McFadden?”

  She cleared her throat. “Yes, Kelly. Everyone’s heard of him.”

  “Catherine was friends with John McFadden’s son.”

  It was the cocaine talking. Kelly wouldn’t have said it normally. Not on the anniversary of Catherine’s death, what with how Mom felt about Hollywood people and Catherine’s old friends and even the sound of Catherine’s name. Every time you said her dead daughter’s name out loud, it killed Mom a little. Kelly could see it in the way she was looking at her now, with those bruisey eyes she always got when
someone hurt her, a look on her face like she was recovering from a punch. I’m sorry, Kelly wanted to say. But the words wouldn’t come out. She wasn’t sorry. She was tired of living by Mom’s rules, tired of missing Catherine in silence and alone.

  Mom said, “How do you know that?”

  “I talked to some people from school.”

  “I don’t want you talking to those people.”

  “What people?”

  “The ones who . . . the people who would know that about your sister.”

  Kelly wanted to ask her what she meant by that, but of course she knew. The People Catherine Met at Parties. Catherine always used to claim that their mother was jealous of all the parties she went to—and of Catherine herself, young and connected as she was, just fifteen years old but on the fringes of the New Hollywood, this close to being a star . . . Kelly didn’t believe it back then. Mom always said she was just trying to protect her, “to save you from yourself,” as she used to say. “Those people are like the movies they make—best viewed from a distance.” And that had made sense to Kelly. It had made sense up until the beginning of this week. But it didn’t anymore. Kelly heard Catherine’s voice in her mind, the voice becoming her own. How could you of all people tell me who to spend my time with? You who couldn’t even make it in the movies as a makeup artist. You who . . .

  “. . . got knocked up by a lousy stuntman.”

  “What?” said Kelly’s mother.

  She hadn’t even realized she’d said it out loud. But the coke made her brave, and reckless with the truth. “That’s the closest you’ll ever get to being a star. Getting knocked up by a stuntman.”

  The lip brush dropped out of her mother’s hand, clattered on the floor. Kelly stared at it—the mother-of-pearl handle, delicate and wand-like. Her mother’s brush. She’d never noticed before how pretty it was. Some things you only notice when they fall to the ground.

  “Who have you been talking to?”

  Kelly knew she should stop now. She’d gone too far already, but she couldn’t help it. There had been so much confessing this afternoon, so much truth. “Sometimes, I think my mom would have been happier if Catherine and I had both died. It’s like . . . she has this grief and guilt. But since I’m still around, she can’t get lost in it. It’s like the worst of both worlds.”