5 Chapter 5

Anne takes Laura by the hands and leads her into the next room. She turns to look at her, for the first time that Laura can seem to remember, she cracks a smile. Her eyes seem to shine with a new emotion as well. She seemed to have more emotion in these last few minutes than she has shown the entirety of Laura’s life.

“Why does she look proud of me?” Laura thought uneasily, her mind on overload after the events of the last 10 minutes seemed to replay in her head on repeat. “Louis has been funding all of my art shows? Did I just kill him? Why is my mom not freaking out?”

Anne opens her mouth and begins to speak quietly and excitedly. “ Oh, this is just the best news ever! I am so glad that you have shown this potential. Your grandmother always thought it would be you, but I never believed her. I thought for sure it was going to be Lizzy to be the one to take over after that whole incident, but I was holding out the hopes that you would grow into the position that we wanted for you.”

“What the fuck are you even talking about mom?” Laura whispered back. “ What do you mean ‘the positon’? What do you mean ‘ grandma always thought it would be you.’ Why aren’t you calling the police and turning me in as any sane woman would do?!”

Anne said “ Because Laura! This is not an unusual thing to happen in our family, and quite frankly, I’ve seen worse.

Laura did not know whether to laugh at the dark humor or scream and run out of the room and away from her deranged mother. She takes a few steps back and closes her eyes to try and make the room stop spinning. Once she has gathered herself and tried her best to calm the Fat Man that was about to hit the Nagasaki that was her brain.

“Mom. I need you to explain this to me in the clearest way possible. I need you to tell me what the hell is going on and what the hell we are going to do with Louis’ body because I sure as hell don’t want to go to prison for murdering my skank-ass cheating ex-boyfriend.”

“ Well, Laura we are first going to act like killing Louis never happened because surely you will be the only one to miss the weasel, and it is not like anyone outside this family knew that he was coming here to see you.  We simply dispose of the body and tell everyone that he left early because you and he called it quits for good. We say it was a mutual and respectful thing and we leave it at that, therefore no questions should be raised about his whereabouts. That is not what I want to talk to you about though. I want to talk to you about taking the position of head of the family business. I think you have what it takes to take over from where your grandma left off after her death.”

Laura wished she could say that she was struck by her mom’s cool and unemotional response to finding out her daughter was a murder, but she had to admit it seemed like the most normal response from her. She did not seem to acknowledge that it was a problem it seemed as though she was happy by it.

“ What do you mean?” Laura said. “ I don’t even know what we do, and I didn’t even know grandma had a part in it.”

Anne laughed. “ Sweetie, you should have figured it out by now that our family runs one of the biggest drug cartels in the state of Illinois and Indiana. We are the biggest supplier to the dealers who are in Chicago. Your grandmother was the ruthless leader who took this family from street-corner dealers to heads of the mafia. It was a loss to have her die, and the cartel has been doing well for themselves this past year, but now it is time for a new leader. That leader is you, Laura. You are passionate enough to kill a man, you are passionate enough to run the business.”

Laura did not know how to feel about what her mother was telling her right now. Her first thought was “ Well, she finally lost it.”.  But, as her mother explained the history to her, she for some reason began to believe her mother. Yes her mom was crazy, but this did seem like something that her family might do. She began to process the rest of what she was saying. “ What does she mean she wants me to run the cartel? I can’t do that! I am not built like grandmother, able to intimate even the biggest men with a glare from her eye.

She began to ponder the decision that she had in front of her. She was at a fork in her life. She could leave and go back to being a failed artist who murdered her boyfriend and will sure probably go down for it without her mother’s help. Or, she could take her offer and she could become one of the more influential and powerful women in America. She liked the sound of that. There was only one other thing that might stand in her way though.

She looked at her mom and smiled. “ Mom, I want to become the new head of the cartel. But, there is only one other thing that might stand in the way of that.” Her mom looked confused and then understood what she meant. She smiled at her daughter.

She then said, “ So, what do we want to do about Lizzy?”

“I’ll take care of Lizzy, so just…” Anne paused to look at her blood-splattered daughter and the body on the floor. “Start doing what you can to clean this up.”

“What?”

“The blood, dear.” Anne carefully made her way to the door, taking care not to step in anything. “Roll him up in the carpet and make sure to clean up anything else. Knowing your grandmother, there should be cleaning supplies in the bathroom.”

“Oh, right.” Face set in a grimace, Laura began to roll her boyfriend in the carpet. “You know, they never talk about how messy it is after killing someone in the movies.

Anne rolled her eyes, stepped out of the room, and shut the door firmly. Listening, she waited until she was sure Laura was moving around before going to look for Lizzy. Heart pounding, she thought about her eldest and youngest daughter. Both are different from the other and alike in the worst ways. Bemused, Anne wondered if this is what her mother meant when she said “I hope your kids end up just like you.”

“Mom?”

Anne turned to look at her eldest daughter as she came up the stairs. She had the same stubborn look that she had since gone through puberty. A mixture between a pout and genuine anger. Anne loved her for it, even if she could be infuriating sometimes.

“Lizzy.” Anne walked towards her daughter and looped an arm through Lizzy’s. “What’s wrong?”

“You know what’s wrong.” Lizzy snapped, attempting to peer around her mother to look at the door of Laura’s room. “What’s going on with those two?”

Anne laughed, the sound echoing in the hallway as they kept walking. Past vases gifted during anniversaries and acrylic paintings done by a father long gone.

“Nothing. You know how your sister is. Overly emotional and not wanting to show it.” Anne pulled Lizzy to stand in front of a family photo. In it were her parents and siblings that she had long since lost contact with. “This is one of my favorites.”

“What?” Lizzy looked at the photo. “When was this taken?”

“I think I had to have been at least nineteen in this.” Anne ran her finger gently along the edge of the frame. Tilting her head, she looked at her mother’s bright red hair. “Yeah, I was nineteen. Your grandmother had just dyed her hair and she was mad as hell about it. It was too bright and my father kept telling her that she looked like a cabbage patch kid.”

“What about the others? Cousins?” Lizzy asked, taking a glance at Anne. “I’ve-you never talk about anyone outside of Grandma and grandpa. And Aunt Carrie.”

“There isn’t anything to say. We don’t talk anymore.” Anne crossed her blood-splattered arms and stared at her younger face. Her face was set in a soft smile and her hair was curled the way she liked to wear as a young woman. Her face and her style of dress often had people looking at her, and not on what her siblings might have been doing. Her sister and she had made a game of it. How much could Carrie steal from off the shelves while Anne smiled emptily at the cashier? The most they had gotten was fifty dollars worth of candy before her mother caught on to what they were doing and had them put the energy into helping the family.

“You remind me a lot of myself when I was younger,” Anne says, stepping closer to the photo. “ I was always asking questions. I was so determined to know everything I could.”

“Oh?”

Anne could tell that Lizzy was pleased about the comparison. In some ways, she hated what she had to do but if her mother taught her anything, it was that doing what is necessary hurts sometimes.
“Yes and your grandmother hated me for it. I never knew when to shut up.” Anne sneered. “She would always go ‘just fucking do it. It doesn’t matter why. Get it over with or get the fuck out of the way.”

“What.”

“I’m sorry.” Anne with more force than she used in years shoved Lizzy and her daughter tripped over her feet before tumbling through the servant’s door. Standing with her face in her hands, Anne listened to Lizzy’s breathing stop. When it did Anne took a couple of deep breaths, kick off her heels, and began to clean up.

~ ~ ~

            Matty at a standstill, lying cold in the woods outside the house, sits up and peers at the house through the trees. Were his happy memories here even real? With his dried tears on his face, his toes nearly frozen from laying in the frosty grass, and his head still aching from the mixture of drugs in his system, he slowly gets up from the ground, ready to face the weight of his family. Questioning the reality of his memories and blissful childhood with his grandmother, he unsteadily walks toward the house.

I shouldn’t take any more drugs right now. Sober up, for Grandma, he thought to himself. Not feeling confident enough to walk inside the house that once made him comfortable, he settles for the stairs just before the front door. Matty notices the curtains of the front windows that normally show a view of the living room is closed. He sluggishly walks towards the door, reaches for the doorknob, and waits.

After hearing nothing come from the other side of the door, Matty opens the door to meet his mother face-to-face.

“We’re just cleaning up, you can head out. We’ll chat later?” Anne stares directly into Matty’s eyes as though she is hypnotizing him in a desperate attempt to not expose what is happening beyond the living room. The door is cracked just enough for Matty to know that nothing suspicious is happening but the house is eerily quiet and Lizzy’s rundown car is still out front.

“What’s up? The two drama queens duke it out yet?” Matty slightly chuckles.

“Almost!” Anne laughs awkwardly. It’s like they have never spoken to each other without the company of other people before. They stare at each other for a second, but it feels like an eternity before Matty’s gaze breaks. He looks past his mom’s shoulder at the empty room and tries to recollect the events of the evening. Anne shifts and tries to shut the door closed little by little to give him a hint to exit. This is his chance to leave and never look back or to insist upon staying, going all in, and continuing the cycle of being cast out or forgotten by his family.

“Why are you guys cleaning up? Isn’t Bernice and John here?”

“I let them go off for the rest of the night after you slipped away. Figured they didn’t need to hear another petty argument from Lizzy and me,” She smirks knowing that Matty will believe anything she will say right now. After all, he is far from sober and when did he ever show any interest in cleaning or his sisters?

“Am I the only one that fucking cares about Grandma?!” The tears in his eyes return, but he holds them in and swallows to push the lump in his throat down.

“What are you on about?! You came late to dinner, high on drugs, and left the moment someone held you accountable and you want to say YOU are the only one who cares about your grandmother?” Anne scolds Matty yet feels deep down that she should have been more active in his life. The past year was hard on him and she wasn’t there to grieve with him. She hasn’t grieved at all.

“So? I was the only one who spent more than just the holidays with her. She encouraged me to be a good person, she taught me lessons you never would. You left me with her to go on trips with Lizzy or Laura and expected me not to have a stronger attachment toward her?”

“No, I-”

“And of course, I’m not getting her house right?” He waits for a response. Anne looks blankly past him, nothing she could say would make up for her lack of care for her son.

“We’re not talking about this right now, no one is getting the house.”

“Right, right. Like you haven’t lied to me before.” Matty walks away defeated.

Walking toward his car, he fights the urge to look back at his mom to give her one last blow to the chest. When he steps inside and adjusts the rearview mirror, he watches his mom go back inside. It was like what he said to her meant nothing at all. He wondered whether any of it meant anything. He knew he had no chance of getting the house. He sat in that fact before he could drive down the road.

Crossing the bridge over the river, he makes a pact with himself to never talk to his family again. Maybe this is what Grandma meant about good things coming to those who wait, he thought. It took a reunion after her death to realize the reality of his position in his family; which is non-existent. He didn’t stop to wonder what was happening with his sisters and mom, it was beyond him and his capabilities. He took the last of his pills besides his medication earlier in the day and didn’t intend on getting more drugs in his body. There was nothing left to numb.

~ ~ ~

Anne and Laura stare out the front window until Matty’s car is no longer in sight.

“Thank god, we didn’t need any more distractions,” said Anne.

Laura looked at her mother blankly. Is that all Matty is to her? A distraction that we needed to go away? He is her son… Laura was never very close with Matty, but she never had any sort of resentment towards him the way she did with Lizzie. She could understand why her mother wasn’t so fond of Lizzie and was able to dispose of her the way she did. She was always up someone’s ass about something. She didn’t even act like a daughter or a sister; she was like another mother, except an extremely annoying and snooty one. Laura had just thought that her mother only felt coldly for Lizzie. But Matt too? She’s killed Lizzie, she doesn’t seem to care about Matty, does she even love me?

She looks up to see her mother smiling at her. Anne gives her a hug and says,

“Alright hun, let’s get this over with.”

If she didn’t care about you she wouldn’t be helping you right now. She would have gotten rid of you too, thought Laura.

The two of them head back upstairs to fetch Louis’s body. Anne grabbed him by the feet, Laura by the arms. “ For such a scrawny-looking guy he sure is heavy,” Anne muttered.

Matty was a few miles away from the house by now, but he still couldn’t shake his feelings of disgust for his family off. They don’t fucking deserve that house. They didn’t care about Grandma. It’s a damn insult to her to have one of them living there. It should be me, she would’ve wanted me to have it. I would take good care of it, but they don’t care. They don’t care about me. Quite frankly, I don’t care about any of them either. These thoughts had been circulating through Matty’s head since he left the house. It’s not fucking fair.  He pulled over at the next gas station to calm down for a minute. And then he calmly unbuckled his seat belt, got out of the car, and filled up four containers of gasoline. He then made a right turn out of the gas station parking lot heading back towards the house.

“ I’m giving you one chance guys, get out of the house now!” Matty screamed as he had emptied the last can of gasoline around the house.

“Did you hear something?”, Anne asked.

“No. But I smell gas, where the hell is that coming from, ” said Laura.

“Mom, Lizzie, Laura! Get the fuck out here now!”

“God damnit. Laura, stay here.”, said Anne.

Anne grabbed a gun out of her purse and started running downstairs. Laura chased after.

“Mom, what the hell are you doing?! Let me talk to him. Please don’t hurt him.”

“ I told you to stay upstairs. Why can’t you ever just listen?  Matty is going to ruin everything. He had his chance to go and he came back. Now I have to deal with it.”

Laura was in disbelief by her mother. She was going to kill Matty now? He does not deserve this. This was all her fault. If she hadn’t killed Louis none of this would be happening right now.

They finally got to the front door of the house to find Matty on the other side of it with a box of matches.

“Where’s Lizzie? Why didn’t she come out with you?”

“Lizzie won’t be joining us. Now put the goddamn matches down. You’re such a moron Matty. I can’t believe you came out of me.”

“What are you talking about mom? What happened to Lizzie?” Matt asked with tears welling up.

Anne just rolled her eyes.

“Matty, what are you doing back here? Why are you doing this?” Laura pleaded.

“This house needs to go. There’s no way in hell you were going to let me have it, Mom. And none of you fucking deserve it. You are all heartless bitches who didn’t give a damn about Grandma. Now get out of the way so I set this place to flames.” said Matty.

Anne smiled and said, “ No honey, you need to get out of my way.”

And then she shot him. He fell to the ground and Laura ran up to him.

“Mom, you killed him! Why would you do that! He was going to let us leave! He was your son!”

“You know Laura, I thought you were smart. I thought you were strong too. Are you weak like your brother and sister? Or are we going to get this Louis crap over with? Then we can grab some dinner.”

Laura could not believe what she had just seen and heard. She thought her siblings were the problem this whole time, but it had finally just hit her. It was her mother. She was a bad person and she did not love any of them. She forced a smile and said,

“No mom, I’m not weak. I am getting hungry. Let’s get rid of Louis and then we can figure out where we want to eat. You can head back inside, I’ll be right in, just give me a minute alone with Matty.”

“Alright, fine. Don’t be too long.” said Anne.

Laura waited for Anne to disappear back into the house. Then she pried the box of matches out of Matty’s hand. She lit the match and threw it onto the house and it burst into flames. As she began to walk to her car to leave while drowning out the sound of her mother screaming, she realized something. She has no one. Nowhere to go. She has no brother, sister, mother, friends, and no Louis. And it was all her fault. She turned back around and walked through the front door of the house.