Sky Tongues Read online

  The hotel management was becoming increasingly upset, since they were the ones who had to deal with the “gifts.” Evidently, they weren’t amused either, threatening to take legal action whether I wanted them to or not. By then I didn’t care either way. “Do what you have to do,” I told them.

  Of course, they had no idea where the packages were coming from, making any kind of action, legal or otherwise, next to impossible.

  But they were getting quite antsy about the whole thing and I started to feel guilty so I decided to take my own action.

  I picked up the phone and dialed, somehow knowing that their number would not have changed over the years and I was right.

  My mother answered on the second ring.

  “Hello, Mother,” I said in my most theatrical voice. “How are you?”

  Silence on the other end, lasting a good fifteen seconds. Then: “You! How dare you call my house?”

  Smiling, I said, “What do you mean? I’m only returning your calls. Sorry it took a while but you know how the career of a rich and famous actor can be. Busy, busy, busy.”

  “Oh, you’re the same smartass asshole you always were, aren’t you? I don’t care how much money you have, you ungrateful bitch, you’ll still be a loser until the day you die.”

  “Is that so?” I played with a pen on the table. “And what have you done with your life lately, Mother? What has that child beating husband of yours been up to?”

  “You lie!” She screeched into the phone, causing me to wince and pull it away from my ear. “You’ve always been a lying little cunt!”

  I remained silent, trying to relish this moment, to hold onto the humorous part of it.

  “He never touched you unless you deserved it and you know it! Now you make it sound like he beat you every day for no reason at all! All he ever did was try to protect you!”

  No longer smiling, I said, “Who’s lying now, Mother? Protect me? Please! Is that what you tell people?”

  “I tell people the truth! That you’re an ungrateful cunt who spit in our faces as soon as you were old enough and somehow—gods know how!—some idiot asshole put you on a crappy-ass TV show! That’s what I tell people! The truth!”

  “Your twisted version of it anyway.”

  “FUCK YOU!” she screamed. “I should have killed you when I had the chance! You should have been a fucking abortion! We never wanted you in the first fucking place! You ruined our lives!”

  “I know I did, Mother. Which is why you’ve always wanted to ruin mine, isn’t that right?”

  “We treated you like you deserved to be treated. You were a LOSER! Everyone knew it! The kids in your classes, your teachers, EVERYONE!”

  “But it’s okay to try to take a loser’s money, is that right? I’m not so bad that you don’t want my money.”

  “Why shouldn’t we get some of it? We raised you! We fed you, clothed you, put a fucking roof over your head! We deserve to get something for that!”

  “You don’t deserve shit!” I raised my voice for the first time. “I earned every fucking dime I ever made! I work my ass off for every penny!”

  “That’s bullshit! You think what you do is work? Getting up and showing off in front of people? YOU should be paying THEM for that!”

  “It’s called art, Mother. It may not be fair, but when you’re in the arts you’re either a star or you’re starving. I didn’t want to starve.

  “Oh, you didn’t want to starve? You DIDN’T starve when you were here! And now, greedy little fuck that you are, you don’t want to share!”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” I shouted back. “You actually think you should be paid back for raising me? Children do not have to pay their parents, Mother! Children are a fucking GIFT!”

  Rabia came in from the other room looking annoyed. She stood in the center of the room, hands on hips, glaring at me.

  “Children are a gift if you want them!” my mother shrieked into the phone. If they are the child you want!”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The woman was seriously demented. Remembering that my wife was already mad at me, I lowered my voice and said, “Like Zion, you mean.”

  “YES! Like Zion!”

  “Well, I can certainly understand that. He turned out to be a real prize.”

  “Don’t you talk to me about Zion! You’re not worthy to even breathe the same air as him!”

  “It’s funny though, how he claims he doesn’t want my money. Does that mean he’s out there getting arrested every day for you?”

  In the background, I heard my father’s voice saying, “Who is that?” There was a pause, muffled words and he yelled, “Hang up the fucking phone! Hang it up right now!”

  Click.

  Always the good little wife, obeying her husband.

  81

  “Demented!” I said to Rabia.

  “Then why did you continue to talk to her? What is the point of fighting with an insane person?”

  I chewed my lower lip. I had no answer for her.

  “And what about the kids?” she continued. “They could hear you in there, Sky. What happened to our mutual agreement that it’s unhealthy for kids to see their parents lose it?”

  Going to lay down on the bed, I said, “I don’t know. I’m sorry. But maybe it is healthy for them to see us lose it once in a while. Show them that a human emotion like anger is okay once in a while. It’s natural.”

  She sat beside me. “The emotion is okay, yes. But we’re trying to raise them to handle their emotions in a healthy way, remember? Swearing and yelling at the top of your lungs is not a productive solution.”

  I rolled over, my back to her. I just didn’t have the energy to continue this conversation. I was emotionally bruised and mentally wrecked. I apologized and promised to try to control my temper in the future. That seemed to satisfy her and she went away, leaving me to simmer on my own.

  82

  I assumed after the episode with my mother that the harassment would stop. Instead, it nearly doubled and then my lawyer called to tell me they were trying for custody again, citing that I was an “unfit parent,” due to my “raving outbursts” “false accusations” and “clearly violent temper.”

  To say I was annoyed would be an understatement, but not by much. “Jesus,” I said. “Why do they keep trying to drag my kids into their bullshit?”

  “Don’t waste a moment of your time worrying about it, Sky.” Even the lawyer sounded bored by them. “They still have no proof of anything. The judge will laugh them out of court the same way she did last time.”

  “Yeah, it’s still irritating though.”

  Rabia thought it was irritating as well. “Gods,” she said. “Can you imagine having to give our kids to those lunatics?”

  “I never would. Even if some freak thing happened, like they paid off a judge or something, we as parents would still have rights. We could demand that the boys be sent to live with someone else, an aunt or cousin maybe.”

  “Still, the thought creeps me out.”

  I took her in my arms and squeezed her tight. “It creeps me out too.”

  83

  The lies they were telling their lawyer grew more and more outrageous.

  Supposedly, they had witnessed firsthand, me dangling my youngest son out the window of a limo, traveling at 80 mph along the freeway.

  They’d seen me leave my children out in the park alone all night. They’d seen me hitting them with belts, electrical cords and my bare tongues. They’d watched as my children begged me for food and I’d ignored them, stuffing my face full of prime rib and mashed potatoes. (The idiots had no way of knowing that I’d been a vegan for the past 14 years.)

  My children had sat out in public in their own feces, had been tied to trees and shopping carts, and had been spotted strapped to the roofs of moving vehicles.

  My lawyer and I loved it whenever they came up with something. It made them look even more insane than they actually were.

 
84

  I received word that their next ploy was to try calling magazines and television news stations, anxious to prove to the world that I deserved to have my children taken from me. For some reason, Rabia was never mentioned in any of the accusations, which only served to diminish their case further. Even if by some miracle of miracles they managed to convince a judge that all these things were true, it only stands to reason that my wife would raise the children herself and they still wouldn’t get a dime. But they’d apparently forgotten she existed.

  Unfortunately for them, even the lowliest of the rag-mags either hung up on them or didn’t return their calls. It must have been extremely frustrating to them.

  Destroying a person’s life was not as easy as they made it look in the movies.

  My attorney suggested that we counter-sue for defamation of character, basically for no other reason than to be a thorn in their sides. I said, sure why not. Go for it.

  85

  Ah, how the tides will turn.

  As soon as the countersuit was filed against them, they dropped their own flimsy case and went scurrying back into their hole.

  Word came back to me that they were possibly going to be held up on charges of wasting the courts time and threatened with prison if they so much as whispered my name again in a public setting.

  With their wallets being endangered again, I was certain that that would be the last we’d hear of them. Death would wrap in another couple weeks and we would fly back to the west coast and go back to our normal lives, me with the satisfaction of knowing I’d kicked their asses without even lifting a tongue.

  It was a good feeling.

  86

  I was going over a scene with Theodora the director when the call came.

  While playing with the boys in a park, Rabia had been assaulted, punched and kicked several times until she fell to the ground. The perpetrator had next snatched up our son Crispin and then disappeared. They were currently searching for both the suspect and our child.

  Rabia was in the hospital with detectives. She’d told them with 100% certainly that the kidnapper was my brother Zion.

  87

  The first place the feds checked, of course, was my parent’s house. I wanted to go with them, but they refused to allow it. When they called back half an hour later, they informed us that neither my son nor my brother were on the premises. Both my parents were there and claimed not to have seen Zion in weeks, but still insisted that they knew nothing about the abduction or the assault except that Zion would never do such things. He was a good boy.

  Despite their claims and protests, they were brought in for questioning and their house cordoned off as a possible crime scene.

  Somewhere in the back of my mind, I wanted to be insane with fury, I wanted to want to kill them all.

  But in truth, I was just terrified in a way that I had never known before.

  No one knows true terror until their child is in danger.

  88

  After 72 hours, my parents were released and allowed to return to their home.

  Rabia had slept for about 8 hours of that time. I hadn’t slept any. We were both delirious with fear and exhaustion.

  When we were left alone, I told her, “I have to get away from these cops and go there.”

  “To your parents house? What for? They’re not going to just tell you where Zion is.”

  She’d broken her own rule and raised her voice in front of our kid, who neither of us wanted out of our sight for even a moment.

  Every time I looked at her battered face, fear was replaced by a murderous rage so deep that I wanted to tear off my own skin. I sometimes wonder if I may have actually tried, had I had fingernails.

  “They won’t tell me where he is,” I agreed, pacing the floor. “But they’ll sure as fuck tell me something. They won’t be able to stop themselves. They’ll want to gloat about it, to rub it in my face, torture me with it.”

  Rabia sniffled into a tissue, looking up at me with swollen, red-rimmed eyes. “And what the fuck will that accomplish, Sky?”

  “I don’t know. Something though.”

  She stood up and grabbed Saada from where he sat beside me. She shouted, “You egging them on is what caused this whole fucking thing!” Then she and Saada both burst into fresh tears and she ran from the room with him in her arms.

  No matter.

  I couldn’t think about them right now. They were fine. It was Crispin who was in danger, Crispin who I had to get back from those monsters before they did something terrible to him.

  Unless they already had.

  The thought boiled the rage up from inside me again and I knew beyond a doubt that if that was the case, I’d kill each and every one of them. I wouldn’t give a fuck about prison or my family or anything else. Blind wrath would take over and I would kill them all.

  89

  In the middle of the fourth night I told the sleepy police officer stationed outside our door that I needed to go get a pack of smokes from the lobby or I would start tearing the wallpaper off the walls.

  He looked in my eyes and I’m sure what he saw there was a crazed nicotine attack. I’m sure that’s what he saw because that’s what I wanted him to see. I was a trained actor and a fucking good one at that.

  Yawning, he said okay, but to hurry back.

  I promised him I would, but of course I was lying.

  90

  Dressed only in my plaid pajamas and a thick terrycloth robe, I hailed a cab and gave the driver the name of a street a few blocks from my parent’s house. He didn’t blink an eye and we were on our way.

  91

  I don’t know what I expected to find when I approached their house from behind, creeping through the neighbor’s yards. Police cars with flashing lights? Cops with cups of coffee milling around outside. Sharp-shooters lurking in the shadows, weapons pointed, just waiting for the word.

  Instead, the house was dark and silent, like all the other houses. There was no one around and, though relieved, I was also angry. Why weren’t they being watched? Shouldn’t someone, at least one someone be here, waiting for something suspicious to happen? Maybe Zion would show up carrying my son? Did that not occur to anyone? What the fuck were those people being paid for?

  Crouching low, trying to stay in the darkest patches, I crossed into their yard and hurried to the basement door. Once there, I knelt and brought up the hidden house key from under a log of rotted firewood older than I was. So predictable. They just never changed a fucking thing.

  I slipped the key into the knob lock and it turned smoothly, without even the faintest click.

  A second later, I was inside.

  92

  The basement was pitch-black.

  I closed the door behind me and waited for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. Slowly, shapes formed around me and I saw that the basement hadn’t changed at all either.

  To my right lay my father’s six-foot work bench, something he’d made himself before I’d been born. In front of me was his hulking black table saw, looking like some kind of medieval torture device and beyond that, against the far wall, the ancient washing machine and dryer. I couldn’t believe they were still using such primitive appliances.

  I carefully made my way around the table saw, passed the washer and dryer and left my father’s workshop and entered what they’d always planned to be a “family” room. I saw they still hadn’t done it and probably never would. The same ratty couch sat against one sheetrock wall and an antique but broken console television sat against the other. I thought about all the things they owned, already old when I lived there, and how they could probably sell some of that ancient crap to a museum and make a small fortune.

  But no. That might take a little effort on their part. Easier to try to steal it from a virtual stranger they had once owned.

  Grimacing at the taste of the dusty concrete beneath my feet, I made my way to the stairs that I knew led up to the kitchen, but just as I lifted my foot and was about
to place it on the first step, I froze, thinking I’d heard something.

  A barely audible scraping sound, gritty somehow.

  Had it come from the crawlspace?

  I reversed position and bent over, peering into the blackness beyond the 3x3 square cut into the wall to my right. The basement had once upon a time been twice as big, but for some reason my father had put up this extra wall and made a crawlspace out of half the room. As far as I knew, the only things in there were Christmas decorations, old patio furniture and the furnace. Maybe a few boxes of junk, but that was probably it.

  I strained my eyes trying to make shapes out of the impenetrable darkness, but it was useless. I couldn’t see a thing and heard no further sounds. Considering how decrepit the place was, it was more than likely that they’d developed a few rodent infestations over the years.

  Straightening up, I turned back to the stairs and began climbing, carefully avoiding the stairs that I remembered as creakers. I marveled at how the oddest things come back to you when you return to the place of your youth, the minute things you recall.

  I was halfway up the stairs when the scraping sound came again, much louder this time, making no attempt to hide itself and I knew what the sound was.

  The rubber soles of sneakers scrambling across the grainy concrete. It was a sound I recognized instantly, a flashback to my childhood.

  I turned around to see the silhouette of my brother taking the stairs three at a time.

  93

  He hurled himself forward, taking me down with no effort at all. He even managed to prevent both of us from tumbling down the stairs to crack our skulls open on the cement floor.