Born Savages - Cora Brent Page 0,1
my other sister, on her side. Ava, who was always so soft and adrift, who’s been frantic for anything that looks vaguely like love since we were children. Ava has one now herself, a child. A son who at the age of two is a physical reproduction of his gorgeous asshole of a father. Yet he did manage to inherit his mother’s wounded blue eyes. Saying no to Brigitte will sting a little; saying no to Ava feels like kicking a kitten.
My two sisters couldn’t be more different. There’s Brigitte, brash and tempestuous, ready to grab her birthright with both manicured claws. Then Ava, tender and forever bewildered by the awful things the years have done to her so far.
And finally there is me. Loren, or Ren. The brick wall. Stoic. Stalwart. Detached and cold-hearted.
“Do you feel nothing, Loren?” my own mother would howl while she grabbed her own throat with theatrical gusto. “Is there even blood beneath that pallid skin of yours?”
There’s no point in answering such questions. I always knew that.
“She likes to see me cry.
She’ll tell you that’s a terrible lie.”
Those words once found their way into a fourth grade poetry assignment for Mother’s Day. I swear I have memories of being pinched by her when I was too small to tell anyone about it. As soon as the tears showed up Lita Savage would always back off, a perverse smile lighting up her lips. She was, and is, a person who thrives off the agony of others. A person like that should never ever be a parent.
By now, Lita has nothing to do with me. Or with Ava or Brigitte for that matter.
The three of us, the Savage sisters, are like points of a triangle, all independent and lonely in our separate corners. Bouncing around somewhere in our orbit are my two brothers – rugged Spencer and arrogant Montgomery. They circle us as warily as they do one another.
Montgomery. Loren. Spencer. Ava. Brigitte.
Write all our names in one sentence and it’ll look like a grand mash up of an old silver screen marquee. That was probably what Lita had in mind to begin with when she married August Savage. She wasted no time delivering her first genetic insurance policy and kept them coming in quick order. Monty was born exactly nine months after the diamond landed on her finger and I came along exactly ten months after him. The twins, Ava and Spence, joined the crazy Savage cast a year later and the youngest, the one who has destroyed my peaceful night, came screaming into her own spotlight twelve months after that. I don’t know the specifics but Brigitte’s birth must have taken the gynecological cake for Lita because there were no more siblings afterwards.
In fact, ever since I could remember my parents had occupied separate bedrooms and barely spoke. There was never any question about any of us being Savages though. All five of us, in our distinct ways, manage to resemble dead movie stars.
I’m still half listening to my sister yammer on about production schedules and publicity shoots and other things that don’t interest me at all. I’m putting off the moment that I tell her I can’t do it. She thinks I don’t understand but I understand very well. It’s a tasteless reality television carnival that has nothing to do with reality. There are dozens just like it these days. I wouldn’t be on board even if they weren’t planning on filming down in the dusty hellhole that’s the last sad relic of the glittering Savage fortune.
“Ren, are you listening?”
“I’m listening.”
My god, I can see it like it’s all already been filmed, already been broadcast, already the subject of ten thousand clumsily written blogs. It makes me a little sick that the producers are likely banking on that poignancy, on the ‘Look how far they’ve fallen!’ vibe of despair as they film the remnants of a glamorous family bickering over water usage and shuffling around in the derelict mess.
Who the hell would agree to that?
Then something Brigitte says catches my attention and it all makes sense. Now I know why my own sisters have shoved their dignity into a sock drawer.
Spencer too, apparently. My younger brother must be more desperate than I thought.
“How much?” I ask.
“Five grand. Each. Per episode, Ren. So that’s five grand times ten. Quick, do the math.” Her tone is jubilant. She knows she’s won. I never realized it was possible to hear someone smirk. “Think you can beat