The Alone Time by Elle Marr

Author:Elle Marr [Marr, Elle]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Published: 2024-05-02T00:00:00+00:00

24

VIOLET

The Wild

Dear Mommy—

Fi Fi said I shuld write you a leter. I wrote one to Daddy to.

How are you? I am good.

Sorry. That’s not tru. I’m very tired.

I’m sorry I didint lissen more to you. I love you.

The wuman is back again. I don no how she got here. But I don like her. She is mean mean mean. More mean than Felix-kitty after forth of july. She stares at me.

I love you and miss you.

Your mini,

Violet Esther Seng.

25

VIOLET

Rustle hustle muscle

The wind urges sleet

Cold clear care

Merging in the peat

Bodies mounting slowly

Never what it seems

Over under blunders

Heavy hindered dreams

Alongside the curb, bar patrons emerge from the restaurants and patios that populate Pacific Beach. Neon lights illuminate the neighborhood’s banner overhead, ready to welcome Thursday night revelers.

I sit quietly in my car, not yet ready to join the fun. After I got home from visiting Geri Vega’s old client, I knocked out another chapter of my memoirs. Though I’ve only tackled a few, the experience has been like opening a faucet—memories gush forward, along with new creativity that has probably lain dormant for some time, probably suppressed by substances I was taking. Poetry comes with ease and in ways I haven’t attempted since high school, and I’ve been cooking more—like, actual meals. Instead of settling for a packet of Top Ramen like I do so many weeknights, I managed to make my own shoyu recipe, using pork belly from Costco and hard-boiled eggs I bought from a farmer I passed in the Walmart parking lot, and then I topped it all off with everything bagel seasoning. The result was better than any food wars photo on social media.

Despite what Fiona insists, that writing any of it down is a mistake, I feel a shuddering certainty that the opposite is true. Collecting the fragments of memories that still remain to me is all I have. And each fleck of dirt that I brush away from the covered mound results in more clumps of earth falling away, revealing distinct details that should have been clear to me all along. The same details that I’m beginning to suspect Fiona has always retained, since the day we were rescued. My sister doesn’t want me to recall them for some reason, telling me to shut them down and push them away whenever the memories begin to take shape. It’s time I did more to counteract her efforts.

My phone hums in the center console. A text from Fiona reads:

We have a problem. A new one. She just posted this.

“What now?” I push through my teeth. Sadly, I already know who “she” is without Fiona saying so. In a video featured on Geri Vega’s stories, she sits with her back to the camera, facing a man whose eye color only makes sense on a bag of polluting chip packaging. Daley Kelly. Geri Vega is having or just had a meeting with the documentary filmmaker who suspects our version of the truth isn’t as accurate as we’ve claimed. A self-described truth devotee.

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