Early May, 1993, Los Angeles, California.
"Do you honestly think you can make it in college, Bianca?" Constance asks, inhaling a drag of her cigarette at the "family" meal. Bianca chews the inside of her cheek, forcing herself to remain nonplused at a forthcoming jab at her disability brims to the surface. Bianca thinks her mother forgets that, despite having Cerebral Palsy, she's the Senior Class President and Homecoming Queen. Not that it pleases Constance. Nothing will ever, ever please her. "You can hardly eat with a fork without shaking like a homeless person." Exhales, ignoring at how Adelaide winces when some smoke is blown her way, before standing up out her seat and straightens her dress; she's annoyed and Bianca hasn't even done anything, yet. "Now, you're in charge, Bianca: I expect everyone to be in bed by eleven—Oh, Jesus H. Christ: where the hell is your brother?"
Bianca can't stop herself: "The one you hide away in the attack, or the drug addict?"
Soon enough, it earns her a hard smack on her cheek. It hurts; it always hurts, because her mother always uses the hand that has the most jewelry with the intent to leave a mark. Her eyes sting with tears and she does everything she can to avoid Adelaide's look of concern. Addie is the eldest; therefore, Bianca always assumes that the girl has a strong need to protect her younger siblings, even when they often have an overpowering need to protect her. "You speak to me in that tone of voice again, little girl and you'll be in a world of hurt: understand?"
Bianca nods, staring at her barely eaten plate. Constance leaves for her rendezvous with a married man—Larry, right?—all because she covets the house she lost once their father left town. For the longest time it's just two sisters, sitting adjacent from each other, before Addie pipes in: "We should order pizza." She suggests standing up to begin picking up the plates as Bianca just sat there, still teary eyed from their mother's handiwork. "This meatloaf tastes like shit."
"Language, Addie," Bianca weakly scolds. She tries to stand up and do it herself, even if the muscular dystrophy in her right hand causes it to curl up to her chest, making only one arm able to do any lifting, but Addie tells her to call the delivery man. They know their mom won't be back until morning, if not noon. "Should I even bother ordering the pineapple pizza for Tate, or will he actually make it home besides doing acid or god knows what?" Adelaide's closer to Tate. Tate worships Adelaide much more than he's ever done to Bianca or Beau; they love each other, Bianca is certain of it, but there's this undercurrent of shivers down her spine when she looks into his eyes. He scares her.
His voice interrupts those thoughts as he saunters inside the home and into the living room, slamming the door in his wake, causing Bianca to nearly let go of the phone. "It's weed, B. Not acid." He replies smoothly, hopping on the couch from the back, not bothering to take off his shoes. He's still in his track uniform and—oh, that musk! Boy musk! "Take a shower, Tate!" Adelaide scolds with a scrunched up nose.
"Nah, I'm good, Addie."
Pizza is delivered—Addie tries to give Beau some, but he refuses: he only likes the cheesy bread.—and the three siblings sit around the TV. Bianca's pony tail begins to unravel, must to her annoyance, and she'd ask Addie or Tate, but they're too busy eating. "Where are you applying for college, B?" Tate asks.
"Nowhere if mom has any say." Replies the seventeen year old, bitterly. "All I want is to be far, far, far away from this sh—stink hole," she corrects, much to her sibling's annoyance. She doesn't admit she's already applied and is accepted, full academic scholarship, to one. "Maybe, I don't know, NYU? Penn State? You're a junior next year, Tate, where are you applying for?" She wants to see a Broadway Show; she wants to be a writer, so NYU is where she has her sights set on in the fall. (If Constance finally allows her, that is.)
"Nowhere." He answers with a nonchalant shrug. "I mean, when you think about it, do you really need college to be successful? I mean, De Niro was a High School dropout. Who says I can't be like him?" He studies her for a moment, actually looking genuinely concerned for all she knows, before tugging on her oversized Rainbowbrite sweater she wears around the house, accompanied by acid-washed-holey-jeans. Things she'd never wear outside of their home and certainly never at school. Addie dresses like Constance and so does Bianca, when she's at school. She has to or her mother would never shut up about it.
Not Tate, though. Tate does whatever Tate wants. "You should go to college, if that's what you want. I mean, besides the gimp, you're popular. It's annoying."
"So are you, Mr. Jock."
"Not anymore. I quit."
Addie gave her favorite brother a devious, tiny grin: "Mom is going to freak out."
Tate shrugs, "it's my life, not the cocksucker's."
"Tate!" Bianca shrills, nodding towards Addie with furrowed brows. Once again, her siblings ignore her policy for PG-Rated language only, and Tate continues onward. "I mean, you can handle yourself; mom doesn't get that she can't control our lives anymore. I mean, c'mon, Addie is always in our old house, even when mom doesn't know."
"I have friends there." Adelaide says, simply, taking another bite from her pizza.
She graduates in the twentieth percent in her class, Honors, and is all but thankful that when Constance announces they were going to move back into their old home across the street she has news of her own.
"Mama," she begins, knowing she's on uneven ground with the older woman. She ought to soak up her good mood and use it for her advantage. "I got in to NYU…"
"Well, that's all good and well, honey, but Mama doesn't have that sort of cash on her." Constance has a response for everything. Her tone is condescending, as if she already knows she's in the winning, until Bianca fires back. "Full scholarship, Mama; you won't have to pay a cent. Plus, I saved up on the money Nana and Grandpa gave me for my birthday since I was ten, and I can use that for a plane ticket and—"
Constance interrupts her. The good mood has soured by the youngest female Langdon's persistence; face weathered and set in stone. "And what? Baby girl, I love you and I'm so proud of you, but you've got to think about your brother; how would he react if you just left him? Besides, if you wanted to go to college so bad, go to UCLA. It's just 'round here and you can still be with your family." There's a pause but before Bianca has time for a rebuttal, Constance is back in, full force. "Do you really think someone like you can live alone? Hell, you can't even drive, Bianca. Do you really think you can survive without your Mama and your siblings looking out for you?"
"Yes."
Her mother is taken by surprise. It fades to the stone façade, a raised pointer finger in Bianca's face and the squinty eyes tell her that it's about to be her mother's final word and that's that. "The answer, Bianca Michelle, is, and always will be, no. Now, I don't want to talk about this ever again. Go help your sister pack her things."
Bianca does.
When she leaves with some friends that afternoon, they drive her to the airport when her mother thinks she's at some sleepover. She's packed, Addie and Tate promised to send the rest of her things later, and with a ticket in hand she makes her way aboard the plane and says goodbye to Los Angeles once and for all.
A year later, after months of unsuccessful tries to contact her siblings back home, Tate's picture fills the news, the papers, and the word-of-mouth Nationwide.
He shot and killed fifteen of his fellow students only to be shot by the SWAT team in his room.
Bianca stops trying to talk to her family after the fact. She goes on to become a head writer for the New York Times and says goodbye to her old life once and for all.
Twenty four years later.
The sharp, loud ringing breaks Bianca from her fitful sleep. She's in a haze, really, and her heart is thumping wildly and yet the balding head of her husband is sound asleep, snoring. David can sleep through a hurricane. Blindly groping with her hands towards the phone, she picks it up with her good hand to answer.
"Hello?" She asks her voice hoarse and full of sleep.
"Mrs. Olson?" The man in the phone asks. When Bianca confirms, he goes on. "This is the LAPD. It says here you're related to one Constance Marie Langdon, is that correct?"
It's hard not to eye-roll at the mention of her mother's name. For the past two decades or so that woman's been trying to reestablish contact with Bianca; every call she made went straight for voice mail, which went straight to being deleted for good. David never questions. She's told him about the horror stories and the stressful upbringing her mother enforced, so he never pushed it.
"Estranged daughter," Bianca quips, squint her eyes in confusion. "Is she finally being committed?"
"No. I'm sorry to tell you this, Mrs. Olson, but your mother is dead—hello? Mrs. Olson?"
Bianca doesn't answer. She just sits up right and drops the phone, staring ahead into nothingness.
