Pretty Things

by Janelle Brown

  My husband: Michael O’Brien.

  I struggle in the door with my suitcase, shaking snow from my hair, and he leaps forward to grab the bag, trading it for the glass in his hand. I find myself looking down into a dark pool of claret, my fist clenched around the crystal stem, unsettled.

  “Château Pape Clément—found it in the cellar,” he offers, noting the confusion on my face. “Here, I didn’t kiss you.”

  And then his lips are on mine, the heat of him melting the snowflakes that cling to my skin so that cold droplets trickle down my face like tears. His arms sweep around my back, pressing me against the soft nap of his sweater, underneath which I can feel the placid beat of his heart. There’s an unwelcome throb coming from my groin. And I swear the life growing in my womb recognizes his presence; something fluttering and trembling inside me. Against my will, I feel myself relax into him, the ease of just letting it all be, letting him take care of me. Of us.

  I spent the whole long drive back from Los Angeles preparing to confront a criminal—grinding my way through the storm, thinking, I can do this! I am capable, I am strong! I am Vanessa Fucking Liebling!—only to find this, an attentive husband, harmless as a teddy bear. I remind myself that this—he!—is just an illusion. But it’s such a convincing one.

  Who is Vanessa Fucking Liebling, anyway? A basket case; a weakling, hiding behind a name that’s lost all of its weight.

  I pull back. “You got a haircut,” I notice.

  “You like it, yeah? I remembered you preferred it shorter.” He runs a hand through his hair, tousling it so that a black curl falls over one eye. He smiles at me from underneath it, and I feel desire rising inside me despite myself. I follow him into the kitchen, where a fire leaps in the hearth and something roasts in the oven—a chicken? potatoes?—that smells of home. I’m so overwhelmed I want to weep; the conviction drains from me along with the snow from my boots.

  He pours himself a fresh glass of wine and then turns to look at me. I stand just inside the door, motionless, still in my coat, the wine in my hand untouched. The smile falls off his face in tiny pieces, then all at once.

  “Is something wrong?” he asks.

  Outside, the snow is coming down thick and fast, burying Stonehaven in a silent shroud. Three feet is expected tonight. The weather report is calling it the biggest storm of the season: a dump. (Oh, the irony!) I’m lucky I’m here at all: I had barely driven over the summit before the highway patrol closed the roads entirely.

  Despite the warmth from the fire, the steam clouding the windows, I’m freezing cold.

  I don’t realize that I’m about to speak until the words are suddenly out there, like a grenade slipping thoughtlessly from a hand. (Too soon! I’m not ready!)

  “Who are you?”

  He places the glass of wine down, his brows puckering with mild puzzlement. “Michael O’Brien?”

  “That’s your name. But who are you really?”

  He’s smiling again, bemusement twitching his upper lip. “Asks the queen of duplicity.”

  This stops me. Me? “What do you mean?”

  “Your career has been all about spinning lies. Putting up a pretty facade for public consumption when you’re a mess underneath. Selling a life that doesn’t really exist. You don’t see that as a lie?”

  “That doesn’t hurt anyone!” (Does it?)

  He shrugs and sits down on a stool. He settles the glass on the marble counter with a soft clink, spins it until it is perfectly aligned with the edge. “You can see it that way if you like. I’d disagree. You’ve been profiting off a mythical version of yourself, promoting unachievable aspiration, giving your half-million followers insecurity complexes and dooming them to a lifetime of FOMO therapy. You’re a huckster, darling. Like the rest of your kind.”

  My head feels thick, muddied. It’s maddening, how calm he is. He’s trying to confuse me; he’s succeeding, too.

  What do I say? I’m afraid of upsetting him. I still remember the horrible heft of that poker in his hand, the fury on his face when I told him I wasn’t as rich as he thought I was. There are knives in this kitchen; there are heavy cast-iron skillets and burning logs and all sorts of dangerous things. I don’t want a big confrontation. I just want him to leave.

  I try again.

  “Look, I’ve just been thinking.” (Gentle! I make my voice sound so gentle and unsure; which, really, isn’t much of a stretch.) “Is this really working, you and me? Together?”

  He spins the glass of wine on the counter. It wobbles drunkenly, threatening to tip over and shatter; and I’m about to lunge to grab it when he stabs the stem with a finger, anchoring it in place. “What? You’re unhappy, is it?”

  “I was just thinking.” I glance at the clock over the door. It’s only five P.M., but outside the kitchen windows I can’t see anything, only darkness; not even the lake, not even the falling snow. The stones of the mansion absorb all the sound from the storm; it’s so quiet in the kitchen that I can hear the hiss of the stove’s pilot light. “I was just thinking that maybe we could use a little space from each other. Our whole relationship happened awfully fast, and in such pressured circumstances, and maybe we didn’t know what—”

  He interrupts. “You were just thinking. Well I think maybe you’re always unhappy, yeah? I think your issues aren’t with me, they’re with what’s going on in your head.” He taps a finger to his temple. “You don’t really want me to leave. You just can’t quite believe that you don’t deserve to be alone. So I’m not going to go, because I know you’d regret it. I have no intention of letting your self-doubt dictate the parameters of our relationship.” He slides his hand across the counter, palm up, ready for me to slip my hand into his. “It’s for your sake, Vanessa. You’d be so lonely if I left. You’d hate yourself for throwing away what we had. I’m the only person alive who really sees you.”

  I stand there, frozen in place, chewing on this. Because, oh, he’s right. He does see me; he always did. I believed that he loved me despite my failings as a human being (or because of them!), but now I know that what he really saw were vulnerabilities that he could exploit. And that makes me hate myself even more. He doesn’t love you, because you’re unlovable. He was only ever trying to con you.

  And yet he still stands there, pinning me in place with those blue eyes of his, so tight with concern.

  He comes around the island to stand in front of me. “I can make you happy, Vanessa. You just have to let me. You just have to stop doubting me.” He reaches out and plucks at the zipper of my parka, as if trying to pull me into him. And for a brief moment, this does seem like the path of least resistance: To just lean into him, and let it all be! To relinquish my agency, accept my weakness, and let him wrest control. He is the father of the baby that is growing inside me; wouldn’t it be easier to raise a child with him than to try to do it all by myself? To try to reform him, so we can be a family? To continue to bathe myself in warm lies of convenience?

  I could just give him everything he wants, instead of waiting for him to take it from me. Why do I need any of this, anyway? Why not just hand it over to him and be rid of it?

  Instead, I put my hands on his chest, and push him—hard—away from me.

  As I do, there’s an unmistakable sound from the far end of the kitchen: squeaky hinges protesting, the groan of wood scraping against the floor. One of the kitchen doors has just been flung open. And Michael and I both turn around to stare at the farthest door, the one that leads to the games room, the door that almost never gets used.

  Nina is standing there. Her jeans are soaked from the knees down, her cheeks are slapped pink by the cold, and her bedraggled parka is dark with snow. In one hand, she holds one of the dueling pistols from the games room wall. The gun is pointed in our direction, though I can’t quite tell from where I stand if she’s trained it on Michael or on me.

 
The floor gives way underneath my feet, my knees buckle, and I think to myself, This is the end, finally.

  “Don’t waste your time,” she says to Michael. “She knows. She knows all about you.”

  35.

  WE AREN’T BORN MONSTERS, are we? At birth, don’t we all have potential baked into us, the possibility to be good people or bad or just some nebulous area in between? But life and circumstance do their work on the biases that are already written into our genes. Our bad behavior is rewarded; our weaknesses go unpunished; we aspire to ideals that can never be achieved and then grow bitter when we can’t reach those goals. We look out at the world, we measure ourselves within it, and become more and more entrenched in one position.

  We turn into monsters without even realizing it.

  That’s how you wake up, twenty-eight years into life, and find yourself looking down at a gun in your hands. And you wonder where the Rewind button might be, the button that might take you back to the very beginning so that you can try it all over again and see if you land somewhere new.

  On the other side of the kitchen, Vanessa and Lachlan are frozen in place, just a few feet from each other, their mouths shaped into identical, wordless Os. “She knows,” I say to Lachlan. “She knows all about you.”

  Lachlan looks from me to Vanessa to me again. It may be the very first time I’ve ever seen visible surprise on his face. “Where’d you come from?”

  “Jail,” I say.

  His brows squeeze together in a parody of confusion. “Oh, yeah?”

  “Please, show me the courtesy of not pretending to be surprised.”

  He hesitates for a moment, then laughs. “Fair play. OK, so how’d you get out, then?”

  “Posted bail, of course.”

  He’s calculating this, still not quite understanding. “Your mum did?”

  “No.” I waggle the gun in Vanessa’s direction, which is more difficult than I’d expected. It must weigh at least five pounds, with all that gold and engraving, and my sweaty hands keep slipping on the grip. “She found me and sprang me out.”

  “Eh?” He swivels to look at her. “Well, shite. I really didn’t think you had it in you!”

  I’m not sure whether he’s referring to her or me. Probably the both of us, the more I consider it. His Irish accent, now that I know it’s just an affectation, grates on my nerves.

  Lachlan—no, Michael, I remind myself—takes an exaggerated step backward from Vanessa. I have to make a choice then—at whom should I point the gun?—and I note the relief on his face as he realizes that I’ve left it trained on her. Our original mark. The privileged princess that we came here, together, to con. I watch his eyes flicker between us, and then settle on me, with a tiny smirk. He’s shifted his alliances back to me, and I am reassured to be back in his graces again. At this point, that’s my only hope.

  I look down the barrel at Vanessa and she is trembling as she stares nervously back at me, question marks in her eyes. I summon all those years of Liebling hatred, bring them back up to the surface—Who are you?— and glare steadily at her. She shrinks under my gaze, until she is just two moist, green pools of panic, ready to spread across the floor.

  When I turn to look at Michael he is smiling at me, a watching smile, tight and false. He’s waiting for me to show my hand.

  “She knows,” I say again. “She knows what we were up to. She knows you’re not who you are pretending to be.”

  He doesn’t even look at Vanessa; it’s as if she isn’t even there. “All right. Let’s talk. What’s your game, Nina? Why did you bother coming back here, then? Why didn’t you just fuck off to Mexico while you could?”

  “With a felony theft conviction hanging over my head? How far would I get? And about that—I need money, a lot, to pay for a good trial lawyer. Because of you, darling. Thanks for that.”

  “No hard feelings, yeah?” He is showing far too many teeth; I can see the strain on his face. “I hope you didn’t take it personally. I just saw a better opportunity. You always thought too small. Always so worried about not taking too much. It wasn’t working for me anymore. You and I— We’d run our course, don’t you think?”

  Vanessa has started slowly inching her way backward, one tiny step at a time; her hand groping behind her as if feeling for the handle of the kitchen door. “Go sit down over there,” I bark at her. I wave the gun at the table on the other side of the room.

  She goes and sits, like an obedient pet.

  “Here’s the deal. Whatever it is you’ve got going on with her”—I gesture at Vanessa—“I want in on it. Or I’ll go to the police. I’m sure they’d be happy to give me a plea deal if I turned you in, too. You’re a much bigger fish than I am.”

  “For fuck’s sake, Nina.” He looks down at his cashmere sweater, plucks an invisible thread from the front. “Sure, right. I’ll cut you in. Except you’ve just gone and cocked it all up with this little trick, haven’t you? What am I supposed to do now? Like you said, she knows. Besides, it turns out she doesn’t actually have any money.”

  “I do have money,” Vanessa objects softly. Her hair has fallen out of her ponytail and it covers her face so I can’t see her expression. She’s got her hands placed flat on the table, pressing hard, as if trying to anchor herself in place.

  Michael turns to look at her, with a snarl of disdain. “You have this heap of a house. You have antiques. Not the same thing at all.”

  “We’ll take the antiques, then,” I say to Michael. “We’ll find a way.”

  But Vanessa swings her head and peers up through the curtain of hair. “But I do. I do have cash, lots of it. At least a million. And jewels, my mother’s jewels, worth way more than that. I’ll give it all to you if you’ll just leave, the both of you.”

  Michael hesitates. “Where is it?”

  “The safe.”

  Michael throws his hands up. “My love, you’re a terrible liar.”

  “The safe was empty,” I offer. “I already looked inside.”

  Vanessa’s hands are pressing down so hard on the tabletop that they are turning white. Her eyes are pink and wet. “Not the safe in the study. The safe on the yacht.”

  “Where the hell’s the yacht?” Michael asks.

  “My mother’s yacht. It’s dry-docked. In the boathouse.”

  “Why the hell would anyone put a safe on a yacht?”

  “Of course yachts have safes. Have you ever even been on one?” She straightens a bit in her seat; shoulders pulling back, almost indignant. “Where else are you supposed to keep your valuables when you’re cruising around Saint-Tropez?”

  Michael glances at me, looking for backup. “Tahoe isn’t exactly Saint-Tropez.”

  “Well, there’s still a safe on our boat. And that’s where Daddy stashed a lot of the valuables because he figured people like you would never be smart enough to look there.”

  She sounds like her father again; the cool contempt in her voice makes my stomach curl reflexively. I study her face, looking for signs of prevarication—shifting eyes, a hitch in her breath—but there’s nothing to suggest that what she’s saying is a lie. She stares steadily back at me, her whole demeanor suddenly calm and collected.

  “Wouldn’t it have been easier to get a safety-deposit box?” I ask.

  She shakes her head. “He didn’t trust banks.”

  I turn to Michael. “Look—it can’t hurt to go check it out. If it’s true, it would be easier than the antiques.”

  Michael’s eyes drift to the window, as if expecting to see a boat parked down on the pier, but of course there’s nothing to see but snow swirling in the pitch-black night. “You want to go out in that?”

  “It’s just snow,” Vanessa says. “If we go down and get it now, will you get the hell out? Tonight?”

  Michael turns to me. I shrug: Why not?

  �
��Sure,” he says. “We’ll go.”

  * * *

  —

  We trudge across the great lawn and down the hill in the dark. The snow is so deep already that it sucks at our boots, fills our socks; we lurch and stumble and sink, leaving a path of destruction behind us. Vanessa leads, a few feet ahead of me, instinctively feeling her way down the path.

  It feels good to be so cold; it dulls the feverish voices that vibrate inside my skull. When I breathe, it hurts, but at least it means I’m still breathing.

  Michael falls into step beside me. The snow is falling fast and thick, but the storm is windless and still. It’s so deadly silent out here that I can hear the crunch of each footstep, as the fresh snow gives way to the harder crust beneath.

  Michael grabs my arm for balance, reeling toward me to mutter in my ear. “Hate to tell you this, but that thing’s not loaded.”

  It’s too hard to walk with the gun in my hand; I’ve tucked it into the waistband of my soggy jeans so that I have both hands for balance. “Actually, it is,” I say. “I checked.”

  He scrunches his face. “Huh. Wonder when she did that.” He steps into a snowdrift up to his knee, and swears. “Do you think there’s actually a boat? Or you think she’s trying to pull something over on us?”

  “Like what? She’s about as threatening as a kitten. Besides, there’s two of us and one of her. What could she possibly do to us?”

  “It’s weird, is all.” He sighs. “She’s a fucking liar, that one. Said she had no money.”

  I sink so deep in a drift that my boot comes off my foot. I reach into the snowbank and retrieve it, jam it back over my soggy sock. “So what were you planning? You might as well tell me.”

  He scowls. “It was gonna be divorce, right? Get hitched, no prenup, simplest con there is. Legal, even! California is a community property state, right? I figured, probably couldn’t get half of everything she had, but I’d at least get her to give me a couple million just to go away. But then she finally informs me that she has no real money, it’s all tied up in the fucking house. Which makes everything a lot harder, divorce-wise, yeah? Not like her lawyers are going to let me walk off with the keys to Stonehaven. So then I figured, I’d play nice husband instead, get her to rewrite her will and leave everything to me. Wait it out for a bit, and then…” He shrugs.