by Paul Pen
From the moment Mara discovered that Frank was married, all she could think about was her mother. And then also Grace, the woman who sang her husband’s praises in the videos on her channel, both in the glimpses of their everyday life she recorded with him and in the profound confessions she made in some private part of the house, speaking directly to the camera, to her subscribers. Disgusted with Frank, with herself, with men, with the entire world, Mara thought that fate had perhaps given her the opportunity to rewrite Mom’s story through Grace. For this to happen, Grace had to receive the confession from Frank that mom never received from her husband. It had to be Frank who confessed—Mara wouldn’t tell his wife. That afternoon, she had called Frank. When she mentioned Gracefully and what she’d discovered, he told her not to contact him again. He hung up without saying goodbye. Mara kept calling that Sunday, that entire week. She sent dozens of messages demanding that he confess. One day her call no longer got through, her messages bounced back. Frank had blocked her number. That was when she visited him at the hotel where he worked, until security asked her to leave. She also started walking past his house, looking at him from outside, from his yard, leaning against the motor home she had sold him, as he ate dinner with his family and got up from the table to close the curtains so he could no longer see her. Silent, rational pressure got her nowhere, so Mara had to change tack. Pressure him in some other way. And then the situation turned ugly. So ugly it brought her to this remote road with a knife in her purse so she could once and for all make Frank face up to the consequences of his actions.
Mara touched the butterfly bandages over her eyebrow. The wound was clean, it didn’t hurt. Her stomach bothered her more. Swallowing the car key had been an extreme measure, but she’d thought of no other way out. Frank had started being a jerk with the idea of going to find her car, and his next movement would’ve been to search her. She’d seen it in his eyes. He wanted her out of the RV, any way possible. And if he’d searched her purse, he would’ve found the knife. The emergency weapon she’d brought with her in case things got complicated, though she never thought she’d end up using it. But she did end up using it. It was useful for puncturing the tires, preventing them from leaving.
The accident was an unforeseen event that altered the nature of the encounter and forced her to improvise. Everything could have been much simpler. Her initial plan had been to ask for help, for the family to come across a woman needing assistance in a peaceful place like this. It would have gained her access to the RV to watch Frank stew—with her in front of him—in his own simmering conscience, like a human body cooking in boiling, sulfur-infused thermal waters. But instead they almost ran her over. The blow to the head when she hit the ground hurt, and the blood filling her eyes frightened her. Then the plan became more difficult to execute, to the point that she had to swallow her own car key. Lucky it wasn’t one of the bigger ones.
Had he searched her, had he found the knife in her purse, it would have been easy for Frank to prove she’d cut the tires. That they hadn’t burst by themselves, as he’d told his family—a lie that surprised Mara but that she quickly understood. Frank didn’t want to make her angry. Or for the situation to get out of hand. Just as he had closed his living-room curtains so many times to stop seeing her in the yard outside, instead of going out to send her away and arousing his family’s suspicion. Frank wanted to buy time—he knew she could reveal the truth at any moment, that one false move could make her talk.
Mara herself sometimes wondered why she didn’t just come out with it. Why she didn’t stop messing around and reveal everything in front of the wife. She wanted to spare the children the experience—they shouldn’t have to suffer because of their father. Or maybe they should. The truth is always worth knowing. But this truth was dirty work Frank had to do. He was the one who had to be honest. That responsibility couldn’t fall on her, too. Or maybe it should. Maybe she should tell. Mara hadn’t been thinking straight lately—she’d lost her sense of justice, of punishment. Mom had repeated to her several times that if only it had been Dad who had confessed, the truth would have hurt less.
But Mara, after being denied time after time, was like a bomb with a lit fuse. A fuse of an unknown length that was already smelling of gunpowder. Little detonations were warning signals of the imminent final explosion. One of those warnings had been when she’d stuck her fingers in the food-truck power socket. She must be pretty crazy to do something like that. Or badly hurt. The truth was, she hadn’t thought the electric shock would hurt so much. Just as she didn’t know, when the boy behind the counter had helped her, that taking his hand would transmit the electricity to him. Poor guy. He’d been so kind, giving her a free burger, worrying about her well-being. And she’d thanked him with a short circuit that left him shaking on the floor. When the boy regained his senses, his overweight coworker at the grill had berated her, called her crazy, a drunk, a junkie, while she fled home, crying in the rain, trembling from shock and cursing the fact that a man, Frank, had managed to make her feel so miserable. Exactly what Mom had asked her never to allow.
Still gripping the sink, she felt a stomach cramp shift the key in her intestines. Mara imagined it scrambled up with the wife’s omelet, still only half digested. Egg. Tomato. Peppers. Ham. And chia seeds. It worried her to think how she would evacuate it, whether it would hurt as much as the time she and Frank had tried doing it differently. As well-endowed as he was, the experience had frightened her as much as it thrilled her. At first it hurt quite a lot, but then they both enjoyed it until orgasm. When they’d finished, from behind her on the bed Frank admitted it was one of the things he had never been able to do with his earlier lovers. And she asked him never to blame women for his own sexual dissatisfaction. And to please never blame a woman for any other defect or deficiency of his own—it was a terrible habit men had. In spite of everything, remembering that experience triggered an inappropriate flash of excitement in her belly. She squeezed her eyes shut, as if it would stop images of that encounter from entering her mind. And stop other images. Her apartment. The hot tub. The amateur porn. The honey. She pulled on her hair as punishment for feeling even a tiny trace of attraction to Frank. For desiring an undesirable man. A pathetic excuse for a man in whose eyes, last night, she had recognized, for an instant, the same flash of desire. So brief, so powerful. Mara tugged hard on her hair. Once. Twice. Until her burning scalp finally distracted her from the pain that thinking about Frank inflicted on her.
She removed the pajama top, avoiding the butterfly bandages on her eyebrow. She appreciated the warm aroma that came off the clothes and imagined Grace giving off this innocent smell in the double bed she shared with Frank, filling the entire bedroom with it. How unexciting such a smell would be for him. The smell of baby. Of cuddly toy. Of home life and nights of boredom in the suburbs. She let the pajama pants drop to her ankles, and she also dropped her panties, her bra. The bright red of the scrape near her navel had turned dark. In the bathroom she recognized elements from another bathroom, the one at Frank’s house, which she had visited on a few occasions. The towels with embroidered initials. The perfumed toilet paper with flower-shaped perforations. The mesh sponge hanging from the shower faucet. On the floor, the gigantic pink bottle of the wife’s shampoo: Pure Seduction, a kitsch Victoria’s Secret product with a gold lid and extracts of red plum and freesia. When she saw it in the bathroom at the house, it struck her as an extravagance—in the limited space of the motor home it seemed grotesque.
In the shower she discovered something worse, even tackier than the gold lid on the plum shampoo. In two corners of the enclosure, there were units separating bathroom products into His and Hers. It was written in adhesive letters on each of the shelves. Grace’s contained more bottles of hair treatment, as well as tubs of face mask made from exotic ingredients—pineapple, coconut, papaya—a pumice stone, another mesh sponge, a large lilac bar of soap, and a multipurpose gel labeled For Kids that must have been for the little boy. On
Frank’s shelf, as if it were a bad comic strip on the difference between men’s and women’s personal care, there was just a razor and a somber bar of dark-brown soap. Pine tar, no doubt. She held her nose to it and identified its characteristic smell of burned wood. So masculine. So stale. So old-man-ish. Seeing the razor and the bar of soap together gave Mara an idea. She searched in the cupboard behind the mirror. In the side compartments. In the drawers under the sink. Until she found a box of replacement blades.
She buried one of the blades in Frank’s soap.
She remolded the soap to hide it inside the bar, though the edge would poke out again as soon as it was used. She imagined where he would rub the soap when he showered. Some basic, malevolent instinct hoped he’d be applying it to his crotch when the razor emerged. Castration as an exemplary punishment for the unfaithful male. That he’d cut off his testicles. His penis. That he’d find blood on his fingers, between his legs, like a first period. That this would make him understand some of the suffering involved in simply being a woman.
She returned the soap with the razor hidden in it to the corner caddy.
She smiled as she read the adhesive letters: His.
“Yours,” she whispered.
Two blows on the wall outside shook the room.
“You taking a shower or what?” yelled Frank.
“Don’t worry, Mara, take as long as you want,” Grace added.
She heard them argue in whispers on the other side of the translucent window. And she smiled. She opened the shower door. She turned the faucet full to the left and got under the water, which was so hot it turned the enclosure into a cloud of steam. She clenched her teeth, enjoying the pain on her skin. The back of her neck burned, her fingernails burned. When she began to get dizzy, she turned the faucet as far as it would go the other way. The freezing water left her breathless.
23.
Frank walked away from Grace. He had no desire to continue arguing, much less due to Mara—that was what she wanted. He wandered around the RV, taking deep breaths. Passing the tent, he saw Mara’s purse inside. He stopped. Inside that purse would be the knife, and he didn’t want it near his children. And the car key, if she hadn’t swallowed it as he suspected she had. But her cell phone would also be in there, and he could use it to call 911 right now. She had used it as a flashlight the night before—it was the only one she didn’t end up throwing into the forest. Frank swept his gaze around him, locating his family: Audrey was still looking for the phones in the undergrowth, Simon was failing in his attempt to fold the map and restore it to its original form, and Grace was out of sight behind the vehicle, where the bathroom window he’d just banged on was. None of them were paying any attention to him. Frank walked around the tent as if checking its structure. He stretched the fabric out, pushed the pegs in. He knelt at the door, pretending to examine the zipper mechanism. He stretched out his arm, the only part of his body that penetrated the tent. With two fingers, he reached the purse strap and pulled on it, dragging it out. It was heavy. With sweaty hands, as if he were a pickpocket, he lifted one corner of the flap. Then the other.
“Frank!”
His wife’s whispered cry sounded like the cry of a police officer arresting that pickpocket he felt like. Grace knelt and snatched the purse from him.
“I wanted . . . I wanted to make sure we’re not in danger, check she’s not hiding anything in there.”
“This is unbelievable.”
“Come on, open it, let’s see.”
“No, Frank, this isn’t how we do things.” She closed the fasteners on the flap. “Do you know how private the contents of a woman’s purse are?”
“Mom, please, stop saying those things.” Audrey had moved her search to this side of the road. “Stop promoting stereotypes about women, their femininity, and their purses.”
“And you stop listening in on your parents’ conversations. Get back to where you were, go on,” Grace said. “And stop pulling weeds up, look at the state you’re in.”
Audrey crossed the road, ruffling Simon’s map as she passed him. Grace put the purse back inside the tent, rearranging the strap into a casual shape on the ground. She instructed Frank to get up and return with her to the other side of the RV. They could hear the shower through the bathroom window. It was still running with the same intensity.
“She’s going to use up all the hot water,” said Audrey.
“Our boiler’s tankless,” Frank clarified.
“But what can be used up is the water,” noted Grace. “And if we’re going to end up spending a few days here, we should ration it.”
“Shut up, Mom, we’re not going to spend a few days here.”
“Doesn’t bother me!” said Simon.
“What if she fainted?” Grace scraped her fingertip against the end of her eyebrow. “From the bruise she got yesterday or something, a drop in blood pressure from the hot water. The first twenty-four hours after an accident are very dangerous, I’m telling you.”
Frank shook his head. There was nothing wrong with Mara. If anything, she’d be emptying the tank on purpose. Leaving the family without water would be another way to create chaos, to put their lives at risk and force him to confess. He imagined her standing in the bathroom, watching the water run with a half-smile on her face.
“Just watch how quickly she gets out when I turn off the boiler.”
He went around the back of the motor home to the right-hand side. He opened the exterior compartment where the controls were. When they were planning their first trip—the period that dragged out for such a long time—Frank himself had exchanged the tank system for a boiler like the one in their house. He pressed the red button. On the little screen, the flashing flame and shower icons went off. The water instantly stopped running, as if Mara had turned it off at the same time.
“What did I say?” Frank asked as he returned to his wife and daughter.
“Thank goodness.” Grace withdrew her finger from her eyebrow. “She’s all right.”
The motor home rocked with Mara’s movement as she walked from the bathroom to the door. Frank went to receive her first. The moment he turned the corner, his feet stuck to the ground.
Mara had come out naked.
Her breasts, her elbows, her hands were dripping water onto the road. The liquid that ran down her pelvis formed a stream that flowed toward Frank, as if the water wanted to bring them together again. Her soaked hair formed a grotesque mask over her face. When she smiled, her teeth showed through the wet locks.
“Help me,” she whispered.
The knot of anxiety tightened in Frank’s chest. She offered him the towel she was holding in her hand, still unused.
“I said help me.”
Grace’s voice came from the other side of the motor home. “Everything OK?”
“Help me.” Mara shook the towel. “Please.”
Frank heard Grace’s footsteps coming around the vehicle, walking toward them. Simon joined her.
“No, honey, no, don’t come, stay—”
But it was too late. Grace snorted when she discovered the scene. Simon’s jaw dropped, leaving him openmouthed. His uncovered eye widened. Grace covered it, forming a second patch with her hand. Frank launched himself onto Mara, embracing her to cover her nudity. He quickly regretted his instinctive reaction, the improper familiarity he demonstrated by approaching the naked body of a stranger in such a presumptuous way. A body he knew all too well. His forwardness could arouse Grace’s suspicions. But Grace was gone, she’d fled with the boy. Alone, Mara twisted in his arms like a water snake, making his clothes wet.
“I’m soaked,” she whispered, “just as you like it.”
Frank separated himself from her as if she burned. On the other side of the vehicle, Grace was telling Simon not to move, while Audrey argued there was nothing wrong or shameful about a woman’s naked body, that all human beings come from the same place. Frank thought his wife would return angry at the liberties he’d taken with
the stranger, but she didn’t. The values that shaped her benign view of life could not coexist with the possibility—however remote—of her husband, the person in whom she placed all of her trust, being able to cheat on her with another woman, so when Grace reappeared, she was concerned only about Mara.
“Are you all right?” She encouraged her to use the towel. “Maybe that blow to the head was worse than we all thought, huh?”
“Why?” Mara combed her hair with her fingers and spread the strands out behind her head. “I’m fine, better than before. The hot water did me a world of good. I never imagined being able to shower so comfortably in an RV.”
She rubbed her towel-wrapped hair. Her bare breasts bounced with each movement. Frank clenched his fists, containing the rage that this new provocation ignited in him.
“If you don’t think there’s anything strange about what just happened, then I certainly am worried about the blow to the head,” said Grace.
Mara stopped rubbing and frowned.
“Strange?” She fell silent for a few seconds, as if she really didn’t know what Grace was referring to. “Oh, because of this?” She opened her arms. “Because I’m naked? It bothers you?”
“What do you think?” Grace snatched the towel from her and wrapped it around her body, under her armpits, hiding her breasts, her pelvis. “There’s a nine-year-old boy with us. And he’s just seen a naked woman for the first time in his life.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Really, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Forgive me, really.” The impudence had turned to remorse, and Frank admired Mara’s variety of theatrical registers as she stretched the bottom of the towel to cover herself. “A lot of these hot springs are pretty much clothing optional, so I thought you would be, too. Or at least that it wouldn’t bother you. It’s pretty normal to see people bathing naked here. I’m not going to be the last person you see, I warn you.”