by Paul Pen
Something inside Grace had warned her that her deductions were leading to a dismal discovery, but really facing up to it, having to construct it with words, was as painful as reliving the episode when the gun had gone off. As if the bullet had hit her. “My God, Frank. Your son lost an eye because you brought a gun into the home to protect yourself from a woman who wants you for herself. That’s what happened. Our boy will be missing an eye for the rest of his life because of you. Because of . . . this.”
She gestured at the two of them with contempt, moving her hand with a disdain that made them something appalling, something hard to look at. In this new distorted reality Grace had been transported to, everything was hollow, and awful. And if the person responsible for this distortion was the person she loved most, then everything she knew about the world was a lie. Love didn’t exist. Goodness didn’t, either. Frank nodded. He lowered his head, accepting the full weight of the guilt that Grace had tried to take off his shoulders since the incident but that now made so much sense.
Mara cleared her throat. “It isn’t exactly like that.”
Frank looked up with eyes full of hate.
“It’s incredible how misogynist we women can be,” Mara said to Grace. “How easily we blame one another before blaming the man. Crazy, unbalanced, in love with your husband. Is that the first explanation you arrive at? I’m the crazy one, right? The one responsible for everything. And this is all my doing.” She stretched out her arms to illustrate how extreme the situation was. “Why? Out of spite? Out of love? Because your husband’s such an incredible man that a woman like me will lose her mind after sleeping with him a few times, to the point that I’d threaten his wife with a knife? It’s not that, Grace. I’m not threatening you. You’re a wonderful woman who’s had the misfortune of being another victim of your husband’s staggering lack of honesty. He deceived me, too, denying your existence for months. Telling me he was divorced.”
Another crack opened up on Grace’s heart. She looked at Frank’s ringless left hand. He’d never worn it—he said he was uncomfortable in it, just as he never wore a watch or a necklace. He didn’t even wear sunglasses. When Grace commented on it in one of her videos, many of her subscribers remarked that it seemed like a lack of respect on her husband’s part to refuse to wear the wedding ring, but to Grace that sounded like the antiquated argument of conservative women. A piece of metal didn’t make their marriage any worthier.
“I would never have done anything with a married man,” Mara went on. “If you knew the pain something like that caused in my fam—” A sob interrupted her words. She closed her eyes and shook her head as if fighting against a memory that tormented her. When she opened them again, full of malice, she aimed the knife at Frank. “That’s why I’m here. Because he made me play a part in cheating on another innocent woman.” Her fingers squeezed the hilt with rage. “And because of everything he did to me afterward. Because you haven’t heard all of the truth yet, Grace. There’s more. Much more.”
Frank took a step toward Mara, who brandished the weapon firmly.
“Don’t come near me.”
“Please . . .” He held his hands together as if praying. “Don’t do this.”
Grace took his arm as though he was a stranger.
“Do what?” she asked. “Say what?”
Frank didn’t respond, didn’t even look at her. His eyes remained fixed on Mara’s, half pleading, half intimidating.
“What?” Grace insisted.
It was Mara who spoke.
“The night your son . . .” She cleared her throat, preparing herself for what she was about to say. “The night your son lost his eye . . . I guess you missed your husband when you were at the hospital.”
Grace nodded. Frank had disappeared for a few hours, roaming the building’s surroundings, overcome with guilt because of what had happened to Simon, hurt by the accusation Grace had made.
“He was with me,” said Mara. “He came to see me at my place.”
“Shut up,” Frank muttered. “Please, stop.”
Grace felt her soul being pinched.
“You went to see your lover while your son was in the hospital?”
“But he didn’t come for that, Grace.” Mara swatted a mosquito on her arm. “Let me tell you why he did come, what your husband did that night.”
Mara already had a foot in the water when the intercom bleeped. Since she’d moved to the apartment, every party night had ended in the tub on the balcony—there was no better way to sober up than to relax for a while in the hot water. She could turn on the bubbles or not, depending on how drunk she was and whether she wanted to make use of them in the other pleasant way she did from time to time. That night, for the time being, she wasn’t going to turn them on—the tequila shots at the end of the night were still making her dizzy. To this day, she still didn’t understand why she kept drinking those shots, knowing how unwell they made her feel. Well, she did know: it was Gabby’s fault. Gabby always shrieked the idea at her, with her eyes popping out, at eleven o’clock at night. The hot tub would be the perfect way to subdue the last waves of drunkenness from those shots and everything else she’d drunk. But just as she dipped her foot in, the intercom began bleeping with an urgency as alarming as it was annoying. One of her guests must have forgotten something.
Mara covered her nakedness with a towel tied around her chest. She walked from the balcony to the intercom, dodging red plastic cups and knocking over a can of Rainier that spilled beer on the floor. She mopped it up with someone’s sweatshirt she found on a stool, which might have been exactly what the person ringing the doorbell like a lunatic had returned for. She also trod in something sticky with her heel and hoped it was more spilled beer and not vomit like in another of her recent parties. If she didn’t know why she always ended up drinking tequila shots, she found it even harder to understand why she kept organizing parties with more than thirty people in her apartment, given that when they were over and it was time to clean up, she always promised herself it had been the last. It must have been that, in the end, her vanity got the better of her and she wanted to show off her home, the newest and most sophisticated in her friend group. Many of those friends wondered how she had gotten her hands on such an apartment downtown. Only her closest ones knew the sad truth. After Mom’s death, Dad got rid of the house where his wife had taken her own life. He sold the gigantic property on the outskirts and offered the money to Mara by way of a strange apology for cheating on her mother for thirty years. He persuaded her to accept it by assuring her that it was what her mother had wanted—apparently, for over a year, Mom had been suggesting the idea of selling the house that was now too big for them and using the money to help their only daughter. Mara accepted the money, but not the apology.
It wasn’t a guest Mara now saw on the intercom screen, but Frank, who was staring straight at the camera as if wanting to look her in the eyes.
She buzzed open the street-level door and waited for him at the apartment entrance with the door open a crack. The elevator’s blue lights announced his arrival on her floor. Frank ran out and pushed her apartment door open before Mara could react to his sudden appearance. Inside, seeing him pace around in circles with his hands on his head but unable to articulate a single word, Mara thought she understood what had happened.
“Did you tell her?” she asked. “You finally told your wife?”
Frank looked at her with contempt, the kind of contempt a woman does not allow in her own home and that filled Mara with the desire to kick him out. She was about to do so when the pain and desperation she saw in his eyes brought out her compassion. She asked him again if he’d told Grace about their affair, but he snorted, dismissing the possibility as if it were absurd. Then he bit his lip as his eyes welled up and his chin trembled.
“Stop,” Frank said. “Please, stop now.”
Mara tried to take his hand, but he moved away.
“What is it? I haven’t done anything else. I haven’t
been back to your house.”
Frank rested his back on the glass partition between the entrance hall and the living room and slid down it until he was sitting on the floor. Covering his eyes with his hands, he told her that his son, his youngest, had just blown an eye out with a gun he’d found in his bedside table. Right now the doctors were deciding whether they could save it or he’d be one-eyed for the rest of his life. At the age of nine.
“What’re you doing here, then?” Mara asked. “Why aren’t you at the hospital with him, with your wife?”
“I needed to ask you to please stop,” said Frank, uncovering his reddened eyes. “Leave me in peace, stop tormenting me. I have money, I can give you money. Or give you back the RV, tomorrow, for nothing, so you can sell it again at the dealership. Anything, but please, stop doing this to me. Leave my family in peace. They don’t deserve to suffer like this.”
The mere mention of money offended her. Frank knew her objectives were different.
“You know the only thing I want, Frank. For you to put right what you’ve done. For you to tell your wife. It’s not just that I want you to do it. It’s the least your wife deserves. To know the truth. To know her husband.”
Frank looked up at the ceiling and let out a sigh that contained a barely enunciated plea. A pitter-patter caught his attention, approaching along the microcement hall floor.
“What’s all this?” he asked, indicating the debris from the party.
“I just had a little party. We under-thirties still have them, you know.”
The pitter-patter snaked between the plastic cups, wet ice bags, and empty soda bottles, until two curious snouts emerged from the detritus. Audrey’s ferrets chased each other on their way out of the living room.
“You still have them,” said Frank.
“Sure. They’ll go home to your daughter when you confess, you know that. None of this is Audrey’s fault. You’re the one who forced me to use your family. You can end this whenever you want. You decide.”
“Please, stop.” His shoulders slumped. “Look how far you’ve taken this. Look what you’ve done to my son.”
“Me?” The accusation outraged her enough to almost sober her up, like a big fright. “That gun has nothing to do with me.”
“I bought it because of you,” Frank whispered, “after you started coming into my home like some crazy woman out of Fatal Attraction.”
“And you didn’t think that a crazy woman out of Fatal Attraction coming into your house might be because you’ve become the disgusting unfaithful husband in that movie? When’re you going to take responsibility for your actions, Frank? If you’re man enough to have an affair, you should also be man enough to tell your wife. To be frank. So she knows the life she believes she’s leading isn’t what she thinks it is.”
Just as the life Mom lived had been a lie. Mara had not stopped thinking about Mom, about her pain, her unjust end, since she learned of Grace’s existence. It was in this pain that Mom suffered, and in her determination to prevent it from happening to another woman, to other children, Mara found the justification for taking whatever measures were necessary to force Frank to confess. Silent pressure had not worked, so she had been obliged to adopt more extreme methods: to break into his home, steal his daughter’s pets, tamper with his wife’s shampoo. With the shampoo she had overplayed her hand, miscalculated the quantity. But some lost hair was a very small price for Grace to pay for her husband’s honesty. For the truth.
“Please, leave me in peace,” Frank pleaded.
Mara returned to the balcony to take the bath she needed. She wasn’t going to allow Frank’s crisis of conscience to ruin it. Not after he had dragged her, with his lies, into a situation she detested more than anyone. A conscience was precisely what a man who repeatedly sleeps with another woman before going home to sleep with his wife doesn’t have.
“Besides, what were you intending to do with a gun?” she asked him near the hot tub, Frank behind her now. “Shoot me if I’d gone back in your house? God, Frank, all I did was steal some pets and mess with your wife’s shampoo—I didn’t kill anybody. And I repeat, you can end this whenever you want. It’s not fair for you to get off scot-free after cheating on your wife, on the mother of your children. On your own children. It’s not fair.”
“Then tell her,” said Frank, offering her a cell phone he pulled from his pocket. “Go on, call her and tell her, if that’s what you want, but stop doing all the other stuff.”
“No, Frank.” Mara batted the phone away with a smile. “Telling the truth’s up to you. You’re the only one making the situation worse every day. If you’d been honest with your wife from the start, after the first time in the hut, I bet anything you would’ve had a chance to fix it. A lot of wives end up forgiving their husbands if it’s just one time, a moment of madness. We’re all human, women understand that. But you kept quiet. You’re still keeping quiet, just like my father did. He was silent for thirty years. He stole thirty whole years from my mother.” Mara clenched her jaw when she mentioned her father, spat the tragic consequence of that betrayal through her teeth. “He stole her whole life from her. And you’ve kept quiet to protect yourself even when your lover broke into your house to harass your family, your children. I promise you, that’s much harder to forgive. The longer you take to tell her the truth, the more Grace is going to hate you. When my mother knew the last thirty years of her life had been a lie, that my father had shared his love with other women . . . it destroyed her, Frank. It’s not right for a man to hurt a woman so much, and I’m not going to let you do it to your wife. I’m not going to give you that amount of time.”
“So that’s what this is? I’m revenge for something from your past? That’s why you’re enjoying this,” he said, clenching his fists. “You’re enjoying seeing me suffer, making me pay for something your father did that has nothing to do with me.”
“I enjoy making a man be honest with his wife. I enjoy the truth.”
“Please,” Frank whimpered, holding his hands to his chest. “My son’s lost an eye.”
“And I’m very sorry. I’m sure he’s a wonderful boy. But I didn’t do it. You bought the weapon and the bullets. You kept them in a place where he could find them. You’re the one who did that to your son, like you did this”—she removed her towel, showing him her naked body—“to your wife. When’re you going to stop hurting your family?”
Mara gave Frank a lascivious look, sitting on the edge of the hot tub. Her taunt twisted Frank’s face into a grimace of hatred that frightened her. Moments before, Mara had seen the urge to hit her pass over Frank’s face like a thundercloud. Now he struck like lightning, fast and merciless. So fast that Mara only felt the impact on her face when he had already retracted his hand. She felt heat there, pain in her eye, fire in her chest, and tension in her teeth. But also shame in her stomach, a victim’s unjust humiliation.
The slap left her disoriented for a moment. She didn’t know whether to respond first to her indignation or her pain. Then her disorientation turned into a loss of balance, and she slipped into the tub. Her body fell into the water, her head hitting one of the acrylic corners. The sound of the blow to the back of her neck, the organic crunch of a watermelon hitting the ground, made her bite her lips and tense her fingers in horror. It felt like the electric shock from a blow to the funny bone, but all over her body. Then the pain blinded her, it emanated in waves from the corner behind her neck, synchronized with her accelerated pulse. She imagined an enormous heart beating in the back of her head, on the corner of the hot tub, sending not blood but boiling acid to the rest of her body, painfully dissolving her entire system, turning her into a strange electric jellyfish that feeds solely on pulses of pain. One sense remained unaltered during her agonizing delirium: taste, revealing to her that death is soap-flavored. Soap stuck to the roof of the mouth, as if the jellyfish she now was had a mouth. And if it did, it could speak. She tried.
“Eat all the needles, they’re made o
f ice,” she said.
Her own ravings—the meaningless words that came from her mouth when what she’d wanted to do was ask for help—alarmed her. She blinked, fighting against the bright light that was blinding her, which turned out to be just the balcony light. Her balcony. Little by little the french doors, the rest of the room, her motionless body under the water came into focus. And Frank, standing by the hot tub. From his contorted face she gauged the seriousness of the fall, and in his eyes she could see the distress of someone witnessing a terrible accident. She saw pity in them, but also the relief of someone who isn’t in the victim’s situation. The fear he exuded infected her, injecting her with adrenaline.
“Frank, help me.” This time her lips said what she intended. “Frank, please. I can’t move.”
Her useless body didn’t respond to any of her attempts, as if she really had mutated into a strange jellyfish specimen whose tentacles were unable to interpret the orders from a human brain. Her limbs remained underwater as if they were dead, and her back was slipping on the acrylic, sinking her slowly.
“Come on, Frank, get me out.”
In his frightened expression she perceived his desire to help her, the human instinct to assist someone injured. But before he responded to that impulse, the light in his eyes changed.
“Frank!”
Mara’s backside was descending the smooth surface, dragging the spine, the neck, the head with it. The corner of the hot tub had gone from her neck to her skull, her hair was floating around her eyes, her chin was underwater. Frank simply watched what was happening, the instinct to help now gone from his eyes, now glazed in an unsettling glow that scared her even more. Because she began to understand what it meant.
“I’m sinking, Frank. You pushed me. You did this to me. Frank! Help me!”
He kept looking at her without doing anything, the glow in his eyes darkening just as the decision he’d made darkened his soul. Mara yelled again, but her words were just bubbles, her mouth underwater now. The taste of soap, that bitter taste of absurd death, reached her stomach. All the fear she’d felt in her life until then was nothing compared to what shook her now, finding herself unable to breathe, to move. The feeling of comfort she’d had from persuading herself that nobody drowns in a hot tub—in such a stupid way—disappeared, because in reality she knew that these domestic accidents did happen—it was happening to her. Stupid deaths are only stupid when they happen to other people. And now that Mara knew she could die in a hot tub, she understood that there was nothing funny about it, as it may have seemed to whoever would read about it tomorrow in a news item shared on Facebook. Those people were unlikely to understand how someone could drown in two hundred gallons of water, but for Mara the hot tub was as big as the Pacific Ocean, and she was a wretched dying jellyfish sinking to the seabed in a goddamned hydromassage bath.