by Paul Pen
Grace blinked several times to dry her eyes.
“Is what she’s saying true, Frank?”
“No, honey, of course it isn’t.” Her husband gave her a sidelong smile, like on the bench outside Starbucks where it all began. “She’s unhinged, she’s a psychopath.”
“Stop lying to your wife, Frank. Stop it now,” Mara ordered. Then she looked at Grace. “Do you want to see what he did?”
She took a cell phone from her purse.
“What’re you doing?” asked Frank.
Mara browsed the device with her thumb until she found what she was looking for. She threw the handset to Grace, who caught it in midair. Mara told her to play the selected video, apologizing for how much it was going to hurt her. Frank stuttered, trying to say something he never managed to say.
When Grace tapped the screen and started watching the recording—the horrible reality of what Frank had done—the strange world she seemed to have been exiled to since her husband admitted his infidelity now continued to mutate until it became uninhabitable. She wanted the vacuum in her chest, created when so many good things were suddenly absent, to suck her up completely. To make her disappear, taking with it the pain of the deceit, the shame, the deep sadness. Beside her, Frank didn’t even bother to peek at the cell phone’s screen. He just lashed out at Mara, accusing her of trying to trick his wife with some material she must have fabricated as part of her sinister plot. But his yelling stopped when the plucking from Jewel’s song came from the telephone’s speaker. Grace thought she would faint at the horrifying scene on the device.
“It can’t be,” Frank murmured to himself. Then he yelled at Mara. “It’s not possible! I deleted all the files. All the day’s recordings.”
“Come on, Frank, you’re smarter than that,” said Mara. “You deleted it locally. Before midnight I was able to access a backup copy of all the videos on the cloud, from my own cell phone. You didn’t delete anything.”
Grace recognized her husband’s characteristic ineptitude with technology in Mara’s words. Her hands began to tremble.
“Honey,” he said, “please, honey, I didn’t . . .”
Frank must have seen in Grace’s eyes the vacuum that was destroying her from the inside. Faced with the sudden but total absence of love in the gaze that had adored him for twenty years without cracking, he finally collapsed. He sat on the road, hiding his head between his legs. He begged her to forgive him, weeping in a way that almost moved her.
“I am so sorry, Grace. I really am,” said Mara. “For everything that’s happened. For your hair. For that video. At first, I just wanted your husband to admit his cheating, so you wouldn’t suffer like my mother did when it was already too late, but now I need him to confess something much more serious. I need Frank to give himself up to the police.”
Frank stood, filled with rage.
“Come on, you’re a psycho who’s enjoying all this.” He waved his arms and spat as he spoke. Then he turned to Grace. “Honey, I don’t deserve this. You and the kids don’t deserve it. She came into our house, she took Audrey’s ferrets, she burned your hair. Who knows what she’s done now to poor Earl.” He indicated the blood on Mara’s clothes. “I deserve you leaving me, I deserve to have to give up my home, my children, to regret for the rest of my days that I lost the love of my life because of a stupid impulse. But I don’t deserve this madness. Whatever her father did isn’t my fault. And if she had that video, why didn’t she go to the police the next day? Why aren’t they coming to arrest me? That was the logical thing to do, not all this nonsense.”
Grace saw some logic in what Frank said, so she asked Mara the same question.
“It took me a few days to come around. I don’t know if I completely have yet,” she replied. “What Frank did to me changed me forever, Grace. I’d never felt my life was so worthless. His admitting what he did to me would be the first step to regaining my self-worth. I don’t want statements, arrest warrants, investigations, or to be questioned, like women always are. I want Frank to confess what so many men deny doing to so many women. I want him to do it for all the victims who never made it out of the bathtub, the kitchen, the bed, who never had the chance to seek justice. I have been given that chance, and I demand that my executioner confesses.”
Frank snorted. “Please! Can you hear yourself? Speaking as if you’re a martyr?” he said. “You love this.”
“I loved the face you made when you saw me on the road again, when you hit me—I won’t deny it. Raised from the dead for you. It was a moment I’d been waiting for. I gave a lot of thought to how I’d show up, like a ghost, but you decided to escape before I had the chance. You deceived your family again to drag them to the other side of the country with the ridiculous excuse of building a new future. And I had to improvise, show up here, stop you from getting away. Just moving to another state in itself makes any legal action more complicated, more drawn out, without your confession. Do you see why I need you to turn yourself in?”
Frank feigned a grotesque laugh.
“You really are crazy if you think I’m going to hand myself over. Take that video to the police, tell them your version, and we’ll see if they come looking for me.”
“It’s up to you, Frank,” she said with a smile. “I’ll take the video to the police, then . . . and I’ll publish it on the internet, as well.”
Grace stifled a scream.
“It was what I first thought of doing,” Mara explained. “Upload the video to the web so everyone can see how some men treat their darkest secrets, which unfortunately tend to be related to women. I’m sure it’d go viral—your thousands of subscribers would make sure of it, Grace. And the video would end up on the news, you know that. The court of public opinion will be way harsher than any judge. But that would affect you”—she gestured at Grace with affection—“and the children. And I don’t want that. None of this is their fault. I don’t particularly want to be known forever as the woman killed in a tub, either, but I’ll do it if you leave me no choice, Frank.”
Grace looked at her husband, who was motionless, his mouth open as if he was going to say something, but silent. Even his blinking had stopped.
“Frank?”
She could hear his breath scratching his throat. A pungent smell of sweat emanated from his body. His fists clenched.
Frank leapt at Mara with a roar that frightened Grace, but she wielded the knife firmly, without losing her nerve, forcing him to stop. His face was an inch from the blade.
“Don’t you dare,” Mara said through gritted teeth. “You will not touch me again.”
Frank raised his hands, showing his palms.
“All right, relax. I’m sorry, I lost control.” He took a couple of steps back. “None of this is necessary. I’ll go with you. But put that knife down, please. Don’t hurt my family. We’ll go right now if you want. It wasn’t the law that scared me—all I cared about was my wife, my kids, that the people I love most wouldn’t know the terrible things I’ve done . . . and now Grace knows. I’ll go with you, but put the knife away, and let’s all calm down. The children are in there. They shouldn’t have to see something like this.”
Mara interrogated Grace with her eyes. She accepted the proposal. If Frank was prepared to do the right thing, as he was saying he would now, there was no reason to keep threatening him with a weapon. But as soon as Mara lowered the knife, Frank broke his promise and charged her. He grabbed her wrist and twisted it toward her back, immobilizing her with an arm around her neck.
“Frank!” cried Grace, feeling as deceived as Mara.
Even she was offended that her husband had taken advantage of his size and strength—such basic and unjust weapons, the eternal natural disparity that justified men’s superiority over women. Mara squirmed and managed to free her wrist. With the knife, she attacked the arm that was strangling her. Frank screamed with each cut from the blade. He ended up letting go of the armed animal that was wounding him.
“Oh
, Frank.” Mara’s voice was trembling with rage, the knife shaking in the air. “Oh, Frank, I promise you that was the last time you’ll try to trick me. Oh, Frank, now you’re going to come with me back to Seattle. Whether you like it or not.” She fell silent for a few seconds, plotting something, her posture restless. Then she turned to Grace. “Get out of here,” she told her. “Take the children. Go, far away.”
Frank asked her what she was suggesting, but she ignored him, keeping her eyes on Grace’s, trying to make a connection between two women disowning the man who’d made them both suffer.
“Go,” she repeated.
Mara recovered the cell phone Grace was holding and ran off up the road in the direction of the hot springs they never reached. Her frantic footsteps on the earth could be heard even after she disappeared into the night’s darkness.
“Honey . . .”
Frank tried to touch her, but Grace dodged him and fled to the motor home. She had to get the children away from there.
33.
Mara pressed fingers against the stitch in her side. She kept running even though each stride hurt. Her cell phone flashlight lit the way, guided by the tree trunks lining both sides of the road. The pine needles were shining in the faint light from the sliver of moon. The sweat that soaked her clothes gave off the smell of Grace’s fabric softener once again—it refused to die despite the dust, the perspiration, the blood. As if the home the cozy smell belonged to itself also refused to die in the face of betrayal and deceit. When she reached an upward slope, Mara’s body wanted to give up, warn her she couldn’t go on. But she accelerated, screaming to give herself the strength she needed to make Frank go with her. She reached the top with fire in her legs, in her chest. She regained her breath on the way down, leaning backward. The pain from the stitch subsided, or maybe she got used to it, as she’d gotten used to so much pain lately. She dried tears of exertion, of rage, of her desire to make Frank pay.
At last the flashlight illuminated the rear of the car, the curious combination of letters on the license plate: SKY. Mara thought of Molly, or Polly, the nervous girl at the rental office. Just like the boy at the food truck, or the waitress at Danielle’s, Mara hadn’t treated her well. She could have been more understanding of the girl’s inexperience instead of making her first transaction more difficult. But the fact was, she had asked too many questions that Mara had no idea how to answer. When is a woman supposed to return a car when she’s going after the man who killed her?
With both hands on the hood, Mara took deep breaths that eased her pulse. Thirst had thickened her saliva, and using her T-shirt she wiped a string of drool like glue from her face. Regaining some composure, she pulled on the car’s door handle. She burst out laughing when she found it was locked, because she suddenly remembered where the key was. She hadn’t thought about it once on the way here, fixated with her fantastic plan of returning with the car to get Frank—run him over if necessary—to take him herself to the police along with the video of the hot tub. But the car wouldn’t start without a key, and the key was inside her body. Her laughter overcame her, a crazed fit of cackling.
She was still laughing when she stuck two fingers in her mouth, down to the base of her tongue. The first retch twisted her stomach, hurt as if her sides were cramping, but it was unproductive. The taste of her fingers—of dust, earth, and blood—made her feel worse. The next retch grated her throat, flooded her eyes. Again, nothing was expelled. Against her instinct, which fought to eject the intruders on her tongue, she pushed her fingers deeper. They came out covered in something sticky just before she vomited bile. The bitter taste, of acidic death, provoked more retches that expelled only fluids, until she was left dry. Empty. The last thing she’d eaten had been Grace’s omelet at breakfast. She’d swallowed the key twenty-four hours ago. If it was too late for it to come out of her mouth, it was on its way to emerge somewhere else. After everything she’d done, Mara wasn’t going to allow such a biological complication to release Frank from his responsibilities. Considering how regular she was, in all this time she should have needed to go at least once. It shouldn’t be too difficult. She approached a tree by the side of the road. She lowered the denim shorts she’d fashioned to her ankles, and her underwear as well. She rested her back against the pine’s trunk, adopting a seated position.
It was much harder than she had imagined.
Diurnal birds that were sleeping in their nests flew up into the darkness, like bats, startled when Mara’s initial groans turned into cries of pain that echoed around the mountain.
34.
Grace laid a travel bag on the double bed, like a fugitive preparing her escape luggage. Opening it, she found it full. She overcame the setback by dumping the contents onto the bedroom floor. Emptying a bag to fill it again—her mind wasn’t thinking clearly.
“What’s going on, Mom?” asked Audrey. “What’re you doing?”
“We couldn’t hear anything,” said Simon. “What’s happening?”
The children kept asking questions, but she didn’t even have answers for her own. She acted in silence, moving around the motor home with glazed eyes. Frank, who came in after her, touched her elbow in the bedroom.
“Don’t touch me!”
Grace couldn’t contain her reaction, even knowing her children were present. She was also unable to contain the sob she’d been holding in her throat, a sob that intensified when she saw Audrey’s and Simon’s faces respond to the way she rejected Frank, as if she no longer loved him, as if it disgusted her to be touched by him. The children had never seen their parents fight like this, not even over the gun, and Grace could almost hear the crunch of something beautiful, something miraculous, breaking in front of her. Innocence. If their parents could stop loving each other like this, what other terrible things could happen in the world now?
“I’m so ashamed,” said Grace, voicing this one feeling even though in reality she was being ravaged by others that were worse. “Oh God, I’m so ashamed.”
She rubbed her arms, her chest, her face, wanting to get rid of something sticky that enveloped her. She felt trapped by an invisible web, made of all the lies Frank had woven around her, turning her into an insect that doesn’t even know why it can’t fly off as the spider approaches to devour it. Grace peeled things from her body that weren’t there.
“Mom, stop!” Audrey took her by the shoulders. “You’re acting crazy. What is it?” Faced with her silence, she turned to look at Frank. “Dad?”
He didn’t answer, either.
“Is Mara dangerous?” the girl asked. “She had a knife, we saw it.”
Simon hugged his father. He whimpered into his belly, displacing the eyepatch.
“Is she dangerous?” repeated Audrey.
“Yes, honey, she is,” replied Grace. “That’s why we have to leave.”
She continued to fill the bag while Audrey asked why Mara was a threat to them, what she could have against them, if it was all because they ran her over.
“All you need to know is there’s a dangerous woman out there and we’re going to get away from her. We’re leaving. Your father’s going to stay here to”—she didn’t know what to say—“to fix the RV.”
Audrey frowned at the absence of logic in the idea. Simon said that if they were going to escape, they all had to escape together. Grace pulled the boy away from Frank, insisting that Dad was going to stay to fix the motor home.
“But how’s he going to fix it?” yelled Audrey. “We’ve been here an entire day saying it can’t be done.”
Frank went up to Grace. “Honey, listen to me.”
“I said don’t touch me.”
She linked her hands together behind her back to prevent him from taking them.
“Has Dad done something wrong?” Audrey was beginning to understand. “Dad, did you do something? Why did she cut your face, your arm?”
Grace fought back her tears, waiting for whatever answer Frank was going to give. She wanted to study h
er husband’s face when he lied. To understand why she hadn’t detected any revealing signs when he had deceived her day after day. The face that had loved her for years was suddenly an indecipherable enigma. She could no longer be sure what the light in her husband’s eyes meant, or what he was thinking when he frowned. The slanted smile that had made her melt might have been covering up appalling truths. For more than a year, Frank had hidden a serial infidelity from her. He had looked her in the eyes after drowning a woman, and Grace had been stupid enough not to see any change in the face she thought she knew as well as her children’s. A face she’d observed for a longer time than she’d spent observing her own in the mirror. It saddened her to think of all that wasted time, looking straight at a falsehood without recognizing it.
“I haven’t done anything, honey,” he replied.
There wasn’t a single trace of the lie in his injured features. Frank didn’t stutter, his voice didn’t tremble. He fixed his gaze on his daughter with the same firmness with which he looked at Grace to tell her he loved her. Perhaps all the I love yous Frank had said to her throughout their life together had also been lies.
“So what’s going on?” the girl insisted. “Why’s she doing this to us?”
“Forget it, honey, we’ll talk about it later,” Grace said.
She zipped up the bag and left the room, avoiding Frank, telling the children to follow her.
“Mom.” Simon grabbed her pants. “You put Dawn in the bag.”
She snorted, incredulous. She would have to be out of her mind to put a bottle of dishwashing liquid in the bag. But when she opened it on the dining table, there it was, the orange antibacterial soap with double the grease-cleaning power.