The Beloved

by Gonzalez, J. F.

  Gregg sat in his chair looking stunned and sheepish. He shifted awkwardly in his chair. “Um...yeah...I will...” He looked embarrassed; his face flushed red. “Sorry.”

  Elizabeth smiled. It felt good to drive the knife in a little bit. She felt naughty, but she also had a confession. “And now I want to apologize to you.”

  Gregg looked up at her, surprised.

  “I’ve spent so much time shut up in my office writing, tending to the miscellaneous business of my work without even thinking about it, that it’s no wonder you’ve been behaving the way you have been. All you’ve seen is me shut up in my office all by my lonesome typing away and now since I have a good paperback house putting out my stuff, you’ve seen the boxes of books that come in once a year. You’ve seen the advances, which aren’t much. You’ve seen the money I get from short stories. It comes in and goes out as spending money. Right?”

  Gregg nodded.

  Elizabeth grinned. “I thought it would be obvious to you that I’ve been getting bigger royalty checks now from the paperbacks. I mean, we’re talking the reprint of my first novel and the publication of my last two novels all over a three-year period. Royalties aren’t paid the first time out until eighteen months after publication, and if the book has done well subsequent checks usually account for that. You had no idea, did you?”

  Gregg shook his head. “No.”

  “That’s because they come in and I’ve been depositing them right into my 401k account. And since I do our taxes there’s no way you would’ve seen the W2 forms.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “They’ve been sending you W2s?” Now they were on his wavelength.

  Elizabeth laughed. “Yes, you dummy! I’ve been getting them now for three years. I’ve probably thrown in about thirty grand in my 401k in the past three years alone.”

  Gregg’s eyes grew wide. “Thirty thousand! Are you serious?”

  Now Elizabeth laughed harder; she couldn’t help it. He looked so cute when he looked like that. “Yes Gregg, thirty thousand.” She laughed harder. “The school district’s pension plan is pretty shitty, so how else am I going to supplement my 401k plan? We can’t depend on yours when we retire.”

  And then Gregg laughed and he reached out and hugged her and she hugged him back, laughing. His skin felt clean and soft, his hair smelled like fresh shampoo and she kissed him, tasting his lips. “I love you, Gregg,” she said, hugging him. “I’m sorry we had a fight, but...”

  “I’m sorry too,” he said. He looked at her. “I had no intention of making you feel that way. I...I don’t know why I did what I did, but...”

  “Gregg, can I ask you something?”

  Gregg nodded. He looked embarrassed, ashamed that he had behaved so badly.

  “Don’t be mad at me,” she said, “but sometimes I get the impression that you’re...well...a little jealous of the fact that I’m still writing and that I’ve enjoyed more success in my chosen avocation the last few years. Is that true?”

  Gregg visibly flinched; his body stiffened and she saw his cheeks turn red. “No,” he said, quickly.

  “It’s okay if you’ve been a little jealous,” Elizabeth quickly said. “Really, it is.”

  Gregg’s face was red. He kept averting his gaze from hers and she grasped his face in her hands and turned it to hers, looking into his eyes. He met her gaze and she said, “Tell me the truth.”

  “Okay,” he said, sighing. “I guess maybe...I have been a little jealous.”

  Elizabeth nodded. “It’s okay. I understand. Have you thought more about getting into the local theater scene here? The Fulton Opera House stages plays every year, you know.”

  “I...I’ve thought about it a little,” he said, relaxing a little. “But where would I find the time?”

  Elizabeth quickly kissed him. “You’ll find the time. For now, you’re on the right track. You’re thinking about it more, which is more than you’ve done lately.” She hugged him. “It makes me happy that at least it’s entered your mind.”

  Gregg hugged her back and she could feel the tension melting off him. She knew he had been telling the truth when he admitted he’d been thinking about pursuing his muse again, and that was a major victory when compared to the relative inactivity of the past eight years. Now she had to give him the space he needed in exploring his options. She’d be there to guide him, carefully nudge him back into the scene, and she hoped he would.

  “Let’s go to bed,” she said.

  “Yeah,” he said, and his lips found hers and kissed her with a passion that had been missing lately. It surprised her and they laughed again and went upstairs and made love, and for Elizabeth it was just like in the first few years when they were married.

  SEVEN

  SOMETHING WAS HAPPENING and Mary Baker was scared.

  She huddled under the covers of her bed, terrified. She knew if she told her daddy he wouldn’t believe her. He’d say she was lying, or that it was just her imagination. But she’d seen it—or at least she thought she’d seen it—and it had terrified her and she didn’t know what to do.

  She risked a quick peek at the bed on the other side of the room where Lily slept. Lily wasn’t in bed, and when Mary had gone into their bedroom she thought she had heard the little girl in the kitchen while her mother sat at the computer, surfing the Internet. Lily’s brother, Rick, had been playing with a Game Boy in the living room, silently immersed.

  Something wasn’t right. And Mary knew it. She couldn’t describe it, didn’t know how to put what she felt into words, but something was very wrong here.

  Diana and her kids weren’t....right.

  Mary turned toward the wall, bunching herself up under the covers. She told herself not to cry. She’d been living here for four months now, and if Lily was going to do something to her she would have done so by now. But just the thought of sharing a bedroom with that...that...

  Monster? Was that the word she wanted to use?

  Maybe I was just imagining it, she thought. Maybe it was a bad dream. Maybe it was because they were watching those scary movies the other night and I stayed up to watch with them when I should have been doing my homework. Maybe I should have called my grandma and had her come get me, but Rick and Lily were watching the movies and Diana was gone, I don’t know where she went, and daddy was working and there was nothing else on TV, they wouldn’t let me turn the channel so I could watch Sponge Bob, and I watched it too and it was some movie about a Blair Witch, and then something about Demons or aliens and then Lily’s face...her face...

  Mary shivered, tears streaming down her face. She’d begged them to change the channel, she didn’t want to watch this scary movie, but Rick had told her to be quiet and they’d sat there in the darkened living room as the horror movie blared from the TV, Rick leaning back watching with a smug grin, Lily staring transfixed at it with that vacant stare she had, and Mary cringing and trying to look away, not wanting to even be there.

  Then somehow Diana was back and the TV was off, and the house was lit up and Mary must have fallen asleep because that was the last thing she remembered—them watching the scary movie and then it suddenly being turned off and Diana was back in the room. Mary had jumped up and headed straight to her room and dove into bed. Lily hadn’t come with her; she’d remained in the kitchen where she was now.

  Maybe it was just the movie, she thought. Maybe I was having a bad dream because of that movie we were watching. Maybe my imagination got to me. My grandma always said that watching scary movies will mess with your imagination, make you see things that aren’t really there.

  That made her feel a little better, but not much.

  Because she could’ve sworn she saw it. Even though it was brief.

  She could have sworn she’d seen Lily’s face changing into something else.

  She’d caught a quick glimpse as she was heading to the bedroom she shared with her step-sister (that’s what Tina, her friend at school, called Lily; her step-sister, and it was confusing
to Mary because grandma and her daddy and Diana were saying that Lily was her sister, but she didn’t feel like a sister, not really). She had just woken up and seen that Diana was back in the living room in front of the computer and that horror movie was turned off. She realized then she must have dozed off, so she’d gotten up and headed to the bedroom, catching a glimpse of Lily playing on the kitchen floor out of the corner of her eye.

  Only it wasn’t Lily. Well...it had Lily’s body. And it kind of had Lily’s face. But Lily’s face had been...shifting...

  It was so sudden that Mary didn’t know if she had really seen it or not. Lily had looked up as Mary rounded the corner on her way to their bedroom and the movement in her face was shimmering, as if the skin of her face was elastic and there was something beneath it moving around; her eyes had become black pits, her mouth turning upward into a grin for the first time since Mary had known her.

  And then just as quickly it was gone. Lily’s normal vacant stare was back.

  Mary hadn’t stopped. She’d dived into the bedroom and into bed, not even bothering to put her pajamas on.

  Where she’d been ever since, trying to tell herself that what she saw was just her imagination.

  I just want my daddy, she thought. The more she thought of Lily, the more she tried to remember if what she had seen happened, the more confused she got. And the more confused she got, the more scared she became. She started to cry silently. I want my daddy!

  She hated living here. Daddy was never around; he was always working, and whenever he was home he was either grumpy or too tired to play with her or listen to her. He was always asleep when she woke up to go to school, and he didn’t even take her to school anymore—Rick did now, walking her to the school bus every morning. At least grandma picked her up in the afternoons, but on those days when she couldn’t, Diana was there to pick her up. Once home, it was just she and Lily and Diana, and Diana didn’t like her anyway. She never even made supper. Mary usually wound up calling grandma, asking for her Pop-Pop to pick her up, which he did. Those were the only good times of the day—being at school and being with her grandparents. Sometimes her cousin Eric was there and she always had a good time with him. But then Diana would either come to pick her up or, most likely, Pop-Pop would drive her back to her house and she’d have to face the long evening with Diana and her two kids (they’re not my brother and sister, they’re not, they’re not, they’re not!). The few times she tried talking to her new step-mother (that’s what Tina said Diana was; her step-mother; she wasn’t her mom; Cindy was her mom and Mary knew there was something wrong with her mother but even if there was, she much preferred her real mother’s company to her step-mother’s; at least her real mother loved her and paid attention to her, even if she was drunk a lot of the time), Diana had acted as if she was annoyed as all hell. That’s the phrase her grandmother sometimes used when she overheard conversations grandma had with Aunt Elizabeth. “Whenever Diana is forced to do something with Mary or her own children, she always gets that annoyed as all hell expression.” Diana got that expression a lot, and Mary understood clearly the woman wasn’t the least bit interested in looking over her homework or looking at her drawings or playing a game with her. Mary had the feeling Diana didn’t want to have anything to do with her. For the first few months she wondered if she was going to be like the evil stepmother in the story Cinderella, but Diana seemed to treat her own children the same way. She ignored them, too.

  She’d tried playing with Lily, and while that went well most of the time, she got the impression the younger girl was going through the motions and wasn’t really serious about it. And in the past few weeks she’d gotten an even stronger impression that Lily was somehow different.

  She’d started noticing Lily’s blank stare, her eyes. At first she merely attributed it to the girl’s behavior, but as she observed her more she realized there was something creepy about it. Sometimes Lily could go for hours without speaking. She’d sit on the sofa in the living room staring blindly at the TV, like she was a robot or something. And Rick, while he was no better, would usually flip the channels disinterestedly. He mostly ignored Mary. But then he ignored Lily too. And his mother.

  In fact, they often ignored each other.

  The more Mary thought about it, the more frightened she became. The only time she ever really saw them interact with each other was when her daddy was home or when grandma or Aunt Elizabeth or Eric was around. When it was just the three of them they didn’t talk to each other at all.

  That wasn’t right. Even though Mary was only seven, she knew brothers and sisters talked to each other and their mother at some point. Mary had never even seen Diana yell at her kids. She yelled at Mary all the time, but

  Gooseflesh erupted on Mary’s skin and she shivered under the blankets as she heard the door creak open. A shaft of light spilled into the room and she held her breath, telling herself not to cry. Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t—

  Soft silent footsteps padded into the room.

  The creak of bedsprings from Lily’s bed.

  The rustle of blankets.

  Lily had gone to bed.

  Mary listened for other sounds but there were none. She could imagine Lily on the other side of the room, lying in her bed, her flat gaze staring up at the ceiling with those dark, soulless eyes.

  I hate living here and I wish daddy had never met this woman. I don’t like Lily and Rick and Diana and I just want to go back and live with my grandma. I just want my daddy and my real mommy!

  Thinking about her real mother brought a burst of sadness and now she couldn’t help but cry. Silent tears rolled down her cheeks. She felt a sense of shame that her family was not normal. Her friends all had normal parents; Eric’s mommy and daddy were normal. She felt like an oddball because her mommy and daddy didn’t live together, weren’t married, and now everybody was trying to make Diana her real mommy when she wasn’t. Mary had a real mommy and she just wanted to live with her and daddy in their own house, away from Diana and her kids.

  I just want my daddy. I just want my daddy.

  She cried silently, thinking these thoughts, as she finally fell asleep.

  While in the next bed Lily lay on her back staring at the ceiling, her eyes open and vacant, her face expressionless.

  THE CLOSER RONNIE Baker got to his home, the more the feelings of dread solidified.

  Maybe it wasn’t exactly dread. It was more like a feeling of apprehension.

  And he was horny, too.

  It was a weird thing to harbor feelings that were polar opposites of each other. He and Diana made love every night, even when it was her time of the month. He’d always avoided sex during a woman’s period before, but not with Diana. He thought he would be repulsed by it, but he’d actually grown to like it!

  So he was looking forward to tonight’s romp. But he was also apprehensive about coming home.

  Ronnie yawned as he made a left down Fir Road, which led down to his development. The roads were relatively deserted at this hour of the night, and Ronnie liked driving home with nobody around. He liked having the road to himself. But lately the drive was beginning to wear him out. It wasn’t so bad when he drove to work, but after a twelve-hour plus shift he was starting to feel tired lately. He couldn’t really afford to work fewer hours. Diana wouldn’t work, and in a way he liked having her home during the day to be with the kids, but it was beginning to take its toll on his well being. He never had time for anything except work and driving home to fuck Diana, eat, sleep, wake up, scarf a quick breakfast and drive back to work to do it all over again.

  And for the past four weeks, the work schedule had been seven days a week.

  It was starting to really get to him. Ronnie felt irritable and tired. He didn’t know how much longer he could work this brutal schedule, but he didn’t know what else to do. He had the mortgage, the utilities, his car payment, Diana’s car payment, insurance for both vehicles, his credit card, her
credit card, food and clothing for the kids, and the usual miscellaneous expenses that went with running a house. Diana was expensive, too. He’d bought her diamond rings, bracelets and necklaces, all from the best jewelry stores in town. Her engagement ring alone cost over two grand. And even though he made over fifty thousand dollars a year, that barely covered things. Actually, he made less than that—it was only through working the overtime and on weekends and holidays that he was able to pull in double-time, which boosted his salary to a mid five figure level.

  He had to work these grueling shifts. If he didn’t, he’d fall behind on a payment. And if he fell behind on a payment, started slipping financially, he might lose what he had.

  He didn’t want to lose Diana.

  But she was beginning to piss him off.

  Ronnie thought about this as he cruised home, the radio playing Bad Company as he drove slowly through the back roads of Reinholds, the town he had moved to. As great as Diana was in the sack, she wasn’t very supportive when it came to paying her share of the bills or giving him some support. You’d think if she were home all day she’d clean the house and do the laundry and have dinner ready for him when he got home, but the house was becoming a pigsty. She didn’t clean, she didn’t dust, and she didn’t cook. There was never any food in the house, and the few times he’d seen Mary this week she’d complained they’d been out of cereal and milk and eggs for almost a week.