Donna was finding it difficult to breathe. She took Nigel’s hand and squeezed. “What else did your dad say?”
Junior shrugged.
“Who was he talking to?”
No answer. He studied the screen with great interest.
“Junior, stop watching cartoons and answer me.”
“What?” he said, glancing impatiently at her.
“Who was he talking to?”
“I don’t know. Some lady.”
Donna turned to Nigel. “Do you know anything about this?”
Her sensitive child, with his large eyes full of concern as he stared back at her, shook his head.
She turned back to Junior. “Was her name Amelia?”
The boy ignored her.
“Junior, damn you, pay attention.”
“What?” he replied with obvious irritation.
“Amelia. Was it Amelia?”
“I don’t know. I guess.”
Donna reached for the remote control and flicked the set off.
“Hey! Whadya do that for? I was watching that.” Junior jumped from the chair, strode to the bed, and turned the set back on.
Donna flicked it off again. When he reached for it, she pushed his hand away.
“I don’t have to watch TV with you,” he said, his tone hard. “I hate it here. It stinks and everybody is crippled or sick. I hate it and I wish I never had to come.”
Donna grabbed Junior by the arm and yanked him around. “Now you listen to me—”
“ —Oww. Let go. I want outta this cruddy place.”
He tried to twist free, but Donna held tight. Was it possible to dislike your own child, she wondered? Before her stood a miniature of his father, so young, yet already prejudiced and narrow-minded.
“You’re going to learn some manners, some respect,” she said. “You’re not going to be the way he is. No son of mine will be bigoted and, and —” Tears sprang to her eyes, rolled down her face, but she was oblivious to them. “—Not like him ... not like them.”
She realized then that all her life she had put up with the intolerance of the two men most important to her. She had worshiped them —first her father, then her husband — allowed them to use her or dismiss her, depending on their whims. Her father, after all these years, had finally taken an interest. Not because he realized he loved her, but because he could not tolerate deformity of any sort in his family. To her husband, as long as she was useful and served a purpose, she was number one. No longer the star, Nolan had switched allegiances. He had already replaced her for an unflawed specimen. Her husband was cheating on her with Amelia Corde.
Junior continued to struggle, his face red, twisted in anger. “Lemme go. I’m telling Dad.”
“Stop it,” she said sternly. “Don’t make me more ashamed of you than I already am.”
“Who cares? You’re ugly now.” He pulled back and shouted. “Ugly!”
Donna let go of his arm, but before he could move away, her hand flew out and struck him hard across the face. The sharp sound reverberated in the room. She felt a tearing in her throat, then excruciating pain. Something oozed across the burned skin.
Nigel began to sob, hugging close to Donna’s other arm.
Junior ran to the door, his face crimson where he’d been slapped. He grasped the handle, then, turning to look at his mother, he bent over, his breath coming in ragged gasps, he opened his mouth wide as though to shout, but no sound came out.
Donna stared back, her chin quivered. She had a strong urge to beg him to forgive her. She had never struck out in anger before and she never wanted to do it again. But she held her position, sensing a turning point in her life. Would she, this day, she wondered despairingly, lose her son as well as her husband?
Well, so be it.
Junior’s mouth still worked silently. Then, in a cracking voice filled with emotion and pain, he cried out, “Why did that have to happen to you?”
Donna continued to stare at him. She ran tremulous fingers through Nigel’s hair.
“Momma ...?”
Donna, salty tears stinging the wound at her jaw, moved her head slowly from side to side as she contemplated her oldest son and his pain.
Suddenly his face crumbled, the stony reserve, uncharacteristic of a nine year old, gave way to a child, heartbroken and pathetic. He rushed across the room and threw himself to his knees at the side of her bed. He buried his face in the stiff sheet and sobbed.
Donna pulled him up. She held him to her chest and rocked both Junior and Nigel, cooing softly, the pain under her chin no more than a dull ache now.
The door opened and her husband and father entered. Both men stopped at the foot of the bed. Neither came close enough to kiss, let alone touch her.
“You saw the show today?” Nolan asked Donna.
She stared solemnly at him before nodding her head.
“Your best friend seems to like being on that side of the camera. I believe she has designs to stay there.”
“Really?” Donna said with unmistakable irony.
“Is there something wrong?” Nolan asked, looking curiously from Donna to his sons.
Donna turned to her father. “Dad, will you take the boys home now? I want to talk with Nolan —alone.”
“We have things to discuss first,” her father said gruffly. “The cosmetic surgery—”
“Later,” she said, cutting him off.
The boys went to their grandfather. Nigel took his hand and pulled him toward the door, his large, expressive eyes silently coaxing.
When they were alone, Donna turned off the TV. “Are you sleeping with Amelia?”
Nolan could only stare at her. Not directly at her, she realized, but at some point above her head. She felt she could forgive his infidelity, if only he could look her in the face, if only he could care for her despite her deformity.
“I’m coming home tomorrow,” she said quietly. “I don’t want to find you there.”
“You can’t mean that,” Nolan sputtered. “You’re being irrational. This whole tragedy has changed you. You’re not yourself—”
“Don’t you mean I’m not your puppet any longer? All these years you were the ventriloquist and I was the dummy. The dummy broke, and now it’s time to find a new one.”
“Donna, that’s crazy talk.” He glanced at her, glanced away.
“Look at me. Look at my face. My throat. Take a good look at my wounds, damnit.”
Nolan looked. And for a moment he was able to mask his disgust, then he dropped his eyes and whirled around, putting his back to her.
“I’m certain Max will accept your resignation at KSCO. And the sooner the better,” she said.
“Now you wait a minute,” he said whirling around. “You can’t force me to resign. Without me you’d be nowhere. I gave you ‘City Gallery’. If you think they’re going to let you anywhere near the set looking like ... like that, you’re crazier than I thought. Even with your father’s money and all the plastic surgeons—”
“To hell with my father and his surgeons,” she shouted, raising her voice for the first time. “He’s not running my life anymore. And neither are you.” She rolled over in the bed, putting her back to him. “Now get out, I can no longer stand to look at your face.”
They were heading toward Potrero Hill. Regina stared out the window at boarded storefronts, vacant lots overrun with weeds, abandoned cars. John drove. Although he drove well, maneuvering through traffic as if he did it every day, he looked odd sitting there — belonging, yet not belonging.
John had met her at the station after the show. The program had gone extremely well. The phone lines remained lit to the end of the show with callers eager to talk to the “dream doctor.”
As they rode in silence, Regina found herself stealing glances at John. She had a score of questions, but she’d made up her mind to wait until he opened the portal for conversation. John, however, seemed preoccupied and uncommunicative.
Why were they doing t
his? When he’d met her at the station she had indicated that it was not necessary to go to Corinne’s, that she had changed her mind. But John had insisted, saying it was something he had to do.
He pulled up to a clapboard house, the yard long ago gone to weeds and junk. A front window had a wedged-shaped piece of glass missing, duct tape covering the opening.
“This is it,” John said. “This is where she lived when I met her.”
“How do you know she still lives here?”
“Where else would she go? Winning the pageant was going to get her out of the slums.”
John got out, came around and opened Regina’s door, and they both started up the walk. In the driveway at the back of the house, Regina saw an old car. It was large, as cars in the fifties tended to be, and a dull black. There was a bulky hood ornament above the grill. Regina put out a hand to stop John. She pointed to the car.
John gave it no more than a cursory glance before moving on.
Regina bit down on her lower lip, but kept quiet. She followed.
On the cracked, concrete slab that served as a porch, plastic garbage bags filled with trash littered the area.
John knocked.
Regina saw a corner of the curtain flicker.
They waited. John knocked again, louder. Again they waited.
John put the side of his face to the thin door. “Corinne, it’s John Davie. Regina’s with me,” he said gently but firmly. “We just want to talk. Please open the door.”
A voice close to the door responded. “Get outta here. I have nothing to say to you ... or her.”
“I have something I want to say to you,” he said.
Silence.
“Corinne, you’re not alone anymore. Two others have suffered like you.”
“So what?”
“Let’s talk, okay?”
They waited.
John looked at Regina, looked away. “Please, Cory.”
Regina thought she heard a sob from the other side of the door. She definitely heard the click of a deadbolt turning. After several moments John reached a hand to the knob and turned; the door opened a crack. He pushed slowly, stepping inside. He motioned for Regina to follow.
Regina had a bad feeling about this. The open door had unleashed a putrid odor from inside the house. The heavy, cloying smell of stale cigarette smoke and beer, and the underlying stink of filth, rot, and decay.
John took her wrist and pulled her along with him before she could turn and leave this place. The cluttered room lay deathly quiet in a haze of cigarette smoke. Mounds of butts were piled in a half dozen ashtrays; and beer cans, each one crushed, were littered about.
No one was in the room.
John closed the door and everything, blessedly, faded in the darkness. A panel of light glowed under a closed door that probably opened into the kitchen.
They stood just inside the front door. Regina breathed shallowly. She wanted to take John’s hand, wanted to feel his arm around her, giving her strength.
Neither moved.
From a dark doorway Regina saw the silhouette of a tall figure.
“Sit down somewhere,” the hoarse voice said. “Excuse the mess. It’s really not as bad as it looks. Nothing a can of gasoline and a match couldn’t put right.”
Regina and John stepped to the sofa and sat.
The figure moved into the room. Regina could vaguely make out a woman in a shapeless shift. A towel was wrapped turban style around her head, a corner dropped down to cover one side of her face.
“Hello, Cory,” John said quietly.
“It’s been a long time, huh, Jack?”
“A long time.”
Regina sat still, not speaking. The silence grew heavy with tension.
“I’d offer you some refreshment,” Corinne said flippantly, “but I’m afraid the cupboard is bare. If I’d known you were coming, Jack, I’d have stocked up on those red nuts you like so well.”
“Cory,” John said carefully. “Donna was attacked like you--”
She cut into his words, “Not like me. I saw her. A mere flesh wound.” She laughed at her pun.
“Tammy wasn’t as lucky,” Regina said.
“Luckier than me.” She lit a cigarette, turning her head away at the flare of the match. “Three down, two to go. Who will be next?”
“We hope no one,” John said.
“Why are you here? You think I did it?” Corinne asked.
“No,” John said.
“Then why? To tell me I should feel better because I’m not the only freak?” She snorted. “Sure I feel better. But not much. I had twenty years to live with this. My life was destroyed before it got started. Donna, Tammy, Amelia, and you Regina, all had a life. Beautiful people doing beautiful things while I sat here in this hole rotting both inside and out. Shit, now that you’re finally beginning to get old and wrinkled, what’s a little acid when you’ve got all those good memories.”
“Cory--”
“Stop calling me that,” she snapped at John. “Say what you came to say and get out so I can get back to what I was doing. What I do best. Being alone.”
Regina remembered Donna telling her that Corinne resented her father for gambling away the money that would have gone to reconstruct her face. Disturbed by the fetid odor and the deathly silence of the house, Regina asked, “Where’s your father, Corinne?”
“I don’t think that’s any of your business, Regina.”
“Corinne, do you have any idea who did that to you?” John asked.
“Maybe you did it, Jack,” she said.
Regina felt John stiffen. In the dim light she could see the astonishment on his face.
“Is that what you think?”
Regina caught John’s quick glance.
Corinne laughed with wry humor. “Oh, poor baby. They came after you, didn’t they? The cops. Someone told them we’d argued that day. And you had no alibi. It looked bad for you.” She rose and moved slowly to the window. She adjusted the drape so that the slice of light became a mere laser stripe down her front.
“Is that why you wouldn’t let me near you? Why you shut me out? Because you suspected me?”
“You’re such a fool, Jack.” She whipped back the drape, light flooded in, making her squint. The towel was flung from her head to expose the matted hair beneath. Then she turned her head so they could get a full view of her scarred face. “Look at me,” she said deep in her throat. “Would you have loved this? Would you have stayed with this?”
John stared unflinchingly at Corinne, his expression neither shocked nor repelled, only sad. “I don’t know, Cory. You never gave me the chance.”
“I’m giving you the chance now. What do you say, Jack?”
John was silent as he rose and moved toward her. He reached out to touch her.
She jerked back violently, letting the drape fall. “Don’t touch me. I’m only blind in one eye. I can see that you love her. I can see that much.”
Corinne’s words caused Regina’s stomach to flutter.
Corinne turned her face away, her voice softened, yet still bitter. “And that hurts. God, it hurts so bad. No one cares about me. I might as well have died. There were just two people who seemed to care. Momma,” she paused, “and ... and you, Jack. Only I couldn’t let you see me.
“That man in there,” she spun and pointed a finger toward a closed door, “killed my mother! He went through all my money. I was forced to depend on him for everything. Well now he has to depend on me. It’s his turn to hurt.”
“Cory, don’t do this to yourself. Let us help you. Let us help both of you.”
He reached for her again. She raised her arms, her fists clenched, and then she let them fall and began to cry. “Oh, sweet Jesus, why? Why me?” Deep sobs were torn from her ravaged throat and she collapsed against John, burying her face against his chest. His arms went around her, holding her tight. He smoothed her hair, rocked her gently.
“Stay out of it. It’s not your concern. H
e doesn’t deserve to live,” she cried. “God is punishing him. God made him sick. And if he dies, it’ll be God’s will.”
Regina looked down to see a photo album on the floor at her feet. On the cover, with a black felt marker, were the words. The Thrill of Victory—The Agony of Defeat 1970-1990.
With the toe of her shoe she lifted the cover. She saw a grainy black-and-white picture of Donna Lake and a newspaper clipping of the assault. There was one of Tammy, as well. Regina, her leg now shaking, let the album close.
John looked over at her and, with his eyes, gestured toward the closed door.
She shook her head vigorously. John continued to stare.
Regina surreptitiously reached into her purse and wrapped icy fingers around her mace container. Holding it tight in her hand, she rose slowly and crossed the room. Her heart thumped in her chest as she turned the knob and opened the door. The smell that assaulted her made her reel. The odor was unmistakably waste and decaying flesh. She breathed in short, shallow breaths as she slowly entered the room and stepped to the bed. The man in the bed was pale, his glazed-over eyes were partially open, and Regina knew without touching him that he was dead.
Oh god, what had she and John walked into? She backed out of the room, returned to the living room where John still held a sobbing Corinne. He looked at Regina inquiringly.
“He’s dead,” she whispered. “We have to call someone.”
Corinne pushed away from John. “Get out of my house. This is none of your business. No police. Do you hear? No police.”
“Cory,” John said, “We have to--”
“Nooo!” she said, her face twisting. She pushed at John, her fists swinging, hitting him on the chest. “Why’d you have to come here? God, I hate you. I hate you all.” And before John could stop her, Corinne grabbed her long black coat from the sofa and fled out of the house.
John cursed. He seemed uncertain whether to go after her or let her go. The sound of an engine revving, then a car racing down the driveway, took the decision out of his hands.
Regina felt an overwhelming sense of oppressiveness. She couldn’t stay another moment in this awful place, “I have to get out of here,” Regina said, pulling him toward to door.
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