by Lucas, Helen
KAREN
It stung.
God, how it stung.
To see… To see Liana naked, in Kyle’s home. Fool me once, shame on you.
But fool me twice…
I began writing that night. I wrote about the way our parents had met, their stormy relationship. I outlined how the rest of the book would go: how Kyle bullied me as a kid, how his hands had found their way under my swimsuit, how he had harassed me, his horrible sense of entitlement that pervaded everything he did. I wanted the book to burn him.
I wanted it to sting him like this had stung me, but worse.
I’d tell everything—about how he’d been a jerk, how he’d tried to seduce me, tried to buy my love, and how I finally gave in. I would give my readers all the nasty, sordid details.
We’ll see what it did for my career. We’ll see what it did for his. We’ll see either way.
The pain was never dulled by the writing, but it did become easier to ignore it, to subsume it in the work of writing. My colleagues knew something had happened, though no one had the courage to ask, not even Masha or Anthony, and for this, I was grateful. I couldn’t bring myself to talk about it.
And nor could I bring myself to discuss it with Kyle. Even though he had been calling me two, three times a day since.
And gradually, the calls decreased to once a day. And then once every other day.
Initially, he tried to explain to me, via voicemail, what had happened. But I was never able to listen to one of those messages for more than thirty seconds or so when I found my fingers, as if possessed, deleting the message without a second thought to his side of things.
I was done listening. I was done letting other people tell me what had happened, what would happen.
It was time for me to take things into my own hands. It was time for me to tell my story, as I wanted to. It was time for my story to serve me, and no one else.
Lori was delighted. I couldn’t blame her: the book was shaping up to be juicy, the kind of high culture intellectual scandal that only comes around once every ten years. She predicted, correctly probably, that it would be the literary event of the new year once it was published, that it would dominate the review columns.
I became used to talking to her two or three times a week. She was eager to keep a tight rein on the book’s development, so we could get it out as quickly as possible.
It was on Tuesday afternoon, waiting for a call from Lori when I received a call from a number I didn’t recognize.
“Karen O’Lowry.”
The voice on the other end was halting. Unconfident. Fatigued.
“Karen?”
“That’s right. Who’s this?”
“Liana Stone.”
My heart was caught up in my throat. I wanted to hang up but I couldn’t, couldn’t force myself to. I don’t know why I couldn’t: I had no trouble hanging up on Liana’s ex-husband, after all.
“What do you want?” I asked, my voice colder than the ocean had been on that fateful early December day a few weeks before…
“I’m calling from a rehab center in upstate New York. Would you… Would you be willing to meet with me?”
I paused. I couldn’t make myself say anything.
“Are you able to leave?” I asked finally.
“No. They won’t let me leave. But I’m allowed visitors.”
“So, you want me to come out there, take time out of my busy schedule, to come talk to you?”
“That’s right.”
“Why the hell should I?”
“It’s not for me, Karen. It’s for Kyle.”
“He’s dead to me.”
“Don’t say that. You need to hear what I have to say.”
“Why can’t you tell me over the phone?”
A loud bout of coughing cut me off. I heard serious voices murmuring just out of range on Liana’s end of the line.
“They don’t like me using the phone too much either… But you’ll want to hear what I have to say. Kyle loves you.”
Tears were in my eyes. I tried to shake them away but they refused to leave, refused to cease their irritating insistence that I feel something at those words, at that confession: that he loved me, that Kyle, my ex-stepbrother, still loved me, somehow, some way.
“Don’t tell me that.”
“It’s true. That’s all he would talk about, when he was waiting with me, for the ambulance.”
I took a deep breath. What would Maribeth Wilson do?
She would go to hear what Liana had to say. She would trust another woman, she wouldn’t throw away love so easily. Even if it hurt to hold on.
I drove down to White Plains that afternoon. The facility was sheltered from the road, and by extension the outside world, but a thick forest. Perfect—just what Liana needed. Just what I needed.
A place that looked like the Cape Cod house.
The staff met me at the gate and a valet parked my car. This facility really was fancy—absolutely the best buy in the world of high class drug addicts, I could tell.
Two handsome young men dressed in white led me through the manicured gardens, mostly deserted except for the occasional waifish young girl or boy, sitting clutching themselves on a garden chair, shaking in the throes of withdrawal while somehow gently strummed out a song on a ukulele.
Liana saw on a veranda overlooking the gardens. She was in a wheel chair and covered in a thick blanket. She looked even thinner than before on that fateful day, but some color had returned to her face.
“Hi,” I said, suddenly shy.
“Hi.” Liana extended a single bone thin hand. As I took it, shook it, it shook, it trembled. She was not well.
“How are you feeling?”
Liana shrugged.
“I don’t think I’ve slept in two weeks, as far as I can tell. I have nightmares but during the day. All the time.”
“Are they… Giving you anything?”
“They’re giving me something to ease the withdrawal but it doesn’t do much, honestly. If anything… I think it just prolongs the pain.”
She leaned forward a bit conspiratorially.
“I have a theory that they try to drag things out here, to try and make more money off you… But I don’t have any proof of that.”
Maybe there was a book in that. I didn’t suggest it, but I got the sense that Liana wouldn’t be opposed to it.
“So, what did you want to tell me?” I asked finally as the staff brought us both tea. Chamomile tea, I noticed. Something innocuous, something that wouldn’t upset the patients.
“You found me on Friday,” Liana began, referring to the day several weeks ago when I had found her at Kyle’s house.
“Right.”
“But I had actually been there since Wednesday. I was dropping off my keys to the house as part of finalizing the divorce settlement. I have proof from my lawyer that I was doing that. But I wasn’t supposed to enter the property.”
“Really? So what were you doing there?”
She shrugged.
“Hell if I remember. I remember driving out there, almost getting into two or three accidents on the way. And I remember letting myself in to see what wines Kyle had… And after that…”
“Just a blur?” I offered. Liana gave a pallid, weak smile.
“Right. More or less. And the next thing I remember was Kyle standing over me, trying to wake me up, talking to me. That was right before the ambulance got there.”
“So you didn’t…”
“We didn’t have sex or anything like that. Not by a long shot. I was… Too far gone. I was almost dead at that point. I technically committed a crime by trespassing, so they were able to put me away here, against my will. Probably for the best, I suppose,” Liana said with a heavy sigh that was shortly replaced by a wry grin.
“But I do remember what Kyle was saying…”
Liana’s smile ran away from her face, to be replaced by a painful expression that I didn’t quiet understand. And then I un
derstood it… It was jealousy.
“He told me about you—about how much he loves you. How smart you are, how driven you are, how much he admires you, your passion, your fighting spirit. How he wants to be with you. How he would never forgive me if I messed this up for him. And so I wanted to make things right.”
She bit her lip.
“Karen, Kyle is a good man. He’s maybe the best person I know. It’s amazing that you find someone as rich as he is, as powerful as he is, who hasn’t been totally corrupted by his wealth and his power…”
I couldn’t answer her. I was on the verge of tears but I couldn’t let them fall, nor could I bring myself to reply to Liana.
“I want him to stay like that—to stay innocent. Please, do that for me—keep him safe. Keep him happy.”
“I… I don’t know if I deserve him at this point, Liana,” I said finally. “I’m writing a book about him. About our relationship. I… I need to stop it. I see that now.”
Liana nodded.
“And go to him—don’t let him slip away,” Liana said, her voice cracking. “That’s the most important thing—don’t let him slip away. That’s the mistake I made—I was in love with him, and I had him, but I lost him, because I was a fool.”
She shook her head sadly.
“Please, Karen. Don’t you dare make my mistake.”
We hugged and said our goodbyes. She felt so skinny in my arms, so fragile. For a second I thought I would break her, that her bones would shatter and disintegrate in my arms. But she survived the embrace and as we broke apart, she pressed a kiss to her hand and then pressed her fingers to my cheek. I caught her fingers with my own hand and nodded, the tears starting to flow.
I was left to find my own way out of the complex. My heart still slammed hard in my chest, threatening to burst out of my rib cage with each step. I was worried, horribly worried, that somehow, I had still destroyed this—that, as Liana had warned, I had lost Kyle. Irrevocably.
I knew I had to fight this. I knew I had to get him back. Today was the first day he hadn’t called. In fact, now that I thought about it, he hadn’t called for two days. I immediately put in a call to his office as soon as I got back to my car.
“Mr. Stone hasn’t been into the office in the last two days,” his secretary answered coldly. “In fact… No one’s seen him.”
I bit my lip. Bit my lip so hard it almost began to bleed.
“Right, thanks,” I replied as I hung up. So. He wasn’t even going to work. I called his private cell phone but that just sent me to his voicemail.
“Kyle, I met Liana. At the rehab center. She told me everything that had happened. Kyle, honey, I’m so, so, so sorry—please, call me. Let’s make this right. Please. I want this to stop. I hate this all so much and all I really want… All I really want is to be with you.”
I took a deep, halting breath.
“Kyle, baby, I love you. Please, call me. Please.”
But no call came. For several days.
The book languished for a while. I ignored Lori’s calls. And then, finally, I returned her call.
I knew I needed to tell her… Something.
“Listen,” I said. “I’m not going to write the book like we’ve been planning it.”
I heard Lori start to protest but I cut her off.
“I’m going to write a short article. We’ll call it… ‘Portrait of a Billionaire.’ Can you get it placed for me?”
KYLE
I hadn’t gone to work in a week. Hadn’t answered my email or my phone. The funk that had descended on me showed no signs of lifting and there was nothing, absolutely nothing I could do to stop it, I realized. And so, I put Nicholas in charge of my affairs for the time being, as I slowly drank myself into a stupor each evening.
That is, until one Sunday morning, right before Christmas, when I got a call from Nicholas—his number being the only one I would look at it.
“You’d better take a look at the New York Times magazine today,” he advised me. Half asleep, I googled it and, to my surprise, saw my face staring back at me.
“What… What the hell is this?” I asked.
It was a story called “Portrait of a Billionaire.”
The subtitle to the story? “How a man demonized in the media kept his soul and saved academia.”
All right. That was a bit hyperbolic. But I couldn’t be mad at that.
And then I saw the name of the author.
Karen O’Lowry. The story was about us. But I didn’t come off as a monster here… I was a saint, a tortured martyr. Nicholas stayed on the line with me as I skimmed it.
“What… What the hell… This is amazing…” I murmured.
“And here I thought things were over with you and Karen.”
“You know, I thought the same thing,” I murmured, my voice still heavy with sleep and drink.
“What do you want to do about this? Do you want to issue a statement?”
“Something generic. Say that my partnership with the Silliman University English department has been rewarding in more ways than one, that I look forward to working with them in the future… The usual.”
“Right. Fancy language that says nothing at all.”
“Exactly,” I replied, my eyes still gliding over the words Karen had written about me. I had to call her.
When I hung up with Nicholas, I called Karen immediately.
She picked up.
We were both silent for a long time, unable to make words tumble out of our mouths as we enjoyed the silence, the sound of each other’s breathing.
“I’m sorry,” she said finally.
“Me too. Where are you?”
“In Atlanta, with my mom.”
She paused.
“Do you know it’s Christmas Eve?”
I squinted at the date in the upper right hand corner of my computer. December 24th. So it was.
“Then it’s not too late.”
“You Scrooge,” she said with a little giggle.
“I want to see you.”
“I want to see you too. I’m here in Atlanta until New Year’s.”
“Come to New York for the New Year.”
“I’d like that.”
“I like you.”
“I love you. I like you and I love you,” she replied, her voice barely more than a whisper.
KAREN
New Year’s Eve. I rode the elevator up to Kyle’s apartment, a bottle of nice champagne in my hands. Of course, it wasn’t as nice as what he could afford, as what he would have for us… But I wanted to bring him something.
I wore a short, flirty little black number. I knew he would like it—knew it would be perfect for our private party.
He met me at the door. His shirt was already off, a glass of champagne was already in his hand.
His eyes seized upon the bottle in my hands and our eyes met. We both burst out laughing.
“I’ll take yours and you can put this one in the fridge,” I said, accepting the champagne and tasting the sour sweetness of the bubbly. He disappeared with the bottle for a second before re-appearing.
“I read your article,” he said shortly.
I felt my face growing hot.
“And?”
“Nicest things anyone’s ever said about me,” he said with a tease note in his voice as he approached me, his hands working their way around my waist.
“Really? That can’t be true…”
“You’d be surprised at the things people say about me…” he whispered, his warm face nearing me, coming closer and closer. I took a deep breath, sighing as I inhaled his scent, and then the scent of the champagne on his breath. That, along with his cologne… The cocktail intoxicated me.
“Well, I think it was Oscar Wilde who said…”
“…that the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about,” he replied.
“You’ve been doing your reading.”
“I have a good teacher.”
“Oh?
What’s her name?”
“Don’t tease,” he growled, as he ran his hands over my bottom, gripping me through my dress as his teeth found my ear lobe. I gasped, leaning into him hungrily.