A Beautiful, Terrible Thing

by Jen Waite

  Suddenly, I remember reading about vore. Of course, I think. Psychopaths desire to be consumed whole by someone else because they lack an identity themselves. Psychopaths mirror other individuals so completely that in a sense it is like they are being swallowed whole by their target, until they turn the tables and rip their target apart from the inside out. Maybe the desire to fill the void, to obtain an identity, manifests itself in this sexual vore fantasy of being fully consumed by someone else.

  I look at the photo again. Of course. He’s turning into a male version of Croella.

  It is like I am actually watching him cross over; I am watching his physical and emotional transformation into someone else entirely. For a few months, he ping-ponged between two people—the person I knew, the guy he called “old Marco,” and the money-obsessed, club-going, selfie-taking person, the “new” Marco. Now I see very clearly that two personas were battling inside him over the last few months; he hadn’t fully transitioned from the person he became because of me to the person he was becoming in order to control Croella. I look at the photo for as long as I can stomach and then slip my phone into my jeans’ back pocket.

  Aunt Julia wanders into the shoe aisles, and I sidle up to my mom. “Another thing, Mom. Marco texted me today that he was planning to ‘execute’ the waitress from the Thirsty Owl that he slept with.” I push the stroller steadily forward. “Because he was worried about her telling me. He said he could have done it and ‘no one would have known.’” I make air quotes with my fingers. “He just sent me this text totally out of nowhere. Isn’t that creepy as you-know-what?”

  “Are you serious?” My mom comes to a standstill in the middle of the diaper aisle.

  I laugh. “I mean, we know he’s full of shit at this point. The crazy thing is I barely flinched when I got that text. I just roll my eyes when I get those kinds of texts from him now.”

  “But, Jenny, why do you think he sent that to you?” my mom says it in a way that makes it clear I’m missing something.

  “To . . . scare me?” I try to come up with the correct answer.

  “And why would that scare you?” my mom prods.

  “It scares me because . . .” We start to walk again slowly down the aisle. “It scares me because he’s telling me he was planning to kill someone who was in his way.” I pause a moment as the full realization comes flooding in. “And that’s me now.”

  “Yes, that’s you now. In his mind, you’re the reason for his fall from grace. Not his actions, not what he did, but that you caught him,” my mom says, finishing my thought.

  “Jesus Christ. But the thing is, when he was truly backed into a corner, he didn’t hurt me or Louisa. He tried to hurt himself . . . or wanted to make it look that way. So I’m not super worried.” I pop a few Puffs into Lulu’s outstretched hand. “I’ve read that the majority of psychopaths aren’t violent.”

  “Well, I thank God every day that the three of you didn’t go to Peaks.” My mom shakes her head.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Jenny,” my mom says pointedly. “A cottage on a remote island in the middle of the winter.” She looks at me like what she’s saying is completely obvious.

  I laugh. “You think he would have done something? To me and Louisa?”

  “Accidents happen,” my mom says completely seriously, and a chill runs through my body. I remember the way Marco came toward me in the kitchen when I tried to flee to Maine, his eyes dark and empty. But still, in all the years we were together he never once showed any violent tendencies.

  “No way,” I say, but I’ve stopped laughing. “I mean, I really don’t think so.”

  “Well, I’m glad you didn’t go. I’m so glad you didn’t go.”

  —

  I HAVE started applying to jobs while Louisa naps. There is part of me that is scared shitless to start working again and part of me that is thrilled. My résumé consists of seven years of acting in New York and a couple of years as a paralegal and an analyst at a hedge fund. I spent an hour buffing and glossing my résumé with temp work that I did during my pregnancy. It is not much but it is something, and apparently my résumé looks credible enough because today I have my first interview for a paralegal position at a small law firm. You’re not ready yet, a small voice whispers in my ear. You’re still having panic attacks on a daily basis. I shake my head and say “shh” out loud while I dab on blush and mascara in the mirror. I pull on the black, knee-length pencil skirt my sister has let me borrow. I glance back in the mirror. In my high-waisted black skirt and tucked in silk blouse I look svelte, but when I poke at my middle my fingers sink into a soft pouch leftover from pregnancy and rapid weight loss. “Ugh,” I say, grabbing the skin and pulling. Throughout my pregnancy, especially at the end, I fretted over how difficult it would be to lose all the weight I had gained. I never thought that I would have the opposite problem. I lost too much weight too fast, and now I have a loose pouch only around my middle. “Not a diet I would recommend,” I say out loud to my reflection. I twist my hair into a knot on the top of my head and step into black heels I bought at DSW last week.

  “Wow, you look great. Good luck!” my parents call as I walk through the kitchen to the garage.

  “Thank you,” I say nervously, and kiss Louisa on the head before I leave.

  My stomach flips and flops on the drive into the Old Port. The interview is at a small law firm housed in a quaint brick building on a cobblestone street.

  “Hi, my name is Jen. I have an interview. I’m a bit early,” I say with what I hope is calm self-possession, as I try to keep my voice steady.

  “Hi! Sure, I’ll let them know. You can take a seat while you wait. Great outfit, by the way,” the young receptionist chirps before picking up her ringing phone.

  I smile big in acknowledgment and take a deep breath. I can do this.

  Sitting at a large conference table, across from the four founding partners, I quickly gain confidence. They are young, early to late thirties, and they talk to me as a peer. I explain that I have moved back to Maine because I had a baby. I am looking forward to going back to work after spending six months at home as a full-time mom. I say it with a knowing smile, as if it has been hard but rewarding—as if I didn’t discover that my husband was a psychopath when our baby was a month old. They all nod and smile knowingly back.

  By the end of the interview I know that I will receive a second interview, and I get a callback e-mail before I have even turned off Shore Road onto Haven. Yes. Yes. Yes.

  BURN

  A FEW people who have experienced deep loss themselves have asked me, “Are you in the anger stage yet?” And when I respond, “I don’t know. . . .” they say, “You’ll know.” Deep down I have always been quite certain that I am just not an angry person, and the anger that I feel will always be covered with love and heartbreak like a rock covered in moss. And then suddenly, out of nowhere, today, the day after my interview, I know.

  I am livid.

  I am outraged.

  How. Fucking. Dare. He.

  I walk around and around and around the loop, practicing conversations with him in my mind where I say all the things I should have said on January 20. I let this anger swirl around inside me for days. It has nowhere to go. I tell myself to rise above and that this is good; I am making progress. And then it pours out in a series of texts to Marco. I break no contact to send him picture after picture of the most unflattering pictures of Croella I can find online with hashtag #stupidman, #youfuckedup!!!, and #goodchoice. It is low and it is callous and I am so much better than this and it feels fan-fucking-tastic. This goes on for days. Marco responds with an “OK, Jen,” half the time and love-bombing the other half. (“All I ever wanted was a family. All I wanted was to wake up next to you every morning.”)

  I’m afraid I am stuck in this anger. It feels better than what I was feeling before, and I don’t want to
let it go, but it is so heavy and I drag it around with me wherever I go. It is consuming me. When I wring my hands together and tell Lisa, she looks at me like, “Yeah, what did you expect?” and says, “You’re going to be angry for a long time. I mean, look at your life right now. Look at the narrative that he created for your daughter’s birth. You have a lot of anger to process.” We talk about tools that can help me get to the other side, such as cutting down on checking their profiles on social media and reading books on trusting my intuition.

  “I want you to rebuild trust in your own inner compass,” Lisa says. “You have good instincts, but for some reason you pushed those instincts way down and ignored them. You said you felt sick to your stomach for weeks at the beginning of your relationship with Marco and same thing with the Thirsty Owl. Something inside you was saying, ‘Whoa, hold on, this doesn’t add up,’ but you ignored that voice and plowed on. What we need to figure out is why and start to arm you with some concrete tools that you can draw on until you truly learn to listen to your intuition.”

  This sounds good in theory, but I am skeptical. I can’t stop. I want to hurt them, both of them, so badly. I want them to pay. This afternoon is my follow-up interview with the law firm. I get ready and sit on my bed staring at my phone. The anger that is coursing through my body feels so good. I am going to get a fancy job, and we will be fine. Ha. Fuck you, Marco. I send off a new series of pictures. My head is dizzy with adrenaline and anger. I am waiting for something. Some kind of vindication. His response lights up my screen. “At least she knows how to make a man happy.” Suddenly, my anger is wiped away by a flood of tears. I try to hold onto my anger, to pull it back in, but it has already drifted so far downstream that I am left stranded at the mouth of the river. I pick up Louisa and trudge downstairs. I hide my face behind her soft hair and murmur into her ear that I love her and that I’m going to try to do better for her.

  “What happened?” my dad asks sharply as soon as he sees my face.

  “Oh, nothing. I texted Marco some stupid, mean things. I wanted him to feel like an idiot for choosing her over us. But it didn’t work. He just texted back ‘At least she knows how to make a man happy.’” I get to the last word and start to cry again. “I know that after everything he’s done, I should be used to it, but stuff like that still hurts. I just want him to pay. I want to hurt him like he’s hurt me.” My voice comes out in broken sobs, and my mom hugs me and then gently takes Louisa.

  “You can’t hurt him, Jenny,” my dad says. “You can’t hurt someone who has no feelings. No matter what you try to do to hurt him, he will come back and hurt you worse. That is what he does. He hurts women. He doesn’t hurt them physically, but he has a very finely sharpened set of tools that he uses to hurt women. He is a master at this. It comes as naturally to him as breathing, and he derives great pleasure from it. Every time you text him an insult, you feed his ego, you energize him. This is fun for him.” My dad says this quickly and matter-of-factly. “Maybe your therapist is right that he doesn’t even know what he’s doing, that it’s subconscious, but now that we know that he was cheating throughout your entire relationship, we know that he was never even trying to be a good guy. He never had good intentions.” My dad clenches and unclenches his jaw. “You need to understand one very simple fact: He is feeding off your pain.”

  I know that my dad is right. I will only break free when I no longer care. I run to my bathroom and splash cold water on my face. I redo my makeup quickly for my interview. I glance at myself. Passable. I hurry back downstairs and out the door. “Bye,” I yell.

  “Good luck,” two voices yell back simultaneously. I run back inside and kiss Lulu.

  Somehow I make it through the second interview. I meet one of the partners who was in court during my first interview. He is cute and nice and shy. His eyes don’t move down my body, and he doesn’t flirt. He tells me that his wife is on maternity leave with their three-month-old right now and that his paternity leave will start as soon as she goes back to work. He is the kind of man I would have found utterly boring before. As I shake his hand on my way out, I think, Why, why couldn’t I have picked someone like you?

  —

  AS I begin opening up to other women, I notice something: Every woman I share tidbits of my story with has her own account to tell—either tentatively, cautiously disclosing a painful event, or furiously, voraciously spitting out the story that has been on the tip of her tongue for years—something that either happened to her or someone close to her.

  First, there was Ava, a friend from New York. Ava is uniquely, breathtakingly beautiful, with smooth dark skin; an abundance of black, curly hair; and deep brown eyes. I remember being surprised by how friendly, eager to please, and helpful she came across the first time I met her. She had moved from the UK to New York a few months prior to the first time we met. She relocated for her acting career, and we bumped into each other at the agency we were both signed with. We became fast friends that day in our agent’s small office, after realizing quickly that we shared the same doubts, fears, and aspirations about our careers (or lack thereof). It probably didn’t hurt that we were the opposite physical types and knew instinctively we would never be competing for a role. We began hanging out, drinking wine at my apartment, coaching each other before auditions, and venting after particularly horrific ones. She had been calling me and leaving messages every few days ever since I fled to Maine. I put off calling her back, instead shooting off texts here and there: “I’m OK. I can’t talk yet. I’ll call when I can.” The very thought of calling exhausted me and sent a shiver of panic through my body. But she kept calling. And texting. And finally I realized this girl I had known for only a year was silently rooting for me and was not going anywhere. A few weeks ago, around the time I began interviewing, I was suddenly compelled to reach out to my friend who had proven so supportive.

  “Ava,” I said, “I’m sorry I haven’t called until just now.”

  “Love,” she said, “tell me everything.” So I did, starting from the beginning. When I told her about my sociopath research, there was silence for a moment.

  “Jen. I’ve just had a bloody epiphany,” she said, her soft British clip came through the phone. “I think my father is a sociopath.”

  I quickly remembered back to her telling me off the cuff, after several glasses of white wine, that her father was currently on his fifth wife. The revelation had shocked me, but she laughed it off and we never dipped any deeper into her past.

  “My dad had an affair when I was two and my brother was a baby,” she told me over the phone. “My mum called the hotel he was staying at on a business trip, and his pretty young colleague picked up. It was late at night, and my mom knew right away.” Ava went on, half to me, half to herself, piecing it together for the first time. “She told me when I was a teenager that she hung up the phone and then leaned over and threw up into the sink. She was devastated. My dad promised it was a terrible mistake and that he would end it. He begged for another chance. She had two babies and had just spent all her money putting him through law school, so she forgave him. And then two years later, when she finally felt they were on solid ground again, he packed a suitcase and walked next door . . . to his mistress’s house.” Ava let out a cold laugh. “My mum finally understood why my dad had insisted on moving the family right after he had supposedly ended his affair.”

  I was silent for a moment, digesting this information.

  “But,” I started, “you said he was on his fifth wife?”

  “Oh, yes, he married the mistress and then left her for another woman a few years later. And then again. And again and again. All these years I just thought he was a womanizer, and my mum spent many, many years blaming herself for the end of their marriage. But the relationship cycle you were talking about? He’s done it to all of his wives. And, Jen,” she said slowly, “I think he’s done it to me.”

  We talked for another ho
ur about what it was like growing up in and out of her dad’s good graces: Always trying to be on her father’s “good side” but always feeling vaguely like she and her brother were just trophies that he would parade around when it suited him.

  And there was Monica, the woman who ran the coffee and pastry counter at the small community center on Peaks Island, who told me that she had been happily engaged to the man of her dreams five years earlier. They had dated for a year and bought a house together before he proposed. She went to visit her sister across the country who had just had a baby. When she came home, she walked up to her front door and found it locked, which was odd because her and her fiancé never locked the door. She fished inside her purse for the key that she had almost never used, but the key wouldn’t even fit in the hole, let alone open the door. So she pulled her phone out to call her fiancé and that’s when she saw she had a voice mail.

  “I listened to the message five times before it made any sense at all—before it sank in. He only said it was over and that he had changed the lock to the house. That was all. He never picked up my calls, and I never talked to him again—except through lawyers. Oh, and another woman moved in the next week. With her two kids.” Monica paused and smiled at Louisa. “I know you won’t believe me now, but this is the best thing that could have ever happened to you.”

  And then there was Delaney. Delaney. A woman who had popped into the back of my mind on January 20 and stayed there, just under the surface, floating beneath the waves of depression and anger and fear. A woman I had been trying to forget ever since I met her two years earlier. It was the first hair-modeling gig I had ever booked. L’Oréal had hired me to showcase their new line of hair-color products. They were going to dye my dirty blonde hair a shocking red to turn my drab “before” into a stunning and fierce “after.” Delaney was my makeup artist that day, and I liked her immediately. Her classically beautiful face, complete with elegant, long blonde hair and a perfect button nose, contrasted with her brash and colorful personality. While she did my makeup, we talked. I gushed about being engaged to Marco, the Argentinian father who had appeared out of nowhere and swept me off my feet. At the time, the Thirsty Owl was just on the horizon, and I talked excitedly about the possibility that we would be restaurant owners soon.