Wicked Beautiful

by J. T. Geissinger

  “Do you want children?”

  “Children?” I repeat the word as if it’s one I’m unfamiliar with, a word from a foreign language.

  Parker glances over at me. His face reveals nothing. “You said small children terrify you, which I took to mean you didn’t want any. But I know it’s never smart to assume, so I’m asking.”

  My mouth is the Sahara Desert. The breeze riffles through my hair, swirling it around my shoulders. I stare at the dark horizon, at the stars being slowly obliterated by clouds, and long for them to obliterate me.

  “I wouldn’t be a good mother.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  When I look at him from the corner of my eye, I can tell he isn’t being sarcastic. He actually seems surprised by my statement. As if it isn’t obvious.

  “In case you haven’t noticed, Mr. Maxwell, I’m not exactly the nurturing type.”

  “Most men aren’t, either, but no one considers it a negative for them.”

  “That’s because they typically have a partner who is.”

  “So if you had a partner who was nurturing, the problem would be solved?”

  This conversation has taken a turn I don’t like. I shrug and gaze stoically into the distance. “I’ve never really thought about it.”

  “You should.”

  I look at him. He’s serious. It’s terrifying. “Let’s change the subject.”

  His voice softens, as do his eyes. “No.”

  My stomach is in ropes. Beads of sweat break out along my forehead. I manage, barely, to swallow. “What if I said please?”

  “You haven’t said it yet.”

  I open my mouth, but Parker beats me to the punch.

  “I’ve always wanted kids,” he says, looking right into my eyes.

  I feel as if my dinner is about to make a violent reappearance. Cold flashes over me, then scalding heat, and then an anguish so complete it floods every cell, every atom of my being, straight down into the marrow of my bones.

  For a blind, bottomless moment, I’m no longer Victoria Price. I’m no longer a woman looking at a man, or even a human being at all.

  I am Pain.

  Then I’m out of my seat, stumbling over wooden floorboards to the railing that surrounds the lanai, gripping it like a life vest, my knees and elbows locked so I don’t slide down to the floor.

  He comes up behind me and surrounds me with his arms. I close my eyes and lower my head, fighting the swell of sobs rising in my throat. Parker puts his face into my hair.

  “I want to know all the dark places in you,” he whispers vehemently, his arms like a vise. “I want to be the one who has the key that unlocks all your bolted doors and chases away all the monsters you keep hidden behind them. I want to be the light inside your darkness. I want to be your rock and your safety net, the soft place you can fall.”

  When I don’t reply, he turns me around, holds me by the waist, and lifts my chin.

  “I meant what I told you before, about you being safe with me, Victoria. Whatever happened to you in the past, with me you’ll always be safe. I promise.”

  My breath catches in my throat. “Why?”

  Eyes shining, he says simply, “You move me.”

  I drop my head to his chest. My voice comes out hollow, an empty, ugly rasp against the muffled boom of the distant surf. “You don’t know me. You said it yourself.”

  “I know enough.”

  A gull cries, soaring somewhere overhead. The breeze grows more restless, snapping the curtains by the sliding doors, pulling my dress into billowing folds around my knees. The pungent sting of ozone hangs in the air, and I know that rain is imminent.

  I whisper, “Why are you saying these things to me? Why did you bring me here? What is it you want?”

  Parker strokes his hand over my head, combs his fingers through my hair, his silence contemplative. Then, finally, with a soft sigh as if a decision has been made, he says, “I want to show you something.”

  He takes my hand and leads me away from the railing, inside through the kitchen, and up the stairs. We pad silently down the hallway toward the master bedroom, but turn instead to a door to the right. It’s closed. Parker grasps the handle and looks at me.

  “Have you ever heard of something called spousal privilege?”

  What an odd question. My brow wrinkles. “I don’t think so.”

  Parker’s Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. “It’s a legal term. It means that a husband can’t be forced to testify in court against his wife.”

  I dread the answer, but know I must ask. “And what does that have to do with anything?”

  Parker stares down at me, his eyes as focused as lasers on mine. Light burns behind them, catching fire to the flecks of gold in his irises. A tingle of animal recognition courses through me, and I know in an instant that whatever he’s brought me here for is behind this door.

  Parker turns the knob, pushes it open, and lets his hand fall to his side. “Just keep it in mind.”

  Filled with trepidation, I look inside the room.

  The first thing my gaze falls on is a picture, displayed prominently on the opposite wall, a framed eight-by-ten surrounded by dozens of other pictures, similarly framed.

  My heart stops.

  It’s a picture of two teenagers laughing in each other’s arms, blue sky and tall pine trees making a magnificent backdrop behind them. The summer sun shines bright on their faces. They are young, carefree, and blissfully in love.

  It’s me and Parker.

  My mother took the picture three weeks to the day before he left.

  THIRTY-THREE

  My shock is so total I feel flash-frozen. Everything inside me hardens, crystallizes, chills to crackling ice. My brain refuses to allow my tongue to form words, so I stand there stupidly gaping, silent and unmoving as Parker walks past me into the room. He stops in the middle of it, examining the framed pictures. They cover most of one wall.

  Other than all the pictures, the room is empty. Only a single plain bench is set opposite, so a person could relax and contemplate the display. It’s like a museum.

  Or a shrine.

  “I come here when I need a reminder,” Parker says sadly.

  Why does he have that picture of us? Why isn’t he accusing me of anything? Why doesn’t he seem angry? What the hell is going on here?

  I find my voice, a whisper of breath in the quiet room. “Of?”

  When he turns his head and looks at me, his eyes are full of ancient sorrow. “Who I used to be. And everything I’ve lost.”

  My gaze flashes back to the pictures. Some of them depict his parents at various parties and social events, his mother in silk and pearls, his father’s florid face grinning, always grinning that hateful, entitled grin. There are photos of the mansion where he grew up, family gathered on the green expanse of lawn, photos of football games, of Parker in his letterman jacket from senior year, photos of him from childhood, of the city of Laredo, of his favorite polo pony, and on and on.

  And there isn’t just the one shot of the two of us; there are many more. In formal wear for a school dance, at a pumpkin patch close to Halloween, at my brother’s hospital bedside on his thirteenth birthday. I’m holding balloons, Parker’s holding my hand, and my mother’s got her arms around both of us. Everyone is smiling.

  Inside, I’m sick. I’m a volcano with a vomit core, about to blow. But I don’t show it. I give him nothing. I’ve come too far. I have too much invested.

  If this is the goal line, I’ll be damned if I’ll fumble the ball now.

  I draw myself to my full height. I look straight at his face. In a voice devoid of emotion, I say, “Why don’t you explain what you mean.”

  He takes a seat on the bench, slowly, as if it pains him to bend his legs. He props his elbows on his knees and drags his hands through his hair. When he speaks, it’s to the floor.

  “I’ve spent the last fifteen years of my life on hold. I’ve opened over twenty restaurants, fo
unded a nonprofit organization, traveled the world, met celebrities, politicians, and even a king. I’ve become wealthy beyond all my expectations, given away millions to charity, built myself an empire.”

  His voice drops. “And none of it makes up for one mistake I made at eighteen.”

  All the air is sucked from the room. The clocks stop ticking. The earth stops spinning under my feet. I’m no longer ice; I’m granite. I couldn’t move if I wanted to.

  Parker raises his head and stares at the wall of photos. “My father was a terrible man. Is a terrible man. The textbook definition of a bigot. Why my mother married him, I’ll never know. The woman is a saint.” He shakes his head. “I’m grateful she doesn’t know what I did. The shame would cripple me.”

  The silence in the room is deafening. Into it, Parker sighs.

  “The girl I told you about, you remember? The one who killed herself?”

  He looks at me. I must nod, or make some other kind of acknowledgment that I don’t realize I’ve made, because he continues.

  “That’s her.” He turns again to the pictures. His expression hovers somewhere between searing agony and crushing defeat. “Isabel was her name. She was my best friend. My first love. I would’ve done anything for her. So when my father made me choose between destroying my own life or hers, I chose mine.” His laugh is bitter, the laugh of a man who’s lived too long with guilt, whose soul has been corroded by it. “What a fool I was.”

  Howling erupts inside my head, like a thousand wolves in a dark forest, muzzles raised to the rising moon. I can’t speak. I stare at the photos of myself, the girl I used to be, thick glasses and a crooked nose, crooked teeth to match, cheap clothes and deeply bronzed skin from spending so much time outdoors. That awful haircut my mother gave me. A smile like the sun.

  I’m unrecognizable. That trusting, happy girl is just another of my ghosts.

  Parker exhales a heavy breath. “Her family was very poor. Mine was filthy rich. In the beginning my father tolerated our relationship because he thought I was like him; he thought I was just sowing my wild oats. Getting experience.” His voice gains an edge of disgust. “‘You’re not a man until you’ve split the dark oak,’ he once said to me, clapping me on the shoulder. Like making love to the girl of my dreams was just a rite of passage. Like she was a thing to be used. That’s when I began to hate him. That’s when I began to hide my feelings for Isabel from him. To pretend.”

  Parker’s voice gets lower. Rougher. “It lasted for two years, until he found out. I think he had me followed after he discovered us together one night. But he didn’t confront me right away; he waited. He planned. And then, when he had what he needed, he forced me to make a choice.”

  My hands shake. My palms sweat. My heartbeat increases to a nearly impossible rate, pounding with such frantic hummingbird beats I feel faint. But my mind is clear and cold. I have the most intense feeling of hovering above myself, outside my body, watching this horror unfold with detachment as if it’s happening to someone else.

  Parker stands. He contemplates the photos with his hands on his hips, his shoulders rounded, the normally proud line of his back bent. “Isabel’s father had a gambling problem. I have no idea how my father discovered that, but he organized a private poker game, one with a low enough buy-in so that her father could play. And then my dad did what he does best: he cheated. He let her father gain confidence with a few substantial wins, let him get a taste of real money, and then pulled the rug out from under his feet. The man got so desperate he ended up betting the deed to his farm. And, of course, he lost.

  “When my father had the means to destroy Isabel’s entire family completely, he came to me and said I could stay with her—and her family would lose their livelihood and be out on the streets, and I’d be disinherited so I couldn’t help them—or I could leave that very night and go to school in England, never to return. He’d already arranged everything. Plane ticket, apartment, tuition, everything. All to get me away from a girl he hated because of the color of her skin.”

  When Parker turns to look at me, his eyes glitter with moisture and self-hatred. “So I agreed. Though it broke my fucking heart, I thought that I was being strong for her. That it was the right thing to do, saving the farm, saving her family. I had no doubt my father would follow through on his threats. And, stupidly, I thought she would eventually move on, have a beautiful life, forget all about me.”

  His voice cracks. “Instead she killed herself. Because I didn’t have the courage to stand up to my father, she died.”

  I don’t understand. I don’t understand what you’re saying.

  My words must have been spoken aloud, because Parker replies, “He made me write her a good-bye letter, and then I left. For a few years I was in school in England, and then I lived in France for a year with Alain. I was miserable the entire time. Heartbroken. When I couldn’t stand it anymore, when it got to be so bad that I knew I had to go back or go insane, I booked a flight to Laredo and went straight to her house as soon as I got off the plane. I was going to confess everything, beg her for her forgiveness. But I was too late; she was already gone. Her mother told me the whole story.”

  One by one, my cells begin to shrivel up and die.

  I whisper, “Her mother?”

  As if he can no longer bear to meet my eyes, he looks away and hangs his head. “She loved me like a son. She was always good to me. But when I saw her that night, I knew her love had turned into the kind of hate that eats you alive. She said things to me, screamed things…things I’ll never forget. She told me that after I left, Isabel had killed herself. That she’d taken her father’s gun and put it to her head. And that she’d been cremated, so there wasn’t even a grave I could visit. She was gone. And I had her blood all over my hands. I still do. It can never be washed away, no matter how hard I pray, how much I give to charity, how long I try to make amends.”

  My knees give out. Slowly, inch by agonizing inch, I sink silently to the floor where I sit ashen, shell-shocked and shaking, like the victim of a bombing.

  Lost in his painful memories, Parker doesn’t notice my distress.

  “I went a little crazy after that. Got into a lot of fights, did a lot of stupid shit, got myself into a lot of trouble, because I wanted to die, too. Couldn’t shake the guilt. Drank. Wandered. Spent a few months in jail for a minor drug possession charge. Probably could’ve gotten out of it if I’d contacted my father, but by then he was dead to me. I didn’t want his help or his dirty money. Met a guy inside who was a cook. Got to be friends. We were released at the same time, and he offered me a job in his family’s restaurant, cash under the table.

  “I took it because I had nothing else to do. Started as a busboy, moved up to cook. Turns out I was pretty good at it. I guess I picked up a lot living with Alain that year in France. The restaurant got a good write-up in the local paper, started making more money. I started trying different dishes. Reservations started selling out. One day some bigwig comes in with a boatload of money, says he wants to make me the head chef at his fancy new restaurant. I said sure, on one condition: we name it Bel Époch. The investor said that was a stupid name for a gourmet Mexican restaurant, especially since it was spelled wrong, but I said no name, no deal.”

  Gazing at my picture, Parker pauses for a moment. His voice turns reverent. “I wanted to name it after Isabel, you see. That was my nickname for her: Bel. It was an homage to her, and to the time we had together. Bel Époch: beautiful era. The best time in my life. So the investor eventually relented. And that was my first restaurant.”

  Almost as an afterthought, he adds, “I started The Hunger Project in memory of her, too. I thought she would’ve liked the idea of giving food to the underprivileged kids in the South. Kids like her, who never had money for school lunches. And the donations I make to the Muscular Dystrophy Association, those are in memory of her little brother who died of the disease.”

  He heaves a deep, heavy sigh. “I guess…I guess I’ve be
en trying all these years to somehow make it right.”

  Tears slide down my cheeks. I feel them, but make no move to brush them away. I don’t have to ask Parker about my letters, because I know now he never received them. Whether my mother or his father made sure of that, I doubt I’ll ever find out. But I know by the honesty in his voice, the deep emotion and unfathomable regret in every word, that what Parker has just told me is the truth.

  He doesn’t know I’m Isabel.

  He doesn’t know I was pregnant when he left.

  He believes I’m dead, and that he’s the cause.

  He’s done all these wonderful things—naming restaurants and giving to charity and starting a nonprofit to help poor kids—for me.

  Me, the perfect, dead love he told me about on our first date, the girl I hated with a furor like a holocaust.

  Reality folds in around me like a complicated origami form, angles and layers I can’t see through, sharp edges that cut. The out-of-body detachment from before vanishes, replaced by a distinctly painful in-body experience wherein I feel each and every screaming nerve, each and every acutely agonizing intake of breath.

  I’m underwater. I’m going to drown.

  Everything I am, everything I believed, all the rage and vengeance that has driven me for the past fifteen years was built entirely on a sandcastle of untruths and misinformation, of pettiness and folly, of the hardness of two people’s hearts.

  Parker’s father and his intractable discrimination.

  My mother and that one, terrible lie.

  A lie that she’s kept like a secret lover, all these years. I remember all the times she railed against Parker, cursed his name, wished him dead, and I’m sick all over again.

  I understand why she did what she did. It’s simple, really: revenge. She wanted to make Parker pay for the agony he put me through when he left. But she didn’t know that he was just trying to do the right thing. She didn’t know he’d already paid, and paid, and paid. And would be paying for years to come. Would pay forever.

  So this is the poisoned fruit that bigotry and revenge have borne. Here we sit, two broken hearts, two ruined souls, two stunted, loveless people staring at the ghosts of their former selves hanging on the walls.