Ken paused to eat some of his salad. “Marianne was still in our lives. But she became...how do you say it? More...deceptive. The half dozen times I saw her during Carol’s pregnancy was in the company of others. We’d all go with a bunch of people from Carol’s department at work to Chinatown for Dim Sum, and Marianne would always be there. Or Carol and Marianne would go out with some of the other girls from the office. That kind of thing. I actually started chilling out more about it.”
“So what happened?” Sherri asked.
Ken looked grim. “Nothing at first. Carol gave birth to a healthy baby girl we named Helen. She took three months off of work. When she came back, Helen went to a day care facility across the street from Kaiser. Carol actually started working there a few years before, so it was the perfect arrangement. Helen became Carol’s life. I was still the number two person in her life, but I didn’t care now. As long as Helen was number one, that was all that mattered.” His features clouded. “Little did I know what position I really ranked.”
Sherri looked troubled. “You mean...you were really number three?”
Ken nodded. “Yeah.” He offered a pensive smile as he ate his salad. “All this time I thought maybe she’d wised up and put Marianne in her place. But I was wrong. Helen had been number one in her life, but as the weeks turned into months I began to notice that Marianne hadn’t so much as fallen out of her life, she’d just been...shifted to a different position. She’d settled to a lower position in Carol’s life, and she knew it. And once the...novelty of the baby wore off, Marianne started in on Carol again.”
“Damn, Ken, you make it sound like this poor woman was some kind of parasite or something!” Sherri had finished her salad and was fiddling with her fork when Ken’s arm shot out and he gripped her wrist.
He leaned over the table, his features a mad grimace. “Marianne is a parasite! Haven’t you been listening?”
“Ken! You’re hurting me!”
Ken let go, wincing at the realization of how hard he’d gripped Sherri’s wrist. “I’m sorry,” he said. Sherri cradled her left wrist in her right hand, rubbing it with her thumb. Her features had taken on a wide-eyed, frightened look. He couldn’t tell if she was more frightened of his behavior or at the story. “I’m sorry,” he reiterated. “It’s just that...that’s how she got to us. She came across as so trustworthy, somebody that was likeable, yet somebody you could take pity on at the same time. She appeals to people who have a strong streak of altruism. She...makes you want to think that you want to help her. And so you offer to help her by listening to her...and in listening to her problems she feeds you the illusion that you’re friends. And as the relationship progresses, you think you are friends with her. But what you aren’t aware of is that she’s feeding on you. Little by little, she’s digging at you for information: she wants to know everything about you. Your past life, your hopes and dreams, your fears and opinions. She gathers this information discreetly and at the same time she’s feeding you this feeling of euphoria, this feeling that you think she’s a good friend who is truly interested in you for the person you are. And she feeds that altruistic side by throwing out her own problems in the hopes she snares you. Because if you catch that net with the intention of helping her, it tells her that you care about her. And if you care about her, the deeper she can dig her hooks into you and drink deeper. So while you think you’re being the sympathetic friend trying to help her out, listening to her sob stories, offering her advice and words of encouragement, she’s sucking the life right out of you and you don’t even know it.”
Sherri looked stunned. Ken drained his wine glass, set it on the table. “I know it sounds crazy. But it’s what happened. It’s the only thing I can think of that happened. When Helen was only a year old I suddenly realized that Marianne had become the number one person in Carol’s life again. And that Helen and I had dropped down a few rungs. I became Helen’s mother and father. Marianne started feeding Carol this...bullshit that she missed her due to Carol’s motherhood.” Ken’s features took on a tone of disgust and anger. “At first I was like, ‘well what do you expect? When somebody has a child, friendships usually suffer to some degree. Big deal! Get over it!’ I told this to Carol, and all she could say was ‘how could you be so cruel?’ And then she treated me as if I was the bad guy and she’d run off crying to Marianne. And meanwhile Helen is crying for her mother and I’m left fending for not only the baby, but our marriage.”
“She was completely ignoring the baby?” Sherri looked like she couldn’t believe a woman could ignore her baby for the sake of a friend.
“Yes!” Ken exclaimed, his voice raised slightly. “She didn’t give a shit anymore about being a mother. She didn’t give a shit about our marriage. Everything was ‘Marianne this, and Marianne that’! It got to the point when she’d get home from work, first thing she would do was call Marianne. She’d be on the phone with that bitch all night and I’d have to take care of Helen until she fell asleep. Or I should say, until Helen cried herself to sleep because she wanted her mother.” For the first time since Ken began his confession he felt the first strains of tears as he recalled his baby daughter crying herself to sleep for her mother. “This went on for weeks, but Carol just wouldn’t listen. And she was...she was getting worse. She was losing weight. She wasn’t sleeping. All she could talk about, all she cared about, was Marianne.”
Sheri was wholly absorbed by the story now. Her eyes were wide with astonishment. Ken plunged on. “I kept trying to reason with her, trying to get her to see that Marianne was wreaking havoc on our marriage and all she could say was that Marianne needed her. Marianne was on the brink of a nervous breakdown, she was at a very low time in her life, the usual bullshit. And then she’d chastise me for not seeing that...for not seeing that Marianne was severely depressed, that she needed somebody to talk to...that if Carol didn’t do something to help her friend, she was afraid Marianne might hurt herself. That’s what kept her going. I think that’s what really kept her going for so long...being afraid Marianne might hurt or kill herself...her love for that...for that bitch. Because when she finally went, she did it suddenly. She just collapsed in the kitchen in our apartment, dead of a heart attack.”
Sherri’s hand went to her mouth in shock. Ken bowed his head, his eyes closed to stem the flow of tears that always came whenever he thought about Carol. The background noise of other conversing restaurant patrons, the clinking of glassware, the drone of voices, all of it sounded very far away. Ken felt Sherri’s hand on his wrist, gentle, lovingly caressing it. He took a deep breath. “The doctors say it was from the stress she was putting herself through at work. During this time, she was going through a lot at work. She devoted one hundred percent of herself at work, too, not just to Marianne.” He snickered. “And she gave herself one hundred percent to that bitch, as well. The only things she didn’t give that much attention to was herself. And her daughter.”
“And you,” Sherri said, softly.
“Yeah, but it’s not about me,” Ken said, wiping a runaway tear that slid down his cheek. He looked up to see if their conversation, or any of his outbursts, had brought them any attention. They were still safe in anonymity. “It’s about how she should have had her priorities straight. It’s about how Helen should have been number one, more than anybody else. More than herself, more than Marianne, more than me.”
They were silent for a moment. Sherri poured them both some more wine from the carafe. Ken took a sip of his as Sherri finished her salad and pushed the plate to the side. Ken picked at his salad. “I was a wreck after Carol died. I just couldn’t believe she was gone. I look back on it now and realize I was in shock. Somehow I got through things in the week after she died. All I could think about was Helen and taking care of her. Aside from that, I was a basket case. Carol’s parents came and helped out with the baby, and both our parents helped with arranging the funeral. And somewhere during all this, Marianne was helping, too. She’d reached out to Carol’s folks
and worked behind the scenes in helping with the funeral. I didn’t know it at the time. I was so...blind in my grief I barely paid attention to what was going on around me. The few times I remember seeing her I was so numb with grief that I couldn’t send her away. I didn’t want to cause a scene. I really thought I was going crazy. Especially when the autopsy showed that Carol had died of natural causes.
“By the time I’d come to my senses, Marianne had already integrated herself into the family.” Ken took a final bite of his salad, then washed it down with some wine. He pushed his salad plate away. “She was babysitting Helen, helping out with various things. Carol’s parents and my folks totally accepted her. And when I realized she’d wormed her way in, there was nothing I could do. Oh, I came this close to throwing her out,” He emphasized this by putting his thumb and forefinger together a millimeter. “but...I don’t know.” A shrug. “I just couldn’t. My parents kept telling me how much Marianne had helped out, and Marianne told me that she would be there for me for whatever I needed. And she sounded so damned sincere that for a minute I was convinced that maybe I imagined all the crap I’d been thinking. Maybe I really had been jealous of her relationship with Carol. You know? Maybe...maybe I really was projecting my feelings out and had come up with this horrible image of Marianne as this...this...thing!”
“So what happened?” Sherri asked.
Ken sighed and took another sip of wine. “To make a long story short? Marianne moved to an apartment within walking distance of our apartment so she could help out with Helen when needed. And...well, I really did need the help. Marianne was really good with Helen. Treated her as her own daughter. At first I was torn by the decision, you know? I remember Carol telling me when Helen was born that she wanted Marianne to be Helen’s godmother, in case anything happened to her. I remember thinking how against that I was, and as I observed Marianne with Helen I realized, or started thinking, that maybe I had some problems with myself. Maybe I really had been jealous of Marianne. I wanted to talk about my feelings, but I didn’t dare tell Marianne about what I felt about her. So I started seeing a therapist.”
“And?”
“And after a few sessions, my therapist concurred that my fantasy against Marianne was based on my envy and jealousy of her relationship with Carol. I saw that. I was convinced of it. And it helped me to go on with my life. It helped me to let go of Carol, too. Especially when I later learned from her parents that there was a history of heart problems in the family. This meant I had to be extra vigilant in Helen’s care, and I told Marianne that this was what I was most worried about. She shared my concern, and she became a sort of...surrogate mother to Helen. She was around so much it was almost as if she was part of the family for a while.
“I didn’t think I could fall in love again,” Ken continued, looking out into the darkness of the restaurant. “But I did. I met Jennifer Jacobs at work. She started working at Kaiser about a year or two after Carol died. I fell for her the minute I saw her. I...I didn’t want our relationship to be any kind of...you know, rebound thing. I never did mess around with other women after Carol died. I couldn’t.”
“Not even with Marianne?” Sherri’s tone of voice was joking. She grinned.
Ken laughed. “God, no. Marianne was way too old for me. She was old enough to be my mother for God’s sake.” An image rose in his mind and Sherri must have noticed the troubled look on his face. “In fact...well, I’m coming to that in a minute. Just remember what I just said: Marianne is old enough to be my mother. She must have been in her late forties when Carol first started working at Kaiser, and we were married for eight years before she died. Jennifer and I didn’t get together for at least another year and a half, maybe two years later. Okay?”
Sherri nodded and sipped her wine.
Ken sighed. “To make a long story short, Jennifer and I started dating. By this time I had a pretty good relationship with Marianne. We weren’t real close friends, but I trusted her. She was good with Helen, and she helped me out a lot. And in return, I helped her with things as well.”
“So by now you’d gotten over your notion that she was a parasite,” Sherri said.
“Yes.” Ken sipped his wine. “So when Jennifer and I started dating, Marianne volunteered to baby-sit. Jennifer and Carol knew each other professionally since we all worked in the same building. By the time it got serious for Jennifer and I, she and Marianne had become friends. Again, I didn’t think anything of it. All three of us were having a good time, and Jennifer was really good with Helen, too. We were in love. I proposed to her about six months later and we got married. End of story?”
“Apparently not,” Sherri said, mustering a smile that looked forced. Ken knew it was because she was probably feeling a little uncomfortable about her upcoming role in the narrative. After all, Sherri had been the Other Woman. Ken had told Sherri that he was married the moment they’d begun their affair.
“The first few months of the marriage were great,” Ken said. “We had a great time. We moved to a new place in Pasadena, and for a while everything was fabulous. Jennifer became friends with Marianne, and at first I didn’t notice anything was out of the ordinary until maybe a year after we were married. She started spending more time with Marianne. Soon, it was just like with Carol: Marianne began having problems again, and Jennifer started telling me about the depressions, the threats of suicide, the whole bit. And that’s when the warning flag went up and I started looking at the relationship with a different eye. And that’s when I saw what had been happening since before Jennifer and I even got married.”
Sherri took a sip of wine and waited calmly while Ken composed himself to continue. “It was the same thing with Carol. Jennifer became obsessed with helping Marianne, with being her surrogate mother. It was the same excuses. ‘Marianne needs me’, and ‘Marianne is feeling very vulnerable right now’, and then she’d either disappear for the weekend to spend time with Marianne, or sit on the phone with her all night. Helen and I dropped from the number one position in her life to the lower tier of the ladder. And there wasn’t a thing I could do to stop it.”
“What do you mean?” Sherri asked.
“She wouldn’t listen. When I saw it happening again, I immediately knew that I had been right all along. Marianne was a parasite, she’d destroyed Carol, and now she was latching on to Jennifer. She was stealing her soul, sucking the life out of her, and Jennifer wasn’t even aware of it. And Marianne was so subtle about it, so...so...quiet about it, that I didn’t notice until it was too late!
“Remember when I told you to remember how old Marianne was when we first met her? Well, eleven years had passed from the time I first met her till she latched onto Jennifer. That would make her close to sixty. And she doesn’t look a day over forty-five!”
“Ken!” Sherri exclaimed. “Don’t be silly.”
“I’m not bullshitting you,” Ken said. “That woman doesn’t look a day over forty-five. In fact, sometimes she looks younger. But I know she’s older than that, because when Carol first met her and started hanging out with her, she mentioned to me that Marianne was in her late forties. That was eleven, twelve years ago. You do the math.”
“So what’s Marianne doing? Stealing women’s youth?”
“Yes!”
“You can’t be serious.”
“If you would see her, you would know,” Ken said. “I look back on things now and remember little incidents, little snapshots of how she looked when Carol was alive. And the more I look back on old photographs, old memories, the more I can see that as Carol and Marianne’s relationship intensified, the younger Marianne appeared to be getting. And how during the year preceding Jennifer and I hooking up and now, how Marianne began to look older. But in the past eight months I can tell that Marianne is getting younger. She doesn’t look her age at all, Sherri. If you saw her you wouldn’t think she’s a woman in her sixties. No way.”
He continued. The waiter returned with their dinners—veal parmesan for Sher
ri, shrimp scampi for Ken. He detailed the past two years of a spiraling marriage with Jennifer as they ate. How he attempted to get Jennifer to listen to his concerns, her refusal to listen and talk to him. Her increasing obsession with Marianne Denver, how she began to spend first every other weekend with her, then every weekend, and soon every day. “That’s when I lost it,” Ken admitted. “I took a day off of work, not telling Jennifer I was going to do it, and drove straight to Marianne’s place after dropping Helen off at daycare. I intercepted her as she was exiting her apartment and I walked right up to her and grabbed her. I grabbed her shoulders and shook her and yelled right in her face. I told her to stay the hell away from Jennifer, and that if she refused to stay away that I was going to kill her.”
“You didn’t!” Sherri looked shocked.
“Oh, I did,” Ken said. He plucked a shrimp off his plate and put it into his mouth. “Marianne freaked out. She started crying and I got the hell out of there before the ruckus attracted the neighbors. I spent the rest of the day wandering around Old Town Pasadena, drifting into the Barnes and Noble, going to a coffee shop, just wandering around. I picked up Helen early and we went home. Jennifer didn’t even call to tell me she was going to be late. She just went to Marianne’s straight from work. When she didn’t come home by nine that evening, I called her at Marianne’s.
“She sounded...” Ken conjured up the memory. “Dazed. She said she had no idea how much time had gone by and that she and Marianne had just been talking. She didn’t sound angry, and at first it was hard to tell if Marianne told her what happened between she and I that morning. I didn’t really care. I put Helen to bed, waited up for Jennifer for another three hours, and when she still hadn’t come home I finally went to bed myself. I was awake when Jennifer came home and she acted as if nothing was wrong, as if it was perfectly all right for her to just...neglect our relationship like that. I tried to talk to her about it, brought up the fact that she had me worried, that I had no idea she was going to be at Marianne’s and she dismissed it. She said I was over-reacting. That’s when I gave up. There was nothing I could say or do to pry her away from Marianne. At one point during the conversation – which by then had turned into an argument—I asked her to pick between Marianne and me. Know who she picked?”
When the Darkness Falls Page 32