Beautiful Bad

by Annie Ward

  She started to softly close the door behind her, and that’s when he bolted. It was a Jack and Jill bathroom, and he made a run for the opposite exit. She was able to catch his arm.

  He jerked it away and screamed.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, placing her finger to her lips. “Shh! I’m so sorry! But we have to be quiet, okay? Whispers only.”

  His howling subsided, and he stared into Diane’s eyes, as dark brown as his own.

  “Is your mommy in the house?”

  He nodded.

  “Is she hurt?”

  He shrugged.

  “Can you tell me what happened?”

  The boy looked down at the bathroom floor and picked up a plastic bathtub toy. “This is Dolphin,” he said.

  “I love dolphins,” she whispered. “I swam with a dolphin when I was a little bit older than you. In Mexico.”

  The boy gave her the tiniest hint of a smile.

  “Can you tell me what happened tonight?”

  He thought about it, turning the dolphin this way and that in his small hands. “Mommy had a friend over, and Daddy came home.”

  His little belly was poking out over the top of his nighttime Easy Ups, and he had sleep in his eyes. Now he looked traumatized, but she recognized him from the hallway gallery of blissful family moments. Child with the delighted eyes at the petting zoo. Child laughing with Santa. Child playing at the beach.

  Alone in that bathroom with the boy, Diane suddenly felt very claustrophobic and vulnerable. “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

  He shook his head.

  “Can I carry you, sweetie? Would that be all right? I think maybe we should go outside now.”

  He nodded.

  Diane picked the boy up and pulled his legs astride her hips. With her Glock down by her side where it wouldn’t frighten him, she moved warily into the hall. Diane could hear sirens outside, and there were flashing red lights pulsing in the windows. To one side of the hall, she saw an alcove and a handrail. “Is that stairs?” she asked, gesturing with her chin.

  He nodded.

  She carried the boy silently down the dark, narrow wooden back staircase. At the bottom, before stepping into the great room, she said to the boy, “Have you ever been blindfolded? Maybe at a birthday party where there was a piñata?”

  “One time,” he answered.

  “Can I cover your eyes with my hand just for a few seconds? Like a blindfold. Would that be okay?”

  He nodded. She had to holster her gun in order to place her palm and fingers over his upper face as she darted past the kitchen area toward the back entrance. She didn’t want him to see the blood.

  Diane was holding the boy with one hand under his bottom. There was movement on the back patio. The dogs? Then there was a faint scraping noise. Diane glanced to the side, where there was a window. Had a tree branch scratched the glass in the wind? She didn’t remember so much as a breeze when she’d arrived. The kitchen lights were on, and it was deep night outside. The glass door was a composite of reflections from inside the house and the opaque outlines of trees and bushes edging the patio. Diane cupped her free hand to the side of her eyes and pressed it against the glass, searching.

  The dogs sat panting outside the door where she’d left them, still waiting patiently to be let in. She saw the sandbox. The water table. The bushes.

  And a man’s profile, standing a few feet away in the yard, next to the tree that had scratched the window. There was the full dome and bill of a baseball cap, and underneath that a jutting chin and long neck. The man, who looked as if he’d been trying to back his body into the trees and shrubs circling the house, turned his face toward Diane.

  “There’s a man in the backyard!” Diane yelled at the top of her lungs. She put the boy down and cracked the back door. The man in the baseball cap took off racing through the backyard of the house, tripping over the sandbox and falling, flailing, through a prehistoric growth of Pampas grass.

  “Runner in the back!” Diane shouted into the yard before slamming the door shut. There was a switch by the door which she hit, luckily throwing on the backyard spotlight. “Bill!” she said breathlessly into her mic. “We have a runner. I just saw some guy outside. He’s headed to the south side.”

  Bill replied over his mic, “I see him!”

  Shipps, who was standing in the foyer, shouted, “I’ll cut him off at the front!” He went barreling out the front door, leaving it open behind him.

  The boy was shaking and gulping.

  Diane picked him back up again and said, “I’m going to carry you again. We’ll play the blindfold game for just one more second, all right?”

  She covered his eyes again with her hand and made for the front door. By the time they got there, Bill was on her mic. “We got him! Shipps and I got him! He’s handcuffed.”

  “Copy,” Diane answered. “CJ, can you meet me at the front?”

  CJ showed up a few seconds later, and Diane handed the boy over into his arms. “Can you take him to the ambulance and get him checked out? I need to finish clearing the upstairs.”

  “Of course.”

  She turned to go and then looked back. The boy was staring at her as if she’d just betrayed him. “You’ll be okay,” she said, and had to leave.

  Diane went back into the house, bounded up the stairs and retraced her steps until she reached the master suite. First she cleared the walk-in closet, and then she moved on to the sitting room. Finally she climbed the three steps that led up to the big bedroom. With her flashlight and gun in position, she had a look around.

  She could see a comfy, stuffed chair. A pile of laundry. A bench at the foot of the bed. There were two end tables on either side of the bed, one of which was stacked with books. Diane shone her flashlight into the space between the nightstand and the wall. The first thing she saw were the two bare, thin, cadaverous calves. Skinny, long shins, pressed together, the feet bare. A woman was wedged in the cramped space, knees drawn against her body and arms wrapped around them. Her eyes were closed despite the bright light from the flashlight, and her head hung to the side. She wore a tank top and shorts, and her lank, wavy hair looked like black worms crawling over her pale shoulders.

  Diane said softly, “Police.”

  The woman didn’t flinch.

  Diane knelt before her and placed her fingers against her carotid artery. There was a pulse.

  As Diane registered this, the woman’s eyes sprang open, a monstrous red, and she grabbed at Diane’s hand. Her mouth opened and out came a guttural, bloodcurdling scream that threw Diane backward. She aimed her gun at the woman, who responded by snapping her mouth closed like a puppet.

  A light turned on in the hallway outside, and a shadow formed a dark blot on the pale cream wall. A thud on the stairs. And another. The doorway filled with a hunched figure, a bat raised over its head. It lumbered forward. Diane turned on it with her weapon, prepared to shoot.

  “Drop your weapon,” she shouted. “Drop it now or you’re dead.”

  Outside the bedroom window, the yard pulsed with red-and-blue lights, playing rhythmically over Diane’s face and the whites of her unblinking eyes.

  MADDIE

  Twelve days before

  I didn’t feel like writing during my last session with Cami J, and she let me get away with it. Sort of. She did give me a homework assignment. She wants me to write about a time when I got mad.

  Oh boy.

  Where to start? Our cable service. Health insurance. There’s that little boy Blake who picks on Charlie at Kids Club. The teenagers who drive through our neighborhood at breakneck speed. The news. Politicians. People who hurt animals. Ian. Ian has made me mad many times. Probably the worst was when he stood me up in Bosnia. I remember being furious.

  No, that was not the worst. I remember now.

 
Homework for Dr. Camilla Jones

  A Time When I Was Very Angry

  By Madeline Wilson

  We were playing.

  That’s how the story starts. That’s what I remember. We were playing. Charlie and me. I can’t even remember where Ian was. Kazakhstan? South Korea? Honestly I have no idea. Maybe he wasn’t even gone. Maybe he was in the basement and we hadn’t seen him in a while.

  I was chasing Charlie. I was saying, “I’m going to get you!”

  He was laughing and running and I was a little worried because he kept looking back at me over his shoulder and I was afraid he was going to bump into the wall or something and hurt himself. I said, “That’s enough, Charlie. Let’s just calm down for a little bit. Come and let me cut you up an apple.”

  But he didn’t calm down. He went running up the stairs, still making that funny heavy breathing noise he makes when he’s excited and having fun.

  He wanted to be chased. He didn’t want the game to end. I crept over into the foyer and I could see his legs reflected in the mirror at the top of the stairs. He was waiting for me, standing at the railing at the top, watching.

  I started up the staircase after him. I said, “I’m coming for you!”

  He giggled and took off.

  When I reached the top of the staircase, he jumped out at the other end. He had his gun.

  “Oh no!” I yelled, throwing my hands in the air. “Don’t shoot me!”

  But he shot me anyway. His Nerf dart hit me in the arm.

  “Oww!” I cried and fell to the floor. “You killed me! I’m dead.”

  Charlie walked down the length of the hallway with his gun hanging at his side, looking quite a bit like a small bounty hunter. He looked at me lying there holding my arm and he wasn’t laughing. He was thinking about something. “You’re not dead,” he said. “I didn’t get you in the X.”

  I sat up. “What’s the X?”

  He drew an X across his torso, from shoulder to opposite hip and then again on the other side. “This is the X. You only win if you hit the X.”

  I looked him in the eyes. “Who told you that?”

  “Daddy,” he answered.

  “When?” I asked.

  “When he was showing me how to shoot properly.”

  “I didn’t know Daddy showed you how to shoot.”

  “You were at the store. It was a secret.”

  He had my attention. “You and Daddy are keeping secrets from me?”

  “No.”

  “But you just said it. You said it was a secret. Did Daddy say, ‘Don’t tell Mom’?”

  “He said you might not like it.”

  “Why would I care about the two of you playing with a Nerf—” And then I got it. “Oh,” I said.

  Charlie shifted back and forth on his chubby legs. Nervous.

  “Was Daddy showing you how to shoot this gun?” I asked, smacking the Nerf gun so hard he had to scramble to catch it.

  “No.”

  “Then which gun, Charlie? Which gun did he show you how to shoot?”

  “His gun.”

  “His gun?” My voice was shaking. Charlie was scared. “Which gun? The big one or the little one?”

  Charlie’s chest was heaving in and out. He didn’t want to answer.

  “Which one?” I screamed.

  “The rifle!” he answered finally. “The rifle like the one I’m going to get when I turn eight!”

  And that, Cami J, made me very fucking angry.

  IAN

  2009

  From: Ian Wilson

  To: Madeline Brandt

  Sent: Sunday, 11 January 2009

  Subject: Hello

  Hi Maddie,

  I’ve written you a number of letters. None of which I’ve sent. I’ve been a bit afraid of not hearing back from you, or of hearing back from a distant, indifferent you, or finding out that you were married, or worst of all just having you tell me to go fuck myself.

  I’m still very sorry for what happened when I left you in Bosnia but the truth is, I made the right decision.

  John and I started our own company. We made loads of money, Maddie. I won’t have to go back to school. I have enough money now. We are handing over the operations to our employees and taking a long, long leave. We might be closing down the company altogether.

  We’ve only just transferred some of the money from the company into our own accounts and so far all I’ve bought are a couple of antique swords and a new therapeutic walk-in bath for my mum back in Birkenhead that I’ve asked my brother Robbie to install. What I’d really like to do is buy something nice for you.

  I’m sorry I’ve been out of touch for so long. I went back and forth, thinking I’d come sweep you off your feet and then, for a while, I didn’t think I would ever come home at all. It made no sense to keep harassing you.

  I’ve got some time off. Maybe you’d like to come visit me? I’ve got a nice house in Cyprus. Maybe I could come to see you? I’ve always wanted to see Kansas. Or New York. Wherever you are.

  I’m a bit nervous, Maddie. There’s something I should tell you. It’s something I’ve known for a very long time. I love you.

  Had it not been for those last three words, Ian might have sent that email to Maddie.

  He didn’t.

  * * *

  Instead, Fiona pulled one of her bizarre surprise arrivals at Ian’s new house in Cyprus. He was headed to his pool in flip-flops when she showed up.

  “Surprise,” she shouted, a glossy-haired minx in tiny jean shorts and heels, waving to him from the street as she paid the taxi driver. “Fergus and I broke up!”

  The last time Ian had seen Fiona she’d gotten drunk and accused him of trying to have sex with his pregnant sister-in-law. Then she’d bitten him. Ian had long suspected she was bipolar and had broken up with her for the tenth time. Each time he broke up with her, she threatened to kill herself and sent him lengthy text messages detailing what she was doing to herself to achieve that end, sometimes with photos. He’d once tried to get a restraining order against her but, not having saved any evidence, had failed.

  He wasn’t happy to see her, though he had to admit she was more beautiful now in her thirties than she’d ever been before. After so many close brushes with death she seemed to pose a far more minor threat. And he’d not touched a woman in a very long time. He allowed her to come in his house, feeling darkly delighted and terribly ashamed. He fucked her over the table just inside the front door. Then she made drinks.

  * * *

  A week later, they were still going.

  Ian’s scarred hand was wrapped around a giant plastic tumbler filled with vodka and ice, and in the other hand a cigarette hung down, dipping in and out of the water. The cigarette was soaked and ruined and still he clenched it between his fingers as he slipped in and out of consciousness.

  The plastic floatie had a pink horse’s head, which popped up between his muscular legs. As the pool water moved gently with the motion of the roving filter, he looked like a drunk cowboy struggling to stay perched on top of his doddering old mare.

  Music blared from inside the villa, but he could still make out the sudden sound of glass breaking. He dropped his cigarette into the pool and fell face-first into the shallow end. After a second he stood up, shook the water from his hair and crawled out of the pool. He took a few lurching steps toward the kitchen before he stubbed his toe on a chaise longue. While he stopped to silently scream, he looked in through the half-open kitchen window.

  A pile of silver cutlery shimmered in the middle of the linoleum floor. Fiona, with her cat teeth and blood-red gums revealed in a snarl, was wrenching a third drawer free from the cabinets. When she got it loose she held it over her head and smashed it against the counter.

  He slipped on wet tiles and nearly fell running to
the kitchen door. “What’s wrong with you?” he shouted.

  She said nothing, but her kohl-lined eyes were frightening. She staggered to the adjacent living room and used her whole arm to swipe a lamp from an end table to the floor. It smashed.

  “Stop it!” he shouted, but she continued in silence.

  She threw an ashtray against the wall. She kicked a chair. Just as she was about to pry a glass-framed photo from the wall, Ian was there, grabbing and pinning her arms to her sides. “Let go of me,” she spat, trying to wrench her arms free. “You make me sick. You’re pathetic and crazy.”

  “You’re the one destroying the house!”

  “You lied to me.”

  “About what?”

  “You said you weren’t sleeping with Maddie.”

  He took his hands off her and said, “I wasn’t.”

  “Liar!” Fiona ran back into the kitchen and threw the giant steel frying pan toward the window. It was too heavy and hit the counter before thudding to the floor.

  “That’s it. You need to leave.”

  “I don’t have anywhere to go!” Suddenly Fiona collapsed on the floor and rolled onto her side. She started sobbing and curled up in the fetal position. “I don’t have anywhere to go.”

  “Fiona...” Ian leaned down and gently stroked the dark hair out of her wet green eyes. Her face was blotchy and her whole body was trembling. “You’re acting like a bloody lunatic, and I want you to go to bed. Tomorrow I’m booking you a flight back to Scotland.”

  “I’m going to kill myself and it will be your fault.”

  “You know what? You’ve been threatening me with that since our third date. At this point, if that’s how you want to resolve this relationship, fine. I’m out.”

  “I hate her. I hate her so much.”

  “You need to go to bed.” Ian helped Fiona up and slung one of her arms over his shoulders. Like that, he half carried her up the winding staircase to their room and dropped her into the pile of dirty clothes heaped on the bed.