Beautiful Bad

by Annie Ward

  “So you’re just back from Nigeria,” said Joanna, finally putting her phone away.

  “Yes. Port Harcourt. I was looking after a group of firefighters from Boots & Coots who had been sent down to try to put out a fire in a government-owned oil field.”

  Maddie brought over Ian’s vodka rocks and wine for herself and Joanna. Ian patted the chair closest to him, and she sat.

  “And it took three months?” Joanna asked.

  “Don’t get me started. It took forever. What with the preparations and then removing all the melted machinery from this gaping bloody pit where the ground had collapsed. And the smell! Anyway. I’m not complaining.”

  “Yes, you are,” Maddie said with a laugh.

  “Of course I am.”

  “At least the money is good in your line of work,” Joanna said before biting into an olive.

  “Not as good as it was back in the early days of the Iraq war.”

  “I heard you were very successful.”

  “In the end, Joanna, none of us were very successful. Look how things have turned out. The coalition was a bloody joke. No one would share information. Unable to find the fucking weapons of mass destruction.”

  “Speaking of weapons of mass destruction...” Joanna stared at him, nibbling at a piece of cheese. “I’ve seen your apocalypse arsenal downstairs. Impressive.”

  “Ah, you’ve seen that? Well done, Mads, you’ve given her the royal tour of the place. Including the basement! Nice.”

  Maddie looked down and slowly folded and unfolded her paper napkin.

  “Oh yeah,” Joanna went on. “Looks like you’re ready to take over the unfinished work of the Unabomber.”

  Ian leaned back and laughed heartily. “Oh my! I’ve been traveling for two days and I’m sure that I look as if I’ve been dragged through a bush backward, but the Unabomber, Jo? Come on. Ted had way better facial hair.”

  The three of them sat in an uncomfortable silence for a second. Maddie stared into her wine.

  “And you?” Ian said eventually. “No longer delivering nappies and Tampax to the needy?”

  “Ian!” Maddie said sharply.

  “It’s okay, Maddie,” Joanna said, holding up a hand. “Nope. No longer.” She gazed at him intensely.

  Ian played with his Zippo lighter, flipping it back and forth through his fingers. “Then what have you been up to?”

  “Figuring out my next move.”

  “Well. That’s very deep and cool.”

  “I’m trying so hard to impress you, so thanks for that.”

  Ian took an enormous swallow of his very large vodka and clapped his hands together with a fake upbeat smile at Maddie. “I’m going to go downstairs and have a cigarette. I’ll be back in a flash.”

  “Take your time,” Joanna said, drawing her wineglass closer to her with both hands.

  Ian looked at Maddie before he left and noticed how sweaty her face looked, as if the conversation were causing her to be sick. He put a hand on her shoulder before leaving and said, “It’s okay, Petal. Relax.”

  She looked up at him with one startled, wide animal eye. The other, the ruined one, drooped in a way that made him sad. “It’s okay,” he said again, a bit uncomfortably. She nodded, swallowed and looked down into her wine.

  Ian breathed a sigh of relief as he descended into his favorite place. He clicked back on Candy Crush and lit a cigarette. He’d brought his vodka down with him, and he was quite content.

  Until he glanced over at the pool table and saw the computer case for his gaming laptop. It was lying open in the middle of the table, and it was empty. He always put his laptop in the case and stashed it underneath his desk when he went away.

  Ian felt a crushing, sickening dread. Then there was a gut-wrenching déjà vu back to a night in Cyprus years before when he had also realized that his personal emails had been read. Back then Fiona had seen old drafts of weird letters he had never sent to Maddie. Now his wife had likely seen the photos Fiona had sent to him. Why Maddie had even allowed him to walk in the door was a mystery. He would have been furious. Then again, he had pass code protected the computer, and he didn’t think Maddie would have been able to remember his army number. Maybe she hadn’t seen them after all.

  The situation with Fiona had been escalating for three years, and it was now totally out of control. It was a constant burden. He’d had no idea how to handle it. He didn’t want to tell Maddie the whole story because, just like the day in the hospital when the square glass vase filled with black roses had arrived, he hadn’t wanted her to worry. That afternoon after Charlie had been born, Ian had pounced on the nurse who was sashaying in with the unusual bouquet and said, “Whoa, whoa, whoa!”

  The roses had been fake, made out of polyester or some such fabric. The blackish-purplish hue was not intended to brighten anyone’s day. He’d been sent a black rose once before—from Fiona. She loved to be gothic and macabre and mean. He’d snatched at the card and then the damn thing had fallen to the floor. The nurse managed to retrieve it before him, looked and then gasped.

  “Don’t get too attached, Maddie. You stole what I loved most. Maybe I’ll do the same to you.”

  * * *

  It took an afternoon of chasing down old military contacts to find out that Fiona had manipulated a Facebook friend of theirs from the army into giving her his new phone number and address in the States. That same friend had also told Fiona that Ian and Maddie were expecting a child.

  Ian’s first instinct had been to call and berate her and threaten to have her arrested. The more he thought about the situation, and the vicious swings of Fiona’s bipolar personality, the more he worried about the potential fallout from such a knee-jerk reaction. Instead, he decided upon damage control. Keep tabs on her. Though he doubted Fiona would get on a plane to Kansas, he did not put it completely past her. She had a history of showing up unannounced in places she was not wanted.

  Ultimately, he called her and apologized for how things had turned out between them. He said he understood how angry and hurt she was. He’d treated her with respect and had hoped that by killing her with kindness he could lessen her pain and hatred. All he’d wanted to do was make sure she had no sudden hateful inclination to show up at his door one day.

  It had backfired. In the last couple of years his occasional Christmas and birthday missives wishing her well had been misinterpreted. Six months ago, she’d started sending him the photos and explicit messages. He’d saved all her emails in case he needed evidence to get a restraining order. He kept the whole big nasty bunch of them in a folder he’d named “Bunny Boiler.” It didn’t seem very funny now.

  He’d wanted to call her up and explain in lengthy detail how much he hated her. That, however, would have made it impossible to sleep at night when he was in Pakistan and Maddie and Charlie were at home in Meadowlark alone. Fiona knew where he lived.

  He wished he’d told Maddie the whole truth long ago, but he hadn’t. He’d told her it was nothing. He hadn’t wanted to worry her. He thought about it now and was filled with regret. I didn’t want to worry her. It sounded so stupid. Now Maddie had taken his X-rated laptop somewhere, and he was the one who was worried.

  Suddenly upstairs a racket had begun. The girls appeared to be arguing, and he couldn’t help but feel vindicated. He wondered if Maddie had told Joanna off for her snotty attitude and general bitchiness. He hoped so. He enjoyed the sounds of a scuffle until it seemed that it had gone on far too long. And why weren’t either of the girls yelling obscenities at each other like back in the days when they fought in Skopje? He was starting to get curious. Then he heard what sounded like the smashing of a glass.

  “What’s going on?” he yelled up, craning his neck around for a response. No one answered, but he heard a chair being dragged across the floor, and then a crash as if it had been knocked over. He put out his c
igarette and marched up the stairs. “I said, what’s going—”

  Maddie met him at the top of the basement stairs, eyes wet and feverish, stammering. “She ate the cheese you got! It had walnuts in it! She’s in shock! Tree-nut allergy, remember? Anaphylactic shock! She can’t breathe!”

  Ian’s first drunken thought was that he wouldn’t have bought cheese with walnuts in it; that sounded absolutely disgusting. His second thought was that he must have done it unknowingly, and now he had to solve the problem.

  Joanna lay between the refrigerator door and the sink, on her back, clutching her neck. Her face was splotchy and red. She wasn’t breathing. If Maddie was right and it was anaphylactic shock, there was no use pounding on her back or trying the Heimlich maneuver.

  “Ian,” Maddie said, tears streaming down her face. “We don’t have an EpiPen. You’ve done it before. You told me. You did it for a soldier in Cyprus who was allergic to shellfish.”

  “I know I did.”

  “Can you help her? Please? Please do that thing. Save her, Ian.”

  To the right of the refrigerator was the phone, the calendar and a ballpoint pen. He grabbed the pen, pulled the end out with his teeth and shook out the ink tube. He reached for the Cuisinart knife block on the left side of the refrigerator and grabbed the small paring knife. He intended to access Joanna’s trachea below the swelling in her throat and insert the pen tube in the hole to allow her lungs some oxygen until the medics arrived. He straddled her with his knees over her stomach. Hunching over her body, he touched her throat, finding the right spot.

  Bizarrely, Joanna suddenly reached out with both hands and raked her fingernails down his arms. “Calm down, woman!” he bellowed. “I’m trying to help you!”

  She responded to this by scratching his face. “For fuck’s sake, Joanna! Stop it!”

  She stopped. Ian took a deep breath. As he was just about to make an incision in the hollow of her throat to perform the emergency tracheotomy, she inexplicably pulled him down into a tight hug. Joanna wrapped her arms around the back of his neck and held him there. In a voice muffled against her shoulder he said, “Let go! What’s wrong with you? Let go of me!”

  Joanna kept her arms locked around his neck, and he felt an extreme, blinding pain in his back followed by a spreading cold through his body. A split second later he was overwhelmed with nausea. He dropped the tube and the paring knife. Something came loose in his lungs. He tried to pull away, but Joanna’s arms were strong and tight around his neck. With each attempt to sit up he was pulling up the entire weight of her body. It was too much. She was able to hold him down, close and tight.

  There was a moment of relief as the deep pain lessened and then it came at him again, sharper and stronger, and it was ten times worse than having the wind knocked out of him. His whole body felt incapacitated, as if he’d been drugged. He was starting to go weak. Finally she let go and he fell to the side of her body.

  Joanna lay there, breathing in great frenzied gulps.

  “Maddie?” he asked, looking for her. “What’s just happened?” It didn’t make sense. Maddie crept into the edge of his tunnel vision, blurry and fading, but he could see she was scared, more scared than he had ever seen her before. There was a light spray of blood on her, on the refrigerator, everywhere he looked. “Help me, baby,” he meant to say, but this time it wasn’t words that came out.

  Oh she was freaked out all right, completely freaked out. What had happened? Heart attack? No, there was blood everywhere. He reached out a hand toward her, to comfort her that he was still here. Just like her eye, he could be fixed. She recoiled and took a step back. She was mad at him. She had seen his emails. Or maybe it was that he hadn’t had the chance to tell her he was going to take her away, get her out of Kansas for a nice holiday. She’d never stayed mad at him before. She couldn’t. He felt himself shrinking, smaller and smaller.

  Maddie picked up the home phone from its charging station on the kitchen counter. “Now?”

  “Not yet,” Joanna responded, standing up. “Wait a few more minutes to be safe.”

  Ian moved about a little on the floor, making a gurgling noise. Blood ran from his mouth.

  The women stood there in silence. After a minute Joanna said, “Yeah. Let’s go. We’re good.”

  MADDIE

  Day of the killing

  We ran side by side to the foyer. Standing at the bottom of the stairs, I raised the phone over my head and then dropped it to the floor, where it broke into several pieces. The batteries went rolling.

  “Quickly now,” Joanna said, and we started up the stairs. One of Charlie’s blankets was there, waiting to be carried up to the laundry room. I grabbed it and wiped my face. There was blood in my eyes. I dropped it back on the step.

  We entered Charlie’s room, where he was sleeping. Joanna whispered, “Where’s the phone?”

  I whispered back, “It was here!”

  “Maddie, come on, don’t fuck around. We don’t have time!”

  “It was here!”

  “Well, it’s not here now! Go find it!”

  Ten seconds later I returned with the phone. “Call now?”

  “Yes.”

  I dialed 911.

  At that exact moment, Joanna woke Charlie up with a vicious pinch on the arm.

  While Charlie howled, I whispered into the phone, “Go back upstairs, baby, please.” My voice sounded urgent. Good. “Please! Go! Go now!” And then suddenly I shouted, “Oh my God! Hurry! Please help us! Hurry! No!” My heart was pounding as if it was all happening, as if it was all real.

  Then I took the phone, banged it once against the wooden bed frame and turned it off.

  I stared at Charlie. His eyes were tightly shut and his mouth an open oval as the tears rolled down his red cheeks. He was hysterical. I reached out to him, and Joanna said, “Go, put the phone back on charge in the bedroom like we talked about.”

  “Okay.” But I didn’t move. I couldn’t tear my eyes away. I couldn’t speak.

  “He’s fine, Maddie,” Jo said. “He had a nightmare, that’s all. Right, Charlie? It was just a nightmare.”

  “You hurted me!” he sputtered between sobs.

  “I’m sorry, baby,” I said, sounding desperate and hysterical. “Mommy shouldn’t have let—”

  “Give me the phone,” Joanna snapped. “I’ll put it back. Take him and go hide! We came upstairs to get Charlie. We thought we heard Ian, and we decided to hide rather than go back downstairs with a drunk madman loose in the house. You remember what to say, right?”

  I could only gawk like a catatonic mute at my son. What was wrong with me? His nose was running, and snot was smeared across his upper lip. My chest was heaving. I could hear myself breathing. Gasping.

  “Can you handle this?” Jo demanded.

  “Yes,” I answered, blinking and shaking my head. “I’m okay now. Come on, Charlie. I want you to come with me.”

  Charlie was wearing his nighttime Easy Ups and a Thomas the Tank Engine T-shirt. He took my hand and, still inconsolable and wiping his nose, followed me out of the bedroom and down the dark hall.

  IAN

  Day of the killing

  When Ian opened his eyes, he could see the night sky. The fiery star came sailing in, landed and rocked the desert. Behind the hangars, he saw a swelling red sphere, followed by a heart-stopping explosion. Graceful arcs of multicolored light trailed this way and that in the murky distance, and Ian suddenly knew where he was. He was in Iraq, at that godforsaken airport in Kirkuk.

  “Okay,” he said, finally lurching awkwardly to legs that could barely hold him. He took one heavy, struggling step after another, pausing often, to make it through the field. Though it was dark, he thought he could find the abandoned jeep he remembered seeing earlier. As he crossed his own living room to the stairs, explosions sent plumes of red, yellow and oran
ge dirt up around him. The ceiling was the sky. He was a world away.

  Down he went, intuitively, to escape.

  He fell against something solid and was relieved he’d found the jeep. He slid down to a seat on the cracked mud, and it was more comfortable than he’d expected. He felt relatively safe, though it was dawning on him that he’d taken a hit to the back and he needed help. The sound of a droning siren wheeled in and out of his ears, and suddenly he was as heartbroken and hopeless as he’d ever been. Something bad was happening. Something really fucking bad.

  This was battle shock, he told himself. He looked around and it was so damn dark, except for the bizarre light show. None of this made sense.

  “I’m okay,” he mumbled. Just tired, he told himself. He’d been tired in Cyprus in a way that made him not want to wake up, and now he remembered what that felt like. Bloody hell. He hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep since Rwanda and the meadow of bones. He’d never been able to walk out of it. Never been able to walk away.

  He heard footsteps. Heavy, like boots on the ground. Someone was running toward him. There, in the moonless dark, were orange explosions behind an approaching figure.

  He tried to lean forward because his back was soaking wet. The fucking desert heat and all the drenching sweat. It was a bad idea. The movement caused him to spit blood, and now the front of his shirt was wet, too. He reached for the familiar pistol grip of his rifle and found that it was not there.

  Yes, someone was approaching. Someone silhouetted against an orange glow. Then a flare in the sky burst the night open into sparks of brilliant white sparkling light and everything was visible, including Peter. Oh Peter, fucking Peter. He’d never been the sharpest tool in the shed but seriously? Running across that field?

  Ian winced and curled in, bracing himself, knowing what happened next, but when he opened his eyes, he saw Peter was fine and standing in front of him. Peter, who was supposed to get hit by the luckiest fucking sniper the world has ever seen. Ian made a feeble gesture for him to get down, take cover, and then he closed his eyes. He didn’t want to see what happened to Peter again.