Her Pretty Face

by Robyn Harding

  “And,” Frances glowered at Pete, “we’re happily married.” She held up her left hand, defiantly.

  Pete let out a small, derisive snort, and Frances realized her ring finger was bare. Humiliation made her face hot, and she felt a flash of that blind, murderous rage that was occurring far too frequently of late. She could not lose it in front of this bastard.

  Frances felt Kate’s hand slip into the crook of her elbow. Kate’s voice, when she spoke, dripped venom.

  “Why don’t you two hicks go upstairs and fuck each other?”

  Kate led Frances out of the restaurant.

  dj

  THEN

  The man who murdered his sister was named Shane Nelson—allegedly murdered his sister. But DJ knew Shane Nelson had done it, just like he had known that his sister had been killed, that night as he lay in his bed, wishing for superpowers. His parents had talked to the police and the district attorney, but they refused to give their son any details.

  “I don’t want you to know what happened to her,” his mom said, tearfully. “You’re too young to take this in.”

  But DJ wasn’t too young. He had grown up fast, he’d had to, and he deserved to know the truth about what had happened to his sister. He had loved her, too. Luckily, the local newspapers were more than happy to oblige. Crimes like this, the murder of a pretty young white girl, sold papers, and no gory details would be spared. His parents didn’t subscribe to any of the dailies, but DJ had been stealing copies off various neighbors’ front steps. The May 6 issue had the specifics he sought.

  Shane William Nelson, a 28-year-old man from Phoenix, has been arrested for the murder of Courtney Carey, 15. The teen went missing last February from the suburb of Tolleson. Carey’s badly beaten body was discovered in South Mountain Park nine days after her parents, Declan and Susan Carey, reported her missing. She had been sexually assaulted, tortured, and strangled. The coroner’s report states that blunt force trauma to the head was the cause of death.

  Neighbors said Nelson “kept to himself” but seemed to have a lot of friends, both male and female, coming and going at all hours. Nelson, who is single, has a young son with an estranged girlfriend. Nelson has no prior convictions, but police questioned him in 1994 in relation to two rapes in the Avondale area. Nelson, currently unemployed, is in custody pending charges.

  The police are also speaking to a person of interest who, they say, does not pose a threat to the public.

  DJ’s bowels loosened as he read, and he had to run to the toilet. Maybe his mom was right. Maybe he was too young to know. He brought the paper with him and he inspected the mug shot of Shane Nelson as he shit: dark eyes; unruly brown hair; a narrow, chiseled face. In another context, he would have looked normal, even handsome. But DJ could see the cruelty in Shane Nelson’s eyes, the evil in the slight curl of his lips. Why hadn’t his sister seen it? How could she have gotten into a car with this man? Why didn’t she run away? Why didn’t she scream?

  There was a grainy picture of Courtney, smiling coyly, wearing too much makeup, looking like trouble. He knew what people would think. His sister got what was coming to her. If she had listened to her parents, obeyed their rules, she’d be alive today. They’d tell their daughters: See? See what happens when you disobey your parents? When you ignore your curfew? When you rebel? They would all think it could never happen to their girls.

  There was no photograph of the “person of interest.”

  frances

  NOW

  The clock radio on the bedside table glowed in the predawn light: 6:22 a.m. Jason was on top of Frances, pumping away, as was their Friday morning ritual. “Successful marriages make sex a priority,” all the magazines and self-help books said, so Frances had suggested they add it to their agendas. Between Jason’s work and cycling schedule, Marcus’s school routine, his swim classes, soccer, tae kwon do, physical and psychological therapist appointments, and Frances’s attempts to hit the gym, Friday, predawn, was the only available slot.

  “Take your shirt off,” Jason growled into her ear as he bounced on top of her. “I want to see your big, beautiful breasts.”

  Frances’s breasts were currently hiding out under her armpits like they were ashamed of themselves. Jason had always loved Frances’s boobs, for good reason. Once, they had been rather spectacular. But weight gain, breast-feeding, and gravity had taken their toll, and the breasts were now a shadow of their former selves. If Frances took her pajama top off, Jason was sure to find the reality, in stark contrast to his fond memories, repulsive, and this session would take even longer. She wanted to make gluten-free waffles for Marcus’s breakfast.

  “No . . . ,” she whispered, “I’m so close. . . .”

  Her lie had the intended effect and Jason upped his tempo. “Oh yeah,” Frances gasped, “Yes, yes, yes . . . !”

  “Oh God,” Jason grunted, turned on by Frances’s theatrics. “I’m coming! I’m coming! I’m . . .” He trailed off, his handsome face contorting with the effort of his climax. After a few moments, he collapsed onto Frances’s pillowy body.

  Jason lifted his head. “Did you get there?”

  “Of course. Couldn’t you tell?”

  “I thought so, but I wasn’t sure.” He kissed her cheek, a loud, affectionate smack, then climbed off her. He grabbed his robe and put it on. “What have you got on today?”

  Nothing, the little voice said. Nothing that matters, anyway.

  “I’m going to the gym this morning.” She called Curves “the gym” as much as possible. “Curves” conjured images of overweight ladies sweating on antiquated exercise bikes, whereas “the gym” connoted hard bodies deadlifting barbells; much more impressive. “Marcus has a martial arts class after school. And I have to go shopping. I said I’d make a dessert for tonight. I was thinking tiramisu.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Kate and Robert invited us for dinner, remember?”

  “Right.” Jason belted his robe. “You and Kate have gotten pretty tight.”

  Frances smiled, warmed by the thought of the friendship. “Kate’s great. She’s sweet and thoughtful. And she’s really funny even though she’s so ridiculously pretty.”

  Jason pecked her lips. “You’re prettier than Kate is.”

  It was kind, but insincere. While Frances appreciated her husband’s compliment, she knew she could not compare to Kate Randolph. Not anymore, anyway.

  After their lunch date at the waterfront restaurant, Kate had blamed herself for the toxic encounter with the two salesmen.

  “I thought they seemed so friendly, so benign,” she said, as she shuttled them back to Bellevue. “I should never have invited them over.”

  Frances slipped her wedding rings back onto her finger. “You didn’t invite them.”

  “I encouraged them. . . . I thought it would be fun,” Kate said. “And harmless.”

  “It was fun. Until it wasn’t.”

  “You know what would be really fun?” Kate bit her lip as she glanced over at Frances. “We could go back. Pretend we had a change of heart. We’d play along, take things up to their rooms, get them naked . . . and then we’d light their beds on fire and leave.”

  Frances smirked. “And they’d have to run out into the hall naked.”

  “Or . . . we could lock the door behind us and let them burn.”

  Frances, briefly, let herself visualize Pete engulfed in flames, screaming and writhing in agony. I’m not trying so hard now, am I? she’d quip, as she watched him blister and char and succumb. She shook off the image and met the wicked glint in Kate’s eyes.

  “It’s a great idea, but we don’t have time.” Frances looked at the dashboard clock. “The boys have to be picked up at three.”

  Kate snapped her fingers. “Damn.”

  The moment was couched in humor, but that look, where they recognized the darkness in each other, forged a kind of bond. A new level of comfort was born, an inherent understanding of each other. Kate and Frances didn’t connect
with the other Forrester mothers because they were a different breed. They had found each other, and it felt fated.

  In the weeks following, the women had grown even closer, enjoying coffee dates, power walks, and a lot of playful texting. On Halloween night, they’d filled their insulated coffee mugs with gin and tonic, and taken the boys trick-or-treating. (Charles had been a Jedi. Marcus had insisted on a Minecraft costume constructed of numerous shoeboxes that made it nearly impossible to walk. Thankfully, Charles was extraordinarily patient.) It had only been a couple of months, but Frances couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt such a sense of comfort and camaraderie. She knew she didn’t deserve the friendship, fun, and frivolity that other women enjoyed. Not after what she’d done. But Kate, somehow, made her feel worthy.

  As Jason showered, Frances woke Marcus (gently) and headed downstairs to the tiny, cluttered kitchen. When they’d saved up enough money, they would renovate, knock out a wall and put in a center island. The house had seemed perfectly adequate when they’d moved in as a young couple, but as Marcus got bigger, the environment felt smaller. The boy was already so large, and seemed to grow by the minute. And he needed so much stuff, the paraphernalia of adolescence gradually encroaching on their living space. Frances should have been able to keep the house tidy (she had nothing else to do), but she found it hard to muster the energy required for housework.

  Grabbing a plastic mixing bowl from an overloaded cupboard and plucking a wooden spoon from the pottery jar on the stove, she mixed the waffle batter. Syrup was not permitted in her son’s diet, so she cut up strawberries, hoping to compensate for the lack of glucose. Her husband entered, dashing in his dark trousers and button-down shirt, sifting through the mail that had been slipped through the slot in the door.

  “There’s a letter from your mom.”

  The mixing bowl nearly escaped Frances’s grip. “Just put it on the table,” she said, forcing a casual tone. But her voice sounded tense and tight.

  Jason obeyed, examining the other envelopes. Bills probably, always bills. “You haven’t talked to your folks in a while.”

  “We e-mail,” Frances said, busying herself at the waffle maker. It wasn’t an outright lie. She did correspond with her parents, on occasion. But she’d deliberately chosen words to indicate that their communications were regular, casual, not awkward, tense, and fraught.

  “They should come visit,” her husband said, sliding his thumb under the seal of a missive from the phone company. “They haven’t been here since Marcus was little.”

  Remembrance of that last visit twisted her gut. Their time together had been companionable on the surface, but strained beneath. Frances had chosen to keep the dark aspects of her past from Jason and Marcus, and her parents respected that. But the pressure of avoiding subjects, of keeping secrets, of being around people who knew her—the real her—was exhausting. And pretending they were happy, functional, normal, wore on all of them. When Frances looked at her parents, prematurely old and frail, guilt would gnaw at her insides. The sadness and disappointment she had caused had eaten away at them, devoured their vitality. Eventually, the visits had petered out, replaced by birthday cards, monthly e-mails, and packages at Christmas.

  “I’ll suggest it,” she said, brightly. “Gluten-free waffle?”

  * * *

  After dropping Marcus at school, Frances drove to Curves. The Bellevue location had closed when the yummy-mummies jumped on the SoulCycle bandwagon, but Curves suited Frances just fine. And today, she tackled her usual circuit with increased energy, pushing herself harder than she ever had. She wasn’t sure why, but she felt strong this morning, positive and powerful. When she left the strip-mall location, she was sweaty and disheveled, but exhilarated. This must be what they called an endorphin rush. Frances rarely put in the effort required to achieve one.

  Rather than going home to shower and change, she stopped at a grocery store on the way. She knew she looked a mess, but a rather healthy, active mess. There was a certain pride in being one of those workout people, vital and disciplined. And purchasing the tiramisu ingredients didn’t take long. Frances whipped through the aisles, gathering eggs, cream, ladyfingers, and mascarpone cheese. Next, she drove to a specialty liquor store to pick up a bottle of Frangelico. The Italian liqueur was the secret to Frances’s acclaimed dessert. Many people used Tia Maria or Kahlúa, which Frances considered pointless, given the strong taste of the espresso. The hazelnut flavor of the Frangelico added depth and complexity.

  The store was high-end, with warm lighting, wide aisles, and a staff so knowledgeable they bordered on condescending. Frances politely turned down the owner’s offer to help, the proffered taste of a Pinot Noir from an Oregon winery, and headed directly to the liqueur section. She quickly found the unique bottle (designed to look like a friar in his habit, complete with belted middle) and plucked it from the shelf. As Frances turned toward the till, she practically bumped into Jeanette Dumas.

  Abbey Dumas’s mother, dressed in a smart pantsuit and holding a bottle of prosecco, looked as surprised and awkward as Frances felt. Of course, they had encountered each other at school since the “incident,” but Jeanette’s job (she was an effectiveness consultant, or a leadership coach . . . something along those lines) meant Frances was far more likely to see Abbey’s Australian nanny at pickup and drop-off. On the few occasions when Frances had seen Jeanette, they were bobbing in a sea of parents, students, and teachers; avoiding direct confrontation had been easy.

  But now they were alone, face-to-face, literally inches apart. Ignorance was not an option.

  “Jeanette . . . ,” Frances began.

  “Frances.” The tall woman with her high cheekbones and unlined dark skin was attractive in an authoritative, imposing way. From her cropped hair to her rigid posture, everything about Jeanette’s aura said: Don’t fuck with me. Or with her daughter, as it turned out.

  “Celebrating something?” Frances nodded at the expensive prosecco clutched in the woman’s hand.

  Jeanette looked down at the bottle like she was noticing it for the first time, then her narrowed gaze met Frances’s. For the briefest of moments, Frances feared the athletic woman was going to haul back and crack her skull with the heavy glass vessel. (The thought had to have occurred to the businesswoman; Frances couldn’t be the only one who entertained such fantasies.) But instead, Jeanette gave a curt “No,” before turning and walking away.

  It could have been over then, but something (the serotonin surge from her exuberant circuit workout? The confidence gained from knowing that she had a friend and ally in Kate? A delayed psychotic episode from an experimentation with magic mushrooms in her twenties?) made Frances call her back.

  “Jeanette . . .”

  The woman paused, considering her options for several seconds, before finally turning to face Frances.

  “I know that what my son did to your daughter was wrong,” Frances said, her voice tremulous. “I know it was upsetting. For Abbey and for you. But Marcus is seeing a therapist now and . . . he’s just a kid. I feel like this anger isn’t healthy for anyone.”

  Jeanette’s expression remained stony. “Marcus peed in my daughter’s water bottle, Frances.”

  “Abbey was mean to him and he overreacted. Marcus understands that now. He’s very sorry. We both are.”

  “Abbey drank Marcus’s urine.”

  “It was just a sip. And it’s not actually harmful. . . .”

  “It was traumatic!” the woman screeched. “Abbey will be forever scarred by that incident! Don’t you realize how sick it was?”

  “Yes, but . . .”

  What could Frances possibly say to assuage the woman’s outrage? Should she relay the child psychologist’s diagnosis? That Marcus had been hurt and angry, had wanted to lash out physically, but knew he couldn’t hit, punch, or kick? That, in a way, urinating in the water bottle was evidence of self-control and strategic thinking? But Jeanette would not be impressed.

  Per
haps Frances could mention that castaways drank urine all the time, as did lost hikers and plane crash survivors. Granted, it was usually their own urine, but still, they purposely drank it. But would that argument hold water with Jeanette? The pun struck Frances, and suddenly, the whole episode seemed unbelievably comical. She burst into nervous, hysterical, inappropriate laughter.

  Jeanette’s eyes bulged, and her mouth dropped open. She was rightly horrified by the insensitive reaction, but she quickly regained her composure. (Being a corporate trainer or a leadership mentor or whatever she was demanded significant self-possession.) The woman’s eyes narrowed again, a snake, poised to strike.

  “No wonder your son is so disturbed,” she hissed. “You’re a fucking lunatic.”

  I’ve really done it now, Frances thought—or at least, the lobe in Frances’s brain that controlled logic had that thought. But even as she watched Jeanette march to the till, the fury coming off her in palpable waves, Frances couldn’t stop laughing. In fact, she was afraid she might wet herself, right there, in the aisle of the liquor store. That would really top it off! The possibility made the whole scenario even more hilarious. Frances was doubled over, legs awkwardly crossed, when Jeanette Dumas gave her one final glare, then exited the store.

  Abbey’s mother was right. Frances was a fucking lunatic.

  daisy

  NOW

  When the doorbell rang to announce their dinner guests, Daisy was setting out the “guest towels.” The term was a label only; nary a guest’s hands had touched the plush fabric. But she hung them on the towel rack, as ordered, and set the small, egg-shaped “guest soaps” in the soap dish.

  As soon as she’d arrived home after school, Daisy had felt the taut energy pervading her home. She could hear the vacuum humming in another room, not an uncommon sound given her mom’s obsession with cleanliness and order. But the way the nozzle was bumping into furniture, crashing into benches and colliding with end tables, was agitated, almost manic. Despite the emotional distance between them, Daisy was extremely sensitive to her mother’s moods. She could feel the ululating ripples of stress emanating from Kate’s person, hear them in each thud of the vacuum into another piece of furniture. A knot had formed at the base of Daisy’s throat.