Love Under Glasse

by Kristina Meister

  All of them living as if they’d never die, as if it would never actually happen. As if they wouldn’t one day be looking at a ceiling just like this and facing all their mistakes alone. They called her crazy, but if that was normal, El would rather be a freak.

  She erupted into bitter laughter.

  The frown touched only the top of his forehead as the doctor made some notes on his clipboard. “You seem upset.”

  “Upset?” El jerked hard on the shackles, pleased to watch him flinch. He likely had a difficult job, if he had the moral flexibility to take any random, unconscious teenaged girl on the word of her mother. “You’d be upset too, if your abusive mother decided to have you installed in a straightjacket because you dared to disagree.”

  He cocked his head to one side, the vague smile back in full force. “Your mother is concerned. From what she tells me, you seem to be suffering some dysphoria, some anxiety, paranoia—”

  “Yeah?”

  All El’s cautious, anonymous revelations on the internet had all been some kind of exercise. It was as if she was testing her identity in the world, running a focus group on the person she wanted to be. She’d been hiding from the absolutes, from decisiveness because those had consequences that could be painful. That final look on Riley’s face was the worst suffering she could remember enduring, the most painful emotion she had ever felt.

  There were no consequences anymore.

  “From where I sit, you’re depriving someone of their civil rights, but I suppose that just makes me combative, right?”

  “All these sudden changes you’ve made—your hair, the tattoo, your clothing . . . that’s not important?”

  El relaxed against the pillow. “I’m sure it seems sudden to people like you, because girls aren’t allowed to have emotions that build like compressed fire. We’re not allowed to explode. We don’t have the strong exterior to suppress all that, do we? And how could our lives be that miserable anyway, since we are handed everything we should want?”

  “And the injuries?”

  “What injuries?”

  “You don’t remember taking those medications and cutting yourself?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  His smile ticked as he helpfully lifted the thin blanket over her. Across her upper thigh was a thick gauze pad. Dread built in her as he carefully peeled the dressing to reveal a series of deep, parallel gashes that had been sutured. The flesh was bruised and scabbed, an injury at least two days old and sure to scar.

  El collapsed back against the pillow and stared blankly at the ceiling.

  She should be shocked, but she couldn’t be anymore. She didn’t have the energy.

  “What about those, Elyrra?”

  “Why don’t you ask my mother? She’s the sane one, right?”

  “I’m prescribing you some medications. They’ll make you sleepy. We don’t want anything to happen to those stitches, right?”

  He took a needle from his pocket and a bottle of clear fluid. As he stuck it into her thigh, El’s thoughts battered against this impassible barricade and shattered.

  If this was how her life was going to be, she was better off asleep.

  The glow of the computer monitor cast spiderlike shadows as it struck the filming equipment. Riley spun the chair in a slow circle as outside the closed door of the office, Mama marched through her polished home shouting at the staff. She was grateful that the walls of the studio were lined in acoustic tiles. Her veins throbbed with an eager meter that she controlled with breath.

  For the last several days, Riley had been piecing together the trap, questioning every detail, prognosticating every possible outcome and reaction Mama might have. The script was written, the pieces aligned, the timing worked out. Everything that happened from this moment on was entirely in Mama’s hands.

  Which meant Riley didn’t need to worry at all.

  The light clicked on as the office chair was in mid-swing. Mama let out a gasp.

  “Hello, Mama.”

  Though she was obviously surprised to find Riley sitting there, Mama lifted her nose in indignation. “What are you doin’ here?”

  That heavy-handed H earned a vengeful grin. “You mean, what am I not doin’ in a cell?”

  “I warned you, sugar.” Mama stepped inside oozing contempt. Behind her, Lizabet hovered. She gave Riley a nod of solidarity before the door was slammed in her face. “You knew the consequences of crossing me.”

  “Oh, sure,” Riley replied in a measured tone. “And now you’re going to find out the consequences of crossing me.”

  Mama snorted and retrieved her phone from her pocket. “I am callin’ the police.”

  Riley lifted a hand and poised a finger ominously over the keyboard. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

  Unconvinced, Mama shrugged off her hesitation with an aloof glance and dialed. “You can’t just waltz into people’s—”

  “Bitch, save the waltzing for cotillions. Your housekeeper let me in.”

  “This is my private office!”

  “Whoops! I’m sure she gives a shit, since her letter of resignation is literally sitting right here, and she’s packing her bags as we speak. Maybe you should have locked the door.” Riley moved her finger from above the trigger and propped her chin in her hand nonchalantly. “Oh right, if you did that, you wouldn’t be able to follow El’s blog, because how would she write it? Bad habit to pick up. No security, no passwords, all this information just . . . sitting here.”

  The woman’s umbrage dimmed, and beneath the paralyzed lines of her face, concern was growing. “What are you talkin’ about? There isn’t one thing on there worth anythin’.”

  “You sure about that?”

  Mama dropped her arm and went deathly still. Her skin was blotchy, her eyes enormous. Her breath came so shallowly that it wasn’t even discernible.

  Riley reclined comfortably in the black leather chair and put her feet up on the desk. “From the beginning, I’ve had a difficult time figuring out what the deal was. I mean . . . how is it possible that a woman could so hate her own daughters? How could she be so vicious? There’s something deeper going on. There’s some serious psychological issues at play here. People like that don’t have just one flaw. They have so many skeletons they have to rent storage sheds to keep them in. Like the one you have over in Charlotte that—”

  “You get the hell outta my house!”

  “No.” Riley steepled her fingers. She couldn’t help a tiny chuckle at the awareness slowly taking the hateful shine off Mama’s gaze. “I’m comfortable on your throne. Besides . . . you really don’t want me leaving with all the terrible things I could do. El and I have that in common.”

  Mama looked around the room as if seeing it for the first time. As she caught sight of her own cameras, equipped with motion sensors and pointed at a number of useful angles, she seemed to relax. “Are you threatening me?”

  “I turned them off.”

  Sweeping up to the tripod, Mama swung the lens around with a vindictively contorted smirk and pointed it directly at Riley. “It has a manual switch. Now why on earth are you going through my private computer?”

  Riley cracked her neck. “Because I thought all your account passwords needed updating. Oh, and I removed the batteries from your cameras. They needed replacing too.”

  Mama furiously smashed the button. When nothing happened, she shoved the tripod over and stood there fuming.

  “I even made a little podcast and video of my own, just for your family-values groupies. They are scheduled to go live tomorrow. In exactly fifteen hours, to be precise.”

  As if her brain had suddenly shorted out, Mama’s expression vanished. With a sickeningly ratcheted movement, the woman gathered herself up to her full height. She looked down her nose at Riley with two inhuman cobalt slits.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Esto es lo que mi familia mexicana llama un”—Riley framed comedic air quotes—“stand-off.”

&nb
sp; Mama’s lip began to curl back on her perfectly aligned porcelain veneers. “You fucking little bitch.”

  “Stole my line, lady.”

  “You think . . . you can sneak into my home and threaten me?” Her pitch rose with each word, goading every part of Riley that had ever wanted to haul off and punch this woman in the face. The temper remained quiet, however, soothed into slumber by the simple perfection of this plan and the rewards that awaited the risk. “This is my house!”

  The shriek was dampened nicely by corrugated foam tiles. As the silence closed back in, Riley yawned. “If you don’t calm down, you’ll regret it.”

  “Don’t you tell me to calm down! I will end you! You think you’re safe from me, you disgusting whore?” She stepped forward, shivering with rage, flecks of spit spattering as she swore. “I know every fucking judge in this jurisdiction and some very dangerous people. I promise you, your father’s parole is over! Over!”

  Riley smiled. “I told you before . . . I’m not your daughter. You can’t bully me. And also, unlike your daughter, I have family who care about me and have my back. People to witness what you’ve done and say enough is enough. Isn’t that right, Dad?”

  His voice was mighty, even though it came from the tiny speaker of her phone. “I’ve always got your back, Rye. And I don’t know who this woman thinks she knows, but I can promise you . . . I know worse.”

  The surprise sent Mama back a full stride. From head to toe, she began to shake. To some, it might look like fury, or perhaps terror, but Riley had an old soul and she’d seen a few things.

  As Mama staggered back toward the tiny kitchenette and the bottle of bourbon in her cupboard, Riley heaved a great sigh. “What you’ve done to your kids, you did because you hate your life. You hate it and you don’t know why you do. You’re supposed to love it. That’s what they told you. But no, you hate it and you resent them.”

  Mama tossed back the drink and sloshed another into the tumbler. “Fuck you. You don’t know anything about my life.”

  “I know it doesn’t look anything like the life you pretend to have.” She waved a gloved hand over the production suite. “On the internet you’re a model citizen, a perfect mother, a devout sister of the faith. In real life, you’re a drunk, abusive hypocrite.”

  Another drink vanished. “Look at you? A worthless skank with a murderer for a daddy? Living out of a fucking trailer?”

  Riley glanced at the phone, but her father said nothing. “The difference is, I’ve never claimed to be anything I’m not. So you get it, right? While you’re busy wasting all this energy trying to keep your secrets and lies straight . . .” Riley put down her feet and stood up. “I don’t have a straight bone in my body, and I have energy to burn. And boy . . . have you lit a fucking match.”

  Mama was still shaking. Her third tumbler of liquor was clutched in a white hand, long French nails curved around the crystal-like talons. Her features were hard, and her jaw flexed as if she was grinding her teeth.

  Riley crossed her arms. “You hired me to find your daughter, and I have. I know you’ve put her in that hospital on a mental health hold. I know you think you can have her committed and medicated until she actually does have a breakdown. And even if they release her, nothing she says will ever matter, because she’s a nutcase. It’s in her record, right?”

  “You’re . . . sick,” Mama spat. “I’m entitled to protect my daughter from all spiritual evils!”

  “What you did wasn’t protection. It was abuse.”

  “Says a liberal society!”

  “It’s liberal because it has to be, so that we can all coexist, no matter what our backgrounds, duh.” She smiled wickedly. “Unless of course you’re about to tell me you don’t think those sorts ought to be allowed to exist . . .”

  “Maybe they shouldn’t!”

  With one hand, Riley tapped the enter key. The printer revved up with a high-pitched whine and began churning out paperwork. “The last time we were in this room, you made me sign a bullshit contract. You thought I didn’t know what it was. You thought I’d be scared. You were wrong.”

  While Mama hurled curses at her, Riley gathered up the printouts and plucked a pen from the cup. She laid them out neatly on the desk with a smile.

  “—That contract is legally bindin’! If you tell anyone anythin’ about this—”

  “No, it isn’t. You voided it the moment you opened your stupid mouth, and when your husband finds out what’s happened, he’ll tell you the same thing.”

  The woman’s jaw hung open for a moment of self-doubt, and when it finally snapped shut, Riley saw what she’d been waiting for: fear. With a grin, she let the other shoe drop.

  “From the moment I came into the office the first time, I’ve recorded our conversations. Now, you may be looking back thinking I haven’t said anything wrong, but that’s not entirely true. It may not be wrong to you, but to the rest of the world looking in? Way wrong. I’ve recorded you hiring a person to commit what you believed to be illegal acts to retrieve your daughter. I have you admitting to hiring a boy you knew to be a bigot to perpetrate a sexual assault against a minor. I’ve got you advocating hate crimes. I’ve got you for delinquency, by refusing to press charges against a man who attacked a minor. Blaming the victim. Recruiting four men to illegally abduct your daughter across state lines, which is a felony. I even have you threatening to lie to police. And you know what? They’ll take me seriously. Do you know why?”

  It looked as if Mama was about to be sick. Her vanilla skin had turned green. Her bottom lip was trembling.

  “Because you actually went and fucking did it.” Riley stepped out from behind the desk and slid the contract further over its surface. “I got arrested in California, you know?”

  “They’ll never believe you,” Mama whispered. “You thief.”

  Riley could only laugh. “Man, with your stubbornness and drive, you could have actually done something worthwhile instead of turning into Lady Macbeth with a side of Elizabeth Bathory. But come on, I’m telling you why you don’t want to fuck with me. You might want to listen this time, since apparently, you didn’t actually read all the helpful essays your daughter wrote on the subject.”

  Riley leaned back against the desk, enjoying every creak and drag of her leather riding gear as it perforated the ballooning tension. Mama seemed to be struggling with an unseen force. Every time she thought to lunge forward, something held her back, and every time her mouth opened to unleash another invective, her lips parted uselessly. Power was trading hands.

  The magic was shifting to a new mistress.

  “Funny thing happened on the way to the correctional facility. I met this great classifications deputy, named Wanda. She’s been in her job for almost twenty-five years, you know, and she really takes the arrests of young people seriously. Like a mission. And she really fucking despises racists, which . . . I gotta say, really greased the wheels when I said your name. Wowza.”

  Mama brought the glass to her lips and sucked down the few amber sips that sloshed into her face. “I don’t give a damn about—”

  “She listened to my story, even though, like . . . no one would believe a skank like me. Even went and got my phone out of lockup, and then she called some detective friends of hers and they phoned the issuing jurisdiction. Asked to speak to the DA who’d requested the warrant for my arrest. Apparently, he found the recordings really informative.”

  Riley sniffed. The sickly sweet alcohol wafting on the air-conditioned breeze mingled with Mama’s perfume in a disgusting cloud. The woman was completely silent, staring vaguely into space as if watching her future corrode.

  The perfect time to finish it.

  “I didn’t even have to post bail,” Riley murmured. “The DA just dropped the whole thing. Probably didn’t want it to get out that he’d had any dealings with you. I mean why risk his career over a tiny case like mine? You thought you could intimidate me with that, but see, that was stupid, because I grew up on the
wrong side of the tracks. Nothing intimidates me.”

  Mama scowled at her. The witch apparently understood finally that she couldn’t play the old games, because none of them would work. It was like watching a snake shed, as the face pinched up on itself. Suddenly, Mama was looking her in the eye, not as someone she could control, but as someone practicing the same craft.

  “Clever.”

  “That’s what they call me. I love your daughter. She’s an incredible person in spite of all you’ve done, and I’m going to take good care of her, no matter what you say. I know . . . I know it fucking kills you that she might be happy, but I don’t care. You’re not going to stop me.”

  Riley tapped the stack of paper. “This is the paperwork you need to release her from that place. You’re going to sign it. Then you’re going to agree not to bother her for the next five and a half months. She’s going to move out a bit early and you’re not going to do one thing about it. If anything, and I mean anything, happens to disrupt that, we’ll just see what happens, huh?”

  Mama let out a laugh that would have sent a super villain for their vocal coach. “You think that a few recordings of me doing my Christian duty are gonna matter with the kind of people I know? Those idiots would burn a cross on your yard as soon as look at you, sugar. They don’t give a dried-up turd about anything I’ve done. And there’s enough good-ole-boy cops and jurists in this county to shove everything under the rug in a heartbeat.”

  Riley let her have her mirth with a stoic face. When she didn’t evince any sign of backing down, Mama’s baleful smile dimmed.

  “I thought you’d say that. That’s kind of why I just recorded you saying it.” Riley turned off the recording app and tilted her head. “Man! You just don’t learn! You should know that I mention El’s blog in the videos, which of course means they’ll get to read all her details about your child abuse. I reprogrammed all your email accounts, printed off all your bank statements, downloaded the entire file off your keystroke tracker, and data-mined your text messages from the cloud. I read some of your husband’s conversations with his staffers, a few of your insider trading tips, and even a really great bunch of convos with some blocked numbers I’m pretty sure are the four guys who dragged El back. Four guys whose names I know, because I also downloaded all your recent NDA files. I dug up your entire life, and it’s all on the internet timed to fall like an axe from God’s hand.”