The Gorgeous Slaughter

by Christina Hart

  Did I think I would send him a picture of me, let him see me, make him want me, and he would just leave his girlfriend and we would have our happily ever after? Life doesn’t work like that, and I know it. You don’t always get what you want. And in my case, you never do.

  “Thank you,” he says.

  And it sounds like he’s looking at it. Longing. Yearning for the past when happiness was still washing up on the shore in rolling waves at his feet.

  “Looks can be deceiving though, can’t they?” he adds.

  He has no idea. “Yes, they certainly can. Look, I’m so sorry to cut this short, but I have a session with another patient in five minutes and I have to go. It was so nice talking to you, though. Please feel free to text me if you want,” I say, hopeful that he will.

  “Nah, it’s okay. I won’t bother you. I’ll let you go.”

  Please bother me. “No, it’s fine, really. I know you have trouble sleeping.”

  “We can talk tomorrow. It’s okay,” he says.

  But it’s not okay. I’ll miss you. “Okay. Try to go to bed then. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  We say goodnight and I take off my tank top and underwear. I put on my bikini and stare into my full-length mirror. I study my body and see how it compares to hers.

  I pinch the small amount of skin I can grab on my stomach. Grab my small boobs, try to tie the string around my neck to pull them up and see if I can form more cleavage. Her boobs are bigger than mine. She is a little curvier than I am. Her blonde her is sun-kissed, natural. Her skin is glowing. She is smiling because she has Charlie and I’m not because I don’t.

  Thirty-Two

  I stand in front of the mirror the next morning with a robe on as the curling wand is heating and dry my hair. The blonde isn’t bad, the more I look at it the more I like it and I wonder why I never dared to dye it before. Dark locks, dark heart. I guess that was always my thing. My hair was always down my back and when I straightened it, it lengthened a good few inches more. Wavy hair shrinks and frizzes in the heat. You can’t run a brush through it without regretting it instantly. The shorter it is, the curlier it is. But my curls weren’t the perfect kind. Nothing about me is perfect, never has been.

  But Charlie, he doesn’t want perfect. A child of the system, he knows that little fantasy bubble doesn’t exist anyway. Tracy can’t listen to his music with a genuine ear for it, let alone his stories. She can’t understand his way of life and the way it has shaped him. She doesn’t know the path to his past, how to get underground and rest with him. But I do. I could be his nine and three quarters. And if we were at Hogwarts the sorting hat would choose us, put us together. Twelve points for Slytherin the day we’d first hold hands. The death eaters themselves would fear the two of us, together. I just need to find the Hoarcrux to his heart, the one that gets rid of Tracy.

  My phone dings and I know it is him before I look at it.

  “Hey, can you talk?” he asks.

  But it’s so early. Too early. Something is wrong. My heart starts pounding, wondering if he found out somehow. Who I am, what this is. “Of course. Is everything okay?”

  There is no time to set the timer, because Charlie texts back instantly. And it’s one word.

  “No.”

  “Call me when it’s good for you,” I say right away.

  My phone starts ringing moments later and I answer, and Charlie’s voice is different. Sad.

  “Hey,” he says. “I don’t even know where to start, how to feel.” His voice is breaking on every other syllable and something is wrong. Very wrong.

  “What happened?” I ask. It sounds like he’s been crying, or wants to cry.

  “My foster mom, she, she died. They said she had a heart attack.” He says it like he can’t believe it but is trying to.

  I sit down on my bed and take this in, trying to formulate any words that will take his hurt away. But sometimes there are none. “Charlie, I’m so sorry.”

  “She was healthy. I don’t understand.” He sounds shocked, like he’s trying to process this in real time. I hear a glass in the background. Ice. Liquid being poured.

  “How old was she?”

  “Sixty-four,” he says. “She raised me. She was my family. And I wasn’t there for her. I was fucking sleeping while she was dying.”

  I don’t know whether to be Love, the psychiatrist, or Love, his friend. Sometimes you don’t have time to choose. “You couldn’t have known. It’s not your fault this happened.”

  “I just feel like I should have been there. I should have talked to her more often. I should have called her more, every night that I went out and she was worried about me and just wanted a text from me that I was okay. That I made it safe. I’ll never have the chance to fix that.” He takes a gulp, swallows down the regret.

  All the should have’s and could have’s and would have’s, they go down hard, get lost in the wrong pipe. They turn into something ugly and manifest. And sometimes, if you let them fester, you choke on them.

  “Wishing you had done things differently will accomplish nothing and will only make you feel worse,” I say.

  “I know. I know, it’s a slippery slope. I just don’t even know how to feel right now. How to process it all.”

  “That’s completely normal. It’s going to take time. These things, they’re hard. They take some getting used to. Some accepting. And it’s not just you.” And I remind him of that because I think it’s important. I think it’s vital to survival to not feel so alone while suffering. I think being able to breathe and wanting to wake back up the next morning after a tragedy is necessary. And in order to do that, you need friends. You need people who love you. People to live for, even when you can’t for yourself.

  “Yeah, I guess. I’m sure you’re right. I don’t know. I’m having a hard time managing my thoughts here. We’re planning her services. We really only have a few days to get everything together. The wake will probably be on a Saturday. We figure that’s the day most people will be able to attend. Her brother is here. My uncle. He’s taking care of everything.”

  “Saturday is a good idea because you’re right, most people who would want to attend would be more likely to be able to. Everything seems to happen really fast when someone you love passes away. I know what you’re going through, and I’m sorry. Through this, just try to remember that she’s in a better place. We are the ones left suffering after the loss of a loved one. I know it’s hard, but whatever you wish you would have done differently, it doesn’t matter. Thinking about that is not going to get you anywhere. It will only take you to a dark place and make this worse for you. And it’s bad enough as it is,” I tell him.

  He breathes in deeply, lets out a long exhale. I can almost hear his hands trembling as he tries to process it all. The step-by-step tutorial of how to grieve the loss of a mother is not gifted to us as children, or maybe even as adults. We are not told how to get through this, how to survive it. How to make it to the other side when the woman who has given you life is no longer here to sustain it. Nature takes over when the nurture is ripped away. And usually, it isn’t very pretty.

  “You’re right. I need to stop thinking about that stuff. It’s just hard, you know?” he says. “My mind, it’s just, not stopping. I cried for the first time today since I was a little kid, really cried. The kind of crying that chokes you and makes you feel like you can’t breathe. And I wonder if she felt that before she died. The lack of air. The pain.”

  I close my eyes and I nod. I have no idea what to say. My words cannot be a prescription for this, not a Band-Aid. I cannot patch him up and make this go away. It is the kind of cut that takes a lifetime of healing. I still mourn my own loss. At different times. Random times. Sometimes I am taken aback at how fresh the wound feels. How it can wake me up in the middle of the night, in a cold sweat, with tears escaping me. Sometimes it comes from a place of anger, sometimes from the deepest well of sadness. Sometimes I want to rip the hair from my own head, break somethi
ng. Watch it shatter. Just to fill the room with noise to cancel out the static this kind of loss leaves in its wake. And sometimes I do.

  “I’m sure she didn’t feel pain,” I say, to comfort him. “It probably happened suddenly. She probably didn’t even realize what was going on. But even if she did feel something, it happened fast. I don’t think she suffered.”

  “I hope she didn’t,” he says. “God, she took me in and raised me. Gave me a better life than I ever could have dreamed of. She loved me like I was her own son. I wasn’t even her blood. But she never made me feel that way. Ever.”

  “She sounds like she was a really great woman,” I say.

  “She really was.”

  “She’s in a better place, Charlie. I promise.”

  “I don’t know if I believe in that stuff,” he says.

  “Well, you better start.”

  We talk for another half hour. I try to take his mind off this when I can with glimpses of reality and the fact that he’s still alive. He’s still here and he has to get through this. He’s not going to work tomorrow. He has to help his uncle with things for the arrangements and start clearing out his mother’s things. He has to pack things away in boxes. Decide what to donate, what to keep. He has to try to make it through this, by doing one thing after the other, until it’s all over, because that’s how it goes.

  Thirty-Three

  Five hours pass after I say goodbye to Charlie and I take out my laptop to look for any sign of activity from him. His Facebook has gone cold, though he isn’t very active on a daily basis anyway. His silence on all social media speaks volumes of his sadness. He is too busy living in the grief to actively share about it anywhere. Too desolate to debrief internet strangers on the monumental event in his life that has just occurred. But Tracy? Tracy doesn’t respect this.

  RIP Momma O’Sullivan. You will be greatly missed. Your presence in this man’s life changed his course forever, and you will never be forgotten.

  Above the caption is a photo of the three of them, smiling. She doesn’t understand that Charlie does not crave attention in the form of comments while he is mourning. She doesn’t understand that Charlie needs to heal alone, in private. She doesn’t understand that he may not have been ready to face this himself yet, let alone with the rest of the world. But Tracy is a different breed, a different animal. But she is not the one hurting. And she should have respected his privacy. I watch this play out on Facebook, I read the comments and watch the “likes” increasing on the photo. And in real time, I am watching Tracy ruin whatever is left of their relationship. I can almost feel Charlie distancing himself from her even more. And it dawns on me that he may have called me first today when he found out. And if he did, I can see why. I was there for him. I was his ear. His partner. His friend. And it starts to make sense. The vision of perfection that she portrays is a lie. Underneath the surface, she is a liar. A bad person.

  Tracy is too selfish to lend an ear during a hard time. I imagine the words “I’m so sorry, baby” springing from her lips. I imagine the way she pretends to listen as she fixes her makeup as she sits at the vanity desk in her bedroom, looking at herself in the mirror while pretending to care about perhaps the biggest loss Charlie will ever endure.

  Troy is probably texting Tracy right now, apologizing, letting her know that he is there for her if she needs him. Tracy is probably thanking him, telling him how hard this is for them. For them, like it is affecting her. Like she is struggling with the regrets and the remorse. Like she is the one suffering. Meanwhile, Charlie is the one with a gaping hole in his chest. Charlie is the one struggling to breathe, trying to pump air into his lungs just to keep going for another moment. Charlie is the one who has to live on.

  But Tracy doesn’t think about things like that. Tracy thinks about making posts on Facebook to show she cares. Tracy thinks a bunch of comments and likes from absolute strangers will make Charlie feel better, less alone. Because for Tracy, attention heals her. It is all she knows. She has been showered with it since the day she was born and she knows nothing else. I can’t know if she has ever grieved privately, alone, sadness ravaging her body desperately seeking a way out. But this is what Charlie is experiencing. The kind of sadness you can’t put into words. The kind of sadness that needs to be alone, hidden. The kind of sadness you need to try to deal with yourself, the kind you need to make it through one way or another.

  Charlie hasn’t responded to her post. He didn’t like it. He didn’t comment on it. And of course he didn’t. But Troy did. And eventually, Charlie is going to see this. Somewhere inside me I pray, to someone, anything, that he doesn’t get that notification on his phone. Of Troy liking the photo of his recently deceased mother. Of Troy commenting how sorry he is for their loss. Their loss. As though Tracy feels this loss as deeply as Charlie does.

  Tracy is thanking everyone for their kind words. She is liking each comment, responding individually to each one. She is a ham, a pig, soaking in the sunlight and glory of all the attention in the sorrow. She enjoys it. Why is she on Facebook right now and not by Charlie’s side? Why is she not hugging him right now, letting him cry heavy gasps on her shoulder? Why is she not holding onto him and holding him up when that’s what he needs? He shouldn’t have to ask for it. This is what you do for someone you love when they lose their mother. You call them. You run to them. You listen. You show them you are there and that they are not alone.

  I am separated from Charlie by proximity. But I am making plans, devising my reach, mapping out my route to get to him. I close my laptop and grab my car keys and head to the store.

  I am looking through the variety of dresses, touching different fabrics, finding something appropriate. I find several black options. Sleek, elegant, not overly sexy or appealing. Wakes and funerals are no time for cleavage. What, you don’t think I would go? I have to go. I have to be there for him. I find a few decent options and head to the dressing room to try them on. They all feel so sad. I thought my first time going to see Charlie in person would be a happier occasion. I never thought we’d meet while he was burying his mother.

  I try on the third dress. A black dress, three-quarter sleeves, just above my knees. It’s fitting, but not too tight. It’s appropriate, not too revealing. And I wish we were meeting under different circumstances. I wish the first time he saw me would have been for something happy, something joyous. Not this.

  My bleach blonde hair is curly and I look different in this mirror. I don’t look like Love and I wonder who I am. How I thought ripping the color from my hair would impress him, persuade him to look at me and be attracted to me. I stare at myself and ask myself why I ever thought being anything like her was the way to his heart. She’s borderline evil. A disgusting person. And I don’t want to be anything like her. In fact, I am the opposite, and I want to stay that way. I decide right then and there to dye it back to dark when I get home. Black. I’m going back to black. I no longer think I need to look anything like Tracy.

  I no longer think I need to be anything like Tracy.

  Thirty-Four

  I look at my phone, the picture of Charlie, smiling, on the beach, sand in his toes, arm wrapped around the beautiful blonde nightmare who is turning his life into a steel trap. I stare at Tracy. Her porcelain skin, tanned by the sun. Hair highlighted by the sun and salt waves. She’s smiling. A perfect smile full of straight white teeth. Her nose is small, turned up the slightest bit in that cute way cute girls’ noses do. Her bikini isn’t that appealing, but it doesn’t matter, because she is. I imagine in a different era she could have been a pin-up girl. I imagine in this era she dresses up in pretty Victoria’s Secret lingerie for Charlie, giving him something to remember on the long days she’s working with Troy.

  I make a fresh cup of coffee with the Keurig machine and grab my laptop, open up to Facebook, and start the search.

  I dig through faces until I find the exact photo he sent me. They’re both full of shit in this picture, in their statuses that
seem happy. In her hashtag #RelationshipGoals that she constantly uses. And this is part of why she will never be the right girl for him. Because the right girl for him would be making him happy instead of using some silly hashtag to convince her friends and a bunch of strangers that they actually are happy.

  I start the timer to see how long it takes me to find what I’m looking for, just for fun. A challenge. I skim through her photos, one by one. First her profile pictures, then the rest. But she’s a picture whore, of course. If I was her, I probably would be, too. There are over a thousand here. I’m not surprised. Different shots, different outfits. Different filters, different faces. Her profile is impressive, the kind you stop to envy, the kind you get lost in as you wonder what it would be like to be that person.

  She looks like a girl who knows how to have fun, knows how to laugh in a way that keeps you forever young. Her energy seems infectious. In different photos, people are looking at her, longing for her, longing to be her.

  Here she’s at a zoo, baseball cap over her short blonde hair. She’s smiling at a giraffe. In another photo, she’s surrounded by a litter of puppies. Their eyes aren’t even open yet. She is in the middle of them, like she’s making sure they’re all safe and happy. In this one, she’s with a group of girlfriends, all dressed up at a club, with drinks in their hands, all strikingly beautiful in their own way. I imagine they turned so many heads that night, inviting every thirsty man in the tri-state area to salivate over their existence.

  In the next is a photo with her and her parents. Her mom and dad and her. Single child it seems. The only child. They’re all smiling, and I know now that she’s used to getting all the attention. It’s been carved into her genetic makeup, her nurturing. This is not something she seeks, it’s her way of life. It’s all she knows. No wonder Charlie has a hard time keeping up. It must be tiring, exhausting all your energy on one person, making sure they remain the epicenter of your little universe. Revolving all your days and thoughts around them.