by Harlow Hayes
“So you were talking about how much you like me, right?” I wrapped my arms around Niko’s waist and looked into his eyes.
Before Niko could answer Frankie stormed out of my bedroom and into the kitchen.
“We need to talk,” he demanded.
“God, Frankie, now what is it?”
“You’re a bitch. That’s what it is.”
“Hey, you need to watch it, friend,” Niko said.
“Hey, I’m not your fucking friend. I can say whatever the fuck I want. You hear that shit? Is he threatening me? Are you threatening me, motherfucker?”
Niko was going to do it. He was going to punch Frankie. I grabbed his arm.
“I got this. I can take care of myself,” I told him, and he relaxed. I turned to Frankie.
“You’ve had too much to drink.” I shook my head, embarrassed.
Niko was looking at Frankie like he wanted to strangle him.
“What?” Frankie said, staring Niko down. “I don’t need this guy knowing what we talk about. You can leave.”
“No, he stays,” I said. Frankie was standing only a foot away from me. “What is wrong with you?”
“Nothing’s wrong with me, life has never been better. But you don’t get to ask me that. Don’t ask me what’s wrong with me. What is wrong with you is a better fucking question. What the fuck is up with Mara Janae?” He was holding a crumpled-up piece of paper in one hand and a drink in another. I didn’t like the mean tone in his voice.
“What?” I asked.
“This is what, bitch!” He threw his drink on the floor and unfolded the piece of paper that he had in his hand and held it up to my eyes.
“What the fuck is this, Mara?” Frankie asked.
“Mara, is everything okay?” Rosalina asked, walking into the kitchen.
“Yeah, everything is okay. Take your ass back over there somewhere,” Frankie said.
“Who do you think you’re talking to?” Rosalina snapped back.
“What the fuck is this, Mara?” he said, the piece of paper dangling from his hand.
I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. My heart had fallen out of my chest and onto the floor. It was my medical statement from the insurance company. I knew what it said. Termination of pregnancy.
“Thirteen weeks! Thirteen fucking weeks.” His eyes were swollen with tears.
Kate walked into the kitchen. “You guys are getting way too loud in here. I can hear you on the other side of the room. You need to tone it down.”
“You don’t say anything to me, not now,” I snapped at her.
“What the hell is your problem?” she asked.
“This is not the time,” I said.
“Lies!” Frankie yelled out.
“What is going on?” Sophie asked, making her way into the arena.
“Stay out of it. Silence is golden,” Melanie said.
“Frankie, calm down. Go in my room and lie down,” I said.
“I know what I’m saying. Because it looks like this is saying that the baby, the baby that you pawned off as some lowlife’s, was mine.” He turned away and dropped the paper on the floor. “And I was there. You fucking had me there with you, holding your goddamn hand… fucking cunt.”
“You need to go,” I said.
“No, I’m fine right where I am,” he said, pacing.
“Frankie, you need to leave. I’m going to call you a cab.” I grabbed Frankie by the arm and tried to lead him out of the kitchen, out of the sight of others.
“Get off me.” He pulled away from me. “I’m not ready to leave yet. Not until I get some truth.”
“What truth, Frankie? What truth?” I asked, my voice strained and desperate.
“God, you are such a liar. I bet they don’t know the half of it. About the probation?” Frankie’s drunken eyes were only inches away from mine. Then he searched the crowd until he found Erin and pointed to her. “Well, I know your dog-face ass knows.”
He looked past me at Niko.
“Has she told you?”
“Frankie, don’t start that shit in here,” I said, my voice stern.
“I’m going to call the police. He needs to go,” Melanie said.
“Call those fuckers. They might want to check if she has any probation violations,” he said. He returned his attention back to me. “Have you fucked him? Yeah, I bet you fucked him.” He turned around and grabbed the bottle of vodka from the countertop. “Did she fuck you, dude? I bet she didn’t tell you that she fucks me, too. Or at least she used to.”
“Frankie, get out.”
“No, I’m staying.”
“Frankie, you’re drunk. You need to go sleep. You don’t want to say something that you’ll regret.” I was losing myself, unraveling at the ends like thread.
“Whatever, Mara. I regret nothing. I’ve been there for you but you done forgot. It’s been me, not him, not them, me.” He pointed to Niko and then the girls who had been assembled there since the argument began. “That’s truth, but liars don’t see it, don’t recognize it. It’s foreign to them. Do you recognize it, Mara? I don’t think you do.” Frankie pushed his finger into my forehead and pushed it back.
Niko stepped in front of me and pushed Frankie into the fridge. “You need to leave,” he said.
Frankie started laughing.
I jumped forward past Niko to hit Frankie, but he pulled me back.
“Don’t touch me. Don’t you ever touch me!” I screamed at Frankie. “Don’t come here and stare down your nose at me. I have been there for you. Through the funerals, death anniversaries, the worst parts of your life. Who was there? I’ll tell you who: me. And don’t act as if you haven’t hurt me, lied to me, went around behind my back. Used me. All the women you’ve had, God, one after the other, after the other, girl after girl, then you fuck Kate and act as though nothing’s happened.”
Frankie and Kate’s faces froze.
“Yeah, I know, so don’t act so fucking innocent,” I said.
“Oh, so you know about that?” Frankie asked.
“Yeah, I know about that.”
“Well, that’s irrelevant.”
“Irrelevant? You’re fucking crazy.”
“No, you’re fucking crazy,” Frankie said. “You’re the one in therapy. I bet she forgot to mention that to you all, too. Shit, probation, therapy, abortion, rape, you’re a fucking nutcase.”
“Shut up, Frankie!” I stepped towards Frankie again, but Niko put his arm out to stop me.
“What? What did I say?” Frankie asked. “Did you not mention that either? Goddamn, Mara, get your shit together.”
“Get out! Get the fuck out!” I flung my body towards Frankie. Niko came from behind me and the girls grabbed Frankie to keep him from coming after me. I broke loose and grabbed a liquor bottle off the counter and chucked it at him, but it missed and shattered all over the floor. Frankie fell to the floor as he tried to dodge it.
“Get out!” I kept yelling it, over and over, until I couldn’t yell it anymore. Everyone and everything stood still. My ears were hot and buzzing and I sunk into a ball on the kitchen floor. I only remembered blurs of people moving towards the door and the warmth of the tears rolling down my cheeks while Niko’s arms embraced me and Sophie ran her fingers through my hair.
If he hadn’t left, I would have killed him, I thought. I would have killed him.
Chapter 24
I felt violated all over again. My truth had effectively been blabbed to the whole city of Evanston. Frankie had no right and there would be no redemption for him.
My heart raced walking up the stairs to Niko’s condo. I didn’t know what I was going to say. The last thing I remembered was him holding me at the party. I stood at the door, hesitant to knock. I could turn back now and never come back, start over and forget that I’d ever met Niko. I could go on with my life as if the last several months never happened. I could run.
I didn’t cower. I knocked on the door.
Niko answered and his
face was laden with concern.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“As all right as I can be, I guess.” I walked through the door. I moved fast so that he wouldn’t catch me and hug me. I didn’t want to feel it because I would never want to be without it and that would have confused my purpose for being there. I walked into the living room and had a seat on the couch.
Niko followed and sat across from me. The room was silent except for the TV that was running in one of the back rooms. Niko looked at me, his eyes soft, and I knew that it would be the last time that I would see them looking at me so affectionately.
“Please, Mara, tell me the truth,” he said.
I didn’t even know where to start. I took a deep breath.
“The truth is I don’t want to tell you the truth. I never did, but I was going to that night. That’s why I took you to my room to talk, then Frankie…”
Niko’s eyes wouldn’t leave mine. His face was perplexed but his was body strong and secure in its position.
“I didn’t want your pity,” I said. “I didn’t want you looking at me as if I was damaged and deformed.”
Niko leaned forward, looked at the ground and intertwined his hands as he gathered his thoughts.
“You don’t know me, not at all. I would never see you like that,” he said, looking back up at me.
“That’s my point. If I would have told you right off you would have known that person, and I didn’t want you knowing that version of me.”
“Then what version of you do you want me to see now?” he asked. “It is either going to be true or it isn’t. Are you going to be honest with me?”
I’d known that this moment would come but I’d hoped it would have been on my own terms, on my own time. The thought sickened me that I was being forced to have this conversation because of Frankie. My heart was racing and I could feel the sweat from my body building up in my clothes. My ears buzzed and my throat felt like a rag was stuffed down it, but the story came out anyway.
“I was out celebrating my birthday, New Year’s Eve, with Frankie. Some of his friends and some people from school were there, but Frankie and I were drunk so…” I paused to take a breath. “I left my phone in the car, but I needed it for something, and now I can’t even remember what, but while I was standing next to the car in the garage, someone… someone came up behind me.”
Niko’s eyes were soft and kind and it helped as I continued on.
“He pushed me onto the hood of the car and said… he said if I screamed he would kill me, so I stayed quiet, but I tried to get up. I tried and I couldn’t. The only other thing he said was ‘I know you like it rough.’ He raised up my dress, then—”
Niko put his hand up to stop me. “You don’t have to keep going if you don’t want to.”
“It’s all right,” I said. “When I tried to fight him again, he smashed my head into the hood of the car and I don’t remember anything after that except waking up in the hospital. Someone found me there about an hour later. I had hypothermia and was in the hospital for two weeks. Now I take all these meds to help with the dizziness, the migraines, the anxiety and depression.”
I grabbed my purse and dumped out the contents and six different pill bottles fell out. He looked at them then looked at me, and there it was, the pity that I didn’t want. “Until recently I was having random blackouts,” I said. “I lost time, memory, but that was fixed after the medication was regulated.”
Niko sat quietly while I continued.
“Anyway, in April a couple of my classmates thought that it would be fun to play a prank on me in the office, thinking it would be fun to give me a good scare. So that night, as I was getting ready to leave, one of them jumped on my back and wrapped her arms around my neck, and I fought her. I was so scared and… well, I left her in pretty bad shape, and the other one with a busted lip and black eye. I didn’t have any previous offenses and my reaction was warranted. At least, that’s what the judge said considering the attack and all, so they cut me loose with probation. That’s why I go to the counseling center. It’s a condition of my probation and the reason I was allowed to stay in school and continue to the clinical psych program in the spring. Frankie’s the only person consistently around me who knew about the rape and the probation.”
“What about the baby?” he asked.
“I’ve been pregnant before, back in college, and it was Frankie’s, but I miscarried. I was ready to have it, though, I was ready to be a mom. But when I went to the hospital after the attack, they told me that I was five weeks and I’d had no idea. I wasn’t sick like I was the first time, so I continued doing my usual. But this time I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t fit. I had just been raped, I had a brain injury. I didn’t know what the long-term effects of having that baby would be. And Frankie… I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want his baby, so I told him it was the rapist’s. That I was only eight weeks along when I went to terminate the pregnancy.”
“He said he held your hand through it. What did he mean?” Niko asked.
“He was with me when I had the abortion, and he begged me to keep it, even if it was the rapist’s.” Tears ran down my cheeks.
“Why did you bring him with you to do that, knowing the truth?”
“You don’t see. Frankie was all I had. There’s no one that I’m close to, no one that loves me here, and I couldn’t go back home. I couldn’t tell my mother that I had messed up again. I couldn’t look at my father, and I couldn’t have Frankie’s baby. I didn’t want him to want me because of a baby. I wanted him to be faithful and want me because he wanted me. Plus, if I would have had the baby, I’m sure I would have ruined its life. I seem to ruin everything I touch now.” I put my head down in shame.
“You know, you could have told me,” he said.
“I felt that I didn’t need to. We hadn’t established anything. I wasn’t going to go around with a sign on my back saying ‘rape victim.’”
“You could have told me, Mara, and I wouldn’t say that we haven’t established anything,” he said, his voice serious. “And the thing about no one loving you isn’t true. Because I love you. I love you.”
I stopped breathing. I had longed to hear those words from someone, someone who meant it. But I froze, terrified of them.
I knew what he was doing. He was being the good guy that he was. I felt so horrible about myself. Everything that made me respectable was gone. Every bit of me that once shined was diminished because of what happened to me. I have made five steps forward only to take ten steps back. He was already grieving and I made things worse. I had always hated liars and people who withheld the truth. My mother would always tell me that lies hurt people, and I’d never understood why until then. My lies had robbed Niko of his choice, his choice to continue with me and my baggage or not, and now he was caught up in my web. Now he was saying he loves me? I couldn’t drag him through hell with me, so I snapped.
“Are you serious right now?”
He looked at me, worried and alarmed at my anger.
“Yeah, I’m serious, I love you. And if I had known I could have helped you, been there for you, protected you, I would have.”
I wanted to cry. He was being so kind. I couldn’t take anymore. I raised my voice.
“Protected me from what? The damage is done.”
“We’ve gotten close. In our time together you could have found a moment to tell me the truth.”
“This isn’t about you, so why are you acting so hurt?” I said.
Niko’s face squinted into a frown. “Why are you acting like this?”
“I’m the one it happened to. You know now. And you don’t get to chastise me about this.”
“I’m not trying to—I’m not,” he said.
I stood up and grabbed my bag from the floor. Niko remained seated.
“Everybody is so big on truth, so why didn’t you tell me yours? You could have made it clear that you were married to a man. You didn’t make a grand statement about that.
I had to find out by coming here, seeing your pictures. You could have found a moment.”
Niko took a deep breath, then answered. “I didn’t think that we would be getting this close.”
“Exactly. Why should you have divulged that information to me if we weren’t that close? But you kept it from me anyway. Unlike me, a spouse shouldn’t be something that you would want to hide or be ashamed of.”
Niko looked up at me quick, with a sharp look in his eyes. I had gone too far, but I kept going.
“Most likely because you assumed I wouldn’t approve of it. It must not be easy for you to keep a woman around if you come right out with the truth, so you suck them in and get them to fall for you first.”
Niko stood up and walked towards the door.
“It’s time for you to go,” he said.
I followed, ashamed and embarrassed about what had come out of my mouth, but it needed to be done. I wasn’t going to ruin his life. He needed to know what kind of asshole I really was.
He was silent opening the door, then he closed it before I could walk out. He stood before me, solid and fearless.
“Let me tell you this, just so we get this straight right now. I never was and never will be ashamed of my marriage, the person I married, or who I am. My intention was never to lie to you or withhold any information about myself. I never made the situation more than what it was. I never pursued that, you did, and I followed. You started this, right here, in my kitchen, knowing full well who I was. Mara, I wanted to talk to you to clear things up, so we could clear the air, have no secrets. Of course I wish you had told me, because without us being romantic I felt that we were decent enough friends, but I understand why you didn’t. But I just wanted you to know that you could have. I wanted to be a good friend, I wanted to impress you, and I wanted to love you. You had me hopeful for that again. But this conversation has let me know that you don’t think highly enough of me for that to happen, and you don’t look as appealing as you once did either.” He opened the door for me to walk out.
My face burned with shame and anger.
“Wait,” he said as I stepped through the door. “I’m sorry. What I said came out harsher than I intend, but you struck a nerve.”
