by Paul Pen
lost an eye because you brought a gun into the home to
protect yourself from a woman who wants you for herself.
That’s what happened. Our boy will be missing an eye
for the rest of his life because of you. Because of ... this.”
She gestured at the two of them with contempt, mov-
ing her hand with a disdain that made them something
appalling, something hard to look at. In this new distorted reality Grace had been transported to, everything was
hollow, and awful. And if the person responsible for this distortion was the person she loved most, then everything she knew about the world was a lie. Love didn’t exist.
Goodness didn’t, either. Frank nodded. He lowered his
head, accepting the full weight of the guilt that Grace
had tried to take off his shoulders since the incident but that now made so much sense.
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Mara cleared her throat. “It isn’t exactly like that.”
Frank looked up with eyes full of hate.
“It’s incredible how misogynist we women can be,”
Mara said to Grace. “How easily we blame one another
before blaming the man. Crazy, unbalanced, in love with
your husband. Is that the first explanation you arrive at?
I’m the crazy one, right? The one responsible for every-
thing. And this is all my doing.” She stretched out her
arms to illustrate how extreme the situation was. “Why?
Out of spite? Out of love? Because your husband’s such an incredible man that a woman like me will lose her mind
after sleeping with him a few times, to the point that I’d threaten his wife with a knife? It’s not that, Grace. I’m not threatening you. You’re a wonderful woman who’s had
the misfortune of being another victim of your husband’s
staggering lack of honesty. He deceived me, too, denying
your existence for months. Telling me he was divorced.”
Another crack opened up on Grace’s heart. She looked
at Frank’s ringless left hand. He’d never worn it—he said he was uncomfortable in it, just as he never wore a watch or a necklace. He didn’t even wear sunglasses. When
Grace commented on it in one of her videos, many of her
subscribers remarked that it seemed like a lack of respect on her husband’s part to refuse to wear the wedding ring, but to Grace that sounded like the antiquated argument
of conservative women. A piece of metal didn’t make
their marriage any worthier.
“I would never have done anything with a married
man,” Mara went on. “If you knew the pain something
like that caused in my fam—” A sob interrupted her
words. She closed her eyes and shook her head as if fighting against a memory that tormented her. When she opened
them again, full of malice, she aimed the knife at Frank.
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“That’s why I’m here. Because he made me play a part
in cheating on another innocent woman.” Her fingers
squeezed the hilt with rage. “And because of everything
he did to me afterward. Because you haven’t heard all of
the truth yet, Grace. There’s more. Much more.”
Frank took a step toward Mara, who brandished the
weapon firmly.
“Don’t come near me.”
“Please...” He held his hands together as if praying.
“Don’t do this.”
Grace took his arm as though he was a stranger.
“Do what?” she asked. “Say what?”
Frank didn’t respond, didn’t even look at her. His eyes
remained fixed on Mara’s, half pleading, half intimidating.
“What?” Grace insisted.
It was Mara who spoke.
“The night your son...” She cleared her throat, pre-
paring herself for what she was about to say. “The night
your son lost his eye ... I guess you missed your husband when you were at the hospital.”
Grace nodded. Frank had disappeared for a few hours,
roaming the building’s surroundings, overcome with
guilt because of what had happened to Simon, hurt by
the accusation Grace had made.
“He was with me,” said Mara. “He came to see me
at my place.”
“Shut up,” Frank muttered. “Please, stop.”
Grace felt her soul being pinched.
“You went to see your lover while your son was in
the hospital?”
“But he didn’t come for that, Grace.” Mara swatted a mosquito on her arm. “Let me tell you why he did come,
what your husband did that night.”
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* * *
Mara already had a foot in the water when the intercom
bleeped. Since she’d moved to the apartment, every party
night had ended in the tub on the balcony—there was no
better way to sober up than to relax for a while in the hot water. She could turn on the bubbles or not, depending
on how drunk she was and whether she wanted to make
use of them in the other pleasant way she did from time
to time. That night, for the time being, she wasn’t going to turn them on—the tequila shots at the end of the night were still making her dizzy. To this day, she still didn’t understand why she kept drinking those shots, knowing
how unwell they made her feel. Well, she did know: it
was Gabby’s fault. Gabby always shrieked the idea at her, with her eyes popping out, at eleven o’clock at night.
The hot tub would be the perfect way to subdue the last
waves of drunkenness from those shots and everything
else she’d drunk. But just as she dipped her foot in, the intercom began bleeping with an urgency as alarming as
it was annoying. One of her guests must have forgotten
something.
Mara covered her nakedness with a towel tied around
her chest. She walked from the balcony to the intercom,
dodging red plastic cups and knocking over a can of Rainier that spilled beer on the floor. She mopped it up with
someone’s sweatshirt she found on a stool, which might
have been exactly what the person ringing the doorbell
like a lunatic had returned for. She also trod in something sticky with her heel and hoped it was more spilled beer
and not vomit like in another of her recent parties. If she didn’t know why she always ended up drinking tequila
shots, she found it even harder to understand why she
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kept organizing parties with more than thirty people in
her apartment, given that when they were over and it was
time to clean up, she always promised herself it had been the last. It must have been that, in the end, her vanity got the better of her and she wanted to show off her home, the newest and most sophisticated in her friend group. Many
of those friends wondered how she had gotten her hands
on such an apartment downtown. Only her closest ones
knew the sad truth. After Mom’s death, Dad got rid of the house where his wife had taken her own life. He sold the
gigantic property on the outskirts and offered the money
to Mara by way of a strange apology for cheating on her
mother for thirty years. He persuaded her to accept it by assuring her that it was what her mother had wanted—
apparently, for over a year, Mom had been suggesting the
idea of selling the house that was now too big for them
and use the money to help their only daughter.
Mara ac-
cepted the money, but not the apology.
It wasn’t a guest Mara now saw on the intercom screen,
but Frank, who was staring straight at the camera as if
wanting to look her in the eyes.
She buzzed open the street-level door and waited
for him at the apartment entrance with the door open a
crack. The elevator’s blue lights announced his arrival on her floor. Frank ran out and pushed her apartment door
open before Mara could react to his sudden appearance.
Inside, seeing him pace around in circles with his hands
on his head but unable to articulate a single word, Mara
thought she understood what had happened.
“Did you tell her?” she asked. “You finally told your
wife?”
Frank looked at her with contempt, the kind of con-
tempt a woman does not allow in her own home and that
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filled Mara with the desire to kick him out. She was about to do so when the pain and desperation she saw in his eyes brought out her compassion. She asked him again if he’d
told Grace about their affair, but he snorted, dismissing the possibility as if it were absurd. Then he bit his lip as his eyes welled up and his chin trembled.
“Stop,” Frank said. “Please, stop now.”
Mara tried to take his hand, but he moved away.
“What is it? I haven’t done anything else. I haven’t
been back to your house.”
Frank rested his back on the glass partition between
the entrance hall and the living room and slid down it
until he was sitting on the floor. Covering his eyes with his hands, he told her that his son, his youngest, had just blown an eye out with a gun he’d found in his bedside
table. Right now the doctors were deciding whether they
could save it or he’d be one-eyed for the rest of his life.
At the age of nine.
“What’re you doing here, then?” Mara asked. “Why
aren’t you at the hospital with him, with your wife?”
“I needed to ask you to please stop,” said Frank, un-
covering his reddened eyes. “Leave me in peace, stop
tormenting me. I have money, I can give you money. Or
give you back the RV, tomorrow, for nothing, so you can
sell it again at the dealership. Anything, but please, stop doing this to me. Leave my family in peace. They don’t
deserve to suffer like this.”
The mere mention of money offended her. Frank
knew her objectives were different.
“You know the only thing I want, Frank. For you to
put right what you’ve done. For you to tell your wife. It’s not just that I want you to do it. It’s the least your wife deserves. To know the truth. To know her husband.”
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Frank looked up at the ceiling and let out a sigh that
contained a barely enunciated plea. A pitter-patter caught his attention, approaching along the micro cement hall
floor.
“What’s all this?” he asked, indicating the debris from
the party.
“I just had a little party. We under-thirties still have
them, you know.”
The pitter-patter snaked between the plastic cups, wet
ice bags, and empty soda bottles, until two curious snouts emerged from the detritus. Audrey’s ferrets chased each
other on their way out of the living room.
“You still have them,” said Frank.
“Sure. They’ll go home to your daughter when you
confess, you know that. None of this is Audrey’s fault.
You’re the one who forced me to use your family. You
can end this whenever you want. You decide.”
“Please, stop.” His shoulders slumped. “Look how far
you’ve taken this. Look what you’ve done to my son.”
“Me?” The accusation outraged her enough to almost
sober her up, like a big fright. “That gun has nothing to do with me.”
“I bought it because of you,” Frank whispered, “after
you started coming into my home like some crazy woman
out of Fatal Attraction.”
“And you didn’t think that a crazy woman out of
Fatal Attraction coming into your house might be because you’ve become the disgusting unfaithful husband in that
movie? When’re you going to take responsibility for your
actions, Frank? If you’re man enough to have an affair,
you should also be man enough to tell your wife. To be
frank. So she knows the life she believes she’s leading isn’t what she thinks it is.”
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Just as the life Mom lived had been a lie. Mara had
not stopped thinking about Mom, about her pain, her
unjust end, since she learned of Grace’s existence. It was in this pain that Mom suffered, and in her determination
to prevent it from happening to another woman, to other
children, Mara found the justification for taking whatever measures were necessary to force Frank to confess. Silent pressure had not worked, so she had been obliged to adopt more extreme methods: to break into his home, steal his
daughter’s pets, tamper with his wife’s shampoo, sneak into their house in the early hours to keep the pressure on. With the shampoo she had overplayed her hand, miscalculated
the quantity. But some lost hair was a very small price for Grace to pay for her husband’s honesty. For the truth.
“Please, leave me in peace,” Frank pleaded.
Mara returned to the balcony to take the bath she
needed. She wasn’t going to allow Frank’s crisis of con-
science to ruin it. Not after he had dragged her, with
his lies, into a situation she detested more than anyone.
A conscience was precisely what a man who repeatedly
sleeps with another woman before going home to sleep
with his wife doesn’t have.
“Besides, what were you intending to do with a gun?”
she asked him near the hot tub, Frank behind her now.
“Shoot me if I’d gone back in your house? God, Frank,
all I did was steal some pets and mess with your wife’s
shampoo—I didn’t kill anybody. And I repeat, you can
end this whenever you want. It’s not fair for you to get
off scot-free after cheating on your wife, on the mother
of your children. On your own children. It’s not fair.”
“Then tell her,” said Frank, offering her a cell phone
he pulled from his pocket. “Go on, call her and tell her, if that’s what you want, but stop doing all the other stuff.”
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“No, Frank.” Mara batted the phone away with a smile.
“Telling the truth’s up to you. You’re the only one making the situation worse every day. If you’d been honest with
your wife from the start, after the first time in the hut, I bet anything you would’ve had a chance to fix it. A lot of wives end up forgiving their husbands if it’s just one time, a moment of madness. We’re all human, women understand that. But you kept quiet. You’re still keeping quiet, just like my father did. He was silent for thirty years. He stole thirty whole years from my mother.” Mara clenched
her jaw when she mentioned her father, spat the tragic
consequence of that betrayal through her teeth. “He stole her whole life from her. And you’ve kept quiet to protect yourself even when your lover broke into your house to
harass your family, your children. I promise you, that’s
; much harder to forgive. The longer you take to tell her
the truth, the more Grace is going to hate you. When my
mother knew the last thirty years of her life had been a lie, that my father had shared his love with other women ...
it destroyed her, Frank. It’s not right for a man to hurt a woman so much, and I’m not going to let you do it to
your wife. I’m not going to give you that amount of time.”
“So that’s what this is? I’m revenge for something
from your past? That’s why you’re enjoying this,” he said, clenching his fists. “You’re enjoying seeing me suffer,
making me pay for something your father did that has
nothing to do with me.”
“I enjoy making a man be honest with his wife. I
enjoy the truth.”
“Please,” Frank whimpered, holding his hands to his
chest. “My son’s lost an eye.”
“And I’m very sorry. I’m sure he’s a wonderful boy.
But I didn’t do it. You bought the weapon and the bullets.
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You kept them in a place where he could find them.
You’re the one who did that to your son, like you did
this”—she removed her towel, showing him her naked
body—“to your wife. When’re you going to stop hurting
your family?”
Mara gave Frank a lascivious look, sitting on the
edge of the hot tub. Her taunt twisted Frank’s face into
a grimace of hatred that frightened her. Moments before,
Mara had seen the urge to hit her pass over Frank’s face
like a thundercloud. Now he struck like lightning, fast
and merciless. So fast that Mara only felt the impact on
her face when he had already retracted his hand. She felt heat there, pain in her eye, fire in her chest, and tension in her teeth. But also shame in her stomach, a victim’s
unjust humiliation.
The slap left her disoriented for a moment. She didn’t
know whether to respond first to her indignation or her
pain. Then her disorientation turned into a loss of bal-
ance, and she slipped into the tub. Her body fell into the water, her head hitting one of the acrylic corners. The
sound of the blow to the back of her neck, the organic
crunch of a watermelon hitting the ground, made her
bite her lips and tense her fingers in horror. It felt like the electric shock from a blow to the funny bone, but all over her body. Then the pain blinded her, it emanated
