by DM Sharp
Francesca Borgia is sitting at the window, her back turned towards us, inhaling on her cigarette deeply, a sheet wrapped loosely around her shoulders. My first thought was how beautiful she looked, her cascading curls hanging down her back in contrast with the stark whiteness of the sheet, her hands trembling each time she brings the cigarette to her mouth.
“Look Mother, it’s Olivia, she’s come to see you. She’s so like you and she’s going to help you feel better.”
“Are you unwell, Mrs Borgia? Lucien, she shouldn’t be sitting in front of the open window like that, she’s shivering.”
Francesca Borgia doesn’t answer, so I look at Lucien questioningly.
“Mother returned from a trip with her horses and when she couldn’t find her two golden retrievers, which she was given when they were puppies, she called my father who told her that he came to pick them up, took them to the vet and had them put to sleep because she had been traveling.”
“What? I don’t understand …” I stop speaking as Francesca Borgia turns around to face me and my eyes widen. Her left eye is swollen shut, her bottom lip split, swollen and ugly. I stumble backwards in shock.
“It’s okay, Olivia,” says Lucien. “It was my dad.”
“Darling Olivia, you look so beautiful. Do be a dear and fetch me another drink,” Francesca slurs before adding, “Haven’t you ever seen a backhand whip to the mouth?” She starts to laugh.
“Lucien, her head is bleeding, We have to get her to a hospital.”
“No. No hospitals. I’ll get her a drink, you just stay with her. Please?”
I nod, slowly walking towards her, unable to actually work out what is going on.
My eyes look over the bruises on her neck, thighs, and alarm passes through me as I register what look like bite marks on her breasts. Some of them are old. I stroke the wisp of hair out of her eye and wrap the sheet tightly around her, a shudder passing right through me.
“Francesca, let’s get you into some warm clothes.”
“I need to have a bath, please run one for me. You are such a good, kind girl, Olivia. Lucien would do well to have someone like you in his future life.”
I smile agreeably, swallowing down the bile that is sitting at the back of my throat. I startle as I sense someone standing behind me. It’s Lucien. I can hear his breathing.
“Thank you so much for coming over. I just didn’t know what to do, or who to call. I can’t take it anymore Oliva, I just can’t take it.” He dissolves in sobs, clear gloop running from his left nostril.
“I just don’t understand what the hell is going on, Lucien? Those bruises on your mother, they are old. Your dad did this. Does this? All this time, you never said anything?”
I remember Felipe Borgia helping Uncle Preston carry me screaming back to the car when they took me away from my father after my mom passed away all those years ago, how he distracted me, kept me amused in the back of the car while poor Uncle Preston, having had no experience with children was at an absolute loss at what to do. He pulled faces at me and made me feel safe in my strange new world when I first arrived.
Even now, he always greeted me like his daughter, ruffling my hair and pulling my nose. It just didn’t make sense. “Lucien, if this is more of your manipulative bullshit lies …”
“No, I swear, just ask Mother.” He looks at her painfully chain smoking at the window.
“Shit, I closed that window. Keep it closed Lucien!” I watch as he moves obediently and does exactly as I say. I don’t ever think I’ve spoken to him like that before.
I move towards the en-suite and feel engulfed in the the huge, dazzling white marble room with a bath surrounded by perfectly organized, beautiful tea-colored roses and terrycloth towels A crystal chandelier sits elegantly overhead in the oval bath and I picture Francesca Borgia reclining in a chair by the window and listening to French radio on the built-in Sonos speakers in the early morning.
I hesitate momentarily before touching the polished brass taps in case my fingers mark them in some way before quickly flicking them on, mesmerized by the gushing water. There are bottles and bottles of Jo Malone Pomegranate Noir Bath Oil sitting on a shelf, which look as if they have never been used. I wonder if Francesca collects them, before picking up a bottle, twisting open the top and inhaling deeply. Closing my eyes, I can make out the pomegranate, raspberry, clove and patchouli scents. They create a sultry blend that’s warm and spicy. So perfect for Francesca. I pour the entire bottle into the gushing water, letting the swirling heat carry the scent.
There’s a loud crash behind me and I turn to see Francesca scrambling around the floor, clawing at the carpet, her drawer lying on the floor, its contents on display.
Moving slowly towards her, being careful not to startle her, I stand transfixed as she puts at least three blue, round, scored tablets imprinted with 10 VALIUM and ROCHE ROCHE into her mouth, before gulping down a glass of water.
“Francesca, shall we get you into the bath? I’m sure you’ll feel better after that,” I say gently, trying not to stare at the multitude of different colored and shaped pills lying all on the floor beside her.
She nods, grabbing her lighter and cigarettes.
Lucien comes back into the room with a balloon shaped glass, swirling a golden brown liquid in it, his eyes drawn towards the broken drawer lying on the floor.
“What’s in that glass, Lucien? Your mom’s taken some pills. I don’t think she should …”
“She’ll be fine. She’s used to it. It’ll warm her up. Brandy is the liquor of heroes, isn’t it, Mother?” He hands her the glass.
“Listen, I don’t like that cut on her head. We need to get help.” My eyes flick back to the pills on the floor. It would be just so easy. Just one.
As if Lucien senses what’s going on in my mind, he’s on the floor on all fours, picking up all the tablets and putting them in a large bowl on the dressing table, before looking back at me, his eyes filling up. “I’m so sorry Olivia. I should never have called you. I’ve put you in danger.”
“Danger? What are you talking about? It’s your mother that’s in danger.”
He doesn’t answer but starts sobbing as he tries to place the drawer under the dressing table. We both know what he means.
My phone starts buzzing in my pocket and both Francesca and Lucien look at me in terror. I look at the screen flashing with Gabriel’s name on it.
Chapter Thirty-eight
Lucien Borgia
“Don’t answer it.”
“Lucien, we need help for crissakes. You’ve got five minutes to start speaking and telling me what the hell is really going on or else I’m going to get help.” My heart is thumping as the phone stops buzzing and I will, with all my heart, that Gabriel calls me back.
Francesca looks relieved as the phone stops, moving to close the bathroom door. I stop her, before saying gently, “You take a bath, but please leave the door open. We’ll give you some privacy.”
She nods gratefully and I take Lucien’s arm and direct him to the giant staircase where we sit down and he starts talking.
“I was six years old at the time and I didn’t know any better. I thought things were normal in my life. I rode my skateboard, had friends and what I thought was a nice life. Until I turned seven. Things became clearer to me. After staying at friends’ houses I realized that something wasn’t right in my life. My mother and father didn’t get along like everyone else’s. I had unusual rules in my house that friends didn’t understand. I could never go in my father’s room. It was off limits, at all times. Which even I didn’t understand until I got older. At first it started with bad arguments. My father degrading my mother. The arguments were an every night thing. They became louder and more personal. I can’t remember exactly when I started making out the screaming from my parents’ room. Most of the noise was my mother saying ‘stop’ at the top of her lungs. For a while I didn’t witness anything, but I just heard it. I remember one night vividly. Me, my mother
and my friend went for a walk around Central Park, but apparently my father didn’t know that we had gone out. We pulled up to my house. And my dad came storming out front. You could see the anger in his face. My mom already knew what was gonna happen, but didn’t want to scare us kids, so she told us to stay in the car while she got out and followed him inside. I didn’t listen and jumped out of the car, running behind them. No sooner had she stepped over the front door, he punched her right in the face, breaking her nose. This was the first time I witnessed the violence. My friend was terrified. He jumped out of our car and ran home. We never spoke again.” His voice is broken by his sobs.
I stand up to get some tissues for him and decide to check on Francesca at the same time. I walk into her room, my eyes fixated on the bowl of pills on the table. I’m torn.
I hear Francesca coughing and knock on the bathroom door. “Are you okay in there?”
Peeking in through the open door, I watch Francesca trying to light some candles on the side of the bath, blood smeared around the back of the bathtub where her head has been resting on it. I make a mental note to try and persuade them to get to a hospital again once I’ve listened to Lucien.
I hand Lucien a wad of tissues, watching him blow his nose like a trumpet before he speaks again. “Another time, I heard my mother crying in my dad’s room. And it didn’t sound like a regular cry. It sounded like one begging for her life. And that’s exactly what it was.” He stops, looking down at the floor in pain.
“Go on, Lucien, you can tell me.” I sit back down a few steps away from him.
“To this day I don’t know if it was a mistake opening my father’s door to see my father holding a gun to my mother’s head. She was bleeding and crying her eyes out.”
Countless things about Lucien’s behavior, his parents’ behavior start to click into place. “I can’t even imagine what that was like for you as a child. Why didn’t you ever tell me anything? I could have tried to help?”
“Don’t be so stupid, Olivia, no one could help us. You know I’ve lost count of the days that I woke up at two a.m. to get into my mother’s car because my dad was being too violent. I used to eat a bowl of cereal in the car with a plastic spoon and bowl on the way to school when I couldn’t take her crying anymore.”
“That was the crying sickness you used to talk about?” My mind flicks back to intermittent periods of time, which Lucien would spend at the Carters’ for days on end, especially during holidays because his mother was ‘not herself.’ I want to reach out to him and comfort him, but then I quickly remember what he did to me and I keep my arms folded across my chest.
“Why did your mother never leave?”
“Leave? No one leaves a Borgia. My father has always treated my mother as an object, an extension of himself, devoid of any separate existence and denuded of distinct needs. Any assets are in his name from real estate to medical insurance policies.”
“But someone, family, friends, no one knew about this?” I wonder if Victoria ever had an inkling. Victoria Carter was so kind, sat on every charity going, but she always avoided the Borgias.
“She has no real family or friends because he has cut her off from everyone. By intimidating, cajoling, charming, and making false promises, Felipe Borgia has isolated his beloved wife from the rest of society and, thus, made her dependent on him. Totally.”
My head has started to pound and I feel exhausted so I suggest that we go to the kitchen to make some tea. Lucien looks like he needs it and I plan to text Gabriel to tell him where I am so he can help us, firstly by looking over Francesca.
Lucien keeps talking all the way down the stairs to the kitchen as I walk behind him.
“I grew up believing that I was responsible for my mother: responsible for making her sick, responsible for making her better, responsible for nurturing her. I felt terrible for being angry with her. I felt that if I abandoned her, she might die, and this was played by her for all it was worth. She threatened suicide many times. My guilt was exacerbated by memories of when she’d tried to be a good mother.”
“Did he ever, you know, hurt you?”
Lucien sits down at the kitchen bar in the all-white kitchen with his head in his hands. I notice him drifting away, like he’s getting sleepy and losing track of the conversation, and a jolt goes through me because I know exactly what he’s doing. It’s the exact same as what I have a tendency to do when I recall painful things. Gabriel comes back into my thoughts and I close my eyes wanting him to be somewhere close by. He called it a dissociation and had explained to me that it was a learned defense mechanism that allowed me to protect myself from intense emotions.
I copy what Gabriel used to do to me, gently saying, “Lucien, I’m still here and willing to listen when you’re ready.”
Lucien looks up at me, his black eyes bloodshot and swollen from all the tears. “He keeps us both under his control. Occasionally, he would slap me in front of my mother to punctuate a point. He’s a master of psychological manipulation, Olivia. You have no idea.”
“Oh God, I wish you had said something. All those times you helped me after I came here and you had all this to cope with?” Tears and guilt start welling up inside of me.
“My father, the legendary Felipe Borgia, loves to play games and not just in his courtroom. When we had done something to displease him, real or imagined, he would ask us about the incident in such a way as to make any answer seem extraordinarily stupid. The questions were almost rhetorical, yet he always demanded an answer. These games made us terrified. I responded by freezing whenever he began this game. I couldn’t speak or move; I was simply frozen with fear. My non-response infuriated him even more, usually resulting in a hard blow with the heal of his hand to my ear or the side of my head. This was discipline, Borgia style.”
“No, listen we can leave now. I’ll help you both. We’ll tell Preston.”
“Olivia, do you remember that day when we spent all that time in Pets on Lex choosing some goldfish?”
My legs feel weak at the memory of what I had come across that day when I came round to see Lucien, his childish face streaked in tears, “I remember.”
“Well, it was my father, he ran across the room and smashed his foot into the fish tank. I sat there frozen to the spot, stunned. Water lapped at my feet as it gushed from the tank. Fish were flapping about on the carpet. Then you turned up and we both frantically ran around trying to mop up water and save our precious fish.”
“Oh God, but it was too late. Oh Lucien …”
My phone buzzes again in my pocket and I reach straight for it. Lucien stands up.
“I have to answer it Lucien, okay? It’s someone that can help us. I trust him.”
“No, Olivia. We can’t talk to anyone.” He walks towards me, his eyes blazing furiously. “Give me the phone.”
I walk backwards, jarring my back into the kitchen counter but manage to switch the green on button before screaming, “Gabriel, I’m at Lucien Borgia’s. We need help,” before Lucien puts his hand over my mouth and snatches my phone from me and smashes it on the floor.
“What the fuck, Olivia? What have you done?”
“You and your mother need help. That’s what I’ve done.”
“He will kill us all now.” His eyes glaze over as he drifts off again.
“No one is going to kill anyone. Do you hear me?” I scream. “Do you hear me, Lucien Borgia?”
He’s thinking about what I’m saying, his breathing too fast for my liking and his eyes have that black darkness they get when he gets angry, but we both suddenly start coughing.
“Can you smell burn … Oh my God, your mother, Lucien …” We both dive up the stairs as if our lives depend on it. I can see intense flames and choking smoke blocking Francesca’s bathroom door.
Chapter Thirty-nine
Olivia Carter
“I’ll call 911.” I hear the bedroom door slam shut behind me as I look for a telephone, “Lucien, what are you doing? Please, we need to
get out of here.”
Lucien’s eyes look completely dead and his voice is flat as he says, “I’m just making sure that the fire is contained and doesn’t spread across the rest of the apartment. My father won’t be happy.”
“Fuck your father, Lucien. Now let’s try to get your mother and get out of here. Now!”
Lucien jolts into action and heads towards the bathroom, pushing the door open. The sound of the popping and crackling of fire is loud. I start coughing so Lucien tears off his mother’s bedcovers and throws me a sheet. “Put this over your mouth and body, Olivia.”
I nod gratefully, wrapping it around me and wander over to the window, which I had insisted we shut earlier on.
Lucien yells, “Catch, Olivia,” throwing the telephone at me. My fingers miss as I try to call 911.
I yell to the operator, “I can’t breathe!”
“Stay with me,” he keeps repeating.
Tears and smoke block my access to the window as I cry to the 911 operator, “I don’t know what to do!”
The large, blinding orange and yellow glow behind the bathroom door gets larger.
My nose and throat are burning, but I can’t see Lucien.
“Lucien?” I scream, choking. The smoke is so thick, that I can hardly see anything.
The heat is becoming unbearable. It reminds me of when you open an oven.
I think I can hear wailing sirens, but I’ve dropped the phone, so I just keep walking straight ahead hoping to find the window. My head smacks into something; it’s the glass. I feel with one hand to try and open the window, but it won’t budge. I just want to give up. But after everything I’ve been through, there is no way that I am going to die like this. My mind takes over again and I start to talk to myself.
“George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, that’s it, Olivia, keep going. I can do it, I know every U.S. president in chronological order.”
I scrunch up my face, let go of the blanket and feel the window pane with both hands. I push with every ounce of strength I possess.
