by JR King
I pulled myself together. “Sophia.”
The waiter turned up, his smile a little wistfully. “The usual, ma’am?”
Her smile slowly slid off her face. I thought I detected a hint of gentleness in her gaze, but almost immediately she masked the overt emotion. “Please.” She flicked some loose strands from her shoulders.
Her haughtiness almost made me laugh out loud, but I clamped down on it. On the other hand, the smirk I tried hard to shift just wouldn’t budge.
Sophia looked back over her shoulder as she leaned conspiratorially toward me. “You have her, don’t you?” Her voice wobbled with marvel.
“I do.” As far as the kidnapping goes, after the suspension of disbelief remorse had manifested itself. I fully recognized the wrongfulness—the unethicalness—of my proclivities, that’s why I felt guilty, and that’s why I drank. Having a priest on speed dial was useful; I’d made an appointment.
The waiter returned to the table with a bottle of Cristal. He was in his mid-forties with light brown hair, neatly adjusted in a cropped haircut, and brown eyes. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he was obsessively smiling at my aunt as he poured one out.
He missed a beat while pouring and now expensive foam dribbled down the side of the flute. “My apologies.”
“It’s perfect, Hector. No steaks, signature risottos and bites.”
That was Sophia. Arrogance aside, she knew the names of her favorite waiters and sent them Christmas hampers.
“Cheers, Sophia.” Given Elena’s condition, the clink of our glasses meeting sounded happier than it ought to.
To forestall the inevitable, we sampled savory petit fours. I pulled deeply on my whiskey and she sipped elegantly at her champagne. Her dark hair glowed in the daylight, and she seemed to be giving off a warmth that cradled me. Mom’s perfect clone. We made a few more jokes and engaged in domestic chitchat, the sound full of genuine nervousness on both sides of the table. She nibbled at her food and I took savage bites.
Sophia looked as uncomfortable as I felt. Part of me wanted her to transform into my mother. Part of me wanted it to not. Her proximity was similar to a pleasant self-affliction, like poking a bruise or running a thumb over a cut just to make sure it still hurt.
Not being able to fake laughter endlessly, I stopped and sat back. “She didn’t do it.” Putting my fist on the right side of my chin, I cracked my neck.
“Lies. She’s trying to seduce you. She must pay for Simone!”
I allowed myself to think before answering, so I chewed on a tomato tartlet and finished my drink. The sweetish alcohol felt like warm syrup snaking down my throat, vitalizing my body as it went down. I put my glass down on the coaster and slid it a few inches to my left, silently indicating I wanted another one. I looked at Sophia as earnestly as I could. “Her father told her what to say, she uttered words she couldn’t even comprehend.”
Sophia reached for a feuilleté de foie gras and I picked up the caramelized version of the delicacy on pain d’épices, never taking my eyes off her.
“She needs to suffer. Repent for the sins of her father. That about covers it.”
“Let’s get down to brass tacks.” I gave Sophia what I hoped was an obliging, expectant look. “I don’t give a fuck about the baseless construct of revenge anymore.”
“Don’t do this.” The somberness in her voice didn’t intimidate me. “Don’t think with your dick.”
My eyebrows rose of their own volition. “Were I thinking with my dick, I’d be doing her instead of lunching with you.”
Her eyes closed resignedly, and she swallowed with much difficulty.
“I don’t have an axe to grind. Mom shouldn’t have washed down the goddamn pills with a bottle of brandy, Sophia! An overdose is what killed her, not Elena.”
Jesus, I’d said the frigging words.
It looked as if Sophia would spring up from her chair at any moment, and it was impossible to say how I would react if she did.
Want to hear the story?
That—horrendous—evening, my mother took more than three times the lethal dose of Seconal, a barbiturate, a prescriptive medicament she was given to treat her insomnia. By the time I found her and called the paramedics, it was too late. By then it felt like I was bleeding internally. I couldn’t remember where dad had gone, once again abrogating his husbandly duties. It was as if a foreign country had declared war on our estate. Black helicopters circled the sky. Explorer SUVs and Taurus sedans swamped the driveway, the din reaching a near-deafening level. Everyone was shouting over each other and barking orders, sirens were blaring, helicopters were hovering. My brain couldn’t process the flurry of activity fast enough. Lost in a sea of white light, I started drinking and smoking weed and drinking. When the coroner arrived and zipped the body bag, I mentally broke down and started smashing things. Where was my mother? In a better place? Was she safe? At twenty-one, I certainly didn’t have the answer to any of it.
Family came over, neighbors and friends were there already—Jillian had powered through and remained proficient. In my state of panic I fought everyone, even my grandparents. I pushed and slapped and yelled at everything in my path. I shouldn’t have left her alone. I wanted nothing more than to put an end to my pain. However intoxicated, I had enough discipline left to kill myself. I divined my brain would splatter nicely on the walls, so I went to dad’s gun vault. As I punched in the code, I went down like a brick wall.
Tony was the one who’d injected me. Dad kept me sedated for hours, and when I woke, I cried. Not in that pretty way where a few tears roll down the cheek and you wipe them, but in the wailing, hiccupping, snotty way that little girls cry when someone spills something nasty on one of their perfectly groomed dolls. I cried until I had no tears left. Dry sobs decreased and I felt numb. Without mom, my reality had shrunk into nothingness. During days I sat in the house, feeling numb, crossing over into depression. Steven, a stoner of a childhood friend, brought me some snow and I was hooked. Just as I started fucking feeling again, Tony and Aidan broke the news that my father’s yacht had disappeared off the face of the earth.
Day and night, radio and TV broadcasts preached about my misfortune. I watched people deposit flowers in a cordoned off section of my dead parents’ estate. The second funeral did me in. A typical Catholic affair for show, I knew all the major acts by heart. I was instructed to give yet another eulogy at the funeral Mass. Throughout the ten-day requiem, I sat in the front, staring and nodding my way through the posturing. Cameras kept rolling. Family I’d never known existed came to offer me condolences, telling me stories of my father helping them. They told me just how much I looked and acted like him, gave me their particulars and said prayers for me.
I felt nothing and hated everyone, Tony and Aidan included. To keep going, I created within myself a vast place where I could hide memories, box them up for good. Because it was plain horror, because I couldn’t imagine being without my father as much as being without my mother, I took to cocaine for good. Sharpened reality came back into focus. Suddenly I could summon parental memories and feel nothing, like watching a movie over and over again, which prompted me to abuse the drugs. But every time I came down from the high, my grief was amplified. If it weren’t for Tony and Aidan, I would have either overdosed or painted the walls with brain matter within days. What followed wasn’t easy; I got sick of my own friends and too much family swarmed around the house because Tony mentioned I had sadness issues. All I wanted was to retreat down an endless tunnel and have it close in on me. However, it was this endless stream of support that kept me out of the mental gutter, and, sadism became a welcome outlet. Surprisingly, no one bugged me about therapy. For fear of erupting scandals, Sophia lived with me until I retreated back into the sane place where I found hope at the end of the tunnel and saw a new future.
“Alexander. Look at me!” Sophia was leaning over the table, the force of her words spraying saliva over my face. “Give me.” She reached across the whit
e expanse of the table, taking my wrist in her hand. She tapped a few times on my upturned, damp fist, and it unfurled, revealing a creamily pale palm. It was much larger than hers, with shallow, smooth grooves, its lines uninterrupted and diverging crossways into an unswerving W. “Alex?”
Told you I couldn’t talk about my mother without losing it.
I shook my head to rid myself of the riot in my brain. “I’m…fine, Sophia.” I squeezed my hand out of her grasp.
I plastered on a fake smile as a waiter put the main dish before me. My eyes located the dispenser of truffle oil on the table. I took a deep, reverent breath of my wild mushroom risotto before drizzling some onto it. At once I could smell a citrusy earthiness when I inhaled the unmistakable blend of olive and black truffle.
Tucking into my food, there was only a swish of passing customers and waiting staff around me. Despite the soul warming food, the uneasiness was there all the same.
In between bites, Sophia spoke. “You okay, Alex?”
“I am, Sophia.” Since I didn’t bother swallowing all the way through, my words came out cluttered and mushy, like the grains of rice on my plate.
“Elena won’t be able.” Before she continued, I saw her swallow. Saw her hands convulsing against the edge of the dressed up tabletop as she leaned forward. “She won’t be able to complete you.”
Munching a mouthful of rice, I prodded the starch on my plate with my fork, took a sip of sparkling water and swallowed too fast. “No one person can fill the emptiness in another completely, but love has a way of filling in the gaps.”
“Love? Elena isn’t capable of loving anyone else but Frank and you aren’t capable of loving anyone else but your mother. A good old mamma’s boy.”
I sat back from her. “All you’ve done so far is zealously dredge up useless facts.”
I caught a glimpse of something terrifyingly raw in her look. Her voice, louder now, was full of resentment and blame. “You’re tangentially related to her. Would you still want her if she were your stepsister?”
“Rather ask me if I give a shit.”
“One big happy family.” She held my eyes with hers, her expression almost painful to behold.
“We’re not related by blood. What’s your problem?” I took two more bites and then set my fork down. Instead of answering, Sophia scooped up a heaped forkful of the creamy rice onto the silver utensil and stared at it before lifting it to her mouth. Trying to read her face, I shrugged. “Your marriage is a farcical fallacy at best. Just because you’re unhappy doesn’t mean I can’t find happiness.” I tried to hide the joy in my voice, but it still made her wince.
“Are you in love with her?” Her eyes widened in shock, and she slumped back in her chair. Finally, she noticed the sanity in the midst of the madness in my eyes.
There was nothing left to say, I concluded, scarfing down the last bits of my dish. I’d said it all already—verbatim.
The waiters came back and without more ado I tried on my most carefree face. Sophia remained reticent, waved off dessert and coffee. She wasn’t ordinarily so sensitive. Lower lip quivering like a little girl who was about to go into her first crying fit.
“Give her a chance, Sophia. If you care about me at all, you will.”
Her expression brightened. “I don’t care about you, champ.”
I couldn’t hold on, the smirk on my face broke and I chuckled full-heartedly.
“I love you.” When I glanced up at her, her forehead was creased into such a deep frown that she looked like an old woman, tired and broken. “You’ve isolated her?”
“I’m isolating her for a month. That’s enough punishment.” Obviously, the specter of guilt haunted me, but still. In my world, one month of isolation was hardly payback. But more so, I was doing it out of love.
“A month at Turner Estates?” The incredulity in her voice made my eyes snap up to hers, if only to reveal the fire in my glare. “Priciest, classiest, coolest vacation ever. She really has no clue.”
“She’s a simple girl. I like that about her. Do you know she wore a cheap-ass dress when I saw her the first time? Hemp sandals, no jewelry, not even a nerdy-girl hair bobble or barrette. She was happy. Eating ice cream.”
“Sounds dull.” She got up. “Make a clean breast of it after the month. You wouldn’t want to look like a fool.” Sophia’s entire demeanor had changed. I couldn’t read her anymore. I couldn’t even if I tried. The bitterness had gone out of her voice, leaving it almost gentle.
“You’ll tell on me?” A laughable question.
She stood with spare grace, her presence ever imposing, her gaze cool and controlling. “I didn’t just marry Conrad’s brother for my own version of the Brady Bunch. If I tell Philippe and Cecilia who Elena is, you’re done. This obsession you have is like love in a jar. You live in a world where the only thing that matters is Elena, everyone and everything else exists on a lower plane, including your goddamn family. Elena is siphoning off your sanity, take her down the pedestal.”
Feeling enwrapped in all-consuming rage, I stayed tight-lipped.
“I see you’ve made your choice.”
The response I gave her before she left was a short, indignant, derisive sniff. I wasn’t enraged because she wanted to tell on me, I was enraged because she was trying to control me. Between you and me, I’d told grandma everything on Christmas Eve.
I drove to the gray limestone cathedral near South End. The imposing structure held a special place inside my heart. My mother used to bring me here, not always to pray but just to marvel at the grandeur and the tranquility found within its confines. Religious or not, the Cathedral of the Holy Cross felt like a place of redemption.
Rich or poor, we’re all equals in the house of God, aren’t we, mom?
Yes, sweetheart, but being rich is what we want to be out there, don’t you agree?
Hey, I can be two-faced when I want, and we’ve already established that I had numerous sins to atone for. Sitting alone on the first row of pews, I clasped my hands in that reverential fashion, noiselessly practicing my, “Forgive me Father for I have sinned,” speech. Deep in my heart, in a place I didn’t like to visit or acknowledge its existence, a voice spoke up. It wouldn’t call me a liar or a hypocrite, it just told me that because I was Conrad Turner’s son and therefore flawed, I would sin again and again.
The bench beneath me creaked, the air thickening as I closed my eyes and remembered the past. Remembered it like it was yesterday.
*
My eyes lifted and beyond the crush of snobby afternoon walkers, I saw Elena Anderson. I watched her from across the street, all excited and untouchable as she went inside a famous ice cream parlor on Newbury Street. For the first time in my life, I was nervous. I was awkward, and hell, I was a man and she was a child. I waited for her to come out. Waited for the right moment to confront her, make her cry, make her feel sorry and end herself—whatever. It’s what she deserved for obscuring the light of an angel.
I moved, picked a path along the curbside and went closer to the shop. Ducked behind pedestrians and feigned answering a call. On the outside terrace, a young couple huddled together on a bench, and two girls giggled and twirled around. Sara’s voice was irritable, but Elena’s laugh was…its polar opposite. Burning a pattern in my mind until I shivered with intensity. Where Sara’s lilt was higher and carefree, a package of wealth and entitlement, Elena’s was sensible and without airs.
She was beautiful. She was mesmerizing. Her father being blue-eyed and half-Portuguese, she had golden-fair skin, thick blackish hair, her eyes a brilliant shade of shock blue that gleamed like a Hilton Head marina whenever she laughed. Startling against her fair skin and the jet-black of her hair. Even the guy bussing the tables checked her out. Completing her turn, she presented me with a view of her face, forcing me to suck in my breath. Her bone structure was small and delicately rendered. High, prominent cheekbones, precisely as if she were underweight, a small but strong chin, and up close her eyes l
ooked enormous in the otherwise small face. She smiled a real, guileless smile, not one of those twitches that looked like she was about to smile or that she was fighting it, but a full-on, teeth-flashing smile. Million-dollar smile, teeth perfectly straight and ultrawhite. I watched her hair bounce, admired her unflatteringly flared skirt, hated her cheap flip-flop sandals. Cute little feet like hers should have—at least—been wrapped in Uggs. My mind started tracing a Venn diagram. I wondered what mom would say were she still alive. What were the odds of her scolding me? I wondered what Elena would sound like when she grew up. Wondered how she’d sound if I were buried balls deep inside her, making her pay for her sins. Pay for her sins; that was it. She needed to grow old with me so I could savor the sapidness of her apologies day in day out.
Am I that horrible, you wonder? I think the answer is yes. Stop rolling your eyes and keep your political correctness and moral activism to yourself. For some strange reason, she brought out the sadist in me, making me forget whatever shreds of moral correctness I possessed. I knew it was wrong to desire a grotesquely, disastrously young girl, but my want to make her a Turner—as my father had promised her mother—outweighed everything else, rationality included.
I’d made peace with the fact that I’d never know what she told my mother. I was dying to know what my mother’s last words were, but sadly, I couldn’t risk losing Elena. Days later, I was sitting in my apartment and just wondered why I even existed. What was the fucking point of living inside a broken, flawed bag of flesh and bones? I saw myself as an inconvenience to everyone in my world, especially a little girl, so leaving made sense. A successful suicide was the perfect out, and it was the right thing to do to save my family and friends from having to deal with who or what I really was, rather than that which I projected for society’s sake.
Dad came back from the dead, then. He taught me how to control the sadist in me.
*
