Pretty Revenge (ARC)

by Emily Liebert

  As I walked up the stone path, which also looked to be brand-new, I could smell the aroma of something stewing in the oven. Probably something I haven’t eaten in nearly twenty years—like a meaty lasagna or a shepherd’s pie. Unfortunately, my appetite, at least for food, has been tempered by my commitment to preserve a certain appearance. Again, it’s part of the job that’s being me, Mrs. Jordana Pierson.

  I hesitated before the front door, which was lacquered in a rich green gloss and much sturdier than the one I grew up with. I thought about letting myself in, when it occurred to me—I don’t live here anymore. I’m a guest. Or, perhaps, an intruder. I didn’t have the chance to think much further. As I reached for the shiny brass knocker—another new addition—the door swayed open, and there she was. Standing in front of me with moist eyes and a convivial grin that told me I was welcome. Even after all this time.

  “Jordan,” she whispered my name as if it was our secret. In a way it was. Then she took two steps backward, and I took two steps toward her.

  “Mom.” What else was there to say? I looked past her. For him.

  “Your father is in the hospital.” She shook her head. “He’s not coming back. It’s a matter of days, they said.”

  “I see.” My muscles slackened slightly.

  “Come in, come in.” She took my bag and set it down on a bench in the entryway. I followed her into the kitchen, where, as expected, there was a full banquet of delicacies. The sort of things that I grew up eating. When I didn’t know better. There was the expected hearty lasagna. Dinner rolls. Salads. And desserts—freshly baked pies and cookies. A tray of cannoli. It was enough to feed a small army of hungry soldiers. “Help yourself.” She motioned to the assembly of aluminum vats, which seemed to multiply around me.

  “You shouldn’t have. This is way too much.”

  “I didn’t. People have been bringing things by all week.” She bowed her head. “You know, to pay their respects.”

  “He’s not gone yet.”

  My mother winced. “Can I get you something?”

  It was an awkward tango, to say the least. I sat down at the table, and she orbited me like a hawk, calculating my every movement.

  “No.”

  “Not even a little something?” She reached into the cabinet for two plates and piled them high with lettuce.

  “Salad, but only if you’re eating.” It’s instinct to deny myself, though I’m so out of my element that I wonder if calories even count here. I wonder if anything counts here.

  “Okay.” She continued making both plates. “You’re so tiny.” She appraised me, careful not to linger too long. My own mother is afraid of me. I can’t blame her. When you’ve spent the majority of your adult life being startled by the sound of your own heartbeat, what other choice do you have?

  “The house looks better.” While she brewed a pot of tea, I stood up and walked around the first floor, which isn’t much larger than my bedroom in New York. Each room had been updated with more modern furniture. In the living room there was an oversize gray, ultra-suede sectional accented with jewel-toned throw pillows—orange, purple, and turquoise. There was also a glass coffee table where the splintered wooden one of my childhood had been. And a thick sisal rug covered the newly stained floor. Returning to the kitchen, I noticed that the cabinets had been refaced, all of the handles updated too. There was a tiled backsplash to complement the stovetop, and the appliances were ones I’d never seen before.

  “Thank you. It’s been a labor of love.” My mother dressed the table with linens and silverware, and we sat down across from each other with our plates of salad and mugs of tea.

  “I can tell.” I observed her face. Really inspected it for the first time since I’d arrived. She appeared youthful, girlish even. Lighter and smoother. She’d dyed her gray hairs to match her natural chestnut color. Her eyes were wider. Her skin was luminous. “You look great.” I knew the woman across from me, if only faintly from my earliest years. Before he aged her.

  “Things have changed.” She smiled weakly. A genuine smile, not the one she used to put on for my benefit.

  “Oh?” What things? What could have changed? I suppose everything. Why is it that when we leave someplace that we’ve called home, we assume that nothing will be different when we return? That it will have been preserved in time, waiting for us to come back and defrost it.

  “You’ll see tomorrow.” Was that a smirk I saw pass her lips? I’ve never seen my mother smirk. You have to be irreverent to smirk.

  “I’m not staying until tomorrow. I’m here because you threatened me, remember?” The mood darkened once again. Enough of the niceties.

  “But you have to go visit your father in the hospital.”

  “No I don’t. And I won’t.”

  “Jordan.” She reached her hand out.

  “Don’t touch me.” I recoiled. “And that’s not my name anymore. I’m Jordana now.” I pronounced it the way Ethel does. JorDONNA. “I’d prefer if you call me that.”

  “You seem so angry.” She placed her hand back in her lap.

  “You say that like you’re surprised. Wouldn’t you be angry if you were me?”

  She was silent.

  “I’m asking you, Mom. Can you blame me for being furious?”

  “No.” She hesitated. “It’s just that . . .”

  “It’s just that what?” Did she expect me to forgive and forget that easily? Like she always had?

  “It’s been so long. I thought that maybe . . .”

  “You thought that maybe what? That I’d have forgotten what he did to me? What he did to you? And the fact that you let it happen. Or maybe you thought I’d let it slip my mind that you never once came to look for me, that you never once reached out to me until now? For fuck’s sake, Mom, it’s been eighteen years. EIGHTEEN YEARS!” I hurled the accusation at her. “Why now? Tell me. Do you really give a shit if I say good-bye to Dad on his deathbed? Do you really think he deserves that courtesy from me?”

  She was silent again.

  “Answer me! You owe me that.” I slammed my hand on the table, alarming her.

  “Because he asked me to find you.” She looked away.

  “He asked you to find me? That’s really rich.” I shook my head. “So in other words, you didn’t give a crap about finding me. Not until it was important to him. Congratulations! Mother of the year.”

  “Jordan.”

  “Jordana! It’s Jordana!”

  “I don’t think I deserve to be spoken to this way.”

  “Don’t you? Oh really? Well, I don’t think I deserved to be abused as a child. I don’t think I deserved parents who let me run away and never came looking for me. I expected that from him. But you? Obviously you figured out where I was at some point. And you still chose him over me!”

  “Is that what you think?” Her voice was barely audible. I’d bruised her. I didn’t care.

  “It’s the truth!” My tone was fierce. “I was a child, for God’s sake! You were supposed to protect me. He was a monster.”

  “Don’t talk about your father that way, Jordan.”

  “Jordana!” I shrieked. “And I’ll talk about him any way I’d like. I’m an adult. I get to do that. I’m not scared of him anymore.”

  “I’m sorry.” She was sobbing now. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Sometimes sorry isn’t enough.” But even though I was nowhere near ready to excuse her countless faults, I did know, deep down, that the last thing she needed was another person to rebuke her. She’s had quite enough of that. And in the end, I was the one who ran. The one who left her behind without so much as a proper good-bye. What must that have felt like for her? To lose her daughter. To be alone. With him.

  “You’re right. I was just as bad as he was.”

  “That’s not true. You know that. You were his victim, just
like I was. But you made a lot of mistakes. Maybe too many mistakes.” What if I let my resentment fade away and I don’t recognize myself anymore? What if all I can feel is pity?

  “I shouldn’t have threatened you,” she volunteered.

  “No, you shouldn’t have.”

  “For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t have gone to your apartment.” She swabbed the corners of her eyes with a cloth napkin.

  “Honestly, that reassurance isn’t worth much. You got me here against my will.”

  “I know you have a new life now. Very glamorous.” If only she knew.

  “Please don’t be a martyr. I worked hard to get where I am.”

  “No, I’m happy for you. I always wanted that for you. Something better. Something bigger. You were destined for that.” She was still crying, but softly. “I couldn’t give you that here. As much as I hate to say it, you did the right thing by leaving. I just wish—”

  “Please don’t.” I held up my hand. I didn’t want to have to feel remorse.

  “Sorry.” She sniffed one last time, cleared her throat, and then lifted her head. If nothing else, my mother’s learned how to recover. “When I said things changed after you left. I want you to know they changed for the better.”

  “That’s fantastic to hear. So basically, once you got rid of me, life was suddenly one big fucking party?”

  “No, not at all. That’s not what I meant.” She looked me in the eyes. “I was heartbroken when you left. That’s not something a parent just gets over, Jordana. You weren’t the only one in pain.”

  “And again, Mom. I was a child. You were an adult. Don’t serve me that bullshit.”

  “I don’t want to fight with you.”

  “Fine, then just tell me what you want. I’m here now. What do you want from me? Money? I can write you a check and be on my way.”

  “No!” I’d insulted her. “I don’t want a dime from you.”

  “Then what?”

  “Please just stay the night.”

  “Are you joking?”

  “No, I’m not. I’m asking you. I know you don’t owe me anything.”

  “That’s for sure.”

  “But I am still your mother. So, please,” she implored. “Even if you never do another thing for me again. And even if you don’t want to see your father. It’s been so long. And your room is ready for you.”

  “I don’t think so. I didn’t pack any clothing.”

  “You can borrow something of mine.”

  “You know your stuff will be way too big on me. And anyway, I’m extremely busy at work.” I had plenty of excuses.

  “Please, Jordana. If you do this for me, I’ll never ask you for another favor. You’ll never hear from me again.” She was desperate.

  “Let me call my husband and my office. I’ll see what I can do.” I held a stern face. “But I am not going to see Dad. And that is not negotiable. I hope you can respect that.”

  “I promise it’ll be worth it if you change your mind.”

  “He’s already dead to me.”

  She cringed. “I understand,” she said, even if she didn’t. “And thank you.”

  26KERRIE

  I consulted the calendar to make sure I was right. There are less than three weeks left until the Doonan-Blum wedding.

  Ilana, the bridal assistant at the Oscar de la Renta atelier, has left four messages on our answering machine attempting to confirm that Tatiana’s two gowns are to be delivered to our office. In the last one, she said it was her final day on the job and that her colleague Melissa will be our point person moving forward. The thing is, Tatiana has three gowns, which presented me with an easy opportunity to carefully delete each message. By the time Jordana figures it out, Ilana will be long gone. And my hands will remain completely clean.

  Now that I’ve disclosed my real identity to Sara and we share the common purpose of destroying Jordana and Arthur, it’s pretty much all I’ve been able to think about. I reached into my purse for my wallet and pulled out a passport-size black-and-white photo of my nana. I keep it tucked into the compartment behind my cash, so I can look at it every so often, specifically in these moments when I’m doubting myself. I sat there for a few minutes just staring at her placid smile, the way her eyes glinted. It may have been the flash of the camera, but I prefer to believe it was her inner spirit shining through, as it always did.

  I thought about how, when I was younger, I yearned for something to segregate me from the people who said things like, “My mom is my best friend.” Or, “I’m such a Daddy’s girl.” The people to whom these things were givens. And these givens were irrefutable, because their memories were functioning archives of their shared pasts spiraling through the present and into the future like a spool of cotton candy. Sweet, airy, light. Easy. I’ve never be any of those things.

  Sure, every now and then a flicker of a memory will ignite—a flimsy white blouse or a shock of brittle black hair—but I’ve come to realize that these flashes are merely recollections of old photographs or stories I was told by Nana. Even though, technically, I was an orphan, and we barely had the means to make ends meet, I always had a roof over my head.

  Still, it wasn’t like Daddy Warbucks was mowing the lawn.

  It was Nana—and Nana only—who stepped in to reprise the roles of mother and father until her final curtain call. When they found her, with her arms folded across her chest, as the world disintegrated around her.

  I was twelve years old. Lost and alone.

  And it was all Jordana’s fault.

  I propped the photo on my computer keyboard and sat back in my chair, allowing the memories of that fateful night—when the sky was dim and the streets were clammy—to flood my brain. As I walked by her house, I had a direct view into the well-lit living room. They rarely kept their curtains drawn, odd considering all that they had to hide. Maybe her mother thought that if someone saw what was going on they’d report it to the authorities.

  Everything happened in a heartbeat. Her mother and father were fighting. Gillian—I know her name now—looked like a modern-day June Cleaver in her yellow dress with pale blue flowers and a white apron tied around her waist. Jordana’s dad was wearing a thick green army jacket and grasping a rifle in his left hand. The kind of rifle you use for hunting. It looked like he’d just arrived home. He was red in the face, his finger erect, nearly pressed against Gillian’s forehead. I couldn’t hear what he was saying or make out the movements of his mouth, but—whatever it was—she was cowering.

  That was when Jordana entered the room. She tried to insert herself in between them. To pacify her father, as best I could tell. But without warning, he pulled his free hand back and whipped his palm across her face in one fluid motion. She cradled her cheek and bowed her head. I couldn’t see if she was crying, but I wanted to cry for her.

  What happened next was perhaps the most jarring. Jordana stood straight up to find her father’s gun pointed at both of them. I braced myself for the shot. Held my body stiff, like I could already sense the reverberations in my skull. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. I just closed my eyes and waited. But nothing came. No shot. I opened my eyes again and, when I did, I saw Jordana lift up a chair and lunge at her father with every morsel of strength she had. She thrust all one hundred-something pounds of herself at him, until he tumbled to the ground and out of my sight. That was when she saw me. Standing frozen outside the window.

  Our gazes fixed on each other’s, and I nodded. It’s going to be okay, I communicated, without actually saying it. You’ll be safe me. Believe me. I smiled and waved her toward me. And to my surprise, she did just that. She trusted me. Much in the same way she does now.

  Jordana rushed out her front door and trailed me back to my house and—as I’d prayed she would—waited halfway down the block until my nana left for her night shift. That was when she knocked, a
nd I invited her in.

  “Are you hungry?” I asked. “Do you want a sweatshirt?” She was shocked and shivering. I didn’t mention what I’d seen. She didn’t either.

  “Yes. Thank you.” I couldn’t take my eyes off her, this cool older girl who was in such dire straits, but I did, for just long enough to make her a grilled cheese sandwich and heat up a bowl of tomato soup. I stared at her while she ate, like she was some kind of otherworldly being. I couldn’t figure out what made her so impeccable. She had that something. Either you have it or you don’t. I don’t. I never have.

  “Are you okay?” I watched as she nibbled on the crust and spooned the soup into her perfect pink mouth. I noticed the constellation of freckles that trailed across her cheekbones and over the bridge of her nose.

  “I will be.”

  “Do you have someplace to stay tonight?”

  “Not really.” She shrugged. I’m ashamed to admit I was hoping she would say that. I wanted so badly to be an important character in her story. Someone she’d never forget.

  “You can stay here.”

  “Really?” She coiled a section of her long red hair around her index finger and gnawed on her bottom lip.

  “Sure.”

  “What about your parents?”

  “I don’t have parents. It’s just me and Nana. And she won’t be home until tomorrow morning. You can sleep in her bed as long as you make it up before you leave.”

  “That’s really nice of you. You don’t even know me.”

  “We’re neighbors.” I smiled. I couldn’t tell her that I did know her. Or at least it felt like I did. “It’s not like you’re a complete stranger.”

  “That’s true.” She smiled back. If she was wondering why I was so eager to please her, she never said as much. “That’s pretty.” She pointed to my necklace.