Innocent Monsters (14 page)

“Sunday’s fine.”

“Good. Sunday, at the Phoenix on Broadway, downtown. You know where it is?”

“I’ll find it. Phoenix.” She scribbled the name on a piece of paper by the phone. “Eight thirty.”

“See you then. I’ve got to go now.”

He had already put the phone down. Shit.

She folded the piece of paper, stuffed it in the back pocket of her jeans and closed her eyes, rested her forehead against the wall in front of her trying to breathe.

Sunday. Phoenix. Eight thirty.

She could clearly picture herself sitting somewhere with Roger, his black eyes staring into hers as she told him she had been living off the advance for a book that didn’t exist, as she told him she didn’t have a story, she couldn’t bring herself to write anymore, she couldn’t think about words, phrases, about a plot. He was right, she couldn’t do it, the urge to write down her feelings had disappeared.
Everything has disappeared, nothing seems important anymore
. Nothing, except William.

She opened her eyes, turned her back to the wall and looked at her reflection on the mirror opposite her, someone who looked like her but wasn’t her exactly, only a reproduction, a cold, shallow, deformed reproduction. Empty.

Could she write about emptiness? About the empty face she had been watching reflected on her computer screen for days now? About this someone who had stolen her thoughts, taken her place since the day of the funeral? Could she write about how Kaitlyn’s death had become the perfect excuse to stop writing, to stop doing the only thing she was any good at and keep feeling sorry for herself? Could she write about that? Could she write about anything? Anything at all?

The reflection on the mirror looked back at her silent, it moved as Jessica passed a hand through her hair and pulled. It rippled, waved. It was ugly, monstrous.

Then a fleeting, strange thought passed through her mind: if she died, the whole problem would go away. She wouldn’t need to come up with a new novel, she wouldn’t need to meet Roger on Sunday or any other day. Never again. He would not make her feel incompetent, force her to face up to her responsibilities. Sure, William would miss her, but she wouldn’t be here to know how much. Was a writer’s block a good reason to die? Could it be an excuse? Was this how the though of death started seeping through people’s normal, everyday thoughts?

Could she write about death?

COMPLETELY NAKED on her bathroom floor, Jessica was surrounded by white tiles.

William kissed her and touched her. He made her feel alive. Him only.

She lay down and turned her head, watched herself in the mirror opposite the bathtub where they had just been bathing together, her wet hair almost black against the immaculate floor. She looked at her own stomach, William’s tongue slithering from her navel to her breasts around her nipples. She watched his hand guiding her thighs open, his fingers stroking her pubic hair.

“I never thought it could feel like this,” he whispered. “It’s never felt like this before.”

Jessica closed her eyes and widened her legs, letting his fingers move deeper and deeper inside her, faster, faster and faster as she found herself imagining someone behind the mirror watching, watching him do this to her. Then his tongue replaced his fingers and for a while there was someone, she was sure, maybe fat, maybe ugly, maybe handsome, much more so than William. Maybe she was just losing her mind, but she wanted to share this with him, she wanted him to see someone spying on them the way she could. She opened her mouth to speak but none of the words she meant to utter came out, only a cry of pleasure as she tightened her legs around his shoulders to lock him where he was while the rest of her trembled. She waited for him to touch her again, everywhere, while her heart still raced inside her chest. Then he asked her to turn around and she did, she watched him in the mirror kneeling behind her, hugging her waist to lift her up, so that she was on her knees and forearms, buttocks in the air. He held onto her hips and entered her from behind, pushing hard into her, faster and faster, deeper and deeper. Jessica buried her face in her hands.

Could he see? Could he see anyone?

“Talk to me...”

All she heard from him was a gasp and a moan as he started to slow down. She let herself go on the floor and he lay on top of her, his arms around her arms, warm sweat between their bodies. His weight on her back made it hard to breathe, but she wanted him close and they stood in the same position for a long time, until William moved away sitting against the bathtub and dragged her close to him. She was like a doll in his hands, a beautiful doll he could mould.

“You’re beautiful,” he told her.

Jessica smiled at his reflection on the mirror in front of them. He stroked her nose with a fingertip, held an arm around her neck and she looked at herself again, the way she had done only a few hours earlier. How could she look so different? How could she look so normal now when all she had been able to see earlier was an ugly monster? How could he make her feel so beautiful? How could she forget about the void, about the emptiness? How could sadness live in the same body with this kind of happiness? Or was it merely contentment?

“What do you feel?” she asked him. “Are you happy?”

“I am not always happy. But I am happy with you.” He brushed the hair away from her face. “Is it what you wanted to hear?”

“I wanted to hear what you feel.”

“It is what I feel. I am not always happy but I am happy with you. I forget myself. If I don’t remember, I feel happy... What do you feel?”

“I can’t feel anymore. But I feel with you.”

Sadness and happiness in the same body at the same time. What kind of happiness was this ever going to be? Could they be happy about being unhappy together?

He snuggled his head between her shoulder and her neck and she caressed his cheek, his shoulder, his legs, traced a little scar on the inside of his knee with a finger, then a larger one on his left inner thigh and soon she noticed areas of both his legs covered with little white lines, some thicker and longer than others.

“What happened to your legs?”

“Accidents. I’m never really careful when I’m in a bad mood.” He tried to laugh but she didn’t understand what he meant and she didn’t laugh with him.

William could still clearly see himself in his bedroom a couple a months earlier cutting a slice of his leg out with a razor blade, and before that, four months ago, six months, a year ago, two, three, more cuts, more pain, as early as ten years ago. It was funny how after he had done it he could never recall the pain, only the anger running out of his body with the blood. Harming himself was a way to calm down, a way to release the pressure inside him; it was his way of shifting his sorrow, turn it into something he could handle. Misery and rage were feelings he couldn’t handle because they didn’t come from any part of his body, they weren’t curable, they weren’t touchable. His pain was nowhere and it was everywhere. It drove him insane, it made him suffer more than any cut on his body.

“Why don’t we go to my place tonight? I’ve got some work to do at some point, but... You can keep me company if you want. We can get something in to eat first, maybe watch a movie?”

“I’d love to.”

The room darkened. It was raining again outside.

WHEN THEY went out that evening the first stars were already out; the sky had cleared but the air was still cool.

They took a taxi and stopped at Jones Street, by the entrance to Macondray Lane. They walked under wooden trellis, on a cobblestone path lined with Edwardian cottages and trees. A flight of wooden steps lead them through vast private gardens and Jessica made a mental note of coming back in the day time to admire the flowers that were now giving off exotic scents. Through the foliage, somewhere in the dark, she could hear a swing moving back and forth, its chains squeaking.

William’s house was a few yards away, one of a few that stretched for a block, very distant from each other, a deserted road extended between their fronts and a hillside draped with ivy. Peach trees and dark green bushes adorned his front yard.

“This place is wonderful,” she told him. “It’s so peaceful.”

“I told you I like peace and quiet.”

William opened the door and turned the lights on as they walked in, a wall lamp for each of the four white walls of the wide entry hall, completely empty apart from a stone staircase leading to the upper floor and a cactus standing tall in a corner with spiky skinny branches raised up to the ceiling. He led her through an arch opening onto the wall opposite them and switched the light on.

“I’m going to wear something a bit more comfortable. Make yourself at home, I won’t be a minute.”

Jessica stood alone on the curved doorway to the sitting room, this also completely white and really quite bare apart from a plain cream sofa, a couple of armchairs arranged around an oak coffee table matching the wooden floors, a wide screen TV and a large bookshelf. His ivory piano stood in front of four sliding glass doors opening onto complete darkness, probably a terrace. Next to them another narrow arch.
Arches, arches, more arches.

Jessica took a step forward inside the room: a massive marble crucifix rested against the corner of the room on her left, an immaculate suffering Jesus hung from it, his blank eyes staring at nothing. It was so tall Jessica’s head only reached his ribs. It was amazing, tall, magnificent and weird. She stretched her hand and started tracing his nose, his lips, the curls of his white hair, the hollows of his white cheeks, then William walked in wearing a pair of shorts and a t-shirt, a packet of cigarettes in his hand.

“Jessica meet Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ meet Jessica. Can I get you anything to drink?”

“No, thanks.”

Her hand was still on the cross when he sat himself on the sofa. He took a cigarette from the packet and lit it looking at her sideways.

“I wouldn’t get too close if I were you, it’s in a precarious position for now. I still have to figure out a way to fix it to the wall, it’s a lot heavier than I thought it would be.” Jessica turned to look at him bemused, quizzing him with her stare. “I told you, I’m not into religion, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“You don’t believe in God?”

“Nope.”

“You’d have to agree, most people would think this is quite a monument for someone who doesn’t believe in God.

“I bought it because I like the way it looks. It’s not a
monument
, it’s a joke. I thought it’d be funny for someone like me to keep a cross that big in the sitting room.”

“Someone like me?” Jessica walked to him, sat between his legs on the sofa so she could lay with her back on his chest, her legs outstretched. “What’s
someone like me
supposed to mean?”

“Someone who doesn’t believe in anything, like me. A cross is supposed to be a symbol, it’s supposed to mean something and it doesn’t mean anything to me. I find that funny.” He smoked, thought for a second, suddenly afraid he had offended her. “...You don’t believe in all that God stuff, do you?”

“Maybe not God, no. I suppose it’s just become difficult to accept that this is it, that there’s absolutely nothing at all after death. I’m not sure that loosely believing in afterlife necessarily means believing in God.”

“I tell you what I believe. Afterlife doesn’t exist. God doesn’t exist. Any of them, from any religion. It’s all bullshit. How many genocides and crimes have been initiated through history in God’s name? How many supposedly God-fearing-men commit all kinds of cruelty day in and day out? Against men, against women, their own family, innocents, children... Would these monsters really exist if there was a God? Don’t even get me started an all the rest... Disabilities, diseases, hunger, poverty, natural disasters? What kind of a God would this have to be?”

Jessica turned to face him moving between his legs. “Come down. I’m with you on this. I told you, I’m not religious.”

But his eyes were lost in something she couldn’t see and she held his head between her hands, caressed his face.

“I wanted to believe when I was a kid,” he murmured. “For a while I forced myself to believe because I wanted someone to help me and I didn’t know anyone who could. So I prayed, I forced myself to believe and I prayed.”

“Help you do what?”

“I prayed God to take my father away.”

“So did I. And then he left.”

William said noting. There were many words he could have added, many unpleasant thoughts were crowding his mind but they were all born out of the resentment he felt, not towards Jessica directly, but towards the fact that she had managed to escape her father’s misery a lot sooner than he had.

“I hated him... I wanted him to disappear forever,” she said after a long pause, her head on his chest, looking away from him. “And, I know it’s strange, but I think I loved him at the same time. Sometimes I think I only wanted his affections because I was nothing to him. People always long for what they can’t have the most, don’t they? He didn’t care about any of us. Drinking was pretty much the only thing my father put any effort in. And beating the shit out of us, he used to do that pretty well, I’ll give him that.”

“Your mother?”

“Me, my mother, my sister... Whoever was in the way. Mother more, because she used to be around him more.” Always trying to talk to him, always trying to talk sense into him. She would never give up, stupid woman. “I have very few memories of her without a bruise somewhere on her body... I grew up thinking it was normal, and when I was old enough to understand it’s wasn’t, I had to accept it was her normality. Doesn’t make for confident human beings growing up with a role model who gets treated like a door mat everyday and protests very little. It took her a long time to remember what normal should have really been.”

Jessica was thirteen the day she came back from school to find an ambulance in front of her house. Stuart Lynch had been abusing his family for seventeen years then, without anybody ever taking any notice of what he was doing. Everybody knew and nobody ever spoke. Neighbours would buy him drinks at the local bar when he could already barely speak and then turn up the volume of the TV at night when all they could hear was a woman and children cry or scream.

Then one day she found the ambulance parked in front of her house.

Jessica laughed bitterly. “Ever noticed how some people remember to fight for their life when they’re about to lose the only life they’ve got? My father almost killed her that time. She was in hospital for more than a month. If the police never went to see her while she was in there, I’m still not sure she would have pressed charges against him. He went to jail for eight months and we never saw him again. He disappeared.”

“You were lucky,” he said, and in his voice she heard bitterness and didn’t like it.

“Aren’t you? You’re here now, that’s all that should matter.”