Читать книгу The Murderer's Maid - Erika Mailman - Страница 19
ОглавлениеJULY 12, 2016
Back at the apartment, Brooke logs on to check in with Miguel.
Went on a date. Got a little freaked out and told him I had a headache so I could leave.
I get it, he typed back. It spoke volumes. She and Miguel seemed incapable of romance. Their childhoods had screwed them up, stolen from them the possibility of healthy conversation with another, the easy-going flirtations she saw going on at a hundred tables in a hundred cafés, theaters, clubs, restaurants. She couldn’t pull it off.
I robbed myself of a night of passion. He was cute, too.
Should’ve rolled the dice, chica. If nothing else, you blow off steam.
Like you do?
Now and then.
It would’ve been good to spend the night with Anthony. But he seemed too interested in her. When she stuck around long enough for men to start asking questions, then it was all over: “A group home? Were your parents abusing drugs? Abusing you? You don’t know who your dad is?”
Occasionally she would find someone as messed up as she was, but she would always get scared. Their stories upset her, plunged her into despair that their joined life could never be normal. Her longest relationship had been ten months, with a man whose wrists bore scars. It had taken her a long time to ask about those, knowing how much she hated fielding questions herself. She assumed they were the marks of a long-ago suicide attempt. Instead, she learned his stepmother had held him down while his father used the knife on him to make it appear like a suicide.
He’d spent weeks in the hospital fighting for his life, and as his sobs choked through her apartment (six moves ago), she wasn’t sure he was glad he’d survived. She was willing to keep the relationship going, but it seemed he resented having told her. He picked fights, stood her up a few times, forced her to conclude it wouldn’t work. Like him, she had become very good at engineering the ends of relationships so that it appeared to be the other person’s idea.
What would’ve happened if you’d gone home with him?
Miguel knows she can’t invite a man to her home (the wrist-knifed man having been the exception, due to his longevity). Anthony’s place, an attorney’s home: what would it have been like? As lavish as the Carrs’ lakeside home?
Well, duh, Miguel. What do you think would’ve happened?
Crap. You saw through my attempt to picture you in action.
You dog.
She sees the ellipsis appear that indicates he’s typing. Then it disappears. He’s deleted whatever he’d written.
What? she prods.
The ellipsis appears . . . and disappears.
We should try harder. Both of us, he types.
For a second, she thinks he means “try to be a couple,” but then realizes he means both of them with other people.
Why?
What do you mean, “why”?! To have a shot at a happy life.
Are you seeing someone?
It’s as if she can hear him inhale through the computer.
I started seeing someone.
Like, more than just sex?
Yeah.
She can almost hear the huskiness of his voice, remembered from those long-ago porch confessions.
That’s great.
It’s really new. Just giving it a shot this time instead of assuming I can’t do it.
That’s great. So great.
It’s weird; it’s like everyone else in the world can do it. I might be damaged goods but whatever. I want to try.
If you get married, I want to be your best woman.
Shut up! Jesus. I shouldn’t have told you.
Miguel, no no no no. I wasn’t kidding.
You’re jinxing it by being so . . . you know what I mean. I can’t even think that far ahead.
What’s her name?
Big pause.
I don’t want to jinx it.
Her mouse moves in rage to the top of the page where she X’s out of Facebook.
She can’t believe him. He thinks telling her . . . her! some other woman’s name is going to ruin things. Like he’s afraid she’ll perform some jealous voodoo.
She goes to the kitchen to pour a glass of water from the tap. Her last apartment’s one redeeming quality was that it had a dispenser in the fridge door. She’d loved that thing.
Why’d he assume she’d be upset? He kept typing and erasing. He didn’t want to tell her.
She drinks the lukewarm water, her throat tight like she isn’t swallowing correctly. She should get back on right now, pretend there was a power surge in her apartment. The longer she waits, the bigger a deal it becomes. And then it seems like she is jealous. Dammit, why didn’t she go home with Anthony?
She sits down in front of the laptop again but finds she just can’t log on.
The feeling in her chest grows. She’s a problem. Miguel will have to explain her to his girlfriend: See, I have this friend from way back, and we live chat every day because she keeps changing her name and this is the one place where she’s always there, and I have to be her friend because she’ll fall apart if I’m not, and I feel responsible for her just because we have this history together, but don’t worry, she doesn’t really mean anything to me. She’s just a fragile thing I can’t set down because if I do, she will break.
Someday, he won’t chat with her. A day will go by, two days. Because he’ll be wrapped up in the other woman. And then someday it will seem strange and unfaithful to the real woman in his life to be so connected to Brooke. And he’ll maybe even have to tell her formally: I can’t do this anymore.
She’ll have to muster everything in her to reply: That’s fine, Miguel. I totally get it. Go on and be happy.
She makes microwave tea, staring at the chipped counter edge while it brews. How did everything suddenly get turned upside down? She can’t lose Miguel; she has to swallow her pride and log back on. She’ll tell him it’s okay to back off their friendship but it still has to stand. She throws the tea bag into the trash; it lands with a light thwack at the bottom, one of the few things she’s thrown away in this apartment.
She goes back to the laptop, sickly chamomile coating her tongue.
Miguel has already written to her, with a JPEG of a bouquet of red roses.
You are the most important person in my life, and a girlfriend won’t change that, he had written.
I think I’m worried that it will.
She waits, but he’s no longer online.
But it should change, she continues. You deserve love and a chance for all the real things that come with it. Not just messaging with me. I don’t want to be selfish. Miguel, please get married. Do that. Pull it off. And someday I’ll be so goddamn proud to see the pictures of you two at the wedding.
She knows he can’t invite her, “best girl” or not. The same way she knows the nightly chats will become monthly ones. If that.
I’m not being sarcastic here. You’re the only one of us who can do it. You’re the . . .
She pauses.
. . . least damaged. LOL.
Will you stop with the marriage talk??!!!!!! He’s suddenly there. And honestly, mija, you’re not as damaged as you think you are.
I’m crumpled. The UPS truck ran me over.
Then collect the insurance and start over. Anything I’m capable of, you are, too.
Don’t think so, but thanks.
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! (An Irish guy started working here, and he says that all the time.)
The holy nuclear family, she types.
No group home for them.
She’s elated. Miguel didn’t give up on her, and they’re back like they always were. Listen, Miguel. Let me say this one time so you know it, and then I won’t have to say it ever again. I totally release you when the time comes that your girlfriend doesn’t like the idea of me.
Any girlfriend who doesn’t like the idea of you can appreciate my firm muscular ass as I walk out the door.
No, it’s not like that. She is going to feel like I have a hold on you, and it’ll cause trouble.
She already knows about you.
She does?
She has the terrible thought that maybe the girlfriend’s sitting on Miguel’s lap right now, watching him type.
Of course. You’re a staple in my diet, mija. I’m not going to just drop you. I’ll never do that.
But you can.
Stop staying that! I don’t expect you to drop me. Why do you think I would?
One more time . . . slowly. You have a chance at this. I never will. I don’t want to screw it up for you.
You don’t have half the PTSD I do, girl. So why are you so permanently off the market?
You know all this. I have to keep moving.
Suppose you just stayed put and waited to see what would happen?
He’s awful, making her think it, making her type it. They’d catch up with me and kill me.
A long pause. Ellipsis. Erase. Ellipsis.
Something I like about therapy, he types, although it costs me many pesos, is that it makes me question all the assumptions I’ve made about my life. Like that I can’t have a relationship other than just a sexual one.
So you don’t believe me about why I have to move.
I do, mija, I do. I believe you feel this.
You believe that I believe it, but you don’t believe it.
This is difficult given my limited grasp of the English.
Ha ha. You think it’s an unreasonable fear. They got my mother.
You told me she died in a car wreck.
There are a lot of ways to make something look like an accident.
Why were they after her?
I told you this years ago! They wanted to get me. They must’ve thought I was in the car.
“They” being the brothers?
Yeah.
But wasn’t there a period of years between the death of that lady and your mom?
She can’t handle the disbelief, the common-sense questions trying to frame understanding of a situation that was not common, that made no sense.
She’d told him everything on the group home porch, all the evidence—and it looks as if he’s forgotten. If he didn’t care enough to remember, then screw him.
She’d explained about the day a package had arrived at her house with her name on it. She almost never got packages in the mail. Her mother was the only one to give her presents, and she would never waste money shipping something that she could simply hand to her daughter.
