William Lashner - Marked Man

“Mom?”

“What, honey?”

“Can you come here a moment, please?”

A look of sweet exasperation. “What is it, Bryce?”

“I need something, I don’t know what.”

“Can you give me a moment, please?” said Lena.

“Of course,” said Monica. “Go.”

Lena went. I looked at Monica. She was overcome with some sort of unbearable emotion. She straightened her shirt, wiped at her eyes.

“She’s borrowing my jewelry,” said Lena when she returned. “She has plenty of her own, Theodore’s so generous, but she feels more mature wearing mine. I don’t know, I can’t remember ever being that young.”

“I can,” said Monica. “And it was brutal.”

“Oh, you didn’t have much trouble, I’m sure, a girl as pretty as you,” said Lena.

“I filled out a bit later,” Monica said, “but I was quite the gawky adolescent.”

“How did Theodore save you?” I said.

“He gave me a job, made sure my money problems were handled, made sure I finished school. It wasn’t handouts he was giving, it was better. He was giving me myself back. What I am now I guess I owe to him. And the way Bryce has grown up has been because of him, too. He took responsibility for her from the start. As soon as Scott left, Theodore sort of became the father figure in her life.”

“When’s the car coming?” called out Bryce.

Lena looked at her watch. “Any minute.”

“Egad. Do you have that barrette?”

“On the bureau. And not too much makeup. You know Uncle Theodore doesn’t like too much makeup.”

“I know, I know. But I need something.”

“Where’s she heading?” I said. “A date?”

“No, thank God,” Lena said. “Bryce is only fourteen. She’s going to a screening. At the house. Theodore makes a big party out of it.”

“You’re not going?” said Monica.

Lena looked at Monica and smiled. “I’d rather get to know my sister.”

Monica glowed from the light of the compliment, her eyes watered.

Lena said that she now worked for Theodore. In the company. She was listed as an executive producer on some of the movies, but all she did, really, was answer the phones, manage the office, handle crises on the sets. It was a little stressful, working for Theodore was always stressful, but the pay was enough to keep the apartment and take care of Bryce. She dated some and had a few steady boyfriends in the last couple of years, but mostly she spent her time at the office, at Theodore’s house, or with Bryce. It was not the life she always dreamed of, but it was a good life. The mistakes she made had been her own, and everything good, besides Bryce, had come from Theodore.

“He’s been very kind to me,” she said. “You wouldn’t know it by looking at him, but he has a heart of gold.”

“You’re right,” I said. “I wouldn’t know it by looking at him.”

Lena gave me a pained expression just as the buzzer buzzed. She stood. Bryce ran into the room. Tight jeans, silk cowboy shirt, hair straight, makeup bright. She didn’t look fourteen, she looked weirdly adult, older than her mother.

“I’ll be right down,” said Bryce into the intercom before coming over to hug her mother. She said good-bye to Monica and then turned to me and gave me a puzzled look before saying, “I guess I’ll be seeing you.”

“Sure,” I said.

“I won’t be late,” she told her mother, then skipped out the door.

“Nice kid,” I said.

“She’s my heart,” said Lena. “My life. I’d do anything for her. Everything that ever happened is worth it because of her.” She paused for a moment, clutched at her hands again. “I suppose you have questions.”

“Yes, of course we do,” said Monica. “But it’s okay. You can talk about it later if you want.”

“I haven’t even thought about it in years and years. It’s all like a dim memory of a movie I saw a long time ago, that starred someone I can’t quite remember.”

“Let’s talk about it later, then,” said Monica. “When you feel more ready.”

“Do you have a good life, Monica?”

“I suppose.”

“What do you do?”

“I work in an office. I have a boyfriend.”

“I’m glad,” said Lena. “I’m glad it worked out for you. How’s Mom and Dad?”

“Fine. Sad. They never got over your going missing.”

“It would have been worse if I stayed. I was sad when I left, but I had to go. The way Theodore explained it, I didn’t have a choice. It was the only way.”

“The only way to do what?” I said.

“To save everyone,” said Lena. “To save the family.”

This is what Lena said she remembered. The details that slipped through her repressed memory of those days were vague. She had a hazy picture of her mother’s face. Her father, she remembered, was big, so big. And she liked to dance. She especially loved the concerts and the recitals. And her red shoes. She remembered being both so excited and so scared when she appeared on that television show. She had some memory of the joy of her childhood, but what she remembered even more was the terror.

“Terror?” said Monica.

“I could never escape it,” said Lena.

He was always there, bigger than she, stronger than she, reaching for her, hitting her, grabbing her, hurting her. Touching her. Touching her where he shouldn’t have been touching her. Making her do terrible things. She didn’t understand, she was too young to understand, and even so she knew it was all too terrible to tell anyone. Everything that he did to her and made her do to him.

“Who did this to you?” I said. “Was it Teddy? Teddy Pravitz?”

“Who is that?”

“Theodore.”

“What are you thinking, and why do you call him Teddy Pravitz?”

“That was his name then.”

“I don’t remember that. But no, of course not. He never touched me, ever. But he listened. He was the only one who listened. He was nice, and he gave me candy and gifts, and he listened. I told everyone, and no one believed me, no one did anything. I told Mom, I told our priest. No one.”

“What about Ronnie?” said Monica.

“No. He thought I was making it up, too. But Theodore believed me. And he saved me. He took me away.”

“Who knew Theodore was taking you?” I said. “Who did Theodore tell?”

“No one. Not Mom or Dad, not his friends. No one knew. It was all a secret. If anyone was told, Theodore said, I would be put back into the house, and nothing would happen, and I would be at his mercy again, for the rest of my life. Or, if I was believed, I would be taken out of the house, and he would go to jail, and the family would be torn apart. I didn’t want him to go to jail, I just wanted it to stop.”

“Was it Daddy who was hurting you?” said Monica.

“Don’t you know, Monica? Don’t you know?”

“No, I don’t,” she said.

“Thank God. Then it stopped before you were born. Or it was only about me, which is what I always thought anyway. The thing that scared me when I thought about it was that it would keep happening with someone else. But Theodore told me that the only way to stop it and to protect me, to protect everyone, to keep the family from tearing itself apart, was for me to go away. That it would stop if he took me away, took me away to safety.”

“Who was it, Chantal?” said Monica. “Who was touching you? Who was hurting you?”

“You really don’t know.”

“No, I don’t. Who?”

“Which means it did stop. For everyone. Which is such a relief. Which means what I did was right. That leaving was right. For everyone.”

“Who was it?”

“My brother,” she said. “Our brother. It was Richard.”

“Richard?”

“And no one would stop him. It might have been jealousy, it might have been something he was born with, but no one would stop him. I wanted to kill him, to kill myself, until Theodore came along.”