A Nest of a Cuckoo

A long short story with a twisted view of love form the temptress/protagonist in a small town

You have not conquered me�"it is the surge

   Of love itself that beats against my will;

It is the sting of conflict, the old urge

   That calls me still.

It is not you I love�"it is the form

   And shadow of all lovers who have died

That gives you all the freshness of a warm

   And unfamiliar bride.

It is your name I breathe, your hands I seek;

   It will be you when you are gone.

And yet the dream, the name I never speak,

   Is that that lures me on.

It is the golden summons, the bright wave

   Of banners calling me anew;

It is all beauty, perilous and grave�"

   It is not you.

                             

     -Louis Untermeyer

You have not conquered me�"it is the surge

   Of love itself that beats against my will;

It is the sting of conflict, the old urge

   That calls me still.

It is not you I love�"it is the form

   And shadow of all lovers who have died

That gives you all the freshness of a warm

   And unfamiliar bride.

It is your name I breathe, your hands I seek;

   It will be you when you are gone.

And yet the dream, the name I never speak,

   Is that that lures me on.

It is the golden summons, the bright wave

   Of banners calling me anew;

It is all beauty, perilous and grave�"

   It is not you.

                             

     -Louis Untermey

"Well, do you want me to leave her? You know I will..."

Funny thing, I knew he would, I knew he would, from the way he'd look at me when he thought I wasn't looking for what he'd act. Erik would do almost anything for me, as he had taken a few days off from work at Harrison Constructions just to be there when part of my house burned down from a fire caused by a gas leak. He also made me some "special" soup his mother used to give him when he was younger when I came with the common cold. He was even late to pick up his younger daughter from an after school club when I really needed him once. He was the type of man to take care of the people he really cared about, no it was nothing short of thrilling to be loved by such a man, a good man. It was very annoying at times, nonetheless.

Sometimes I wondered what it’s like was to love such a person, or any person really, with the same sincerity.

"No, I'm not asking you to leave your wife, Erik. I never, ever said that's I wanted," I sighed. I placed the rinsed plate into the rack a bit too hard. "What I did ask you to do was to replace some of the tiles in the master bath. Really, how did we move from tiles to housewives?"

"Gwen isn't a housewife, she's a music teacher, and you know that."

"Same damn difference. She spends time with kids who are still living in the world of cliques and mini-wars."

He handed me a sudsy bowl and didn't reply for several minutes. I enjoyed the silence only the rush of the tap made while he thought for a moment, and it was blissful. Until he opened his mouth.

"I would have more time to remodel this house like I did after the fire if I -".

"Do what? Move in?" I scoffed, done with the plates for now and turned to him, facing his side. "And live at least miles from your ex-wife and two kids? Maybe we could talk at the grocer's for a few minutes every two weeks or so while those kids take stuff from the shelves. Then when she goes back home, your old house with the purple trim and white blinds and say to those same two girls, 'Well, it seems that everyone has to get up from bed to do necessary things every day like normal people.'!"

He turned to me, too, and looked at me face on. "Gwen would never say that in front of the kids, and she probably wouldn't even say that at all in the damned first place."

"This is the goddamn South of the United States of America, Erik! Plus, you live in it!" I practically screeched in incredulity. "Women here, especially the wives and older ones, gossip like freaking chickens, and the next day they hug you and bring you 'effing pecan pie! Besides, I don't care if you leave her or not, that's between you and her."

"You've been a part of this since I fucked--!"

"Doesn't mean I slept with you, doesn't mean I actually care about your ‘effed up marriage with Mrs. Church!"

He stared at me for some time, those black eyes reflecting the little light the small window above the sink let in and lips pressed. A little curve appeared at the corner of those lips and twitched spastically. My brow furrowed. “What?”

He shook his head and started to chuckle softly. “Mrs. Church…why didn’t I think of that?”

My own lips pressed together. Again, he shook his head at me and straightened his arms out, flexing the palms against the counter. His soft laughter opposed his tall, bricked body, but then turned into full throaty laughter, which left me a little on edge. There was a strange hitch to it, like he was teetering off a swing.

“Erik, are you okay?” I murmured, reaching for his spastic shoulder.

He stopped immediately, but he still wouldn’t look up. He didn’t respond to my touch.

Then to my relief, he turned towards me and put his hands on my waist, pulling me forward to his wide chest. I could feel his pecs through the thin wife beater he wore. I put my own arms around him, too. His fingertips caressed the skin of my lower back underneath my sweater, and we stood there, just holding each other. My mind raced backwards, because I could feel what was going to happen…

We had met two weeks ago, before his daughter’s, Gaby, fifteenth birthday. A friend of Erik’s, Gary Watson, recommended me as a professional photographer after I completed a gig for his own recent wedding with a small, coffee-colored woman. Reverend Gary Watson was a prominent figure of Plaque, Virginia as the only preacher/reverend of the largest Baptist church, Doves’ Baptist Church. He was a swan amongst partridges and I had been very eager to be working for him, as his word was usually the Gospel’s word, or some Biblical chapter. I could get anywhere under his referral in Plaque, and I was taking a break from the big cities for a long time, having been in New York City for the past six years where I flourished and crashed, as my former “boyfriend” had taken to stalking when the cliqued jukebox didn’t work. Erik was with his family, the day we met in the good preacher’s office, socializing, or rather his wife, Gwen, was. 

She was literally the only person in the room I had noticed for a few moments when I walked in and it had confused me for a few seconds. She was impeccably flawless with her milk chocolate-and-cinnamon skin, curly highlighted hair, and a knee length, fifties pink and white dress. Honest to God, she was even wearing short, lace gloves.

The air around her seemed to be brighter, or if you were into the New Age culture her aura seemed to dance with a bright light that blinded everything else.  Her eyes were bright and alert and trained on the reverend, but they were also gentle. Near her, I felt her vitality and exuberance and I just knew she had never been the ugly duckling. I heard a few words about the reverend’s sermon on Mary Magdalene before my attention finally shifted to her family.

Beside her was a young girl with braids of her early teens with arms at her sides, fingers fidgeting with her white dress. My attention swerved to a more imposing, stocky figure behind her, a man with a half-smile and even brighter black eyes.

This person looked almost washed out to me then, and he still was now with me. Back then he was resigned, as if he was just existing to exist. The same passion and exuberance his wife was portraying for Mary Magdalene didn’t exist in Erik, and there was no hint of drive in his laugh-lined face. 

He was staring right at me though, and right then I saw the apex of his eye lift, like his eyebrow was going to follow, but decided that it wouldn’t be appropriate. I was so unused to this misattention that I actually decided to taken note of it. The reverend finally took notice of me, though, and I had to divert my attention back to him. 

“Ah, Ms. Stiegcio, I was just about to mention you!” he said tiredly, a bit of a croak in his voice. “This is the Halversons.” His gesture displayed a bit of a swish in his fingers. I smiled automatically, and walked in to stand beside Mrs. Church, whom I had so generously named right then. Gwen also smiled and held out her hand. I shook it with quiet reluctance.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Stiegcio,” she demurred and then gestured to the girls. “These are Gaby and Luna. This strapping, seasoned gentleman is my husband,” she turned to the dark man. “Erik.”

He was trying to be subtle, while staring at me while the others except the pastor and Gwen blatantly did. “With a �"k.”

I nodded, transfixed by his white teeth and trying not to smirk. “With a �"k, then.”

There was a pause, filled with a tone I didn’t recognize. Whatever it was, it elevated the adrenaline, and I felt the anticipation I didn’t know the origin of when I was in Plaque. Reverend Watson coughed and I realized I had been staring back.

“I was just recounting your service at my wedding two months ago. You see, Gabrielle, one of our choir girls here, will be having her fifteenth birthday very soon.”

The girl mentioned gave only a flash of a smile before turning her eyes towards her father, who was peering at me from the corner of his eye. He didn’t’ look aware of it this time. I already knew where I was going, where the reverend was going with this, but I let him continue. Gwen spoke over him anyway. 

“I’ve seen the pictures you took and I had to know who had the eye behind them. You made Maggie look like a white queen more than she already had. Erik and I would love to have you do Gabrielle’s birthday party in a week, and we’ve been short a photographer…”

I had to give her brown nosing points right there. Plus I needed the money now for renovations, so I agreed.

Over that whole week, Gwen and I spent more time together than I wanted--I was only taking birthday pictures for Christ sake! Five minutes with her I wanted to scream for the nearest kidnapper.

She wanted three photos of Gaby in this dress, then another, then another one, plus one of her blowing candles and so much more that I just started to take a notebook to her house, because it wasn’t Erik’s place, with him being gone most of the time. On one Wednesday afternoon, she had to go to the bathroom to “freshen up” �"who says that anymore?�"and I absolutely had to take that opportune time to get some fresh air in the backyard of their house. The birthday girl was also out with her aviators and headphones, nodding to whatever artist. The other girl, Luna, was silently playing with a small cat in her lap on the back porch steps. My eyes closed and I breathed deeply, my hands at my hips.

Sudden shuffling beside me startled me, and then I tensed to Gwen saying she needed me back. It was Erik, of course.

“This your first time in Plaque?”

I linked at him and looked up at him. “No, actually. I grew up here.”

He was obviously surprised. “Really? I figured you for a city girl?” he said, making it a question, pushing his hands into his pockets. I gave him a half smile.

“I don’t know whether to be insulted or flattered,” I teased.

“No, don’t be insulted. You misunderstood me is all,” he grinned back.

For some time I was fixated on his teeth, because they were truly shocking, contrasting against his ebony skin and dark purple bottom lip. “I moved away when I was nineteen. Didn’t come back until a few months back.”

“Gwen and I moved the girls from Seattle a few years ago,” he nodded. I raised my eyebrow. “So I’m not the only hoodrat here?”

“Nah, I never was from the ‘hood’,” he snorted and crossed his bare arms. “Don’t even what you’re talking about…”

Now I raised both my eyebrows as I peered at him. He was taller than me, I had noticed. His face was large and wide, made to accommodate the crooked nose that I was sure had been broken and reset sometime. His skin was darker under the shadow of the canopy, shielding us from the falling leaves from the oak trees. His black eyes both fascinated me and creeped me out, because I could see his despondence and I wondered what would make him so sad. He had a perfect wife, beautiful kids, and a flawless house. Around town he was the man to go to for some redneck fun. 

I scoffed at the both of us, me for my brief moment of caring and at him for his “hood” comment. “It is true you wouldn’t know the hood if it robbed you blind.”

“Oh, so it’s off putting for a person to be an innocent victim of crime?” His smile grew bigger, and a small jolt in my midsection startled me again. 

“Really just anyone still living in Plaque,” I replied, grinning sincerely for the first time in a long while. He snorted again.

“Aren’t you here?”

“This isn’t permanent.”

“Of course it isn’t,” he nodded seriously. “Everyone goes back home to just sit around or steal the thunder or settle old scores and/or f**k--”

“Jackass!” I hissed, but still smiling. 

He shrugged and chuckled. “Tell me it’s not true, then.”

I nodded in a sagely manner. “So, you’re fishing for info, are you sir?  Didn’t figure you for a singing canary.”

“Actually everyone is really wonderin’ why you haven’t been to service since you’ve been back. I’m kinda wondering the same.”

I rolled my eyes. “So there’s no point to me being here if I won’t got to Church? Really? And people wonder why I left in the first place.”

He was unexpectedly silent so I turned back to him to see a small furrow in his brow. It marred his face and I felt an urge to smooth it out. I didn’t want him to be thinking too much into what I just said, but it turned out that I worried over nothing.

 “I’d say you’re very religious,” he said quietly. I waited for his silent goodbye that really meant he was judging me.

“…That’s… different.”

I stared at him and he stared back his eyes moving while mine felt frozen in their sockets. I felt that I should have looked away or some kind of invitation would be held, but I couldn’t; suddenly, Erik flashed as beautiful, this iridescent being that would wrap me up and need me. Erik didn’t know it, but he was an angel in that moment. A new song had emerged, a ritual of sort between two people about to do something secret. They would need a new place to keep it, maybe under a house with its heart in formaldehyde. 

On the day of the big birthday “bash”, I was in a hurry to set my small, outdoors studio in front of the sole apple tree in the backyard the Halversons owned. The guests arrived slowly, starting with a few solo teens. As I got prepared, a negligent memory of my own fifteenth birthday came unbidden. 

Ten years ago, my sister Maria had moved away with her current older husband and my mother had given me the keys to our small shack on Nez Drive so I’d be able to come home and do my homework. I didn’t want to be alone on my birthday though, so I rode my rusted bike to Tony’s, the seediest bar and grill in town where my mother was working overtime to pay for the new bills on top of newer bills. 

When I arrived most of the men greeted me and I nodded back to them meekly and some tried to talk to me, but the bar’s namesake, Tony, a bear of a man would step in and just mention my age. I had always looked older than I actually was, but I still appeared to be at least seventeen to my mother. I was any age my father wanted me to be, considering all things and the old night’s spies. 

I got to celebrate my big birthday in the back with the aged cook, Sammy and my mother, who had Tony at her beck and call for most of the night without her realizing, not even Tony. From then on, my mother became beautiful, even when she left the house as I began to wake up and perform my own duties.

I was knocked back into the present when a little girl and her mother got me to take their pictures, blessedly less demanding than Mrs. Church. Thirty five minutes of squinting into the lens of the Canon EOS Rebel held passed, and I was enjoying a quick break, shifting my weight beside me in the wooden boards became apparent, showing a newcomer joined me in looking at the colorful partygoers. Amongst the flock, the belle, Gwen, flourished and spread her parent-of-the-year charisma and shined. The cacophony of sugary children, shrill chiding of mothers, and hoarse laughter from the men smoking cigars. They stared at the women, whether they were married, taken or otherwise and a few looked at me for a little too long, but I looked right back. I knew what I looked like to them because my eyes were light hazel, my skin tan with a burn underneath and my long, black hair.  I didn’t stand out like Gwen did in terms of social conformity either, as far as I could see, no one was wearing black and/or other dark colors. 

I wondered what they were thinking, besides the obvious, when they leered at us. Were we part of the background or were we the subjects? Were we so diversified that we become a blur to them, all looking the same? The natural man was god-like in his worst and primal at his best. Their emotions transcended that of an animal, but their hooves revealed most of the deep thinking they were capable of. They’d wag their tails and chase wild, flowing hair or try to trap long skirts that looked alive. Then they’d create art out of nowhere when nothing had true effect on them when the lost ones never return. To the innocent girls, they were the untouchables; for me they were only visible through the Canon lens I had in my hands and forgotten in the next flash. I used to be the exact same though, I can’t lie. But I never was able to answer that question all young girls ask by the time I left Virginia behind. Still, I was unafraid, because I left behind Virginia. The looks of lust turned into nerves and discomfort and I was satisfied. 

A feeling I couldn’t ignore or place rose inside of me, closer to my left and I turned my neck towards Erik, who had suddenly appeared. A nearby chestnut tree left of the apple one from before framed his head, his black eyes glittered and fell. I didn’t know what he saw when those dark eyes shifted so extremely and suddenly, but they looked at me with great hesitance. A vision more sudden appeared and left as soon as he sat down next to me.

We sat there together, just “shooting the breeze”, as he so graciously put it when I asked what he was doing with me. Besides the photos I took, including him and his family, who looked like a mismatched group�"him as a gorilla, her as the swan and the two girls as the ducklings transitioning into black swans. When I told them to look up at me when it was photo time, as I liked to call it, he looked up at me, signaling for the beginning. It looked like he made a decision.

“What are you thinking about now?” he muttered. Hints of frustration and nerves saturated his voice and I grew annoyed with his impatience, throwing his hand off my waist. He didn’t understand us. 

I began to walk off to old living room but stopped when the small window caught my eye again. I remembered the only time we’ve been in perfect harmony, when he was still in bed with evaporating stress coming off him in waves from that very first night, who had kept our secrets secret while being a secret herself by being forgotten. It seemed Erik had forgotten, too, but that wasn’t the point of us! We weren’t meant to be forgotten and only heard through a few mouths, sharp in criticism and judgement. 

It had also been the first time I had felt unobligated to anyone or anything, and I had found it in Plaque, Virginia of all places.

Right now, I stayed looking out at the window, staring at his house, her palace with the blinking, turquoise colored-flower bushes and two sycamore trees. A rush of overbearing filled me, my eyes tearing up. I kept it still, locked in its place.

“Gina, listen to me, please!”

I almost jumped and realized he had been trying to get my attention again. I kept my eyes flat, because he was already too good at reading them, and sat on the small dining chair close to the window. 

He stood over me for a minute, lips pursed again and hands on my shoulders. I touched his left hand with my right and pulled him down to his knees so he’d be able to look at the face I wanted him to believe. To reassure him, I tried a smile.

“Erik, I love you, not your wife, nor your kids, okay? I don’t need her to even exist, maybe, but she does, and they do. What matters is that she doesn’t kill me, right?”

He tried to argue and I stopped him. “No I’m serious! I’ve never felt like this before, at all…not for any man or woman I’ve ever been with, especially Charlie, as you know that was just Vegas fever. It doesn’t even matter what they will think, because I’m not going anywhere any time soon, and neither are you, ok?”

His face shifted from disbelief, stress, and pain back to disbelief again. His hands fell to my lap, I squeezed them, a sob hitched in his throat, and the big apple in it bobbed. Didn’t he know how much I needed to love him? I felt my forever, a place to be me quietly, a place I had never been before when I laid on his thick chest with him stroking my hair, shoulders, and back, where his signature burned my skin to replay over and over. His blood and mine were one and the same on that night and became too familiar afterwards, but it never ceased to have me bare my neck to him. Even with this, I lamented because he would never feel my side, they never do. They always only pay attention to their own fault, not ours. They only used the purple rose from the caskets that bear us, put them between their own teeth and start a new dance with a blossoming, confused girl, starting all over again. This time I would be both nourished and loved.

“Do you love me, too?” I hissed, the burning from my eyes rising again.

“Yes,” he choked out, his hands now overpowering my thighs, cutting off the blood. Still I singed, and I allowed him to see it. His face lightened, and he grew closer, putting his heavy hands behind my neck. I could admire those teeth of his from where I was, but our lips met instead. 

My sister called after he had left to give me some news. I could hear the reluctance in her voice as I paced, the same feeling from the blinking bush emerging.

Maria lived in Richmond with Phillip Dale, the man she left with many years ago. They lived in a nice loft with a faux Ionic taste and a foreign maid, but no children. Maria hated to clean, and I didn’t blame her. She used to change the sheets after every morning with a lead heart. It was safe to say that we didn’t have a great relationship.

“Great Aunt Hester died two months ago,” she said to me over the phone. I could hear her faux nails ticking against the black--Tick, tick, tick!�"wooden table she had in her kitchen. “She left you a silver comb and mirror with some gems I don’t even know the name for, but she didn’t leave any money, so don’t ask. I mailed it two days ago, so you should have it by tomorrow.”

“Yeah, that’s great. When’s the funeral?” I asked, resigned. 

“No funeral, she explicitly stated she didn’t want one, and the memorial at the Center here is for ‘closest’ friends only and that funerals were only for people missed. Can you believe it?”

“Oh, Aunt Hester,” I scoffed. “She was absolutely, terrifyingly, clinically insane, but she had the best damned sugar cookies in town and the juiciest gossip about everyone and anyone.”

“Yeah, true. She was always so normal in that damn kitchen, though, with those damned pink flowers and white kittens following you everywhere. Ugggghh…” I rolled my eyes.

“I’m sure she loved that wallpaper, Mari,” I grumbled. My sister could be a décor snob, as she was a professional interior decorator.

“She could’ve used white and purple instead, is all I’m gonna say,” she grunted. obviously getting out of a chair. Her quick feet showed her agitation in pacing, something we had shared with our neurotic mother. I sighed, waiting for the inevitable Judgement.

A few more seconds passed with her pacing and me just standing in my living room, glaring at a small painting of me and Erik when we passed by a street artist in Richmond. 

“You’re not still with Mr. I-Hate-My-Wife, are you Gina?” she whispered, probably nervous that the tall Dominican maid would hear her. I would’ve told her she didn’t matter, but I reminded myself I didn’t care. 

“No, Mari, I’m still in teeth Plaque, Virginia where you can actually see the stars because I don’t have someone who I care about who just so happens to be married.”

“With children! Two girls, Gina!”

“DON’T YOU DARE!” I screamed.  The floorboards underneath me groaned from the weight of my foot. “It’s not the f****n’ same, do you hear me? Mom would have went on her knees if--”

We both fell silent, reminded why there were only two calls per month from each of us. I wondered what in Hell’s breath possessed me to tell Maria about Erik and the add-ons. It was probably the overwhelming feeling of loneliness and being too acquainted with the night. 

“You’re my only sister, Gina,” she sighed, “I don’t want you to be hurt, no matter how you feel about this guy. You can’t be caught up with him, it’s not healthy, plus you’re intruding on someone else’s life.”

“What would I have to fear besides my reputation, Mari? Tell me that. Even with that I’m going to leave Plaque, why not lay a few grounds?”

“You don’t know wives Gina, they’re quietly fierce,” she whispered after a time. “We look all dolled up some of us actually look perfect, and we’re protective of our home because they’re all we truly got and we’ve worked hard for it. Too many things have been gathered and prepared and there’s a lot of hope, especially in small towns. Our old one isn’t that different.”

“And you’re what, exempt from that? I seem to remember trying to run away from a certain lady in pink hair curlers and a surly disposition. She looked like It, Maria, It! You know I hate that thing!”

“They were getting a divorce! In the process!”

“And now you’re one of the wives, congratulations Number Three.” 

I remembered that day well, it was one of the very worst of my entire life, when my questions were locked up tight to be answered by failures. Stale breath became a new friend and the grunts of a pig would be replayed over and over from that day, the abrasions I ignored from that day. My memories, good and bad became blurred together, only that day a stark imprint imbedded into my head. I wasn’t being dragged by the hair anymore, I could into any shape I wanted, do anything I wanted.

She huffed at me elegantly. I imagined a pearl from her necklace slurped into her mouth, as she said: 

“It’s wrong, Gina! You don’t belong there!”

I quickly and quietly hung up, sealing up her voice for at least four weeks. 

It wasn’t the next day but the day after that when I would get the package from Richmond and Erik was paying me a visit. Gwen and the girls went up to Six Flags and I didn’t care for the excuse Erik gave not to go; he was here and that’s what really mattered, as I told him.

He brought the package in when he took out the trash for me and put it on the mall coffee table. Eagerly I grabbed it and almost ripped apart the cardboard flaps. 

“Whoa there, babe,” laughed at me, its usual softness returned. “Whatever it is, it won’t crawl away…or maybe it will…”

I slapped his shoulder. He kissed my neck well above the small ‘v’ my collarbones made when they met. I finally got the wrapping paper out and pulled a small, ornate silver comb out, its diamonds, tiny ambers glimmering out of inlaid mother-of-pearl, making me blink under the light. Its teeth were moderately fine and inflexible, perfect for holding up my very thick hair up into anything I want it to be, giving me flexibility. I held it up to the light, catching a bit of reflective properties on the back surface, and it had a strange shape to it. My stomach flopped while I continued to stare at the comb’s bristles; perhaps it was too sharp?

Erik snatched it out of my hands and pushed it into the hair at the nape of my neck where a messy ponytail rested. Again I reached into the box and took the silver mirror with a long handle with thin vines and ambers and mother of pearl along the rim of the reflective surface.  I turned this way and that, inspecting it for its further value, talking to Erik about it. 

Perhaps, not for the value after all; a flash of a wrinkled visage of an old hag had appeared in the mirror over my shoulder, making me jump for a split second and startling Erik.

“Babe, you alright?” he asked, his hands floundering over my body, face and anywhere else I couldn’t think of right there. My body was locked in whatever pose I had left it in at that last second, the hag’s face bleeding into my mind. It had been right behind me. I thought it had smiled for that last second, no, more of a twisted grimace, but with no intention. What was that, or did I dream about it, forgot and subconsciously imagine the beast with the long, pockmarked nose? 

Her eyes! Her eyes had blinked two times, first in red, then orange. Was it Hester, Gwen, Maria?

I shivered, but didn’t feel it. I knew it was violent and hard against Erik, but he didn’t exist right now. Oh, those eyes! The nose! Eyes!

“GINA!” A loud crack rebounded through me, I heard it and tasted. I realized then I could taste something in my mouth, my blood. My eyes blinked, the image of that horrible woman with those�"

“F**k, Gina, if you don’t f*****g wake up I’m callin’ 911!” I shook again, so violently this time Erik had to grab me before I could fall off the couch, but I came back to him. “Gina!”

“Did you slap me?!” I snapped incredulously. His eyes didn’t blink, but his pupils dilated smaller in the passing seconds. The remaining trembles traveled back into the air, energy being transferred. His face contorted around his eyes.

“What do you think? You were going into shock! I should’ve just smashed you with that thing?!” He pointed to the new transparent Lalique crystal vase with several birds in flight in a sky view, crisscrossing paths. My ex in New York, Terry, gave me two weeks into our…relationship. 

I shook my head, getting sudden vibrations out into the air, like preparing for flight. “No, no…just...Sorry, ok?”

“What happened, Gina?” he whispered, sitting up more. I shook my head no and shrugged, deciding that it didn’t happen. 

“Who the f**k knows?” Bending down to get back the comb and mirror off the floor, I also noticed an ovular purple-black mark atop his left outer ankle, almost unnoticeable on his dark skin. I eyed it for a bit too long without realizing the comb was still in my palm, cutting into it. His hand grabbed the one gripping the comb and pulled until I was unbent and glaring right at him. 

He blinked many times and held his hand up. “What…?”

I pulled his leg up, bent it so the foot faced me and grabbed it back to show him what I thought to be�"

“Oh.”

“Yeah, oh you stupid piece of--”

“Gina--”

“Why didn’t you just tell me you were f*****g her?” I hissed at him and punching his arm.

“Hey!” he cried out, rubbing his arm. I rolled my eyes at him and scowled. 

“Shut the f**k up, ‘Rik. I didn’t hit you that hard.” 

He gaped at me, and I seriously wanted to hurt him then so he’d hit me, too. Maybe he’d make the itching in my eyes stop. Seriously, Gwen? “You’re okay with it?”

“No I’m not f*****g okay with it!” I finally screeched. “You’re f*****g her!”

“Look,” he started, getting himself more comfortable and still rubbing where I hit him. “Having sex with my wife isn’t wrong, babe. Suspicions are dropped and Mama is happy, so what’s the problem? You wanted me to keep us a secret, I was okay with breaking things off with her, but you said--”

“I know what I said, you friggin’ jackass dick! What makes you think you can screw your wife and me at the same damn time?! I don’t want her all over you and you coming here to finish yourself off--”

“Gina, you know it’s not like that. It’s like…”

He grunted. “It’s just you and me. No one else ever existed, and that’s crazy in this town. I’m always watching my back, with all these white people and weird assed church people getting up in my business. I’m the top bull, Gina, I can’t f**k up, but with you…no one gets to watch me. I kinda fly with you.”

We didn’t say anything else, until I sniffed softly and pushed him a bit, a little sob he couldn’t hear inching up my throat. “You just had to be weirdly romantic, didn’t you? God…”

He grinned at me, but it was a wary one, like he was waiting for me to drop on him, his hands still up and everything. “So…are you okay with it?”

I got to slap him this time, but on the forehead and he yelled out at me. “No, you f*****g dickface!”

“Okay, okay!” he grunted, more like a huge boar. Would I be the horse, or the gleaming lady in red, hunting him down? I nodded anyway.

“Fine then, just say you’re exhausted or….hell, I don’t know!” I threw my hands up and slapped them down to his chest. He groaned, moving my hands behind my back and pulling me against him. 

“I really shouldn’t hit you ever again, huh?”

I sniffed with grace….ugh. “Ya think?”

I hated that mirror, no matter how many vases I could get out of the ambers alone. It reminded me too much of what my old English teacher, Mr. Ramen, told the class about marriages and mirrors, which didn’t make much sense to me. Mirrors were supposed to be hand-in-hand with vanity in my mind

 

It was safely in my second drawer though, because it was simply too beautiful to let go of or sell. I wore the comb everyday though; it just seemed right. It made me feel like it would help me learn something just from its hard bristles, lime it was going to show me the end. What end, I didn’t know, but it made me feel greenly safe.

 

 

Looking out the living room window the next three days, I spied one of my bushes shivering out the corner of my eye. I ignored it to stare back at the peacock house, but whether I realized it or not the bush was still shaking more and more noticeably until the house became a blur in my teared up eyes. I decided to apprehend the little squirrel in the greenery.

 

I looked down at the bush, my hands at my hips and waited for the little pest to show itself; my own presence was too much for me not to notice. “Who are you and what do you want?”

 

She jumped up with a startled gasp with her back turned to me, looking up at the window where I was. She quickly turned back to the source of my voice in the next second, and made a sort of snort and gaspy sound in her throat. Her eyes were red rimmed, looking swollen from her head and she was still trembling. I deflated in my angst against the intrusion. “Gaby?”

 

Her hands seemed to automatically hold the shoulders without her knowing, and a huge sob expelled from her throat. I thought of stepping in to hug her, but thought better. I knew from experience hugs don’t help at all, even though you get them from someone who mattered most to you. Me being a near stranger would just bring up creeper points against me. Still, I decided to do something; I couldn’t have the rest of the neighbors asking questions. “Why don’t you come in for some hot cocoa? Would that be good?”

 

She nodded, and I thought I heard a tiny “Better than her…”, but I was sure I was mistaken. We stepped into the small foyer and I took her thin coat to hang it on the rack. “You go on into the kitchen, I’ll be there,” I said. She complied.

 

Near the umbrella stand, I spotted a tiny note that fell from her pocket and debated whether to put it back. I shrugged and unfolded the slightly wet paper:

 

 

1. Get RESTASIS

2. Have Mom find the shirt in Stiegcio’s trash.

3. Wing it!

 

 

“What the f**k?” I whispered to myself. Deciding that it was must be a teenager thing, I put the note back into the coat and straightened myself before walking into the kitchen. Gaby sat in the chair, with her foot tapping against the grey linoleum. I cringed inside for the faded tracks on the floor. 

“You want cinnamon, or cinnamon sticks? Marshmallows?” I asked, getting the little tea pot out and turning the dial to high. 

“Neither, please...” Well, at least she had manners. I wondered whether Gwen knew she was here, so I asked. She shook her head and whispered, “She’s out with Luna and Dad.”

Of course, I already knew where Erik was, I always knew where he was, with him always telling me or him being here with me. That didn’t answer the question though, but I decided to let it go. Another thing that bothered me though was that she chose me of all people to drown her sorrows in; why not her friend from the party? This question I obviously couldn’t ask, so I just took the pot from the burner and poured its contents into a huge, blue mug with a tiny bird on top of the handle. I handed it to her and she drank it slowly, the knuckles of her hands gripping the mug.  I sat into the chair across from her with my entwined fingers on the table, and I stared at those hands in anxiety. On her middle finger of her right hand was Erik’s wedding band and it glimmered with a small reflection of me twisted along the surface.  I started to strip off the small skin of my thumb near the nail, a nervous habit developed around the same time Dad whipped out his weapons of mass destruction. Erik left the ring here yesterday and I had yet to call him for it, but I guess the cat was out of the bag now. strangely enough I didn't feel any true anxiety, just a shadow of it, or what I was supposed to feel now. Our secrets were about to be brought forth, and all I had to do was sit back and wait for it all to end in a huge inferno. Ironic, though, how a girl of fifteen would catalyze it.

I decided to bring it about faster, laying my hands flat on the table and nodded at the ring. “So, what did you really come here for, Gaby?”

She put the mug on the table near my fingers and looked at me back with innocent eyes. “What do you mean, Ms. Stiegcio? I just needed to get out of the cold-”

“An imp would look better playing angel, Gaby, let’s not kid around,” I sighed and leaned back. “What do you know?”

She stayed silent, her face contorting to an unrecognizable shape, making me think of the fireplace devil and his companions. A bit of mischief never hurt anyone, right?  “Dad comes here when Mom’s out or sleeping, which is almost all the time. The rest of Plaque don’t know about you guys, and they won’t. I just want to know why, and why you of all people?”

My eyes widened at her boldness; I couldn’t blame her for the questions, and a part of me knew she’d ask one day, but why for me? Didn’t her dad matter more than the homewrecker?

“Why do you ask me, and not Erik?”

“Okay, first of all, don’t speak of my dad like he’s yours!” she hissed at me. The table almost shook underneath her fist. “secondly, because he’s my dad! You think he’d actually tell me, or that mom would even acknowledge it? Yes, she knows!” she said when my eyebrows rose. “She cries every night next to the stove and leaves the water running so that Luna can’t hear her, but I know! I see her heaving next to that stove-”

“Okay, Gaby, I get it, your mom is tortured by your father’s infidelity and you want to know why anyone would want to come between two people and break up a family….Am I getting it right?” She refused to answer, and I didn’t expect her to. 

“Since when do people actually care what the homewrecker is thinking? you have got to be the first person to ever want to hear the side of the temptress, they just want to see her steal the man away from the dainty, moral wife or lover for a few hours. Sure, people blame also the hero, but most abuse is handed down to the naughtiest of women, especially the most...adventurous one but what if the hero was the temptress? 

“What if she decided she wouldn’t be a sitting duck in life, but took what she wanted and claimed it for herself? She began as a mistake to her parents after a planned kid and no one else ever claimed her, ever in her life? She went out into the world with a purpose to steal her own role in someone’s life, no matter the circumstances, to show the rest of them that she’s on top, despite her beginnings that no one cares for. It’s merely a reversal of power between people, it’s a part of life, it’ll never go away. She had to build a nest inside someone else’s nest to create her future, and it’s not all that different from creating one in the first place, since she knows she needs to live in such a world like ours. She doesn’t even have to gain anything from the deceit to everyone, she just has to do it and feel something again.

“It’s nothing personal against you, Gaby,”  I shrugged. “I would have been with Erik- your dad- if you hadn’t existed, even if your mom hadn’t either. your dad really is the one, as far as I’m concerned, and I’m not letting go.”

She snorted and glared at me with those same red eyes, twisting the  oversized-ring on her finger with her thumb. “I don’t know why you’re talking in riddles, but I’m done. I’m going to tell my mom, she doesn’t deserve this, you know.” She stood up to go and I stood up, too. I didn’t want any of my things stolen. We walked to the door where I handed her her coat and shook out the kinks in my shoulders, but before she left she turned back to me.

“Didn’t you ever want to have your family together all the time, no matter what?”

I shook my head. “My parents  nearly killed me, Gaby. I owe them nothing.”

*****************************************************************************

It was later in the evening that I decided that I was done with Plaque, and Canada was looking better this year. With, or without Erik, I was going to one of the biggest countries of the world with winter for spring to start over with new wings. I knew I’d see erik again anyway, because one way or another, his marriage will fall apart, with or without my help. I didn’t want to be the direct cause of it, but I would be the push he needed to get out. So I packed my essentials into the trunk and the back seats of my SUV with no particular plan but to get out before Mrs. Church-or soon to be Ms. Church- got a hold of me. 

That’s when Erik ran across the partially paved street with four bags and a small suitcase, looking very haphazard coming out of a serene house with blue warring with green eyes, which were finally closed. Oddly, I couldn’t bring up any triumphant feelings worthy of a movement, but I did feel the most enlightening of moments when Erik threw his stuff into the car carelessly. 

He looked up at me from his panting, hands on his knees and he never looked more beautiful in that moment. I felt so small next to him, so insignificantly special, like an orchid in the water. He finally stood up and gazed at me, with the same wonder and questions I must have been asking. It was our most vulnerable; a moment between us, none else could match it. And to think this was happening as the sun was setting into twilight!

He opened his mouth and left it open for me to look at his pearly teeth while he spoke. 

“Where you go I go, and where I go you go.”

Tears began to form in my eyes. How could I not have known all this time?! It was like a revelation!

 I nodded, and ran to the car door to the driver’s seat, trying to calm myself through gasps. He grabbed my shoulders and hugged them tightly without looking at me, his dark skin almost blending in the dark interior. He seemed lighter, weightless as a feather instead of a hoof. He was smiling for no other reason than he was going to leave but an imprint of who he was, and I was the cause of such a metamorphosis! ME!

I concentrated and checked my mirrors and everything else before backing up into the street. We were on the road on I-81 and we’d stop in New York to rest, as I told him. From there, we’d fly to Ontario and go where ever. He fiddled with the silver comb I had in my hair at the base of my neck.

We never really got to real talks on the road some time later, but we did feel each other. Even when we were tired and argued, I felt the fairy-like feeling from before, along with new hope. We drew our own horizon out of an eggshell and got our due. Finally, finally, finally we go there, here in this fast rush of ecstasy. 

The comb pinched the nape of my neck with a bite, and I put it in on the dashboard at the wheel. Erik combed his fingers through my hair there, scratching the scalp. 

I didn’t ask about his quick departure from his family and life in Plaque, just as he didn’t try to accuse me of leaving him, even when I had studied the smothered, silenced house. I guess he knew I’d wait, consciously or not.   Either way the old life would never exist ever again for the both of us, and I intended to keep it that way. 

He turned to smile at me, with his fingers still on my scalp. “When we get there, I need to tell you something.”

Silence.

I raised my eyebrow at him, but kept my eyes on the road. “And why can’t you tell me now?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know, I guess I want our feet to be on the ground for this.”

“Think I might faint? You know I’m made of hardier stuff than that.” I got off the interstate onto a smaller road where I spotted a motel as I was coming to Plaque so many eons ago. Its green and yellow lights flickered in the rectangular vacancy sign on a tall pole with graffiti. A small tree swayed to the breeze I felt on my hand out of the car window.

“I know that,” he replied, gripping my hair tighter than ever. “I just meant--”

Suddenly, my foot seemed to instinctively hit the brakes when  my calf spasmed like a shudder, but my other foot simultaneously hit the gas and the car screamed into a loud cackle and out the corner of my eye, I saw the same hag in Hester’s mirror, the eyes glimmered like ambers. It was a force of the anger of the most powerful of Olympians, and as wonderful as the air under an angel’s wings. 

I hit the brakes in a panic, but Erik’s hand was still on my head and wouldn’t let go and I briefly thoughts trying to kill us and push me into the dash but it’s Erik he wouldn’t do that to me he had emerged just two hours ago what will happen to us both why did this have to happen when did she decided to pull us off the many colors in the sky there's too much red there it’s a haze make it go away she toyed with us I knew it that this would happen it was my own fall but i got to share it with him didn’t i so truly i win but it happened too quickly I wanted to see it coming where’s the f*****g help...

**********************************************************************

I picked up on thick fumes that weren’t supposed to be there and turned my head to escape the approaching darkness. A phantom ache at my throat, with a touch of blinking agony, wouldn’t let me swallow. Maybe I swallowed my own tongue, maybe that’s why the air is so stuck in the cavern of my neck. It was worse than drowning; at least then I could’ve known it was the  life-giving-and-squashing essence that destroyed me.

A passing car’s headlights flashed into the windows of the car, illuminating another glimmer I ignored earlier on the dashboard, so unlike the other shards of the windshield, too white and...perfect to be glass. I needed to see, I don’t know why, but I needed to see what was left of me. I don’t know why, but that perfect pearl was so important and overwhelming, and I forgot the wheezing pain in my throat; the wetness of the traitorous wetness rushing out from,  th and I was in a state of denial against it. 

It was the same substance that gave us both life in the night, and it would kill us come morning. It was too synchronized with the suffocating fumes of my car, the two dancing, copper-and-iron with carbon,  to make the other more potent, liem a witch’s brew.

It was a perfect tooth.

By then the panic increased, turning beyond animalistic into something that made me forget what we even were. My head turned my neck to my right, and I saw even more of those teeth strewn across the seat he was in, the floor and even on my thigh. He was sitting so serenely, just like the house before we left, so pathetically. A euthanized rodeo bull lying on the dusty ground with dozens watching. A tiny scream tried to bang against my slit, jagged throat, and I realized there was a smothering weight that was Erik’s hand at my neck. He didn’t exist anymore, and he left without saying goodbye. His face was totally concave...no he had no face, just broken-in bone plates that held his head together since he’d been in the protective womb of the woman I never got to thank. 

Where was the comb? Did he?...

Everything came into such clarity right then. The comb was making a home with my caged words and screams. It wouldn’t allow me the comfort of screaming out his name. maybe he had felt our end? Maybe he had decided to end it all? No, he couldn’t have...he was as excited as I was, and he had emerged...Where was the ambulance? Oh...yeah...that’s right, I knew this would happen and so did she....

So this is true love feels like....How wonderfully god-like….