Page 108 of Dark Ugly Places

Useless, half-formed, undeserving of life, the lot of them.

The best way to end a person is through their weaknesses so that death becomes the only inevitability. Weaken, weaken, then snap. Just when they are nicely bowed and ready.

The lullaby I used to sing to Nicola to put her to sleep after her father had been raging went something like that.

Hush, little baby, don’t say a word.

Mama’s gonna find you a mockingbird.

And if that mockingbird don’t sing,

She’ll snap its neck and drown it in the bathroom sink.

It was always my song. My words. My voice. I drove her to live, live, live, and she never appreciated it. My sacrifices. My love. My giving.

Back in the car, I can barely start the engine before Emmy is asking, “What’s happening? Can my mom come home tomorrow after this?”

“Yes,” I tell her. “Just like we planned.”

She smiles excitedly and buckles her seat belt. She turns to me, and suddenly I’m in her arms. “Thank you, Martha.”

I feel my body tense and shrug her off. “It’s fine,” I tell her. “You don’t have to thank me.”

“Yes,” she says. “I do. Before you got here, everything was a mess, and I knew my mom wasn’t happy. But now, it’s like there’s hope again.”

My spine tingles. Nicola can hear this. How can she hear it? Because Emmy has that ability to draw her forth, draw her out. That’s why it’s best to keep Emmy quiet.

“Okay, okay, enough with the sentimental bullshit.”

Emmy smiles, and I step on the gas. I feel my phone vibrate in my pocket and take a quick glance. Nubia again, wanting to know what’s going on. I throw the phone to Emmy. “Here. Tell her I can’t talk. That I’m sick or something.”

“You want me to lie?”

I catch Emmy’s eyes. “Yeah. Obviously. You really want Nubia caught up in all of this?”

Emmy shakes her head. “I guess you’re right.”

Outside, the wind blows in the trees, and the night sky clouds over with mist from the ocean. Nicola is thudding against my skull now. I feel her anger, her rage starting to burst forth, a volcano erupting. It seeps through, stronger than I would have imagined. I wasn’t counting on her finding out about Ben quite yet. I need her to be quiet and good for just a little longer.

We stop at Pick Up Stix, and Emmy runs in for an ironic bag of Chinese takeout. All the while I sit, listening to Nicola’s screams. I thump my head quietly against the headrest, then the window. Finally, I pinch at the back of my skull until the little sore begins to bleed, my own flesh—our flesh—in my fingertips.

“Enough,” I whisper to her. “It’s as good as done now.”

47

Bambi

The story is everywhere—on all the news channels, the headlines pinging through on her phone and laptop. The magazine stories coming through text messages from friends taking snapshots and sending them to her. The world knows. LaMonte is filing sexual assault charges, and Jason’s contract is effectively canceled. The studio is done with him, according to Agnes. Footage of her and Jason at the hotel alone, standing in the lobby arm in arm, before it happened, gets leaked. Suddenly, it seems so natural that he would be exposed.

Bambi switches off the TV. She can’t stand to see another headline about it.

She holds her stomach and sips the decaffeinated tea, her legs curled up in the oversized white chair in their living room. She pulls the throw blanket around her shoulders and shudders in the cold house.

This is good, she tells herself. She can leave now, no questions asked. She isn’t sure about the other part, but Martha told her it was necessary.

This time it had been Lauren LaMonte, but who had it been before? In her mind, Bambi traces back over Jason’s series of co-stars. Blondes, a brunette here and there, one redhead with short bangs whose name she confuses with another celebrity. Bambi never kept track of them. Now she wishes she had. One by one, their faces spring up in her mind’s eye. So many kisses and after-parties. Small waists and high heels. Bodies so fatless and perfect they scarcely looked real, and to her, that was saying something. They were abnormally thin and small in real life. Not at all the way they were on the screen.

Most celebrities are like this. Small, frail, and too real when you see them up close. Like with Jason, the magic gets lost when they’re before you, shaking your hand or looking aloofly off to the side to wave to someone else more important than you. A fake smile for you, but for Jason? They’d clutch his arm, entwine themselves around him in an antagonizing embrace that she could scarcely stand.