Just Fall (15 page)

“How come we never fight?”

“Are you complaining about that?” Rob asked with a smile.

“God, no. It’s just my mother asked how we fight, said arguing well is the key to a healthy marriage, and I realized we just don’t ever fight.”

“Want me to pick a fight now? This street makes your ass look fat.”

Ellie swatted Rob’s arm playfully. “And here I thought it was an incredibly slimming street.”

They had just had brunch with Ellie’s parents, down from Vermont. A proper engagement ring had been purchased since the impromptu proposal in the park and Ellie’s mother, Michelle, had
ooh
ed and
ahh
ed and plunged into wedding talk with a fervor that took Ellie’s breath away. Her father had been quiet and gruff, but Brian had enveloped Rob in a surprisingly warm bear hug as they said goodbye in the lobby of their hotel.

“Your parents are nice.”

Ellie laughed. “You say that now; wait until Mom is in full-on wedding planner mode. I think she’s been waiting for this since the day I was born, and I assure you there will come a time when we will both long to strangle her.”

“I could never kill someone who loved you.”

Ellie laughed again, then looked at him. He had sounded grave for a moment, as if he was saying a “real” thing. She shook off the slight unease his tone left lingering.

“You’re sure there’s no family you want to invite?” Ellie linked her arm through his as they continued down Park Avenue.

“I told you, there’s really no one left. Just me.”

“What did you do, kill them all?” Her tone was light but also probing. There was something she sensed, though she couldn’t put her finger on what it was. Or why it bothered her.

Equally light, he replied, “Just the annoying ones.” He turned her toward him and smiled at her full-on, looked right into her eyes. “You are my family now, darling.”

She melted. This man was everything: smart, good-looking, romantic, successful. More important, he just got her.

He kissed her and they went on into their day, heading to a department store to pretend to register. Ellie marveled again at how amazing Rob was. It had been his idea to request no wedding gifts but instead donations to a foundation that helped homeless teenagers. He was giving her (and her mother) free rein on the wedding party, and lord knows, it was going to be a bash (!) but he had pointed out that between their two incomes they could buy anything they wanted. As long as he had her, he had all he needed. How could any girl not swoon over that?

The foundation had been started by a man named Matthew Walsh. Rob, who didn’t talk about his family much, had spoken of Matt with genuine affection a few times. And Ellie hadn’t pressed for more than Rob was willing to offer. Matt had seen something in him when he was young, Rob had said, had given him a chance when he was at his lowest.

Ellie wondered if her reluctance to push Rob more about his family history was grounded in the carefully protected secret she herself carried. Sharing should be reciprocal, and she knew she didn’t push past a certain place so that he wouldn’t in turn push her.

Still, she thought, as hard as she’d tried to look forward, things like her secret stained a person, they had to. She knew she hadn’t escaped. She was marked; a specter of cold evil hovered over her. Could she marry this man without his knowing?

Sometimes she wondered if Rob would still love her if he knew her secret, then shoved that thought aside as fast as she could. And so, she allowed him his reserve in order to protect hers. Lovers, husbands and wives—they were allowed to have their private spaces, weren’t they?

Ellie wakes. The room is very dark. She’s utterly disoriented. How long has she been sleeping? Where is she? Is it day or night?

Wow. She hasn’t felt this rested in a long time. It’s kind of a magnificent feeling. Then, as her eyes strain to discern objects in the darkness, she hears the soft
whomp, whomp, whomp
of the ceiling fan and she begins to remember. A floral bedspread. The funny print of leaping fish. The dozing fairy giantess. The parrots. Gold Tooth.

She jolts in fear, remembering him, and cracks her head on something hard. What the fuck? It is then she realizes she is standing up. Tentatively she reaches her arms out in front of her. She’s shocked to feel a hard surface. Wood. Cautiously she lifts her arms above her. More wood. Her breath quickens. Is she in some kind of box? Rising panic. Is she in a coffin? She thrusts her arms out, palms squared and hard, and the front panel breaks away with a satisfying
crack.

Ellie gasps air. It is humid, fetid. But at least she is freed. She starts to walk forward, into the shadows, toward the light, when she feels a strange, sticky pull from the base of her neck to the top of her ass. Terrified, she turns her head. Squints into the eerie darkness behind and sees her spine on display, mounted on the wood behind her, ropes of viscous blood linking her body tenuously to her bones. She opens her mouth to scream…

A meaty paw of a hand clamps down over Ellie’s mouth. She shoots up, eyes blank with fear, to see Lou, gesturing to her to be quiet with the hand that isn’t muffling Ellie’s cry of surprise. The room is dazzling bright. Was she dreaming? Is she now?

“There’s trouble,” the fat woman whispers urgently. “Get under the bed.”

Ellie shakes off the last cobweb tendrils of her sleep. She’s still uncertain: Is the fairy giantess to be trusted? Or is she another puppet dancing to Quinn’s commands?

Lou tugs at her. “Now! Go!”

Ellie does as she is told, slithering under the bed. There isn’t time to argue or explain, ask questions or debate. Lou shoves Ellie’s beach bag under the bed and Ellie clutches it to her chest. Then wills herself silent and still.

She hears the door open. She hears Lou call:

“Found the key to 6.”

The giantess stands back to let in what appear to be two men, based on the shod feet Ellie can glimpse from her hiding place. Lou sits down heavily on the bed. The mattress sags low, pressing Ellie down, and she wills herself even smaller. Her heart is thundering in her chest, her fingernails bite into her skin.

“I told you. She came in but didn’t have a passport. So I didn’t check her in.”

“When?”

Ellie recognizes the voice, the low, cultured tones of the man she saw at her wedding, the one who was calling the shots while her groom had the shit kicked out of him. The man she has come to know as Quinn.

“Not sure, exactly,” says Lou. “Yesterday afternoon sometime. But you’re welcome to check the rest of the hotel. I just don’t want any trouble.”

Lou shifts her bulk on the bed; below it, Ellie fights against the urge to cough. Once she notices it, the tickle in her throat becomes excruciating. She turns her head to peer out, hoping the twist of her neck will calm the need. Lou’s heavy bare feet, solidly planted on the floor, block her view. Lou’s heels are cracked and dry and red; they look painful. A shadow crosses Ellie’s line of sight and there is the sound of footsteps retreating. Lou shifts her weight backward then rocks forward to hoist her bulk off the bed. The bedsprings creak loudly.

“Like I said, you can look around, but I’m telling you, she’s not here.”

Ellie watches Lou’s feet shuffle to the door, following the intruders. She hears the scrape of the key and the satisfying
thunk
of the lock as it turns. Still, Ellie stays put, rigid with fear, breathing dust. A small hacking cough escapes her; she tries to swallow it down even as it surges in her throat.

Gradually, she relaxes, enveloped in the odor of musty, threadbare carpet. The immediate threat seems to have passed. She idly notes the ridges her fingernails have cut into her arms, the dull floral pattern of the box spring above her, the hem of the green curtains as they sway gently in the breeze.

Then she hears the key in the lock again. The door opening. Her eyes burn; her hands curl reflexively into fists.

“It’s me. They’re gone.” The speaker is Lou.

Ellie inches her way out from under the bed. As she pulls herself up, one of her fake nails catches on the bed frame and cracks off. Ellie winces; it takes part of her real nail with it. She sucks on her finger as Lou offers her a hand up.

“How long have I been here?” Ellie is still disoriented.

“Since yesterday afternoon. I didn’t hear a peep from you all night. Figured you could use the rest.”

“Thank you,” says Ellie.

“We girls gotta stick together.”

Ellie looks up at the mountainous woman, she of the ridiculous girlish hair and the lumpy, lined face revealing she hadn’t been a girl for many decades. Ellie doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Laugh at the terrifying absurdity that has become her life or cry with relief because a stranger is showing her kindness.

Lou continues. “Do you want to talk about it?”

The last thing Ellie wants to do is talk about it. She weighs her options. Maybe she can still make it to the airport? Should she just go to the police and confess? Free herself from this nightmare, even if that means going to prison? She has been told to wait here for Quinn, but Lou has prevented him from finding her. Ellie knows enough of Quinn to know he is used to being obeyed. What will he do now that Ellie has disobeyed?

Lou settles back down on the bed, which protests under her girth. “I’ll go first if you like.”

“Sure. You go.”

“I was pretty once, and young. And a hundred and twenty pounds soaking wet, if you can believe it now, looking at me.”

Lou pauses. Her amber eyes dare Ellie to disbelieve she had once been young and beautiful. Ellie meets her gaze evenly, nods at her to continue.

“I met a man. I was only nineteen, he was forty-two. He seemed to know everything about everything—how to change a tire, wrangle free stuff from stores, tie a bow tie, play the piano. I had never been out of my hometown; he had been all over the world. I was a goner after ten minutes. Mad love. I ran away with him in the middle of the night—my mama would have never allowed it, and so I bolted. And…I loved him. In the beginning…well, it was wonderful. But then he began to clock how long I went out for, leveled crazy suspicions that I was cheating on him. One day, when I denied it, he came at me with a baseball bat.”

Lou stops talking. Stares at the leaping fish as if this next part is too shameful to confess. Ellie is silent.

“I woke up the next morning. He had beaten me so bad I could barely move, but even so I was handcuffed to the bed.”

Ellie doesn’t speak.

“He kept me there for three years. Raped me. Starved me. Made me use a bedpan and gave me sponge baths. Used to murmur the same endearments at me whether he was fucking me, hitting me, or washing my hair.” Lou laughs, a brittle sound. “Finally a UPS guy heard me moaning one day and called the cops. Saved by a man in silly brown shorts.”

She studies Ellie. “I was twenty-four by then. I wanted to start over, but it was all in the news; everywhere I went I was ‘that woman handcuffed to a bed for three years,’ a goddamn headline, not even a person. Even worse, I became the butt of stupid jokes. So I came here, to the island. Just to get away for a time. But I found I didn’t want to leave. I got a job, got fat, and eventually bought this place.”

Ellie doesn’t really know what to say. What can you say to someone whose life slid so spectacularly off the rails? She feels empathy, so much that it threatens to drown her. So she remains silent. Lou seems lost in her own thoughts. Finally, Ellie blurts out, “I’m sorry. It must have been awful.”

Lou looks at Ellie, grateful to be pulled back from whatever dark place her mind had taken her.

“You know the worst part?” Lou continues. “I loved him. Really loved him. I still don’t understand how I could have felt love that deep when all he felt was bat-shit crazy.”

Ellie shakes her head. “Love doesn’t make sense, does it? We fall in love with someone, and then as layers are revealed that don’t line up with our feelings, we’re in it already.”

“So we lie to ourselves, that’s what you’re saying?”

“Not lie outright, I don’t think. Color our perception of the flaws.”

“Yeah, right—like the tiny little ‘flaw’ of being a rapist and torturer.”

This hits a little too close to home. Ellie winces.

“You ever been really in love?” Lou asks her.

“I am in love,” answers Ellie. She says it. She believes it. Maybe she doesn’t, since it turns out she had no idea who Rob was. God damn it! She is furious at Rob for all his lies, even angrier with herself for being duped. If all Ellie’s done wasn’t for the sake of saving the man she loved, it was completely base. It was anyway—base, vile, hideous, repugnant, amoral, criminal—she knew this even while clinging to the shreds of her romantic idealism (but still, she needed something). “I am in love,” she says again, with less certainty this time.

Lou sighs. “Well, that’s your first mistake.”

Ellie feels compelled to protest. “You don’t understand—”

The giantess snorts. “Yeah, right, no one ever does. Until your nose is broke or your eye is black. But you know, I’m good now. I have friends here, a life—maybe not the life I expected, but it’s okay.”