Unbind (68 page)

“I am talking about the bind that cannot be broken, even though sometimes, you desperately try to. Yet you can’t. A true love is sharper when unexpected, more bittersweet when put on trial, more poignant in its infancy… it hurts because it demands, tests us because it’s truthful, shakes us because we fray in its presence… yet it will never be broken. I know what I am and what I can be but it’s just my way of testing the waters. Tugging the surface for the real matter beneath. Flesh and bone, is nothing. The real parts of us are hidden, concealed, beneath layers. Those are the pieces we don’t easily part with, yet remind me why my own mind forged a method of dispersing itself… to corners I didn’t have to connect with. I don’t mind admitting I wanted you to fail… yet you more than proved yourself worthy of my son.”

I cried into Claudia’s arms until the sun came up and didn’t even contemplate there was anything to forgive. We parted, promising to keep our meeting secret, just because it was simpler. After all, the artist in Cai was fuelled by anguish and she was that anguish. Like I’d also come to learn, some things were best kept under wraps.

MY PRETTY TIGRESS is in my arms, right where she belongs. It’s her favourite time of year, Fall. We got married today and as I dance her around the floor, I know she’s tired. I can feel it in the way she’s clinging to me, plus her limbs are shifting with less ease than her usual grace. She’s entertained and put on a smile all day long. Now she can lean on me, all she wants.

I press kisses into her hair now and again, soaking up the soft curls and the scent of her citrus shampoo. Dozens of tiny pins holding up her tresses sparkle and glitter against the twinkling sky of a balmy September evening in Notting Hill. We got married at a registry office and our wedding reception afterwards moved here to the Goose and Duck. I love this woman. She forced me to eat three courses (one a roast dinner no less) in a white suit!

Jennifer’s not here. Klaus is however. Over Chloe’s shoulder he’s dancing some old aunt of my wife’s around, a sad look in his eyes. I feel sorry for the guy.

My first London show takes place in December. The ‘Agnes’ shoot… in painted form. Chloe hates that she’s my muse but she has a spirit that reached out to me and I want to celebrate that. I still think fondly of the day I spotted her out of the kitchen window. She was down on the street below, role-playing some meeting with herself, all while avoiding those damn lines. I thought she was the craziest looking dame I’d ever laid eyes on and I loved her, instantly. I hadn’t painted in all my life before I met Chloe. You could say I was put off giving it a go until then but the sight of her, god, the smell of her, made me want to paint a new horizon for us both.

My wife lifts her cheek from my shoulder to look into my eyes, her amber irises sludgy with fatigue. Her head tilts awkwardly too. She’s giving me a look and wants me to figure out what she wants. I know exactly what she needs.

Her bed.

We have a luxury guestroom booked, upstairs. It has a Jacuzzi and everything so I’m told. Maybe even an old creaky bed for us to try and rock off its legs. I truly want nothing more than to have her naked in my arms again, to have her hot and sweaty and beneath my body. Nothing compares to that moment when I press inside her and see her face transform, breath leave her, her body take mine in.

“Ten more minutes dancing. We only get married once.”

“Okay,” she agrees, and replaces her cheek on my shoulder. I kiss her forehead and run my hands over her waist and the lace of her beautiful, perfectly-Chloe ivory gown. You’ve no idea how many deals she turned down, nor how hard we had to work to keep this thing private.

I lift her hand from my shoulder and get blinded by the rock that rests on her ring finger. I got her a bigger, better Cartier ring after I sold my Brooklyn gallery. I made a pretty penny from that and I don’t regret it because I don’t plan on living in New York again. Chloe and I talked and while I love London as much as she does, we might settle in the country somewhere quiet. We’ll travel of course but wherever we go, or end up, my vow is to never leave her side. Never again. I know how lucky I am and that is never going to change.

I watch onlookers swoon as I hold my bride in my arms, kiss her, worship her. Chloe’s mother Katie is dancing with her new boyfriend Alan. He seems nice. It wasn’t too much of a pity that her father and his new girlfriend couldn’t make it.

Anabel and Amanda are laughing so hard as they do some kind of frenetic dance with a bunch of kids. Their pink bridesmaid dresses have dragged up all kinds of shit on their trains.

Kayla, also in pink though not so trampled, has her arms around the neck of someone Chloe invited to the wedding. His name is Lutz, a lighting designer. I talked with him earlier and we got on like a house on fire. For the first time since I’ve known Kayla, she actually looks shy as that guy stares into her eyes.

When some faster music brings everyone onto the floor, I wait until they’re all too busy grooving to notice me pick up my wife and carry her away.

She feels feather-light in my arms as I cross grass and decking to take her through a private side entrance and up to our suite.

Inside I sit her on the bed before locking the door. Remove my jacket and shoes and sit behind her. Begin unfastening one pin at a time.

One hook at a time.

Out of her dress, I kiss the tiny bump in front of her body and she moans, giving me the eyes—she’s too tired. I’ll be kind… I’ll let her sleep a couple of hours and wake her after that. I’ll leave the lingerie on ’til then. It’s too good to waste. She’ll soon be regenerated enough for some passionate reminder of how much I love her, after just a quick nap.

I pull her under the covers and into my arms and she brushes her cheek through my chest hair. When her hand latches onto the hard-on I can’t help where my wife’s concerned, I raise an eyebrow and look down on her. Against the low light of an energy-saving bulb that looks as though it might pop any second, she’s got a wicked glint in her eye.

“How do you expect me to sleep with this here?” she accuses.

I press my lips together. “Don’t get haughty with me, Mrs. Matthews.”

“Hmm, say that again,” she moans, her hand running through my body hair until reaching my heart.

“Mrs. Matthews,” I say, like it doesn’t make me prouder than anything else in the world to call her that.

When she removes her bra and places herself across my lap, I forget a world exists out there and I drown against her silky, heavenly body. I settle my hands under the creases of her buttocks and suck in breath when she brushes the heat of her satin panties against my stomach.

She looks at me with her wide cat’s eyes and runs her hands through my hair, along my scalp. I maintain her gaze though it hurts to. Sometimes I still shy away from the power she holds over me but not because I don’t love her, because I do. I loved her the moment I set eyes on her. I loved her enough that I tried to protect her from the dark, but every time, she brought me back to the light. A light that now shines out of my work.

After she’s taken what she wants and exhausted her pregnant horniness, she rests damp and languid in my arms. When she’s safe, I feel safe. When she looks into my eyes, I don’t see pain or anguish. I feel anything is possible.

Sleep doesn’t find me as easy as it does her. I still carry a million regrets. I just wish I hadn’t slept with all those women, brawled so much, drank myself ragged for so long… all in a bid to bring my mother back. That’s how it began anyway. I wanted to make her angry like before and bring her back to me. Maybe part of it was that Jackie gave me a taste of mindless fucking and that was what I always went back for. Maybe the gay rumours circulated because I got bored after just one night with every girl. I mean, after all, I just needed to get married and get my money, right? So why wasn’t I up for marriage? A homosexual in denial was easier for people to conjecture than, ‘HEIR IS FUCKED UP BECAUSE HIS AUNT IS HIS MOTHER?’

When I first got photography work, that’s when I started travelling and that’s when I started piecing together my mother and aunt’s lives. I just knew I had to do something, anything, to help my mother. The first place I ever worked was London. I went looking for people who knew Claudia and one day got told about this old doctor that had treated her. A psychiatrist, a specialist. He was 90 years old and I told him my mother was dead and I was seeking answers about her life for a genealogy project. He told me Claudia had delusions of grandeur and caused lots of fights at school between other boys and girls. She ousted her mother as a whore when in fact she was the one who began selling herself when she was 14, just to pay for cigarettes and jewellery. My grandmother didn’t know what to do and neither did the doctor. Claudia played different characters in her therapy sessions, but remembered things well enough that she didn’t exhibit the so-called blackouts often associated with DID.

Armed with this information, I researched and researched. I decided to pay a visit to Switzerland and walked into an art gallery run by Anneke Häuser, Klaus’s mother. I’d seen Klaus from a distance before and the woman and he looked so similar. I talked with Anneke about art as she graciously showed me around and I insinuated my family had an art background. Having told her my name was Matthews, she asked if I’d known Claudia and I said she was my deceased mother. Anneke turned beet-red and exclaimed, “I am sorry. That woman was a poisonous sociopath. I shall have to ask you to leave.”

I knew then, there was no romance with Willem. No bastard child passed up for adoption. I began arming myself properly then.

I gathered enough information from various sources to uncover her methods of intimidation. Her elusive friend Holden Price, the monster she’d been screwing to get whatever she wanted, was none other than my father Philippe Cortez. I caught up with Daddy Dearest using a method of my own. Anonymously, I called the cops on his ass after following him back to a townhouse in Brooklyn Heights. They extradited him a few weeks later.

The wars between me and her began. Yet how can a mother and son really hurt one another? The answer… they can’t. Not
really
hurt one another. We both blew up but I couldn’t give
her
up to the cops so easily. She was my mother. Plus, she had a stack of evidence against me too. Drugs. Drink. Women. Whores. I was buried so deep by the age of 21 that it was only when that gallery came into my possession that I finally realised I needed to do something better.

The only big problem came in the form of Chloe. I wanted a square of happiness for myself and Jennifer sent me that damn rose. I knew it was her. It was a damn threat to my happiness. That fucking rose.

Chloe chased me. I sensed she might, actually. She seemed a determined woman. I was an asshole to her but she came looking for me anyway. When I decided I needed Chloe and nothing was going to stop us being together, I revealed copies of the papers I had gathered on Jennifer/Claudia. I told my mother I knew she was acting the part and that she’d made up lie after lie to get her place in the world. We signed a contract where she gave Chloe a job and I would stop brawling in public and keep my fights at the gym. Seemed so simple, really.

Chloe isn’t stupid and picked up on certain vibes. All the questions… I had to lie and lie and lie in case I gave the wrong answers and blurted, “My aunt is my mother and she’s a homicidal maniac.”

When Claudia fucking went and did the dirty on my fiancée by uncovering her as ‘Agnes’, it pushed me over the edge and my mother must have known it would. So I threatened Claudia with the only thing she understands, the only thing she won’t let go of… her reputation. I had dental records that proved she was Claudia, I had written statements from Claire and Dirk admitting Claudia was Jennifer… and I was on the cusp of also seeking Klaus’s help. She backed down, agreed to do whatever. I told her I knew she killed her own sister. I drove it home that even though she didn’t pull the trigger, she may as well have done. She admitted as soon as it happened, she wished she could take it back. It was just too convenient, however… too good an opportunity. Sick and tired of being holed up at
Sub Rosa,
she and my father wanted out. They just had to find an income that allowed him to fly under the radar of the authorities.

I was trapped in this bind and so that’s when I painted
Unbind
, just a few weeks after we got back from Vegas. I fed a story to my mother for her to feed to Chloe and put my fiancée off the scent. It damn well worked. My mother likes to put on a show. She loves an elaborate lie she can get onboard with. I knew my fiancée had been following the breadcrumb trail and wouldn’t leave the lie undiscovered.

As soon as Jennifer dies, I’ll tell Chloe the truth. The whole truth. I will take my inheritance money from that filthy prick Chester but only so I can protect my tigress and the baby girl growing inside of her.

Jennifer
will slide from this mortal coil eventually, with her drinking. Then I’ll tell Klaus he was robbed of love and give him the closure he craves so much. I’ll also tell Chloe, I only did it because I love her. In love, we’ll do anything. It’s selfish but that’s love. Jennifer thinks she corrupted me but I was just a desperate man, seeking a way out.

I remember the first time Chloe smiled at me. It was the first time anyone had ever smiled genuinely, without some hidden motive or pity. She was the first person to ever show me love, damn it. God I worship her.