Page 24 of There is No Devil

I put my hand on the nape of her neck, rubbing her gently. Making her purr. “That’s because you’re a pleasure kitten. You like anything that feels good.”

Mara cuddles up against me, comfortable even in this destroyed space.

“That’s true,” she says.

I continue the story.

“He was cold to her. Cruel, even. She wrote in her journal that she wanted to leave, but by that point she knew him well enough to be scared of what he might do. And then she found out she was pregnant.

“At the same time, my uncle Ruben came back to San Francisco. He’d burned through his money and was beginning to see the value of a place in my father’s firm. My father gave him a job immediately.

“My uncle was clever and could work hard when he wanted to. In fact, he was doing so well that my father promoted him again and again, until he was the acting VP, second only to my father.

“That wouldn’t have been a problem, except that my father now had an heir. At one point, Ruben might have believed that he would inherit the company, or receive equal shares in it. I was a complicating factor. Very much in his way. Especially after my mother died.”

I feel Mara stir against my side. I know what she wants to ask me, but she hesitates, knowing instinctively that this is the one wound inside of me, never healing, always raw.

I promised to answer her question, and this is a part of it.

“It’s alright,” I tell her. “You can ask.”

“What happened to your mother?”

Why is it still so hard to say the words out loud?

I hate that it hurts me. I hate that I care.

“She hung herself,” I say.

Mara winces. She takes my hand, squeezing it tight.

I look down at her hand, wondering why that feels so good. Why it comforts me.

Maybe because no one knows better than Mara what it feels like to be young, frightened, and deeply alone.

“I felt like an orphan. I had no warmth or connection from my father. Ruben terrified me. He was already showing his aggression, as much as he could get away with. He tripped me on the stairs. I broke my arm. He said it was an accident, and I was too young for my father to believe anything else. Later, he tried to drown me on the beach below the house. He kept pushing me under the waves, over and over again, laughing like it was a joke. All I could see was his teeth and the wild look in his eyes, and then he’d shove me under again, before I could get any air.

“That time my father saw it. He hauled me out. It was the first time I saw him truly angry at Ruben. Ruben was more careful after that. But I knew he hated me. He was jealous when my father gave me attention. He sabotaged me any chance he got.”

Mara rises from the couch to inspect the photograph once more. She brushes the glass out of the frame, frowning at Ruben’s handsome face, clear and uncovered.

“It was around that time I started to draw. I had always liked tinkering with machinery, working with my hands. My father encouraged that because he could see the use of it. He didn’t like me sketching. He didn’t care for the arts at all. He only donated to them because he knew philanthropy was part of empire-building.”

“What made you start drawing?” Mara asks me.

“At first I was sketching designs of machinery I wanted to build. The designs became more experimental, more aesthetic. Sculptures instead of machines.” I pause, because this makes me curious in turn. “What was the first thing you drew?”

Mara blushes. “The girls at school had coloring books. I didn’t have one, but I could get my hands on paper and pencils. I made my own coloring pages—mostly princesses in dresses, because that’s what they had. I realized I could draw any dress I could think of. Then I drew other things I wanted. Roller skates, unicorns, a bed with a canopy, ice cream sundaes …”

She trails off as if realizing that, to her, roller skates had seemed as unobtainable as unicorns.

“Anyway,” she says, shaking her head. “Keep going …”

I lost the thread, distracted by thoughts of Mara as a child. I want to know all her secrets. She keeps them buried deep. I’ll have to be the first one to break out a shovel.

Taking a breath, I continue, “I was having conflict with my father. I wanted to go to art school. He was, of course, opposed, expecting me to take over his company. He already knew by then that he was sick.”

“What about Ruben?” Mara asks.

---