Escape (Part Three) (5 page)

Chace’s fingers tightened around mine as the longest beep rung out in the room. Sharp like a dial tone, the end of a conversation, the end of a call, the end of a life. Bonnie spit out a loud, ugly sob.

“Give it a minute,” the nurse whispered.

The return of Mr. Evans’s heartbeat was slow and gradual, like the ticking of a digital clock.
Beep, beep, beep
.

“He’s alright,” the nurse said.

The other nurse relayed the information to the doctor on the other line.

Bonnie let go of her husband’s hand and crumpled towards the floor. Her forehead hit the carpet, hands flat on the ground as she rocked back and forth, like a Muslim in prayer. Chace released my hand and crossed the room to be with his mother, sister, and brother, the three of them surrounding Bonnie like a tall, sharp halo. Evie kneeled beside her and they followed suit, three sets of hands resting on her back.

The nurses stood together, one scribbling on the chart and the other checking Mr. Evans’s pulse.

“We should tell them,” one said.

The other nurse shook her head. “Give them a minute.”

***

The library was the farthest room away from the front of the house. Tall bushes blocked the windows, keeping the paparazzi from peeking in. It was the only room where you couldn’t hear them chatting or snapping away, a true solace away from it all.

Bonnie, Evie and Tyler sat on the brown leather couch across from the standing doctor. Chace and I stood near the window, his arms crossed over his chest as Jonah paced the floor.

“We have to get him to a hospital,” the doctor said.

Bonnie shook her head. “He doesn’t want to go. It was the last thing he said to me, ‘If I’m going to die, it’s going to be in my house’.”

The doctor nodded. “I understand Mrs. Evans but if we don’t move him, he
will
die.”

Bonnie looked over her shoulder to Jonah.

His shoulders slumped forward. “We knew it was going to come to this,” he said.

Bonnie let out a sigh, shifting her gaze to Evie.

“And there’s nothing else we can do? Even if we spare no expense?” Evie asked.

“We would have to build an entire wing to save your husband,” said the doctor. “Or we could transport him against his wishes.”

Bonnie dropped her face in her hands, her elbows sinking into her thighs. Her shoulders shook, another sob rushing through her. Evie and Tyler gently placed their hands on her back.

The doctor straightened his shoulders and Jonah cleared his throat. “Let me walk you out,” he said.

“No…wait.” Bonnie lifted her head. She wiped her wet eyes and cheeks, fixing her mouth and shoulders before she said, “What I’m about to do, you four may never forgive me for.”

“Mom --” said Tyler.

Bonnie held up her hand. “I admit that this is very selfish of me, but I am not yet ready to let go of my husband.”

“
Mom
,” said Jonah.

“Please,” she swallowed a sob. “Don’t try to talk me out of it. I’ve made up my mind and have come to terms with it.” She looked at the doctor. “Call an ambulance and arrange for him to be taken to the hospital.”

***

It took an hour for an ambulance to arrive and push through the crowd of paparazzi camping out on the front lawn. The sight of the EMTs sparked something rabid. They grabbed their cameras and tried to capture every angle of the ambulance, the nametags on the EMTs uniforms, the size of the stretcher they handled two-by-two.

Tyler and Chace were forced to open both front doors, a collective breath trapped in our chests as the EMTs quickly pushed past the threshold, hundreds of cameras capturing the foyer, Bonnie standing near Evie and I, and Jonah leaning against the railing as the doctors instructed the EMTs up the stairs.

“Dad’s body is going to be on every blog from here to Caracas,” Jonah said, flipping through his phone.

“Don’t say ‘dad’s body’,” Evie said. “You make it sound like he’s already dead.”

***

Around nine, I grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and Jonah shoved his iPad in my hand. He said nothing as he pointed to the bright screen. A photo of his father’s comatose body being carried out of the house was the first image on Google when you searched his name.

“It gets better,” Jonah said.

He clicked another tab in the browser and up popped an article.
Harold Evans, Dead at 65
. Then another,
Harold Evans, Comatose but Hanging On. Harold Evans, No Longer Controlled by His Family
; all headings above similar photos of us all, standing worriedly in the foyer.

I placed the iPad on the counter.

“You think this is bad. Let me show you --”

“I get it,” I said.

Jonah turned the iPad off. “Do you want this to happen to your sister?” I looked at him. “She can stop this,” he said. “
You
can stop this.”

The knot in my stomach, a constant since Jennifer hit me, tightened.

“Get me Jennifer’s number.”

Jonah pulled his phone from his pocket. “You can use mine.”

The interview was held in the living room with the curtains parted to let in the twinkle of the bay. Jennifer called off the paparazzi but a few remained on the front lawn, waiting for Jennifer, Cheryl and her crew to arrive.

Jonah called in a stylist named Freda who drove down from New York to make me camera-ready. She smacked on two sticks of gum as she rummaged through my suitcase, cringing at every floral patterned dress and every blouse with lace at the sleeves.

“You got anything to make you look a little, you know?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Like you’re not the type of girl who fucks her boss.”

I bit the inside of my cheek. “That’s all I brought with me.”

Freda sighed. “Let’s go raid Evie’s closet.”

The goal was to make me look “smart”. The public knew vague details of my life: I was an NYU grad, Creative Writing major, and I’d managed to stay out of the press thus far.

Jonah printed out a small packet of articles, blog posts, Tweets and Facebook updates written about me online. Most of them were by classmates I vaguely remembered from college. The girl who sat behind me in Personal Finance remembered me as “quiet but devious”; one of my roommate’s boyfriends, now-fiancé, remembered the time I was leering at him over a can of coke (that never happened); Dan, the boy who I took home and fucked called me “reckless”.

The posts defending me came mostly from the smattering of friends I had left. The ones who truly knew the type of girl I was, who knew I would never lure anyone away from their boyfriend.

One reporter managed to snag a quote from my sister. He bought drinks from her for three days before she told him: “I don’t believe anything Jennifer says. My sister’s one of the most respectful people I know and she’s ridiculously dedicated to her job. You should be snooping around Jennifer and asking her why her boyfriend broke up with her in the first place.”

Freda borrowed Evie’s long brown cardigan, her navy scoop-neck top, and a pair of skinny black pants to match her ballet flats that were a size too small.

She stole a pair of prescription-less glasses from her nightstand.

“Hey,” Evie said with a shrug, “everyone goes through a hipster phase.”

In Evie’s bedroom mirror, I watched myself transform into another girl. My hair was pulled into a tight ponytail, small wisps framing my face. There wasn’t a hint of make-up aside from a swab of light pink lip gloss. I was the girl you overlooked in your classes, the one who spent time tucked away between shelves in the library, the one who wasn’t worried about boys, only studying and succeeding. I was intelligent, quiet, and meek.

“Remember to slump your shoulders,” Jonah said on our way to the living room. “You don’t want to look too confident. You want to look weighed down by all of this.”

“I am weighed down.”

“Yeah but you need to look it. The audience needs to see it to sympathize with you.” He stopped. “Give me a smile.”

The corners of my mouth tugged tightly. “That’s not a smile, that’s a grimace. Try again.”

I moved my mouth a little wider. Jonah shook his head.

“Like this,” Evie said, stepping in front of me. She ducked her head and came back up, wearing a small meek smile, a light blush accompanying her cheeks. A smile from a girl afraid to move her mouth.

I tried it out and Jonah patted my shoulder. “That’s good, remember that.” We kept walking, down the hall, past Mr. Evans’s room, the bedroom door ominous and closed. On our way down the stairs Jonah said, “You read that quote from your sister?”

“Yes,” I said.

“And have you talked to her?”

“I haven’t had the chance.”

Jonah landed on the bottom step. He turned to me. “Jennifer promised that she wouldn’t bring any of that shit up if you stick to the plan. You admit to helping Chace cheat --”

“Even though I didn’t.”

Jonah rolled his eyes. “Even though you didn’t. Say you did and everything remains copacetic, okay?”

I sucked in a deep breath. “Okay.”

Chace was standing near the threshold of the living room, his thumb stuck between his teeth as he watched the camera crew string wires from one end of the room to the other. Most of them were wearing headphones, thick black bands running along the shape of their heads. They tested the sound of the microphones hooked on Cheryl’s royal blue blazer and the blouse of a girl who stood in for me. She didn’t look anything like me. Her hair was too short and black. Her mouth too pinched, her eyes too sharp and small. Cheryl practiced on her, sitting on the edge of the armoire, leaning over to touch her knee, smiling when she jerked away.

“I wouldn’t do that,” I said.

Chace looked down at me, a half-smile playing at his mouth. “She doesn’t know anything about you.”

Soon she would. Soon the world would know parts of me I’d intentionally tucked away.

Hours before Jonah sat down with Jennifer and Cheryl’s producer, picking through acceptable and unacceptable questions. Jennifer had the last say and she chose all the questions lined in red, the ones conjured up to humiliate me the most.
How many boys did you sleep with in college? Did they have girlfriends? Do you remember their names?

Jonah put his foot down when it came to my sister. “I told them, this interview revolves around you. Laura will only be brought up if you go off script.”

My responses were drilled into me by Jennifer and Jonah, the pair of them leering over me as I sat on the edge of my bed and spit out recited lines. “Yes, I knew my boss was seeing Jennifer but I didn’t care.” “Yes I knew I could’ve hurt someone but I’m very selfish.”

“They want me to lie,” I said.

Chace nodded. “Jonah told me. But you don’t have to do that.” I looked at him. “You don’t have to do this. Whatever she has on your sister can’t be that bad.”

The corners of my mouth turned down. Chace didn’t know anything about me either. He probably assumed everything he should know about his girlfriend – favorite color, favorite food, the last thing I said to my mother – were hidden in the foggy recesses of his memory, instead of buried in piles marked “unimportant”.

Before his memory loss I told him little things about me and he conveniently forgot them all. As much as I cared for Chace, he didn’t feel the same. His feelings were fabricated like his vague memories. He thought he loved me, but he didn’t, like he thought we were together but we weren’t.

A scruffy P.A. crossed the room. “We need to get you mic’ed.”

I turned to Chace. This was it, the moment where I told him the truth.

Chace raised an eyebrow before he leaned forward and planted a kiss to my lips. “Last chance,” he said, words ghosting over my mouth.

I swallowed the lump in my throat and entered the room.

***

Cheryl was far less intimidating behind the camera. It was the lights propped around us that caused a pool of sweat to break out at the back of my neck. Jonah was standing a few feet behind her, out of sight from the cameras but in my line of vision. He dramatically wiped his hand across his forehead, mouth forming around the words, “You look nervous.”

The cameras were rolling. We weren’t live but that didn’t calm my nerves. I felt them in my hands, my feet, and my stomach, dancing around like fireflies, pinching the underside of my skin. I was sitting with my back straight but not overly-confident, the posture of a girl who had to teach herself how to sit properly. (“Keep that,” Jonah said, “it’ll remind the audience that you’re an average girl just like them.”) My knees were pressed together conservatively (“Don’t do anything to suggest peeking under your skirt.”) and my hands were folded neatly in my lap. I was the picturesque school girl, non-threatening and innocent.

“Alice Posner,” Cheryl said, my name sliding off her tongue. “You are only twenty-two years old and yet you’ve made quite a name for yourself.”

I cleared my throat. “I suppose you can say that.”

“
Oh
I can say that. But while other girls your age are writing web series and books and breaking barriers for women in the fields of science and math, your name is plastered over the world wide web because, not only did you sleep with your boss, he was in a relationship with his pregnant girlfriend while you were doing it.”

“I didn’t know she was pregnant at the time.”

“But you’re aware that she’s pregnant now?”

No shit
. I bit the inside of my cheek. “Yes.”

“And how does that make you feel?”

My gaze traveled to Jonah. Jennifer was next to him, her arms crossed over her chest, breasts popping out of another dress.

“Guilty,” I said.

“I’m sorry,” said Cheryl. “Can you say that again and look at me?”

“I feel guilty knowing I was sleeping with a man who was cheating on his pregnant girlfriend.”

A noise of approval hummed in the back of Cheryl’s throat. “While a majority of the internet condemns your actions, there’s a small sector of people who are on your side. They call themselves Posner-ites. Have you heard of this?”