Exposure (11 page)

“
C
J
,” my mother was saying to me. I was visiting her place in Brooklyn, trying to help her pick up the pieces from her latest mistake. This particular mistake was named Clifford, like the big red dog, and he suited that name in that respect, as he was red-headed and weighed over 300 lbs. “I need you to go the store for me.”

“Sure, mom, whatever you want or need,” I said. I was trying, very hard, to make sure that she didn’t have some kind of a breakdown. Breakdowns were fairly frequent for her, which actually were the proximate cause for most of her relationship failures. Then, once the relationship actually did fail, her breakdowns became that much more acute.

She shook her head. “But first I need to talk to you about what’s going on with me.” She started to cry. “I just am in such despair over my life. I just don’t know what I’m going to do.”

I put my arm around her. “Mom, it’s going to be okay. You’ll be on hubby number 6 in no time.”

“Not helping,” she said, but she did chuckle a little. “Oh, Lord, CJ, if somebody would have told me when I was 16 that my life was going to be like this, I would have punched them out for saying so. You, Stella and little Nathaniel are really all that is keeping me together. I hope that you know that.”

“Mom,” I said, “I take it that you haven’t been keeping up with your therapy.” Mom had actually discussed her therapy sessions with me, and I knew that the therapist was telling her that she was too dependent upon the people around her for her emotional satisfaction. She was encouraged by said shrink to try to look within herself for happiness, and, to that end, she was trying to find things that made her happy. Internal things. But that clearly had failed, and all of the exercising, book reading and Meet Up groups that she had turned to in an effort to try to make herself feel happy went to the wayside.

I guessed that it was really quite difficult to change after all.

“I know, CJ, I know. I probably put too much pressure on you girls to try to bring me some sunshine.”

“You do, but that’s okay,” I said. “We love you very much.”

She got quiet. “I love you and Stella very much, too. But, I hope that you don’t take offense to this, but Nathaniel is really the light of my life. I guess it’s because you and Stella are grown and you don’t really need me so much anymore. Especially you, CJ. You’ve become such a beautiful and successful woman. I’m just so proud of you. But you two are independent. Nathaniel isn’t. He needs me, because he’s only four years old. It’s nice to be needed.”

I bit my tongue. I knew that it was nice to be needed, too, but the problem with my mom was that the feeling of being needed by somebody centered her world. That was her focus. And, as much as I wanted her to find some kind of emotional resilience in some other kind of way, I knew that to ask that of her would be fruitless. She was who she was.

The upshot was that, every time she got divorced, she felt worthless, because she had tried so hard to make her husbands dependent upon her as well. Trouble was, she was attracted to the more independent types, so the whole thing inevitably blew up in her face.

“Well, mom, I understand your feelings. Stella and I do have our own lives.”

“I wish I did,” she said, as she looked sadly at the picture of her and Clifford in happier days. “Ah, well, regrets, I have a few. And, unfortunately, they’re not too few to mention.”

“I know.” I started to feel uncomfortable about the maudlin turn in the conversation, so I decided to change the subject. “Anyhow, where is that little rugrat Nathaniel?”

“In his room, napping,” she said. “I will have to say that Nathaniel will probably outshine all of us. He’s such an intelligent little boy and so beautiful.”

“Oh, that’s so true,” I said, and we were right about that. He was only four, but he was advanced for his age. He was ahead of his peers in vocabulary, and he picked up things very quickly. He was also very observant, and was able to articulate things better than most kids his age.

“Okay,” I said. “I was going to say that I should take Nathaniel to the store with me, but it probably isn’t such a good idea to interrupt his nap.”

“You’re right,” mom said. “But I would really like for him to get out of the house. He’s been wanting to get out and do things this week, but I’ve been so preoccupied with Clifford and all that’s going on with him and me, that I just haven’t been giving Nathaniel all the attention that I need to give him.”

I made a face. “Mom, perhaps my taking Nathaniel to the store isn’t what’s really needed here. I think it sounds like perhaps you and he need some bonding time.”

“Of course, I know that,” she said, but she shook her head. “I know that, but, CJ, I just don’t have the energy for that right now. So, won’t you be a good sister and please take Nathaniel with you to the store?”

“Alright, mom, but I won’t take him if he’s cranky from being woken up. I’m not good with cranky children.”

At that, I went into little Nathaniel’s room. He was asleep on his little race-car bed, his thumb in his mouth. His blonde curls were rioting around his head, and I made a mental note that I probably needed to take the little boy in for a haircut soon. He was sleeping so soundly that I hesitated in waking him up. So, I closed the door quietly behind me and went back into the living room.

“Where is Nathaniel?” mom asked me.

“He’s sleeping very peacefully. I won’t take him right now. Maybe next time.”

“I understand,” mom said. “Well, you better get going. I need a gallon of milk, because I’m making mashed potatoes tonight for dinner. I’ve even invited Clifford. I hope he makes it.”

“Trying to buy your way back into his heart through his stomach, mom?” I teased her, as I held out my hand for my mom’s car keys. As I lived in Manhattan, I didn’t have a car myself.

“Something like that,” she said, as she looked for her car keys in her purse. “Oh, crap, the keys aren’t in here.”

We then spent the next half hour looking for the car keys. “Okay, mom,” I finally said, after we had failed to find the keys anywhere in the house. “Where else have we not looked?”

She looked perplexed, and then it looked like the lightbulb had come on for her. “I know where they are!” And, just like that, she went into her bedroom, and came out with the keys in her hand. “I remember now. I put them into a little tin on my bookshelf. I think that I was just so tired last night when I got home from work that I wasn’t even thinking about it. Now, get going, CJ.”

By this time, little Nathaniel had woken up. He was in the hallway, his sippy cup in his hand. “CJ,” he said, running to me. I picked him up, and he grabbed me around the neck. I kissed his little baby face all over and he giggled. “Where are you going?”

“To the store, little one,” I said. “Do you want to go?”

He nodded his head wildly. “Yes, yes, yes, CJ. I want to go with you to the store.”

I put him down. “Well, lucky for us, losing the keys like that. Now I can take Nathaniel with me without worrying about waking him up from a sound sleep.”

My mom smiled. “Funny how that worked out. Now, don’t be long, CJ. I’ll be waiting for you to come home.”

“Okay, mom, we won’t be long,” I said. Then I picked up Nathaniel. “Come on, you,” I said. “Let’s get going.”

“Yay,” he said. “Let’s go!”

I
had run
out of Asher’s building, and, without even thinking about it a bit, I was on the street. I felt the feeling of constriction in my lungs and panic washed over me, but, somehow, I was able to put one foot in front of the other and hail a cab. I had no idea how I was able to go outside, but the thought was that my extreme desire to get away from that apartment outrode the sense of panic and dread that I ordinarily felt from being outside.

Being inside the cab made me feel safer, though, so I let out a breath and relaxed when I got inside. It was then that I let out the tears that were threatening to engulf me, ever since that horrible woman said what she did. Not that she was wrong, of course. That was the problem – she asked the right question. It was just something that I wasn’t prepared for, and it brought all of what happened that day back to me.

Darkness was threatening to engulf me again. I was pushed back to that day, when the walls were threatening to absolutely close in on me. I could no longer feel the panic about being outside, because the only thing that I could feel at that point was the blackness. It was as if somebody had turned out all the lights in the entire world, and there was nothing but the void surrounding me.

I was vaguely aware that the cabbie was asking me about where it was that I wanted to go. At the moment, he was just driving around aimlessly. I also was aware that I had very little in my bank account at that time, so paying him was going to be an extra chore. Asher had opened up a new account for me, one that had $100,000 in it, in addition to paying off my prior medical bills. But I didn’t have the debit card for that account, as it was a new account. I didn’t even know how to access it.

I had to make a decision, fast. Where could I go? I could certainly go back home to Scarlett, but there was a part of me that didn’t want to do that. As much as I loved her, I needed to be alone at that point in time. Alone with my thoughts, without somebody trying to pry things out of me. Besides, Scarlett was going to get on my case about leaving abruptly to stay with Asher, without even telling her anything about it at all.

I was also aware, acutely aware, that I needed some serious professional help. I needed my life back, and I needed a way to finally come to terms with what had happened. To finally put that incident behind me so that I could live again. I was in the mental hospital once before, but it didn’t do me much good, because I was so much in shock that I couldn’t really process much about what had happened. It was all that the doctors could do to try to stabilize me, and there wasn’t much beyond that.

I wondered if I could finally pick up the pieces if I had the chance to really spend time in a safe environment with some professionals and perhaps some groups where I could let it all out.

It was then that I remembered that Asher had put me on his insurance when I moved into his place. He had a Cadillac insurance policy, of course, and I knew that he put me on his insurance because he knew that I didn’t have any. I didn’t know for sure, but I thought that I could probably check myself into some place really good with the type of insurance that he had, and I now had.

I could get some real help, finally.

So, I told the cabbie to take me to the New York Presbyterian Hospital. This hospital was the gold standard for psychiatric hospitals in the city. It was nationally ranked. Perhaps I could finally find a way to get myself out of my funk, and find a way to come to terms with everything that had happened.

Maybe.

I hoped that I could come out of all of this with a modicum of sanity. That I could go home to Scarlett and resume my photography career. I would never get over the grief of what had happened to little Nathaniel, and, perhaps, my mother and sister would never forgive me for it. But maybe, just maybe, I could learn to live again.

I
had just gotten
into my apartment after taking way too long to get the club soda for the party. I had no idea how I ran out of club soda to begin with, but I was always a good party host, so, if something ran out, I would go and get it. And Marguerita had gone home, so I couldn’t exactly get her to run this errand for me.

I went into the kitchen and put the club soda on the counter. Sophie slinked in behind me, and put her arms around my waist from behind. I immediately took her hands and forcibly moved her off of me.
When was she going to get the point? When?

I thought about how she was becoming such a pain in my ass. The constant phone calls and emails. Then things got more serious. She knew too much about me, because she was a sneaky bitch and managed to hire some of the best professionals in the world to delve into my background. And she was threatening to expose me to some of my wealthiest clients. She was also threatening to go to the media with all my deepest, darkest secrets.

I knew then that I was going to have to, somehow, someway, get her to back off of me. It was all blackmail on her part – she said, succinctly, that if I gave her what she wanted, she would back off. And what she had wanted was me. Clearly. She had told me that either I take her back or she would ruin me professionally. Or at least try to.

Not that she could. I could contain the damage if the world came to know about who I really was. I had the best PR team in the world, and I was way too established in my line of work. Besides, most of the countries who utilized my energy sources were desperately poor countries who were trying to become industrialized. Countries that were on their way to becoming emerging markets. They could give a rat’s ass about me and my background, as long as I continued to give them what they needed in terms of clean energy at a reasonable price. And I had found a way to do just that, so my company was very much in worldwide demand.

So, at that point, Sophie’s revelations, if she were to make them, would hopefully be just a PR nightmare for me. But, at the same time, I could just have imagined the fallout from these revelations. The right wing contingent in America, who were constantly looking for an excuse to kill alternative energy anyhow, would probably seize upon my background and use it as a cudgel against me. Every talk show in America would be talking about it. It would be increasingly difficult for me to just do my job in a peaceful way, because the reporters would be hounding me day and night.

That was when I came up with my plan for Sophie to move on from being obsessed with me. I had actually asked Amy for her advice on the matter, and Amy told me that if Sophie would truly see that I had moved on, she would promptly give up on me and she could find somebody else. It was only because I was still single and not attached to anyone that Sophie was continuing her obsessive ways.

CJ just happened to be in the picture, so I chose her for the ruse. In a way, that was shitty of me to do that to her. I knew CJ’s background and what had happened to her, and it was disturbingly similar to what happened to my mother. But I also knew that she desperately needed the money, and I was happy to take care of her in that way.

What I never counted on was the fact that I was starting to have strong feelings for her. It was no longer just sex for me, but there was a real feeling of longing. Longing to be close to her. Longing to protect her. Longing to help her overcome her demons. Longing for our relationship to become real, and to see where our relationship might lead. She was so vulnerable yet tough. But I could see in her eyes that she was clearly feeling the exact same way about me.

And I had intended, after the party, to talk to her about it. About the two of us actually making a go of it. Not that I was going to make any promises to her, because I had always had a tough time falling in love. After my own background, loving another person was extremely difficult for me at best. But I wanted to see if we could both drop our walls and approach each other with more of an open heart and an understanding that we could possibly make it work.

Because I was increasingly feeling that I was falling in love with CJ.

And that party was convincing me, more and more, that my feelings for CJ were spot on. She was doing well with my friends, and was starting to come out of her shell. I could see, just a hint, of how she was before her little brother was killed in such a way, and she was truly mesmerizing to me. I wanted, so much, to help her achieve her potential again. To get her back into living and pursuing her passion.

So, I was thinking all these things before I walked through the door, with the hopes of resuming the party.

I came out into the living room with a drink in my hand for Sophie. Vodka soda with a twist of lime was all that she ever drank. I handed her the drink and looked around the room.

“Where’s CJ?” I casually asked. Not that I thought anything of it. Perhaps she was using the restroom or something.

“Uh,” Brent said, looking over at Sophie. Sophie had a look on her face that said that she was extremely satisfied about something.

I sipped my own drink and raised my eyebrows. “Where is she?” I repeated. There was something going on that I wasn’t liking. Something was in the air.

“I don’t know,” he said. “She said something about needing to leave, and that was the last we heard of her.”

I shook my head. That was impossible. CJ literally couldn’t leave. Brent must have been mistaken about that. He had to have been mistaken.

“No, no, no, that’s impossible,” I said. “She has to be around here somewhere.”

Brent shot Sophie a look. “Well, she had a good reason to leave. Sophie, why don’t you tell Asher what you said to CJ?”

Oh my God.
Suddenly, everything was becoming clear to me. We weren’t really out of club soda. Sophie probably poured all the club soda down the drain to make it look like we were out. She needed me to leave the premises so that she could humiliate CJ somehow.

I took a deep breath. “What did you say to her?” I asked Sophie.

She shrugged. “Nothing that was not warranted. I simply asked her why she wasn’t in prison for child endangerment after what had happened. I always wondered that, after hearing her story on the news.” She shook her head. “Why would you get involved with such a woman?”

At that point, I wanted to strangle Sophie. If she weren’t a woman, I would have punched her lights out. Or worse. God knew, I was capable of much worse than punching her. I had proven that to myself, time and again.

I tried to calm myself down. “You said
what
to her?”

“I didn’t say anything to her. I simply asked her a question. I genuinely wanted to know why the prosecutor chose not to bring charges against her. The carjackers are in prison for life now. Her little brother is dead. Why isn’t she serving time somewhere for her role in what had happened?”

“Because she has suffered enough. She was negligent and she knows this. But she was also extremely unlucky. She had a better chance of lightening striking her than what had happened to her, so before you get all high and mighty, you should probably try to walk just a few feet in her shoes.”

“Well, I would never-“

“Bullshit. Don’t ever say that you’re not capable of doing something like that, because I know that you’re capable of much worse. You’re capable, more than capable, of great cruelty. You have shown that time and again with me. And now with her. She made a mistake. A huge mistake for which she is paying every single second of every single day. But with you, your acts are deliberate. You deliberately set out to harm people. You are just a bad person, Sophie, while she is not. She’s a flawed person who made a tragic mistake. With you, there’s just no excuse. You’re just evil.”

There. I said it. She was evil. She had no conscience, no soul. She was just a bad person.

Was that going to make her capable of going through with her blackmail? Probably, but I had to let her do it. I was through with her games, and I was through with her. I was going to have to get a PR person to try to spin my background, although I had no idea how I was going to manage that. I had done some pretty despicable things myself back in the day. They were things that I wasn’t proud of, but they were also things that I needed to do to survive.

Sophie just made a face and went back to sipping her drink.

Nobody was quite answering my question, though. Where was CJ? “Okay, so, she’s around here somewhere. She has to be.”

“I think that she went home, Asher,” Brent said. “I’m sorry about that.”

I shook my head, but I couldn’t say anything. I didn’t want my friends to know that CJ had agoraphobia. That wasn’t their business to know that about her. And it wasn’t my business to talk about her like that behind her back.

“No, I don’t think that she went home,” I said, and I went around looking through every room in the house. I called her name in every room, and, in every bedroom, I looked in the closets and under the bed and just anywhere that she might have been hiding.

After I thoroughly searched the house, I started to feel just a bit of panic myself. CJ might have been gone. Maybe. The only other place that she might be would be down in the lobby, so I raced down there to see if that was where she was. Granted, I didn’t see her there when I returned from getting the club soda, but maybe she was somehow hiding down there.

She wasn’t.

Then I really started to feel scared for her. It was dark outside, and she had shown, time and again, that being outside put her into an absolute panic. But I got a grip on my bubbling negative emotions and just decided to calmly call Scarlett and see if CJ had returned home.

“Hello,” Scarlett said. “Who is this?”

“It’s Asher,” I said.

“Oh, Asher,” she said, evidently annoyed. “What can I do for you?”

“Is CJ there with you?”

“No, of course not. She left this home without a word to me, and I’m going to kill her for that, you know. Absolutely throttle that pretty little neck of hers.”

I looked at my watch. Maybe CJ was en route? “Okay, listen, if CJ gets in, please call me?”

“What do you mean, if CJ gets in? Why would she be coming here? You know how many problems she has when she goes outside, and if you aren’t with her, then that would mean that she’s somewhere all alone. That could only mean major problems, I hope that you know.”

“I know,” I said. “I realize that. But something happened, and she just disappeared. I can’t explain it, either.”

“She couldn’t have just disappeared,” Scarlett said.

“Well, she did. So, please call me when she gets in. If she gets in.”

“I will, but I would be surprised if she comes here.”

“I understand that, but you know what to do if she does.”

“I do.”

I hung up the phone. My mother flashed through my brain. That was the only time that she left the house – when she left the house to kill herself. She had drowned herself in the river. I came home that day to find her final note on the coffee table explaining what she was doing and why. She had finally had enough.

I shook my head.
It’s not the same, Asher, it’s not the same. CJ didn’t leave the house to kill herself like your mother did. Stop thinking that.

But I had no idea how to find her, if she wasn’t going home to Scarlett. I didn’t know her family, and she never talked about them. I was under the impression that she was estranged from them. Which wouldn’t surprise me, giving the circumstances of little Nathaniel’s death.

I went back into the apartment. “Thank you all for coming,” I said, “but I really need to be alone now. Sophie, I think it goes without saying that I never want to see you or talk to you again. Do what you think that you need to do to get back at me for not returning your obsession, but you’re toxic and, as of now, you’re gone.”

Sophie stood there, her mouth agape. Brent came up to me and whispered “don’t worry, she won’t do anything to you. She talks a good game, but, if push came to shove, she won’t do it. She will never do anything that would absolutely ensure that you and she will never be a couple.”

I didn’t care at that point. I could handle it, whatever it was that she wanted to do to me. What I couldn’t handle, at that point, was the knowledge that my actions indirectly devastated CJ. I should have foreseen this happening. I shouldn’t have put her in this position where it could happen. I never should have exposed CJ to that witch, especially alone. I felt incredibly stupid at that point, even thinking about putting CJ in the same room with that awful cunt.

I was going to have a hard time forgiving myself if something ever happened to her. Because anything that happened to her would be because of me. I put her up to this. Now she was paying the price.

Brent slapped me on the back and Amy was getting her things as they prepared to leave. He motioned to Sophie. “Come on, Sophie, let’s go,” he said. “I’ll call you, Asher. Don’t worry, CJ will be fine. She’s a big girl.”

I took a deep breath. He didn’t know about CJ’s condition. If he knew, he probably wouldn’t be so nonchalant. But, again, it wasn’t my place to tell him about that. “Yeah, I know. Thanks for your concern.”

And, at that, everybody left.