here you have to respect that.”
Oh shit. Kyrie.
“Mom, I didn’t mean to—”
“Oh no, you never mean to do anything you do. I bet you didn’t mean to sleep with your own priest, either. And you didn’t mean to keep sleeping with him for six years.”
“We’re having this fight again? I was twenty years old when I lost my virginity to him. How old were you when you had sex the first time?”
“I’ve repented. And clearly you haven’t.”
“I’m a sexual being, Mother. I know you don’t want to accept that your daughter has sexual thoughts and feelings, but I do.”
“I know you do. We all do. But we don’t go around writing about them, do we?”
“What?”
“Did you think I wouldn’t catch you?”
“What exactly did you catch me doing?” Elle asked, more confused now than ever.
Her mother reached into the pocket of her robe and pulled out a sheaf of bent and folded papers.
“You left this here in the laundry room the other day. And it’s a damn good thing I’m the one who found it. Mother Prioress would have you out on your ass in five seconds if someone had brought this smut to her.”
Elle saw it now. Her story. Her Daphne and Apollo story.
She laughed.
“You think this is funny?” her mother demanded.
“You found my book,” Elle said. “That’s why you’re mad.”
“What did you think I was talking about?”
“Nothing,” she said hastily. “I didn’t know you’d found it.”
“I did find it, and I read it. You can’t have pornography in a convent. Have you lost your mind?”
“Mom, it’s not pornography. It’s a romance novel. They sell them in grocery stores. Last time I was in a grocery store I didn’t find any porn. I looked.”
“This is what you think romance is? No wonder you fell in love with that man.”
“Yeah, no wonder.” Elle tried to compose her face into a mask of sincere contrition. Or at least a passable fake. “I’m sorry. Seriously. There’s nothing good to read in this place. It’s all theology and politics, and I got bored. It’s a novel based on a mythology story.”
“It has explicit sex in it.”
“People do have sex sometimes. So I hear. Every now and then. When they’re not in a convent.”
“You don’t have to write about it.”
“I don’t have to. But I want to.”
“Are you trying to get thrown out of here?”
“Well, no.”
“Then if I were you, I’d burn this trash. Burn it today. Get rid of it before anyone else finds it and reads it. And stop wasting your talent on this garbage. Use it to write something good. When God gives you a gift, you use it to glorify Him, not to glorify sin. Or worse, to glorify yourself.”
“Some people don’t think sex is a sin, Mom.”
“And some people think the world is flat and that there’s nothing wrong with letting a priest beat you and abuse you. Those people are wrong.” Her mother threw the pages down onto the counter. She pointed her finger at them. “Now get rid of that before someone else finds it. I find it again, and I’ll throw you out of here myself.”
Elle swallowed. “Okay,” she said. “Sorry.”
“Good. Thank you.”
Her mother shook her head in disgust one last time. She walked to the door of the laundry room. Elle could have wept from relief. She’d been so sure her mother knew about her and Kyrie...but this. A dirty story? That was nothing.
But...
“Mom?”
Her mother paused by the door and turned around.
“What, Eleanor?” she asked in clipped tones.
“Do you really think I’m talented?” Elle’s voice sounded small even to her.
Her mother didn’t answer at first. She looked at Elle, who squirmed under the intensity of the gaze.
“I read every page,” her mother finally said.
“You did?”
“I didn’t need to read every page to know what it was I was reading. I’ll admit, I kept reading long after I told myself I should stop reading.”
“I guess that’s a good sign,” Elle said, smiling. She hated how much she wanted and needed her mother’s praise. “I’ve had fun writing it. I think...maybe...I think it’s pretty good.”
Her mother fell silent once more. Her lips pursed tight and her eyes revealed nothing. Elle tried to see her mother as her mother, not the nun she’d become. If she took off the habit and put on her old white bathrobe and grew her long black hair out again, a little makeup...she’d be Mom once more.
“Do you remember a day in school...you must have been six, I think. First grade. And they took all the children out of your class one by one and gave you tests out in the hallway?” her mother asked.
“I think so. Yeah,” Elle said, nodding. “There were flash cards and different colored blocks and we had to do puzzles for these people.”
“You know what that was for, right?”
“No.”
“They were administering IQ tests to all the first graders.”
“So that’s what that was. Anything to get out of class for a few minutes. They gave us cookies and orange juice.”
“I never told you this, but the school called me a week later and said you’d scored higher than any other student in your grade. Your IQ was—”
“One hundred and sixty-seven,” Elle said.
“Genius.”
“I wouldn’t test that high now,” Elle said, shrugging. “Kids tend to test high.”
“Did they tell you your score?”
“He did,” Elle said. He meaning Søren.
Her mother’s body stiffened. “He did? Why?”
“He was in charge of my probation, remember? And I had to keep my grades up. One day I was struggling really hard with my pre-calculus. I was in tears because I couldn’t figure it out. He caught me crying into my math book. So he made me some hot chocolate and sat next to me on that bench that’s across from his office door. And he told me he’d seen my school records and that my IQ was something very special. I told him I didn’t feel very smart right then. He said IQ wasn’t a measurement of what you know but how fast your brain works. If the brain was an athlete, then math wasn’t my event. But someday I would find my event and when I did, nothing would stop me from doing whatever I wanted to do with my life. Then he helped me with my homework until I had it halfway figured out.”
For a long time her mother only looked at her. Elle picked up the pages off the counter.
“Maybe this is my event,” Elle said, clutching the pages to her chest.
“I should have told you how smart you are,” her mother said. “I shouldn’t have let that be something he got to tell you.”
“So why didn’t you?”
“I don’t know. You were so confident, so arrogant growing up...I assumed you already knew you were the smartest girl around. You certainly acted like you knew everything.”
Elle laughed a little. “I was an arrogant little shit.”
“Was?”
“Okay, I am. Still am.”
“You know, I’d have to send you to your room sometimes instead of fighting with you because I was scared you’d be able to talk your way out of whatever trouble you’d gotten into. You certainly ran circles around me with your logic sometimes.”
“Still don’t know what the point of making a bed is if I’m only going to sleep in it that night and mess it up again.”
“Same reason we get up every morning and try to make our world better even though we know someone is going to mess it up. That’s why.”
Elle laughed and nodded. “That’s actually a good point. You’re pretty smart, too, Mom.”
“Thank you. Glad you finally noticed that.”
“Only took me, oh, almost twenty-seven years.” Elle would be twenty-seven soon. Too soon. Time was passing quickly an
d she still didn’t know what to do when and if she left the abbey.
“You’ll behave, won’t you? You’ll get rid of that story?”
“Sure. Of course. It never existed.”
“I sleep easier knowing you’re here and not out there. I don’t want them to make you leave.”
“Are you sure?” Elle asked. “I mean, really? This is your world. Being a nun was your dream. I know it’s probably distracting having me here.”
“Out there,” she said, nodding toward the windows, toward the big wide world outside the walls of the convent. “Out there, I can’t see you, and I don’t know what’s happening to you. I don’t know if you’re safe or if you’re scared, if someone is hurting you or helping you. Here, I can keep an eye on you. I know you’re safe. I know you can’t stay here forever. But while you’re here...yes, I’m glad, Ellie.”
“Thanks, Momma. Thanks for taking me in despite...you know.”
“You left him and that life you were in. All is forgiven. And yes, I think you’re very talented. But write a real book, please.”
Elle took a step forward but her mother was already gone. She sat down on a chair and laid the handwritten pages of her book on her lap.
She’d spent all morning folding laundry, but now she unfolded. She unfolded every single sheet of paper that her mother had crushed and crimped. With a sweep of her hands she flattened the pages and put them back into order.
She had no intention of destroying her story. She’d cut her own hand off before she burned any book, especially one she’d written. No, she would do something else entirely. She’d finish writing the book. And she would get it published. And she would make money off it. And then her mother would see that her book was a real book. People did have sex, after all. Why shouldn’t she write about it?
It needed a title, her book did. That would make it real. A thing must have a name. She couldn’t go on calling it “the story” or “the book.” And once it had a title then she could figure out what to do next. Although she’d read books all her life, she had no idea how to get one published. But she’d figure that out later. Finishing the book was step one.
Elle flipped through a few pages and stopped to read a random section.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were a virgin?” John asked as he soaped his hands and ran them over her inner thighs and the raw skin of her torn hymen. He’d taken her home like she’d asked him to but instead of putting her in his bed and making love to her again, like he had in the woods, he’d run a bath, set her in it and washed the dirt and blood off of her.
“Does it matter?” she asked, wincing as the hot water scraped the most sensitive places inside her. “Would it have stopped you?”
Daphne looked at him and saw him now as if for the first time. Before she’d lost her virginity, he’d been a monster to her. Mr. Apollo—six feet four inches tall, powerful, able to kill her brother without breaking a sweat. But now she saw he was a man, a human man, not a monster, not a god. A scared man who had made a terrible mistake and had made loving her his penance.
“Yes,” John said. “It would have stopped me.”
“That’s why I didn’t tell you I was a virgin.”
Elle stood up and opened the junk drawer where all the random things she pulled out of the nuns’ habit pockets ended up. The drawer was filled with thimbles and keys, half-used packages of tissues, small tubes of hand lotion, small prayer books and worn-out rosary beads. Elle pulled out a pen from the jumble and removed the cap. At the top of the first page of her story she wrote the title. At least it would act as the title until she thought of something better.
THE VIRGIN
By Eleanor Schreiber
A moment later she crossed out her own name and changed it.
By Elle Schreiber
27
Haiti
GÉRARD RETURNED AND Juliette returned to him. Kingsley did nothing but lie on the beach for one entire week after she left him.
He wasn’t grieving.
He wasn’t mourning.
He was planning.
It would be easy. He knew his way around the house. He could stage a break-in at night, shoot Gérard and get Juliette off the island before they even found the body.
Or he could fuck Juliette. He’d spent a whole week fucking Juliette and he’d got very good at it. And he could do it under Gérard’s roof and time it so that he saw them together. It could drive Gérard into a rage. Kingsley had been trained to kill a man with one well-aimed punch to the Adam’s apple—asphyxiation would ensue—or a sudden hook to the jaw could break the neck if sufficient force was applied. If Gérard attacked him, then anything Kingsley did after that would be considered self-defense. Juliette wouldn’t have to know it had been Kingsley’s plan all along.
Then she would be free.
Violent fantasies consumed Kingsley. Once plotting to kill had been all in a day’s work. His ability to plot an assassination remained as keen as it was in his days doing his quiet cleanup work for the French government in Russia and Eastern Europe. His skills were just as sharp. If only he could get his conscience out of the way so he could go through with it.
The men he’d killed in the past had all warranted his intervention in their continued existence. He’d killed killers. Gérard wasn’t a killer, though. His crime was taking advantage of a scared fourteen-year-old girl trying to save her mother, using her love for her mother to hold her hostage, and to deny her children, the one solace she’d begged for. It was a crime. A crime that needed punishing.
And he would. He could. For Juliette he could.
On the night of the seventh day of his plotting, Kingsley went for a long swim in the ocean to clear his mind and focus his attention. He would go to Gérard’s and watch, only watch. When did Gérard wake up? When did he go to bed? What was his routine? What rooms did he frequent? Did he drink heavily? When did he like to fuck? Morning? Noon? Night? All of them? He wouldn’t let Juliette know he was there. No one would know. And once Kingsley knew everything he needed to know, he would do what he had to do, anything he had to do as long as Juliette was his by the time he was done doing it.
Kingsley dressed in dark clothes and sandals. He’d need to be barefoot in Gérard’s house. Silence was the difference between life and death. Life for Juliette. Death for Gérard. He drove to the house and parked far away, hiding the car well out of sight of any passersby. He didn’t bring any weapons with him. He didn’t need them. Gérard was a politician. He’d never even served in the military. He might be tall and strong and handsome, but tall and strong and handsome would be no match for a trained killer on a mission.
Once near Gérard’s home, Kingsley walked its perimeter. He stayed hidden behind the trees and ornamental gardens that surrounded the estate like a green wall. Gérard no doubt saw himself as untouchable on this island. Here he was—rich, powerful, from a white French family that had been here for three hundred years. They’d come before the Revolution and stayed long after many French colonists died or returned to the old country. He had diplomatic immunity, a house like a castle and enough money to buy his way out of any problem.
He wouldn’t buy his way out of this one.
Kingsley entered the house through a sliding glass door using his elbow to open and close it. He stood in the dark room, a small office or library, and let his eyes adjust to the interior light. At the door he listened and heard voices in the house. More than two. Gérard had company.
When the sound of the voices dimmed, Kingsley eased the door open and stepped into the hallway. He stayed close to the wall and took note of every door, every window. If he were caught by anyone other than Gérard, he’d have to escape quickly.