| |
Flashing lights. Red strobes. Blue strobes. It was all a blur in her mind as she revisited the familiar scene in her dreams. Blood on the pavement. Marianne screaming as people came running at the sound of her cries. Bradford trying to maintain some sense of control. More blood. There was blood all over the car seat, dribbling down as the vehicle finally stopped rolling over and collided with another object. Someone was in the seat next to her, but the girl was no longer moving. A shrill scream sounded from somewhere outside of the mangled car, a world once known now forever gone...
The scream from the nightmare had merged with the piercing blare of the alarm as her deep, brown eyes fluttered open and then squinted shut from the bright sunlight washing over her bedroom. The damned thing always startled her, despite knowing that it would go off at exactly six every weekday morning. Vera rolled over in bed and slammed her palm against it, stopping the noise in its tracks.
It was Monday.
Again.
The weekend had been uneventful.
Boring even.
She had binge-watched Game of Thrones upon learning of its popularity all across social media. It was a bit gory at times, but a show that had sucked her in after the very first episode.
Sighing, Vera’s eyes rolled over to the alarm clock again and she realized with a start, that ten minutes had gone by. Jumping into the shower quickly, the young woman used a generous portion of her beloved Gucci bath gel. Each time she bought it and sometimes even splurged on accompanying lotions occasionally, it certainly put a dent in her wallet. But despite her insecurities about her looks, her wardrobe, and just herself in general, Vera repeatedly splurged on this one item at least four times a year.
It made her feel, or at least smell, pretty.
She had never been a pretty girl. A slightly chubby little girl, Vera Willis had had it rough growing up in her parents’ household. Her mother constantly nagged her about taking more care with her appearance, while her perfect sister had gotten all the praise.
Victoria had always been the perfect one.
The pretty one.
The slender one.
The brain.
Good grades in school, millions of friends, and their teachers always remarking on what a success Victoria Willis was going to be when she grew up. Even amongst her own family, Vera noticed how they had treated Victoria very differently than how they had treated her and it hurt. She hadn’t understood it back then, but she could readily admit that she didn’t care about it anymore. She had pretty much caused an even further rift between herself and her parents, or at least that’s the way they would make it appear when they complained to anyone that would listen about what a problem she was.
How they would lament that Vera always had to make things difficult.
Vera had left her parents' house, right in the middle of dinner, and hadn’t been back there since. That was over three weeks ago, but she could hold a silent treatment just as long as they could. Vera was tired of being a doormat for everyone to complain to, yet when she had her own problems no one was anywhere to be found.
Maybe listen to her moan and groan for a change.
Three years ago, her cousin had accused her of being selfish when she refused to watch her bratty kids while she went out on the prowl for yet another man. She and Allison had never been close and Vera almost hadn’t picked up the phone when she saw the number. But the wimp in her did it anyway, so as not to start a whole ‘thing’. For Allison to suddenly call her as if she had nothing better to do than babysit three children she barely knew, was a bit out there.
“Well, I figured you weren’t busy. Anyway, I will be over there in about twenty minutes. Where do you live again?”, Allison asked distractedly right before she screamed at one of the kids, the squabbling in the background grating on Vera’s nerves.
It was all she could do to hold her composure right before she blurted out that she was busy and Allison would have to find someone else.
That’s when it got ugly and after Allison hung up on her, angry, her mother called to berate her about being more supportive of family members who were having a rough time.
Allison was a divorced mother of three kids.
So what?
Vera’s whole life had been a ‘rough time’ and no one gave a shit.
Vera had been the one to hang up the phone that time.
Toxic.
They were all just toxic.
They barely bothered with her anyway, but she discovered that she liked it that way. She was down to only three anti-depressants from five since the incident with her parents' dinner and she was beginning to feel the weight come off of her shoulders.
Drying off, Vera realized with a start, that she was seriously running late now. Dressing quickly, she threw on a simple black skirt and a creamy, white button-down blouse. She grabbed her favorite red sweater and her purse as she slid her stocking-covered feet into a pair of worn, scuffed black flats. Her dark hair was a bit rough-looking, split-end city truth be told, but she didn’t have time to deal with it right now.
Vera locked up her apartment and hurried to the elevator at the end of the hall. She grabbed a brush from her purse and began to whip it through her limp hair as the car rode down six floors to the lobby. She quickly checked the mailbox, retrieving the contents from Saturday since she hadn’t gotten out of bed all weekend long.
Junk-mail.
A Verizon phone bill.
She owed Con-Ed big-time for the excessive use of the air-conditioning from the final, nasty heatwave that had fallen over New York City a few weeks ago.
No time for the subway today.
Hailing a cab, she gave the driver the address of the upscale mid-town Manhattan office building she’d worked at for the last three years. It was a good job, and she was very good at it. Her boss, however, was an asshole. Some days it took everything in her not to go upside his head because she couldn’t take him. He was a narcissistic, chauvinistic, dickhead who she absolutely could not stand. He would stride around the office as if he was a king, and it showed. Most of the people at the office kissed his ass to avoid becoming his target. He would antagonize people in the office to the point that they would either get fired (or at least she felt that he would somehow get them fired) or they would just quit in exasperation since upper management refused to address the issue.
The CEO of the company was a nice enough man, but he, unfortunately, lacked the backbone to deal with this assertive, alpha-male type so he was basically a victim, too. The worst part of this whole thing was that the asshole didn’t even realize that he was the problem.
But Vera knew.
She would sit and quietly listen to the office gossip from co-workers huddled in distant corners away from his view, or holding private rants amongst each other in the break-room or the restrooms.
It was always someone else and him.
The common-fucking-denominator.
Vera had learned that the CEO was aware of this issue, but he wanted them all to work together as a team. Try to get along for the benefit of the company, which had been hemorrhaging money lately for some odd reason. The CEO wanted everyone pulling their weight, and Vera understood that.
There was no time for drama.
But it was like that with small offices sometimes.
In the past, Vera had worked at much larger companies, where there were so many people that no one paid her much attention anyway. She preferred it that way because most workplaces today had too much damned strife. Once, she even provided support to an office manager and it was just the two of them, which suited her also. Unfortunately, that had been a temporary situation she’d gotten into before she found her current job. A maternity leave assignment, the temp agency had said. It had been nice there and Vera had gotten very comfortable for the six weeks she worked with family-like staff.
Small offices with ten or twelve people?
She couldn’t stand it because there was always that one freaking asshole that threw a monkey-wrench into the works and made it impossible for them all to work cohesively as a group.
A cancer.
The yellow cab rolled to a stop in front of the tall building in midtown and Vera paid and got out of the car. It was starting to get brisk, all traces of summer completely gone now that it was mid-September. She was glad that she had thought to bring her sweater. As she walked into the building holding up her identification, the two uniformed guards didn’t even glance her way.
Yup.
Invisible.
Vera stepped into the elevator and punched the button for the nineteenth floor, listening to the annoying Musak that every elevator in the world seemed to have. When the doors slid open, she was greeted by the sight of her coworkers laughing and talking together as they shared the past weekend’s events with one other. She mumbled a ‘good morning’ as she made her way around them and to her lone desk, which was located right outside of Asshole’s office door.
None of them responded, or even looked up for that matter.
Typical, but not unexpected.
None of them ever bothered with her.
She came in, did her work, and then went home. She got the feeling that they didn’t trust her because of her ties to Asshole and his assistant, Linda. She could almost feel sorry for Linda because she handled all of his personal affairs, events, invitations, travel itinerary and was even on-call during the weekends. But not too sorry, because that bitch acted just at haughty as Asshole at times, but then other times Vera would witness her near tears after one of Asshole’s many tirades. If her co-workers had ever bothered to ask her, they would know that she hated him just as much, if not more, than they did.
Vera had barely set her purse down on her desk, before Asshole’s door ripped open and he barked at her to get his coffee. The door slammed shut and then he was gone. The last time she’d gotten his coffee, just this past Friday afternoon at exactly four-fifty-nine on the nose, she had spit in it. Maybe a trip to the ladies-room first, with his coffee cup, on her way to the break room might be a good idea. When she went to the break room after locking her purse in her desk drawer, she stopped in the doorway. A stunningly, gorgeous blonde woman was standing at the counter making herself a cup of tea and she turned upon hearing Vera’s arrival.
“Oh, hi!” she chirped, a flawless smile spreading across her narrow face as she moved towards Vera, her pale blue eyes made up perfectly as the scent of what smelled like Yves Saint. Laurent ‘Mon Paris’ wafted from her.
Vera had that very fragrance on her wish list at Sephora. Her bee-stung lips wore a glossy, pink stain “I’m Elizabeth, well Lizzie anyway. Lizzie Juhl.”
Vera stared at her wordlessly, the petite figure draped in a very fashionable fit-and-flare navy blue dress, high-heeled black patent-leather peep-toe Mary-Jane’s on her feet, her golden hair down and flowing around her slender shoulders, and to her surprise, a rare smile began to tug at her lips.
She was stunning.
“Vera.” she finally managed.
“Oh my God! I love that name! It’s one of those names that you don’t hear anymore, but people still like it. It’s a lot classier than Elizabeth, that’s for sure.” She said, with a little, embarrassed giggle as Vera gave her a matching, fake but cautious one. She didn’t know what the hell this girl was doing here, but Vera was starting to feel trepidation in the pit of her stomach as she continued to take Lizzie in.
“Are you a temp?” Vera finally asked as Lizzie shook her head.
“No, I was just hired last week and today’s my first day. I’m so stoked.....” Lizzie gushed as her words began to fade as Vera realized that she had a big problem now in the form of this bubbly, blonde woman who she was trying very hard not to like.
“And what will you be doing here?” Vera pushed, after another long, anguishing pause as the fear in her body spread far and wide. If she didn’t know better, she thought that she was about to throw up right then and there and that would ruin everything. The CEO was looking for a new executive administrative assistant, and Vera had secretly submitted her resume. Working for Asshole was getting to be tiresome and she needed a change. Not to mention the huge raise that came along with it. She hadn’t heard back from them yet, and she didn’t know how she’d react if Lizzie was the new assistant. She watched the gorgeous young woman take a leisurely sip of her tea as if she didn't have a care in the world, a little sigh of contentment escaping her as she relished her beverage. Just as Vera was about to lose her shit, Lizzie finally spoke up after a second sip.
“I’ll be working with the accounting department.” She admitted as Vera finally let go of the breath that she’d been holding.
“Well,” Vera said, as she set Asshole’s cup down and started filling it with coffee from one of the large urns at the counter. “Welcome.”
“Thanks,” Lizzie said, with another pretty smile as she started to leave and then turned back towards Vera. “Hey, what are you doing for lunch today? Maybe you can give me the low-down on the office. You know, dish the dirt?”
Vera just blinked.
In the four years that she’d been in the office, she had always eaten alone. Usually a solitary sandwich or salad of some sort and a bottle of water, or iced tea down in the building’s lobby. There was a café-style restaurant there that most of the employees used. No one had ever invited her for lunch before.
“Uh......we can go to the café in the lobby. Twelve-thirty okay?”
“That’s fine!” Lizzie gushed, as she turned and walked out as she called over her shoulder, “See you then!”
Vera was still stunned after she’d brought Asshole’s coffee back to his office, which she had spit in again, and then got started on his calendar. She couldn’t believe that Lizzie had been so nice to her, but then again, she had only invited her to lunch because she needed help fitting in with the others. Vera could already see where this was going. She’d go to lunch with Lizzie today, and tomorrow the woman would forget all about her as she got to know the others. Lizzie would undoubtedly learn how none of them liked Vera and thought she was a company spy for Asshole. Lizzie would join the others in their open loathing of her, leaving her completely alone. Again. Vera was tempted to cancel the lunch and just eat by herself as she always did, but when twelve-thirty started to roll around she was a bit nervous. Excited, too. And just as she promised, Lizzie came and found her, a pretty navy-blue purse hooked over her slender arm as she smiled at Vera.
“Ready to go?” Lizzie asked as Vera managed to make her fingers move to unlock her drawer and get her purse.
This was going to be interesting.
***
Lizzie had her slender arm hooked familiarly through Vera’s as they came back from lunch, laughing together over some wild story the woman had told her at the nearby diner they’d eaten at. It had been the most fun she’d had in a long time. She was very sorry to see it end, but duty called. As if on cue, Asshole came out of his office and stood watching them with his hands on his hips as he tapped his foot impatiently.
“Bye.” Vera practically whispered, surprised that Lizzie had treated her, “Thanks again for lunch.”
“We’ll do it again tomorrow,” Lizzie whispered back, which thrilled Vera to the core.
“Sure.” She said, as she scurried to her desk, where Asshole immediately started in on her even though she still had a few minutes left of her lunch break.
“Where were you?” he demanded as Vera took the papers from his hand and tossed them on her desk. “I’ve got a big meeting in twenty minutes and of course, you forgot to email me my notes....”
“I did email them to you. Right before I went to lunch.” Vera said, already sick of his crap, which was occurring on her time.
That part really pissed her off.
“No, you didn’t because I never got it. Get it on my desk, now.” Asshole said meanly, shaking his head in exasperation before slamming back into his office.
Vera sat at her computer, after taking a brief moment to count to ten, and opened her email program. She looked in the folder that housed email items ‘sent’, ‘delivered’, and ‘read’, and sure enough the email was there.
Just as she had told him.
When he had pulled this shit before, Vera set up her emails to him with an automatic receipt of it being read just to cover her ass. She could tell if and when he opened any emails from her, so there was no denying he got them. He hadn’t pulled this on her in a while, but she wasn’t going to let him get away with it. Vera printed out the mysteriously missing email, complete with the status of ‘opened and read’ right at the top in bold letters and took it into Asshole’s office. Without even a thank you, he waved her away from his door and she pulled it shut behind her.
One day almost done, only four more to go.
***
Vera rolled her eyes as her cell phone rang for the second time in five minutes while she was eating her dinner at home that night, sucking her teeth. She had let the first call that came through go to voicemail because she knew that it was her mother.
It had to be.
No one else ever called her.
But Vera wasn’t in the mood for Marianne right now.
She increased the volume on the television as she nibbled on the crackers she’d pulled out of the cabinet to go with her canned chicken noodle soup. A loud knock sounded suddenly on the front door and her eyes widened. No one ever knocked on her door, unless you counted the little pain-in-the-ass bastards that lived down the hall that thought it would be cute to keep knocking on her door and running away until she complained to management. The large immigrant family had long since moved away after that, after a small war that waged for months between her, them, and the building's management, so this was going to be interesting. They had finally gotten evicted, due to having too many people living in the apartment at one time, which was a strict violation of the lease.
Typical New York City set up in these buildings.
Good.
Folding her arms across her chest, Vera walked to her front door, looked out the peephole, and continued to stare as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
Shit
There stood her mother, bold as brass, on the other side of the door. The older woman had on one of her more expensive suits, a light fur jacket to complete the look. Her makeup was impeccable, despite the fine lines in her face showing her age. Of course, Marianne's frosted, pale hair was styled perfectly and despite the wind picking up outside, Vera knew that the short, trendy bob would not budge an inch. Not with the amount of teasing her mother insisted on during her weekly visits to the salon to preserve her elaborate hairdo. Marianne was tapping the foot of her high-heeled leather boot now, her patience wearing thin.
“Vera!” she shrieked, banging her fist against the door now, “I know you’re in there!”
In a panic, Vera gave the place a quick once-over to be sure that there wasn’t a thing out of order for her mother to criticize. Marianne started hammering on the door again as Vera ripped it open.
“Finally!” her mother snapped, hurriedly pushing past her daughter as Vera sarcastically waved her hand in an afterthought manner to invite her mother inside as she rolled her eyes. “Didn’t you hear me knocking? I could have been mugged!”
“Hello to you, too, Mother,” Vera said, quietly with just enough disdain in her voice to get away with it.
“What were you doing? You would think...” Marianne inquired nosily, and then she paused mid-sentence as her eyes crawled towards Vera’s bedroom before they widened slightly. A sly smirk appeared on her face now. “Do you have a man in here?”
Vera sighed wearily deciding the best way to deal with Marianne would be to find out what she wanted so that she could get her mother the hell out of there. She was quite surprised to see Marianne since the big blow-up three weeks ago, but neither one of them mentioned it.
“What do you want, Mother?” Vera asked, tiredly, suppressing a groan as Marianne took off her lightweight fur coat and made herself comfortable on the sofa.
Vera didn’t want her to get settled.
Vera wanted her out of here already.
“That’s a nice tone to use with your mother.” Marianne snorted, “But then again, what else is new?”
Vera shook her head lightly, knowing that her mother would never change and she sat in her favorite upholstered chair from IKEA, as far away from the older woman as possible.
“I could use something to drink first. Really, Vera, where are your manners?” her mother chastised her, as Vera got to her feet.
“I’m sorry, Mother.” She apologized meekly before she could stop herself.
Habit.
She fixed a pot of tea and listened to the semi-silence of the living room from her small kitchen as Vera imagined her mother sitting on the sofa as if she were a queen. She sucked her teeth again as she heard the droning from the television cease, indicating that Marianne had found the remote control. That meant a lecture was coming if Marianne wanted it completely quiet. When the tea was finally ready and Vera served them, she sat back in her chair.
“So....” Vera began, not even bothering with dressing her tea as Marianne took exactly one careful sip with pursed lips, as if the gray ceramic was dirty, and then moved the cup away. She had finished. “What’s going on?”
“Your father and I have been talking and we’d like you to reconsider moving back home.”
Vera closed her eyes as she braced herself for what she knew was coming next. They didn’t care about her enough to honestly want her back home, and when she had moved out two years ago they had called her selfish. Treated her like she was a monster for simply wanting her own life, away from them.
She didn’t have any friends.
Not a one.
She could never bring them home without fear of her parent humiliating her in front of them. The few that she’d tried to make in the past would look at her with pity once her parents started in on Vera about her life choices, her lack of friends, and a boyfriend because she didn't take enough care of her appearance. The worst, without doubt, was Marianne's regular Academy Award-winning performance when she began filling them in about Victoria.
What had happened to her and how she had died so young.
What a tragedy the whole thing was.
What a disappointment that Vera was, in their manner towards her if not in their words.
She wasn’t surprised at all that her mother still kept a shrine for a dead twelve-year-old girl, after all this time. Marianne would even talk about Victoria as if she were here. Who would want to be friends with someone whose parents didn’t even respect their only remaining daughter, the one who was still alive?
The one who still needed and wanted love.
The one who had parents that could only lament about the daughter they had truly loved while blatantly ignoring the obvious needs of the other. The one that had been lost, no gratitude for the one they still had. After all, Vera had been in the accident too.
Her older brother, Henry, had been smart and had gotten away as soon as he graduated high school and started college out of state. But Hank was different than she was. He was everything a father could be proud of. Good grades, football scholarship, and he’d met his wife Pauline while attending school and married her shortly after she got pregnant during their junior year. Of course, neither one of her parents had said anything about the fact that they were having a baby out of wedlock. They were just happy that their golden-boy son was giving them a grandchild.
Then Marianne would start grilling Vera about taking better care with her appearance so that she could attract a man enough to possibly incite marriage and have a family of her own. During her early life, she had tried hard to please her mother but Marianne was always so critical about everything, causing a phobia in the girl about her looks and self-worth, Vera had just simply given up. No matter what she did with her hair or makeup, she would never be good enough to be a wife or even a mother, if she could be honest.
She just wanted to be alone.
Okay, not completely alone, but maybe with a man that would adore her and do all the romantic stuff that she could only dream of. Or at least fantasize about it while she’d masturbate, guiltily, when she was feeling extremely lonely. Then she would feel pitiful about having to take care of her own needs in this manner, terribly saddened that she even had to resort to such a thing. Everyone needed love, even if others felt that they weren’t important or good enough.
Sometimes she wondered what it would be like to have a man in her life and be married, hell, someone that would truly love and care about her so that she could feel normal. Maybe even have a child or two and then that idea would quickly leave her head when she thought about her brother’s bratty kids and how he and Pauline allowed them to get away with murder lots of the time. Because of that, Vera had a hard time with the realization that a man would want and expect her to give him children, and she knew that she didn’t want any whiny, snot-nosed rug-rats in her life.
Vera had been little more than a live-in maid for her parents and an unwilling babysitter for her older brother’s kids anytime he and his wife wanted to go away somewhere for a vacation alone. They wouldn’t even ask her if she minded watching them, but like magic, Hank’s children would appear on their doorstep anytime the need arose. Marianne would make herself scarce, even though she had been the one to tell Hank and Pauline that it was no problem for the children to visit. And after the doting love and attention focused on the children, particularly Hank’s daughter who was the very image of Victoria at that age, her father would disappear into his study never to bother with them again until their parents came around to pick them up. So that left it up to her to entertain the two children, who seemed to delight in acting like they were out of their fucking minds, tearing up the house and getting into everything they possibly could.
Even her bedroom, which should have been a safe haven for her, Vera had taken pains to keep locked to dissuade the children away from there, only to be reminded by Marianne that they didn’t lock doors in their house. So she had taken to putting the things that she didn’t want to be broken or messed with, up high and hidden away where little hands couldn’t reach. Of course, the children had been instructed to harass her with anything that they needed while her parents went on with their business as if none of them were even there. Her only escape had been going to work, and even having to deal with Hartwig at the time had been better than sitting at home, helplessly, while everyone just did whatever they wanted to and at her expense. Vera had taken the long way home plenty a night after work, just aimlessly riding the subway all over the city with no real destination, just to avoid going home. She had gotten away with it a few times, too, until her mother got wise to her and complained. According to Marianne, she was a selfish girl with no care for anyone but herself, but they had created that monster because it was apparent that none of them cared about her so she had to care about herself. No one ever bothered with her, otherwise, or ever asked her how she was doing, what she was up to, or what was going on in her life. Vera was expected to do everything that everyone asked her to do and not complain about anything, ever.
No matter what she did to try and get her parents to see how wrong they were in treating her as if she didn’t matter to them, it all fell on deaf ears so she’d faded into the background over the years. Or worse, they would tell her that she was being ridiculous, or childish, which she had since learned was a term called gaslighting. Making her feel like it was all in her head as if she’d made something as bad as their treatment of her was, up. That was two years ago when Vera decided to stop being a victim and leave her awful family to their own devices so that she could live her life in peace. Vera had boldly, and suddenly, moved out after apartment-hunting on the sly as far away from her family as she could get.
Her parents lived in Douglaston-Little Neck near the Queens\Nassau County Long Island border and she stayed in Manhattan on the Upper West-Side. Hank and Pauline lived in a stately home in Great Neck, in which Pauline was a stay-at-home mom. Pauline had been somewhat nice to her at first, but over time the girl started treating Vera like the rest of them did. It was easy for the woman since she saw that none of them respected Vera so why should she? Pauline wanted to fit in with her husband’s family, fearful of getting on their bad side, so she did as they did to safeguard her position. So the one ally in the family Vera primarily thought that she might have was suddenly gone and that was the end of that.
Her cousin Allison and her family lived near Astoria in Long Island City, in one of those fancy, new high-rise buildings that Queens was becoming inundated with. This made them the closest relatives distance-wise but thankfully they stayed away. When they did come to the city, which was often and the biggest reason they chose to live in Astoria since it was so close, they never bothered with her and that was fine too. Vera had been nervous the first few nights in her nearly empty apartment, but she had gotten used to it.
Although a little scared, she was furious that her parents were being so ignorant about a young woman wanting a place of her own.
Her own life.
“Don’t think that you can come back here when that Manhattan rent eats up your entire paycheck and you get kicked out!”, Bradford had shouted after her as she had left their house with the last of her things, for the final time. “Don’t you even think about it! You will get nothing from us!”
She didn’t need their money.
She didn't want their money.
Vera had diligently saved her money and researched the rent issue well before she had even called a realtor to start her hunt. As usual, her parents never gave her any credit for having a brain and still treated her like she was a child. Of course, her mother had gotten on her case for getting her father upset, being that he had a heart condition. Even anger management hadn’t helped him, nor did the fatty, fried foods that he still ate whenever he wanted. Bradford wasn’t quite a very heavy man but he was rather obese, had bad eating habits, and never exercised anything but his mouth when he yelled at her. Her father also hadn’t stepped a foot into the city since she’d been there and this was only the second time her mother had ever been there. She found the less that she said to Bradford, the better. Even after all of these years, he just couldn’t let it go and treat her like she was his daughter. There wasn’t a therapist in the five boroughs, hell, in all of the free world that could fix what was broken between them all.
“Vera!” Marianne said, exasperated as she snapped her fingers in front of her daughter’s face. “Are you listening to me? Honestly....”
“Goodbye, Mother,” Vera said, quietly as she stood and went to the door and opened it, waiting for her mother to get up.
Marianne smirked as she rose to leave.
“Just think about what I said. You’ve had your fun and now it’s time to try and be a good girl. Come back home.”
Vera didn’t say anything as her mother walked out and she closed the door behind her, locking it.
