3 MONTHS LATER
It takes several months, a team of lawyers, and some hefty “donations” to the right people before Cole is entirely in the clear.
In the end, the Chief of Police pins a medal on Officer Hawk’s chest for closing the case on the Beast of the Bay.
Hawks scowls through the entire press conference, not at all pleased with the deal Cole struck with the SFPD.
Hawks gets the credit, and Cole gets fifty hours of community service for flipping a police cruiser in the middle of Sanchez Street. He’s been serving his time at the Bay Area Youth Center, teaching delinquents how to draw.
He comes home from his sessions in a surprisingly good mood.
“Some of these kids show real talent,” he says.
“What kind of talent?” I tease him.
Cole grins. “All kinds. That’s why I like them.”
Cole’s lawyers argued that he was wrongfully arrested, and that he had no choice but to escape after he witnessed Shaw abducting me off the street and dragging me into the labyrinth.
I supported this story, including the part where it was Cole who cut Shaw’s throat, while I fled back to Cole’s mansion. I pretended to be disoriented and in shock, freshly showered and hiding in bed in my pajamas when the police finally found me.
They couldn’t question me too hard since I had been telling them all along that Shaw was the Beast. I was the girl who had to escape him TWICE because they wouldn’t listen to me.
It helped that the cops uncovered a mountain of evidence in Shaw’s apartment.
Most damning was Shaw’s collage of stolen driver’s licenses. He had spray-painted them gold, hiding them within one of his technicolor paintings. When the cops scraped off the paint, they found the IDs of Maddie Walker and twenty other victims, Erin’s “lost” license among them.
They also found the wallets of two missing men: art critic Carl Danvers and Professor Oswald. The papers noted that Danvers attended a party with Shaw shortly before his disappearance, and that Shaw was one of the professor’s students at CalArts when he likewise went missing. The professor’s wallet finally allowed the death of Valerie Whittaker to be linked to the Beast.
Cole was extremely pleased that I managed to break into Shaw’s apartment before the cops showed up.
“And you didn’t leave a single print!” he said, admiringly.
“I learned from the best,” I grinned back at him.
I’ve come a long way on my journey, to the point where planting evidence is exhilarating rather than horrifying. I’m beginning to understand how even the most reckless acts can feel like a game, the high stakes only enhancing the fun.
Still, I’m glad it’s over.
Or I suppose I should say, almost over.
I have one piece of unfinished business to attend to.
I’m standing on the front step of a dingy, single-level house in Bakersfield. The grass is unwatered and uncut, the garden beds nothing but bare dirt.
I have to ring the bell several times before I hear the shuffling sounds of someone moving inside the house.
At last the door cracks open, and I see an eye pressed against the space, peering out suspiciously.
For a second, she doesn’t recognize me.
Then she pulls the door wide, straightening up, blinking in the garish spring sunshine.
I almost wouldn’t recognize her, either.
She’s chopped her hair to shoulder length, frizzy and uneven. Threads of gray run through, poorly covered by an at-home dye job. She’s gained weight, enough that she fills out the baggy oversized sweatshirt that once belonged to me. As faded as it’s become, I still remember that retro Disney logo on the front. I never actually went to Disneyland—I bought the hoodie at a thrift shop, hoping other kids would think I’d been.
Makeup from the night before cakes around her eyes, settling in the wrinkles beneath. The lines are deep, etched in place from every ugly expression she’s carried, hour after hour, day after day, all these years.
Her face bears record of every scowl, every sneer. No smile lines at the corners of her eyes—only trenches on her forehead, between her eyebrows, and in marionette lines running from her nose to the edges of her mouth.
She’s become a witch from a fairy tale. Transformed by misery. The darkness inside finally reflected on her face.
Those gray-blue eyes still glitter with malice. The same color as mine—cold as San Francisco fog blowing in off the bay.
A part of her will always be in me.
But I choose which part.
“Hello Mom,” I say.
I can see her struggle.
She prefers to be the one showing up unannounced on people’s doorsteps. She hates that I’m trespassing in her space, catching her unaware.
On the other hand, she’s been trying to find me for years. She can’t possibly slam the door in my face when she’s finally getting what she wants.
“What are you doing here?” she croaks.
I must have woken her, even though it’s ten o’clock in the morning. The sour scent of unwashed clothing, spilled wine, and stale cigarettes wafts out of the house. An old, old smell for me. One that recalls my earliest days.
“I brought you a gift,” I say, holding up a bottle of merlot, her favorite.
Her eyes flick to the label and back to my face, narrowing. I have never bought her alcohol in all my life.
“A peace offering,” I say. “I have something to discuss with you.”
I already know she won’t be able to resist. The wine is only half as tempting as what she really wants: the chance to dig information out of me.
“Fine,” she grunts, holding the door wider and retreating back into the house so I can follow.
That’s as good as an invitation.
I cross the threshold, closing the door behind me.
It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the interior gloom. I stand still until they do, so I don’t trip over the piles of pizza boxes, empty beer cans, overflowing ashtrays, discarded clothing, scattered shoes, stacks of old magazines, junk mail, and moldering paper plates still marked with the remains of meals long past.
“Sit anywhere,” my mother says, flopping down on a pile of blankets on the ratty sofa—clearly the same place she was sleeping moments before.
I have to move a pile of old newspapers off the closest chair before I can likewise sit down. I recognize the paper on top: it’s the same one Arthur showed me during my last shift at Sweet Maple. The one that contains a picture of me in the arts section.
A tiny smirk plays over my mother’s lips as I set the papers aside.
She sparks up a cigarette, holding it in her usual way, pinched between thumb and index finger like it’s a joint.
I know her habits so well. Their familiarity repulses me, like an old journal entry that makes you cringe.
“Do you have a bottle opener?” I ask.
Of course she has a bottle opener. I might as well ask if she has toilet paper. It’s probably even more of a necessity in her eyes.
“In the kitchen,” she says, making no move to stand and retrieve it.
This is a power play—making me fetch the corkscrew and the glasses, waiting on her like I used to.
I anticipated this, and it suits me just fine.
I carry the wine into the kitchen, which is even filthier than the living room. The stovetop is piled with so much clutter that I doubt she’s ever laid eyes on the burners, let alone used them to cook. When I snap on the overhead light, several roaches dive down under the pile of dirty dishes in the sink.
The cabinets are empty. I find the glasses in the dishwasher, amongst a pile of plates speckled with green mold. Swallowing back bile, and avoiding the roaches as best I can, I wash the cups in the sink. I have to swish a little water in the Dawn bottle to get the last dregs of soap out of it.
My mother doesn’t call out to see what’s taking so long. I hear the faint crackle as she sucks on her cigarette, followed by an exhale and a wracking cough that rattles in her chest.
The glasses are wet, with no paper towel to dry them. I shake them off, then search for the bottle opener. Unsurprisingly, it’s out in the open on the kitchen counter, next to my mother’s keys, an open tube of lipstick, and a handful of loose change. Next to that, a dozen prescription bottles, some with her name on them, and some bought or stolen. Most of the bottles are already empty.
I bring the glasses out filled to the brim, and pass one to my mother.
She takes it, saying, “Where’s the bottle?”
I retrieve it from the kitchen, setting it on the coffee table between us, atop a stack of old Vogues. I’m not the first person to do this—Anne Hathaway’s face is already distorted by several wet rings.
My mother takes three swallows of the wine, gulping it like cool water after a long race. Sighing in satisfaction, she leans back against the threadbare cushions of the sofa. Now she’s smiling, smoke drifting up from her cigarette, hanging over her head like her own personal storm cloud.
“Come back to brag?” she says.
“Not exactly.”
“What, then?” she snaps. “What do you want?”
She can’t imagine anyone visiting her on purpose, for the pleasure of her company.
In this case, she’s right.
“I saw you gave another interview about me,” I say.
She lets out a snort of air, the closest thing to a laugh.
“Don’t like me spilling all your secrets?” she sneers.
My mother still has the mannerisms of a beautiful woman—she arches her eyebrow in the same haughty way, holding her cigarette with theatrical flair. Men used to fall at her feet. She had this dark confidence that sucked them in until they realized that everything about her is an act. She’s allergic to the truth, she won’t tell it even when it would benefit her to do so.
Which is why it will be difficult to get what I want from her.
“I don’t care what you say to reporters,” I tell her. “It doesn’t matter. Nothing you do can tear me down now.”
“ ‘Cause you’re fucking some artist?” she scoffs. “I know how that works. You’re nothing without him. When he’s tired of you, he’ll toss you aside and you’ll be right back where you started.”
She takes another gulp of wine, the glass more than half gone.
She really believes what she’s saying. The world is so ugly to her. People’s motivations so cruel.
I could almost feel sorry for her.
Almost.
“You’re telling your story, not mine,” I say.
She sets her glass down hard, a little wine sloshing over the rim.
“You think you’re better than me because you stroll in here in your fancy new clothes, ‘cause you got your name in the paper? I know who you really are. I fucking birthed you. You’re weak, you’re stupid, you’re lazy, and you’re nothing but a filthy little whore. You can paint a billion paintings and not one of them will change what you are inside.”
Triumphantly, she picks the glass up again, downing whatever remains inside.
I watch her swallow it all, my own wine sitting untouched next to me.
“Good,” I say, softly. “Now that you’ve finished, we can address what I actually came here to discuss.”
She frowns, her forehead furrowing.
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
I reach in the pocket of my suede jacket, pulling out a small bottle of liquid pseudoephedrine.
“I put these drops in your drink. Colorless, tasteless. You might have noticed a little bitterness, but it obviously didn’t stop you drinking it down.”
“You spiked my drink?”
Color rises up her neck, from the collar of my stolen sweatshirt.
“Poisoned it, actually.”
She makes a move to get up from the couch, but she’s already unsteady. Her elbow buckles under her.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you. You’ll be dead before the ambulance arrives.”
“You sneaky little bitch! You filthy nasty—”
“I wouldn’t do that either,” I snap.
She stops talking, her mouth closing like a trap. Her eyes water until the pupils swim, and I can see the shallow hitches of her chest. Some of this is fear, but the rest is the drug taking effect.
“That’s better,” I say, as she sinks back down.
“What the fuck do you want?” she hisses, panting fast.
“I have the antidote. I’ll give it you. I just want to know one thing.”
“What?”
She’s writhing against the cushions, the pseudoephedrine taking hold.
I stare at her, face still as stone, not a hint of sympathy.
“I want to know my father’s name.”
She lets out several irritated hissing sounds, squirming on the cushions. Her face is deeply flushed now, her skin sweating. Her breath grows more and more shallow.
“Fuck you,” she snarls.
“Suit yourself,” I say, standing up from my chair.
“Wait!” she cries.
Tears run down both sides of her cheeks, mixing with the sweat. She clutches the front of the hoodie, pulling it away from her chest as if that will ease the pressure.
“Tell me his name,” I say, quietly, relentlessly.
She’s groaning and writhing, pulling at the shirt.
“Tell me. You don’t have much time.”
“Arghhhh!” she groans, rolling on her side and then on her back again, thrashing around in the blankets, trying to ease the pressure any way she can.
I’m colder than ice. I feel nothing but the relentless drive to squeeze this secret out of her. The one thing of value she could tell me, but she always refused.
“Tell me,” I order, my eyes fixed on her face while she twists in a rictus of agony.
She makes a mumbling sound, drooling a little at the strained edges of her mouth.
“Tell me!”
She shakes her head like a toddler holding its breath, eyes slitted, hatefully obstinate all the way to the end.
“TELL ME!” I roar, and I slap her hard across the face.
The pain jolts her. Fear replaces stubbornness as she finally realizes I’m not fucking around.
“I DON’T KNOW!” she howls, her voice strangling in her throat. “I NEVER KNEW! Are you happy, you fucking cunt? I never knew who he was! I don’t even remember it happening.”
She rolls off the couch, shoving the coffee table with her hip as she falls, toppling the bottle of wine so it tumbles on its side and pours the liquor onto the floor with a steady glug, glug, glug.
I make no move to right the bottle.
I don’t touch my mother, either.
I watch her squirm and buck, her face the color of brick, her hands twisting into claws as she grasps at her chest.
Her mouth moves silently, her lips trying to form the word antidote.
I look down at her, pitiless.
“There is no antidote,” I say. “There never was. Nothing can save you. Just like nothing can change you. You are what you are … dead to me.”
I leave her lying there, twisting and croaking out her last breaths. I won’t even give her the comfort of my company. She can die alone, like she was always going to.
Instead, I carry both glasses of wine back to the kitchen and dump them down the sink. I wash the glasses and return them to the dishwasher, wiping my fingerprints off every surface I touched: the Dawn bottle, the faucet, the handle of the dishwasher, the interior handle of the front door … Every place I touched while inside the house.
By the time I’m finished, my mother has stopped moving.
I don’t bother to clean up the wine, but I remove my prints from the bottle, laying it back down on its side.
I put the drops directly into her glass. There won’t be any trace in the bottle.
I doubt they’ll even autopsy her body. The effects of pseudoephedrine are similar to a heart attack. Even if they run a full-panel blood test, the cornucopia of drugs in the house will muddy the waters. She was trying to kill herself long before I helped her along.
Leaving the house feels much better than entering.
The warm sun bathes my face, the fresh breeze reviving my lungs after the stale fug of the house.
A handful of cherry blossoms float across the lawn, blown from the trees in the neighbor’s yard. A single petal lands on my palm, before fluttering away again.
I feel as light as those petals, alive on the air.
I meet Cole in Yerba Buena, where the party is already in full swing.
I’m showing my new series, The Other Gender. This one isn’t drawn from my past. It’s an examination of female empowerment through the iconography of the ages. I’ve painted gender-swapped versions of Attila the Hun, Alexander the Great, Suleiman the Magnificent. I’m showing the history of the world if women were the only species. Marilyn Monroe sings happy birthday in her see-through dress, dancing on the lap of a female JFK who smokes her cigar with all the same lust in her eyes, but a sense of playfulness too, mutual enjoyment.
The music blasting from the speakers is nothing like my last show: it’s boisterous, confident, triumphant.
Because that’s how I feel.
I’m on top of the fucking world right now. I don’t need to wait to hear what everyone thinks of my show. I fucking love these paintings. I loved every minute of making them. I put them out with overflowing pride, with confidence that everyone who saw them would feel something: they’d feel what I felt painting them.
Every woman who walks the galleries is laughing and pointing out their favorite images to their friends.
I’ve deliberately invited every woman in this city that I admire. I want them all here, celebrating who we are and what we can accomplish.
It’s not about wishing we were JFK. It’s about planning how we WILL be, in the not-too-distant future. The next person who stands behind the presidential pulpit and gives a speech that enlivens the heart of the nation won’t be an old white man.
I put Sonia in charge of the whole thing, from the guest list to lighting to marketing materials. This is Sonia’s gallery, a new space she’s rented on a 12-month lease, primo real estate in the heart of the east end. The palatial galleries are already filling with her favorite female artists, some local, some international.
This is her debut as much as mine. She is slaying, holding court in a stunning black gown, closing deals faster than her newly-trained assistant can keep up.
I hold my glass up to her across the room in a silent toast to her future success. She grins back at me, letting Allen Wren believe that he’s getting some kind of deal on the hottest new artist out of Mumbai as he signs the purchase agreement.
Cole is just as busy, arguing with Marcus York at top volume. Marcus is trying to rope him into another sculpture, this time for Golden Gate Park.
“No fucking way! The last one almost killed me.”
“What, from a little snow? Come now, we’ll build this one in the summer!”
“We won’t build it at all, ‘cause I ain’t doin’ it.”
“You need time to think.”
“I need time to drink,” Cole says, seizing another glass of champagne off a passing tray. “I don’t know if I’m going to work at all this year.”
“You don’t mean that,” I say, slipping between him and Marcus York and stealing a quick kiss. “You love working.”
“I used to love working,” he says, grabbing a handful of my ass, not giving a fuck if York is still watching. “Now I’m distracted by more interesting things …”
“Well, I’m sorry to hear you say that,” I pretend to pout. “Because I heard about an opportunity opening up in Venice …”
I pull the plane tickets out of my purse, fanning them open dramatically in front of him.
“I need a hot young artist to accompany me … I could write you a letter of recommendation if you’re interested?”
“What’s gotten into you?” Cole says, pulling me into the adjoining gallery so he can kiss me deeper and harder. “Whatever it is, I like it …”
I tilt my head up, running my tongue along the side of his neck, all the way to his ear. Then I murmur, “I took a little drive this morning. Stopped in Bakersfield.”
Cole goes still, his hand resting on my lower back.
“Oh, really?” he says, no hint of play in his voice now. “Did it satisfy?”
I hesitate, really considering how I feel.
“It feels right,” I say, at last. “It feels good.”
I can feel him smiling, his face pressed close to mine.
“Because it is,” he growls.
