Exposed: A Novel (12 page)

Chapter 28
Taylor

Andy untied me so I could do my hair and makeup and follow his rules. Thankfully the guy I was supposed to shoot a video with found out he had Gonorrhea and couldn’t make it. Sounds bad to be thankful, but any reason was a good reason. Andy shot a few pictures for my Web site, slapped me around for not being sexy enough, then threw me back into his bathroom, tied me up, and rubbed his spit in my hair.

I closed my eyes as bitter saliva clung to my eyelashes and ran down my nose. So much for getting back at him.

Andy walked to the door. “You were horrible tonight.”

He spit across the room. It landed on my foot.

“By the way, tomorrow you have an appointment to get breast implants.” He stood in the doorway. “I’m not paying for it either. Not after the stunts you’ve been pulling. I’m taking the money out of your pay until it’s paid in full.”

I wanted to refuse him or ask him what kind of stunts I’d been pulling. Seriously, I had no idea. But I couldn’t ask anything with a scarf stuffed in my mouth and wrapped around my head.

For hours I stared at the ceiling, wondering how I’d escape Andy before my breast implant surgery. Somehow I needed to tell someone and get out of his presence forever. Maybe fly to Canada for a few years until he found another girl he could ruin. Or, I could start over there. Not like anyone in Maryland cared about me anyway.

If only he tied the rope around my neck, I thought. Then I could just strangle myself to death. What’s the point of living anyway? I bet I’d have an empty funeral. In fact, I’d probably be tossed in the ground without a casket.

A tear fell off my cheek.

And another.

And another.

I woke up covered in dried spit and tears, smelling like I hadn’t showered in months, feeling like I never showered in my life. Andy tugged at the ropes around my body until they were off. He pulled me up by my hair and untied the scarf in my mouth.

Blank and tired, I looked at the ground.

Andy pulled my chin up. “Look at me.”

I did.

“All you have to do is listen.” His voice, dry and crackly, boomed through the bathroom. “Listen and you will be a lot better off. That’s all I ask.”

So I listened as he gave me orders. I showered, he watched. I did my makeup, he watched. I put on my shoes, he watched. I got in the car, he watched.

Andy had one rule.

He watched.

Yep, that was the rule. Everything I did was in his view or I didn’t do it.

I swear he must’ve been looking at me out of the corner of his eye while he drove. I contemplated jumping out of the car, but he put me in the backseat and the doors were child locked. A prisoner. A prisoner in a world I never imagined living in.

Andy turned the music up in the car. Elton John’s voice calmed me. Norma Jean’s name made me shiver. I listened, watching houses, buildings, stores, and trees pass by. She lived her life like a candle in the wind. Never knowing who to cling to when the rain poured down her cheeks. I imagined Marilyn Monroe in my head. White dress, pretty smile. Elton continued to serenade me. His sad words made sense. Too much sense. Loneliness. And even when she died all the papers had to say was that she was found naked.

The song continued, echoing deep in my heart. Never, never in a million years did I think I’d be able to relate to Marilyn Monroe.

Her name bounced off my mind.

From then on I decided to call her Norma and never look at her as the pretty woman in the white dress, but look at her and see something more, something underneath the surface that needed love and help.

I didn’t want to end up like her.

More trees blurred by, like my life. I thought of Norma. If she actually wanted to be a sex object. Or if Elton was right. Maybe “they” crawled out of the woodwork and whispered lies in her ear, making her think being a sex object would be glamorous, devoid of pain.

Maybe the money and fame enticed her. Maybe she wanted to feel worthy of love. Maybe singing to Kennedy made her feel valuable. Starving for love, she’d do anything to fill her appetite. Except her choices ate a hole in her stomach, killing her off like AIDS. Inside, under all the glory, maybe her heart pawed for love, but instead was shoved aside and neglected while her smile and curves were adored.

They crawled out of the woodwork to starve a soul so they could feed thousands of hungry sexual appetites.

I wondered if Elton really did see Norma as more than sexual, more than just our Marilyn Monroe.

I wondered if someone saw me like that.

Andy parked the car.

I looked at the large brown building with glass windows. Nothing hospital-like about it. My foot shook so fast the car started to shake.

I looked down and inhaled. Andy got out of the car and walked over to my window. He motioned toward the building, but I didn’t see anyone in the windows.

He opened my door and reached for my hand. I pulled away, hoping I’d be left alone with the doctor long enough to spill my story and run away.

Andy forced me to hold his hand and led me inside. Funny, he actually held my hand in public. What an occasion.

The office smelled like rubber gloves and citrus air fresheners. I looked around at empty chairs, then up at the TV mounted on the wall.

I expected a hospital, rules, regulations, stuff like that. I guess I hoped to hide and escape like Leonardo DiCaprio in
Catch Me If You Can
.

Andy made me sit down while he whispered to the girl at the front desk. I tried to listen, wondering if he tried to crawl out of rotted wood and lie to her too. Make another Marilyn out of her.

After whispers and giggles, he sat down beside me. I picked up a magazine and thumbed through pages. Andy watched TV. I crossed my legs and looked at the celebrities printed on magazine pages, wondering why I ever wanted fame. Being followed, chased, obsessed over—it didn’t seem that nice after all.

Andy grabbed my knee. “Stop shaking your foot. It’s annoying and childish.”

I stopped my foot and continued looking at glossy photos, analyzing bodies, hairstyles, faces that would never be mine, could never be mine, no matter how many surgeries Andy made me endure.

A door opened.

“Sadie,” a man said.

I looked up, shaking from my teeth to my foot.

Andy nodded to the man and looked at me. “Ready?”

Chapter 29
Ally

Dad and I stopped talking about Mom after my voice rose along with my blood pressure. He steered the conversation toward the little memories we shared. There weren’t many, but we remembered all we could until silence broke through our words and left us alone in the stuffy July night.

We stared at each other for a few minutes. Dad’s eyes glistened. I looked passed him at the lightening bugs.

“Let’s go,” he said, standing. “We can do this again sometime soon.”

He walked me to my car and hugged me.

I wish I could say it was a magical, happy-ending kind of hug. But it wasn’t. Awkward, loose, and quick. We hugged and parted ways.

I’m not sure what I expected, but that wasn’t it.

I pulled into the garage at home and saw Jessie’s car. Opened the door and saw his face, disheveled and unshaven.

Avoiding his eyes, I walked around him. He turned and touched my arm. I glanced at my wedding rings on the dining room table. Thoughts of Dad’s faithfulness made my empty stomach churn. I didn’t want to put them back on.

Jessie sniffed. “Allyson.”

I looked at him, back to the rings, then walked past them both. And I sighed, longing for the day when I wouldn’t want to walk by the present anymore.

Jessie wiped his eyes and picked up my rings.

Ignoring him, I went to our bedroom and saw a grey plastic bag on the bed with a note on top. For a few seconds I stared from the doorway, trying to figure out what I ordered. Quietly, I walked to the bed and picked up the note.

To my wife, the only one I’ve ever loved – You don’t need this, send it back. You are perfect the way you are. Your husband, Jessie

The name of the company on the bag caught my eye. I sighed. If Jessie didn’t think I needed lingerie then he would have kept his eyes on me all those years, instead of those women in lingerie.

He walked into the doorway.

I watched him. He watched me. Somewhere inside I wanted to run up and forgive, truly forgive, and make everything better. Somewhere underneath my desire to scream at him I still wanted his hands to caress my face and tell me everything would be okay. But forgiveness Band-Aids wouldn’t work in this case. The wound cut too far into me. So far I wondered if it’d ever stop bleeding.

Jessie put his hand on the doorknob and looked down. I folded his note in my hands. His neatly marked words disappeared behind paper. I thought of my marriage. My neatly marked marriage, disappearing behind this crazy reality.

I wanted to say something to Jess. But the betrayal, the other women, the anger and sadness, all of it stacked in front of my forgiveness like solid bricks. Unbreakable, towering, solid bricks.

Too much pride stood on my side of the wall. I knew that. I did. But I didn’t care. Humility seemed so far from reach, so pointless, that I couldn’t bring myself to think about it, much less ask God for it. Especially after what Jessie did.

Before his downfall, a man’s heart is proud, but humility comes before honor.

Jessie took a step. I looked up. He dried his tears on his sleeve. Silence climbed higher, clogging our marriage like thick fog.

I don’t even know what humility means right now, God. I can forgive, but I will never be able to forget this. And I can’t live with this pain.

“I have a problem. I’m sorry I brought you into this,” Jessie plunged the silence. “Maybe you should’ve married Sean like he always said.”

My eye twitched.

He looked up.

I looked down.

“Why should I take anything you say seriously after you ran off for days when I caught you salivating over porn again?” I said. “I mean, what were you thinking, Jess? Begging me to work through it, then looking at it again, so soon?”

“Didn’t you get my note?” he said.

I shook my head.

“I came back that day and left a note on the kitchen counter for you saying I talked to Pastor Dave. That’s where I went after you came downstairs. And I wasn’t looking at porn. An ad popped up on the side of my screen and I lingered on it, but it startled me when you came downstairs. I knew you wouldn’t believe that I didn’t find it on purpose. Anyway, I went to see Pastor Dave and he told me about a men’s retreat over the weekend. It was for addictions.” He swung his arms. “So I went.”

Ah, so this is the humility. Isn’t it, God?

I analyzed my bare ring finger.

Trapped at the end of a dead end road with no way to turn back, I sat on the bed and looked at Jess, hoping he’d break through the walls around me and carry me to the other side, carry me to himself.

But he just stood there.

I pressed my fingers together and made a heart with my hands.

A heart.

All I ever wanted in life was to fall in love, be married, have children, and live a passionate romance unknown to the world. I wanted to prove that even through trials marriages could be beautiful, romantic, and conquering amidst a thousand enemies. But I didn’t expect this trial. Porn was the last thing I expected. Lies, porn, adultery, more lies—it shouldn’t have ended up this way.

“If I knew this,” I thought aloud. “I wouldn’t have gotten married.”

Jessie’s shoulders dropped. The orange glow from the streetlight underlined his lips and jaw and drew a delicate sparkle in his eyes. I traced his highlighted jaw with my eyes and squinted to hold back tears.

Sullen and droopy, Jessie’s presence chased the light from the room, leaving us with that hollow, numbing silence when hope seems hopeless and marriages seem marriageless, leaving his eyes with no sparkle, only a shadow so alive it hid the whites of his eyes and everything else in the room.

He reached for the doorknob. My heart reached up from my chest, grabbed my throat, and shoved a heavy sob into the colorless room.

A streak of my steel blue cry saturated the room, but Jessie didn’t care.

His hand hit the doorknob and my heart hit the floor.

“I hate this,” I said between sobs.

I wanted him to stay.

The door closed, bouncing my cry back to me and twirling it around the empty room.

I fell back on the bed and cried to the ceiling, “Why Jessie? Why my Jessie?”