When Smiles Fade (54 page)

“I know,” Emma said sympathetically, “I understand now how you feel. I’m real sorry about that. I was young.”

“Yes, I understand that,” Valerie said gently. “And I’m sorry for testifying against you in court. That attorney told me it was the right thing for me to do. But I was scared to death that you would come after me if they let you off. But now I can see that you have finally matured enough to understand that if you had just not been such a little rebel when you were younger things may have been different for you.”

“Well, I guess we learn as we get older,” Emma said, swallowing the lump that had gathered in her throat at her mother’s statement. “I was hurt that you testified against me. But now I see that you didn’t have a choice. Well, it all turned out good in the end and I think we can make a new start together.”

The idea of not being alone anymore appealed to Valerie. “Why don’t you two move in here with me?” she offered. “I have plenty of room. We can share the expenses and I can look after Isabella while you’re at work.”

“I don’t know,” Emma said hesitantly. “I’ll need to think about it. I mean, it’s awful soon and, well, Isabella and I will need a little time to think about it. I can let you know in a couple of days.”

Valerie was visibly disappointed. The prospect of not living alone anymore had given her hope.

As they were leaving, Emma promised her mother she would call in the next day or two. Valerie was eager to have people back in her life. She needed others to live with her again and help drive away the loneliness that had fallen over her life like a heavy wool blanket. With the prospect of having family move back into the house, she was optimistic about life getting back to normal. Just as it used to be, she thought, when they had all lived together and Pepper was the man of the house. After all, she reflected, whatever others might think, everything she had ever done in her life—all her sacrifices—had been for an unselfish purpose: to keep her family together. Valerie lived in deep denial of who she really was, and of the heartache that she had heaped upon her daughters, all for the sake of keeping a family around her. This was a personality flaw that no one would ever change.

Driving back to Kensington, Emma’s thoughts lingered on her mother. She hadn’t changed much in the years since she’d been gone. In many ways, she was just the same. A little more pathetic, perhaps, now that her beauty was gone and in its place were the gruesome scars on her face that would remain a permanent reminder of her past mistakes. Deep down, Emma knew that she would go back and live with her mother. She and Izzy needed to start over, and she wanted to get the child out of Kensington. She decided to call her mother in a day or two and let her know they were coming home. She smiled, thinking how delighted Valerie would be at the news.

Emma and Isabella moved back to Chain Street a week later. They found an excited Valerie eagerly awaiting their arrival. She had baked chocolate chip cookies for Izzy as a special treat. Emma looked on, reminding herself that her mother had never done anything special for Gracie and her. They settled in quickly, and within a week, Emma had painted the room she and Izzy shared, bought furniture, and even installed new lighting so that her niece would have no difficulty reading. Isabella spent most of her time in her “new” room, now that it was painted and decorated the way she liked it.

It was less than two weeks after they had moved back to Chain Street that Valerie went to Friday night bingo with her friends and returned ecstatic.

“Oh, Emma!” she exclaimed, “I met a man. He’s just wonderful! He’s asked me to go on a date with him tomorrow night. He didn’t even seem to notice what happened to my face!” she gushed.

“Wow! That’s great, Mom,” Emma said, echoing her enthusiasm. “Did you say yes?”

“Are you kidding?” Valerie retorted. “Of course I said yes! I haven’t been asked out on a date in years. Who in their right mind would turn a man down for a date?” she rattled on.

Over the next two weeks, and to Emma’s delight, her mother went out with this new man almost every night. This gave Isabella and her time to spend alone in the quiet of the house. They were able to read and play games without Valerie’s incessant jabbering about herself.

One night, after a date at the movies, Valerie boasted, “My boyfriend, Ted, has a house on the beach in Florida. He wants me to move there with him. He’s also promised to take me to his plastic surgeon so that I can have my face fixed.” Then her voice dropped to just above a whisper, as if she were letting Emma in on a divine secret only meant to be known by special people such as them. “I suspect he’s filthy rich.”

Valerie was the happiest Emma had ever seen her. All of her mother’s dreams were coming true. A knight in shining armor had come in to save the day. Emma was beyond thrilled that her mother was willing to give her new relationship a go. With Valerie gone, the idea of having the house just to the two of them indefinitely seemed very appealing. She was well aware that her mother lived for male attention. Valerie’s beauty had been her greatest asset in attracting that attention. That was precisely the reason why Emma had mutilated her face. But now, watching her mother behave like a giddy young girl, Emma laughed quietly to herself. She was about as different from her mother as one could get. Unlike Valerie, she was independent-minded and wanted nothing more than to be self-sufficient. Besides, after Salvatore, she didn’t know if she would ever be able to love another man again, and certainly not in the way she had loved him.

“Mom,” she suggested while Valerie was busy packing her bags, “now that you’re moving to Florida, I was thinking that Isabella and I could live here and pay the bills and mortgage for you. Does that sound okay? I really don’t want to uproot Izzy again.”

“Of course that’s okay, darlin’!” Valerie cooed, ready to be generous now that she had something better to move on to. “My home is your home. I think it’s a wonderful idea!”

“Good. So when are you moving?” Emma asked, flashing Valerie a smile so bright that it reminded her of the beauty she’d lost and stirred envy in the older woman. But she shook it off after remembering what Ted had promised about the plastic surgeon.

“Next week! Can you believe it? My friends are just going to die! I’ll miss them, of course, but now they can come and visit me at my house
on the beach
! Everything is finally turning out the way I wanted. I have my daughter back
and
a new granddaughter. And to top it all off, I have a rich, handsome boyfriend! See, Emma, my sacrifice has been worth its weight in gold. Good things come to those who wait,” she declared.

Over the next week, Valerie quit her job at the grocery store, said her good-byes to her friends, and packed her belongings. It was Friday night and Ted was coming to pick her up early the next morning. Emma had cooked a farewell meal for her mother that the three of them shared.

After Emma put Izzy to bed, she went back down to the kitchen to help her mother clean the dishes. She chatted easily with Valerie about her new adventure as they worked together to tidy up after dinner. Valerie yapped nonstop about her new life with Ted, while Emma talked about enrolling Izzy in school the following Monday. Drying the last frying pan, Emma looked at her mother with pity. She was the dumbest person on earth, she thought, lifting her arm and whacking Valerie on the side of the face with the heavy metal pan. As her mother slipped out of consciousness, the last thing she saw was Emma standing over her, her green eyes blazing.

On Saturday morning, Sydney arrived at the house on Chain Street to watch Izzy for the day. Once they were playing a game in Izzy’s room, Emma went into the bathroom to change. She put on one of her mother’s “going-out” dresses that was two sizes too big and a pair of old sneakers. She tucked her hair under a brimmed hat and put large sunglasses on. One would never imagine how beautiful Emma really was under the unattractive camouflage she was wearing. It was exactly what she’d intended. As she descended the stairs she yelled, “See you this afternoon, girls. Have fun.”

Forty-five minutes later, Emma walked into Dunkin’ Donuts in West Philadelphia. She looked for a man wearing a green baseball cap and walked up to him, “Ted! Right?” she asked joyfully.

“Yeah, that’s right,” he replied. “I was instructed to come here and pick up my five hundred bucks. I assume everything went as planned with that Valerie woman. Man, she gave me the willies with that face of hers! She is one fucked-up broad. Ewww!” He flailed his arms, as if he were trying to shake a bug off himself. “She’s one foul chick,” he went on, “but hey, five hundred bucks to tell some homely woman I love her and we’re going to live in Florida and I’m gonna pay to fix that fucked-up face of hers—that’s the easiest money I’ve ever earned!”

Emma pulled the envelope from her pocket. “Here’s the money,” she said. “Thanks for everything.”

“Sure thing!” he responded, accepting the envelope and leaving right away, an expression of satisfaction plastered on his face.

Emma waited for him to drive away before getting into her own car. She quickly pulled out her cell phone and made a call. “Thanks, Salvatore,” she said. “Everything worked exactly as planned.”

“Good. I’m happy to hear it went smoothly. I am very happy you called me. I’ll talk to you soon?” he asked hopefully.

“Yes, I’ll call you. And Salvatore…thanks again,” she said with deep affection in her voice.

When Valerie woke up in the middle of the night, her excitement over moving to Florida flooded her with a sense of immense pleasure.
What time is it
? She wondered drowsily, puzzled as to why she had woken up so early. She came fully awake when she tried rolling over to look at the alarm clock next to her bed and couldn’t. She realized then that something was preventing her from moving. She couldn’t see a thing through the shroud of darkness, and as her senses jolted alive, she smelled dirt. She put her hand out in front of her and felt plywood. Terror surged through her body as she began to push at the object on top of her but it would not budge.

She felt the dirt, cold against her arms and the back of her neck. In a panic now, she scratched and clawed at the plywood with her fingernails. Then she began screaming at the top of lungs, until her air started to grow thin and her breathing became labored. She knew then exactly where she was and how she’d gotten there, as her fate wrapped itself around her in that suffocating space. She realized how she had been fooled and that Emma would never come for her. The realization made her lose all self-control. Sobbing and shaking uncontrollably, she contemplated the reality of what lay ahead. The grimness of what was to come engulfed her in horror as she felt the bugs crawling on her lower legs and feet. Valerie tried to swat them off, but the tight space in which she was confined would not allow her to. All she could do was lie there and wait for death to come.

In the late afternoon, after Sydney had left, Emma sat watching television with Isabella. She felt blissfully content as her mind wandered momentarily to her mother, now lying in her shallow grave in the basement. The same grave Valerie had left Gracie to die in. The dimwit hadn’t even bothered to fill in the hole after they’d left home. Emma’s demons were finally laid to rest.

“Aunt Em, is Grandma ever coming home?” Izzy asked suddenly.

“No, baby. She moved to Florida, remember?” she reminded her niece.

“Oh yeah, that’s right. But it’s okay. She was weird. I didn’t like her that much anyway,” Isabella confessed.

“Me neither, sweetie, me neither,” Emma stated with heartfelt honesty.

Find out what happened to Emma’s friend, Alessa…

Read Paige Dearth’s debut novel,
Believe Like A Child
. A victim of child rape herself, Paige wrote this work of fiction based on her darkest idea of who she might have become had fate not intervened in the nick of time. Here is a sample of Believe Like A Child…

How It All Began

Alessa awoke in the middle of the night to find her nightgown bunched up around her chest and her uncle’s fingers between her legs. Just seven years old, she was scared and confused by what her so-called protector was doing to her and pretended to still be asleep, hoping it would make him stop. Alessa didn’t know if what he was doing was right or wrong; all she knew was that it filled her with dread. Ten minutes later, she felt as if she were going to explode right there in her uncle’s bed from the terror welling up inside her. She pretended to be just waking up, and gathered the courage to look up at him with wide, terrified eyes.

“Just lie back and be quiet,” he rasped. “I’ll make you feel really good.”

Then he placed his thick, wet mouth, still stinking of cigars, over hers and continued to explore her undeveloped body until he had finally entered her. Alessa was young, but knew instinctively that no one would believe her, if she reported what her uncle had just done to her.

Alessa was the youngest of four children and the only introvert in the group. While her family was loud and opinionated, she was quiet and timid. And because she was so different from the rest of them, she often found herself watching the chaos that ensued during family gatherings from the periphery, like an outsider who didn’t belong. She wondered why God had placed her with them. She couldn’t relate to her parents; nor did she share any of the qualities that characterized her siblings. In the constant arguing and heated debates that they had with each other, the seven-year-old found herself lost and forgotten.