Marizabet, I Come Your Room
Marizabet,
I Come Your Room
Liko tumbled into the pool, had a drink and a shower, and fell asleep in the cool of his bedroom for forty dreamless minutes, waking to the sound of loud laughter and Salma barking.
He got dressed and fretted, because a bubble of festive joy was inflating in the kitchen, and he was going to pop it with the words my son passed away.
Liko Greenman, International Man of Misery.
“Just get it over with,” he mumbled.
But when he came into the kitchen, Maisie simply put arms up around his neck and drew him close without a single word.
Her hand rested on his head while Huff rubbed a few slow circles on Liko’s back.
They stood still, took one deep silent breath together, and Liko knew they already knew.
He’d been spared. The bubble was pre-popped and it had been Dane’s doing.
My friend is here, my friend has my back, my friend took care of it.
“We’ve been thinking about you so much,” Maisie said.
“It’s so good to see you,” Liko said, meaning it to his bones.
The evening unfolded, soft and superb. The steaks were perfect, and the corn—renowned in four counties—didn’t need a lick of butter or speck of salt. A mountain of gnawed cobs piled up as the wine flowed and the conversation twined and wove around the four people, dripping clusters of laughter.
“How’d you two meet?” Liko asked the Jensens.
“A Great Dane introduced us,” Huff said.
Maisie raised her glass. “Thank you, Great Dane.”
Dane waved a dismissive hand. “What are brothers for?”
“When was this?” Liko said.
“Same night I met Ethan and Nomi. At a rather momentous art show in SoHo.”
“Life-changing,” Huff said, running a hand lightly up and down Maisie’s back.
Though he was thoroughly stuffed, Liko found himself fixating on the intimate caress with a wistful hunger.
Not missing Janelle, but a mate with touching rights.
The partner who conveyed with a dozen little pats or pets, You’re mine, I’m yours, we’re together and all is well.
He felt Dane’s gaze and glanced over. Dane looked back with his two-colored eyes.
His face a gentle place for Liko to lay his head.
He relaxed into the idea that two couples were at this table, and he put a hand on the back of Dane’s chair.
Dane moved his leg a little, and pressed their anklebones together.
He said, “Maze, Liko wants to hear how we found each other.”
“I’m not demanding the tale be told,” Liko said quickly. “I’m just curious.”
Maisie twined her fingers and set her chin on top. “How much background do you have?”
Liko hesitated, his glance going around the table, and Dane gave a little encouraging nod. “It’s okay, we’re all friends here.”
“Concise version,” Liko said, keeping eyes on Dane. “I know after a long, abusive childhood where you were kept in the dark about way too many things, you were put into a private clinic. Among other horrendous suffering, you were forced to undergo top surgery without…”
“Informed consent,” Huff said.
“And without reconstruction. You stayed in the clinic a while longer. More unspeakably horrendous things happened. That’s where we left off the other night.” Liko glanced at Maisie and Huff. “I slept rather badly afterward.”
Maisie nodded and poured the last of the wine into all the glasses. “So Dane, have you introduced Paul Goldberg?”
“Not yet.”
“He’s a tricky one, Paul,” Huff said. “Definitely the morally gray character in the story. But without him, God knows what would’ve become of Dane.”
“Who was he?”
“Basically a minder,” Dane said. “To call him a governor is very D.H. Lawrence, but it fits. So does supervisor.”
“Handler,” Maisie said.
“Coach is the most elegant way of putting it,” Huff said.
“Basically my father hired Paul to make a man of me,” Dane said.
“To make sure I behaved the right way and, equally important, looked the right way. He took control of my clothes, my hair, my body, my looks, every scrap of food that went into my mouth. My schoolwork, my extracurricular activities, my transcript, the whole college admission process. Table manners, etiquette. He taught me to drive. He…” Dane trailed off, looking at little lost.
“Again, Paul’s a tricky one to classify,” Huff said.
“Did you know him?” Liko asked.
“Me personally? No, this is my hearsay analysis based on anecdotal evidence.”
“I only met Paul once,” Maisie said. “He came into the gallery and it was impossible not to notice him. He had such a presence. Aloof and intense at the same time.”
Dane laughed a little. “Behind his back I called him the Sphinx. He was bald with sort of cat-like eyes. He almost never blinked.”
“What was he like?” Liko asked.
“Formal and reserved and strict. I never kidded myself he was a friend, but next to my father, he was positively kind. Even though he was distant, he was handsome, and it was a time when I was discovering handsome men had an effect on me.”
“He was predictable,” Huff said.
“Yes,” Dane said. “I never knew what I was going to get with my father. His rules changed on a whim. With Paul, there was a consistent code of behavior and I understood it. He was much more generous with positive feedback, too. If I did something well, I heard about it.”
“What if you did something wrong?” Liko asked, thinking if it involved anything made of leather, he was leaving the table.
Dane shook his head. “Paul didn’t put a finger on me. He didn’t have to. He was a buffer between me and my father. If I pleased Paul, he reported back to Ivelaw, and I got left in peace. I got tiny allotments of freedom. I got to relax a little.”
Liko looked at Maisie. “Why was Paul in your gallery?”
“I had no idea at first. He did a couple loops around the exhibit, then he came to stand at a painting right by my desk. I can still see him. His back to me, perfect suit, trench coat over an arm, just cool and slick and chic. He looked straight ahead at the canvas and said, Is this by Marie Elisavette Strong?”
“Dun dun dun,” Huff sang under his breath.
“Who’s she?” Liko said.
“Me,” Maisie said. “Marie Elisavette Strong is my legal birth name, but I changed it to Maisie Montresor when I was twenty-one.”
“How did Paul know it?”
Dane raised a finger. “From me. I never knew her as Maisie. Only Marie Elisavette, which I garbled together as Marizabet.”
“Marizabet,” Maisie said softly, as if a little boy calling. “Marizabet, I come your room.”
“That’s what he’d say?” Liko asked.
“Can I come your room? I come stay your room, Marizabet.” She exhaled long.
“Anyway, my heart promptly fell out my asshole because anyone throwing my real name around had to be connected to my father. I literally had my finger on the panic button, ready to call security, but then he looked from the painting to me and said, I have a message for Marizabet. And Jesus Christ …” Maisie took her chin off her twined fingers and dropped a hand on the table to Dane, who took it.
“Only one person in the world knew that name.”
“Holy shit, what did you say?” Liko said.
“I said, What message, how do you know that name, who the fuck are you? Paul’s hand came out from beneath the trench coat and held up a book. A copy of The Secret Garden.”
“Not just any copy,” Dane said. “The Dell Yearling edition. Ninth printing. With illustrations by Tasha Tudor, who signed the title page: To Marie Elisavette, may the magic always be in your garden.”
Maisie was nodding, eyes bright. “For like a minute he was standing there, holding out the book, and I couldn’t even move.
Finally I took it.” Maisie’s hands mimed opening the book.
“I saw the inscription from Tasha Tudor and almost fell out of my chair. This was my book from my old bedroom from my old life.”
Dane put a hand on Liko’s forearm. “Sidebar. Up until this time, Maze figured everything she left behind in Malba was gone.”
“Thrown away, given away, chucked in the East River, burned,” Maisie said. “I have no daughter, she’s dead to me, never speak her name within these walls. So forth and so on.”
“But nothing was touched,” Dane said. “Her room stayed exactly as she left it. Clothes. Shoes. Makeup. Perfume. Stuffed animals. A poster of Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet.”
“Oh my God,” Maisie laughed. “Leonard Whiting, take me now.”
“Did you give Paul the book to give to Maisie?” Liko asked Dane.
“I had no idea any of this was happening.”
Maisie’s hands mimed again. “I turned the inscription page and behind it were two pictures of Dane. One as a little boy, which I immediately recognized and—”
“You did?” Liko said. “You remembered him?”
Maisie didn’t take her eyes off her brother as she drew a long slow breath in. Huff’s hand returned to her back.
“I forgot his face,” she said, “but I never forgot those eyes. How could I?”
Dane fluttered his lashes. “Heterochromia does have its perks.”
“The other picture,” Maisie began, but then stopped and shook her head. “That boy was unrecognizable. Both his eyes were brown and he was…”
“I was jacked,” Dane said. “Porto had me on so much fucking testosterone.”
“Growth hormones, anabolic steroids,” Huff said. “Combinations that would make an endocrinologist stroke out. It was criminal.”
“I went into the clinic a young prince,” Dane said. “I came out beefy, bloated, bad-skinned troll.”
“School must’ve been miserable,” Liko said.
Dane gave a sour laugh. “I made others miserable so they couldn’t do it first.”
“Our Dane, a bully,” Maisie said. “Can you even picture it?”
“No.”
“I was just an overly aggressive prick who would then go home and cry in his sister’s pillows.
How’s that for a trope? To add to the bad boy image, I had quite a lucrative side business within my circle of elite peers and their parents.
” Dane glanced at Liko. “Huff did mention this story had morally gray characters. I was dealing drugs. I learned how from Paul. Despicable, yes. It also allowed me to bank a few grand into an account nobody knew about. So maybe it’s a moral wash. ”
“Okay, put a pin in that,” Liko said, his head spinning. “Go back to the gallery, Maisie. After showing you the book and the pictures, what did Paul tell you?”
“He said Dane was probably going to make a run for it. Could he come to me? I started to say Of course but he cut me off and said, You need to look at something before you decide. What’s been done to him isn’t going to be fixed with room, board and a credit card.
Which I thought was obnoxious, but then he took out some papers from his inside jacket pocket and showed them to me.
” She paused and took a long drink of wine.
“What were they?” Liko asked.
“Xeroxed pages from his medical files. Post-op shots of the mastectomy. I didn’t understand what I was looking at. I said, What happened to him, is he sick, what’s going on? Then I got to the other pictures.” Her eyes flicked to Dane.
“What I described to you the other night,” he said to Liko. “The conditioning sessions. I didn’t know it was photographed. Must’ve been a two-way mirror in the room. Or hell, maybe the person taking pictures was there the whole time and I blocked it out.”
“Where’d Paul get them?” Liko said.
“My father kept copies of all my medical reports in his office. Paul had access to that office. He swiped them.”
“I was almost sick on my shoes,” Maisie said. “I told Paul, You send him here. You tell him to come here. Paul said, If I can find you, Ivelaw can. I said, You just send Dane here. Already my hand is reaching for the phone because I’m calling Gideon, I’m calling my lawyer, I’m calling my pipple.”
“But what did you say to Paul before he left?” Dane asked, like a child insisting every detail of a beloved story always be told the same way.
Maisie smiled, “I said, Tell Dane not to hide his eyes.”