25. Where this Demon Lives
25
WHERE THIS DEMON LIVES
F or a few minutes, Alberto felt eerily calm. Nothing mattered anymore. He was vaguely aware of something hot and wet trickling down his face, yet it was no concern to him. Feeling the weight of his mother’s arms around him as she helped him take a seat on the bed, he watched Dimitri comfort his daughter. Her gushing tears were a thing of beauty. So were the sobs shaking her athletic frame, casting the illusion of frailty. A distant and familiar voice in the back of Alberto’s mind suggested to tell her she was born with great acting skills, commedia dell'arte.
“You’re right,” he mumbled when he recognised the voice. Mathias had turned up for him, if only in his head.
Mamma wouldn’t let go of him. He found her embrace both reassuring and suffocating.
Standing in front of them, Dimitri was beside himself. “What if we hadn’t shown up at the right time? Did you intend to kill her?”
Alberto didn’t reply; he had nothing to say in his defence. In fact, he perfectly understood Dimitri’s anger. He would have reacted the same if he had found some arsehole playing life-size maracas with his precious daughter. Alberto was done for, really… and it was fine. He hadn’t felt that amazing in a long time. One glance at Stasia told him that, despite the handprint on her cheek, she hadn’t felt that amazing in a long time either. After all, she finally got him to snap.
Like father, like son .
Alberto inadvertently chuckled.
Dimitri turned to him, his arms full with his evil daughter. “And you think it’s funny?”
A little bit. A little bit, really.
Dimitri’s face swelled with anger. “You little psychopath. You’re not gonna laugh so much when I press charges.” He faced his wife, and his voice turned pleading when he said, “Olympia, please! You can see he’s not normal. Look! Look at him!”
Alberto shut his eyes, afraid of glimpsing his mother’s expression. When her arms tightened around him, he opened them again. Also nestled in her father’s arms, Stasia was watching them carefully. She was biding her time, and soon enough, behind everyone’s back, she would smirk at him. She would. She had to. Because she wasn’t hurt, was she? He hoped she wasn’t, even now. Even if he had lost to her, failed to prove her wrong.
“He’s not normal…” Dimitri was saying, his mouth twisted in disgust. “He’s not normal…”
“He came at me out of nowhere.” Stasia spoke in a quivering voice. “His eyes… his eyes were all bloodshot. At first, I thought he was on drugs… illegal drugs.”
Alberto’s mother flinched, but she didn’t release him.
“It’s not the first time he’s acted weird around me, but…” Stasia let out a string of sobs, hiding her face in her father’s neck. When she drew back, tears were flowing down her cheeks again. “I’ve always known there was something off about him, but I never thought he’d hurt me !”
Dimitri pressed her closer to his chest. “That’s all right, my darling.”
Alberto shut his eyes again. Mamma’s perfume filled his nostrils, and as always, the refreshing floral notes carried him back to the villa in Napoli. Funny how it was almost preordained. No matter how hard he had willed himself not to become his father, he still ended up throwing a girl against a wall.
“I don’t want him around my daughter anymore,” Dimitri said. His tone was firm, his stance powerful. Still clutching Alberto, Mamma said nothing. “Now we know he’s dangerous. Olympia, do you hear me?”
If she did, Mamma didn’t show it, but her grip around him had grown so fierce, Alberto started struggling for breath.
“Olympia!” Dimitri pleaded. The look in his eyes suggested he was desperate for his wife to side with him. Alberto wondered if he had often dreamt of this, of being rid of him at last. “It’s not just that,” Dimitri said after a pause. “There’s also… There’s also…” He turned away from them, his shoulders slumping, then he started pacing around the room.
Alberto stared at him from the corner of his eye, as though watching a puzzling movie whose denouement left him absolutely indifferent. He looks like a blood orange now, Mathias’s voice spoke in his ear. Slowly, Alberto nodded in agreement.
Dimitri abruptly stopped pacing and stood in front of Alberto’s mother. “Weeks ago…” His voice was softer now. “Weeks ago, after our party, he returned home in the middle of the night.” He waited, but when Mamma didn’t react, his jaw clenched. “I didn’t want to say anything, but I have to. I really have to. He was drunk when he came home. Stumbling up the stairs and shouting… He made such a racket, he got me out of bed. And when I came to check on him, he…” Dimitri balled his fists. “He kissed me!”
Ouch . Mamma’s nails dug painfully into Alberto’s flesh. As he lifted a hand to stop her, something finally clicked in his brain.
“What did you say?” he asked, at the same time as his mother.
Dimitri only had eyes for her. “It’s true, I swear, it’s true! He may have been too drunk to remember, but I wasn’t—” He paused for a brief moment. “I went to his room to scold him for making too much noise, and?—”
“He kissed you?” Mamma spoke quietly, but in a tone as cutting as a blade. Alberto’s heart stopped momentarily in his chest. “Alberto kissed you.”
“Yes! I was in shock, naturally, I?—?”
“My son. My son kissed you, and you never thought to tell me?”
“I didn’t?—”
“What did you do, then?”
Dimitri hesitated. Mamma slowly released Alberto.
“What did you do?” she asked again. “Did you kiss him, then?”
“No! I stopped him, I did! And then I… then I… I left him alone…” Dimitri stopped talking, his gaze falling on Alberto, who had started laughing, quietly at first, then gradually loud enough to cover his voice. Hiccups of laughter shook him until his sides started hurting.
“Did I…” He wiped tears with the back of his hand. “Did I really kiss you?”
“You did ,” Dimitri said, in a tone laced with scorn. “You threw yourself at me, and I pushed you away—Stop it! Stop laughing! ”
But now that it hit Alberto, he feared he’d never be able to stop laughing. “We had an audience that night, did you know that?” To Alberto’s delight, Dimitri’s orange face turned grey from shock. “Truly, we did. My friend was here. He…” Alberto’s laughter died in his throat. “He saw everything .”
Stasia’s tearful eyes narrowed. She only now realised her mistake. She may have simply believed “Alex” too insignificant to tell her father about that night, preferring to poke at Mamma instead. And Mamma had evidently never told her husband about Mathias’s visit, because Dimitri lunged at her in a frenzy.
“Olympia—”
Suddenly, Mamma was gone from Alberto’s side, and his laughter returned, unrestrained. So that’s what Mathias had seen that night. It had nothing to do with him finding his pills in the bottom drawer under the bathroom sink. It wasn’t because he thought Alberto was a pathetic sack of shit, unworthy of his time. Poor, foolish Mathias. What a shock it must have been! No wonder he disappeared after that. Did he think he and Dimitri were secret lovers? What a mess, what a disaster. And yet, Alberto could only laugh. And the more he thought about it, the more hysterical he sounded.
“Look! Look!” Dimitri pointed at him. “He’s not sane! He’s not normal!”
Mamma pretended—or not—not to hear him. All but buried in the walking closet, she was pulling clothes off the rack and throwing them into Alberto’s favourite duffle bag. Vegan leather , that’s what it was made of. Alberto didn’t wear animal skin or their fur, not even wool. If anyone would ask him, he’d say since the day someone had plucked off his wings, he’d convinced himself he wouldn’t hurt a fly. Now he realised there wasn’t much truth to it. He had wanted to swat Stasia for years, and he just did.
She’s not really a fly though, is she? Mathias’s soothing voice said. Alberto could vaguely see him, sitting low in a chair with his arms folded over his chest, a glint of mockery in his eye. He adverted his gaze; it was all too tempting to agree with him.
“ Be still, my heart… ” Alberto whispered, earning himself a glare from Dimitri. “ Thou hast known worse than this. ”
When she was satisfied with the amount of outfits she had crammed into the bag, Mamma rushed to the bathroom next and dumped a pile of things on top of his clothes, so very like the way Alberto had packed months ago, febrile from the pleasure of having Mathias standing by his side in this very room. The more Mamma added to the mess in the bag, the more Dimitri panicked. He followed her every step, his face increasingly sweaty.
“Olympia, fine, I take it back. I won’t press charges, just listen to me!”
Alberto’s mother was hyper-focused. He could see that from how wide her eyes were and how rarely she blinked. She didn’t spare her husband a glance, and she only stopped when the bag was full and she couldn’t zip it closed no matter how hard she tried. When her nail snapped and he rushed to her aid, she seized the bag and stepped away from him.
“I’m taking him away from here.”
“Where?”
She hesitated. “Somewhere… safe.”
“Olympia, don’t be ridiculous. I’m not going to hurt him.”
Her face red, Mamma turned away from him. When Alberto met her eyes, she bit her lip. “Meudon. That’s where I’ll take him.”
Where do demons live?
Alberto had his answer now.
Mamma spun on her heel and, gripping Alberto by the arm, she pulled him up and led him outside the room. The sudden movement filled Alberto’s vision with black dots, and he almost tripped. In confusion, he even waved at Stasia, and he saw her lift her hand back.
“Olympia, why won’t you look at me?” Dimitri rushed after them. “I didn’t kiss him, he kissed me !”
Alberto personally believed Dimitri was telling the truth. That night, naive as he was, he had mixed his medication with wine when Mathias took him home and ended up staying in his room. Alberto was certainly messed up enough to mistake the two in the dark, but Mamma didn’t know that, and perhaps finding out your husband kissed your son and didn’t feel the need to mention it was terrifying enough to justify her reaction. If only Alberto had known… he would have told her weeks ago. Then they would have moved out of this house, and he wouldn’t have hurt Stasia.
Not that any of this stuff mattered anymore.
Mamma’s voice was shaking when she spoke again. “I know you were drunk too when you went to bed that night.”
“What are you saying? I mean, sure, yes, I had a few drinks, but it’s not like?—”
“He’d just turned eighteen!” Mamma snapped, clattering down the staircase, Alberto in tow. He was so lightheaded, he felt like he was gliding down the stairs. He checked his nose, but he wasn’t bleeding anymore. Maybe his brain really did come out of his nose, since he couldn’t think or feel anything. He thought of telling Stasia, share a last laugh, but Mamma was tearing across the hall and pushing him outside.
They were met with a rainfall. Mamma rushed down the front steps, slamming her thumb on the key to the Jaguar while pulling Alberto by the hand, and she slipped. Dimitri caught her before she tumbled down the stairs.
“You’re upset, Olympia,” he said in an emotional voice. “At least have Oleg drive you there.”
Mamma looked at Alberto, and after a moment of hesitation, she brushed his hair away from his face and said, “Yes, okay.”
Dimitri rushed back inside, while Mamma stood on the front steps shivering. Then she let out a sound of surprise. “What’s this?” she asked, stepping onto the terrace. “What are these doing here?”
The old pair of silver scissors—now broken—was lying, abandoned, in the middle of the terrace. Mamma lifted her head toward her bedroom window and saw that it was closed. Then she turned to Alberto.
“Did you do this, Tesoro ?”
Alberto did have a faint memory of throwing them the moment he pictured himself sticking them into Stasia’s neck. He gave his mother a nod of admission. It reassured him, somewhat, that before he snapped, he had every intention of avoiding hurting her.
Whatever Mamma made of this, she didn’t say a word. She walked back to his side, and when Dimitri reappeared accompanied by Oleg, she dragged Alberto toward the SUV and pushed him in. The door slammed shut, and everything turned quiet.
“You believe me, right?” Dimitri asked, his voice muffled. Through the window, Alberto could see the fear in his eyes. Mamma was talking back, her voice too faint to be heard.
Alberto checked himself and felt no fear. He was glad to leave, and even happier to be put away. He closed his eyelids. Where was Mathias right now? Probably congratulating himself on proving to Alberto he was right about their parents. Would Mamma marry Mr Rodin now? None of this mattered. Alberto was done now.
When he reopened his eyes, Mamma was already in the seat next to him, and the car was reversing, crunching gravel and casting a bright light on Stasia’s face. She was smiling at him. A triumphant smile.
“I’ll leave,” he said softly. “I’ll be a model, you’ll see. I’m irresistible… gorgeous enough to bring the world to its feet.”
When Stasia waved, Dimitri whirled around and snapped at her. Only then did she stop smiling, and then the car turned, and she was gone from his sight.
The night was black, and the now pouring rain was obscuring the sides of the road, but the headlights from the cars on the opposite lane sometimes cast a glaring light on Mamma’s tear-streaked face. And at last, concern and resentment grew within Alberto. All those years enduring to ensure she wouldn’t weep because of him, all for nothing.
“Why did you do this?” she asked, her voice weak. “How could you…”
“I’m sorry.”
The rain pounded against the windows and the roof of the car. Sorry was the right word, indeed.
“How could you do this to that poor girl?”
Why? Alberto couldn’t say, so he wept, too. Mamma was looking at him like she’d never seen him before.
“Are you off your meds?”
“Yes.”
Shock brightened her eyes. “Why?!”
They were making me slow.
I had a man to catch.
And they were making me slow.
She stared at him, and she saw her first husband, probably. Like father, like son. The rest of the journey was spent in tears, and in the mirror, Alberto caught the worried face of Oleg. There was silent judgment in there, too. After all, it’s a terrible thing to make your Mamma cry.
Don’t tell your mother, Alberto. If you tell her, it will destroy her.
“Don’t ever let me out,” he told the receptionist. First, she asked his name, and since Mamma was rummaging through her bag, he was faced with answering. He said, “Hello-my-name-is-Alberto-and-I’m-a-dumb-white-gay.”
She blinked at him in confusion before asking his mother, “Is Alberto off his medication?”
“Yes , ” Mamma said, her voice strangled. When anxiety brought her down, her jaw would clench so hard, she couldn’t even have water. She would lose the feeling in her fingers, too. Alberto knew that. She was on antidepressants way before him, but even then, she needed extra help sometimes. He used to force the pills through the small gap of her teeth, and half an hour later, when she could finally open her mouth, he was able to give her the water she needed. Once, it had to be through a straw, because of the punch Papà had given her hours before. She couldn’t get up, and she was so afraid of leaving Alberto alone with his father, she had made herself sick from worry. Nothing bad happened that night. Sometimes, even Papà felt guilty.
“I don’t know how long it’s been,” Mamma said at last, “since he’s stopped taking them. He’s in a state, like last time.”
“Oh, so he has been with us before?” She looked him up on their records.
“Yes, in 2007.”
Shit year, it was.
Yes, yes it was.
The receptionist asked, “Is it true, Alberto? Have you stopped taking your medication?”
Alberto would rather speak to Mathias, who was there, next to him, speaking to him. So, you decked that poor girl, huh?
“Not everyone has your legendary self-control.”
Mathias laughed, like in all of Alberto’s fantasies. You’re so weird, he said, and the corners of his eyes crinkled when he smiled.
Alberto said, “I needed to be fast, to catch myself a werewolf.”
“He’s not making any sense.” Mamma looked sad. So sad.
She asked about Doctor Roland. There was a lot of talk, about the clinic’s rules, his treatment, his dietary restrictions, and how things were different now because Alberto was no longer a kid. They spoke of a room just for him, with a view of the grounds. They gave him a pen, asked him to sign some papers. Got the date wrong. Signed more papers. Then Mamma gave her credit card, and just like that, thousands from her savings were gone.
Like father, like son.
“Don’t ever let me out,” he told the woman who led him into his room. Mamma apologised for him and sat him on the bed.
At this hour, the heavy curtains were pulled shut. Nice view, nice view. His favourite.
He couldn’t rest, his blood wouldn’t let him. His messed-up brain was recovering from the brunt of Stasia’s blows, and now he was left pacing the room like a caged animal, afraid of losing control of his limbs. Afraid. Terrified. What will happen to me? Didn’t matter. Didn’t it? What would happen to him? His mother watched him from the armchair, weeping silently. Once or twice, she begged him to sit on the bed, no, better, to lie down.
Do you always do what your mother tells you? Mathias laughed in his ear.
Alberto laughed, too. “You’re still here,” he said, overcome with joy.
Where else would I be? Mathias asked, and they were interrupted by Doctor Roland, who took one look at him and went tsk tsk tsk .
“I can’t talk to him when he’s like this,” he said in the same old condescending tone.
Mamma had always been afraid of him. He probably looked like her father. She nodded anxiously, and a nurse stuck a needle in Alberto’s arse after he said, “Go ahead, do it.” A few seconds later, his lungs expanded, and he could finally breathe.
“That’s better now, isn’t it?” The doctor looked at his file. “So what happened, Alberto? Are we in the middle of a little crisis?”
Punch that asshole, while you’re at it , Mathias said while inspecting the contents of the nightstand. Alberto didn’t reply.
“Change into your pyjamas,” Mamma said, and her fingers brushed his shoulders. She let out a sound of surprise when he slapped her hand away.
“Please don’t touch me.”
Perhaps it was indeed fear in her eyes. But if he undressed in front of her, he would have more explaining to do. And now, he was dead tired.
He saw while he was changing in the bathroom Doctor Roland and Mamma talking in hushed voices, then she was hugging him, her face wet, and reassuring him she would come back tomorrow.
Suddenly, Alberto was in bed, in his favourite pyjamas. Mamma was pulling the comforter over him. A comforter to comfort him. Thank fuck for all his blessings!
“You’ll be just fine,” Mamma said, and she kissed him.
“Don’t ever let me out,” he replied.
Then it was dark, and he was alone in the room.
To his doctor, to Dimitri, to Stasia, to the world , he was just a big fuck up.
I’m a fuck up too, Mathias said.
Yes, Alberto knew that. But Mathias didn’t need to worry. Alberto saw him for everything that he was. He looked at him and how his beautiful body covered his own. How his eyes were burning into him. Burning for answers. The timid first, then the growing, threatening opportunity. To Alberto, Mathias was that guy.
Lights out, Mathias said, somewhere in the back.
“Wait, wait!”
Alberto thought if he saw him again, he would tell him all that. He would stop playing aloof because he was afraid. He’d tell him I know we’re over, but you should know that you made my heart beat hard and fast, and it wasn’t out of fear . He wanted to say thank you, thank you for that opportunity, for allowing me to feel something different . And then the medicine really took effect. Words first, then thoughts slipped away from him, vanished into the ether, and soon, he had forgotten all of what he wanted to tell Mathias about.