41. Bambi
Bambi
Bambi slides into the breakfast nook, a plate of quesadillas on the table.
Martha taps away on her iPad, both of them silent until Lucita finishes packing her carrier bag, takes her keys, and heads out for the evening.
At the kitchen door, she pauses. “You need anything else, Miss Bambi, you call me.”
Bambi’s heart freezes, a tightness in her chest. “Thank you. I’m fine, Lucita.”
Lucita nods, and the empty house darkens and fills with shadows after she leaves.
In a few hours, Jason will return home from the damage control press junket, and Bambi’s stomach is already knotted.
She pushes her plate away and leans back, a slight bulge in her stomach from the food.
Foreign and familiar at the same time, it reminds her of when she was little.
Her face throbs beneath all the swelling, and she lightly touches the puffed skin with her fingertips.
She glances at the small clock above the kitchen stove. Martha’s time is almost up, and they had been holding back while Lucita was there. “So, what do we do then?”
Bambi searches her for the usual signs in someone. A nervous swallow, a flush of the cheeks, but Martha is calm, centered. “Well, we make a plan,” she says. “But are you sure you’re ready for this?”
Christ! Maybe she had been wrong. Maybe entrusting this person, with her sloppy haircut, her roots showing through, her cheap clothes, and heavy eye makeup, was a dreadful mistake. Why had she done it? Fear? Desperation? Self-loathing, perhaps? Stupid! What might happen if anyone found out?
“I’m ready, Martha. It’s you who sounds uncertain now. Why are you doing this, anyway?”
Martha puts down her knife and fork, letting them clatter against the plate. The house throws the sound back at them in the empty quiet. “You really want to know?”
Bambi leans forward. “I do.”
Martha smiles, satisfied. “Everyone has someone in their family they’d rather not talk about. Someone who, for all intents and purposes, they could go the rest of their lives not remembering, and they’d be happy. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“Who was yours?”
Martha wipes her mouth, smearing grease across their good linen napkins. “My father. He had a hard time dealing with his demons. He took it out on us until he couldn’t anymore.”
Bambi has to ask. “So, you knew? When you first got here. You knew about me? About us?”
“I had a hunch, yes.”
A rush of panic. If Martha knew, did everyone? Can they smell it on her, what she tries so carefully to hide?
Martha’s eyes flick up and down her. “I knew you were afraid, that’s all. I knew it the same way I knew my father was going to kill himself.”
Bambi spits water forward onto the table. “Oh my God, Martha.”
She nods, her demeanor calm, reticent. “There was no rage that day or the night before. He wasn’t drunk or smashing things or hitting us. He spent the morning sitting, staring out the window, his hands idle, his face unshaven. An hour later, he was dead.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“I’m not.” Martha turns to stare out the window. “With him gone, the four of us were a lot happier.”
“I can’t believe you went through that,” Bambi said, not wanting to look at her.
Martha lets out a little sigh. “Kill or be killed. That’s the way for men who have monsters inside them.”
Now Martha stares at her, studying her face. A realization coming over her. “You’re different,” she says, her tone stern, certain. “Something’s different.”
Bambi shrugs. “I think I’m just in shock.”
Martha shakes her head, adamant. “No. It’s not that.”
She shifts uneasily in her seat, fondling the frayed edges of her shirt. “It’s just … what if I’m wrong? What if they’re all wrong about him?”
Martha’s head tilts to one side. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, what if there was no affair? What if that actress is lying?”
Martha sits up, her back perfectly straight. “That doesn’t change who he is. What he’s done to you.”
Bambi’s throat is suddenly dry, her skin clammy. “But what if I’m wrong and all of this is a mistake?”
Martha sighs and reaches into her work bag at the side of the table. “I didn’t think you’d need this,” she says, keeping her voice quiet. “Here.”
She slides a manila envelope across the table. Bambi takes it, her fingers quivering. “What’s this?”
“Open it.”
Bambi sucks in air and hesitates. She pulls open the flap.
Inside is a photograph. Black and white.
The license plate obscured. The quality so poor that it’s impossible to make out, but Bambi freezes.
The tilt of the driver’s head, the outline of his hair, the height of his shoulders.
It’s unmistakably Jason. And beside him, a paper-thin shadow of someone in the passenger seat.
A waif of a person. One slender arm propped up on the window ledge.
The date and time stamp printed at the bottom. Middle of the afternoon in May.
“What the hell is this?”
“It’s a traffic photo. That’s Jason driving.”
“I know it’s Jason,” Bambi whispers, her eyes flitting over the details once more. “Where did you get this?” Her voice is harsh, accusatory. But she cannot seem to help it.
Martha sighs. “That’s not important. The point is, that isn’t you in the passenger seat, is it, Bambi?”
She shakes her head. “No. It isn’t.”
“But you know who it is, don’t you?”
Bambi nods, a little lump forming in her gullet. “So, he was with her then? When he said he was filming?”
“Seems that way. You can see from the photo that it was taken just a few streets from where she lives.”
“Sunset and Crescent. He’s a fucking liar and a cheat,” Bambi whispers.
Martha nods once in agreement. “At least you know the truth.” She stands, ready to leave.
Bambi fumbles, sliding the photograph back into the envelope, and passes it to Martha. She looks away, suppressing the burning tears in her eyes.
“Don’t worry,” Martha says, taking it, clearly sensing her panic. “I said I would help you, and I will.”
Bambi gets up and steadies herself. She sees her to the door. The lights outside are already on, and a cold chill in the air makes her skin dimple.
“There’s just one thing,” Martha turns back to her. “I know you want to leave now. But you can’t. Not yet.”
Martha had plucked the thought from the far recesses of her head.
“So, what, then? I just stick it out until …” She no longer has the words.
“Until we are ready. I left something for you in the upstairs bathroom. Call me when you’re done with it.”
Bambi shivers, a terrible sense of dread in her core, the kind she got before Jason became violent. But something tells her to trust Martha.
As Martha turns to leave, Bambi grabs her hand. “Wait.”
Martha turns and catches her eyes, her expression curious.
“I’m scared,” she whispers, her voice thin and childlike.
Martha smiles, that same assured look coming over her. “I know. You’d be crazy not to be.”