I collapsed right there on the rug that bore the cold brunt of the cold downpour of a momentarily opened front door. Hot tears streamed down my face as I kept staring at the blackness of the wooden door. For some crazy bizarre reason, I didn't expect him to comeback. It pained a bit, but it felt like someone took a load off of my head. I felt very light, air-headed almost, but also very immobilized. I pictured the pain the flitted across his face, how he controlled himself to not scowl at me. More than anything else, it was the rapidity of his departure that shocked me. He didn't even wait to grieve; it was almost like he left no time to even regret.
I heard the hard steps of Jane coming down the steps of the stair case. She stopped after seeing me sitting on the floor, holding my stomach in.
"Lizzie," she said softly without coming near, "are you okay?"
"No" I said through my tears. I stayed that way for a few seconds after finally mustering the courage to get up. I looked at the stairs and saw Jane looking at me concerned, and also mum standing at the top with a stern unpleasant expression.
"I'm sorry for stealing the thunder away from your coming out story" I said to Jane with a dry sarcastic chuckle.
"Lizzie," Jane sighed and closed her eyes for a few seconds in exasperation, "Why didn't you ever told any of us anything?" she seemed a bit disappointed.
I spotted mum's eyes glued to me, it felt like they were burning a hole. "What would have I said Jane?" I said, "That I'm the booty call of some obscure billionaire?"
"He is not some obscure billionaire" I heard mother hiss as she leaned onto the railings, "He is one of the richest men of this country, if not this world. And you are telling me that you have been having an affair with him right under my nose? Do you even know him?"
"No, mum, I don't" I said, "but you do, you knew his mother, right?"
"What?" Jane laughed nervously.
"Why are you surprised, Jane?" I said, "this is just another Tuesday in good old Bennet household. Not telling shit to your own family!"
I saw dad come outside after I screamed that accusation.
"Behave yourselves, ladies," he said, "what will our guest think of us?"
Jane looked at dad accusingly, hoping he would shut up, but I laughed sardonically at this.
"Maybe he will understand why I chose to leave this life" mum said coldly.
"How come you never told us about the Darcys?" I asked, "why did I have to fuck a guy to know that he is the son of my mother's best friend? I mean, that is a stupid question really, I didn't even knew about my mother's divorce from herself." I said as I climbed up the stairs.
"Elizabeth," mum said warningly, "don't."
"Don't what, mum?" I snapped back, raging with anger, as if everything that happened here was ultimately her fault.
"Lizzie, you don't know Darcy" she said quietly.
"and you do?" I asked.
"Yes" she said assertively, "I knew Catherine. She was my only friend for the longest of times and I miss her everyday even after all these months." Her eyes pooled with quivering tears.
Michele came as invisibly as he possibly could and put a gentle hand on mum's shoulder, but she ignored him.
She then slowly turned and moved towards the dining room again with Michele following her. Dad and Jane stood there casting periodic concerned glances towards me in an uncoordinated manner. I climbed up the stairs and went into a room that I presumed to be dad's bedroom and shut the door behind me. I fell onto the hard bed (old-age back problems turned dad away from soft mattresses) and dug my face in a fat pillow and released my eyes of torrents of tears. The rain stopped soon after and the orgasmic feeling one gets after a good soul crunching cry lulled me into a nice nap.
I was roused by a gentle knock on the door, the urgency of which was indicative of it being there for a good two minutes or so before I woke up. It was very dark outside now as the sky seemed a deep bluish-purple with rotund clouds framed by a wide window. I lay there listening to the knocks trying to build the mental courage to get up.
"Elizabeth" it was mum's soft voice that finally came through the door, "please open up. You didn't eat anything properly this afternoon, I have some sandwiches."
The shock of that sentence pulled me up. I sat there on the bed a bit confused, and out of curiosity I went and opened the door to behold the rare sight of mum holding a food item intended for other's consumption.
And there she stood, her expensive coat off, holding a plate of turkey sandwich, holding it up to me as if showing it for my disbelief. I moved aside so she can come in.
She looked around the room after putting the plate on a table. I sat and looked at her suspiciously, wondering what she would say.
She finally sat on the edge of the bed and looked down for a couple of minutes.
"You and I both know that I have never been the mother that you girls deserve." She started, "and we don't really have the time to get into all the things that I did wrong. I see now why you find yourself in a situation like you did with Frank, and I don't blame you. You see, Lizzie, me and Catherine were very close. Back in the day I had an affair with a British man named Henry Darcy. British was all the rage back in the day, James Bond, Beatles. And I loved the adventures he had. But he was a flawed man. Everything was about power with him. I knew I could never marry a guy like him. But I never could get him out of my head. I knew I should I stay away from him, but that man had a pull stronger than gravity, Which why I married your father soon after at the drop of a hat."
We sat there a bit quiet.
"And then?" I asked.
"And then he married Catherine" she said with a sigh, "and I was furiously jealous obviously. But then I finally met her. And I could see why he married a woman like that. So kind, such a gentle woman, so much compassion she had for literally everyone, even a bitch like me. She did what I thought was impossible, to love someone despite their worst parts. She was one to never judge anyone. Her elder George was just like her, a gentle little boy, but Frank" she said pausing and closing her eyes, "Frank was just like his father, on a bigger scale. And would you know it, the poor woman doted on him like hell. Till the day she breathed her last, she would ask for Frank and George would lie to her, because what else is the poor fellow supposed to do. But he never came." She was sobbing at this point now.
I have never seen mum like this, it felt very alien. But there was something comforting in the idea that both of us were talking about a guy that loomed so large over our lives.
"I am not saying that he is a bad person Lizzie" she continued, "but I felt really hurt that you were so alone in your life that any amount of attention from a man like him would drive you in such a place. I don't know what is going between you two now and I don't know if you even love Aidan or not, but I will say this to you; you better know what you are into before you go too deep into him. I know this because I have. I never found to be happy after Henry, no matter how hard I tried. I hope you do it better this time around." She paused again, "I know he has done a lot for this family, for whatever reasons, he knew what was right to do. But that doesn't make him a good person. He is just shrewd like that. It all turned out to be fine, yes, but it was all just prudent business decisions for him, maybe why he hasn't figured out a way to factor you in his life in anyway. And if you ask me, Lizzie, that is his loss."
I stared at her for a few minutes because it was surreal to see these expressions on her face, of vulnerability, of pain, of fear.
"Do eat the sandwich dear," she said retaining her usual coldness within a second as if she sensed that I was gauging her emotions for the first time in my life, "we will be having dinner around 9."
I spent the rest of the evening till dinner in that room as I heard some noises from the direction of the dining room occasionally, sometimes of the cook and his staff and sometimes of Michele and Dad, Mum and Jane, Jane and Michele and other possible permutations. I started to think, probably for the first time, this darkness that was inside Frank, this depth that was so apparent in him. I used to think that it might just be a wall, but it seemed more and more like a bottomless pit of despair. This animalistic instinct of his that I still find so arousing and adventurous was probably just indifferent hubris, the never ending lust of something that he always need to have at all times. A kind of darkness that probably blinds you towards anything else. I knew that I was no longer his only victim, or can I even use that word?
The effect he left on me, has it burnished me for the rest of my life? Am I doomed now? There are so many answers that I needed from him but I knew I will never now. I started to feel thankful of Aidan leaving, I did exactly what mother did all these years ago to get away from and failed spectacularly, I considered myself incredibly lucky to avoid it.
It was extremely clear that everything I did, I did to run away from him. I wanted to run away from this feeling of loneliness, or nothingness. But I was just running in circles.
Should I run away in another direction? No. I just couldn't think any other place to go. Just a second's worth of thought I gave to my job made me feel good about it. The job is good, boring at times and the people around are nothing like the ones under Cas, but it feels so refreshing, so calm, peacefully boring. I would not trade this for anything.
Should I even be running away from Darcy? There is reason to be scared of his vastness, your entire identity being lost in his person. But then again, what is there to lose? I would like to take Frank Darcy head on. Stand up to him, or at least try my best to anyways. Try to understand how he holds so much power over people. Time to stare his vast infinite darkness in its eyes.
Another knock came on the door, this time along with the sound of Jane, "Lizzie?"
"Yeah, I'm coming" I said glancing at the clock showing 8:35.
But she has opened the door this time, carrying a box with her.
"It isn't about dinner" she said smilingly, "I made sure to pick this up when they were packing up our home in Beardlsey" she said gesturing towards the box. The box had the words "Christian Louboutin" in it's characteristic cursive. It took me a while to realize the significance of the box. But I still opened it to confirm.
The glittering golden heels stared back at me like they day they did when Jane gifted me them. For all these poor heels know, it is still 12 December, still waiting for me to wear them to Darcy's birthday party that mum was hosting. They might be living in an alternate universe where the shit never hit the fan.
"Thank you Jane" I said while still staring at the shoes, trying to relive the day for some masochistic reason.
Jane looked satisfied.
"Ready for dinner?" she asked.
"Yes, I'm starving."
