Reconstructing Madonna - Part Two
Part One here.
Part Two
“I fucking hate him!”
Eileen paces around the small apartment like a caged animal, her round cheeks flushed and her eyes glittering dangerously. Anger is coiled tight in her chest, begging to acquaint itself with her and be released back into the atmosphere.
She has never been one to deny her impulses.
Papers fall to the floor in a flurry as her arm sweeps over the surface of her desk, knocking any and everything important to the floor. This has all the makings of a first-class temper-tantrum.
She can see it all in her older sister’s eyes. The thinning tolerance. The irritation and that ever-present question of ‘Aren’t you getting a little too old for this?’
Serena isn’t in the habit of surprising her. There’s monotony and the beginnings of a sigh in her voice as she replies. “Lee, you don’t even know him.”
They’ve had this conversation.
Five hundred times.
Eileen still hasn’t gotten tired of it.
“I don’t need to know anything but that he cheated on her, altered her DNA, and permanently screwed her up. She’s a fucking basket-case, Rena!” The words are spit out; sharpened and intended for a phantom. Her sister is the only one who hears them.
And she sure as hell doesn’t seem to be listening.
Serena tilts her head in acknowledgement. “Yeah. But a lot of that… a lot of that’s not his fault. Liz was a hurting and confused teenager who made some pretty self-destructive decisions.”
The twenty-four-year-old is talking again before Serena’s had a chance to finish. “Yeah, but who wouldn’t be messing up right and left in that situation? She sustained a fatal bullet would, was brought back from the dead, and then had to start lying to everyone that she loved. And that asshole just sat back playing her and had the nerve to act like a self-righteous prick when she got tired of it!”
Eileen is not a stupid woman. She knows that there’s likely another side to this. The sick, rarely-used intellectual part of her brain would probably be delighting in that obviously twisted and inhuman point of view if the person left alone and hurting wasn’t her best friend. But it seems that Liz is concerned solely with the other side of things, and her sister is too busy looking at things from everyone’s point of view to champion the fragile woman.
Someone has to. Maria relocated to Europe years ago and disappears into the recording studio for months at a time. Alex is dead. Liz’s mother stopped talking to her when she flunked her first semester at Winnaman.
Her father still believes this is a phase she’s going through.
‘It’s not a fucking phase!’ She wishes she could scream that at him, get in his face in the hopes that he’ll see reason even if he won’t see his daughter. That’s a fruitless wish, though. In his own way Jeffrey Parker is as blind as her own father.
Is there any man in her best friend’s life who hasn’t abandoned her in some way, shape, or form?
But Max Evans takes the cake. And if she wasn’t worried about exposing Liz, she’d hunt him down and shoot him herself.
“You’re right,” Serena allows, “she can hardly be faulted for a lot of this. We’re not the ones who get to decide, though.”
And just like that it’s over. Her face crumples.
Why is this happening to them?
Liz is the one who sat all night with her in the hospital when Tommy was dying of a drug overdose. Liz is the one who understood about her parents, and didn’t feel the need to ream her out whenever she was a brat. Liz is the one who didn’t try to shrink her when she experimented and got a girlfriend freshman year of college.
And Liz is also the one who’s been having nightmares and crying fits since they met six years ago. She’s the one who criticizes herself for not being curvier, blonder, more alien.
She’s the one who views herself as worthless because at sixteen, she couldn’t successfully save the world and keep everyone happy. Guilt is killing her. She welcomes it, makes overcompensation and terror her friends. But how much longer can she continue before she’s too tired?
It can’t last forever.
Her friend doesn’t deserve this. And all of Serena’s conjectures, and “objective” observations, are making things worse.
But maybe that’s just the frustration talking. Maybe she’s just sick of not possessing what Liz needs. To heal. To love someone wholly again.
To not be so ashamed of the pretty-fucking-fantastic person she turned out to be.
“You’ve read her journal,” Serena continues. “You know what happened.”
“Yeah,” Eileen retorts. “After seeing the worst of humanity, Romeo decided to shelve his altogether.”
For the first time her sister shows something resembling emotion. And of course, because it is her sister that she’s dealing with and because Serena came here from a long day at the office, that emotion is anger.
“Dammit, Eileen! Do you think that this is helping her? Having us fighting over someone from her past, talking about her when she’s not here? She’s not stupid! She knows when something is up, and knowing that this is affecting us too is only going to make her feel worse!”
The two sisters glare at each other. Twenty-four-year-old frown lines mirror twenty-nine-year-old ones. Neither woman is willing to stand down.
This could go on for hours.
It has before.
“The problem,” she says tightly, “is that he isn’t in her past. He’s not just in her heart and in her memories, he’s a frigging part of her body. And obviously, he’s not any more willing to let go now than he was to track her down and work things out the first time around!”
“There were letters,” Serena points out.
Eileen snorts. “Yeah, two of them. Real persistent, that one.”
They grow silent at the sound of Liz’s scratchy and warm voice traveling from the outside hallway. She’s saying a quick hello to Mrs. Morris, which means they have less than a minute before she’s inside. “He didn’t mean to break her heart, you know,” Serena finally says. Quietly. Sadly.
Her answering chuckle is mirthless. “Some people don’t have to do any one thing to be bad for you. They can crush you just by being who they are.”
Sometime during this last exchange her roommate has opened the front door. Light, almost silent footsteps announce her presence. “Hi, guys. Who’re we arguing over, Robert? Hate to say it, Ree, but I wasn’t too fond of him either.” Liz is all teasing smiles, her every-which-way hair framing a grinning face. From the right angle it’s almost possible to believe it’s real.
The problem isn’t that she’s not happy to see them. She always is. But every time she sees her friend become content, Eileen waits a second to see the internal light bulb ignite. The one that tells her that it’s wrong to be happy. After that, those infectious smiles always seem a little more forced.
Serena’s answering giggle is completely natural. “You’re right. God, I think I was still in my Backstreet Boys stage back then. I can only thank my parents for threatening to disinherit me if I followed through and ran off to New York with him.”
Her sister is such a faker. She shouldn’t be allowed in an occupation that focuses on fixing people.
But damn it all if she isn’t right. Right at this moment, Liz isn’t screaming or crying or looking grossly unhappy. They should do everything in their power to keep it that way.
So she puts on a cheery face, bumps hips with her sister, and says merrily, “Sure would’ve saved me some trouble if you had.” Her chin trembles slightly with the effort of reigning in emotions that were previously free for all to see, but one look at the tired circles under Liz’s eyes is all the incentive she needs.
Liz’s expression is unreadable for a minute as she observes the two of them. Eileen raises a questioning eyebrow, her signature smirk falling in place. It used to make Liz uncomfortable. Now she looks to it for reassurance, as regularly as clockwork.
The short brunette shakes her head. The grin quirking her lips suddenly becomes less energetic and more sincere. “I don’t know… there’s just this weird air around the two of you sometimes. It always freaks me out.” She shakes her hands, as if ridding them of culpability.
Eileen smiles agreeably like an idiot.
This is getting so tired.
Some day soon she will forget caution and find Max Evans. She will yell, scream, punch, and scratch until he heals whatever it is that he broke. She’ll ensure her friend some peace.
It’s not some day soon yet. “So Serena, you were mentioning setting me up with someone?” She does her best to make an effort.
Serena laughs giddily. Shoots her a thankful smile when Liz isn’t looking. “Oh, that’s right! But first, you have to promise not to shoot me down as soon as I tell you his name.”
Her eyes try to roll up into her head. “Good Lord, how bad is this going to be?”
“His name is Edwin, and…”
“Oh God,” Liz laughs, hiding her mouth with her hand. “‘Edwin and Eileen’?” The roommates exchange an amused glance.
“And,” Serena continues, “He’s a really nice guy. He does maintenance work for us.”
“So he’s a janitor?” Eileen says. Disdain creeps into her voice.
Liz shoots her an amused but chastising look. Eileen merely shrugs unapologetically. She doesn’t consider herself a snob, but being raised by socialites has definitely left its mark.
Serena corrects her patiently. “No, he’s a maintenance worker.”
Liz gets caught in the middle when Eileen turns to her and says skeptically, “Liz, help me out here. Is there a difference?” She’s vaguely aware of playing this up because her adrenaline hasn’t bottomed out yet.
“Um, not that I’m aware of,” Liz replies, smothering a laugh. It’s not loud or mirth-filled. It’s quiet and soft and painfully, beautifully real.
A rare sight these days.
On impulse Eileen throws her arms around her, hanging on for dear life when Liz stiffens. Soon she relaxes, and they cling to each other in that boneless, sisterly way best friends do.
“Is this a private hug, or can anyone join in?” Serena asks.
Liz chuckles. Extends an arm in invitation. “Come here, you big dope.”
Thin arms wrap around both of them, and she feels a small palm run soothingly over her hair. There are a thousand emotions railing through her, but somehow the moment is immortalized as weightless.
Maybe, just maybe, things aren’t as bad as she’s been making them out to be.
Maybe they’ll be all right.
-
This hope lasts until 3 AM.
The screaming starts then, like always.
She grinds her teeth, clenching at her comforter to keep from jumping up.
Three years ago while in the midst of a particularly gruesome nightmare, Liz went pretty much crazy. Destroyed the whole room.
Blasted Eileen.
Now she’s not allowed to go in there at night. It hurts Liz when they argue about that, so she doesn’t mention it anymore. There’s not much of a point when she’ll just get the brush-off.
She never did ask what the nightmare was about.
Part Three