Hey Friends,
It's me again, and it took me a minute but I'm back to give you the third installment of our little Halloween story series, Tales From Behind your Closet. I hope you all have been enjoying picking out pumpkins and drinking pumpkin spice lattes as much as I have. The season isn't over just yet, there's still more to come. This week's story is a two-parter, coming from a friend of Ravyn's, and if you like thrillers, you're in for a little treat. So heat up a mug of apple cider, and get cozy, because tonight's read might have you guessing.
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Lots of Love,
Raine
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Everyone had considered the deaths of Violet and Jay Smythe to be a tragic story of sweet lovers, but the truth of their marriage was far nastier.
Jay Smythe walked into my life around 6pm on a cloudy Summer evening. It had been overcast and muggy all day, and the smell of rotting garbage had gotten so bad in the city during the latest strike, that I was driven to taking my dad up on his offer to meet him for a quick dinner at the hospital in order to marinate myself in some air conditioning and the smell of disinfectant.
I had never particularly cared for my father. He had always seemed to be more of a distant relative than anything else. I always just thought of him as some guy who would occasionally show up at my childhood dinner table and ask me about how school was going, giving me some vague advice that never quite fit the context. He didn't know me, and I didn't know him, but at some point while I was still a teenager, we had entered into some sort of silent agreement that things would be easier if we just maintained our emotional distance. So, I simply kept him as more of a side character in my life, someone whose personality could never be completely pinned down nor figured out, but that it didn't really matter so much because they were barely a part of the overall story to begin with. I would have been happy keeping it that way, but on that stinking, cloudy day in particular, I had found myself somewhat short of money, and I guess he had found himself short of a daughter to show off. So, I thought to myself, why spend my money when I could spend his, and get a free meal while I was at it?
I was early to our appointment. I sat down in one of the static-y plastic seats at a solitary table tucked away in the corner of the hospital cafeteria and pulled out my laptop to get a bit of work done on my newest design before he came.
Maybe we should change the background? No, let's keep it navy and change the color of the left sleeve to something else instead. That would be edgier.
I glanced up at the rising volume of the cafeteria's constant hum of conversation. Everybody and their mother was now standing in the cafeteria line. Still not here.
Must be rush hour. It's only 5:55, so I guess he's got 5 minutes left, but at 6:15 I'll just leave and eat some ramen back at the apartment if he's still not here.
I went back to my design on the laptop, drawing new lines and filling in colors, checking my watch every two minutes.
6:14
I couldn't even be mad as I began to pack my things back up, readying myself for a night of the stale ramen I had in the back of my cupboard and a glass of the best ten dollar wine I could get at the convenience store around the corner. No sooner did I look up, than he appeared at the other end of the room, holding two hot sandwiches and talking to another doctor with the biggest grin on his face, his round cheeks rising as he chuckled at something the other said. I had never seen him laugh and smile like that, as unrestrained as he was right at that moment. He patted the other taller, slimmer guy on the shoulder. My jaw tightened a little as I debated still leaving. He probably hadn't seen me yet.
While I was debating with myself, his eyes had disconnected from his conversation and began to scan the room, landing on me in the corner, crouched in a position halfway between getting up from my seat and sitting back down. His smile went back to its default pleasant state and he pointed at me, saying something to the doctor he was talking with, and they both turned to look at me, and began to cross the room.
Oh no. Wait no, not an introduction.
I didn't feel like fake smiling and finding things to say to a man I didn't know and didn't care about. There was no energy left in me to be polite that day, and this was going against the original plan I had in my head. We were supposed to just eat our sandwiches in silence for 15 minutes then go our separate ways until Thanksgiving. This was just supposed to be an eat and leave kind of situation.
My heart sped up a little and my stomach churned. I ducked my head down into my bag and pretended to rifle around for absolutely nothing at all as they continued to weave around the tables and chairs, making their way toward me, my dad leading the way. I should have just told him I would rather eat the stale ramen at my house, and then I wouldn't be in such an awkward situation. I thought we had an understanding.
"Violet, there you are. Sorry I'm late, I had a surgery that went a little longer than I thought and I happened to run into Dr. Smythe on the way. Jay, this is my daughter, Violet. You two should be around the same age." The smile never slipped from my dad's face. How fake.
"Nice to meet you, " Jay politely turned to me with a little wave, before looking down at the ground and giving his own tight smile. How awkward.
"Jay is going to join us for dinner before he gets back to work. I hope you don't mind." My dad stared at me, silently warning that he in fact would mind if I said I did.
"No, of course not. I'm happy to have the company." The lie slithered through my teeth, cutting my tongue. I hated lying, it was so inconvenient. That's why all of my interactions with my father were usually conducted in silence. Why lie when you could just not talk?
Our new friend was handsome though, I'll admit. That at least I couldn't take away from him because it was true; a fact really. And well mannered. It seemed as if everything he did, was done gently and deliberately, even after he opened up and began to talk more. He ate his sandwich gently, wiped his mouth gently, took a sip of his coffee gently, and even spoke gently.
I soon found out that Jay Smythe was a quiet, soft-spoken, promising young neonatologist (apparently he loved babies), with a thick head of short dark hair, parted neatly to the side until it framed his face just so. Matching thick lashes hid a pair of round honeyed eyes that occasionally sparkled the more he talked... to my dad. Once he came out of his shell, he could even be considered a charming sort of person, with a lopsided boyish smile that would appear every once in a while. It was safe to say that we got along easily enough, even though it was no secret what my dad was trying to do.
And that's how it went for the three weeks that followed after our first meeting. My dad would call and ask me again to come to the hospital cafeteria for a light dinner, and since my rent usually ate into my food funds, I agreed. He knew I would because, beggars couldn't be choosers; he wasn't going to give me a cent more than it cost for a turkey sandwich and I would just have to put up with it. Jay would always join us. Every single Thursday. For an entire month. Until one Thursday, my dad said he couldn't make it. Another lie. Some surgery had gone overtime, leaving me and Jay to sit and stare at each other in silence while eating turkey on rye. At least Jay bought it.
"Hey Violet, I was wondering if maybe you wanted to grab a real dinner sometime. You know, without your dad..." He said quietly, looking to the side and fidgeting a little, before quickly looking down, and taking a bite.
He's kidding, right? So we could just sit there and stare at each other again, for a longer period of time, the only difference being a less sterile setting?
I sighed inwardly and scratched my neck. "Where did you have in mind?" I asked, my voice rising an octave.
"Well I haven't had a steak in a while, so I figured we could go to Lord's, you know, downtown."
I thought about it for a minute and ran the calculations in my head. I hadn't had a steak in forever, and if I was lucky, he might ask me if I wanted any dessert. I loved their chocolate cakes. I had been thinking about their chocolate cakes since the last time my Dad took me there for my 21st birthday, ten years ago when we were still pleasant to each other.
"You know what, Jay? Why not?"
That's how it usually went with Jay. He would always want to do something with me, and I would just say, "Why not?", and we soon fell into a certain rhythm. We would go out for dinners and lunches each week on his days off from the hospital, and sit, eating good food in semi-silence. I would stare at my plate, and he would stare at me. It all worked out. And the more time I spent with him, the more I liked him. He took me out to eat at nice places, gave me pretty gifts, told me how lovely I was, and the best thing about him? He actually wasn't much of a talker. I found that men who talked a lot were almost always suspicious. I had figured out that there were two types: one kind wants something from you and has to use words to distract you from thinking too deeply about anything, and the other kind thinks he's smart but isn't. i had dated both, and both made me tired. Jay was neither.
A year went by like this, and Jay was still just as gentle and just as handsome as he was the first day we ate sandwiches together. He was still taking me out to eat and buying me nice gifts, and I was still enjoying the nice treatment and the sweet, sweet, silence. I had never been treated so well. He even let me stay at his place when my upstairs neighbors had a bug problem and my whole apartment building needed to be fumigated. That was the day when he asked me.
"Did you want to get married?"
"Sorry, what was that?" I yelled over the running water. It was cleaning day at Jay's house, and he liked everything to be just perfect.
One little quirk I found out about Jay while staying with him was that he hated mess and disorder. Every day there would be a bit of light surface cleaning when we woke up and before we went to bed, and the deep cleaning would be saved for the days he had off. Smooth, already shining oak floors would be mopped and polished, and his overstuffed velvet couch would be spot treated, the microwave had to be doused in vinegar and scrubbed, and special attention was paid to the bathroom, with its black subway tiles, forest green walls, and dim mood lighting. His apartment was rather large and beautifully furnished with dark, masculine touches here and there, and he kept the whole place so spotless, I could eat off of his floors if I really wanted. Anything less than operating room sterility caused him to be visibly out of sorts.
Besides everything being clean, everything also had to be orderly. Every thing had its place, and every place had its thing. The dish soap went next to the all-purpose cleaner, and the all-purpose cleaner went next to the hand soap at the kitchen sink. Each time he caught me putting the dish soap back next to the hand soap, he would simply sigh and place them back around the correct way. Jay never raised his voice, and he never seemed to get angry with me. That is why I gave him the answer that I did.
"I said, did you want to get married? To me, I mean."
"Sure, why not?"
He nodded and went back to his dusting. This was the way things usually went, and it was...comfortable. That is, until the morning after the engagement party, when my friend Wes gave me a call inviting me to lunch uptown.
"Oh hey Vi, come sit here next to me. We asked the hostess for a nice view so that we can see the ships go by. We ordered your usual caesar salad, so I hope that's okay."
Wes was a blonde haired, blue eyed, golden-boy attorney, with a smirk permanently attached to his face, and a pair of designer men's sunglasses never far from his head. You wouldn't guess it by looking at the two of us, but we had been good friends for over a decade, ever since he sat next to me during a philosophy class and offered me gum, wanting to gossip about the other members of our group project, first semester of our freshman year in college. Wes loved to gossip, but he never actually called it that, he preferred the term, "sharing information", and he always seemed to have the most information out of anybody in the room. There was nothing that Wes didn't know, or couldn't find out. He said he learned the skill from his four older sisters.
"Look at that rock, Vi. Oh wow," Fatima whispered in hushed awe.
"Man, I wish my husband gave me something like that," Scarlett looked at Wes out of the corner of her eye.
"I'm still financially recovering from the one you've already got," he scoffed.
"Meh," Scarlett shrugged her shoulders.
"What about you, Vi? Are you starting to get the wedding plans going? Do we at least have a date yet? Do you have a planner or no?" Fatima peppered in question after question in between forkfuls of her salad, her brown doe-eyes sparkling with excitement in the sunlight.
"Yeah, is Jay excited about planning it or is he just leaving it all up to you? I personally would have hated Wes if he just dumped everything on me to plan, but I know some brides like that."
Question after question was shot my way like bullets, until,
"Do you have a prenup in place?"
Oh.
I get it now. This wasn't just a fun little lunch with my friends to show off my new ring, this was a grill sesh. I swallowed as Wes put down his glass and looked at me.
"No? I don't want to start off a marriage that way, and upset Jay. Besides, I don't really have much to begin with, and you know my dad isn't going to leave me anything, it's all probably going to his little girlfriend on the side he's had for forever." The mood at the table soured a bit, but I didn't regret saying it out loud. It was an open secret.
"Well, you should get one. You know the risks of not having one in place, and it can't hurt to be prepared. The nastiness I have to see every day comes out especially when there haven't been any procedures set in place at the beginning. There's also your design studio to think about." That was just the divorce attorney in him talking.
"And...While I'm at it..." His usual smirk had disappeared and his face turned serious as he took off his sunglasses and scratched his freshly shaven chin slowly, hesitating. He stopped, shutting his mouth tight, seemingly thinking. After a beat, he opened it again.
"And while I'm at it...and I'll only say this once, then you'll never hear anything about it from me again... I think that you should get the prenup to protect yourself. I'm not even saying this because of your parents' situation, but because of him." He said the last pronoun in a clipped manner, as if chasing it out of his mouth, afraid that it would never leave.
I paused, tilting my head. Then I waved him away. This conversation was going left real quick. "Oh come on, Wes. Now maybe I would listen to you a bit more if he was some sort of smooth talker, slime ball guy with petroleum oozing from his pores. The man doesn't even say that much, and the only thing weird about him is how clean he likes his apartment, which I would say is actually a plus!" I laughed it off.
"No, no," Wes shook his head and leaned in a bit further, "I've met him a few times now, and there is. Something about him. That I cannot. Subscribe to." He bit out the words between breaths as if they pained him to say. Then he sped up, now vomiting them without control, "I'm not sure what it is, and I promise you that I'm not here to ruin your happiness or rain on your parade, but there's just something about him that rubs me the wrong way. Are you sure you want to marry him? What do you know about him? Who are his parents? What is his credit score?"
I sat there with my mouth hanging wide open, my hands upturned. Where was all of this coming from? What was I supposed to do with all of these questions? Why was he saying all of this right now?
"All right Wes, all right. You've said your piece now let her breathe and just think about some of these things later. I'm sure she can just ask him and it'll all be settled. That's reasonable isn't it?" Scarlett cooed, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder and frowning.
Fatima bit the inside of her mouth, then decided to break up the tension at the table. "Are we going to get any dessert? I heard that the pecan pie here is really good."
"Can't. Jay will probably want a kiss when I come through the door and he's super allergic to tree nuts."
I at least knew that.
Following that stressful lunch, during the months leading up to the wedding, I began to think more and more about what Jay was getting out of this marriage. Did he really even like me? I mean, sure I was a catch, but at least on my side, even though he had grown on me, there still wasn't that much of a spark, and I could tell that my personality sometimes made him bristle. He was able to hide it surprisingly well, but I had gotten better at being able to tell when he was annoyed once I started living with him, which seemed to be more often than not. So, what was he getting out of this arrangement? If I was honest, it really seemed like I was getting the better end of the deal. I counted on my fingers:
1. A nice, large, and comfy apartment to live in, rent-free, with absolutely no bug problems that would be cause for fumigation.
2. A fully stocked fridge, instead of stale ramen and a boxed wine (Although my streetwear design studio was now financially successful enough to break even, I was still eating like a college student).
3. An impressive ring, and lots of other thoughtful (and expensive) gifts.
4. A handsome and kind husband who cooks and cleans, and won't make my life absolutely miserable, turning me into my mother.
I knew it was all shallow, but I had heard all the urban legends in the legal world from Wes about girls getting swept up in a love story, happy to struggle with their husbands in the early days of his career, then getting spat back out with nothing to show for it when it came time to get a divorce lawyer. If that makes me cynical, then so be it.
Sitting together for breakfast one Wednesday morning on his day off, I looked at him closely across the table, the conversation with Wes still in the back of my head. He took a sip of coffee from his favorite mug as I continued to examine him. A long, sloping nose led to a pair of full lips. I couldn't deny, he was handsome to look at, and frankly, that was one of the perks of marrying him. Oh, who was I kidding? Wes couldn't possibly mean this guy. I mean, look at him! This dude who only wants a clean house and to help the babies at the hospital? Wes had to have been joking! This dude who can't see a thing without his glasses and does every single thing quietly and in slow motion? He had a tree nut allergy! He even had to explain to me what a tree nut was! Ridiculous! Absolutely ridiculous, and what made it even more ridiculous was that Wes couldn't even give me a concrete answer about what was wrong with him. Was he shady? Is there something I don't know? Where was the proof? And how could he reasonably expect me to call off an otherwise great marriage prospect just on his say-so about a "feeling"? Ridiculous.
This didn't answer the nagging questions that continued to creep in the background. Where exactly did Jay get the money for such a nice apartment from? He was still a relatively young doctor, and I always heard that the real salary didn't come until years down the line. My friend, Jess was only doing marginally better than she had been when she first got out of med school. I thought I was bad, she had only recently upgraded to eating deluxe instant ramen, and having only one roommate instead of seven. Maybe his parents are supporting him? No, he said that his parents had died a few years before he met me. Maybe they had made sure that he was well taken care of before they passed? Perhaps. But the dots weren't connecting as easily as I had hoped they would. The more I thought, the more unsettled I became about the whole thing. So, later that day, while I was at work, I decided to be proactive and give Wes a call, taking him up on his offer to draft a prenup for me. The only difficult part would be bringing the subject up to Jay.
Then, a few weeks before the wedding, I finally worked up the courage.
"What would you say if I told you that I thought we should get a prenup?"
"Do you want one?" Jay turned the page of his medical journal on the couch. He always got straight to the point instead of beating around the bush. I liked that about him.
"I think we should. Just in case. I have the business and all, and if anything happened, it would make sure that things don't get too out of hand. I asked Wes to draw up a draft for you to look at. I told him mostly to keep things pretty simple. Anything that we come into the marriage with is retained, and anything that we get after we are already married gets split down the middle." I set it down on the coffee table in front of him.
"That sounds fair. I'll have a look and then send it over to my attorney, but I'm sure it's fine," he shrugged and went back to his journal.
That was easy. In addition to being gentle and clean, he was also easy-going. Must be why the babies at work liked him so much.
"Oh and don't forget to fill out your part of the marriage license application so that it won't be late," I reminded him.
"All right, all right, I will. Don't worry about it, it'll be handled," He said dryly, not bothering to look up from his reading.
He handled it...eventually. Long story short, the marriage license would probably be completely processed the day after the wedding at the earliest. It was my turn to sigh and purse my lips at him, but I couldn't say much about it because he usually handled things efficiently whenever I asked him to. This must have been just a slip-up moment, a bit of pre-wedding nerves distracting him. I would never know, though, because he never seemed to lose his cool. I had never seen his face crack.
Despite our little hiccup, the wedding went off without a hitch. We had agreed on a small wedding held outside, but it was the most perfect day that any girl could ever want: the cake arrived intact, the guests complimented the dinner choices, the florist had turned the vision board I brought her into the most gorgeous centerpieces, and there were blooming flowers everywhere. Even my father looked particularly pleased. Jay was the happiest I had ever seen him that day. We didn't know it then, or understand what was going to come next, but that was probably the last time that both of us were happy at the same moment. That was probably the last time that things were still comfortable between us.
I shifted uncomfortably during the ring exchange. Jay looked at me oddly. I never should have put on that terrible old bridal corset Aunt Margaret stopped by the dressing room to give me earlier that morning.
"I heard you were missing your 'something old' and so I popped by to see if this could help. I wore it when I married my first husband." Great Aunt Margaret leaned on her cane with a mischievous smile. That husband had turned out to be the first of many.
I took the white corset from her now old and gnarled hands, the fingernails always painted bright red. I inspected it, surprised. The white was still as pristine as if the garment had been sewn together only the day before. It was a beautiful piece, with gold embroidery threaded through it in a swirling floral pattern, and gold hooks at the front to keep the corset fastened in place. Fatima and I ran our fingers along it, giggling and whispering in hushed tones.
"This is absolutely lovely, Aunt Margaret! Where did you get it?"
"Well, I had that custom made back in the day, and I guess I just held onto it. It's got sentimental value, so I figured I would pass it along to you for your big day, since your mother isn't here. She would have wanted it to go to you next, in case you needed a little bit of help."
"Help with what? Fitting into my dress? 'Cause I designed the dress myself, and it fits like a glove already. None of those bridal diets here, we won't hear of it."
She tossed her head back and laughed, her smooth, white bob swinging. "No, Duckie, not help with that. Just...help. If you ever needed it."
What an odd thing to say.
My face must have shown what I was thinking because she gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek saying, "I'll have to give you my congratulations right now, because right after the reception I have to catch a flight back to Shanghai. Your cousin Charlie is probably messing up the business as we speak."
And that's how it went. I thought the whole exchange to have been rather funny, but then again, Great Aunt Margaret was an eccentric old woman.
That awful corset had been poking and digging into my ribs all day, and by the time all of the guests had finally left, I was ready to just tear it off.
It was late by the time I had gotten around to it, maybe 2:00 am, and Jay had already passed out on the bed, snoring softly after complaining about the millions of bobby pins he had to help me take out of my hair. I moved about the room quietly in the dark so that I wouldn't wake him, almost tripping over my half packed suitcase in the corner of the room, just sitting there waiting for our honeymoon to the Caribbean at the end of the month.
The hooks at the front of the corset were difficult to get undone, as my thin fingers, now shaking with fatigue, fiddled with them. I gasped in frustration, the corset was now really digging into me, like a knife twisting in my guts. I took a deep breath and waited for a minute before returning to the job, forcing my hands to move methodically in the dim lighting. Finally releasing myself from the torture, I let out a shudder.
Why was this corset so pointy? It didn't feel like that when I first put it on.
I felt around the stretched fabric and the relatively flexible boning. Nothing should have been—
There.
That's what was poking me. Something is inside the corset, sewn in.
I walked over to the bathroom, bringing the garment with me and closing the door. I turned on the lights and grabbed the scissors from my nail kit. Deciding to work along the stitching so that the piece would still look good once I'd sewn it back up again, I started cutting.
Snip, snip, snip.
What on earth is in this thing? Shining metal began to peek out from the cut threads.
Snip, snip, snip.
What is this? What. Is. This.
My hands were now frantically moving along the rips in the fabric, trying to work whatever was hiding under the layers, out of the garment in the flickering light of the bathroom. I wanted to go to bed, and I needed this to be over with. I'll have to tell Jay that the bulb needed replacing tomorrow.
"Come. Out. Come. Out." I chanted in a rough whisper.
Until what was hiding inside, finally tumbled out. And it looked to be—
Oh.
Oh.
Don't worry, part 2 will be up next week, so keep checking!