"I need to talk to you, Mother," I tell her.
She's silent. She wasn't expecting this.
Good. Maybe I have the element of surprise. Maybe I can penetrate through that shell.
"I need to tell you something," I say trying to draw strength from the silence.
But it's like Mom reads my thoughts, you know?
Because she breaks that silence with a simple, "What is it?"
I take a sigh. And I say the words that I'd never thought I'd have to utter.
"I'm sorry, mother," I say. Now she really is surprised and her eyes go wide. "I should've never crossed you in the first place."
Mom looks at me in silence.
"I should've done what you said when you said to do it, but I didn't," I tell her. "I should've realized the kind of monster that Magnus was."
"That Magnus is," my mother says, bringing me back to the present tense. "He hasn't changed."
I wince. This feels like a betrayal. Maybe if I say nothing then Mother will take my silence as consent.
"But I don't know why you say such a thing, baby girl," Mom says in a sing-song voice as she stands up from her desk and walks around it. "Magnus is by all definitions, a perfect man."
My eyes flash and I look to her. How can she say such things?
I watch her as she walks to the door to her office and closes it.
"He's handsome. He's kind. Gentle. With a generous and compassionate soul. He's fun. Distracting. Engaging. Lively. Irreverent, but when he falls in love with you, well, you better be holding onto something," she says, looking straight at me. "Am I right?"
She's expecting an answer. But I can't answer. I came to beg for forgiveness and save Magnus. He would be enraged if he knew I was here.
But I can't let that stop me.
"I'm waiting for an answer, girl," Mom asks, harshly. "He's very easy to fall in love with, yes?"
I sigh.
I can't lie about this.
I nod my head. "Yes," I say. "He is very easy to fall in love with."
Mom smiles.
"I know," she says. "That was the plan all along."
I look to her. She has more surprises for me than I did for her.
"Oh, Magnus was the perfect man for any woman," Mom says out loud, walking to the window to her office overlooking the hustle and bustle of Times Square. "But I never liked men. I never liked the man who was your father. I only married Magnus for his wealth and connections. I honestly don't know why he stayed with me."
And then the part that shocks me the most.
"We never even consummated the marriage. He never once stuck that fabulous cock that he must be pleasing you with inside of me. I never let him," Mom says.
That can't be.
Mom looks at me and I notice something for the first time.
A complete lack of emotion. A lack of morals. Or compassion.
It’s like staring into a soulless pit of darkness.
“Yes, girl, I lied to you the entire time. Magnus never once cheated on me. But you can figure that out by now that something didn’t add up, I’m betting,” she says to me with a cruel smile. “He was a fool to stay with me as long as he did once we married.”
"But why did he marry me?" Mom asks, turning around. "Magnus, for all his good qualities is a simple soul. He fell in love with me."
My heart catches.
"Well at least he thought it was love. It was unrequited lust. He was young and I was scheming. I got him to marry me and I kept him at bay. We were only married for a very short time, as you remember, but he was kind and patient. He didn't want to rush me into the first time we had sex. What he didn't realize was that I was sleeping with Laurel every day and every night," Mom says, telling me with a smile. "He'd leave for the day and Laurel would come over at lunch and we would fuck in our bed. Maybe I wouldn't have done that if I liked men, but I was always about the women."
I sigh deeply. It's frustrating and sad.
But also very, very scared.
This person who is in front of me is finally the true nature of my mother.
There was always flashes of her cold, calculating visage that’s on display for me now. Times that it came out only to be shrouded again as she put on her facade.
But this is the most dangerous form of psychopath. She knows exactly what she’s doing. She has no compunction against right or wrong. She knows on a rational level that she’s in the wrong - but it doesn’t affect her at all.
Perhaps the most dangerous form of evil ever. I need to get the hell out of here.
"At first, Magnus tried to work through it,” Mom recollects to herself as well as me. “He tried to save what he didn't realize was a sham of a marriage," Mom continues. "I think he liked the idea of a family, Penny."