Magdalena's Shadow, page 13
“I am,” Coco gasped through waves of panic, “I’m a single mother. Rob, and I love you….” She blinked back tears and tried to steady herself.
“You are too young to know what love is. And you aren’t a mother; you are quite obviously nobody’s mother.”
“Don’t say that. You know Bebe’s mine. You have seen us together. No one else wanted her and no one else wanted me. We live here alone and you’re the only person who’s ever noticed us,” she added, now sobbing. “To the rest of the world we don’t exist.”
“I don’t know you at all. You’re a kid. You’re probably still hung up on fairytales like love at first sight and all the other childish things little girls hang onto. Jesus, Coco, you’re too young to know anything. I would never have done this if I had known.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, sitting hunched in the chair, eyes averted. “Why did you lie to me?” His voice dropped, heavy with regret.
“I didn’t,” Coco shot back. “I never lied.”
“Omissions are the same as lies. You have kept me in the dark, and you have endangered my freedom, my career, and the custody of my daughter. If anyone ever found out about this I could be disbarred and worse. What do you think would happen to Mila? How could you do this to me? I was totally honest with you!”
“Rob, I’m of the age of consent and I’ll be eighteen in a few months. Please… I’m sorry, no one will ever know about this, no one, I swear it.”
“Consent is not always a legal defense. I’m eleven years older than you, Coco. Even if I was acquitted my reputation would be ruined. Besides all that, I know what we did was wrong,” Rob added, “and I have to live with me. I’ve been living a clean life since Mila came. I thought you were different. I trusted you. I can’t live with this and be a person she’ll respect, a person I can respect.”
Coco walked slowly toward him, taking her dress off the floor to cover her body. Rob kept his eyes low as she sank down beside his chair and took his hand.
“I’ll never tell anyone. I love you too much to betray you. No one will ever know. My mother, Magdalena, left us here. No one even knows she has a grown daughter let alone a two-year-old. We don’t exist. I’ll be eighteen in no time. Please be patient and believe that I love you, not as a naïve child but as a woman who’s suffered enough to know what love is when she finds it. Please, Rob.”
“You know we can’t be together.” His voice was level and cold. “There is a lifetime of living between seventeen and twenty-eight.” Rob shook his head when Coco tried to wrap her arms around him. “Coco, I’m in shock,” he whispered, pushing her away. “Why didn’t you tell me? I thought I knew you… I remembered you being here… when I lost my mother. You….” He couldn’t finish.
“I didn’t know you then….” Coco shook her head in confusion, remembering only the shadow of a boy who used to live in #1.
“Your mother… she lived here?” Rob asked looking up.
“Yes,” Coco answered, but Rob shook his head as she reached for him a second time.
“Magdalena? I remember… now it makes sense… she would stand in the doorway and talk to me with a baby on her hip, a baby that looked just like Bebe….”
Coco froze, her hands clenching the gown that separated them. “What are you talking about?”
“When I first saw you, you were a memory I didn’t understand. Now it makes sense why you were so instantly familiar.”
“You remembered her?” Coco asked icily.
“I thought you were….”
“You thought I was Magdalena!”
“I couldn’t separate you from the memory; I couldn’t see that you’re just a kid.”
“Oh God!” Coco rose to her feet, blindly balancing on legs that no longer wanted to support her. “I should have known. All along it was her, not me.” Her eyes locked onto his as tears rolled down her cheeks. In the brief silence she suddenly understood. “I remember you too. You came over to talk to her.”
“I had just lost my mother. Magdalena….”
“You were the boy I remembered. The boy who came to see Mama.”
“Coco….”
But Coco couldn’t see him for the sudden rage. “It was always her, wasn’t it? How could I have believed you loved me?” She turned away from Rob, feeling the years of pent up rage toward Magdalena crush down on her in that moment. “That baby she was holding… I’m that baby,” Coco sobbed. “You just fucked that baby!” Coco moved to run from the room, but Rob rose quickly, catching her around the waist, pressing his face into her hair. “How could you love her?” Coco sobbed still louder, her voice rising to a scream. “How could you? She would have eaten you up and left you. She would have made you love her just so she could leave you crying for more. Don’t think I don’t know!” Coco pounded her hands against her forehead. “Of course you love Magdalena. Everyone loves Magdalena. How could I ever have dreamed that you could love me?”
“Coco, calm down; you don’t understand. I was confused by how familiar you have always seemed. Please, honey, calm down.”
But Coco couldn’t hear him. The satin gown fluttered to the floor as she broke loose. Rob took hold of her wrist. She swung at him savagely, her free hand smacking him hard across the face. Coco ran for the bathroom and switched on the shower, determined to wash everything and everyone away.
Twenty minutes later Coco emerged from the bathroom to find the house empty. Rob was gone. She had expected nothing different. The revelation that it was Magdalena he had flirted with, Magdalena he had kissed, and Magdalena he had made love to ripped her heart into so many pieces she could hardly breathe.
Coco walked methodically through the house, taking down pictures of Magdalena wherever she found them. Framed Vogue covers, full size posters hidden in back rooms – wall after wall, all tastefully displaying the smiling face of the villainous homewrecker who always seemed to find a new way to hurt her daughter.
“I hate you!” Coco ripped yet another photo from its frame. “I wish to God you were dead.”
The door clicked open behind her. Rob carried a sleeping Bebe in, laying her on the couch. Coco lifted the toddler up and carried her quickly to her room. When she returned, Rob stood in the doorway, his eyes leveled at the floor.
“You don’t need to hang around.” Coco shoved another of her mother’s photos into the garbage can she had dragged into the living room. “I won’t rat out your Magdalena fixation. No one will ever know you fucked her daughter.”
“Coco, look at me.” Rob reached for her.
“No,” Coco sobbed. “Don’t you dare touch me.” Rob’s eyes sparkled with grief. “I could’ve handled anything tonight.” Coco’s voice softened when she looked at him. “I could’ve even handled losing you if I thought I had a chance of winning you back, but to lose you to her, to the reality that you love my bitch mother? I can’t bear it.”
“Coco, stop it. That’s not true. I never meant to hurt you.” Rob’s words reflected a deep bitterness. “This is all wrong. Neither of us is what the other expected.”
Coco laughed and looked up at the ceiling, tears streaming down her face and throat. “You… you are exactly what I expected: beautiful, loving, good, kind. You are everything I want in this world. I’m the disappointment, not you.” She bent suddenly over the garbage can to rifle through the trash.
“Here, take this. Something to remember us by.” She walked to the door where he stood. She pressed a picture of Magdalena holding a two-year-old Coco into Rob’s chest with such force that she pushed him over the threshold of #2. “And try to remember,” she added, her free hand reaching to close the door, “that one of us actually loved you.”
Chapter Eighteen
“What’s happened, Bebe?” Tia looked around the room the following morning in shock. She lifted the two-year-old up from between a heaping pile of clothing and the overflowing garbage can.
“Mama fixing.” Bebe surveyed the pile as something smashed in the guest room.
“Coco?” Tia called, walking around a pile of clothes mixed with shredded photos and broken glass.
Coco stood in the guest room, a pile of Magdalena’s clothing growing at her feet. Without turning to look at Tia she ripped another piece from its hanger, hurling it to the floor.
“What’s the matter, Coco?”
“I’m getting rid of stuff!”
“Why?”
“Because it’s time. This is my home not hers.”
“What’re you going to do with it all?”
“I’m going to throw it away.” Coco came out of the massive walk-in closet, her arms filled with couture.
“Let’s talk, honey.” Tia noted Coco’s red eyes and disheveled appearance.
“No, not till I’m done.”
“Please, you’re making a mistake. What’ll you wear if you get rid of all this? This is your wardrobe not hers.”
“It was sent to her, not me. I don’t want her hand-me-downs, not anymore.” Coco threw the armload on the floor before returning for more. Her last words hung in the air with cold significance for that was how she now saw Rob, as a hand-me-down, just another thing that Magdalena had dropped into Coco’s life. Robert Banks was another beautiful object that was never meant for her.
Tia looked at Bebe who watched the scene with concern.
“Would you like to play with Mila while Coco and I talk?” The toddler smiled and nodded.
“Tia,” Coco called coming out of the closet, “they left this morning.”
“What? Why?”
“The case he’s been consulting on wrapped up yesterday; they flew to New York this morning.”
Tia didn’t speak for a long time; she glanced between Coco and the pile of clothing in the center of the floor.
“I get the feeling there is more to this. What else happened?”
Coco turned away, ignoring Tia’s question.
Ten minutes later Bebe bounced on the sofa, jelly and toast crumbs clinging to both her cheeks.
“Mila, please,” she sang, “go Mila’s now.”
“I’m sorry, Bebe.” Tia wiped Bebe’s face with a washcloth. “Mila can’t play today; she had to go to New York with her dada.”
“Why?” Bebe persisted.
“Because that’s where they live. They had to go home.”
Bebe squished up her face and thought. “I see Mila.” She jumped off the couch and ran to the door. “I see Mila, okay?”
Tia opened the front door certain that if Bebe didn’t knock on #1 she would never understand that her friend was gone. Bebe ran ahead through the hall, her hands clenched to fists in preparation. When no one answered her knock Bebe sat down outside the door, her legs crossed, her chin resting in her hands while she waited. The expression of anticipation that had lit up her face quickly turned to one of worry.
“Come on, Bebe, let’s go. We can go to the park if you like.”
“Mila,” Bebe said quietly, “just Mila.”
“I know, honey, I’m sorry.” Tia scooped up Bebe, holding her close when the child began to cry.
“Oh, Bebe.” Coco began to cry too when she saw her sister’s tears. “I’m so sorry.” She took Bebe from Tia and held her. “I’m so… so sorry, I’ll miss Mila, too.” Tears poured down Coco’s cheeks. Together the two sisters sat and wept on the sofa while Tia watched and worried about them both.
At eleven o’clock Benny the doorman arrived with two janitors to haul away the “garbage.” Tia insisted on rebagging the clothes, separating them from the rest of the things that Coco wanted tossed.
As afternoon approached Coco wore only a T-shirt and a pair of jeans, two items out of a handful that she had bought for herself.
“I wish you would be rational about this,” Tia reprimanded. “Your allowance is nowhere large enough for you to afford clothing like this.”
“No,” Coco watched a janitor carry off the last bag, “I’m not my mother and I refuse to wear her clothes again.” Tia shook her head and she turned back to Bebe who played quietly in the corner.
In the weeks that followed, Gilman’s became a whole new experience for Coco, a refuge from #2 and the memories she couldn’t face. Instead of focusing on the pain, she chose to pour her grief into her second term projects. The soft feminine look, the style that represented her, didn’t change, but her cuts became more daring, her materials more refined and delicate.
During the first few weeks after Rob had left for New York, Coco’s style of dress changed as well. Gilman’s stopped being a place to be seen as fashionable and became just somewhere she went each day whether she wanted to or not. When she arrived the first day after Tosca wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt, everyone had assumed she was hung over. As the weeks passed and the wardrobe change continued, rumors of a breakup and worse began to circulate. Everyone noticed when the much-envied couture coats and boots disappeared, replaced by one oversized red quilted jacket and Converse shoes. Coco even considered chopping off her hair but decided that a simple braid was easier to manage. The illusion of maturity she had worked so hard to create had tricked a good man, a man she loved, into loving an ideal that didn’t exist. Coco was a girl. She was not a woman and she was not her mother; never again would she resemble Magdalena, not in any way.
Chapter Nineteen
“Hey,” Carmen called, dropping her bag on her work table. Nearly a month had passed since Coco had arrived at Gilman’s dressed down and depressed. Coco didn’t like to talk anymore, and she flatly refused to answer questions regarding what had happened. As the weeks passed Carmen’s worry didn’t lessen. The speculation around the fashion school was that Coco had been hurt, maybe even raped, but no one knew the truth.
Coco glanced up from where she sat deftly stitching jet beads onto a silk scarf she had found at a thrift store the day before. “Hi,” Coco answered before turning her eyes back on her work. Piles of material lay across Coco’s table, each with a scribbled-on yellow sticky note that briefly described the part of the vision the item would create. The vision was a black satin evening gown with jet beads and a sheer, flowing, beaded overskirt. Carmen sat in her chair and swiveled it around to face Coco and her piles of black cloth. “So, how’s it going?” she asked, leaning her elbows on Coco’s table.
“How’s what going?” Coco replied, not making eye contact.
“The dress, the project, life… You know, all the things we used to discuss. I miss talking with you. How are you, and I don’t want to hear fine.”
“Then I guess I’ve nothing to say,” Coco retorted still not looking up.
“Okay. How’s the dress then?”
“Fine.”
“Show me,” Carmen insisted, rising from her chair to stand next to Coco, who had two sketches laid out on the table in front of her. The first showed the dress from the side: low backed with satin and taffeta material gathered just above the lower back. The second showed the front view where a panel of satin slid from the rear gather up to encircle the rib cage, breasts, and shoulders. Black-on-black beadwork encrusted the bodice and overskirt with branched flowers that scattered petals down the length of the skirt. Petals fell into dark piles at the hem.
“The flowers are dropping their petals. I like that but why black? Why not an autumn color?” Carmen asked. “Is the black to match your new mood?”
Coco smiled. “Yes, to match my new mood, and if I did it in any shade lighter it would look like a wedding dress. I like black. Besides I have all this material I need to use.” Coco indicated the piles of black fabric folded along the edge of her table.
Carmen ran her fingers over the different materials but stopped when she touched a particularly fine piece of satin. Lifting the bundle up, she discovered a beautifully finished Yves Saint Laurent dress.
“Oh, Coco, you’re not going to cut this up, are you? It’s gorgeous.” Coco stared at the dress, remembering the last time she had worn it. The black Yves Saint Laurent and the fur were the only two pieces of Magdalena’s clothes she had kept.
“That’s exactly what I’m going to do.” Coco looked away from the dress. “I’ll patchwork it into the skirt – satin for the branches of the rose tree, satin at the bust, and satin at the hemline to add depth and darkness to the fallen petals.”
“It’s vintage, isn’t it?” Carmen asked, holding the dress up to her body. The skirt lay bulked on the floor, evidence that at least twelve inches would need to be hemmed off if Carmen were ever to wear it.
“Yes, it’s vintage!” Coco answered, glancing back at the dress. The sight of it, crumpled on the floor at Carmen’s feet, reminded her of the way it had fallen at her own feet, the way it had deserted her that night. “I’m cutting it up.” Coco refocused her eyes on her beading. The used scarf she had found at a thrift store was also satin, and when the dress was done the scarf would be wound through the model’s hair, black roses gleaming through a pile of black-brown hair.
That was the image Coco had created, an image she couldn’t seem to let go of. The dress had come to her the night she had ripped Magdalena from her home. All that night she had cleaned and cried with this macabre black dress floating through her mind. Adding the black satin Yves Saint Laurent had been the last piece, a decision she had made moments before the doorman would have hauled it away with the rest of her mother’s clothes.
“I love it.” Carmen looked again at Coco’s drawings. “It’s… like your other pieces, Coco, soft, chic, and elegant.”
“It’s so me, right?” Coco’s voice sounded dry, almost condescending.
Carmen looked at Coco closely. “Not quite. I would say it’s sad. I don’t usually think of you as sad.”
“Sad?” Coco looked up at her friend, her eyes searching Carmen’s.
“Sad,” Carmen repeated. “Beautiful, fragile, and sad.”
Coco stared at the dress in silence. Carmen was watching her with a focused expectant expression. “I’ve asked you this before and I’m asking you again. What happened to you, Coco? You’re totally different. You went out to the opera with Rob and the very next day you came to school looking like a worn-out thrift store special. What happened to you?”
