Another Love - Final Justice

Already, the beautiful thing Karen and her Phillipe had shared, was turning gangrenous. Away from Phillipe's hypnotic influence, her own airbrushed memories were beginning to show cracks, reality intruding. And reality drew with a much harsher brush. Uglier strokes.

She remembered back to when she'd first found out about her husband's various affairs. How angry they'd made her feel. No, not angry... helpless. Rejected and inadequate. She was a nothing, a nobody, married to a famous man. If she'd objected to his activities, she risked losing him. It was beginning to dawn on her that she'd always found it humiliating but had suppressed those feelings for her own psychological survival. How else could she maintain her love?

To placate her own outrage after discovering Phillipe's first affair, she'd insisted they open their marriage, but the one time she'd suggested enforcing her right to take a lover, Phillipe had reacted negatively. He didn't touch her in months following her fling. Punishment by silent rejection. She'd learned her lesson well and in subsequent years satisfied herself with sharing her husband's lovers.

When no one answered her knocking, she turned the knob of the unlocked door and walked in. She found Karen in a chair, staring at the painting on the shelf. She didn't look well. Avril's own problems were set aside for the moment. She kneeled before her friend.

"Cherie, what is wrong?"

The battle in Karen's head had just ended. The victor as inevitable as waking tomorrow older than today. Memories of love, stunning happiness, and pleasure were in a smouldering heap. Standing over the smoking pile was a monster called self-loathing. The beast had coalesced around a core of twenty years of supressed guilt. Wrapped around that was memories of anger from Rob, Kevin, and Oscar. Coating that was a veneer she didn't recognise but was the mutated remnant of memories. Every good element turned to bad.

The outer coating needed no professional eye to identify. It was the certain knowledge that she had failed in her most important role as a mother. An imperative that a million years of evolution had drilled into just about every species more evolved than a cockroach. The duty to protect her young. That was bad enough. The fact that she'd introduced the danger to the nest in the first place, was inches away from destroying her.

This was the hulk that greeted Avril. The last remnant of the conscious mind of Karen McDonald, unable to accept the blame, for there lay destruction, lashed out. Never once looking away from the painting, she spoke in a dull voice.

"I invited Phillipe Du Monte into my house and he molested my children. I allowed it. You allowed it."

Avril rocked back on her knees as if struck. Karen's words were delivered with such stark certainty that they bypassed all logical denial. She found herself in the same place Karen had been before. Alternatively looking at opposite ends of a vast field, with memory at one fence and new fact at the other.

"But, cherie, that can't be true. My Phillipe would never..."

"He did. My sons were just here. They told me and they told that reporter you sent. I'm a bad mother and soon the whole world will know it. You allowed it."

"But, Karen. That can't be true..."

"HE ABUSED MY CHILDREN AND YOU ALLOWED IT!"

Before Avril could react, Karen swarmed out of the chair, knocking the tiny woman over. The enraged monster strode to the mantelpiece and grabbed the painting. With uncharacteristic strength, Karen firmly grabbed the frame on each side and brought it to her rising right knee. The wooden frame broke into several pieces which became about five pieces as the enraged woman continued to smash it against the hardwood mantlepiece above the fire.

Finally, the canvas was released from most of the frame apart from one side still attached by half a dozen staples. Karen bundled this up, opened the door of the fire and used the poker to stuff it all in. The hungry flames quickly consumed the oil-rich paint.

With murder in her eyes, Karen rose; turning to face Avril; with the iron poker in hand. Avril saw the look in Karen's eyes and knew she was in grave danger. She sprang to her feet and fled toward the door. The glancing blow of the poker hitting the side of her head would have done more than make her stumble if it had hit full on. With a ringing in her ears, she raced to her car and escaped.

Fifteen minutes later, Rob and his offspring ran in the open front door. They surveyed the damage in the parlour, but a hunt of the house revealed no Karen, or her car when they belatedly looked.

An hour later, they were still talking about what to do when the police called. Karen had been arrested for criminal damage. Rushing to the police station, Rob was filled in by the duty sergeant. His wife had been arrested in the south mall where she'd successfully smashed half a dozen paintings famously restored by the legendary Phillipe Du Monte. Rob recognised the paintings. They were the ones Phillipe had been restoring when he first met Karen.

When security had first accosted Karen, she'd rendered one of the guards unconscious with an iron poker. It had taken being tasered to finally get her under control. No, he couldn't see her. An ambulance had arrived ten minutes prior, his wife had been forcibly sedated and removed to a hospital. The sergeant gave the name of the local mental hospital.

EPILOGUE

Rob was refused access to Karen at the hospital, so returned home. He squeezed the name of the magazine from his sons. He never spoke to John but briefed his editor on the hoax. The story should have died there, except for a massive, collective error of judgement.

Avril took the news of the future devastation of her late husband's name back to a family meeting. Her side of the family immediately took to the hills, trying to put as much distance between themselves and Phillipe Du Monte as possible. After having seen what happened to equally high-profile artists like Rolf Harris, they had no doubts about the future.

Phillipe's side of the family called on one of their family members who worked for a marketing company. She convinced them their best strategy was to pre-empt by holding a press conference before the magazine article was published. No one thought, perhaps from collective embarrassment, to try to get the article suppressed. The French cultural acceptance of extramarital affairs had got them into this. The same cultural, republican, feelings of the freedom of the press, compounded it.

That is how the world discovered the story. A well-meant, but in hindsight, misguided attempt at damage control. The press pounced on the corpses. The Albany media, with the local connection, were all over it. Karen was pilloried as an accomplice, or, at the very least, a negligent mother. Her vandalism of Du Monte's restoration works in the south mall gave credence to the story. They left Kevin and Oscar alone after they publicly denied being abused. Many victims don't wish their suffering to be openly acknowledged.

Avril never talked to any of Rob's family again and neither she nor her daughters ever knew what the truth was. The value of Phillipe's artworks plummeted as everyone tried to dump them before their value reached nothing. Small plaques next to paintings that read, "Restored by Phillipe Du Monte," quietly disappeared. Textbooks including descriptions of his techniques, were quietly edited and reprinted. His daughters, who had honoured his memory by keeping his surname, quietly adopted their husbands'.

The exhibition of his works never happened. His memory was effectively expunged from history. The field that was the memory of Phillipe Du Monte was sown with salt.

By contrast, the landfill containing the ashes of the late artist flushed down the sewers, along with thousands of tons of treated poo from his neighbours, became a verdant oasis, beloved by happy families for generations to come.

With royalty payments withering to nothing and the value of Phillipe's paintings approaching that of firewood, Avril was forced to sell the family mansion. She died in virtual poverty, cursing Karen for utterly ruining her life and, vicariously, through her late husband, her place in the history books.

For a small amount of time, Rob wondered if he should support Karen and encourage some sort of reconciliation between her and the boys. Then he concluded, "Fuck it", she'd forced him to live a lie for twenty years. Effectively stole all the happy memories from what should have been the best time of his life. For that he felt he owed her nothing at all. The boys were big enough and ugly enough to make up their own minds and he would support whatever they chose.

What he owed was all to himself. He owed himself a catch up on the time lost by the estrangement with his sons. He owed himself the chance to end his days with someone who actually did love him as much as he loved her.

But first things first. Rob, Kevin, and Oscar packed their old camping gear, fishing rods, and what amounted to about half a barrel of bourbon. Memories of that week were a blur, but three close knit men emerged at the end of it. They still find the time to get together for a week a year and do something bad like that. Their relationship was never challenged again.

Rob thought that he'd never trust another woman. He feared his ability to truly read their feelings. Then he met Bella. He immediately knew she wore her heart on her sleeve, and that she was incapable of guile. He vowed he would be exactly the same. The relationship being fairly new, Rob tried to defer the annual trip, two years after the first trip. Bella overheard him on the phone to Kevin, insisted on speaking to him, found the real story and told Rob she wasn't available that week. That episode cemented a tight bond between son and stepmother and Kevin proudly stood at his father's side two years later at their wedding.

Karen, under psychological advice, didn't see her sons for the four months she was hospitalised. With her inner demons threatening to drown her in despair, the system wouldn't even contemplate releasing her. By the time she was released, it was too late.

The letter of apology her counsellor encouraged her to send to Rob, to hopefully begin dispersing the guilt, was returned with 'Not known at this address' written on it. Rob had moved out of the house and out of her life.

When she finally had the courage to contact Oscar, he told her in no uncertain terms that with the amount of damage she'd inflicted on both he and his father, she had to be kidding to think that they could be mother and son again. He never relented and at the time of her death, Karen had only ever seen photos of his three daughters and one son.

Kevin did try to have a relationship with his mother, but it was strained. Karen continued carrying much guilt over what she'd forced on her son, and, despite his best efforts, Kevin still felt much resentment that she'd robbed him of so much of his life, of his childhood.

Toward the end, their times together were so uncomfortable that Kevin began making excuses not to make the long trip. In fact, the first time Karen met Kevin's new wife was after the birth of their first child. Karen flew up but it was obvious Melissa held her in absolute contempt and trusted her not a jot. Karen scolded her son for telling Melissa about her relationship with Phillipe Du Monte, managing to shock him. The idea of concealing anything from his wife was an alien concept to him. Karen, of course, didn't see the problem. A leopard is a leopard is a leopard and has spots.

The whole week was so uncomfortable that Karen vowed it would never happen again. She tried to get Kevin to bring her grandchildren to see her without his wife, but he rightly refused.

With no family, shunned by her old friends, and never having shrugged off the 'once smeared with, never completely clear of' stain of child abuse, Karen's heart finally broke for the last time at the early age of fifty-eight. With no better idea of what to do with her ashes, Kevin scattered them in the backyard of the house she'd hardly left for the last few years. His father attended the funeral, but only to support his son.

That night, the neighbour's tomcat sniffed the unusual smelling ground and once he was bored, dug a shallow hole in the soft spot and crapped in it. Then he deigned to respond to his mistress's shouts to come home for dinner. God, he hated the name she'd given him. Who the fuck would call a cat Phillipe?

THE END

Now lighten the fuck up.

No joke today, just a story from my chequered past. I once lived in a residential college while I was attending university. Yes, folks, I'm edjumacated. That four-year degree was the best five years of my life. I discovered beer and girls, although I can't remember in which order. In the 60's the college was all male. In the 70s it became coeducational.

We had a lecture one day by a guy that was an ex Rector of the college but was now losing it. He stood in front of 250 students and happily proclaimed, "Great was the day this college became bisexual." And wondered why 250 people promptly wet themselves with laughter.