Minako was very glad that she wasn't
holding anything breakable. The entire apartment had hard floors, and if she had been holding anything breakable,
she was quite sure that she would have dropped it. She didn’t want to be responsible for ruining
anything else under Katarina's roof.
Alan moved away from Minako, being very
careful not to look back at her while he was walking towards Katarina. He held up both of his hands, doing
everything very slowly, as if his wife were some wild beast who would leap upon
him if he made a wrong move. Minako had to admit that it was probably a rather
apt comparison. After all, this was the
most passion Katarina had shown in quite some time. She had been cold up to that moment, and
while Minako couldn’t help but feel some relief that Katarina could still feel,
it did nothing to make her feel better.
Minako also couldn't help but notice
that there wasn't a trace of grief in Katarina's aspect. There was nothing but righteous indignation,
and while Minako was hardly an expert at this sort of thing, she thought that
such a reaction was… wrong somehow. Then again, maybe Katarina had already done
her grieving for her marriage. Maybe
anger was the only thing left that she could feel. And maybe it was better that way.
"Katarina,” Alan began. “I--"
"Who is she?" Katarina
demanded, her grey-blue eyes frosting over until they resembled how Minako thought the world would look when it froze over.
Minako felt her stomach tighten in
panic. She hadn’t wanted Katarina to
find out about that night at all, but now she knew that something had happened, Minako didn’t want
to think her reaction if it somehow came out that it had been Minako, one of
her best friends. Minako didn’t know if
Katarina would become an emotional wreck or if she would cut herself off from
it again. All Minako knew was that she didn’t
want to find out.
She wanted to drop dead on their kitchen
floor and have her body spontaneously explode in a shower of dust. It was as much as she deserved. Maybe it was more than she deserved after
what she'd done. She couldn't be certain
of exactly what "the other woman" deserved in these types of
situations. All she could be sure of was
that her lungs seemed to be getting smaller while her heart got heavier.
Alan closed his eyes, taking a deep
breath. It was probably to calm himself down, but it only seemed to make Katarina more
upset. It was likely the same thing he
had done before he suggested she go see a counselor. "It doesn't matter who it was. It--"
"It doesn't mater?" Katarina repeated, her teeth clenched. "The hell it doesn't! I want to know who you brought into our home
and... slept with in our bed!"
Minako stared at the two of them in
disbelief, though her eyes were almost exclusively focused on Alan. He was
actually protecting her. He wasn't going
to tell Katarina who it was. He'd made
his decision, and he was going to stand by it no matter what Katarina
threatened him with. Even in the chaos,
Minako couldn't help but be touched.
After all, no one had ever protected her before.
Our bed?" Alan asked, sounding genuinely surprised and breaking Minako out of
her reverie. "I've never slept in
that bed while you were in it, Katarina.
You’ve had me on the sofa ever since we came
here, and for the better part of a year while we were still in London; but when I
sleep with someone else, suddenly it's our
bed?"
Katarina curled her fists at her
sides. "Well, I wouldn't have had
to kick you out if you’d managed to keep your hands to yourself!"
Minako winced, knowing that she should
have offered to leave, but she couldn't move. She was frozen in place so
thoroughly that she wasn’t sure if a sudden earthquake would have managed to
knock her over. It was like watching a
train wreck, but even more morbidly fascinating, because she'd caused it.
"I never tried to force you into
anything," Alan said, obviously insulted.
"If I ever laid a hand on you it was because I was trying to
comfort you."
"I didn't want your comfort,"
Katarina snapped. "And I didn't
need it, either."
"Would it have been so horrible to
just admit that you were in pain and you needed help?" Alan asked, though
Minako was sure that he had posed this question to his wife on several
occasions before.
Katarina glared and said,
"Yes. It would have."
"Why?" Alan asked, his temper
rising. "Why is it so terrible to
admit that you're human, that you’re vulnerable?"
"Because I'm not
vulnerable, Alan!" Katarina shouted. "I've never been one of those weak-minded
sobbing idiots who need to depend on other people for support. I'm perfectly capable of coping on my
own."
"That doesn't make you weak!"
Alan countered.
"The hell it doesn't!"
Katarina snapped back.
"For God’s sake,
Katarina!
You're my wife! You’re allowed to
turn to your husband on occasion!" Alan cried out in disbelief.
“What good would that have done?”
Katarina asked, her voice like acid. “You were the one who got sullen and
depressed when it happened, just like you always do. How could you have possibly helped me?”
Alan was hurt, and Minako could tell
from his posture that he was trying very hard not to show it. "Of
course I was upset, Katarina! Of course
I was depressed! You'd just lost a baby!
What the hell was I supposed to do?
Act like nothing had happened?
Completely disconnect from everything and everyone, like you did? No, I
behaved normally. You were the one who
didn’t handle it!"
Katarina tore her gaze away from Alan
and looked back at Minako in horror. She stammered for a moment, her face paling as if embarrassed at being exposed.
And even though she had no right to feel
it, Minako couldn’t help but be hurt by the knowledge that Katarina had never
wanted her to know what happened. If she
had been told earlier, she might have been able to help. Katarina might not have thought so, obviously
still thinking of Minako as a child no matter what terms they had come to four
years earlier, but she could have tried.
At least then someone would have been there for her, and maybe then she
would have accepted what had happened.
Minako glanced down at the ground in
shame. Regardless of when she had found
out, she should have tried to help.
She’d done nothing but make matters worse and she didn’t know how anyone
she knew, least of all herself, could ever forgive that.
"Don't bother," Alan said
before Katarina could force any words from her lips. "She knows."
Katarina's eyes widened, shooting back
over to Alan. "You told
her?" She glanced back at Minako
and asked, “You knew? You knew what I
was talking about, and you didn't say anything?”
"Yes," Alan said harshly,
preventing Minako from having to panic about having to talk to Katarina about
their conversation. For that, she was
grateful. "Just
like I should have done when it happened. I should have told her and made her talk some
sense into you. You might have actually
listened to her. You don't think she's
weak."
Minako bit her lip so hard that she was
afraid her teeth might pierce the skin.
She didn't want to be witness to this, but now she had no choice. Now Katarina knew she was a part of it,
though she had no idea just how big it was.
"I don't think you're weak,"
Katarina snapped.
"But you do think you're stronger
than I am," Alan responded.
"You think that you're better than I am."
Katarina closed her eyes, annoyed that
she was being attacked in a situation where she ought
to have been faultless.
"Alan--"
"No, you do," Alan
interrupted. "I don't know if
you've always felt that way, but that's certainly how you feel now. I can see it when you look at me. Every time you look at
me." He shook his head, his
pain evident in his voice. "I
always knew that I didn't deserve you, Katarina. But that doesn't mean that I enjoyed being
treated like dirt."
Katarina shook her head adamantly and
shouted at him with her full voice, taking both Minako and Alan by
surprise. "I just wanted to be left
alone! And you wouldn't! You just... you
kept insisting that I was crazy, that something was wrong with me when I
was--"
"You are not ‘fine’!" Alan
insisted. "You were not fine when
it happened, and just because you kept saying that, it did not make it true.”
“I kept going,” Katarina retorted. “I picked up the pieces and I moved on with
my life. That does not mean I was
insane.”
“I never said that you were,” Alan replied,
sounding very tired.
Katarina didn’t believe him. “You kept trying to ship me off to some
shrink. Like I
couldn’t handle it by myself. But
I could!”
“You didn’t handle anything!” Alan exploded. “You just ignored it, Katarina! You never
acknowledged that an issue existed; you just pushed it aside and worked, because
you refuse to admit when you need help.
God forbid that you actually show emotion once in awhile."
Katarina glared and hissed, "Well,
acting on emotion is precisely the thing the sort of thing that leads to
falling into bed with nameless women!"
Alan’s hands curled into fists and
Minako saw that his entire body was beginning to shake. Even Katarina seemed startled by the sight,
jumping a bit when he finally let loose.
"Well, what the hell do you expect, Katarina?! You haven't let me
touch you for the better part of a year!
Are you actually surprised that I went looking for it elsewhere?"
Minako closed her eyes and felt them
start to burn again. She knew he didn't mean
that callously. He was just angry, and
she really had no business being hurt by it.
But it didn't change the fact that now she felt even worse than she had before.
Katarina seemed to be unsure whether she
should be shocked, disgusted, or furious. She tried to find a balance between
the three, but she was definitely leaning more towards the third option. "I cannot believe you are actually
expecting me to sympathize with you when--"
"I am not asking for your
pity!" Alan yelled, throwing out his arms.
"I made a mistake, Katarina. And I've hurt
you, and I'm sorry about that. All I am
asking you to do is accept some responsibility for this."
"For your
infidelity?" Katarina asked, outraged.
"For this... hell
that we’ve disguised as a marriage!" Alan
corrected, his ears coloring.
Katarina stared at him for a moment, her
fingers curling up to form fists. She swallowed tightly and said, "Oh.
I see. I've made your life hell,
have I?"
Alan sighed, his shoulders sagging in
defeat. "Katarina, that is not what
I--"
"If I made your life so terrible,
why did you stick around?" Katarina asked, throwing the wrapper at
him. "You could have stayed in
London. You could have filed for divorce."
"I didn't leave because..."
Alan trailed off, perhaps trying to come up with a good reason himself. Minako couldn't know for sure since his back
was to her. "Because I was hoping
that maybe I could help for once, instead of always being the one to need help."
Now Katarina decided to show a great
deal of disgust. "You wanted to fix
me?"
"No!" Alan yelled. "I wanted not to feel completely useless
around you!"
Katarina shook her head, looking a bit
green. "And you saw my... my
miscarriage as an opportunity."
Alan growled in frustration, burying his
hands in his hair. "Why are you
putting words into my mouth? That isn't
what I said! That isn't what I
meant!"
"Then what did you mean?"
Katarina demanded.
"I mean that I didn't want to
abandon you after what happened," Alan snapped. "I thought I was doing the right
thing."
Katarina continued scowling, pursing her
lips. "Did... 'doing
the right thing' include doing some slut in our apartment?"
Minako folded her arms across her chest,
looking down at the floor. She could not
remember the last time she had felt so small.
Nor could she remember ever feeling so guilty about the way she was
feeling.
She noticed once again that Alan did not
look at her. "Katarina, I didn't go
and pick up some hooker off the street."
"Do you really expect me to believe
that, Alan?" Katarina asked incredulously.
"You don't know anyone around here.
The only person who even knows your name is--" She gestured at
Minako and stopped.
And at that moment, everyone was
suddenly on the same page.
Minako’s eyes shut as her shoulders
sagged in defeat. Now Katarina
knew. She knew what Minako had done, and
any hope she might have had for things returning to normal was gone forever. She could feel Katarina’s disappointment and
her disbelief weighing down on her, and Minako wished that it would flatten her
so that she wouldn’t have to look up and see it in a few moments.
"Oh, my God," Katarina
whispered in a broken voice, staring at Minako.
She seemed more hurt by that realization than by finding out about Alan,
which only made Minako feel worse. Not only
for what that meant to her but what it meant to Alan. If his wife's feelings for him hadn't been
clear to him before, they certainly were now. "Oh my... Oh,
my God."
Alan turned around, apparently not
having realized what his sentence had implied until it was too late. "Mina,
I'm sorry, I--" Alan started, sounding about as guilty as Minako felt, and
that was saying something.
Minako nodded, her fingers tightening
around her forearms. She couldn't bring herself to speak with him. She
didn’t even want to look at him for fear of what might happen if she were confronted with his pain as well as her own.
"Minako..." Katarina said, her voice crack.
"How... How could you?"
Minako stepped forward and tried to drag
her gaze up from the floor, but she couldn't quite manage it, feeling the same
fear for looking at her that she felt for looking at Alan. The anguish in the room was palpable and
Minako felt like she was choking on it, like it was sucking all of the oxygen
from the room. She blinked rapidly and said,
"Katarina, I..." She sighed
and forced out. "Please don't blame
Alan."
She heard Alan move towards her,
prompting Minako to take a step back again.
"Mina, don't--"
"No," Minako said forcefully,
stopping him with her voice. "You
can say all you like about it being both of our faults, and maybe that’s
true. But I should be the one that she
and everyone else gets to blame. You were... You were drunk and vulnerable, and
I should have been responsible. I should
have been the one to say no, and I didn't.
So I should be the one to blame."
"I don't believe this,"
Katarina whispered, obviously trying not to cry. She would appear strong to the very last
moment, no matter how much things had been destroyed. "I can't believe
that you of all people..."
Minako screwed her eyes shut, causing
two tears to slide down either cheek.
"I'm so sorry, Katarina.
I'm... so, so sorry."
“You’re sorry?” Katarina echoed, her
voice quaking.
“Yes,” Minako repeated so quietly that
she was surprised Katarina didn’t ask her to say it once more.
Katarina shook her head, not wanting to
believe that all of the chaos that was going on around her was actually
happening. Minako understood her
feelings. It would be nice to suddenly
wake up and discover that the past few days had been nothing but a horrible
nightmare. But Minako wasn’t sure that
even nightmares could be this cruel.
“Why is this happening?” Katarina asked
aloud, though she was posing the question to no one in particular. “Why did you do this to me?”
Minako licked her lips, hugging herself
even tighter. “I didn’t... I didn’t mean
to hurt you. I didn’t mean for any of
this to happen. I--"
“If you didn’t want to hurt me then you
wouldn’t have slept with my husband,” Katarina said, still trying to keep her
voice steady.
Minako nodded, knowing she was
right. “It was a mistake, and it was
wrong. I know that.”
“Didn’t you know that then?” Katarina
demanded. “Or did you just refuse to
think of me at all? Did you ignore your
better judgment and just go ahead and do what felt good?”
Minako winced. “Katarina--"
“No, this is just like back in London!”
Katarina hissed. “You
compartmentalize. You go ahead and do
things that you know are stupid and wrong and sometimes deadly, because you
refuse to acknowledge that there will be consequences for your actions. And
then yes, you feel terrible about what you did afterwards, but what does that matter? You still did it and you still ignored any
part of you that told you to stop. I
know you, Minako.” Katarina stopped,
pushing her lips together so tightly that they were as white as her face. “I know you.”
Minako didn’t know what to say to her
after that. She knew that Katarina was
right. She might have thought about Katarina initially, but the minute she had
become engaged in what she was doing, she’d banished all thought of her. She’d told herself that she would think about
Katarina later or maybe not at all, because if she had thought about it, she
would have to stop. And she hadn’t
wanted to do that.
Then Alan, who had been wisely staying
out of the women’s conversation at that point, spoke up. “Katarina, why don’t you calm
down?”
Minako could hear Katarina’s head snap
in Alan’s direction. “You want me to calm
down? After what she’s
done?”
“She is your friend.”
Katarina considered this statement for a
moment before ultimately shaking her head in denial. “No.
She isn’t.”
Minako’s shoulders jerked but she held
the tears back, though she would never be sure how. It was the worst thing Katarina could say or
do to her, and the other woman knew it.
Why else would she have said it?
“Katarina, don’t be like this,” Alan
said gravely.
“Why not?” Katarina asked. “She brought
this on herself. She knew better and she
slept with you anyway. Am I supposed to
just forgive and forget that?”
Alan knew better than to agree with that
sentiment. “I’m just saying that she obviously feels terrible about it.
There’s no reason to rub it in.”
Katarina scoffed, sniffling as
discreetly as she could. “There is plenty
of reason to rub it in.”
“Don’t you think she feels bad enough
already? She loves you, Katarina,” Alan said compellingly. “Don’t throw that away just because she made
a mistake.”
“No, Alan. She doesn’t love me,” Katarina denied angrily. “She loves you. Or else she wouldn’t have been so anxious to
forget about me and fuck you.”
Minako whimpered and cried out. “That isn’t true! I love both of you! You know that!”
“Don’t lie!” Katarina exclaimed. “You’re still in love with him after all of
these years, aren’t you?”
Minako didn’t know what to say to
that. She didn’t know whether or not it
was actually true, but she certainly cared a great deal about Alan. And she had allowed herself to feel the way
she’d felt when she was thirteen, childish as it had been. She’d been nervous
and anxious around him, and things had felt right for the first time in what
felt like years. She couldn’t say she
knew what any of that meant anymore, not when it was all mixed up with shame
and guilt and anger and so many other feelings that were quickly getting out of
control.
“I don’t know,” Minako finally
admitted. “I don’t know.”
That seemed to signal an end to the
conversation. Katarina offered no more accusations and Alan could not come to her defence any more. The three of them stood there in the middle of the mess with only the sound of Minako’s labored breathing to prevent complete quiet.
For a minute, no one knew what to do or say to the others. There was too potent a mix of love and hatred
in the room to be certain of any action.
"Get out," Katarina finally
said, breaking the silence.
"Katarina--" Alan started.
"Get out of my house, Minako,"
Katarina repeated coldly.
Minako waited a moment before nodding; then
she turned to go, trembling. She had expected
nothing less from Katarina. She could
tell that Alan reached out for her at one point, but Minako was too quick for
him. She spurned his comfort, just like
his wife had done, though Minako's motivations were vastly different. She wasn't trying to be strong; she knew she
was weak. Just like she knew she didn't
deserve the solace.
And as quickly as she had wrecked it,
Minako left their home. This time she
knew it was for good.
Coming Soon - Part Eight: La Connaissance
