Blue Glass

Prima Donna

...then I, I who had never contemplated killing anyone before, crossed the room in a few purposeful strides. Me, who had never imagined I would kill my mother for the sake of the honor of a man I knew I could never love.
The thin blade, to my surprise, held up as I punched it into the middle of her back. There was a dull popping sound, like a piece of rotten fruit exploding. It reminded me of the time Svetlana and I had been standing at the kitchen sink, our hands full of rotten tomatoes which we proceeded to experimentally squeeze.
She didn't make a sound. Her limbs crumpled like a marionette whose strings had been cut; her body struck the floor like a collapsing card castle.
"Mama," I heard myself say as I dropped to my knees on the floor beside her. Dark red blood flowered out over the pale pink satin material of the back of her robe. I tried to recall if I had seen a flower as red as this albeit macabre one. Roses, petunias, poppies...
I gently rolled her onto her back. Her head lolled lifelessly to one side. Her eyes, whose black centers once flared with animosity and hatred, were now glassy and sightless.
"Mama." I tried again, this time vigorously shaking her shoulder.
She didn't move.
There was no jubilance, no exultation. No rush of happiness that the creator of my misery was gone. All I could think was, What have I done?

The first thing I heard was the sound of the rain on the windowpane. I kept my eyes shut, suddenly afraid of what I would see if I opened them.
I didn't want last night to turn out to be all a dream. And if it was, I wanted to try to go back to sleep.
I rolled onto my stomach and buried my face into the pillow. Underneath the sound of rain hitting the window's glass, I thought I could hear the sound of people talking; the sound of glasses and silverware clinking.
But Wedding is too poor of a place for anyone to clink silverware—
I opened my eyes and turned my face to one side. My gaze landed on the floral wallpaper that adorned the wall in front of me.
The wallpaper in my house is a plain white—
I sat up so fast my head spun—and breathed a sigh of relief. I was still in the bed Manfred and I had shared last night; in the same room; in the same hotel. I drew my knees to my chest, my eyes darting this way and that. I wanted to make sure that it wasn't a dream. What had happened last night seemed almost too good to be true.
It hadn't been as enjoyable as I thought it would turn out to be. The books I had clandestinely read emphasized that sex was an enjoyable thing—I could now discredit them all by experience. It was really a whole bunch of unpleasant and painful friction that was apparently supposed to feel good to the man you were doing it with.
It was a good thing my first time had been with someone who actually gave a damn the way Manfred had. I didn't know what I would have done otherwise.
I had fallen asleep trying to muscle my way through the pain that felt like it was going to split me apart. I had heard Manfred go into the bathroom immediately after he got out of bed, most likely to take a bath. While I knew the most appropriate thing to do was clean myself up, I had wanted to do nothing more than sleep.
Speaking of which, where was Manfred? It appeared that there wasn't even a trace of him left in the room anymore. Gone was his hunting rifle, which had been leaning against his suitcase, as was the ash grey greatcoat that had been draped over the footboard. His suitcase was also nowhere to be seen.

At first, it didn't alarm me too much. He had more things to do than sit around in a hotel room and talk to me. But as the hours dragged on and late morning turned into noon, and noon to afternoon, I began to get a sinking feeling that he didn't plan on coming back—at least for a while.
I wasn't about to sit on my ass doing nothing, either. Although it stung that he hadn't deigned to tell me he would be gone for so long, I immersed myself in fastidiously making the bed as a way of patching up the superficial wounds to my pride. By now, the rain had stopped, and rays of sun were beginning to filter through the grey clouds scudding angrily across the sky. I could hear the chatter of people more and more clearly now that the rain had ceased, even though breakfast time had long passed. I supposed it should have come as no surprise to me, since it was a Sunday and people had all the time in the world to linger over their meals.
I spread the velvet coverlet over the bed and stood back to admire my handiwork. It looked good, for a girl who had had someone else making her bed for her since she was eleven years old.
My next thought was to have a bath. I walked into the pristine white bathroom, which looked virtually untouched. My first thought was that Manfred must be very good at cleaning up after himself.
I studied the lineup of soap cakes on the rim of the tub as I sat on the opposite end and waited for it to fill up, and settled on a lavender scented one. The steaming water enfolded me in its embrace as I slowly lowered myself into the tub.
I wondered what I would say to Manfred when he came back. I imagined him standing in the doorway of the room, his cheeks flushed from being outdoors. I also secretly hoped he didn't want a repeat of last night tonight. The problem didn't lie in him—Manfred was extremely physically attractive in my eyes—it was just the pain and discomfort it caused me. Otherwise, I liked making him happy; I liked being the reason he enjoyed himself. And besides, it was as he had said: the more we did things like this before we got married, the more used to it we would be.
I spread my hands out in front of me. My fingers had turned a pale pink from the hot water. I wondered what sort of ring Manfred would get me when we got engaged. I imagined it would be something understated yet classy—something fit for a noblewoman.
I stayed in the tub until the water cooled down completely, listening for any signs of Manfred's return. None so far. I unplugged the drain and watched the soapy water spiral slowly down, leaving a gauzy film of bubbles on the walls of the tub in its wake.
I hastily toweled off and dressed, wringing the water out of my hair as best as I could. I wondered how on earth I was supposed to style it without pins or a comb. I settled for combing through it with my fingers and using whatever pins I had already had in my hair to put it back up. I just hoped Manfred wouldn't walk in on me  putting my unorthodox plan into action.

The sky was dark when I finally separated the last pin with my teeth and pushed it into place. My concern for Manfred's absence had been replaced by full blown offense. Questions raced through my mind: Does he not like me anymore? Is he having second thoughts? Did I say something in my sleep about Vienna? About my mother? About Heinrich?
If he thought I was just going to sit pretty and wait for him to jilt me, he was wrong. I would go back to Wedding and bide my time there until it was safe for me to go back to Vienna. I didn't need him—or his protection. It wasn't like I was going to get it, either. Telling him anything about my mother would immediately make him repudiate me. For all the kindness and tenderness he had displayed me, I couldn't forget that in the end I was dealing with an aristocrat—an inherently picayune, supercilious aristocrat.
Suddenly, to have slept with Manfred didn't seem like such a good thing anymore.
Blinking back tears of rage and shame, I slapped my hat atop my head and snatched my purse off the table.
He had literally used me the way one would use a high class whore. And to add insult to injury, he had done it under the guise of love.
My mother had been right, I thought as I took one last look around the room and turned to leave. Men really were all the same—disgusting, heartless creatures.
The careful way I shut the door didn't reflect my inner mood in the slightest. If I had been in my house, I would have slammed it so hard the door would have fallen off its hinges.
I made my way through the carpeted hallways, down two flights of spiral staircases, and into the lobby of the hotel. There was no sign of Manfred in any of those places.
He might have just gotten busy, a voice in my head said as I made my way to the main door. He probably got held up somewhere, and he'll be so hurt when he comes back and finds you gone...who will have jilted who then?
In my defense, he should have told me. He shouldn't have just left. But I knew those were nothing more than transparent excuses to hide the fact that I alone had proved myself wrong. I was letting my emotions dictate my actions—emotions that would soon pass and give way to others. It was my actions that would have more lasting consequences.
I knew the right thing to do was to go back upstairs and wait for Manfred until he came back from whatever he was doing, but for some reason, I ignored that fact. I crossed the lobby at a much faster walk than before and pushed the door open.

The rain began to fall once more from the now dark sky as I stepped out of the hotel, the glass door hissing shut behind me. My shoes clicked an angry staccato on the pavement as I stride off down the street. The rain only seemed to come down harder and faster the farther away I got from the building. As if even the heavens were pleading with me to stop being so irrational and temperamental and just go back.