Real Novel Chapter Three

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Chapter Three

"Wha..." Madeline jumped awake. Ricki was barking. Barking loudly, urgently upstairs. Sitting in the wicker chair, she'd dozed off partially hypnotized by the colorful blur of the ceiling fan, but now its noise broke into her thoughts unpleasantly. The three-year-old cocker spaniel that never seemed to return her love was still barking. Where was Georgina?

Madeline took her time going up the stairs, though Ricki had never sounded so agitated before. As she entered the bedroom he was scratching at the connecting door, trying to get in to the bathroom. Seeing Madeline arrive, Ricki calmed his barking to soft whimpers, his head low and sorrowful.

Opening the door Madeline saw Georgina, her better half, lying motionless in their tub.

"So help me, sweetness, you'll pay for this!" Madeline cried to the dead body in the bath, the unmistakable smell of bath salts hanging in air. "You'll pay for messing things... oh... oh...oh why--why now?" Time slowed as she moved towards what had been Georgina half floating in the cloudy water. It had happened after all, and she hadn't been able to stop it. Madeline had often thought that her lover might eventually take her own life.

She had tried hard to banish such thoughts from her mind since she'd made the decision to live with Georgina. They had first met in college, when Madeline had been attracted to what she had believed was genuine emotional sensitivity. She had seemed fragile and vulnerable, and for Madeline was a dream made flesh, with her bubble gum lipstick and her willowy figure.

Madeline herself had often been called "Lucky Maddie" - born rich, beautiful and talented, with almost everything going for - until she had met the troubled and tormented Georgina. Georgina had always been at odds with herself. She wanted to fit it, be 'normal', whatever that was. Her parents didn't approve of "that sort of lifestyle" ; that's how they said it. Their attitude cut deep into Georgina ; she would have periods of being herself, honest to the core. Then she'd switch back to the falsity and be with guys, all kinds of guys. She was even married once an army boy she met in Vegas to satisfy her parents. She downplayed it later although it had been three years of her life. Three years of denial, three years of "being normal". And this from a girl who often said that she'd "no staying power".

Georgina's father had died while she was married, a stroke out in the field behind the family home. He was on life support for the best part of a week, but he was already gone. "You could tell," Georgina had said to Madeline. "His heart was beating, his chest rising and falling; but the eyes were empty. Just two deep blue circles staring off into space. I said my goodbyes then and there. A simple "I love you" and a kiss on his forehead."

Her mother had died the summer before. Now that there was no-one left who disapproved, Georgina could be herself again.

She'd left her man; divorced. He went back to the army; she felt guilty but moved in with Maddie all the same. Came back for her college sweetheart. College, everyone had called Georgina a "lipstick lesbian". Madeline had scoffed at the nickname: it sounded as if lesbians couldn't – or didn't want to – look good. She had gladly let Georgina kiss her that first time, kiss her brusquely with those soft pink lips.

Now Madeline looked in the mirror and nearly smiled, delicately curling her fingers to her palm as if she were holding that moment, knowing that together they had had more good times than many people have in a lifetime.

Then she moved unwillingly away from the side of the tub, pulled her cell phone out of her back pocket and dialed 911. "I want to report a suicide," she said, her voice tired, monotone and emotionless. "Yes... Thank you... Okay."

Madeline's main thought was not what to do with her life now everything was over, but on how she could possibly tell their friends and family that Georgina had slit her own throat, her own beautiful, pure white throat that was the envy of most other women who saw her.

Dear Georgina; the only girl who could have a moose tattooed on her bottom, call it art and get away with it. Dear Georgina; the tall tales she'd tell, never knowing if they were just some wild fantasy or... or the truth. Like the creepy dancer without feet. Like the sleepers, forever drugged in their own world. Like the man that lived under her bed. That's why they'd gotten Ricki. The dog made her feel safe. Dear Georgina; confused Georgina. But why now? Weren't the two of them happy?

Madeline pulled off the shower curtain and draped it over Georgina's body; covering her nudity head to toe. She felt it was the right thing to do. They always cover dead people in the movies. She was shaking, her hands trembling. She fell to the floor and sobbed until the ambulance came, and for a long while afterwards.

"What's left for me now?" she cried, kicking at Ricki who cringed and whined, pacing the rooms looking for Georgina.

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