Isabella learned about love when she was thirteen. Sister Mary-Ellen Murphy, her teacher in the eighth grade, sat down with her one fall morning during recess, and talked to her about love. And, following that meeting in the empty classroom, just the two of them, Isabella believed she was, by definition, in love.
Sister Mary-Ellen could have been a romance novelist. With her tender voice and soft touch, she put into words the exact feelings that Isabella was experiencing. She sat close to her and in a whisper that connected the two of them like sisters, she told Isabella that it is natural to have those thoughts. Mary-Ellen was, for a nun, pretty cool. She used her last name, didn't wear the habit that the older sisters did, had a teaching job, taught private music lessons after school, and directed the award-winning show choir at the high school. And, in Sister Mary-Ellen's words, she was married to her lover and her best friend, Jesus.
It was years later, after Isabella had matured and had experienced the struggle of coming to understand what it meant to become a woman, after she had seen, first hand, the pressure of a boy's desire, felt fear from a man's stare, felt anxiety when walking home from school, that she came to understand how Mary-Ellen could believe that she had found the perfect man.
The way that her teacher had described Jesus, how her eyes glistened as she told Isabella of his tenderness, of his mercy. Faith, certainly, for this woman had immense faith in her Jesus, but there was more to it. For her, Jesus represented a romantic lover. Isabella could tell this from the way she described his eyes and his voice; her dreamy poetry was as lyrical as a sonnet. When Isabella asked her if Jesus spoke to her, Sister Mary-Ellen seemed surprised by the question, and told her, plainly, that of course he does. They would talk all night, sometimes. She would lay in bed each night and tell her lover, Jesus, about her day, about her struggles. She would feel consoled. She would feel respected. She would feel his love.
It almost made sense to Isabella. The depiction of Jesus around the school, the iconography of the Catholic Church, was all about humanizing God through Jesus, and Jesus was turned into cover art for a romance novel or a movie poster: peaceful eyes, long hair, firm chest, tight muscles bulging as he hung there from the cross, loin cloth slung seductively low. It was no wonder girls used to become nuns. There was a print of a drawing in their classroom, the one Isabella stared at when she was writing and wrestling to come up with the right word. The picture was called "Jesus Smiling," and that image just made her want to throw her arms around this hunk, give him a juicy smooch on the cheek and tell him how she wanted to be his girlfriend, take him to meet her friends, sit around a campfire on a summer evening at the lake. She could say to the other boys, the ones eyeing her up from across the campfire, that she was here with her boyfriend, so you better leave her alone, or he'll tell his dad. Then they'd be damn sorry.
Mary-Ellen had married her boyfriend, Jesus. Her life was devoted to her man. In everything she did, she sang the praises of her lover. She bragged about him, endlessly; she tried to emulate his values and when she fell short, she would receive his unconditional forgiveness. There was no fall too deep for him to forgive. Mary-Ellen had found the perfect man, and wanted Isabella to find him too.
But at thirteen, Isabella was already wondering about her feelings for another of Jesus's friends, the new priest working at the school, young Father Luke.
Fryer lets out a laugh. Up to now he has been silent, listening to Isabella tell her story of her childhood. "You fell in love with a priest? How did that turn out?"
Isabella, with an embarrassed giggle, reaches across the front seat of the taxi and gives Fryer a playful punch on the arm. "Nothing happened, silly. I was thirteen and thought I had a crush on the man, that's all."
It is night. Isabella and Fryer are together in the front of a yellow taxi cab, although there is no cab driver. Fryer is in the driver's seat. He, somehow, arranged for a taxi to be delivered to Mariana's condo for their use tonight. The two of them have been talking and laughing, like old friends, for an hour now. Mariana is in Angelo's mansion, has been for a while. Isabella got the text message saying it was time to go into the house and Mariana, dressed in Isabella's school outfit, smiled to them as she slid out of the back seat of the cab and disappeared into the compound. By her smile, it looked as though she was about to play a prank on a friend. Isabella couldn't understand how Mariana could be so nonchalant about the whole thing. She was worried about her.
But Fryer changes that. They sit together in the cab and she talks. She chats like she was a young girl again, and it feels good. She tells him things she has never told anyone before, like about her crush on Father Luke. Maybe it's because he reminds her of the young priest. She tells him how the crush phase passed, soon enough, and her desire to be near the priest became a longing to be close to him as a man, a brother or a father. Maybe it was because she didn't feel threatened by him, maybe because she sometimes needed mature advice from someone who wasn't concerned with looking like the tough guy in front of his buddies, or trying to peek down her blouse or maybe it was because he was so gentle. She loved the man, she knows that now.
"Do you still practice, I mean, do you still go to Church?" Fryer asks this her in a way that begs truthfulness.
"No. I sort of let that go. I will still attend mass when I am home at Christmas, but no, not really. To be honest, I am bothered by the Catholic Church's attitude towards women. I find it hard to respect a body that has institutionalized discrimination against women."
"Is it any worse than in the corporate world?"
"Well, it certainly has a longer history of abuse. I actually think that the Catholic Church has set the bar for discrimination, that it has essentially, over time, given permission to the rest of society's institutions to behave that way. Corporations, family, government—they all still represent male domination and repression of women, and that stems from the Church. They are all unjust."
Isabella loves talking to Fryer. It has been so long since she had a mature, intellectual discussion. And to feel open enough to share her values with another, let alone a man, excites her. She wouldn't say these things to anyone else.
"Sorry if I sound like a feminist." She wonders why she feels the need to apologize.
"You sound, to me, like a humanist."
Isabella turns and looks into the darkness beyond the cab window. She sees, in the reflection of the dashboard lights, herself smiling.
But Fryer doesn't reveal much. Isabella still doesn't know much about the man. She knows how she is starting to feel about him. When he speaks, the tone of his voice is like a blanket offered to her; his touch, a hand placed on a shoulder now and then, sends shivers through her; his laugh, fills her with joy. She knows he is older than she is by about ten years, but tells herself that there is nothing wrong with that. He is from the Bay area originally, he did tell her that much, but little more. Mainly, though, he guides the conversation with his questions, and listens. Isabella loves that he listens.
She doesn't realize how long Mariana has been gone when there is the sounds of footsteps running toward their cab. The back door opens and Mariana slides in. Her hair is disheveled, her blouse hastily buttoned. Her eyes swollen. She is crying. In her hand is a plush, beige stuffed animal.
"Are you hurt?" Isabella turns to face her in the back seat.
"Just drive. Just go."
Fryer starts the car and steers into the road. The lights from Angelo's mansion disappear behind the shadows of palms. Isabella tries to determine the extent of Mariana's injuries in the darkness of the taxi cab.
"I am alright. A little bruised I am sure, but I am okay."
"Alright, but I thought because you were crying–"
"No, it's not that. It was pretty emotional for me, that's all. You need to imagine that I just had sex with my ex-fiancée, who I hadn't spoken to in eight years, who was thinking he was screwing somebody else, while slapping me around, not to mention choking off my airway. It's all pretty fucked."
Mariana tells Fryer and Isabella how it happened. She entered the house just as Angelo had instructed, went to his room, and waited in his bed. The lighting was just as Isabella had demanded: dark enough to obscure things in the shadows, light enough so the cameras would pick up the details. She assumed that Angelo was already in the building because she saw that someone was resetting the alarm on the panel. Mariana found Mr. Wiggles, the stuffed doggie toy, the same one that he had back then. She knelt on the bed and fell forward, burying her face in the stuffed animal, and waited.
"Do you think he knows it was you?"
"I don't think so, but I think, right now, he doesn't know what the hell is going on. He thinks you might be dead, Isabella." Mariana goes on and explains that, while she really doesn't want to talk about it right now—and it is all on the video anyway—at the end of it all, Angelo flew out of the room in a panic. "The fact that I may have exaggerated my asphyxiation probably had something to do with it," she says in a mix of laughter and sobs. "I bet you didn't know that I am a bit of an actor. Death scenes are my specialty."
"That wasn't the plan," Fryer is quick to point out. "What were you thinking? This might just jeopardize the entire scheme."
Mariana answers with, "the play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king."
Isabella recognizes that as a quote from the play she performed in High School, from Hamlet, and understands the irony. Fryer doesn't respond and looks ahead as he drives them further into the darkness.
They ride in silence. Isabella can't help but think about what would have happened if that had been her with Angelo instead of Mariana. Would she have fought back? Run away? Revealed all? Or worse?
Finally, Mariana speaks. "I'm sorry if I messed things up, but I guess I overestimated my strength here, my ability to stay calm. It upsets me. It upsets me that he is so cold, so screwed up, that he has it in him to do this to you—to anyone. He showed no tenderness at all, only a need to dominate, like he was trying to prove something. This was not how he was with me, back then. There is no way I would have stood for that. He has become a man obsessed, or possessed, or something. Yet, while he was behaving like a crazed man, doing everything he could to get a response from me, it struck me that he was no different than a little boy. A boy throwing a temper tantrum because he can't get what he wants."
"And why does that upset you, Mariana?" Fryer's voice is calm and resonates with understanding. Like he is her therapist, or a confessor.
She is silent and looks out the car window before she speaks. "Do you remember, Isabella, when I told you that people are not simple? Things are not black and white. Think of the strongest, most intriguing characters on television or in the movies, or in books. They aren't the ones for whom everything is cut and dry. We want them to do the right thing, but we identify with them because of the fact that they are human, and they do human things, like the things that might be self-destructive, or that hurt the ones they love. That is what real humans do. They screw up."
Her gaze returns to the darkness of the window. "There is nothing I want more than to see this guy suffer for what he did to me, and for what he tried to do with you. And there are probably others, or there will be others, unless he is stopped. But I am not writing this script. If I were, I would be strong. But I am not, I am human. I am flawed. There is something about Angelo that I can't shake. There is some part of him that I need. I don't know–I really don't. It is like there is something that makes me want to forgive him, over and over again. So yeah, it is upsetting to find that you are not the person you thought you were. But, Isabella, there is another thing you need to know."
Isabella feels a twinge of fear. A hand, Fryer's hand, gently takes hers and squeezes it as Mariana continues. "He wanted me, I should say he wanted you, to respond. I refused, and just lay there on my hands and knees, forcing him to use me like a dog. He started yelling at me, demanding that I tell him to stop, to tell him that he is a monster. But I wouldn't. Then, he reaches in front of me and shoves a piece of paper in my face and tells me to read it. That was when I decided I was going to improvise my own ending and take this to the next level."
"What did it say?"
"It was a picture of your brother on a public notice of termination. It was dated this afternoon. The asshole had already fired your brother. He had no intention of ever holding up his end of the bargain."