The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)

Being Betty Vredenburg, Part 2

Previously: "Being Betty Vredenburg, Part 1" 

The longer you contemplate it, the chillier you feel: the girl who looks like Lucy Vredenburg probably isn't. She's probably a thing, the same kind of thing like you left back in Mrs. Cooper's place. There is no way the real girl—the girl that Betty Vredenburg has raised and tussled with—would have anything to do with Professor Aubrey Blackwell, or the kind of stuff that he's involved with.

(Not because Lucy would be allergic to magic. But because she's allergic to anything that requires work and intellect.)

You find yourself pacing the house in a distracted and horrified state of mind. You know what it is, of course: it's Betty Vredenburg's horror at the thought that her oldest daughter isn't really her oldest daughter anymore.

And you have to sit down when an even worse thought occurs to you: If you can switch between your own face and that of Kelly Cooper—sometimes leaving Kelly Cooper to execute your orders, and sometimes executing them by being Kelly Cooper—well, Blackwell could do the same with Lucy.

Now you do feel ill, because it all makes sense: His opposition to your becoming a Vredenburg, and his warning you away from becoming involved in any way with Lucy.

Because sometimes he is Lucy.

And now here you are, having maneuvered yourself into Lucy's family. What are you going to do about it?

The only saving grace is that you've got time to think before you have to act. Lucy is hardly ever at home.

* * * * *

You've got the house to yourself for the next hour or so, but you distract yourself by concentrating on dinner. For all her chicness, Betty Vredenburg is a very bland and untalented cook (as she herself even recognizes), and for supper you prepare nothing more complicated than pan-fried beef strips, home fried potatoes, and green beans. You make enough for three, in case Cindy comes home early, but when you put the last of it on the table, it's only you and Frank.

Your husband is a finance manager for the city of Saratoga Falls, a position which pays quite well and is the reason the Vredenburgs can live so comfortably with Betty acting as full-time housewife and mother. He's a pudgy man in glasses who has just turned fifty, but at least he still has a full head of hair, and his gray beard is still streaked with black. He glances around now at the empty table with the puzzled air of a man who doesn't know if he should say anything.

So you answer the question he isn't asking. "Cindy's doing something with friends."

"Oh. Well, she's missing out," he says as he scoops out some beans.

You hesitate, then ask, "Has Lucy told you anything about an after-school job she's taken?"

Frank looks up. "No. Did she get a job?"

"I don't know. I was just talking with someone, and they were asking me— Well, I had the impression they thought she's got some kind of work-study position at the university."

"Who were you talking to?"

"Oh, it's not important, I probably misunderstood. I just wondered if you knew anything about it."

And that is all you meant by it: Maybe Lucy had let drop something to her father about doing work for the professor. But asking about it out loud has done one thing: It has reinforced to you just how janky is the idea of Lucy voluntarily doing any kind of work for a creepy, stuffy, bookish man like Aubrey Blackwell.

* * * * *

The rest of dinner is taken up with Frank telling you about his day, and while you're cleaning up the kitchen Cindy comes home, which suits you fine because Frank was starting to get kind of a randy look in his eye, like he does every time the house is empty. After everything is in the dishwasher, you and your husband nestle on the sofa to watch some TV. You don't pay much attention to it, or to Frank, even as he snuggles closer and drapes a bear-like arm around your shoulders. Later, upstairs, as you're getting ready for bed, he hovers near you in the bathroom.

"You," he bluntly declares as you're taking off the makeup, "are looking really sexy tonight."

You tense all over, then force yourself to drop back into Betty's personality. You did it with Kelly's husband, you remind yourself, so you can do it with Betty's.

"I thought I always looked sexy," you tease him back.

"Well—"

"I better always look sexy to you!"

"You do!" he stammers. "Just tonight, you— I—" He runs a fingertip up your arm, like a shy high schooler.

"Go wait for me in bed. I won't be a minute."

He growls appreciatively, and kisses the back of your neck. You re-center yourself after he's padded out, and try to put yourself into one of Betty's erotic moods.

It doesn't work—you feel yourself striving too consciously for the effect—and so put things off by getting in the shower.

Frank is such a sweet man, you remind yourself as you soap yourself all over. He was never sexy, he was never a stud. Not like Robert Cooper, Kelly's husband, who was a lacrosse player and who—

You frown and pause in mid-lather. It's mostly gone, you realize now: your memories of Kelly Cooper's life. You remember them being very vivid and present when you were being her, just as you have very vivid and present memories of Betty Vredenburg's life now. And you retain certain "facts," such as that Robert Cooper was a college lacrosse player. But what he looked like then, and how he was with Kelly, you have no real memory at all, save the knowledge that Kelly thought him very sexy, and thrilled under his touch.

Betty never thrilled under Frank's touch, even in college. He wasn't a nerd, but he was a very numbers-oriented guy even back then. He was a business major, but not one of the hard-charging ones. Just a guy who was good with accounting software, and thought that the way to a woman's heart was by teaching her how to balance her checkbook. There was something very sweet about that.

Betty herself wasn't a stunner in either high school or college, not like their daughters. (Where did their genes come from? Betty has often wondered.) She was pretty but sober, and was pursuing an English degree in an offhanded kind of way. She dated some guys—one of whom was on the college baseball team—but things never progressed beyond some really heavy petting, and she pushed them away when anything threatened to go farther. Not that Betty was virginal. She was just nervous.

She and Frank shared a business class their sophomore year, and he helped her through it. She started inviting him out to parties, because he never made any moves on her but his presence kept other guys off of her. They started hanging out more and more. He was sweet and funny, and the more they hung out the more she liked him. She's the one who finally made a move by kissing him out of the blue while they were sitting out on the quad on a sunny day in April.

That's when he confessed he had been pining hard for her for the longest time. His confession almost made her melt.

So love came first. Solid, comfortable, scratchy sex came later. They were married shortly after they graduated college.

All that was in Iowa, and they moved to Saratoga Falls about fifteen years ago, just before Lucy was to start school, when Frank got a position with the city of Saratoga Falls. He has worked himself up the hierarchy with diligence and hard work, but it's pretty clear he's gone about as far as he's ever going to get—he just doesn't have the appetite to become city comptroller. Which is fine. He doesn't need the stress of that position, and a hundred and seventy thousand a year is more than what you and he actually need.

What he and I need. You brush away your consciousness of the thought and just try to keep the thought itself as you finish drying yourself and pull on the bathrobe. We are so happy together, you remind yourself as you pull the belt tight. So blessed. How many other women my age have a good and loving husband who thinks their wife is still sexy?

And I am, you allow yourself to gloat a little as you cast a quick glance back at the bathroom mirror before putting out the light. Your hair is wet and glistening, as though you've just stepped from under a waterfall. And Frank makes me feel sexy!

So you don't know whether to be relieved or crestfallen when you step from the bathroom, to find him snoring.

* * * * *

The next morning. You're sitting at the vanity and putting the final touches to your makeup while giving some thought as to which silk shawl to match with your dress when your phone buzzes with a text from Kelly Cooper. It's long, but the gist is that she successfully put off going out to Blackwell's last night, but that the professor expects you to be out at his place no later than three o'clock this afternoon.

That gives you about six hours to figure out what to do about Lucy, and to put a plan into effect.

You have to assume that the girl is a fake, a mask riding around atop ... someone or something. And either the mask or the thing beneath is enslaved to obey Blackwell's commands. If the former, then there is nothing you can do; and if you removed the mask, only to replace it, it would leave the thing with a memory of what you tried to do. If the latter ... Well, you could treat the mask to enslave it to your control, or slip under it yourself, at least briefly.

It's an awful risk to take. Maybe you should just continue using your time to figure out how to put a spy on the thing instead.

Next: "Old Plan, New Target" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 1)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)"