Читать книгу The Prized Girl - Amy K. Green - Страница 9

THE FUNNY THING about death is how hard everyone strives for normalcy in its wake. If we could all just pretend it didn’t happen, these horrible feelings would go away. Only a week had passed since Jenny’s murder, and we were having Sunday dinner. The weekly ritual was something none of us enjoyed to begin with. Now, it was unbearable.

I pulled into the driveway around six, awaking several reporters who had been parked across the street for the past three days. They flooded from the vans but couldn’t step on the property, and I was grateful for the long driveway. I slipped into the side door attached to the garage. Once I was inside, they went silent and retreated to their vehicles like zombies resetting in a haunted house. They would lie dormant until I resurfaced later that night.

I entered the kitchen from the garage. It smelled like Italian. I peeked in the oven and saw a lasagna. It was store-bought, Costco probably. Linda always cooked extravagant Sunday dinners, but since the murder, doctors had her on something close to horse tranquilizers.

“Hello?” I yelled out into the house.

“In here,” said my father from the living room.

He sat in a brown leather chair and clung to his phone, typing with purpose. He looked up after a second. “Virginia, come, sit.”

Linda was curled up on the couch, leaving plenty of room for me to join her. She was put together, but wrapped tightly in an old afghan that her late mother had knitted for Jenny, and rocking so subtly one could miss the motion if they weren’t looking for signs of insanity.

I lowered myself down onto the couch, afraid if I created too much movement she would break. “How are you doing, Linda?” I asked.

She smiled at me. “I’m doing well. Thank you. How are you?” Her voice was affected. Linda always spoke with misguided energy, but now she was deflated, giving a canned response that was totally inappropriate given the circumstances. Jesus Christ, Linda, just admit something really horrible happened and you aren’t one hundred percent. I won’t tell anyone.

“You know …” I trailed off. “A lot of reporters out there.”

“A bunch of vultures who don’t think of us as real people,” spat my father.

“They just want to help,” Linda tried.

“Help who? You think they’re out there to help us? They’re out there waiting for us to do something that they can use to say it’s our fault. Proof we weren’t good parents, proof we didn’t do enough to protect our daughter. It’s what they always do.”

That upset Linda. She rested her head down on the arm of the sofa, a physical sign of surrender.

“Do the police have any leads?” I asked my father.

“It was that man from the pageants. Had to be. A truly disturbed man. Evil.”

Linda met this with a labored moan. “Can you please stop? Can we just have a nice family dinner?”

“Christ, Linda, what else do you expect us to talk about?” he grumbled.

I didn’t expect compassion from my father, even in this extreme circumstance, but it wasn’t any easier to witness. Even I wanted to offer Linda a hug, something my father only did in front of the cameras. She just looked so fragile. I almost forgot how much I disliked her.

The timer went off in the kitchen, and Linda unwrapped herself from the blanket and announced, “The lasagna is ready.”

MY FATHER SAT at the head of the table. He brought his phone with him, something that always agitated Linda. I sat in my normal chair to the left. The extra leaves were still in the table from the wake, resulting in three empty chairs instead of just one, Jenny’s.

Linda entered with the lasagna and placed it in the center of the table. She had removed it from its packaging and set it into a casserole dish, hiding the evidence. Such a poor misguided woman to think anyone would care that eight days after the death of her only child she didn’t make a homemade lasagna.

She took the chair to the right of her husband, then reached out and took his hand, pulling it away from the phone in an affectionate way. He obliged and set it down on the table. A small victory for Linda.

“I would like to say something before we eat,” she announced.

“We don’t need to be dramatic. Can we just eat?” asked my father.

“Calvin, I want to say something.”

He leaned back in his seat. Another Linda win. She interlocked her hands, thinking about her words. “Jenny was such a beautiful girl. She had a bright future. She could have been Miss America, but she was taken from us by a monster. I hope that once they find that man and bring him to justice, we will be able to find peace.” She nodded like she had finished grace and reached for the knife, slicing into the lasagna.

Linda’s obsession with pageants was nauseating. It had long been one of my triggers. I knew what it was like to be my father’s child. It came with such pressure to be successful that I had long ago snapped, revolted, and practically been disowned. That poor child saved me. She became the focus so that I could slip away. It worked for everyone until it stopped working for Jenny. For the past few months, she had not been behaving as required. It was not addressed, and it was ignored to the point that even now Linda was talking Miss America. I could feel my temperature rising. I had to say something.

“But don’t you think the timing was odd? I mean, if it was this Benjy guy, why now? She wasn’t even doing pageants anymore. Don’t you think he would have found a girl, you know, more perfect?” I knew the last part would sting. That was the point.

“She was perfect,” Linda snapped.

“I just mean, I think too much emphasis is being put on her pageant life. The pictures everywhere are these disgusting glamour shots. I think it’s just creating a false story. She wasn’t a doll. She was a teenager.”

“That’s enough,” my father commanded.

It felt empowering to get that out even if I was alone in thinking it. I was a lousy sister, and this felt like the least I could do. Someone had to stick up for her memory, not the memory her parents and the media wanted portrayed, the memory she would want.

I left right after dinner. They wanted normal and that was normal. I didn’t like those people. I hadn’t realized how much of a buffer Jenny had been between me and my father and Linda. I always thought they used her to ignore me. Apparently I used her too.

I stepped outside and awoke the zombies.

They kept yelling questions as if I would stand at the top of the driveway and yell answers back down to them. The narrative was already clearly established: Jenny was a beautiful, pristine child raped and murdered by a pedophile obsessed with her. A murder that rocked a perfect town and a perfect family. I would watch that Dateline episode. It was time to shake that image up a bit.

When my car reached the end of the driveway, the reporters parted to allow me access into the street. They surrounded the car, trying to get a good look at me. I rolled down the window to help them. Then I raised both middle fingers and announced, “You’re all so fucking stupid,” before hitting the gas and driving off.