Читать книгу Mother, Mother: Psychological suspense for fans of ROOM - Koren Zailckas - Страница 12

IT WAS BARELY lunchtime, and Violet was already tired of being cooped up all morning. She’d always felt sanest in the great outdoors, especially when there was compost in her cuticles and maple pods in the ends of her long-ago hair.

Even during Violet’s bad trip, her mood had instantly improved after her friends brought her outside. The Fields’ eco-contemporary sat on ten enchanted acres, the Mohonk mountains guarding it from the south side like a high garden wall. The wind pulled the leaves across the lawn in crested waves. Violet saw vortexes and patterns in the hellfire sunset. This, she decided, was all she ever needed or wanted in life. She wanted only to wrap herself up in the misty red-gold dead of autumn. She wanted to make these three enchanted creatures—Imogene, Finch, and Jasper—her permanent family.

Imogene rode Finch’s BMX bike around the driveway while Violet stood on the rear pegs. Finch smiled beatifically behind the twirling flames of the copper fire pit. His face bloomed red and gold with reflected flashes.

“Hurst, you remind me of that Inuit story about the Stone Child,” he’d said.

“What?” Violet had asked. By that time, she had been lying on her back, her cheek in the overgrown grass, doing a slow improvised backstroke through a pile of dead leaves.

“So there was this orphan, right? And his mom and dad died in a bear attack. He lived by himself, angry and starving to death. All he had was a rock the same size as he was. He wrapped his arms and legs around it and refused to let go.”

Violet had a thought that it sounded like her parents’ relationship: doting Douglas clinging to an ice-cold hunk of rock.

“That’s how he got the nickname the Stone Child,” Finch continued. “The villagers thought he was out of his fucking mind. But that bat-shit little boy didn’t let go. He just kept clinging to the thing, until one day, the big rock broke in two. And inside was the most perfect girl he could ever ask for. She gave the Stone Child bows and arrows and a harpoon. They got married and had kids.”

“What the fuck does that even mean?!” Jasper cried.

“And what does that have to do with Violet?” Imogene asked, shrieking with laughter.

“I was just trying to say Violet is intuitive. She reminds me of some of the great healers.”

Violet felt all her organs flush hot and pulse.

Her cell phone had squirmed uncomfortably in her pocket. It was a text message from Josephine:

WE NEED YOU AT HOME. YOUR FATHER AND I HAVE DIVORCE ON THE TABLE.

After passing her phone around the group—Violet had to make sure she wasn’t tripping hard enough to imagine that—she texted the wary response: WHAT??? ARE YOU OKAY?

“It’s about time,” she’d told her friends. Her parents’ relationship wasn’t like Beryl and Rolf’s, or anyone else’s she knew. It was like a business arrangement, where her father provided the capital and her mother funneled money out the back. The only “business” they were in was denying reality and their true natures, and business had been failing ever since Rose ran away.

Violet’s phone buzzed with Josephine’s reply: YES, I’M OK. DINNER. I MEANT WE HAVE DINNER ON THE TABLE. MY PHONE CHANGES MY WORDS. COME HOME NOW.

They’d practically pissed themselves laughing. Violet rode her bike home via the town rail trail. The clouds on the horizon had darkened, and the bent trees looked a bit like they were clawing for her.

As Violet pedaled, she’d hatched a plan to fake a migraine and duck out on family dinner. She rehearsed everything she was going to say under her breath. She thought of the mantra for peace of mind—asato ma sadgamaya—which meant roughly, “lead us from darkness to the light / from knowledge of the unreal to the real.” Maybe she’d been having auditory hallucinations, but the bike’s spinning wheels had sounded like a sitar.

High on seeds, Violet would have much rather slept on the rail trail if she’d had her choice. Climbing off her bike, she found the front door locked. The more she tapped the brass door knocker (nobody answered), the more she began to feel like a stranger. Pacing back and forth on the personalized doormat (HURSTS, it read in severe, serifed letters), she’d started to feel like a home intruder.

Finally, knowing full well that her mother hated the sound, Violet hit the doorbell and listened to the dissonant electric sound of “When the Saints Go Marching In.”

The door had snapped inward, and Josephine’s grimacing face popped out.

“Why did you ring the doorbell?” she asked. “I hate that sound. That’s no exaggeration. I hate it. Douglas! Haven’t I told you to reprogram that thing?! It’s not your fault, Violet. It’s that father of yours.”

Violet had stepped into the foyer, where the chandelier seemed to bloom open like a crystal chrysanthemum, and felt like she’d crossed a psychic threshold that could never be uncrossed. Violet had wanted to retreat to her bedroom, but she couldn’t seem to vocalize anything. “It’s locked,” she finally said, tapping her temple with one finger.

“Let me smell you,” Josephine said, backing Violet against the door. “Have you been smoking cigarettes? You’re eating tonight. You’re eating something. Do you understand me? I hope you’re hungry, little girl.”

Now, in the hospital, Violet really did feel like a little girl. She felt as utterly aimless as she did during summer vacations when her mother used to confiscate her books as punishment for fighting with Rose. Since she was no good at sitting still to begin with, Violet decided to walk every inch of the resident area. She perused a cart of books donated by a ladies’ auxiliary (it was mostly graphic horror and super-inappropriate “throbbing manhood” smut). She scanned the patient art that had been stuck to the bulletin boards with packing tape (presumably tacks could be swallowed or used to self-harm). A handprint collage returned her thoughts, for the billionth time, to Will. For all the times people had questioned her about him, no one had told her how he was doing. She wondered whether he was home from the hospital. She hoped he wasn’t in pain.

After she’d done the full tour, Violet headed down the long hallway toward her room. She was nearly there when a nurse headed her off.

“Violet, right?” the woman asked. “Your mom dropped this at reception when she came in for paperwork.”

Violet felt a rush of blood as she reached out for the envelope. Any letter her mother left was sure to enumerate all of Violet’s faults. Or else, allude to the punishment she should expect when she got home. Violet’s anxiety turned to utter disbelief when she saw the perfectionistic print and the return address. When she noticed the sealing wax, she knew without a shadow of a doubt it was from Rose. Pyro Rose, who would melt down anything from crayons to Babybel cheese cases and stamp it with a peacoat button.

Violet shivered as she recalled the image of Rose standing in the foyer on the night of her intake. Her throat felt tight as she slit the envelope with one blue fingernail. Inside was Rose’s stick-man handwriting, all perfectly round circles and precision-straight lines, the pressure slightly too hard. Their mother was always appalled that no one of their generation used cursive.

Dear Vivi,

Greetings from corporate hell. I’m in acting class most nights, so I only have time to write when I’m at my day job. From what I can see, office life is like this big theater exercise where everybody just shuffles papers and acts really busy. I’m playing along, pretending like I’m taking the minutes for a meeting and really taking the opportunity to write you with a year’s worth of questions like …

How is Stone Ridge High these days?

Do you have your license?

Do you have a boyfriend?

Are you still thinking about art school? I hope so. I know I didn’t always “get” your art in the past, but you’re good. You should go for it. Whatever you do, don’t end up an office slave like me. Every second of the day is soo boring. Half the people I work for don’t even bother to ask my name, and the rest are too filthy rich to remember what it’s like to be young and broke. “How broke?” you might ask. This morning I bought coffee filters on credit!

Does it sound too stupid and optimistic to say I think I might catch a break soon? I’m auditioning again and I have a callback I’m crossing my fingers about.

My new acting teacher is the best I’ve ever had. The other day, he was like, “Rose, you’re a young twenty-something and the pool is pretty full of your type. You need to think about who responds to you best in real life. What kind of strangers smile at you before they even get to know you? Figure it out, and then audition for commercials for products that those people buy.” For me, it’s old people and little kids. According to this teacher, I’m the good girl, but not the leading lady. I’m more of the cute office clerk or the supportive older sister type. So ironic, isn’t it? I’m only typecast at parts I suck at in real life!

Which brings me to why I’m writing … I’m sorry I lumped you in with the rest of the family. I know we’ve both always done our own things, but I see now I should have let you in on my plan. I just didn’t want to be criticized, and I really didn’t want anyone to talk me into staying. Damien asked me to move in with him, and there’s no way Mom and Dad would have let that happen. You know how it would have gone … Dad inviting him over for dinner, Mom ribbing him about “living in sin.” I thought hopping on a train was the best way to spare everyone!

I’m really hoping you’ll play pen pal with me, and also that you’ll keep my address secret? That is, if Mom hasn’t already seen this and put two and two together! I’m just not ready to have the whole family banging down my door. I’m sure you understand why I’d rather visit them on my own terms.

I miss you!

Rose

It came as no surprise to Violet that her sister was alive and well, nor that she was living in the city. The police had said as much when they closed her short-lived missing-person investigation last year. It all ended with relief and embarrassment when Rose’s car was towed away from the Poughkeepsie MetroNorth station. Its metered parking ticket had expired, and the police found her Dear John letter to the Hursts placed prominently on the front seat. CCTV at the station had shown Rose buying a one-way ticket to Grand Central—a charge that matched the credit card the company confirmed she still used. It all proved what Violet had secretly suspected: the whole “case” was really just a five-alarm overreaction on her mother’s part, not to mention a waste of public sympathy and taxpayer money.

After her disappearance was deemed voluntary, other emotions whooshed in to fill the family vacuum Rose’s absence had created. Violet’s parents had been able to deal (just barely) with their panic over Rose’s so-called abduction, but they were totally unequipped to handle the fact that their golden child hated them enough to cut them out of her life. Douglas, even in his self-contained way, had seemed dejected for months. Josephine was rip-shit at being ignored. Will was angry too, in allegiance to their mom. And Violet … Once Violet was a hundred percent sure Rose was safe, she was overcome by sickening envy. She wanted the freedom her sister had. Of course she did. But Violet was most jealous of the subversive means by which Rose had broken free. Rose had escaped by doing exactly what Josephine asked of her, waiting until just the right moment to rebel. By comparison, Violet’s small, daily rebellions put her mother on guard around her. The harder Violet fought back, the more controlling Josephine became; she was in a choke chain of her own making.

Violet’s parents hadn’t been exaggerating to the police; it really was unlike Rose to take off for days without telling anyone. But they’d also failed to mention all the ways Rose had been acting out of character and causing tension for months—dropping her theater major and taking long walks alone, supposedly, on the town rail trail.

Only Violet and her mom had known the reason for Rose’s sudden bitchy pensiveness. Rose had come down with the kind of sickness that gets cured by either (a) a two-hour appointment at Planned Parenthood or (b) eighteen to twenty years of servitude. Rose had picked the former: A for abortion. If Violet had figured it all out sooner, she would have applauded Rose for not just going ahead and having Damien’s kid, simply for the ego trip (genes, lineage, legacy). She would have told Rose that she had lots of time to push around a mini-person who shared her last name. Violet knew in her gut that Josephine was the major reason Rose had done what she’d done. With a mom like theirs, it was impossible not to equate becoming a mother with becoming a monster.