Mother, Mother

by Koren Zailckas

  Violet swallowed, hard.

  “Josephine reminded me of a fifties screen goddess. A real woman. I’m talking silk dresses and Liz Taylor eyes. Wit like a razor blade and all the charm I was missing. She was studying art at Mercyhurst. Way too good for the likes of me. So I figured out what was important to her and I became that. Before I met her, if somebody asked me what I liked in a piece of art, I would’ve said I like it to hang straight on the wall. Suddenly, I’m wearing checkered scarves and hair grease, trying to keep up with conversations about Rothko and the human drama.”

  Laughter rippled across the room like a wave.

  “I know … We could teach those art school kids about the human drama, couldn’t we?”

  Someone spit-whistled. Again, laughter bounced off the cinder-block walls.

  “In the beginning with her—my wife—I didn’t even need to drink. Booze stopped me feeling bad, but Josie did me one better. She made me feel special because she was so special. A perfect ten like her would never go out with a guy who wasn’t up to snuff.

  “But I couldn’t keep it up, of course. After the wedding, my artsy-guy mask started to slip, and Jo saw the real nerd she’d married. I tried to make up for it by spoiling her. Taking care of her the way I used to look after my mom. I got myself a decent IT job. Tried to take Josie on vacations, buy her jewelry, rub her feet, paint her toenails. I’ve always said if I get canned from IBM, I’ll make a damned good pedicurist. I even push back the cuticles.”

  This round of chuckles was tinged with embarrassment.

  “Eww,” Corinna whispered. “I’d never date a guy who knows his way around a pumice stone.”

  Violet grimaced.

  “Anyway, nothing worked. Josie started backing away. Maybe because I was too demanding—I’ve never really figured it out. Anyway, the change was immediate. She stopped telling me she loved me. You name it, she hated it: the way I eat, dress, drive, floss my teeth, answer the phone. On the surface, everything was fine. We had a baby. Then, two more …”

  Violet slouched lower in her seat. She prayed her father wouldn’t mention her by name.

  “I kept hoping with each one that things would get better. Don’t get me wrong. I love my kids. I do. But I don’t know them very well. Josie used to stare daggers at me if I tried to pick one of our crying babies up. If I tried to bring my son outside for a game of catch, Josie would act jealous or say something about how I couldn’t catch a ball if it was smothered in Gorilla Glue.”

  Violet remembered that dig. Her mother often pointed out her father’s lack of man skills. She also liked to say Douglas couldn’t light a fire if you handed him a burning match; he couldn’t tie a knot even with a troop of Boy Scouts there to show him the way.

  “I guess you could say I backed off being a father to my kids. Booze helped there.” He gave a slow whistle. “Alcohol gave me a break from the voices in my head. And I don’t mean schizophrenic voices. I’m talking, my father’s voice and my wife’s voice were singing this duet in my head, and the lyrics went: ‘Douglas, you’re useless. Douglas, you’re a shit.’

  “I can’t say for sure when I started blacking out. I don’t remember a lot. I was blacked out at my oldest daughter’s choral concert. I was blacked out the night my youngest daughter had a psychotic episode. I don’t remember most of Christmas Day, 2006. I woke up the next day, and it was like Christmas all over again. I was going, ’Oh, look at this. I got an iPod. Someone gave me The Sopranos on DVD.”

  People hee-hawed. Douglas had obviously written his speech to include sitcom timing, jokes at regular intervals. But Violet wasn’t laughing. She was the one who’d given him that DVD. And that mention of the “psychotic episode” confirmed it: her father had been hammered.

  Violet thought back on the car ride to Fallkill. She remembered sitting in the passenger side of her father’s car while he swerved around the southbound curves of Mohonk Road. The radio had sounded, at least to Violet, like a combination of un-tuned violins and fingernails on chalkboards. Fog shrouded the hood. If they’d talked during the ride, Violet couldn’t remember it. She had no gauge for how drunk he’d been when he dropped her at the psych emergency room.

  Corinna noticed Violet’s wet eyes. Are you okay? she mouthed.

  Violet nodded.

  “Wow,” Corinna whispered. “This is really getting to you, huh? He just needs to dump her, hit the gym, and lawyer up.”

  Violet felt a soft hand grip her shoulder. When she turned around, she saw the Fallkill counselor with a warning finger to her lips.

  “At a certain point, I was drinking to stop the guilt too. Because sometime during that period, Josie eased up on me and started going a little Joan Crawford with the kids. I could have done something. Interceded the time Jo slapped my youngest daughter across the face.”

  Violet remembered that slap; later her mother had called it a “love tap,” as if to further confuse love with pain.

  “I came to AA after my pal, and now sponsor, Kerry, saw me spiking my coffee with a ziplock bag filled with whiskey.… Yes, the ziplock bag is what they call the poor man’s flask. It’s also the sneaky drunk’s flask of choice.” The alcoholic-addicts did their laugh-track thing. “Anyway, Kerry told me, ‘I’m still kind of new to this recovery game and they’ve told me I can’t diagnose anyone else’s disease but my own. But in your case, Doug, I’m gonna make an exception.’ Kerry said, ‘If you don’t find yourself a program and take the advice those people suggest, then something major’s gonna happen to you in six months or less. You’re going to lose your job or your kids. You’re going to smash your car into the side of the Poughkeepsie bridge.’

  “Three weeks after that, an incredible thing happened. My daughter ran away.” Douglas shrugged. His voice wavered.

  The crowd murmured in sympathy.

  Violet’s eyes wouldn’t focus. She took a swig of her coffee, but it tasted charred and the cracked foam cup fully split, scalding her thighs and splattering Edie’s white shirt. “Give me your cigarettes,” she hissed, and Corinna handed over her pack with a look halfway between amusement and shock.

  Violet heard her father continue his stream of self-confession as she turtled her head into the collar of her peacoat. She half-skittered, half-staggered out the door.

  “After my daughter left, the only person I hated more than my wife or my dead father was myself. I hated myself enough to come with Kerry to a meeting like this one. And when the time came, I raised my hand and told the people there about my poor baby Rose …”

  • • •

  Violet sparked her lighter. She was beginning to understand why people liked smoking cigarettes; they were an available source of comfort, always at the ready, even if they did leave you feeling fragile and dependent as a newborn baby.

  “Violet Hurst!”

  Part of her expected to whip around and see her father. But it was only the angular, bug-eyed face of Fallkill’s resident addiction counselor. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “Nowhere. Sorry. I just needed some air.”

  “Do I look like a chump?” The counselor snatched the cigarette from Violet’s fingers and stamped it out with her age-inappropriate Doc Martens boot.

  “No.” The counselor’s questions were never rhetorical.

  “I’ve been in your shoes, remember? You think I never tried to slip out of a meeting and thumb a ride?”

  “I wasn’t gonna leave.”

  “Suuure,” the counselor said, incredulous. “I’m going to report this, obviously. But for the moment, I suggest you get your ass back in your chair. Willingness is the key.”

  Back in the basement, the official proceedings were finished. Still, the room hadn’t cleared. It felt tinier now that people were standing. Alcoholics and addicts were milling around, hugging, confiding things to each other as they slammed more coffee and chewed on crumbly bakery cookies. Violet spied Corinna in the corner with her biker boy and gave them a wave.

  “Not so f
ast,” the counselor said, hooking two fingers into Violet’s coat pocket. “There’s the meeting before the meeting; the meeting; and the meeting after the meeting. I expect you to attend all three.”

  Violet’s heart was hammering. Across the room, a small huddle of people were commending her father on his “beautiful message.” “I’ve got seventeen months,” a boy not much older than Violet told Douglas. “I felt like you were telling my life story.”

  Douglas asked him if he had a sponsor. He added, “A bunch of us are going to the Bull and Buddha. Come along if you like.”

  The more Violet heard, the angrier she got. It was more paternal than anything she’d seen of Douglas in years.

  “You’ll always be an outsider unless you start interacting and sharing at meetings,” the counselor told her. “It’s like your hair.” She reached up and snatched Violet’s hat like a high school bully. “Anyone who looked at you would think, Now there’s a girl who knows how to make herself vulnerable, but in reality, you’re more closed off than Cuba …”

  It was too late. Douglas glanced over from the person he was talking to and spotted her buzz cut.

  Violet grabbed the beanie back, but the damage was done. Pulling it over her forehead, she looked up and saw her father standing directly in front of her. His cheeks flushed red, almost as though he’d been slapped.

  “Dad,” Violet said. Her heart was speeding. She could feel the barometric pressure around them changing, getting sucked out the way it does before a damaging storm.

  WILLIAM HURST

  ON WEDNESDAY MORNING, Will woke to his mother arranging an outfit. A drift of clothes was piling up at the foot of his bed: flannel slacks, sweater vests, button-down shirts in seasonal orange plaid. There was the screech-scratch sound of his mother moving hangers in the crowded closet.

  “I can’t decide what we ought to wear,” she said. “I worry that if we dress the way we normally dress, this Trina woman will think we’ve scrubbed ourselves up and gone out of our way to impress her. But then, if we dress the way normal people dress, especially the kinds of people she tends to see … Well, I don’t even think we own anything like that.” She laughed to herself. “I’m letting a civil servant on a power trip send me to pieces.”

  A few moments later, she stepped toward Will holding an (obviously) fake letterman’s sweater and a pair of wide-wale corduroys with tiny Scottie dogs embroidered all over the cuffs.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Will, please do as you’re told. Do I really need to remind you about the gravity of the situation we’re in? Do you really want someone to rip you out of your crying mother’s arms?”

  Will stepped into the corduroys, suddenly wishing Violet were home. He realized that without her, he had no idea when their mother was being dramatic.

  “Right,” Josephine said. “That brings us to hair. Not your hair. Mine.”

  He followed her down the hall to the master bathroom and watched her unloop her curlers in the “hers” side of the his-and-hers antique mirrors.

  For a fraction of a second, she stopped fluffing her hair and looked sharply at him. “That thing I told you in the car the other day? About your father?” She didn’t turn away from the mirror. She was addressing Will’s reflection.

  “Yeah?” Will felt his stomach drop away like the floor on his least favorite carnival ride.

  “I probably don’t need to tell you not to mention that today.”

  His mother was always scariest when she spoke in double negatives. “No,” Will said. “You don’t need to tell me.”

  “That’s what I thought.” Her voice was hardening. She screwed her face into a look of sham bewilderment, brows pinched, scratching her head with the blunt edge of her lipstick pencil. “And can I ask what you took away from your father’s office the other day?”

  “What do you mean?” Took away. He was thrown by her word choice. Had she sent him there hoping he would walk off with some tangible evidence?

  “I mean did you find out anything new? About your father’s business?”

  Will still couldn’t decide whether the words were specific or offhanded. Did his mom mean Douglas’s profession? Or his personal business?

  Will knew this was the perfect moment to tell his mother about the suspicious calls from Carrie and to ask her if she knew about the private investigator. But he wanted his final reveal to be big. He didn’t want to go to her until he knew more about Carrie’s identity and Rose’s resurgence. As they said on the cop shows, he had to find that one crucial piece of information that would blow both cases wide open.

  “Dad’s work is fine. For him, I mean. They’re building cool programs. Trying to make a computer that speaks like humans instead of in zeroes and ones. I wrote all about it in the worksheet you gave me.” It occurred to Will to wonder if she’d read his so-called assignment. “I still don’t think I’d want to work there.”

  That quirk of a smile. She was pleased with his answer. “Why not?”

  The dread was building in him. “I’d rather be a writer or an artist like you.”

  “Anyone can work in a place like Dad’s work. It takes someone very special to see the world with an artist’s eye.”

  He was speaking her language. He was the star pupil quoting the teacher to the teacher herself. But, even as he said it, he didn’t buy it. The words were gluey in his mouth. Josephine was still considering Will’s reflection. Something—a look of boredom in her depthless eyes—said she didn’t believe him either.

  He asked about the day’s science lesson to change the subject.

  “Oh, Will,” she sighed, “I think we have bigger concerns today. Don’t you?” She grabbed a tissue from the shimmery gold tissue box cover and set to work cleaning an invisible smudge on the mirror.

  He said, “The house looks nice.”

  She snorted suddenly. “It ought to. I spent all day yesterday on it. I cleaned so hard I broke the mop handle. I want those CPS people to come in here and be wowed. No, intimidated. Remember this, Will. Social workers are just as mean as lawyers. They’re jealous of families like us. They want to believe that everyone grows up in the kind of abusive households they did. They want to believe every mother is a monster and every child is a punching bag, boo-hoo. It makes them feel better about themselves.”

  Will’s mother had grown up in an abusive household. He didn’t know the details because they were too horrible; his mom said her childhood was so gory she couldn’t remember most of it. Will knew only that Josephine’s mother had kicked her out of the house when she was eighteen for reasons unspecified and promptly died six months later.

  Josephine huffed with annoyance as she yanked the last tissue in the box. “Will, honey. Pass me some toilet paper, will you?”

  And then he noticed it: a small but undeniable thing. The toilet paper roll was on backward. His mother was very vocal about her preference for the “over” orientation (it was the manufacturer’s intent, she argued; the pattern was printed on that side). For reasons Will couldn’t quite explain, seeing its tail brush the wall made his blood run cold. Would Rose change things around the house just enough to make them feel disoriented and slightly nuts? Was Rose trying to send them a message? Or did confusing them just make them easier to manipulate? Lochetic. That was yet another word Will had copied into his unusual-word notebook. A describing word, meaning “waiting in ambush,” it reminded him of Rose.

  “Hello, Trina. I wish I could say it’s a pleasure to see you. But I’m not one for false pleasantries. Am I, Will?”

  “I applaud your honesty.” Even when Trina laughed, her face seemed built for pity. Her eyes were too wet and her big, fleshy cheeks tugged downward. “This is my colleague, Mr. Flores.”

  Mr. Flores. It was strange to hear him introduced so formally, given he was just a few years older than Rose. He was a slight Hispanic man with a buzzed head and a tie that looked extra wide against his slender chest. He flashed his ID card.

  “For heaven�
��s sake,” Josephine said, waving his badge away. “I have neighbors, you know.”

  Mr. Flores’s frown said he was already forming opinions.

  “May we come in?” Trina asked.

  “There you go again … Acting like I have a choice in the matter.” Josephine’s deep, theatrical laugh conveyed anything but joy. “Come right this way. I have Martha’s scones in the oven.”

  “Martha?” Trina’s eyes fell to her clipboard, as if scanning for a third Hurst daughter.

  “Stewart?” Josephine said. Her nose crinkled. Her half-smile was the one she reserved for top-shelf idiots. “Please leave your shoes by the door.”

  In the middle of the kitchen table—right alongside the linen napkins and tiered serving tray—was a conspicuously placed computer printout about state and federal laws as they pertained to child protective services. The top page read: KNOW YOUR RIGHTS! Will was suddenly fearful for Trina and Flores. Turn and run, he wanted to say. Run and don’t stop running until you get to a place that serves strong drinks. After my mom’s done with you, you’re gonna need one.

  “This is all very generous,” Trina said. “But we should probably just get down to business so you can get on with the rest of your day.”

  “I thought you might say that.” Another flash of that fangy smile. “In that case, Will, could you please start the video camera for me? I’m hopeless with electronics.”

  Will started. Sure enough, sitting directly next to the bowl of clotted cream, was his father’s digital camera. He felt Trina’s horror as he picked up the cold hunk of metal and opened the shutter.

  “That’s my boy. Just press Record and set it over there on the china cabinet.”

  “Mrs. Hurst.” Trina’s voice rippled with hesitation. “I want to assure you we are on your side.”