Mother, Mother

by Koren Zailckas

  “Be quiet, William,” she shushed. Her face was pursed in disgust, a harsh downward crease where the sides of her nose met her liberally rouged cheekbones. She sat back in her white linen chair, waiting.

  Will rose high up on his tiptoes and brought his nose to meet the Great Work! sticker. After what felt like thirty minutes, his calves started to cramp. His thighs quivered. His loafers creased and cut into the tops of his feet. Each passing minute, the sticker seemed to get higher, but Will knew it was really his will failing him. Gravity was relentless. The pain was spider-crawling up the back of his knees.

  What made it even more humiliating was the view she had of his butt crack, the way his pants always began to slip at what felt like the forty-minute mark, and still he couldn’t move to pull them up. Steatopygic, a describing word, reserved for someone with a sofa-sized ass.

  As he stood there, his mother had her open Bible in her lap. She sounded calm for the first time since Trina and Flores had left, her voice no longer breathlessly high and unnatural. She was reading Timothy 3 aloud: “For people who be lovers of self … proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents …” Josephine was never more devout than when her children transgressed.

  After an hour or more, when Will’s ankle finally gave out, he half-hoped, as always, that his mother would physically punish him—smack the back of his neck, maybe, pinch his bicep, whatever. But physical brutality was beneath Josephine.

  Or maybe she’d conditioned Will to do the job for her. Still on the floor where he’d fallen, he started crying again, banging his head against the door in frustration. She kept on reading: “ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control …” Will’s vision curled black at the periphery, and at this his forehead budded lumps like a buck growing antlers.

  Pedicle, he thought. The bony protrusion of the skull from which an antler grows. And then he smacked his head once more.

  They ate frosted wheat squares that evening after Douglas called to say he was staying late at work. This was something they always did whenever they were alone for supper. When Violet and Douglas were home, dinner was a many-coursed, fancy-named thing—angel hair something and soy-glazed whatnot. But when Will and his mom were alone, dinner was Froot-Looped and Cocoa-Krisped.

  It was the kind of guilty pleasure that made him feel closer to her, even though she left him alone at the table to eat it by himself. After the lengthy punishment in her office, Josephine had slammed a bowl and a carton on the kitchen table, then carried her own portion upstairs.

  Alone at the table, Will smelled rose hips and sulfur in the air. He heard the water running in the master bath, and he knew his mother was eating her cereal in her claw-footed tub, mirror steaming, bath salts crunching under her thighs.

  Will dragged his spoon through the sugar-slick mush, wondering what time his father would come home. Was he with Carrie? Will knew how sex worked. When he was five his mother had given him a very descriptive “intercourse” talk (her right pointer finger “erect,” plunging into the “okay” sign she made with her left hand). It was still weirdly horrible to imagine any man doing it to any woman, let alone his father doing it to Carrie.

  Bible passages were still ringing in Will’s ears, and he couldn’t eat, not when he was thinking these bad thoughts, knowing that God thought him treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit.

  He got up from the table and listened for a few minutes at the foot of the stairs. There were no footsteps, no opening and closing of dresser drawers. Will knew, intuitively, that his mother hadn’t toweled off yet.

  He crept to the living room, his least favorite room in the house. Probably because his parents only summoned him to it when they needed a place to give him bad news: “Rose has run away” or “We’ve decided you’re not suited for public school.” Maybe they chose the space for their bad-news talks because they thought its big dripping curtains and throned chairs had gravitas. Or maybe they wanted to keep bad talks and bad memories confined to a part of the house that they rarely visited.

  The room was pristine and grand, but Will knew the chaos that awaited him. He pulled open one door of the soaring built-in cabinet and saw an infestation of mess. There were toppled vases, tangles of Christmas ribbon, mouse droppings, oyster plates, gravy boats (plural), and big-eyed porcelain doohickeys. Antiques, his mother would say. They’d seemed to multiply, especially over the past year. Toward the back, Will uncovered the leather-bound photo albums.

  It was true. The Hurst family album was littered with blanks, exactly like Douglas had told the PI. It was exactly the kind of betrayal his mother had described to the person on the phone: “She’s tearing our house apart. Destroying our possessions.” All but a few of Rose’s baby pictures were gone, and in the few that remained, her cherubic face was obscured. In one photo, Rose was just a lump of pink blanket in Josephine’s hospital bed. In another, Rose was just a bald skull peeking out over the top of the baby carrier their father wore strapped to his chest.

  In later family shots, Rose had simply been torn or scissored out. There were jagged holes in the middle of their Christmases, their school graduations, their vacations to Lake George and Cape Cod. There was a slight tremor to Will’s hand as he turned the plastic pages.

  He dumped the albums back in the cluttered cabinet. He stopped again at the bottom of the steps to listen for signs of life upstairs. It was still quiet as a tomb, no sound of the tub draining.

  He thought again about the e-mail his father had sent the private investigator: a few personal items have gone missing. What else had Rose come back to take? She was so much older than Will—ten unbridgeable years—he had no idea what mattered to her. When she left, she’d taken her computer, her phone, and a good-sized chunk of her wardrobe. Surely, that was all a twenty-year-old would need.

  Unless she’d come back for money. But to Will’s knowledge, his parents weren’t the type who hid dollar bills in cookie jars. Heck, his parents hardly even used cash.

  Will searched his TV references, his only window into the logistics of the crime. Reality law-enforcement shows always showed people stealing jewelry in order to pawn it for cash, but surely Will would have heard all about it if one of his mother’s tennis bracelets had gone missing. 20/20 always ran specials about young people swiping their parents’ prescriptions, but Will knew the meager contents of his parents’ medicine cabinet; there was little inside beside the basic aspirins, laxatives, and fish oil supplements, plus, of course, his epilepsy drugs.

  For a minute, Will considered going upstairs and clawing around in Rose’s desk drawers. But then he remembered Violet and her caper jar: Mom rifles through other people’s stuff, but she’s totally unwilling to look at her own baggage. Had the same thing occurred to Rose? Maybe she, too, had used their mother’s storage for safekeeping. Maybe the basement was the place where things had gone missing?

  The basement smelled of dampness and the kitty litter his mother sprinkled around to absorb the humidity, and it was shadowy no matter how many bare bulbs his father hung from the ceiling. Will began with the scarred oak armoire. Violet’s caper jar was still in the side pocket of his mother’s sable coat (half full), along with sixty dollars cash and a little metal pipe that looked menacing. But the rest of his mother’s coats, capes, and blazers turned up empty.

  He moved on to the next wardrobe. He was worried about the time, whether his mother was upstairs looking for him. There were too many garment bags to unzip, too many little satin-lined pockets to finger. Violet was right. It was a shocking ton of clothes, much of it unworn, the price tags dribbling out of the cuffed sleeves. Will was about to give up when he spotted the hat boxes beneath a long dress cloaked in dry cleaner’s plastic.

  Idiot, he told himself when he flipped open the top and found, merely, a globular fur hat. It looked Russian, reminiscent of a Bond villainess. Will couldn’t help but pick it up. The silvered fur felt so alive beneath his fingers. He half-expected it to pan
t and growl as he petted it. The hat was halfway to Will’s head before he looked down and saw the book that someone had hidden beneath it: Waiting for Baby: A Nine-Month Journal.

  Will perked his ears for any sounds of footsteps upstairs. His breath suddenly felt like he was back in real-school gym class. Each pinched inhale burned, and his legs cramped under him. Tiny reindeer bells jingled as he repositioned himself, and it took him half a second and a near heart attack to realize he’d grazed the side of a Tupperware container marked X-mas.

  He lifted the book carefully, by the edges of its lavender cover. He was hoping it belonged to his mother, even as he knew it was too new. Its corners were uncurled and the spine was barely creased. And right there on the first page, on the dotted line designating mother’s name, his sister’s rigid hand had penned Rose Hurst.

  It was painful to read. The writing was so emotional—such blurty stuff, full of expectant joy—that it drew a sharp line under the fact that Rose had documented it for someone other than Will. The first few weeks were Rose’s fragmented biography. On the line marked favorite pastime(s), Rose had written: Hiking, camping. Also, cooking. Although I can only do it when visiting friends at college. At home, Mom complains about the mess and me using her spices. When the book had called for three words to describe me, Rose had answered: Rose-colored glasses!

  Evidently Rose’s “earliest memory” was Playing bank at a neighbor’s house. Pennies and fake bills everywhere! A bigger mess than my mom would ever let me make at home! She’d added: I *swear* to tolerate normal-kid messes. So bring this book to me anytime I am being unfair. I don’t mind if you are mouthy and messy and a little bit savage. Much more fun than being like me, who acted like my mom’s best employee!

  Will shuddered a little on the last word. Did he act like he worked for his mother? He consoled himself with the thought that he’d never had Gerber-baby looks. Even now, he wasn’t cute enough to score model management in the manner of grade-school Rose.

  And that was something. With the exception of the veiled employee comment, the journal made zero mention of Rose’s acting, singing, or modeling. Will had always thought these were the things that defined his oldest sister. But now he wondered whether he’d confused her with the sound bite his parents gave their friends.

  Her baby’s father was suspiciously absent from the journal. Unlike the “family tree” section of the book—where Rose had left blanks after headlines like fond memories of my parents and favorite family vacation—she had written something, however vague, in the space marked qualities I love about your father: If you’re reading this, I hope we’ve had lots of talks about your dad and you don’t have any unresolved questions! I wish so hard that I could give you a dad who could be there for you!

  The son or daughter in Rose’s journal seemed so real, like a flesh-and-blood relative Will ought to be able to play Blokus and Uno with on Thanksgiving. The baby even had a name! Well, Rose had scrawled a few possibilities—Sophia, Audrey, Oliver—into a section titled baby names I’ve always liked.

  Suddenly, it occurred to Will that he could be an uncle. Uncle William. It had a nice ring to it: not the kind of uncle who could teach you gun safety or how to pour beer from a keg, but the kind who could teach you etymologies and show you how to make a present look professionally wrapped.

  Will kept flipping through the pages.

  I first suspected I was pregnant because.… I threw up in my lap while driving on I-87!

  I found out for sure on … April 25, 2006.

  My reaction was.… Brief terror followed by joy!

  At the nine-week mark, Rose had pasted a murky ultrasound photo following a visit to the doctor—Your heartbeat looked just like a firefly!—and spilled the beans to their mother:

  When I told my family I was pregnant, their reaction was … Told Mom today because I had to … Somehow, she knew I’d been to Planned Parenthood. She probably scrolled through the outgoing numbers on my phone. Well, baby, she thinks I am ruining her life. Not my life, mind you. Not yours. HERS. She trapped me for hours in her office, trying to make me tell her about your father (I wouldn’t) and pressuring me to terminate. Holy shit, I must really be losing my mind … What am I doing writing “shit” and “terminate” in your baby book? I’m not terminating. You’re a part of me. Yes, Mom is right, you will be needy, expensive, and all-consuming (that’s your job). You will poop and cry ’round the clock, and IF I was ever #1 in my life (I’m not sure I even was!), that will certainly not be the case once you’re born. You’re gonna be a life-changer. But I like that! At this point, any change is good. P.S.—Don’t worry, I WILL NOT raise you in my mother’s house!

  It got worse.

  What role do you see your family playing in your baby’s life? At this point, next to none. Mom’s threatened to kick me out of the house (fine) and stop paying my tuition (problem!). She keeps giving me printouts of studies about how single mothers have poor health later in life. I was in sociology the other day, and an article titled “Why Pedophiles Love Single Moms” fell out of my notebook. Mom had obviously tucked it where she knew I would find it. Thank God I saw it before I mistakenly turned it in along with my research paper!

  That was the last entry. Weeks eleven, twelve, and thirteen were blank.

  Will decided to go and get his mother. He’d already forgiven her for the afternoon’s punishment (he had been slacking on piano) and he was on her side where it came to the child protective people. (Trina and her partner did, in Josephine’s words, seem like zombie clones trained to “steal children” and “eat up federal funding”).

  Josephine, at the very least, needed to know that Rose had it in for her.

  Will climbed the stairs with the heart of a lion. His whole body had tightened. His brain was hardened with some emotion he didn’t often feel, maybe rage.

  Now, he wanted more than anything for Rose to come back. Will wanted to catch her red-handed in the midst of slashing the tires, or Saran-wrapping the toilet seats, or whatever prank she had in mind next.

  It was more than just outrage, this shimmer of a feeling that made Will’s teeth grind and his jaw chatter. There was uneasiness there too. He was afraid. How far would Rose go to get back at them? Would she rub their toothbrushes with raw meat? Rub their sheets with poison ivy? Cut the brake lines in their mother’s car? In Will’s mind, there was no end of terrifying revenge scenarios.

  Will wasn’t sure which scared him more: Rose’s revenge or the idea that she might drop the pranks and prowling and come back to live with the Hursts in a real way. If Rose came home, would their mother forgive her? If Rose came home, would she replace Will as their mother’s favorite? He couldn’t live with his demon sister. He couldn’t go back to breathing shallowly in some corner. Will felt a whip of despair, and beyond that a boy prince’s desire to defend his kingdom. The basement, make that the whole house, was motionless, but for the circling, overhead threat of rogue Rose.

  VIOLET HURST

  “VIOLET,” BARKED THE scrubs-clad figure in the doorway. Violet, painting her nails with Edie, expected a quiet-down warning, but instead the nurse said, “Mail call.” She dropped the letter facedown on the bed, and Violet’s eyes fell to the dusty-mauve seal.

  She felt oddly exhilarated. Maybe because she really was warming to the idea of living with Rose.

  Edie urged, “Open it.”

  Dearest Vivi,

  I’m so sorry to hear about the asylum …

  “Asylum?” Edie said. “Is this, like, Valley of the Dolls and you’re the Patty Duke character? Or does she think you’ve sought political asylum?”

  Violet rolled her eyes so hard they nearly fell out of her face. She read on.

  … Thank you so much for understanding!

  I love your questions to me! You must be studying for the SATs if you’re thinking in multiple choice. I can remember what that was like. For, like, six months I could only think in analogies. Vindictive: Revenge as Dishonest is to __________. Yu
ck, I would not trade places with you!

  Anyway, let’s see.

  A) I am definitely not in formal touch with Mom and Dad. Although I am curious about them! Do you hate them as much as I did when I was living there?

  B) I’m doing temp work. I move between a lot of different offices, all of them boring. Acting is my real work. Or maybe, I should say trying to get acting work is my real work! I’ve been really trying to change my approach to auditioning. I make bolder choices than I used to. A director may not like what I’m doing. He may think, “That’s all wrong,” but he sure won’t say, “This Rose girl isn’t doing anything!” I’d rather they hate me than forget me.

  C) Yep, Damien and I are living together. Sometimes I still worry that cohabitation is a “relationship killer” the way Mom always said. But we plan to get married eventually. You’ll have to meet him and tell me if you approve! What about you? Do you have a boyfriend? You didn’t answer in your last letter!

  D) You know about that picture, huh? It’s okay now. I’ve made peace with everything.… Do you believe that? Nah, sometimes I don’t know if I believe it either.

  So how is Will? He was such an innocent little boy when I left, but that’s probably not the case anymore.

  Fill me in. I need details!

  Still missing you,

  Rose

  P.S. Write me at the below address. Damien’s father has some health issues, so we’re staying at his parents’ country house for a little while. You heard me, I’m back in the Hudson Valley!

  • • •

  “Are you as disturbed as I am by that revenge analogy?” Violet asked.

  “Hmmm,” Edie said, blowing contemplatively on her wet nails. “Maybe it was a coincidence that she picked that one?”