Mother, Mother

by Koren Zailckas

  “I thought Freud said there are no coincidences.”

  “It’s a touch passive-aggressive,” Edie agreed.

  “Who’s passive-aggressive?” Corinna strode in and plopped herself down on Violet’s bed. “Fill me in. I’ve been talking on the phone with Leatherboy. He’s at MARC sober house, so he has unlimited phone privileges and all day to describe his thick, throbbing—”

  “Aggghhh, phone sex.” Edie gagged and covered her ears. “I ca-an’t hear you. La la la la la la.”

  “Just be careful he doesn’t give you hearing AIDS,” Violet said.

  Corinna laughed. “That joke took me a second,” she said, and proceeded to read Rose’s letter. When she finished, she said, “See, I was right. A country house, la-di-da. Big sis found herself a Daddy Starbucks.”

  “A Daddy Warbucks,” Edie corrected.

  “I got Starbucks on the brain,” Corinna said. “I’d kill for one of those caramel apple cider drinks. When it’s cold out and you’re stoned, it tastes like apple pie. So what’s the address on big sis’s stately country home?”

  Violet tossed her the envelope. “Newburgh.”

  Corinna lifted her chin, put her pinky in the air. “No, dahling, not the old burg. The neeew burg.”

  Edie grabbed the envelope. “We’ll Street View it. Next computer lab.”

  “Why do we even have that?” Violet asked. “Computer lab, I mean. I can’t figure it out.”

  “It’s so we can keep up our studies,” Edie said. “Online courses. GEDs.”

  “It sucks, right?” Corinna added. “The last hospital I went to had Wi-Fi. And they didn’t confiscate cell phones.”

  The most unsettling thing about the letter was the part about Rose being back in the Hudson Valley. Violet appreciated the buffer the city put between them, at least while she tried to figure out Rose’s intentions. Now Rose had halved the distance between herself and the rest of the Hursts. It was like the games of Red Light, Green Light they used to play when they were little. Now that Violet’s back was turned—now that Violet was locked away—Rose was inching closer and closer, trying to tag her, trying to reset the whole game, whether Violet was feeling ready or not.

  Violet’s stomach fell when she felt an authoritative hand on her elbow. “You’ve got a visitor,” the nurse said.

  Violet was tempted to say, I know. She was expecting her father. She was expecting a long, frustrating talk about their “shared substance abuse issues.”

  But the man at the table wasn’t Douglas. He was young, Latino, and, at least in Violet’s approximation, retina-searingly good-looking. Boyish, she thought. The man’s eyes reflected light like dark leather, and Violet was stupidly glad she was still in the sweater dress Edie insisted she borrow.

  “Viola Hurst?” the young man asked. He banged his knee as he pushed out his chair and awkwardly rose to his feet, giving Violet the impression that she wasn’t the person he was expecting either. She’d let Corinna conceal her dark circles and line her eyes in soft gray. The result was surprisingly un-mental-patient.

  She shook his hand. “Most people call me Violet.”

  “Nicholas Flores. I’m from Child Protective Services. Sorry—” he stammered. “It’s just—We have the same haircut. It’s kind of tripping me out.”

  “Oh.” Violet reached, self-consciously, for her scalp.

  “Did you play the soundtrack for V for Vendetta while you shaved it? I did.”

  “No,” Violet laughed. “I did donate it to Locks of Love. I’m sorry, did you say you were from social services?”

  Nicholas nodded and slid Violet his business card.

  She felt her face flush from the bottom up, a sensation like she’d been pushed out of her depth and could feel herself going under. “Someone else hurt my brother. Not me. Does that answer your question?”

  “No. I’m not—” He paused and looked out the window. The sky was cornflower blue. “I’m actually more interested in your family as a whole, and your sister Rose. I went to Old Stone Way earlier today.”

  “You went to my house?”

  Nicholas nodded. “I met Will and your mother.”

  “Mom,” Violet repeated. The shock of it was enough to make her pull out a chair and sit down.

  “She’s a tough customer, huh?”

  A flood of breath rolled out of Violet, like she’d been kicked in the stomach. “You don’t know the half of it. I’m sure you got Mom at her most presentable. All oven mitts and cookies from scratch.”

  Nicholas met her eyes and laughed. “Scones, actually. Yeah, I can see how she could be convincing, how she might come off real put together to someone she looks up to. Me? I think I’m probably an inferior being, so she made it pretty clear she’d rather have a conversation with the dirt on my shoe. Besides, I’ve been doing this long enough to be suspicious of people who play at being perfect.”

  Nicholas was studying her with his deep black eyes that weren’t unkind. “I could be totally off-base, and I hope you’ll tell me if I am. But I left your house feeling weird … disoriented. It’s my experience that dangerous people make you feel off-balance.”

  Violet wanted to be distrustful of this kindness, but it felt too good. Her hair-trigger tear ducts were ready to go.

  “I can see I’m upsetting you.” He looked genuinely apologetic. “Maybe you can just start by telling me about your sister? She’s the real reason I’m here. When she ran away, your family got entered into our system. This matter with your brother was more like …” He struggled with the word.

  “Strike two?” Violet offered.

  “Not quite. I just wouldn’t be doing my job if I treated them as unrelated incidents.”

  “Well, like, what do you want to know about Rose? Her personality, or hobbies, or what?”

  Nicholas shrugged. “Anything that gives me a better sense of her state of mind when she ran away.”

  The more Violet tried to describe Rose—and she seemed to be doing it a lot lately—the more she felt like she was objectifying her, pinning her down as a musical theater girl, the kind of person who sipped Throat Coat tea and asked questions like “Does my voice sound pitchy to you?” The sad truth was: her sister was a really good actress, but Violet was starting to realize that she had no idea what lurked beneath the public persona Rose was so skilled at putting on.

  “I don’t know. Rose lived at home, but we were never really that close. Anything I have to say, well, you’ve probably heard the same thing from Mom and Will. Rose did a lot of school plays. She owned character shoes. She didn’t drink milk before big shows. My mom was always buying her shirts that said things like Drama Queen and Broadway Bound. And some days Rose would sit around for hours doing diction exercises, like You know New York, you need New York, you know you need unique New York.”

  Nicholas surprised her by laughing. It was a contagious laugh, twinkling and sincere.

  Violet went on. “Anyway, halfway through college, she had a kind of quarter-life crisis, dropped her theater major, decided she’d be happier sampling rocks, being some kind of scientist. I guess she’s changed her mind since. She’s back to vying for a Tony.”

  “So you two still keep in touch?”

  “That’s overstating it. It’s only a few letters. And she only just started writing me.” Nicholas was the first kind and helpful person she’d interacted with since checking herself in. She didn’t want to blow it just yet by telling him about seeing Rose. She couldn’t stand him thinking she was a hallucinating schizo-person. “It’s weird, I feel like her presence has been with me for the past few weeks, and then suddenly she gets in touch now that I’m in the wacky ward.”

  “Any chance I can get her contact info from you?”

  Violet shrugged. “Didn’t my mother give it to you?”

  “She said she figured the letter she brought you was from Rose, but she didn’t copy the address down. She’s been trying to give your sister space. She said that’s what the police advised her t
o do.”

  “Sure, I can give you her addresses. I don’t have her phone number.”

  “That would be great. So do you mind taking me back to the weeks and months before she left? Was Rose fighting with your parents? Anything going on at home that would explain why she’d run away?”

  Nicholas must have noticed her sudden squirrel-in-the-road posture. “You can tell me,” he said.

  “I’m pretty sure Rose got pregnant the spring before she left. I think she had an abortion, and Mom went a little Rick Santorum on her.”

  “How do you know that?”

  He kept his eyes steady as Violet told him about the photo on the desk, but she could tell it wasn’t the kind of thing he was expecting. “Cruel and unusual?” she asked.

  Nicholas rubbed the back of his neck. “Hard to say. Is your mom especially religious?”

  “Only when it’s convenient.”

  “Have you told anyone about this? Your dad? Did you mention it to the police after Rose ran away?”

  Violet shook her head. “I should have. I know that. But it’s one thing to call bullshit to your family and another thing to call bullshit on them. I didn’t want everyone knowing what weirdos we are. Then they found Rose anyway. And I figured she’d been through enough without having to rehash it all over again.”

  “How did they find her?”

  “She’d left a pretty obvious paper trail: cleaned out her bank account a week before she left, filed a leave-of-absence form with SUNY, applied for a couple of new credit cards. She’d left a note for my parents on the seat of her car.”

  “What did the note say?”

  “I don’t remember exactly. Something about how she was tired of chasing the carrot on the stick.”

  “Any idea what she meant by that?”

  “I used to think she was tired of playing the game. You know, sick of college. Done with auditions and rehearsals. But after the week I’ve had, I think the carrot was something else.”

  “Like what?”

  “Love.” Violet reddened. “My mom’s love is a pretty conditional thing. Rose had spent years trying to earn it. It led her in circles.”

  “She was disoriented.”

  “Yeah. Anyway, Rose called my mom up a few weeks later and told her she was finished with the bunch of us. Her boyfriend, Damien, got on the phone too and told Mom to fuck off. Told her there’d be hell to pay if my mom ever got in touch with them. Not that they even left her a way to do it.”

  “So, Rose found the love she was looking for in a guy?”

  “Guess that’s a pretty old story, huh?”

  “Can you tell me about Damien?”

  “Never met him. You’ll have to ask Rose yourself.”

  Violet found herself wondering, for the first time, whether the abortion was hard on them as a couple.

  “Do you remember the name of the investigator you spoke to when you thought Rose was missing?”

  “Unh-uh. Sorry.”

  “No worries. I’ll see what I can find out.” He looked so sad, Violet knew the question he was going to ask next. “So the night Will was hurt—”

  “I told you already. I didn’t do it to him.”

  Nicholas put both hands up. His dark eyelashes beat once. “Will you just listen to me for a second? That’s not what I was going to say.”

  Violet folded her arms, self-protective but resigned.

  “I was going to ask if you knew your brother had a seizure that night.”

  Violet gave a quick shake of her head. “He didn’t have one while I was there.”

  “I’ve read seizures affect memory.”

  “I’ve asked Will what they’re like, if he feels any pain. He says they don’t hurt. I think it’s just lights-out, like going under anesthesia.” She paused for a stunned second, and the meaning of this new information sank in. “I think he usually has a hard time remembering the minutes that lead up to the seizure. Even afterward, he’s groggy and confused for a while.”

  “So I’m wondering, did anyone else see the incident? Your dad, maybe?”

  “He was drunk. Blacked out, actually. He said so last night at Christ Episcopal Church. There were a roomful of witnesses. Only it’s a support group and they have a confidentiality thing. They’re not supposed to repeat anything they hear there.” Violet glanced down at her yellow bracelet and saw that her hands were trembling. She felt as trapped as she had on the night of her intake.

  “Hey.” Nicholas’s fingertips fell soft on her elbow. “I believe you. That’s why I’m here. But right now it’s your mom’s word against yours. I just wanted to ask if there was somebody else who could come forward and back you up.”

  “Rose,” Violet said suddenly. “I don’t know for a fact. But I thought—I don’t know, I thought she was there that night. If you’re planning to get in touch, you can ask her.”

  Nicholas nodded. “I’ll ask Rose.”

  Violet saw the compassionate glimmer in Nicholas’s eyes and finally saw the real reason she wanted to get out of the hospital, out of her parents’ house. There were honest people out there, reasonable people who cared and wanted to help. Not everyone bought into her mother’s make-believe. Not everyone thought Violet was on the fast track to bag-ladydom, shrieking gibberish and shaking her fist at vapors. Josephine was dangerous. Hers weren’t victimless crimes. Just the opposite: Violet’s mother made crime-free victims. Other people sensed it too, people like Nicholas, who knew the proof was in the feeling she gave him.

  Fresh from her conversation with Nicholas, Violet spent the next forty minutes scrawling another letter to her sister. She was ready to spring and run, to find any escape route, even one that included Rose. Also, Nicholas reminded her of Rose’s boyfriend query. She kept coming back to the feeling he’d given her—a warm, rare, decadent feeling that stayed with her, melting like stolen chocolate in her pocket.

  Nope, she scrawled with her self-titled colored pencil. I’ve never had a boyfriend, officially, and I think it will be a while before I do. What’s it like? Are you happier? Is your life more complicated? I can’t think of you cohabitating without imagining you roasting Cornish game hens in a black garter, but surely men have feelings beyond, “rawrr sex and food.” What was it about Damien that made you run off like a character in a Grimm fairy tale?

  She thought for a minute and added:

  You asked about Will. He’s definitely not a little boy anymore. And probably not so innocent either, thanks to Mom. It’s pretty horrifying, actually, the way Mom treats him like her little husband. Sometimes she calls him “stud.” I’ve even seen her pinch Will’s ass. If something doesn’t change soon, I’m sure he’ll be joining me in here soon. Maybe he’ll be treated for depression. More likely he’ll come for starting fires or choking the Wildomars’ dog.

  And do I hate our parents? Yes, I hate our parents. And not for typical teenage reasons either. I hate them for mature reasons. Well-founded reasons. Mom is not “difficult,” she’s abusive. She’s not “different,” she’s mentally fucking ill. Being here only makes me more dead sure of it.

  WILLIAM HURST

  WILL’S MOTHER DIDN’T answer when he knocked on the door. He tried the knob. Locked.

  “Mom?” he called.

  Will had grown up in a house where females outnumbered men, and still he had little idea what women did when they were alone with their lotions, pink razors, and cotton balls. The closest he’d come to finding out was the time that he’d walked in on Violet, then thirteen, screaming that Josephine wouldn’t allow her to shave her legs or wear deodorant. Ironically, as the years passed, Violet had just embraced fuzzy shins and organic stinks anyway.

  “Mom!” Will called again, louder this time. “I don’t want to bother you …”

  “Then don’t!” Her tone was joking, but her laugh had a serrated edge.

  When it became clear she wasn’t going to open the door, Will wandered down the hall to Rose’s room.

  He couldn’t remember
the last time he’d been inside. Before Rose disappeared, the little room with its canopy bed and Holly Golightly posters had seemed adult and off-limits. Afterward, it was like a war zone; police had taken apart Rose’s paper lanterns and unpinned all her snapshots from the clothesline where she had them displayed.

  Now, Rose’s room was more childish than Will remembered. There were still teddy bears lined up on one bookshelf. There was still an old Girl Scout sash in plain sight.

  Will was looking for something to bolster his case against Rose. Something that definitely proved that she’d been back to stalk and shake up his family. Sure, Rose was pink macaroons and Violet was hemp seed crackers—Violet was macrame and Rose was rhinestones—but once you got past the surface, the younger female Hursts were one and the same. As far as Will was concerned, both his sisters were sick in the brain.

  He rifled through wire baskets. Hair-straightening balms oozed into nests of Velcro curlers that were just like his mom’s. And what was that about, anyway? Why did girls have to straighten their hair before they curled it? Will rattled through about fifty bottles of pink nail polish (if there were subtleties of shade they were lost on him—they all looked pink). All the brushes, and compacts, and hair dryer attachments.

  Will moved on to the dresser. He had almost forgotten the way his sister dressed. Everything that remained was bright, stretchy as second skin, low-cut in the back, front, or both. Still, the drawers seemed sparse to his eye. Will wasn’t sure how much Rose had packed when she ran away, but there seemed like a decent chance she’d sneaked back for more clothes.

  The police had done a thorough job stripping the desk. Not that Rose had left behind anything truly telling. She’d made off with all the electronic goodies her parents had bought for her freshman year at SUNY: laptop, memory sticks, external hard drive, and cell phone. Only a few college textbooks remained. As he was leafing through them, a page fluttered out onto the cabbage-rose rug. It was a folded piece of paper, a copy of Rose’s schedule from the spring before she ran away, likely printed off before she committed it to memory. Courses like ENG393 and GLG293 meant nothing to him, but he folded it into the pocket of his Scottie dog pants anyway.