Mother, Mother

by Koren Zailckas

  Douglas raised his chin defensively. “That’s not fair, Violet! I’m doing my best!”

  “Well then, your best is epically shitty! She’s a psycho, Dad. She can’t control that! But you have a choice! You could do the right thing, but you don’t!”

  “I am RECOVERING, Violet!”

  Douglas’s roaring voice brought a nurse to the door, but Violet didn’t care. She’d had enough.

  “Great! You’re recovering, while the rest of us are SUFFERING!”

  “Visiting hours are over,” the nurse said.

  “I am not an abusive parent,” Douglas said, standing, dead-eyed, flailing his arms into his overcoat.

  “No, you’re not, Dad. You’re a bystander. And if you ask me, that’s even worse.”

  Violet’s heart pounded as she watched Douglas thunder out the door with a broken expression that didn’t match his puffed-up posture. She felt as sick-stomached and sorry as she ever did when she lost her temper at home. She felt guilty for raging against a man who couldn’t do better, and stupid for confiding every feeling and resentment to someone who had no basic ability to hear or understand them. But once she got past the self-punishing voice—You took the bait again, it said, you stirred up the family drama—Violet took some small comfort in the fact that she’d been honest. She’d been real. She’d finally told him how she felt. She wasn’t acting as vacant as Douglas, or Will, or the old blank Rose before she ran away. And maybe that was a sign that her mom hadn’t driven her crazy yet. Now, if only Rose felt the same, they could join forces, help each other in the fight not to become like the people who’d raised them and let the rest of the Hurst family go to hell.

  Dinner was intestine-y pasta slathered in ectoplasmic pesto. The definition of “food” in the hospital was incredibly loose. Still, Violet wolfed as much of it as she could manage. Sallekhana was officially a thing of the past. Even if Violet lived the rest of her life in misery and substance dependency, she was going to keep living if only to spite her parents. She was going to stop trying to forgive her mother, and get to work on outliving her. She hustled to the phone booths to return Nicholas’s call before her evening meeting.

  “Violet Femme,” he said. “Sorry, stupid joke. I’m glad you got my message. I sent snail mail to both addresses you gave me. Made me feel like I was back in 1994. Do you know how to reach Rose by phone?”

  Violet felt protective of her sister, and the feeling surprised her. Violet didn’t want anyone else speaking to her before she got the chance, especially not their parents. “Nope. Rose only wants to play pen pal for now.”

  “Ramblin’ Rose,” he whistled. “Sorry, I only pun when I’ve been at my desk too long. At least she’s in contact with you. I spoke to Detective Donnelly at the Kingston Police Department—he inherited the case after the last investigator transferred departments—and it looks like Rose was declared voluntarily missing on account of her financials and the fact that she’s over the age of majority. The law recognizes her right to remain out of contact with your folks, but Donnelly said he’d review the file anyway, just so we can talk to her and make sure she didn’t sustain any abuse while she was living at home.”

  “No point,” Violet said. “There was no physical abuse. Only emotional stuff.”

  “Hey,” he said softly. “Abuse is abuse. If you ask me, the emotional stuff is some of the worst. I guarantee pretty much every battered woman I see was an emotionally abused kid, especially the ones who come in talking about how it’s their fault, how they just can’t seem to stop provoking him.”

  “Yeah, well. The way the girls in here talk, I doubt many family court judges share your concern.”

  “Things are changing,” he said. “A jury in Florida found a mother guilty of child abuse in the case of her teenage daughter’s suicide. She’d never laid a hand on her. But she’d forced her to work as a dancer and lived off her tips.”

  “My sister was pretty sheltered before she ran away. The only pole Rose ever touched was a fishing pole. On second thought, I’m not even sure she’s done that.”

  Nicholas’s exhale sent a ripple through the receiver and down Violet’s spine. “Well, I’d feel a whole lot better if I could talk to her. I can see if she has any insights on this Will situation, and while I’m at it, I can make sure this Damien is an okay guy.”

  “Nicholas?”

  “Yeah?”

  Violet wanted to ask if it was okay to call him Nicholas, and also why he was confiding so much in her. But she wasn’t sure she could handle the rejection if he said it was purely a matter of protocol. Some vicious, paranoid inner voice—Josephine’s echo—was already piping up to tell her Nicholas was just pumping her for information he could use against her. Instead she asked, “How hard is it to get emancipated?”

  “Depends. You’d have to wait a year, until you’re seventeen. You’d have to move away from your parents, refuse any financial support from them, and get a job.”

  Violet allowed herself a moment of wondering whether Mrs. Dekker would hire her full-time, but then it hit her like a ton of bricks: if she divorced her parents, she couldn’t possibly stay in Stone Ridge. In a town of less than twelve hundred people, she’d be sure to bump into her parents at the Rite-Aid or the bank, and all the while, her mother would be spreading Lord knows what kind of gossip about Violet to her friends from the historical society and Saint Peter’s Church. Josephine was too powerful. She’d already had Violet locked up for almost a week; who knew how much damage she could do if Violet was living just a couple of blocks away? No, Violet would have to move to a city with good public transportation and a slew of barista and retail jobs. If not New York City, then Hudson, at least. Beryl was an option, but Beryl was sick and Violet would be an imposition. What’s more, the Fields’ house was apt to be the first place her mom looked for her.

  “You’d probably qualify for Medicaid and student loans,” Nicholas said. “You could finish out high school at a community college, where your credits could be applied to your undergrad too. But emancipation isn’t always the clean break you think it will be. You might still need your parents’ permission to get your driver’s license or routine healthcare. But I’ll help you file all the forms, if that’s what you decide to do.”

  Violet was taken aback at his willingness to help. “Thanks. I’m just feeling out my options.”

  “No problem. Hey, can I ask you one more question? Do you remember how old Will was when he got his autism diagnosis?”

  “It was last year,” Violet said. “So he would have been eleven. I’m assuming you have his medical records.”

  “Not yet. If it comes to it, I can try to subpoena them. Anyway, I just wondered. Eleven is a little late for the onset of autism.”

  “I think Mom probably watched some nightly news special about high-functioning autism, and got it in her head that Will fit the bill. The first doctor wasn’t so sure, so she dragged him around for second and third opinions.”

  “Do you remember what the other diagnoses were?”

  “Mom never said.”

  “Do you think Will would know?”

  “I doubt she told him either.”

  “Do you worry about your brother? You think he’s okay?”

  “Inside our family, he’s more okay than any of us. Outside our family, well …”

  “Violet, can you think of any reason that your mom would want to hurt Will?”

  It was impossible to ascribe normal human motives to her mother, but she couldn’t actually imagine Josephine going that far.

  “I don’t know,” Violet said, honestly. “It might just be that Will’s so close to becoming a teenager. Mom takes puberty personally. She gets weird about it.” Each normal teen milestone had been a fight. Their mother had made Rose wear a Hanes sweatsuit to her first dance. She consistently left Violet’s makeup bag on the bathroom radiator “by accident,” causing everything inside to melt.

  “Look, I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but
I’ve been working for eleven hours straight and I drank some kind of energy drink that I thought was grapefruit juice. When I said would your mom hurt Will, I meant would she really hurt him? She’s said from the beginning that Will grabbed the knife from your hand, but the doctor at the hospital had concerns …”

  “Concerns like what?”

  “Well, it wasn’t a very clean wound. It was cut in a few places. Shredded, that’s the word the doctor used.”

  WILLIAM HURST

  ANXIETY GNAWED AT Will’s stomach as he dressed for the day and rehearsed ways to apologize to his mother for that horrendous word.

  Will hadn’t said it, he was (pretty) firm about that. But something he’d said had twisted like a game of telephone before it reached Josephine’s ears. Only, not many words sounded like the offending one. Blunt? Grunt? Up front? Few were his style. Even fewer fit the context of the piano lesson.

  Still, Will crept downstairs feeling remorseful.

  Josephine was sitting on the couch, watching The View over a steaming mug of hot chocolate. She fixed one for him too because he’d never confided that the smell made him nauseated. He breathed through his mouth and held the cup very far away from him, where he couldn’t see the mini-marshmallows doing the dead man’s float.

  “Mom, I just want to say, I’m really sorry—”

  His apology was drowned out by the sound of the studio audience clapping.

  “I said I’m really sorry about what I said during my piano lesson.”

  “Ugh, Will.” Josephine sighed. Her face was unadulterated disgust. “Please don’t even mention it.”

  Will wondered if now was the right time to bring up Rose’s journal, and decided to risk it. “I want you to know I know about Rose,” he said.

  His mother hit the Mute button on the remote. “What are you jabbering about now, Will?” she said, spinning to look him dead in the eyes.

  Heat rose to Will’s face and he felt the words jamming in his throat. He realized he’d made a terrible miscalculation. Mentioning Rose now was far more likely to annoy her than impress her with his fine detective skills.

  “What, Will? What about Rose?”

  “Nothing …” Will rubbed his cheek, self-consciously.

  Her voice flared. “How many times do I have to tell you to keep your hands off your face?! It’s no wonder you’re practically polka-dotted. I swear, Will … Twelve is just too young for acne. It’s too young. You’re so handsome, Will, but you need to keep your skin in check.”

  Papuliferous: pimply.

  “I’ve been using the soap you gave me,” he said. “I’ll keep my hands off my face. I just wondered if Rose is coming back to get us because she’s mad at you.”

  Josephine sighed heavily. “There is a chance that your sister is”—she seemed to fish for a word—“resurfacing. Apparently she thinks I destroyed her life, and she’s taking revenge on our family as a whole. She sees all of you as an extension of me.”

  Will didn’t know what to say.

  She gave him an encouraging half-smile. “Don’t worry about it too much. There’s nothing to be afraid of. If Rose wants to get to you, she’ll have to get through me first. I have it taken care of. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  Will felt his stomach settling. There was nothing to worry about. His mother loved him. She lived for him.

  “We should take a walk on the rail trail soon,” Josephine said over a commercial. “We could hunt for some frogs for that habitat I got you.”

  Will tried not to show his surprise. “I think it’s too late for that,” he said. He was hoping it didn’t sound like criticism.

  “What do you mean?” Josephine asked. She seemed dreamy and half-listening, closing her eyes and running her fingers through her hair.

  “It’s just—They’re probably hibernating already. Burying themselves in the mud. Going way down into the bottom of the creek beds.”

  “Oh, do frogs hibernate?”

  Will was scared to say more. His mother hated know-it-alls.

  “Will, you’re such an observant boy,” she turned to him and said, for the second time that week. “There’s no getting anything past you. So I’m just going to be honest with you.”

  The blood slowed in Will’s veins. He pulled his legs even closer to his chest.

  “After Rose ran away, she didn’t do very well on her own. When I found her, she was living in abhorrent conditions, and the things she was doing for money … well, they were things no one like Rose should have to resort to.”

  Will wondered if she meant dancing? Ecdysiast, a naming word for a striptease performer. Prostitution? Singing on subway platforms? With his mother, there was no way to be sure.

  “So I set her up with a decent apartment under the strict conditions that she dump that boyfriend, get a good day job, and return to acting. And for a while she did. She did very well. She restored our trust and we were so proud of her.”

  We—Will shoved his instinctive jealousy aside and realized that his father must have hired that investigator after all. The PI had located Rose, but for some reason, Will’s parents didn’t want her to be found by anyone else. But why? It was like Rose was being quarantined, like her defiance could infect the rest of the family.

  “Why can’t me and Violet talk to her?”

  “Why can’t Violet and I talk to her? Anyway, we wanted to let you. But we thought it best to give Rose a trial period. She was so unstable. I didn’t want her upsetting you.” Josephine didn’t even try to fight back her tears. “Oh, Will, if you had any idea how your sister used to treat me. The anger. You’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “She was mad at you because she wanted a baby.”

  She looked stunned for a minute. Even so, she didn’t ask how Will knew, and so he didn’t bring up the journal.

  “Your sister didn’t really want a baby. She didn’t know what she wanted. Everything with that pregnancy, it was all just an excuse to cut me off. For months, I could feel her planning it, looking for ways to justify abandoning me—us. Anyway, the trial period didn’t last.” She laughed bitterly. “Rose’s true colors came shining through.”

  “What happened?”

  “She went back to that Damien character, who turned her against us even worse. I think he blames us for the decision Rose made.”

  “The decision not to have the baby?”

  His mother nodded. “We’ve only ever talked on the phone that once. But I don’t have to meet him to know he doesn’t really care about Rose. He’s just using her.”

  “For what?”

  “What else? Her youth. Her beauty. The fact that she’s bound to be famous one day. If it weren’t for him, she’d probably be famous already. Who knows what ambition Rose has left, now that she’s channeling all her energy into destroying us.”

  “Destroying us?”

  There was his mother’s almost-grin. Frightened as Josephine may have been, Will could feel her low-level excitement. Despite everything she was saying, she seemed glad to be back on Rose’s radar. Being hated by Rose was still an improvement over being ignored by her.

  The sick feeling grew in Will’s stomach. “What’s Rose going to do to us?”

  “I honestly have no idea,” Josephine said. “If someone had come to us two years ago and said Rose would be keying our car and tearing up our family photos, I’d have told them they were crazy. I would have said, Rose would never dream of doing anything like that. Will, she’s tried to steal from us. I could see her trying to commit fraud or destroy our credit. But mostly, I’m worried she might try to come between us. I fear she might turn you kids against me.”

  Will was outraged. “Rose could never turn me against you.”

  “Thank you for saying that,” she said, muffing his ears with her palms and kissing him on the brow. Her hands slipped to Will’s cheeks. “Even so, I want you to promise you’ll come to me if your sisters say anything—and I mean, anything—about me. That way, I can dispel any f
alsehoods they tell you. I won’t have them spreading lies that could destroy me and this family.”

  “Mom?” Will said. He felt so disoriented, so divorced from himself and his fear, like he was being sucked backward through a tunnel.

  “What?” Her hands abruptly fell from Will’s face.

  “That letter you brought Violet—the one with the wax seal?”

  “Yes?”

  “That was from Rose, wasn’t it?”

  “I assume so,” she said sadly.

  “Should we be worried that Rose is telling lies to Violet?”

  “Probably.” She gave a glib little shrug. “And probably Violet will believe her. But what am I supposed to do about it? Your sister’s a big girl, and she’s already made up her mind. She expects me—and the rest of this family—to be perfect. She just can’t take me as I am. There’s just no winning with her.”

  “Violet’s just so miserable she hates it when anyone else is happy,” Will said confidently.

  Josephine reached out and took his hand in hers. “Thank you for saying that. I thank God every day that one of my children is normal.”

  It felt good to hear her call him that. Although there were times when these reclassifications—“disabled” to “gifted,” “gifted” to “normal”—gave Will whiplash.

  She squeezed his fingers a notch harder. “You’re going to be an influential writer, Will. One for the ages. You’re so gifted, I can barely keep up with you. I’ve been thinking, how would you like to go to prep school? Maybe even in England? Be among other mature, intellectual boys—your equals?”

  Will’s stomach collapsed in on itself. “But my—”

  “Epilepsy? Autism? I’m worried that we’ve been wrong to let them hold you back.”

  “I’d be too homesick. I’d miss you.”

  “We’ll go with you. Or I will, at least. Your father and Violet can stay here. Anyway, it’s food for thought. Let it percolate. Tell me … In an ideal world, if you could do anything this afternoon, anything at all, what would it be?”