“Language arts,” he said. “Homophones.” That was where they’d left off a week ago, when they stopped his schoolwork.
Josephine’s smile was tinged with pity. Probably she’d been expecting an answer like go-carts or the Six Flags amusement park. “Right,” she said. “Homophones. Can you name me one?”
“Rose,” Will blurted, as if possessed. “It can mean either the flower, or the past tense of rise.” He knew it displeased her, but he couldn’t help it. It was the first and only word that came to mind.
VIOLET HURST
CORINNA PICKED up the phone, as she had made the scarred telephone booths her second room. She stood there for hours, talking to Leatherboy, despite repeated warnings from the nurse on call (“Corinna, girl, you should be charging by the hour”). “Violet!” she called, holding up the receiver. “Papa bear!”
Violet felt her stomach turn over as she walked to the phone booth. She couldn’t stand the thought of a repeat of the conversation they’d had at visiting hours. “Hello?”
“Violet.”
“Yeah, Dad. What’s up?”
“I was hoping—” He took a deep sip of something, hopefully something whose strength wasn’t measured by volume. “I need you to tell me more about this CPS investigation.”
“I’ll give you Nick Flores’s number. But I’ve already told you everything I know.”
“You haven’t told me much of anything.”
“I don’t know anything! I am begging you, talk to Mom directly! I can’t be your go-between!” Violet tried to steady herself with one of the deep, nasal breaths from her meditation DVDs. “I’m in a locked ward, Dad. I can’t go anywhere. Unless you’re going to finally get me out of here.”
There was silence on the line.
“Dad? Are you going to help me get out of here or not?”
“I’m trying, Violet. But I don’t know how you expect me to help you when you’re withholding information from me.”
“Mom is the one withholding information. You need to stand up to her.”
“You and I are very different people, Violet. I don’t see that rocking the boat is going to help matters much.”
“It’s not rocking the boat, Dad. It’s called communication. You’re allowed to ask questions. Other people do it all the time. Other people don’t live in fear of someone else’s reactions. They don’t relentlessly stress out about getting into trouble.”
Smoking her first cigarette of the day, Violet worried that she’d been too harsh with her dad. Still, she was floored by his repeated failures to acknowledge her predicament. What little they’d spoken to each other since Violet’s intake had been about either Rose or him, namely his sobriety or failures at it.
When was Douglas going to ask her how she felt about staying in a place that used four-point restraints? Among some patients who were public masturbators and others who “spoke” fluent jabberwocky? When was he going to apologize for drunk-driving to the hospital? Or ask what she remembered about Friday night? She’d been evicted from her life and—shitty as her life had been, willing as she had been to throw it away—that still sucked. Hospital life didn’t feel like living. It felt like an airport, some dehumanizing, transitional space where the flights were delayed and most people treated each other with less care than they gave their luggage.
Violet was listening to the morning birdsong and wondering why the hospital staff didn’t consider smoking “suicidal behavior,” when she heard the fwip of Edie’s Zippo springing open.
“Morning, sunshine.”
“Violet? That is you, isn’t it?” Edie’s eyes were the glassiest Violet had ever seen them, and the pillow marks on her cheek gave her skin a texture that called to mind tenderized meat.
“It’s me. Are you all right?”
“Yeah, I really need to quit these things.” Edie waved her cigarette. “I’m so addicted, I’m having my morning smoke before I’ve even put in my contacts.”
“Have you ever quit before?”
“Once. It wasn’t that bad. I only really missed the morning cigarette. And the one after meals.” She exhaled woefully. “Plus the after-sex one. And the really bored one. Also the ones when I was studying, and when I was driving.”
“Sounds like quitting’s a breeze.”
“Aside from going no contact with my mother, it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Why is it so hard to say good-bye to something even when you know it’s a slow-growing cancer?”
It was unlike Edie to miss sarcasm.
“You’re sure you’re okay?” Violet asked. “Did they change your meds again?”
Edie shook her head. “No. I’m fine. Sorry. It seems I’m only capable of two moods lately: depressed or pissed off.”
“I’m with you there,” Violet said, stubbing out her cigarette on the underside of her chair. She’d already made the mistake of trying to stamp one out with her hospital slipper, singeing an angry circle in the sole.
“Why? What’s going on?”
“Nothing. Just my dad keeps calling to ask me about the stuff that concerns everyone but me.” She explained about Douglas and CPS.
“Triangulation,” Edie said sadly, fanning the smoke away from her face. “It’s how fucked-up families communicate. Instead of talking to each other directly, everything goes through a third party. If one person controls all the information, they can lie or pit people against each other. Let me guess, your mom usually plays the role of the family interpreter?”
Violet nodded. She never stopped being surprised by how well Edie instinctively understood the Hursts.
“Your dad’s probably just coming to you because he’s afraid to set her off.”
Violet had never really thought about the way Josephine inserted herself firmly in the middle of everyone else’s relationships. Their mother hadn’t just fostered competition between Violet and Rose, she’d also made it next to impossible for Violet to get to know Will.
“Some mothers cannot love,” Edie said, her voice a touch too aggressive and loud. “Ask any farmer, they’ll tell you some moms just aren’t naturals. Having a baby doesn’t make you a mother any more than buying a piano makes you fucking Beethoven.”
Later, in computer lab, Violet watched Edie out of the corner of her eye, thinking how hollowed-out her friend looked. Edie’s lips were raw and cracked. There was a knackered slump to her shoulders, and even her Tahitian-blue eyes seemed muddled and flat. Edie didn’t even look up from her computer screen when one of their favorite schizophrenics started coaxing her desktop as if it were a horse, saying, “You’d better be good, or I won’t give you an apple when we get home.”
Violet went to Facebook and pulled up Rose’s friend Amelia. According to Amelia’s profile, she was a corps dancer at the Rochester City Ballet. Violet knew how to pronounce corps, but the word always made her think of corpse. And indeed, there was something distinctly corpselike about Amelia’s profile picture. It was a head-shot, and Amelia was long-nosed, long-haired, and unsmiling in it—her head tilted backward over her shoulder as if someone out of frame were pulling her down by the ends of her lusterless low ponytail.
Violet had met Amelia only once or twice, both times after school plays, when Amelia and Rose were still flushed and sweating through their pancake makeup, awkwardly juggling cellophane-wrapped bouquets while they air-kissed their castmates.
Now Violet could see how Rose and this girl once made an unapproachable pair. Amelia and Rose both looked courtly and weight-conscious. Both seemed stingy with smiles.
Violet wrote Amelia with the number of the hospital pay phone, asking her to call when she could. It was a desperate move, but Violet was trying all possible options. She needed her sister’s help to get out. If Rose had been at Old Stone Way, Violet needed her to help clear her of the possible charges against Will. If she waited for her dad to step up to the plate, she’d be waiting forever.
At the computer beside her, Corinna slammed one excited palm on the table. “Fu
cking Edie!” Corinna shouted. “You never said today was your fucking birthday!”
Edie just looked up with the same haunted face she’d been wearing all day. “Huh?” she said. “How did you know?”
“It’s right here on your Facebook timeline. You sneaky, sneaky bitch …”
The woman who’d been speaking to her computer as though it were a pony began to sing “Happy Birthday” to the tune of what sounded like Céline Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On.” It was at that point that Edie finally broke down and cried, big roaring tears that did not stop until she ripped out the keyboard, noosed the cord around her neck, and got herself escorted to the “quiet room.”
WILLIAM HURST
WHEN WILL’S FATHER got home from work, he pulled the family calendar from the wall and proceeded to pore over it in the breakfast nook.
“Who is Trina?” Douglas asked, underlining her name with his pointer finger.
“You’ve met Trina.” Will’s mother took off her new hat and set it down on the kitchen island. “From the historical society. She came by to discuss next year’s stone house tour. There’s some kind of controversy brewing already. The Allerton House won’t participate if the Fletcher House is. The Fletchers have exposed the beams in their living room, and it’s no longer historically accurate.”
The tightness returned to Will’s chest. He had a strong urge to leave the room, but he felt like he was caught in invisible gunfire.
There was a small chainsawing sound as Josephine used the electric opener on the bottle they’d bought at the artisan wine shop. She poured a big glass and set it down on the table in front of Will’s dad.
Douglas spun the glass once and then nudged it away. “Jo, has Child Protective Services been here?”
Josephine froze, and Will felt the air pressure change in the room. She didn’t seem guilty, exactly, but for a split second he could feel her mounting shame. Just as quickly, it was gone, replaced by pure, accusatory rage.
“I told you that yesterday, Douglas. What is wrong with you? Do you have early-onset Alzheimer’s or something?”
“Jo, I think I’d remember something as important as—”
“No! I’m sorry, Douglas. That’s bullshit. You do a very good impression of someone who’s listening, but unless something pertains to you directly—”
“I’d say a government agency trying to take my children away pertains to me—”
“Listen to yourself! You are so cold. So self-absorbed! You make us feel bad about ourselves sixty percent of the time. You shame us for trying to be close to you. Ask your son. Go on, Douglas. Ask him if he’s terrified of you. Will feels like you only take an interest in him if you need something. He feels like you don’t even know him. Look at Take Your Kid to Work Day. You left him alone in your office all day. You left him alone at the table when you took him out to lunch.”
Spirate, a describing word meaning “voiceless.”
Tears were sliding down Will’s face, so something she’d said rang true.
When he finally found the courage to look up, his father had left the room, maybe even the house. His mother was sitting in the bay window, drinking Douglas’s glass of wine and leafing through a Lands’ End catalog. “So, cereal for dinner?” she asked, barely glancing up from the luggage page.
When Will didn’t answer, she looked up with a consoling smile and opened her arms for a bear hug. “Oh, darling, don’t you worry about him. Your father takes great pleasure in making other people feel crazy.” She licked one fingertip and turned the page while Will curled into her lap. “Really, William. All these tears … It’s okay. You don’t have anything to worry about. I won’t ever let your father do the kinds of things to you that he did to Rose. Now tell me, what do you think about this wheeled duffel bag? I’ve been thinking … if we start applying to boarding schools, you’re really going to need a monogrammed suitcase.”
VIOLET HURST
WHEN THE NURSE said there was a friend who wanted to see her, Violet’s thoughts instantly went to Edie.
The seclusion room, or “quiet room,” was the stuff of movies, bare of everything except a wafer-thin mattress. Watching Edie get escorted there by her elbow, Violet had feared her friend would be treated to leather straps and benzo-filled syringes. But Sara-pist explained that the quiet room was just a place to “escape painful stimuli” or “experience strong emotions.” The door to the quiet room even stood ajar, although Violet and the rest of the patients were forbidden from peeking inside.
But it wasn’t Edie who was asking for Violet. It was Imogene, sitting in the visitors’ lounge with Violet’s school books and a box of sweets from Krause’s Chocolates in Saugerties.
Imogene looked more out of place than ever. She was twiddling her silver ear cuff. Her rainbow-tipped hair fanned over the back of her chair. The notice she was eyeing read: VISITORS PLEASE WASH HANDS BEFORE AND AFTER EACH VISIT WITH PATIENTS. Violet and her friends called it the DON’T FEED THE ANIMALS sign.
“Holy shit.” Imogene’s Indian bangles jingled as she opened her arms and gave Violet a hug. “Are you okay? This place is creepy. I always imagined these hospitals being like the heaven scenes in movies. You know, all clean and white. But this place … I think it’s already given me asbestos poisoning.”
Violet felt like she didn’t have time to laugh. Her mind was already jumping ahead to all the questions she wanted to ask. “How did you get here?”
“Finch drove. He said to tell you sorry. He just couldn’t come in.” Violet’s heart sank. Imogene puffed her cheeks and exhaled. “He has, you know … this thing about hospitals.”
“I know. How is she?” Violet couldn’t bring herself to say Beryl’s name, as if doing so made her diagnosis more real.
“Same.”
“How are you?”
“I’m honestly not that sad anymore. It’s life. I’ve tried to stop worrying about Mom dying. We just kinda hang out. When she’s feeling low, I comfort her. When I’m feeling low, she comforts me. At least she’s got a new oncologist. He says she’s the healthiest sick person he’s ever met.”
Violet’s gut warmed at the thought of Beryl. She was absolutely the first person she wanted to see when she left Fallkill. If she ever left Fallkill.
“How’s Dekker’s?”
“Weird. Finch said cops turned up last night after close. Lots of them. Mrs. D won’t say why.” Imogene took the lid off the chocolate box and revealed an assortment of their favorite chocolate-covered lemon peels and sea-salt caramels. Violet shook her head no thanks. “So I still don’t get what happened,” Imogene said. “Jasper’s brother’s wife said she saw your mom and Will at the play group in Rosendale, and your mom was downplaying, telling everyone Will’s hand was just a kitchen accident.”
“Do you know any of them by name? Does Jasper know them? Could they vouch for me? You know I didn’t do it, right? You believe me? I can’t get anyone to take me seriously about this.”
“Obviously … You couldn’t hurt a fly, even if you were tripping your face off.”
Violet took a breath. “There are three options the way I see it. Will hurt himself; Mom hurt him; or Rose did it.”
“Rose?” Imogene’s eyebrow stud twinkled.
“I thought I saw her there, in the house that night.”
“Violet, we were on seeds. I thought I saw God, and he looked like Bill Murray. Why would Rose come back?”
“Because she’s angry. Or because she wants something. Or because she’s the one who’s responsible for all the creepy shit that’s been happening at home. At first I thought it was Mom, trying to sabotage me, but the timing of it all … I’m starting to think Rose is the one who keyed the car and tore herself out of our photos.” Violet unfolded the envelopes she was carrying in her jeans pocket.
“Is this Rose’s address in the city?”
“It’s a UPS store. Rose bought a box there.”
“Maybe she doesn’t have a doorman?” Imogene offered.
> “Maybe she wants the kind of arm’s-length relationship where she can reach us, but we can’t reach her.”
“But why? I mean, why would anybody do that? It doesn’t make sense.” Imogene was studying her. The glittery magenta shadow on her eyelids did nothing to lessen the intensity of her stare. “Your mom called my mom yesterday and said you’re a pathological liar. She said that’s how the hospital diagnosed you. She said we should be careful of you—that you’ll come clean when it suits your purpose and go back to lying when it fits your agenda.”
Violet’s ears roared. It was like someone had opened up the cabin door midflight—like she’d been sucked outside of herself.
“Violet? She said you do things to Will.”
“Things like what?”
“She said you’re jealous of him. That back when Will was in school, you used to feed bullies information to tease him with. She said you pinch him when no one’s around, so hard it leaves bruises.”
“I’ve never touched Will!”
“Violet, your mom said the best thing we could do was stay clear of you—to let your condition be your downfall instead of ours.” Imogene’s chin dimpled. There were tears in her eyes. “I don’t know what to believe. I said you’ve never lied to me. At least as far as I know …”
“That’s genius.” Violet stood up too abruptly, too angrily, but she needed to restore feeling to her legs. “Because if I’m such a stellar liar then you wouldn’t even suspect there was anything wrong with me. And the reality is: there isn’t anything wrong with me!” Violet knew her anger was working against her. Each time her voice jumped an octave, she could feel herself losing Imogene even more. She was about to apologize when Corinna stuck her head in the room.
“Violet,” Corinna said, eyeing Imogene suspiciously. “There’s someone named Amelia on the phone?”
Mother, Mother Page 17
