Mother, Mother

by Koren Zailckas

  Not that Violet was a cured woman. In Hawaii, she realized she couldn’t play. Not the way other people did. Sure, she could dig trenches and weave palm leaves until her hands were stiff and covered with sores. Yes, she could drink ’shroom tea with honey and swim in a warm, trippy metaphysical sea. But she couldn’t bang on the vibraphone or patty-cake bongos with her fellow interns. Not sober and not for the hell of it. When one of the cooperative members’ babies—blond, gender indeterminate, topless in a pair of homemade overalls—came to Violet with a plastic pony, Violet’s first instinct wasn’t to snort and whinny, it was to fight tears. She wasn’t shell-shocked. This wasn’t the fallout from two terrible years and the fact that her mother had tried to wring her neck like a rag. Violet, beneath all her glibness and occasional drug-giddiness, realized she couldn’t have innocent fun.

  In Hawaii, Violet was confronted by this small pickle: she was apologetic about wanting to live for her own enjoyment. She felt really guilty about having her own identity, and doubly fucking terrified when she experienced something beautiful or even pleasant, accustomed as she was to her mother ruining it, usurping it, or passing it off as inconsequential.

  Maybe, someday, some gifted acupuncturist or Reiki healer could dislodge, in one go, all the Josephine-shaped shrapnel that was embedded in Violet: her shame, her underachieving, her willingness to absorb the kind of physical and emotional pain that most people wouldn’t accept in their lives. In the meantime, she decided she would just keep following the bittersweet terror that told her when she was on to something. Not anything quite so profound as “growth” or “healing,” just a little bit of childhood unease replaced by a small gush of gratitude for the tiny moments when she could live in the moment and be herself.

  Late one night after laying down mulch, Finch kissed her in the wood-burning hot tub. It was a good kiss, deep and spine-tingling, and she surprised both of them by sobbing like he’d punched her in the throat. Finch just gently pulled her head to his chest and laughed, “Good for you then, was it?” It was good for her, first reaction aside. It was good, and terrifying and a fantastically long time in the making.

  The night before they left the farm, they watched a wild boar giving birth to a litter. Three boys and three girls. Striped and fawn colored, like mini-deer or giant chipmunks. Each one crashed, skull first, into the world and lay stunned in the dirt until their minutes-older siblings gave them a sniffing nudge. Then, squealing, still tethered by umbilical cords, they walked, working hard to get their hind legs under them. Maybe it was stupid to be moved by a species of the pig genus, but Violet and her friends were. It was an intense birth, gory as a tragedy. It left them awed. Afterward, Finch got wasted on rum. Imogene cried so hard her face still looked mangled the next day. One of the other drunkish interns kept saying, “Wouldn’t it be amazing? To come into the world and immediately be able to stand on your own feet?” It was amazing, and even Violet could see that was exactly what she’d done. She had walked away from the first and most dire of her life’s disasters. Her birth. Her mother. The dynamics of her family and her childhood. She’d survived, and now it was her job to do more—to really live where she’d once just tried to endure from one day to the next. To be honest, it felt more daunting than exciting. It had been easy to make Josephine happy (or unhappy). Fighting for her own happiness was far less straightforward. She hardly knew where to begin.

  Violet surprised herself by getting into art school, even if Douglas, who was drained from Will’s private school expenses, couldn’t afford to send her. Instead, she took a year off and saved up, working full-time at Dekker’s.

  It turned out to be exactly the kind of hands-on, knackering work she needed. Mrs. D spared her the cash register and the tourists, and instead let her do some of the heavier farmwork. Lugging hoses. Heaving old car tires onto the plastic sheet of the silage clamp. It kept her away from the farm stand, where Josephine’s new defense-lawyer boyfriend tended to linger in the parking lot (sunglasses, convertible) and spy on her. She couldn’t imagine what he possibly reported back: Violet refilled the microgreen bin, then restocked the frozen quiches. Juicy. Or maybe it was juicy. Even from the confines of her eight-by-eight cell, Violet’s mother probably felt affirmed by the fact that Violet wasn’t in college. It was still too easy to conjure Josephine’s voice: See? I told you Violet was a screwup. No discipline. Not smart enough. Of course, she’d forgo a higher education.

  Those were exactly the kind of thoughts Violet couldn’t have out in the fields, with her joints creaking and the bridge of her nose turning red. It was impossible to be in her head when she was doing that kind of work. All the hauling and digging burned off some of the remaining panic (over her mother), anger (at Will), and frustration (with her dad).

  Not that Violet’s Dekker’s life was all unskilled labor. Mrs. D took her under her wing, bringing her to meetings of the Local Growers Association and asking her to paint the Dekker’s sign, weekly, with the crop of the moment. The final product was always dark, but usually funny: a Thumbelina-sized woman struggling to carry an ear of corn, a boy with an apple on his head like he was about to be shot. She even convinced Mrs. D to open up the farm stand as a flea market in the winter months. It wasn’t hugely profitable, but it gave the community a little lift during those last lonely weeks before the ground thawed and the seed catalogs arrived in the mail.

  After Finch and Imogene left for college, Beryl let her stay rent-free in the Fields’ guest cottage. She managed to buy a car from one of the Dekker’s meat suppliers. A truck, actually. An ugly but well-maintained pickup with at least a jillion miles that she planned to drive until the valves melted. Mostly, she drove it to visit Imogene at Hampshire College and Finch at Wesleyan. Both had yearned for UVM but decided to stay closer to home, or rather, closer to Beryl, and Violet could drive to each school in just about two hours.

  Violet and Edie still spoke. She was back at Vassar, finishing up her last few credits in some sort of theory class that had her writing papers on neoliberal societies with postclassist philosophies. Her fellow students overused the phrase social construct in a way that drove her crazy.

  “Today someone raised their hand and said depression is a social construct,” Edie wrote in one of her near-weekly e-mails. “I swear, Violet. It took everything I had not to flip the table. I shouldn’t take it personally, I know. They think ketchup is a social construct. They think pants are a social construct. But it still makes me feel so fucking judged and lonely.”

  One Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend, Violet went down to Poughkeepsie and spent the weekend with her. Edie had been at Fallkill longer than expected, and her old housemates had been forced to fill her room with someone else. So Edie was back in the residence halls, rooming with a girl (not of her picking) who wore too much red lipstick, drank water from a Bordeaux glass, and talked about little but her “heteroflexibility.” Or, more specifically, whether wanting to sleep with her boyfriend’s friend meant she was at the end of a monogamous relationship or the beginning of a polyamorous one.

  By that time, Violet didn’t feel as out of place on a college campus. It wasn’t like those first few times she’d visited Imogene and Finch, when she couldn’t get past all the acronyms people used to describe the buildings and dining halls: ASH, CFF, MDB. She wasn’t as floored by tales of library sex and repulsed by the smells of damp laundry and cheap watery beer.

  Edie hadn’t had any episodes on her latest cocktail of medications, but she still didn’t seem entirely at ease. It was a bit like she’d driven the black dog of depression over the Pennsylvania border and abandoned it in a field. It was gone, but still out there … somewhere. Edie just kept waiting to hear it scratching at her door, filthier and more ravenous than ever.

  “I feel the same way about my mother,” Violet had confessed. Back when Josephine first began her jail sentence, she’d sent Violet a short letter saying she really wanted to “rebuild their relationship.” The other inmates were sick of hea
ring her weeping, she said. She said she felt like she had lost not one daughter, but two. Violet had let the letter sit for a week or two, trying to decide whether it was merely words—the same kind of seduction story an abusive husband would give. I’m sorry, baby. You mean so much to me. I swear to you it will never happen again. Only Josephine hadn’t even admitted any guilt. She hadn’t, in fact, said she was sorry at all.

  Violet had been composing her reply, ready to give her mom the benefit of the doubt, when a follow-up letter arrived. In it, Josephine accused Violet of using everything that happened with Rose as an “excuse” to “terminate” their “relationship.” She said Violet had always been difficult: a colicky baby, a defiant child, a narrow-minded young adult, rejecting and all but impossible to love.

  Violet did write a rebuttal to that one. She was halfway to the post office before she realized her folly. If Josephine couldn’t use false promises to rope Violet back in, she’d use insults in the hope Violet would come running to defend herself. Violet didn’t jump to the challenge. Instead, she tore up the unsent envelope.

  Eventually, Josephine’s boyfriend started sending gifts to Violet at the Fields’ address. A big fleecy bathrobe (the note read: Mommy wants to make sure you are keeping warm). A necklace with an H-shaped pendant (for Hurst) with a note that read: From your loving mother, thinking of you on your birthday. Violet donated the robe to the Tibetan Center’s thrift shop. She marked the necklace “return to sender.”

  Finally, Josephine sent Beryl a scathing letter accusing her of turning Violet against her own flesh and blood. Violet managed to persuade Beryl not to respond. “It’s counterproductive to all of us,” Violet told her. “Instead of helping me let her go, it will just start the cycle all over again and make me hate her more.” In the months since, there had been an eerie silence from Josephine’s camp. It felt peaceful, but ephemeral. Violet got the sense that her mother wasn’t done yet.

  That MLK weekend, Edie gave Violet a road map to no contact as they drank honey drip coffee in her favorite Vassar-adjacent coffee shop:

  “In another year, you’ll get to the place where your mom simply won’t exist to you. You might be able to put words to some of your own coping mechanisms and self-defeating behaviors. You’ll probably wild out a bit. Tattoos, casual sex. Don’t go crazy. After two years, you should be able to see yourself outside your family context. The grieving period will be winding down. You’ll be heavy in the process of unlearning things she taught you: fucked-up things you say and think but may not believe deep down. After three years, you should be able to pick men you trust, not just megadouches who trigger family stuff. After four years, you’ll realize taking care of people feels good, but you’re not Atlas. You don’t need to hold up the world. You don’t need to attend everyone’s life crises. After five years, you’ll probably still have problems with intimacy, but you won’t be compelled to fling yourself headfirst into relationships you know you don’t want.”

  Violet nodded, even though things were going well with Finch. They were talking seriously about Violet moving to Middletown next year. He kept encouraging her to apply to the art department with a series she’d been working on. They were 3D charcoal drawings that she then photographed. If she drew a tarantula, she snapped her fingers picking it up. If she drew dominoes falling down, she clicked a photo of her hand knocking the first one over.

  “When do I get to feel good?” Violet asked. “Or at least neutral?”

  Edie thought for a minute. She looked older than she had in the hospital, little threads of premature gray in her dark hair. “Five to ten years, maybe? Or maybe, by then, it’s just that you’re too tired and battered. You don’t have the energy to be self-destructive.”

  Sometimes Violet looked back with nostalgia on the drug-recovery program she did in the hospital. She wished addiction were her problem. Giving up family, even an abusive family, felt even harder than kicking a drug habit. “Anything else I should know?” she asked.

  “It helps to know older women,” Edie said. “Neighbors. Mentors. Don’t run away from women who offer you momlike kindness. Just don’t get all your mothering from just one place. That’s when things go terribly wrong.”

  By the time Beryl lost her fight to cancer, Violet had already grieved Josephine as though she were dead. She’d done the angry thing. The heartbroken thing. The socially awkward thing where she felt ungainly and inept: her conversations were awkward, even her greetings felt weird. She’d come to terms with the fact that she’d never have a mother who could celebrate at her wedding or the birth of her first child. She’d accepted not having a biological mom she could call for advice when things weren’t going well, when a layoff happened, when the car broke down. Even if Josephine had been in Violet’s life, she couldn’t have done any of those things. Josephine wouldn’t allow anyone to be happy unless she was the source of their happiness. If Violet had been riding high, Josephine would have been ratty and envious. If Violet had been feeling low, Josephine would have kicked her while she was down. Violet missed the idea of mother (mother in general) far more than she missed mother-specific.

  Beryl was different. When Beryl died, Violet missed a million little highly specialized things. She missed the way, when you couldn’t figure something out in the kitchen, Beryl had a way of showing you how without making you feel stupid: roll out the sticky dough between sheets of wax paper, smash the garlic clove with one fist and the side of the knife. She missed the way, even after Violet moved out of the guest cottage, Beryl found excuses to visit and call: to tell Violet about the funny thing that happened to her when she was shopping for mattresses, to make sure Violet had power in the torrential snowstorm. Violet missed the way Beryl looked so deep into your eyes when you told her something: I’m with you, that sweet gaze said. Even if I don’t agree, I’m here. I’m engaged. I want to understand.

  In those first tender months after Rose’s funeral, Beryl had told her: “I know things feel messy right now. It probably feels like life has just chucked all these ingredients at you. Flour’s hanging in the air. Milk is dripping down off the counter. But everything you’re going through … You’re going to turn it all into great pancakes someday.”

  The last time Violet visited her in the hospice, Beryl had looked up from her pillow and said, “Get the syrup. I smell pancakes.” The nurses thought she was talking nonsense, but Violet knew what she meant. Violet’s life felt like a guilty pleasure. Something she’d stolen. It was the one gift her mother had never intended for her. Josephine had birthed Violet for Josephine.

  But Violet was going to live for herself.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  As Violet would say, I must have been an exceptionally good person in a past life to know such inspiring women in this one.

  Thank you, first and foremost, to my editor Alexis Washam for being my patient teacher and my sister in darkness. I’ve never loved writing more than I have with your contagious energy and warm, incisive guidance on the other end of the line. Also, my husband’s pet name for me is “Spoiler Alert,” so without you, this would have been a far less suspenseful book. Hopefully, all that clue-slashing hasn’t left you carpal tunneled.

  Thank you to my agent Amanda Urban for reading and re-reading and re-re-re-reading, always with trademark frankness and kindness.

  Thank you Josie Freedman, also at ICM, for loving Will as much as I do. What’s more, at the exact second I was doing my best Munch scream, you called with all the answers I could have possibly asked for.

  Molly Stern, Crown Publisher, I can’t even begin to put ten years’ worth of gratitude into words. In the trippy Oz of my adult life, you’ve been my Glinda the Good. You sent me down this book’s path long ago (probably without realizing it), and I’m so thankful you gave me the opportunity to realize it.

  Other jewels in the Crown: Sarah Bedingfield, Sarah Breivogel, Lauren Kuhn, Rachel Meier, Jessica Prudhomme, and Jay Sones.

  Thank you to everyone in the Mother-Mother
land: Martha Frankel and her perennially awesome Woodstock Writers’ Festival; Barbara Cole; Cassandra Mahoney, Robin Shornstein; Woodstock Day School; the Mid-Hudson Library System; and The Golden Notebook, the coolest bookstore in Woodstock.

  Also, on the subject of booksellers, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Miwa Messer and Barnes and Noble’s Discover Great New Writers Program, who have been my friends and cheerleaders ever since I was, well … a drunken cheerleader.

  Thank you to Christie Lafranchi, Devon Banks, Corvette Hunt, Mary Karr, Joan and David Lehmann, and the great many Hamiltons (especially Carol, for always being there to talk female-noir with me and remind me, in British-fashion, to keep calm and type on).

  Speaking of British allies, I owe a great deal of gratitude to Kim Young at HarperCollins UK for help in this book’s final inning.

  Thank you, above all, to my husband, Eamon Hamilton, and my three children for being my anti-Hursts. You are family like I never knew it could be.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR