NINE
The family of four stood in the front entryway of Virginia’s home, and seeing their unfamiliar faces was weirdly comforting.
There are still people out there. This isn’t some crazy dream.
“What happened to you?” the young girl said as she stared at me, and I gestured to Jake.
“This is my husband, and we got stranded. Virginia was nice enough to offer us her home.”
“Annabella, back in the car,” her mother said, eyeing me. “Yes, Virginia is very nice. She’s always been there for us in a pinch, lending us her home when we have large family gatherings or birthday parties. Vinnie celebrated his sixth birthday here,” she explained, patting the little boy on his shoulders.
“Well, we really appreciate the ride into town. I’d like to give you gas money for coming all the way out here-” Jake began, but the man held up his hand.
“Not necessary. Just glad to help.” He glanced my way. “I’m sorry there isn’t enough room for you, but I promise you, I’ll have your husband back here in no time with a tow.”
I was fully prepared to sit on Jake’s lap, as he suggested, but a glance out the window told me Virginia had been correct- a small sedan, not even four doors.
Jake looked at me. “Oh, I can squish in on Jake’s lap, it’s no big deal,” I assured him.
The woman widened her eyes with a shake of her head. “Heavens, no. That’s not safe at all, I can’t allow it.”
“My wife is going with-”
“That’s okay.” I cut Jake off, touching his elbow gently. “That’s okay, Jake, just go and get back. Fast as you can.”
“I’ll take good care of Lizzie while you’re away,” Virginia promised, and Jake met my eyes firmly.
“Are you sure?” It was a statement, not a question.
“Yes, I’m sure, go,” I said, pressing a kiss to his lips.
He moved his mouth to my ear. “I love you.”
“More,” I whispered in return.
I watched the taillights as they pulled out of the snowy driveway. I thought for sure they’d get stuck, but Virginia must have used the tractor to plow again.
“Well, then, we’re headed in the right direction,” Virginia announced merrily, walking toward the radio and turning the dial.
“Since I Don’t Have You” by the Skyliners.
I knew the song well.
She turned the volume up, and I took a deep, calming breath.
Jake was gone.
I had only to wait. My brain was still a little foggy. “Could I make a cup of coffee?” I asked Virginia, and she turned to me with a brilliant smile.
“Of course, dear. I’ll have a cup with you.”
I remembered my conversation with Jake.
Tap water.
“You know, on second thought, it might make me jittery.” I helped myself to a glass, then went to the sink. “Water’s fine.”
She regarded me with a side glance, but I didn’t meet her eyes. Taking a long drink, I stared out the window.
My reflection in the black window stared back.
I lowered the glass to the cabinet.
My reflection did not move.
I screamed, letting the glass slip through my fingertips. She rushed over to me, hurriedly bending to collect the glass shards in a hand towel.
“Oh, dear. Are you alright? Let’s sit down,” she urged, leading me toward the back parlor.
Portraits on the wall. Everywhere. Eyes staring me down. Staring us down, the two of us, arm in arm, each supporting the other.
Lizzie and Virginia.
Eyes watching with various levels of interest, some more than others.
I looked back over my shoulder at the black window, and my reflection mirrored my movements.
Am I hallucinating? What just happened?
“You know, the Millers are a very nice family. Jake is in good hands,” she said, patting me on the shoulder. “If you’re worried.”
“No, I just saw... I don’t know what I saw,” I managed, looking up at her as she lowered an afghan into my lap.
“You’re exhausted. It’s been a tiring few days,” Virginia said. “A lot of emotion. After our talk, I’ve been thinking a lot about Molly. It’s hard to remember such things without feeling it all over again. I know you understand,” she assured me.
Patting my hand.
Another song began, from the fifties or sixties. I recognized it on the playlist I’d made for my mom whenever she and I rode in the car together, but I couldn’t remember the name of the band, or even the song title.
I pulled my hand away, shoving it under the old afghan. I could still see my skin through the large, worn-out pull holes in the blanket where the yarn had separated with age.
“Of course,” I managed.
“Here now,” she said, reaching for the old book on the small table between us. “You’re a writer, you say. I know you must love old books as I do. Have you ever heard the quote, ‘hell hath no fury like a woman scorned?’”
I blinked. “Of course I have.”
“This is a tragedy written by the British playwright William Congreve. His play first premiered in 1697. Those are very old words,” she went on, opening the frayed book. “A first edition, you see. Very old. I handle it with my fingers and not gloves, because it is mine, and we only have this one life to touch things. Objects. Items of no consequence. I don’t have a care for who should come along after my death and whisk these books away to auction. I care only for this moment.”
She traced a fingertip over the words on the binding.
“The Mourning Bride” by William Congreve.
“Hell does have no fury like a woman scorned. But not just any woman. No, men are not worthy of the scorn of a woman.” She gripped the book in her fingers, and her knuckles turned white. “It is a mother who holds the true power of fury. True rage. Capabilities beyond comprehension. Just as a superhero draws her power from a particular moment, item, or situation.”
She gasped for air. “A woman who is handed the true fury of a mother who has had her child taken away is a force greater than a hurricane. A force stronger than anything manmade or nature-made. And she is not made by nature. Having your child taken from you. Stolen. Murdered. That is not nature. There is nothing natural about another person ending your child’s life. Nothing natural at all.”
I listened to the rise in her voice, shuddering.
“Congreve wrote of a woman’s wrath, but he was a man. Egocentric as any man. Vain enough to believe that a woman could possess such a powerful fury over contempt. Rejection by a man.”
“I’ve heard the quote, but I never read the play,” I managed.
“You’re not well-read, then, Lizzie. You must be a reader to be a writer, dear. Consume the words of others. Feel the way they tumble and dive into your emotions. Be irritated by their lack of depth. Revel in sentences so powerful that you’re driven to hold a word between your fingertips.” She held up the book. “Every book I own, I own for a reason. Not to fill the shelves of my library. But to touch words that have touched me.”
I felt like I’d been thrust into a college classroom with one of those overly passionate, first-year teachers determined to change lives with their desire of the written word.
“I’m glad books mean so much to you,” I said, almost defensively. No, I wasn’t well-read. I was forced to read Jane Eyre and The Great Gatsby and Catcher in the Rye in high school with the best of them, but they weren’t for me.
When it came time to pick a book for our high-school senior literature thesis, I chose One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey. I knew there was a movie with Jack Nicholson, and it’d be easy to ramble on for eight to ten pages about society’s drive to control natural impulses in the early sixties. It was my go-to conversation piece whenever I discussed classic books.
Virginia pouted as though my half-enthused response was not the intellectual exchange she’d been hoping for.
“
May I tell you about the day Liza came here to apologize to me?” Virginia asked.
I twisted the multicolored afghan in my fingers. My engagement ring, a solitaire, pierced one cluster of yarn and became entangled.
“Of course,” I replied, but what I wanted to say was, please don’t.
“You’re so easy to talk to, Lizzie. I can’t explain how much your visit has meant to me.”
My visit? I wanted to rip the afghan apart.
“After the accident, Liza left Martin. She left him, but I couldn’t feel satisfied about that. I couldn’t feel gratified that the woman he’d left me for had left him. Because I knew why she left him. She couldn’t live with the guilt of what had happened to our Molly, and the way that she murdered our daughter.”
I pressed my back into the oversized chair.
I could feel the ringing in my ears as she began talking, as though my blood pressure was dropping. I always had to lay down on a cot when having my blood taken to keep from fainting, and I learned the hard way how my body felt when it was about to happen. I took deep, slow breaths.
In through my nose, out through my mouth.
In through my nose, out through my mouth.
VIRGINIA
Autumn in Pennsylvania officially lasted three months but existed for all to see for two solid weeks. Liza knocked on my door in the middle of the most beautiful day, the kind of day where I could sit on the wraparound porch and watch each individual leaf change over the course of several hours. I witnessed the chlorophyll break down with such clarity, I imagined tiny microscopes attached to my eyes. The lake was still, so each leaf that fell played in the air for only seconds before landing in the water. So few fell in the water that day, so the surface of the lake was glass, mirroring the colors as they appeared.
Liza had texted me, I learned later, but I’d blocked her number, so it never came through. She’d texted me that she was ‘beyond sorry, and I’m leaving Martin. I’m disappearing for a while, but I need you to know how sorry I am.” Beyond sorry.
Beyond sorry sounded like something a teenager would write in an apology letter to her parents. I’m beyond sorry that I missed curfew. Can I please be ungrounded?
Beyond sorry was lazy work. What was beyond sorry? Sorrow? A lifetime of solitude?
Death?
Liza texted me, but I never received the text. Blocked texts don’t come through, you see. I knew later that Liza texted me because I read the text. I read it again and again until her phone locked, and then I easily guessed the password to unlock her phone.
The password was Molly’s birthday, because that was the date they officially became official. Martin and Liza. An item. A couple. An arbitrary date for her that was the anniversary of the day I became a mother, and Martin and I became a family.
A celebration of an affair come to fruition.
A commencement of infidelity. Of sexual encounters that became the foundation for their marriage.
Molly’s birthday.
The text was sent too early in the morning to be polite. I am an early riser, but to send a text at 5:30 a.m. was rude. Inconsiderate to a mother who was mourning her child. Inconsiderate to anyone.
Liza knocked and the leaves stopped changing. I wasn’t expecting anyone that day, though Sarah Miller would often stop in to check on me. She’d bring me groceries and casseroles from the people in town long after Molly’s funeral.
I would look at every casserole and wonder if it was the last casserole. I never knew the last anything, so I wanted to be prepared this time. I never knew that my last kiss with Martin was our last kiss, or the last time I heard Molly say “I love you, Mommy,” was the last time I’d hear her voice. I never knew that would be the end of it, so I wanted to pay attention to lasts. First meant nothing to me. Lasts were impactful. Casseroles were a good place to start. Non-committal. Insignificant.
I still had a fresh casserole and two in the freezer from Sarah the day before, so I doubted it was Sarah at my door. But the days really ran together back then, so several days could have passed and I wouldn’t have been the wiser.
Martin never came by. He never tried to knock on my door or text me or call me. Martin put Molly inside of me, and his whore took her away from me, but he didn’t check on me.
I opened the door. I saw her red hair first, the kind of old red that remained on a dirty bandage. Old blood. Blood that wanted to turn black and harden. She’d let it grow to her shoulders and the wind tossed it about. She tried to brush it away from her mouth when she spoke to me.
“Virginia, please don’t close the door. I just- I need to apologize to you. I need to say the words. And then I’m gone. For good. I’m leaving, and I’m not coming back. Please.”
I watched her lips as they moved. I imagined they tasted like cigarette smoke and old lipstick. Lipstick from the very bottom of a purse that had sat in a car through the highest and lowest temperatures in Pennsylvania. Matted, salty lipstick speckled with lint and food remnants.
“Virginia?” she asked again.
I hated my name on those lips, those filthy lips that had put on a show for my husband. Lips that sucked his dick and kissed my child. Lips that so easily accommodated bottles of vodka.
I said yes because I wanted my name off her lips. I backed up and opened the door so she could enter my home.
She wasn’t appropriately awkward when she came inside because there wasn’t a polite bone in her body. She was purposeful, and the clackity clack of her heels on the tile echoed up the stairs. I wanted her to take off her shoes before she reached the carpet because the dagger heels would certainly puncture the thick padding.
She didn’t take off her heels.
She spun around in a nervous circle, and then walked toward the door again.
“Maybe we could walk outside, by the lake? It’s hard to talk in here. This is your house and I feel bad.”
I almost laughed at that. You’re uncomfortable? You feel bad?
You’re beyond sorry?
“Yes,” was all I said as I slipped my shoes on and found a light sweater. It was warm enough outdoors to not require a sweater, but Liza made me feel cold.
We walked along the cobblestone pathway around the house, toward the lake. I hadn’t been to the lake since Molly was alive. It felt right bringing her killer with me, as though I was closing a circle. Completing a long-awaited task.
It felt right.
I was waiting for her to speak. I had nothing to say to her, and she was the “beyond sorry” one. She kept clearing her throat, like the words repeatedly attempted to come up but turned to mucus every time.
Finally, we reached the dock. There was no defined path around the lake, and I had no intention of forging one to continue strolling with my daughter’s killer.
She turned to me.
“Molly said that she loved this lake. That Martin would take her fishing here, and you’d make lunch for the three of you so you could all have a picnic in the sunshine.”
I could hear Molly’s giggle then, as Martin teased her with his dirty, mud-and-worm covered fingers. “Should I wash my hands before I eat?” he’d ask, and she’d shriek, running away from him.
“Those are my memories,” I snapped at Liza, narrowing my eyes. “You are not worthy of them.”
She looked taken aback for a moment, and tears clouded her ugly eyes.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Beyond sorry.
“Get on with it,” I hissed.
She sniffed, wiping her nose with the back of her hand.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t more careful. I- I should have just hit the rabbit, it wasn’t that big. I- I reacted at the last minute, and I swerved, and...”
And.
And she stopped.
I crossed my arms over my chest and glared at her. “And?”
“And I-”
She was openly sobbing now. With every gasp of air she took, I gritted my teeth.
She breathed my air. My t
hin goddamn air that barely fed my lungs anymore. It was hard enough to inhale without my own daughter’s killer stealing all my fucking air.
“Stop breathing,” I said, my voice shallow. I didn’t want her breath in my mouth. “Stop breathing!”
She was startled. Taking a step back from me, she stumbled in her heels but managed to keep her balance.
“This was a bad idea. I should go,” Liza said.
From everywhere and nowhere, I felt superhuman anger that I hadn’t known I was capable of. The rage of a mother scorned. The wrath of a thousand mothers with murdered daughters, Lizzie, you see, I- I can’t quite explain it. The rage that can only end with the end. The end of something or someone. Finite. Fixed and determinate. A story of a permanent death with no sequel. And that, Lizzie, is the fury of a woman scorned.
TEN
The lights flickered.
I could hear the wind picking up outside. I had twisted the afghan into such a knot that my hand was caught in its web. As I tried to untangle my fingers, I swallowed hard and then swallowed again.
She killed her.
I think she killed her.
How could she have read her text messages on her cell phone? They were at the lake, the same lake Virginia stared at every time she passed the window. How easy would it have been for her to simply murder Liza, and dispose of her body in that enormous lake?
There was no one for miles.
Liza was leaving town, she’d made that clear to everyone in her life.
It was perfect.
Perfect.
Is she trying to tell me?
I waited, perched on the edge of my chair, staring into Virginia’s eyes.
I waited.
“And then what happened?” I managed.
Just a little push.
Virginia cupped her hand to her ear, as though I should listen. The faint remnants of “She’s Not There” by the Zombies carried in from the kitchen.
One of my dad’s favorites. First one on his playlist, the one I’d made for him long ago. Songs I’d listen to when I needed to think about my dad, the kind of man every man should be.
The strong man that every good woman deserved.
“No one told me about her,” Virginia echoed, looking at me dead in the eyes.
ABOUT HER Page 9
