Scavenger Hunt

by Dani Lamia

  “I never wanted to get pregnant,” she continues. “What do people say now? That relationships ought to be consensual? Well, you were not the product of a consensual act of sex, my darling. I was a very heavy drinker once upon a time—damn near an alcoholic—and your father had a taste for incapacitated women. We were dating, or whatever you call it where a man takes you out drinking and watches you like a hawk until you pass out and then does whatever he wants to you.”

  I swallow hard. This is a more specific and deliberate version of the same story she has told us ever since we were children. About how she never wanted to be a mother. About how she was tricked into it. We always assumed that she was exaggerating. But I suddenly realize that she may have actually been softening the truth.

  “I hated myself so much back then,” she says. “I hadn’t made peace yet with the way that I am. I wasn’t anything like my sunny, self-actualized current self that you now see before you. I hated myself so much that I let my relationship with your father keep going, far longer than it should have. I think I made up my mind to kill him very early on, possibly after the first time he stole a kiss from me in that elevator. I came up to the city to get away from an investigation back home in Alabama, where I had gotten rid of a similar nuisance in my life, a pastor in our church who just wouldn’t take no for an answer. But before I had a chance to rid myself of your father, I came up pregnant. Obviously, my first instinct was to get rid of the child. What do you call it up here? The fetus. But I made the mistake of telling your father my plan and not following through quickly. And that’s how he got me. He found my weak point. He was always a very good game player. Not better than me—not when I was sober, anyway. But back then I was rarely ever sober.”

  I can’t remember my mother ever playing games in her life. She would watch us from afar, drinking and smoking, a look of loathing in her eyes. Much like the look she has now, recalling my father’s tactics.

  “He got to my family, is what he did. Before I could run out and get you scraped clean out of me, I was getting phone calls of congratulations from my mamma and daddy and my cousins and brothers and aunts and uncles from every trailer park and pig wallow in Alabama. He used his inheritance and bought them all houses and jewelry and paid their debts and sent them gambling money. He asked my father for my hand in marriage, contingent on us having this baby and many more babies. And in return, he was going to keep my family set up forever with his Nylo family fortune: a fortune that he wanted to use to make fucking board games and novelties. I was trapped.”

  She shakes her head in defeat, and reaches into her pocket to pull out a pack of cigarettes.

  “He made it so that my family would hate me for the rest of my life if I spurned him. He solved all of their problems, joining us with capital in a way that would never work with mere feelings. I guess he really must have loved me back then, before he knew completely what I was like. Maybe he never knew completely. To drag my whole genome out of the filth and into the glory of Yankee wealth, all I would need to do was have his babies. He attacked me where I was weak: my pride. And so I let you be born. I regretted it instantly. But I did it. I did it knowing that I could always take it back if I really wanted. I wanted my family to be strong. To be rich. To prosper and to thank me for it. Pride. Pride is all it was.”

  She slips a cigarette from the pack and lights it. I reach into my jacket and pull out a pack of my own. I realize that we both smoke Dunhills. Of course we do. My first pack was probably one of hers that I found after she died.

  After she didn’t die.

  “The years slipped by,” she continues, after taking a deep drag and sending a puff of smoke wafting across the room. “Your brothers came next. I realized that having children isn’t so bad when you’re obscenely wealthy. You didn’t seem to need my love. Those early years were actually kind of a blur. Your father struggled with his game designs, trying like hell to have some kind of independent success so he could wrest himself from his family’s purse strings. He was rich as hell for Alabama, but for a Yankee scion he was woefully dependent. Which meant that I was also crippled by his failures, forced to travel with him to beg his mother and father for infusions of cash, or to accompany him to banks to look pretty while he wheedled out loans. He needed a success and so I gave him one.”

  Her eyes flick to the ground, where all the pieces of Sea Farmers are scattered on the ground.

  “I had never invented a game before or studied game theory or anything like that,” she says. “I just based Sea Farmers on how people live back home: pretending to be all social and caring and Christian while trying to destroy each other and buy each other’s land out from under bank debts and render curses unto the seventh generation and all that. Basic human evil and primordial shittiness, the kind that’s always right there in front of you if you ever choose to look. My original had the Kraken from the very beginning, but your father didn’t like how brutal the game could become that way. He changed the rules, and Sea Farmers was an instant hit.”

  She smiles ruefully and brings the Dunhill to her lips for another pull. “Of course, your father said that no one would ever buy it if they knew that the game was invented by a woman. As if they really would have cared. I was allowed to come into the office, but the game’s origins had to stay a secret for his own pride and vanity, for the good of the company, he said. There wasn’t much for me to do in those early days, since I had no interest in developing follow-ups or marketing the damn game to all the rubes of America and Europe. Your father was very sensitive to the smell of paint, so I repainted the walls of the office over and over again to torture him. He had a constant headache back in those days. It kept him away from me as effectively as cold showers and saltpeter. It’s the little tactical victories that one savors the most.”

  She flicks her ashes onto the carpet and takes another drag.

  “I’m sure you can figure out the rest. Angelo started courting me and I let myself be courted, mainly just to hurt your father. Eventually, however, I couldn’t stand any of you anymore. I didn’t want to divorce Prescott and divide the fortune, nor did I want to see the rest of you brats ever again. I told Angelo how I was thinking about murdering you all and then killing myself. He said that there were easier ways to end things. Less drastic ones. He cooked up the plan of faking my death. And that was satisfactory. For a while.”

  She sighs.

  “I thought that if I never saw any of you ever again that my resentment—my hate and loathing—would fade. Disappear, perhaps. That it would be dissolved by my own lassitude and languor. But, darling, no. It only grew and deepened. I couldn’t stand how I had been used to bring all of you into the world. I couldn’t stand how useless you all were. And so I began to connive to destroy you all, beginning with your father. Angelo told me what your father wanted to do with his will. How it would be a game. Angelo was worried about his own daughter, about Gabriella’s future. And so my plan started to come together. I hijacked the game and replaced your father’s clues and questions with my own. I told Angelo that if he helped me kill off Prescott’s children, Gabriella would be left alive at the end and she would inherit everything. He trusted me. I think he really did love me, in his way. Gabriella also agreed to be part of our little cabal. With a mother like me and a father like Angelo, what chance did she have to be even the slightest bit normal? So the three of us conspired to kill you all off. And then at the end… well… ”

  “You chose me,” I say.

  She smiles.

  “I chose you.”

  37

  “I didn’t expect to become so fond of you,” says my mother. “After all, you ruined my life. But then again, there is so much of me in you. Your hair color. The shape of your jaw. The way you walk. The way you command a room. Even when you were a child, I had an affinity for you. Nonetheless, I thought it would be easy to kill you eventually for the humiliation you caused me by being born, but, darli
ng, I must admit: watching you these past few months has really made me reconsider things. Accepting you the way you are has become a way for me to cherish myself more. Is that crazy?”

  I give her a wry smile. “Actually, I think it’s fairly normal. Possibly the definition of motherhood. Every other fucking thing you have ever done or said so far is crazy, though.”

  She snorts, laughing.

  “I wouldn’t know anything about motherhood,” she says. “My own mother, your grandmother, was a bit of a nightmare horror show. We come from slave owners, you know. Not everyone had what it took to be a slave owner. You had to love it. It had to give you a real thrill.”

  I shudder. She grins, leaning toward me. I feel a chill down the back of my neck but also a longing. I want her to love me. Even after everything that has happened, I want her to take me in her arms and tell me everything will be okay. I am so fucking happy to have my mother back. I am relieved that she wasn’t the weak part of me, the part willing to sacrifice myself to let Gabriella live. Instead, I now know that she is the other part of me, the part with killer instincts in the board room and at the gaming table.

  I am covered in blood and glass, and I am scared out of my mind, but for the first time in a long time, I feel whole.

  Of course, I can’t let her get away with what she has done. She’s come back into my life in the worst, most temporary way possible.

  So good to have you back, Mother. And now you must fucking die.

  “I don’t expect to get away with what I have done,” she says, as if reading my mind. “The world will look at me as the worst kind of abomination. I am a Medea, a woman who kills her own children. I have hunted them down one by one after deeming them unworthy. The world doesn’t respect the rights of mothers. A father might send his own weak children off to die in some impossible, stupid war and be lauded for it as a patriot. A mother who kills her failed children is a monster because she shows agency. And so children bend toward the traits of their fathers, not fearing their mothers as they should. Do your own children fear you?”

  Of course not. The strongest emotion I elicit from them is contempt, which I am sometimes able to twist into benign fondness. But I hate my mother. I know that for a fact. I also love her. And yes, I fear her very deeply. How could I not, as she confesses what she has done while pointing a revolver at me?

  “No, I don’t expect anyone to forgive me for what I have done, and I don’t expect to get away with it,” she says. And here she smiles at me shrewdly. “But do you think that they will forgive you for what you have done?”

  I don’t know what to say to this. I smooth my pants down. What does she mean? I open my mouth to ask, but I don’t even know how to phrase the question.

  “There are many ways that this could go,” she says. “Let me lay them out for you and then let me tell you what I think will be best. I am sluggish, glutted, and satisfied with my revenge so far. I am old and tired and have lived a very good, very full life. I am ready to retire.”

  I nod, blankly, unsure what else to do. Outside, I can hear people shouting and the noise of police sirens and barking dogs. How long have we been up here in this musty second-floor room? Flies are starting to circle around the dead bodies. It is growing dark as the evening comes on. My mother lights another cigarette, and the glow from her lighter momentarily blinds me. I look away, starting to get a headache from the smoke and tension in this close room.

  “I could blow my brains out,” she says, holding the revolver up to her temple. My gut tenses up. I have imagined seeing my mother kill herself so often over the years. I am shocked to discover that I don’t want her to die, even though just moments ago I thought I was ready to kill her myself. Something primal in me would be devastated. I already mourned her once. I couldn’t do it again.

  She lowers the gun, seeming to sense my panic.

  “I don’t want to die,” she says. “And the cloud would fall on you. The company would fail. You would be blamed for killing the lot of us, I’m sure. So many bodies and no one around to corroborate your story.”

  She smiles.

  I know she is telling the truth. Goddammit, she has all the power here.

  “Or I could stay alive and blame you for everything,” she says. “I could tell the world that you and I set everything up together so that you would be able to rule your father’s empire uncontested. I’m not sure that anyone would believe me. But I could plant the seeds of doubt. I am very persuasive. You might not go to prison, but I think I could very easily make it so that the shareholders could not in good conscience leave you in control of the company. Nylo is a family business after all.”

  What she is saying is absolutely true. Nylo would become as lurid as the Manson Family. It probably will anyway. I can’t imagine any way that the company will come out of this unscathed. Everyone is dead.

  My mother smiles at me and her blue eyes glitter. She sees that I am working it all out in real time.

  “Or I could confess,” she says. “I could tell the truth. I have videos and recordings of what I have done. I could make the world believe that I did it alone. And you could try and understand and forgive me.”

  “I will never forgive you,” I say instantly. And we both know that this is true. But I have overplayed my hand. She has asked for the moon and already she has the compromise she wants. Already I am trying to understand her. Already I am trying to see the world how she sees it.

  And then I suddenly realize that this is why my murderous bitch of a mother has chosen me and not Gabriella. Because I will be able to understand her someday. Maybe not now. But eventually. And she knows that I will want to understand her. That I will need to know why she has done what she has done. That I will be more fascinated than revolted.

  “There is something strong about you,” she says. “Stronger than me. You are just as much of a monster as me, of course—just as much as Angelo, your sister, and your father. But you keep it in check. You keep it down, like vomit that will not rise. It poisons you but you hold it anyway. Wouldn’t you like to know more about what you are swallowing? How to use it?”

  My heart is beating wildly. She knows that she has me. That my wild love and hate for her will see us both through to the very end of her plan.

  “You will come visit me,” she says. “In prison. You will visit me often. And in return, I will take all the blame. I will tell all the world what I have done and why I have done it. In public, you may deny me. You will get all the sympathy that you are due as the victim of an impossible tragedy. An inexplicable, decades-spanning horror. I will see to it that the world is on your side. You will be the hero. You will rise from this, stronger, with all the control over your own designs that I never had. Did you know that for the past few months I have been watching you play board games on the internet at your little club? I have bet on you and I have bet against you. You are a canny player, but there is still so much you can learn about business and strategy from a superior player. Nylo was built on my stolen ideas. My body was used against my will, and that’s where you have come from. But I will do this deal with you, because I think that you of all people might be able to understand me somewhat before I lay down my weary head.”

  She takes my hands in hers. My mother’s touch, after all these years, after all the madness of the past hour, the past week, brings tears to my eyes.

  “I don’t want to have an unrequited life,” she says. “I want to tell you everything. I want to be your rabbi, your consigliere, your secret source of wisdom and strength. Will you let me be your mother? After what I have done? Because of what I have done?”

  What choice do I have? Letting her confess is both the right thing to do and the most self-serving thing to do. I know that if she dies, no one will ever see any of her videos or recordings. I sit across from her silently, my head and heart pounding.

  I stand up abruptly and walk to the window, flin
ching as I look down into the yard where I can just make out Ben, Olivia, and Jane surrounded by police officers, illuminated by flashing lights from cop cars and ambulances. They obviously heard the gunfire. Do they think I am dead? What sign are they waiting for to rush in and save me?

  “Give me the gun,” I say, turning back around to face my mother. “If they storm in here and see you holding the gun on me, they’ll shoot you.”

  “And you don’t want them to shoot me,” she says, her voice confident, but also tinged with hope.

  “No,” I reply, and I mean it.

  She empties the bullets from the chamber and hands me the revolver. I set it on the ground by my feet and stare at my mother as an equal. I collapse into her and hug her fiercely, luxuriating in her smell, in the comfort of her arms.

  “I can’t believe what you did,” I say. “I don’t understand it. I will never understand it. I’m not like you. I never was and I never will be. You can’t possibly understand what you have done. And what you have lost.”

  “I know what I have lost,” she says, looking me in the eyes as she releases me from our embrace.

  She bends down and kisses Alistair on the forehead and then Gabriella. She closes Alistair’s eyes. There is blood on her lips, which she blots with a Kleenex from her pocket.

  “I gave them all their life and then I took it back,” she says. “And now it is you who has everything. All of my love. All of my attention. Didn’t you ever wish me back to life? Well, here I am. What will you do with me?”

  I don’t know what to say. I want to scream. I want to jump out the window.