All Your Fault

by NJ Moss

  “You bet it is. Come on.”

  I walked down the hallway, through the kitchen and into the garden, across the well-tended lawn and to the squat brick building at the rear. When Mother and Father first moved here, Mother had proclaimed her desire to become a writer. She’d failed long before I was born, apparently, though Troy told me writers never failed, they just stopped writing; getting a straight answer from one was impossible, evidently. It was an office in the sense it had a desk and bookshelves, but no work was done there.

  Mother was sitting in her armchair in the corner, one leg folded over the other, looking like a skeleton with her bones showing through her face. Then I blinked, my eyes adjusted to the light, and I saw her through the dimness of the room. Isabella Addington was a devastatingly beautiful woman of sixty years, her hair sleek and white, her cheekbones well-defined. She wore a bright patterned dress and her hair was styled, which looked incongruous as she lounged there, reading Great Expectations, the paperback worn with time.

  I couldn’t make out the cover in the semi-darkness, but I knew the book well: the broken spine, the exact size and shape of it. It was the thief of my mother’s attention in the years after Hope’s death. I wondered if she could see the text, or if she recited from memory, silently singing the words in her mind.

  My mother had dealt with being an ignored in-the-way child by losing herself in the books with which her cold academic father had stocked his library. The evening Hope died I saw her pick up a paperback, the same one she was reading now, and stare fixedly at it, refusing to look away. It was as though she could escape, like she did when she was a girl. She didn’t have to deal with the madness of life.

  “Great Expectations,” I said from the doorway. “How many times have you read that now, Mother?”

  “I’m sorry?” She raised the book like a shield, peering over the top of it, her eyes piercing with the rest of her face hidden. “Did you say something? I was utterly immersed.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Father wanted me to let you know I was here.”

  I sound like a small scared child. How does she always do that to me?

  “I can see that. I’ll be in in a few minutes. Could you please ask Nicholas to get the beef out of the fridge? I want it room temperature. I’m making risotto.”

  “Yes, of course. I’ll tell him.”

  She turned back to her book. I stared at her, wanting to tell her I got the job, but she already knew that. Father knew so she knew. But she hadn’t said anything.

  I lingered, waiting, watching as she slowly turned the page. The crisp papery noise seemed absurdly loud. Even if she were to ask me what I was doing, why was I hanging around, that would be something. She kept reading.

  I left the room and quietly closed the door. I didn’t want to disturb her more than I already had.

  14

  It was impossible to escape my sister in the dining room. As the five of us gathered around the table, she stared from three separate photos. She was smiling in this one, scowling playfully in that one, and staring in the third. I’d always hated the third: the way she gazed, dead-eyed, as though they’d taken a photograph of her corpse.

  As a girl I was glad they’d rarely made us sit in here to dine, not after Hope left us. On the occasions they did – when Father had people over from work – I’d tortured myself with Hope’s voice. I’d imagined her words, her voice, in my mind, coming from three separate places.

  I’m coming to get you, she would whisper. I’m riding on my bike and when you hear the wind, it’s not the wind, Grace, no, it’s my tassels rustling, my stupid fucking bike making a rustling noise. I’m coming to get you, big sister.

  I sat and waited for Mother to bring the plates in. I wanted to help her, but the few times I’d offered she’d given me this look, as though the very idea of needing my help was obscene. So I sat, watching Russ and Mia, trying to detect if my outburst in the car had mentally scarred Russ. But when I smiled he smiled back, and it meant a lot.

  Mother and Father, not Mum and Dad, that was what I called Isabella and Nicholas Addington. It had not always been like that. In the graveyard silence following Hope’s death, I didn’t call for their attention for half a year. I didn’t shout down the stairs asking what time dinner was. I didn’t ask for money. I didn’t talk to them unless they addressed me first.

  Then one afternoon, in a mad bid to reclaim our family, we were at a restaurant and they were both sitting there like zombies. Outwardly, they were a presentable upper-middle class couple who’d had their only child later in life. Father in his salmon sweater and Mother with her pristine pearls. But their eyes were empty. They gazed out the window as the waiter approached, at nothing, or maybe at things only they could see.

  When the waiter spoke to them, they continued staring, comatose. He looked at me – a cute older boy then, a spotty teen in hindsight – as if to ask what their problem was.

  “Mother,” I said. “Father. The waiter.”

  I was so embarrassed, convinced the whole restaurant was laughing at us. And there it was; they didn’t correct me. They’d been Mother and Father ever since. If I’d called them by their first names at that dinner table, I was sure they’d be Isabella and Nicholas. If I’d remained silent and sat in the awkwardness, perhaps I wouldn’t be calling them anything at all.

  Mother brought the food in and I poured everybody pop and water from the jugs already laid out, a task Mother allowed me with a curt nod. Mia spoke at length about her art, and my mother’s face lit up.

  “You’re exceptionally talented,” she said, fork balanced like a weapon between manicured fingers. “I truly believe art is as much nature as nurture, and you have both, Mia. You have the natural eye and the desire to improve. After dinner, why don’t I show you some more of your great-grandmother’s work?”

  “Do you have to?” I said, surprised to hear the sharpness in my voice.

  Caffeine, caffeine, look what you’ve done to me.

  Everything was sparking under the surface.

  “Of course not,” Mother said. “It was only an idea. Good heavens, Grace, do you truly imagine that by looking at some paintings Mia is going to become like my poor mother? You have always been so paranoid.”

  She was right. I’d been hounded by the idea I’d inherit Cecilia’s madness since I was a child. It might’ve had something to do with the way Father told me. Mother had spent the night screaming and crying and walking with frenetic steps around her bedroom, a rare outburst that was not to be repeated.

  Something in her had exploded, some primal chord struck. Father and I sat in the hallway outside her bedroom, Father’s eyes red with lack of sleep and whisky, looking down at the floor and never at me, not once. He told me the whole story: the suicide, the gruesome method. He told me, yes, but truthfully I think he was telling himself.

  “Isabella saw it, saw her. Her father died a few years later. She was alone until we found each other. A smoky flat in London, a party filled with friends of friends. But we were apart for years after. I was working abroad. And then we reconnected, in the bookshop, the musty old place. I walked in and found her there, this gorgeous angel behind the counter. What a romance!” He inflated, then grew sombre. “This is hard for her. She’s always lived too close to tragedy. It’s not fair she has to suffer this. I can still see her, the skinny girl with the sharp smile, standing next to that window, the smoke from her friends’ cigarettes curling around her. I can still smell those days.”

  Ever since I’d learnt schizophrenia often ran in families, I’d felt the dangerous hands of possibility tickling up my spine more than I cared to think about. I tried not to be dramatic about it.

  Schizophrenia had been treated differently back then, especially in the cloistered community in which my grandparents lived. My grandmother had been devoutly religious, and her psychoses were encouraged by some of her friends at church. Worse, my grandfather had sometimes played cruel tricks on her, gaslighting her in the sickest
ways. Things were different these days. There were treatments, medication, therapies; people could flourish in spite of the vicious illness.

  I let Mother’s comment pass without rebuttal. I didn’t want to erupt again.

  It didn’t take long for Russ to play up. We were about halfway through our meal when he scooped up a big fork of risotto and aimed it at Mia, preparing to fling it at her. Mother’s eyes snapped to her grandson like a reflex. “Young man, if you even think about behaving like an animal at my dinner table, you can wait outside until the rest of us are done.”

  She didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t seem angry. She stared coldly.

  Amazingly, Russ listened. Something flickered in his eyes, he gave a cheeky smile, and then he went back to eating his food. I should’ve been glad, but it sent a nasty thought rioting through my mind.

  I wasn’t as good at motherhood as Mother. I had to shout. She told.

  “Grandma,” Mia said a few moments later. “Isn’t it fantastic Mum got the job?”

  “Of course.” Mother glanced at a photograph of Hope, the one where she was sitting on her brand-new pink bike. “Your mother truly is an intelligent woman. She could have a doctorate in psychology, you know, but of course life has its ways of meddling with such things.”

  “Because I was born, right?” Mia said.

  “No. Grace could have returned to her studies after your birth, or continued them while she was pregnant. People do that when they are truly determined.”

  I was a let-down. I was everything Hope wouldn’t have been. I silently seethed, which was my speciality under this roof.

  “I’m proud of her,” Mia said, giving me a secret smile.

  It was strange – or perhaps normal, and only new to me – but the older Mia grew, the more I felt like she was my sister, my co-conspirator. I smiled back and on the meal went, the minutes ticking by, the six dead eyes of my little sister staring unceasingly.

  * * *

  Later, Mother took Mia to her office to peruse some of Cecilia’s paintings. Russ and Father and I went into his workshop so he and Russ could work on his HMS Victory.

  There were no photos of Hope in here, but there was a piece of her.

  On the wall – beside the magnetic tool panel – hung a bracelet of small painted stones and seashells. I remembered sitting on the beach, feeling very grown-up as I sunbathed and waited for the boys to be impressed with my new swimsuit, as Hope skipped across the rocks, searching for the right size, the right shape, the right everything. It was the last bracelet she’d ever made.

  15

  My first week at Langdale Consulting was a frantic rush of events.

  Even if I’d somehow passed the interview, I felt like an imposter as I strode into the office, into my office. As I set out my things on the desk, I found myself wishing I was with Russ in the park or at home or at the museum or anywhere else. Taking my seat, I forced thoughts of escape from my mind. I was here. I could do this. I’d be the best goddamn PA I could be.

  “Don’t expect me to coddle you,” Clive said that morning, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed in a way that hid his paunch and showed off his Rolex at the same time. I wondered if it was intentional. “Management consulting is all about making them feel like absolute shit. That’s lesson number one. The client, they’re fucked. Beyond fucked. They’re on the verge of bankruptcy. And only you can save them. That’s what we need them to believe, all right? The hard part is having them still like you once you drop the bombshell. Sound cut-throat? Maybe so. But I’m throwing you in at the deep end, Grace. It’s sink or swim at Langdale Consulting. And I expect you to be an Olympic-grade swimmer, okay?”

  You’re quite annoying, Clive.

  “Of course,” I told him. “I’ll do my best.”

  “Give me one-hundred and ten per cent and we’ll be gravy.”

  Clive spoke entirely in clichés, it seemed to me at times, but that was hardly my biggest concern. The first week was a battleground of catching up to something I had no experience in: writing reports, attending client meetings, learning how to play nice when one client called me a “good girl”. All through it, my heart was a pounding drum in my chest, which might’ve had something to do with the coffees Olivia brought me twice or sometimes three times a day.

  I didn’t have the heart to turn her down. Or perhaps the caffeinated glory was the only thing getting me from nine until half past two, when I finished… or was supposed to finish. Twice during the first week, I had to ring Father to pick the children up from school, as unexpected overtime kept me tethered to the desk.

  I came to look forward to the stolen minutes with Olivia, who seemed friendly if a little standoffish, as though she was unwilling to sink freely into a full friendship with me. It might’ve had something to do with the general atmosphere in the office, the sense I’d done something nefarious or immoral to get this job. I often felt as though my colleagues thought I’d had some prior relationship with Clive. Perhaps I was one of those women who slept with men to get jobs.

  Or perhaps it was all in my head.

  Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. How I hated that word.

  “How do you think I’m doing?” I asked one afternoon, taking another sip of the unbelievably strong coffee, as though the trendy hipster café had accidentally filled my cup with narcotics.

  Her impish eyes glimmered knowingly. “Jeez, woman, don’t worry so much. You’re doing fantastic. I saw the way Tim Richardson was grinning when he left yesterday. You know how to handle people. And it’s your first week. Honestly, I should resent you for doing so well. On my first week I could barely work the flipping scanner.”

  I laughed, letting her words bolster me, and then looked at the family photo I’d placed on my desk. The four of us were standing next to Wimbleball Lake in Exmoor, our faces ruddy from the cold, our expressions free and serene. I was doing this for them.

  16

  Derrick paused in the doorway of the break room. When he saw we were alone he smirked and stood up straighter. He was wearing gym gear, the fabric baggy and airy, giving him a careless handsomeness that somehow bothered me. As far as I could tell, he was the only one who made use of the in-office facilities.

  “Hard at work?” he asked, with surface-level politeness.

  The kettle hissed and finished boiling, bubbling loudly, and I thought about grabbing it and throwing it at him. It was glass and I knew it would make a satisfying shattering noise as it smashed over his shaved sanctimonious head.

  “Just taking a short break.”

  “You deserve it.” He beamed. “How is Clive treating you anyway? Hope he isn’t hammering you too hard. I know he can be quite stiff sometimes. But sometimes you gotta lie down and take it, right?”

  Hard-edged flaring, a whelming of violent intent inside of me. “Excuse me?”

  I wanted to slap him so hard his teeth shattered.

  Who the fuck did he think he was? I felt like a teenager, the lost version of me flashing into my thirty-year-old psyche. It didn’t help that my heartbeat was a nonstop jackhammer and my thoughts were racing endlessly, always, around and around like—

  Not now; not here. This was about him.

  I strode closer. I lifted my chin. “As you’ve worked here longer than me, Derrick, I’m sure you’re aware this company has a human resources department, as all modern companies do, and I’m also sure you’re aware this is the twenty-first century and not the nineteen-fucking-fifties, so if you could keep your perverted thoughts to yourself, that would be very much appreciated.”

  “Woah.” He blinked slowly, looking a little like Russ when he’d been caught sneaking a treat from the cupboard. “I meant with the workload. Hammering you with the workload.”

  “And lie down and take it?”

  He was blushing. “The workload. Lie down and take the workload…”

  “Of course that’s what you meant,” I scoffed, striding from the room, annoyed I’d had to abandon the coffee.
<
br />   “I really did,” he called after me. “I’d never say anything like that.”

  I walked quickly to my office and closed the door behind me.

  I couldn’t help but wonder if the comment had been innocent. Perhaps I’d overreacted. It was difficult to know. But it was over. Nobody had seen except for Derrick, and I doubted he’d be in a rush to repeat it.

  You hope. Or he’ll go around the office telling everybody how crazy you are.

  “We’re one big happy family here,” Clive often said.

  It was his mantra, but I was starting to doubt it already.

  It didn’t matter. I kept my head down, and soon it became clear Derrick had kept our scuffle private. He even directed a strange frown at me a couple of times, almost like he was upset, or regretful, or something. But it passed too quickly for me to read and I never acknowledged what had happened in the break room, even when we were forced to interact for work-related tasks.

  It was almost like it had never happened.

  17

  I couldn’t sleep, not properly, perhaps three or four hours a night, and even then it was never all at once. When I woke I was always covered in sweat and my first thought was to drag myself downstairs and make another coffee.

  “She really has it in for me,” Troy said when I returned to the bedroom one night, the house silent but for the creaks and whines of its settling. He was staring at his phone, the email app open, shaking his head. “What did I ever do to you, Vicky? Jesus Christ.”

  Vicky, his boss. It was always something. I had started to expect at least twenty minutes of ranting an evening.

  I’ve already put in my time today, I unfairly thought as I sat on the edge of the bed. Without prompting, he told me the tale of Vicky and her order to have a stack of unreasonable reports ready for lunchtime the next day.