by Dan Noble
“You came to a story with your personal history and your perceptions and beliefs, and your brain did what it does—tried to draw meaning from meaninglessness. Your actions resulted in a classic reversal. In life, you felt your mother was killing your spirit, so you went and killed her creatively, where it was safe to act on your feelings. We aren’t so difficult to work out, despite the yearning for us to feel we’re unique and complex creatures.”
“So she isn’t actually dead? I thought Kennedy killed her.”
“Remember what I told you: art and science are not so separate as we would like them to be. Art is part of science. If you look at them together, you get infinitely more possibilities. And that’s what you need to do.”
“Why can’t anyone simply answer a question?”
“You want simple answers, Millie. This is your problem. The only things that are simple are your desires. Everything else, all the possible manifestations, the permutations of what we might do about those desires, in this realm and in fiction, especially joined together like this, there are too many ways to look at it to get the clear-cut answer you’re looking for.
“It’s all open to interpretation. And everyone’s interpretation is different, just as this, your journey, is unique from everyone else’s. Art has always been infamous for presenting us with questions. Science, though it has some answers, with each new revelation, constantly shows us how little we know.”
“What are you going to do with me?”
“Well, that all depends on you. But if it were up to me, I’d kill you right away. No point in waiting for the ending. You’ve been nothing but trouble, since your conception. But there’s the whole love problem. None of it works without love, blah blah blah. And so, here you are.”
“What do you want, then?”
“Ah, motivation. Yes! That’s more like it. What’s my motivation? Well, I’m pretty damned sick of being a pawn in this whole game. I’m ready to take it to the mainstream. Just been strung along, year after year, doing a bit part when really, I should be running the show. I’m the one who understands the science of it. I’ve written all the implementation manuals.
“But nobody can get on board with that idea. It’s not something to be institutionalized. It’s all individual, creative. For each of us to work out on our own. Blah, blah, blah.” He’s mocking Mother and it’s clear from his exaggeration and body language how fed up he is with her. I’ve been there myself enough to recognize it. Can this be real?
“So why don’t you break off and do it on your own?”
“Wouldn’t that be so simple? You are not a thinker, Millie. This is your problem. Your Mother is the most powerful Writer ever, in the history of the world. Do you even know what that means?”
“Are you saying Writer with a capital W? I thought I was imagining that.”
“Call it whatever you want, Millie.”
“Oh, I get it,” I say. “Why I always wanted to call you Pinocchio. Because you’re a puppet. You voice everyone else’s agenda.”
“We’re all puppets,” Pinocchio says. “It’s a sick, sick, exultant, addictive business, stories because we all want it to mean something—this life.”
“And what about you? What do you want it to mean?”
“Still with the simple questions, Millie. After all this. I think Emily will find you a disappointment.”
“Is she alive? I thought she was dead?”
“Oh Millie.” His brows raise. “You know what though, I am proud of you for one thing: having the guts to see your dad. Well, that was a surprise. Emily didn’t think you would. You’ve done such a wonderful job shutting out the past, pretending none of it happened. Look at you. You are surprising. Well done. Might have a satisfying ending after all.” He pats his front shirt pocket, takes out a soft pack of cigarettes, lights one. And I’m out.
And then I’m back again. She’s drugged me again. Maybe I was always being drugged? Angie’s alone in the room.
“Where’s Dr. P?”
“Dr. P? Well there’s a blast from the past. You must be off with the fairies again, Millie. No Dr. P here. Haven’t thought about that dude in forever.”
“Where’s Kennedy?”
“The sad part is, after all this, after everything, I still want to be a part of it. You think I don’t see Emily in that daughter of yours? You in her? And now I can have her all to myself. Kennedy—what did he do to deserve it all?”
“Where is Kennedy?” I say.
“Dead. And look it’s time for your meds.”
Blackness.
50
MILLIE
After so much time, you would think I’d have my script ready for Mother. But it’s just the opposite. I’m speechless. What can I say to her? Even when she was speaking to me, I never did have the words.
She looks formidable. In high-waisted jeans and a black silk button-up blouse, her hair smooth in a massive ponytail. I haven’t seen her hair long in many years. It suits her. Ageless. I hate myself for wanting to pounce, launch myself at her, crush her with my hug.
“Millie, I’m sorry to have taken your pregnancy.”
Of all the things I imagined her saying, that certainly wasn’t it.
“It’s a terrible thing to lose a child. All kinds of ways for that to happen. Like when your own child murders you, for instance.”
A shiver starts deep inside me, takes over. I have to lean back into the chair.
“All those years, you tried to make yourself feel better about it. But the truth is, when you were given the choice, you murdered me. I watched you, shocked. On the one hand, I was deeply satisfied—I could never have predicted you’d go that way. What a plot twist! But on the other, quite a blow to see how you felt, instinctively, deep down. You smashed that stone again and again. Brutal. I guess we are all animals.”
“But here you are.”
“But here I am.”
“Why have you done all of this to me?”
“It’s called conflict, Millie. There’s no story without it.”
“Am I so meaningless? Just a mere character in a story?”
“Au contraire, Millie. Characters are perhaps the most meaningful of all. They drive the story, connect the readers, change opinions, challenge beliefs, soothe souls.”
“I only ever loved you, wanted you to love me.” I hate myself for saying it, but the words are out before I have a chance to stanch them.
“Don’t you think I know that? I could never have propelled you through all this if I didn’t know your motivation.”
“Well, it’s out there now, so did you ever love me?”
“I did. I do. I couldn’t have invested so much in you otherwise. But one mustn’t be precious about these things. When you’ve been doing this as long as I have, you know you often have to kill your darlings.”
“Mother, that’s a phrase for writers. In that sense, ‘darlings’ are words. Not real, live people.”
“Are you really saying that to me? You think I haven’t witnessed your pathetic cover-up all these years? ‘I don’t remember. Was it a dream? Was it in a book? Was it in the Book World? Did it really happen? No, Kennedy! Don’t dig up the yard. What if you find the corpse of my mother buried back there?’”
I still have no words, feel like I’ve been smacked, then kicked, then run over by a big rig. All those years rehearsing zingers I thought would hurt her, and now I realize I can’t touch her. She’s impenetrable. It’s too late to make amends with emotions. We are all on her strings. Puppets.
“It’s all beside the point, anyway. Words, people, stories, real life—I’ve managed to tear down the divisions. And with the help of Dr. P, well, now I’ve got a surgeon’s precision.” She laughs.
“Is he really a puppet?”
“Don’t you get it? Everyone’s a puppet.”
“Mother, you can’t mean all of this. Don’t you remember the way we were: you and me against the world.” Why do I continue down this hopeless path?
; “I remember you always asking when I handed you a book: ‘What’s this about?’ And I’d paraphrase Flannery O’Connor: the meaning of a story does not rise to the top of a book like schmaltz in a soup pot. A story is not a textbook. As she so eloquently put it, ‘the whole story is the meaning.’ When you were young, you’d get so flustered. ‘But can’t you just say what it’s about?’ If it had all been that easy, none of us would be here in the first place, then again, none of us would be here in the first place. Try putting that in a blurb. Try sticking it in a genre.
“You never got it, Millie. And you never loved yourself. Never trusted yourself. Probably to do with your weak father. You’re so desperate for love, but it isn’t your fault. We’re made that way. And that’s why it’s so easy to work everyone out. He did love you, though. That’s what you couldn’t work out. He did it for you. He saved you all these years. Gave you time. He’s a hero. And now, you’ve become such a strong character, you propelled us here, to this glorious, perfect ending. Congratulations. You finally get it.”
I’m so at peace, it’s incredible.
For a moment Mother looks thoughtful, reminiscent even. “You need conflict for stories, Millie. A loving mother and daughter is boring. It just doesn’t work. We’re making the ultimate sacrifice—together.”
She approaches me, hugs me in a way I’ve pictured exactly many times, her hand in my hair, the feel of that ring getting caught—a pull, but a reassuring one. It’s everything I hoped it would be.
“Mother, I love you so much. Thank you; I know this is not your way, to speak so directly. But you’ve done it for me, because you understand I need it. This straight-talking is not to your mind the best final scene. It should have ended at ‘congratulations.’ I understand that. But you’ve done it for me. Thank you. It means the world to me. Mother, Mother, Mother, Mother.”
I wake this time to laughing. “Mother, Mother, Mother! God, Millie, you are so pathetic! Do you hear yourself?”
Despite the realization of where I am—restrained in my bed, my best friend above me, mocking me after killing my husband, who killed my mother—I feel at peace from the exchange that took place with Mother and me. It’s no less true because it came from my imagination. Perhaps it’s more true because of that. I’ve made a decision. I’m done fighting for this life I’ve only destroyed. Everyone here is better off without me. I’m coming, Mother. I’ll fight the good fight—creating and grounding myself in stories—for the rest of my days. And then when I die, we’ll be together forever.
And that’s when I know the time has come: the classic reversal, story’s most powerful hand. She’s going to kill me—Angie, Mother, Angie; it’s one and the same to me. It’s the moment I’ve been headed toward all along.
51
MILLIE
A scream from outside brings me back. The voice is male. Angie does not run to the window, she walks slowly, amused by her surprise (what a twist!), I assume, and with an obvious curiosity about how things will unfold. We were always suckers for twists. She pauses before the heavy curtain, another I had made with Mother’s coupon, as if savoring the moment, this crescendo. There’re footsteps approaching. I’m so woozy, I can feel my head weaving, heavy on my neck. But it’s heaven. Whatever drugs she’s given me have helped to finally bridge my two worlds.
“Do it, Angie! Please. Kill me now. It’s perfect. Now. Before you lose your chance.”
“You’re crazy! You really are. Do you know that?”
It all happens so quickly after that. The man’s voice is louder. There are sirens outside, lots of them. And then yelling through a megaphone. “Angie James! Someone is coming inside right now. If you pull that trigger, you will spend your life in prison. If you come out now, we will make it easier on you.”
She shakes her head. “No. This is the way it has to end. I won’t be the weak one now. You’re the weak one.” She cocks her finger. I shut my eyes tight. The noise is deafening. The pain. Then, thankfully, I’m gone.
52
MILLIE
It’s neat, my descent back to the Book World. I know exactly where I am. There’s Mother, apparently bleeding out on the carpet. I know she’s not, really.
When Pinocchio approaches Kennedy, I know what’s going to happen. We rehearsed this at least. Angie mustn’t know where things stand now.
“She’s gone,” Pinocchio says.
Angie runs to her bloodied body and prostrates herself over Mother. It’s macabre, the way she rubs herself in Mother’s blood, beyond devastation, something primal.
“You never did know how to separate yourself from her,” I say. And it’s true. “That’s not the same thing as paging-in. But that’s the closest you could get. You were misguided, Angie. She used you. You found what you needed to in her words, but that wasn’t necessarily her intent. She only has one daughter. And that is me.”
“No. No!” She lifts her head. Mother’s blood is smeared at her cheekbones, like she’s dressed for a ritual dance, a sacrifice. She doesn’t know the half of it. Mother’s ending is a corker, a real unexpected zinger—and that’s because we wrote it together. We’re a team now. All those years of training. All the meticulously collected quelque choses. Well we’re finally doing quelque chose with them. We’re both individualists. We’re doing it for the experience, for us. Universalists, individualists—it doesn’t matter. We’re going to hand it off to the public now, and they’re going to choose what they want to see. You make it real, and they choose. That’s the magic. Our magic. We are the point. We are significant.
In this world, it’s Mother holding the trigger. She wasn’t really bleeding. We just set it up that way. Had a lot of fun with those blood capsules. Just the kind of fun I’d always imagined.
53
OFFICER LOU
As soon as I pulled the trigger, I realized I’d inserted myself forever in their story. I’m not going to lie, that felt amazing. I was hooked. Books, writing, reading—it was a new world that had opened itself up for me. Much more satisfying than most prosaic attempted murder scenes. Angie was going to kill Millie. That was certain. I’d done the right thing on paper, too. The mother’s body is being processed, thank god.
The paperwork, the hours of questioning at the station, lie ahead of me, but all I can think is how grateful I am to have been pulled into her story, to have the knowledge that there is more out there than the ugly shit I see every day.
I have to swallow, I feel tears sting my eyes as I rush to Millie, check her pulse, radio the emergency services crew to come up from across the street. I can’t tell if it really happened, or if it’s just the way I experience it, but she opens her eyes, one last time, takes me in, and mouths, “You get it.”
My hand trembles and the colors go vivid around me, the noise is deafening. A kind of divine love enwraps me as if in answer to all the suspicion and research I’d given to the idea of any meaning in this life previously. You get it.
I step back, slowly catching my breath, and at that moment, I think of The Great Gatsby. God, I fucking loved that book, Dr. Eckleberg’s glasses across the water. Something’s watching. In that moment I feel Fitzgerald had it right. It’s such a relief. I see Caroline coming toward me, and step right into my role, but standing more upright, feeling more, more—more.
Epilogue
“Time for meds, Millie.” Roxanne’s cackle sends shivers right through me.
“Still writing those lists, huh?”
I take the Dixie cup, dump the pills in my mouth, swallow them down with water from the second Dixie cup then open my mouth, swirl my tongue, to show her I’ve got them down.
“What’s a Quell-ku choose anyway?”
I don’t answer. I never do.
“Fine, well you have fun with all your papers, darling. But don’t forget it’s lights out in one hour.”
Through my open door, I hear her call off what she’s given me. The other nurse writes hard enough on the clipboard that I can hear it. Then she slaps the cli
pboard on top of the wheelie cart and they make their way down the hallway.
“That poor girl,” I hear Roxanne say. “First her mother, now her. Well, at least her daughter’s safe, off with the grandfather. He’s the only sane one in the family.”
“You know what Dr. P says—”
“She’s happy where she believes she is.”
“Well, that’s more than I can say for most of us.”
They both laugh, and I smile, incredibly satisfied. I’m a better Writer than I ever could have imagined. Mother is so very proud of me.
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Coming in 2019
Years later, Officer Lou has made quite a name for himself as the go-to detective in any case where literature is involved.
This time, there’s a serial killer picking off the most prestigious scholars at The National Library of Australia. It isn’t long before he finds himself immeshed in a story full of twists and turns, where fact and fiction aren’t so easily separated. To keep up to date on the launch, join Dan Noble’s reader’s group here.
About the Author
