by Kris Ripper
“She needs help, Singer.”
Singer said something to that, but Lisa had escaped back to her room and shoved the side table up to the door. She’d squished one of the bananas so hard it oozed through cracks in the peel. Nothing for that, so she ate it and plugged her ears with a roll of toilet paper she’d stockpiled for her more out-of-control crying jags.
Making an appearance in the morning seemed the best way to do it; when she got it out of the way early, sometimes she could return to her regular schedule of hiding in bed or haunting #praiseforanthonygrace on Twitter. Or rereading those blogs about how to get over yourself after leaving a cult. Not that reading seemed to have helped at all. Here she was, freaked out and sitting in her bed, knowing she had to leave the room at some point. Step number one for cult recovery: Leave your room.
How was she going to get a job if she couldn’t even leave her room?
Just do it.
She gathered her composure and promised herself coffee.
Mother was sitting at the kitchen table, like anyone would sit at their kitchen table. But when she looked up, Lisa wished she’d gone back to bed.
“I’m glad you’re awake,” Mother said. “We have an appointment.”
“An appointment?”
“Yes.”
“What kind of appointment?”
Mother’s eyes flicked up and down, and Lisa’s entire body cringed away from her assessment. This was the woman who’d taught her how to apply lipstick and trace the outside of each lip with liner. This was the woman who’d taught her how to curl her eyelashes and straighten her bangs. This was the woman now eyeing her as if she had just jumped off a truck leaving the fields after a hard day of work.
Was that racist? Lisa half turned away, ashamed of herself for a kaleidoscope of reasons, some of which actually seemed to conflict. She washed her hands, which was a normal thing to do, except that seeing water running over skin reminded her of the time she and Abigail tried to make tamales for their dinner shift, how the corn husks hadn’t held together and it all ended up being one huge mess. Still tasted pretty good, even if everyone had to scoop it into bowls.
Clara had nearly thrown a fit. Ranting about resources and planned menus and responsibility until someone (Di, maybe) stepped in. They hadn’t used more than a meal’s worth of food, after all. They hadn’t done anything wrong, not really. Abigail had taken it hard. Abigail took everything hard, Lisa thought, standing in her mother’s kitchen with the remembered feel of the farm’s wood-grain countertops rough under her palms. They’d washed up—volunteered for it to get Clara off their backs—and she’d made Abigail laugh, tears on her face.
Was that it? Had that been the day she’d decided to do it? But that had been at least a year ago. She’d been okay for a while after that.
Not that any of it mattered.
“We’ll leave in forty-five minutes. When you’re ready.”
Slight emphasis. She forced herself to translate: Clearly you aren’t ready to leave the house now, but forty-five minutes should be enough time to pull yourself together.
Her internal Mother voice was such a bitch. She’d have to ask Singer if he had one of those, too.
“Fine,” Lisa said. She could fight, but where would it get her? Did the Bay Area have cult specialists? She was probably about to find out.
*
The new specialist was a woman, which could have been okay. Except she bonded immediately with Mother. They spent the entire hour processing Mother’s feelings about what she termed Lisa’s “abandonment of the family,” and in a way, it was interesting. She’d been so in love with Anthony, with the fantasy he’d offered of living on the farm, everyone responsible for everyone else, everyone in love, that she’d hardly blinked when they told her to write a letter withdrawing from her “baby family.” You’re a grown woman now, Lisa. You don’t need them to take care of you anymore. We will take care of you.
Mother said reading that letter was like having her heart torn from her breast. She actually said “breast.” If Lisa remembered how to laugh, she might have. It was probably good she didn’t.
The therapist, whose name she didn’t remember, was very sympathetic. She nodded a lot and asked Mother questions, drawing out her responses. Toward the end, the woman had looked at Lisa and asked if she’d known how deeply her actions affected her family.
For a second, she’d frozen. But this was an easy question, so she’d offered an answer.
“I guess it didn’t seem like anything I ever did mattered before.”
Mother had gasped and started crying again, which was weird. Lisa tried to feel bad, but she couldn’t feel much of anything.
They left, Mother still dabbing her eyes, and once they were safely in the car, Mother said, “She’s the first one we’ve seen who was helpful, don’t you think?”
“I guess.”
It was enough. Thankfully today Mother didn’t insist on any further errands. Mental note: make Mother cry at therapy so she gets insecure about her makeup and doesn’t decide to tack a Nordstrom’s trip on after.
God, what a horrible thought. Lisa at the farm wouldn’t have thought that way. For a brief moment, she’d been a better person. Was it only because of the structure? Was it only because of the pressure to be good? Was it only because Abigail used to look at her like she was good so she started to believe it?
Lisa turned her face to the window and discreetly bit down on three of her fingers. Don’t think. Don’t.
Her fingers wiggled—had she told them to?—and she realized they were snakes. She pulled them from her mouth, heart pounding. The strange girl in the reflection looked terrified. Was that her? Was she terrified? She could still taste her fingers. Not snakes.
She dug her nails into her palms for the rest of the ride home and chanted no snakes, no snakes, no snakes until they were nonsense syllables in her head.
15
Emery
21 days since meeting Lisa
Emery arrived bearing fancy pastries from a Russian bakery in Berkeley, which he handed off to Carey at the door.
“We do have bakeries on this side of the tunnel, you know.”
“You got poppyseed rugelach out here?”
Carey shook his head. “You may have a point. If we’ve got that—whatever it is—I haven’t heard of it.”
“You should be ashamed of yourself. Living in New York City that long and never having rugelach. Alice! Your man is a stunning disappointment!”
Carey laughed and led him into the kitchen. “She’s making an egg bake for dinner. You have a job nearby in the morning?”
“Yep.” A fetish shoot arranged by a dominatrix he’d worked with before, but Carey didn’t need the details. “Thanks for putting me up for the night.”
“I’d actually completely forgotten. Let me make up the sofa bed and clear out of the office.”
Alice’s lack of immediate appearance (or response to his shout) meant she was painting, so Emery took a stack of sheets and blankets and got to work while Carey shut down his computer and neatened the desk.
The first time they’d met, Carey had invited Emery to his apartment. Alice’s comment to him was, I like this one, Em. A plea simultaneously for approval and a check on her judgment. Later, after they’d solidly established a friendship even apart from Alice connecting them, Carey had confided that her comment to Carey had been, Em sees through people. You’ll like him.
The guy made okay money back home, but okay money still meant you had a fourth-floor walk-up and your kitchen was in a closet if you wanted to live in Manhattan. Emery had been struck by how purposeful Carey’s apartment was. It didn’t appear sparse, but everything had a place. Clearly he treated his office the same way, leaving it pristine at the end of the day.
Each of them was finishing up when Alice’s studio door opened. “Where’re my husban
ds?”
Emery made a sour face; Carey offered an apologetic shrug.
“Reconvening in the kitchen,” Carey said. “Should I start prepping something?”
“Spicy sausage. Em can grate cheese.” She stuck her head in. “I had a shit day in the salt mines. Remind me to pull out a picture I want later, Em. It’s a beaut, but I need it at least five by seven, if not larger, so I can work with it.”
“Oh, sure. Your wish is my command, Queen of Sheba.”
“Go prep food for me, minions. I need to wash up.”
Emery decided not to grate cheese. She’d been playfully calling him her husband for years—since long before Carey—and he’d halfway hoped that Carey would dislike it and demand she stop. Unfortunately, Carey wasn’t the jealous type. Or the possessive type. Or even the strictly exclusive type, though Emery didn’t think that he’d ever tested that last one.
Alice, who tested everything, had tried to hook up with another man exactly once since she and Carey got serious; she’d ended up leaving in the middle of her date and showing up at Carey’s apartment. Emery grinned a little maliciously at the memory.
“What’re you looking so smug about?” She deposited a block of cheese, a grater, and a bowl in front of him.
“Hey, remember that time you thought you were gonna fuck a CEO?”
Carey grinned. “Poor guy.”
“He was a schmuck. Why isn’t my cheese grated?”
“You don’t deserve minions.” But even as he said it, he was unwrapping the cheese. “Anyway, I thought I might pick up a lock for Lisa. A keyed lock, so she can leave her room without thinking someone’s going to search it.”
“Hmm.” Carey drained the sausage and grabbed a pepper to chop. “Is that what she’s afraid of?”
Emery considered it. He’d only met Lisa a handful of times, but he couldn’t stop thinking about the way she’d looked while she drank her coffee: eyes closed, head tilted forward, lips … he probably shouldn’t be thinking about her lips. And anyway, she’d looked the same with the lasagna, as if she hadn’t really enjoyed anything in a long damn time. Not that enjoyment had anything to do with putting a lock on her door. “Jake thinks it’s all about her mother, but I think she might be more generally jumpy than that. It might not be about who is in her space, but about the potential that someone could be.”
Alice leaned against the counter where she could supervise both of them. “Cults aren’t known for prioritizing physical boundaries. Could be she’s extra paranoid.”
“There was an incident with the mother, as well,” Carey said. “Which isn’t an argument against paranoia.”
Emery met Alice’s eyes across the room, both of them thinking about how weirdly sheltered the Derrie kids were. Even Carey, who had his own burdens, had a quaintly well-adjusted streak.
Emery shrugged. “If she grew up with that kind of thing, it probably wouldn’t be all that disturbing to her now. Then again, Mrs. Thurman seems pretty … disturbing. In general.” He waited to see what they’d say to that.
Carey skewed somewhat diplomatic, as usual. “I’m glad she didn’t raise me.”
“She’s a fuckin’ mess.” Alice made grabby hands at them. “All right, bring it all in, egg bake time. Viv’s a wreck. For one, she’s got that fake smile soldered to her face. You think one of these days it’ll start peeling, like a snake shedding its skin, and we’ll find her whole creepy grin lying on the carpet over there?”
He grimaced. “You’re disgusting, Al.”
“And for two, there’s something hollow about her. She sat at Cathy and Joe’s house, smiled, laughed in the right places, but there was something not quite there about her.”
“Like a fish out of water,” Carey agreed. “She seemed slightly confused by the whole thing.”
“And looking at your parents made her sad, but maybe not even consciously sad.” Alice combined her ingredients in a dish and slid it into the oven. “Looking over when they were talking to each other was the only time the smile faltered. Isn’t that interesting?”
Carey shrugged. “Singer never talks about his dad, as far as I know. I think they’re still married, but he didn’t even tell them that he and Jake were adopting until Viv showed up here.”
“It’s fascinating because I wouldn’t tell my folks if we were adopting, but they also wouldn’t move across the state to be near the cult I was living in, or follow me home to make sure I was okay again. It’s hard for me to reconcile the”—she waved a hand—“the detachment with the overinvolvement. Wine, Em?”
“Yeah, thanks. But you think I should bring a lock over, right? I mean, there’s no reason not to.” A request for approval, a check on his impulses. He almost took it back when he realized how it sounded.
She handed him a glass. “Can’t hurt. Unless you have an unrequited crush. That might sting a little.”
“Shut up. I do not have an unrequited crush. What am I, twelve?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Carey shot an assessing glance at him. “I don’t think anyone really ages out of having crushes. When you get older you can choose to do something about them is all that really changes.”
Alice handed her man a ginger beer. “Exactly. Like buy a lock for a pretty girl.”
“Are you two trying to set me up?”
“You’re doing a decent job with that all by yourself, pal.”
Carey, though, didn’t make it a joke. “When’s the last time you were interested in someone who wasn’t falling all over themself to—” He broke off, as if considering the many ways he could end that sentence.
“Get all up on your jock,” Alice supplied helpfully.
Emery shot both of them dirty looks. “Not something I usually have trouble with. Hi: model. Tattoo artist. Don’t need help finding company.”
“Fair enough,” Carey said. “Is that what you’re looking for, though?”
“I’m not … looking for anything.” When they just stared at him, he sighed. “Shut up, both of you. I’m not. She needs a lock. I can install one. Why is this a thing?”
Alice kind of snorted and turned away to check on the oven, but Carey nodded. “Maybe it’s not. For the record, I think Lisa spent a lot of years trying to be what other people wanted her to be. It’s gotta be hard to be back with her mother, or even Singer, even us, and not have that persona to fall back on.”
Emery almost asked, You speaking from experience? But there wasn’t any point in calling Carey out, because he’d just nod. He knew from having a role, fitting other people’s expectations.
“Get the woman a lock for her door, Em.” Alice offered him the wine bottle, but he shook his head. “I like her. She isn’t running with ‘pretty, but damaged’ as a character to play, and every now and then she has a sense of humor. Way better for you than all those people who act like you’re their reward for flashing the right smile, or delivering the right cheesy line.”
Approval: granted. Weird that it felt good to sit in the kitchen at Alice and Carey’s, thinking about Lisa. He didn’t want to seduce her. Maybe this was more like a crush than anything else: he wanted to find excuses to spend time with her, listen to her talk. He’d caught himself falling into his usual shtick—charming, handsome Emery, who smiles brightly and makes everyone feel special—but Lisa seemed immune to it.
That was rare enough to be intriguing all on its own.
He raised an eyebrow at Alice. “You think it’s narcissistic of me to be surprised she’s not all that interested in my charming smile?”
“I think it’s entertaining as hell that her lack of interest in your flirty persona is what you find attractive.” She nudged Carey. “Can’t wait to see how this plays out.”
“Don’t be rotten. And I think she could probably use a friend who’s never seen all the masks she’s worn, Em. That would be good.”
“It’s
just a lock. Anyway, is my meal done yet? I don’t come here because you two are endlessly amusing, you know.”
“Exactly how much are you paying us for room and board? And another fifteen minutes at least, pal. I should make you dance for your dinner.”
He rolled his eyes. “Didn’t you have a favor you were asking me?”
“Right, yeah, where’s your portfolio? I need a picture.”
Emery went to grab his portfolio and his camera. Talking about photos and paintings would be better than overthinking lock installation. Definitely.
16
Lisa
54 days since leaving Grace
A week after the cult specialist who’d so enjoyed Mother, Lisa woke up to a weird text message from Singer.
Did you order a door lock, installation included?
She almost texted back a question mark, but Mother had driven somewhere earlier and hadn’t come home yet, so she risked going out into the house instead.
The living room was scattered with toys at varied intervals while they tried to train Miles into inching along the floor when what he obviously wanted was to half walk, half lean on the sofas. Jake was doing most of the training, it looked like. Singer might have been smirking when he gestured to her guest.
Emery was there. With a Home Depot bag and a toolbox.
“Hey. Figured you might want a hand with this. Hope that wasn’t presumptuous.”
“Oh. No. I mean—yes, that would be good. You found a lock?”
“Sure. Like I said, it’s not like it can’t be pretty easily picked, and the door wouldn’t hold up to a good kicking, but a lot more people will walk in through an unlocked door to snoop than will pick a lock to snoop, you know?”
Was Mother the first group, or the second? She glanced at Singer.
He considered it. “I don’t think she’d break in. Maybe. I don’t know.”
Not that it mattered. The lock would still make Lisa feel better.
“I don’t know how to pay you for that. I don’t really— I mean, I have this credit card, but—”