Mother, Mother

by Koren Zailckas

  Like Josephine, Rose was a gifted artist. It was one of few bonds they shared and one that made Violet jealous as hell, especially on the afternoons when they’d take their canvases to the Poet’s Walk in Rhinebeck and, presumably, spend the whole day in side-by-side conversation as they painted the mountain-framed Hudson River. No matter how hard Violet tried, she couldn’t seem to infiltrate their discussions about painting terms and techniques—endless communions about “scumbling,” “wet-on-wet,” or the color phthalo blue. Josephine claimed Violet’s landscapes lacked richness and her earnest portraits looked like carnival caricatures. (Eventually, Violet started playing to this. Although she’d never shown the drawings to anyone, she’d done a horrifically ugly charcoal series of the Hursts as a three-ring circus. In them, her mother was the ringmaster, and Rose was the kind of trained animal who jumps through hoops.)

  Anyway, Rose had been doing just fine sketching out the brain with black ballpoint pen. It was for science class, after all. Not the National Art Honor Society. But the very second Josephine saw, she’d insisted Rose draw her brain in colored pencil.

  “No, Mom,” Rose had said. “It’s fine like this, really. I still have an anthropology paper to write.”

  But Josephine had made the most monumental deal about the colored pencils that she had upstairs on the desk in her office. “But they’re a seventy-two-color set of Prismacolors! I just bought them yesterday at Catskill Art Supply!” Josephine’s eyes danced with glee while she said it. Her mouth had been corkscrewed into such a strange expression, like she was desperate to suppress a smile.

  Rose had finally trudged upstairs, muttering something about how her forthcoming masterpiece was going to be lost on her professor, Mr. Cadaver-Travers.

  She wasn’t gone long. Not more than thirty seconds passed before Rose came whooshing down the stairs like a flying ghoul. Her face was a mask of melted eye makeup and tears.

  “That’s why you wanted me to go up there?!” Rose screamed, her voice breaking in the middle. “You are sick! You know that?!”

  “Oh, Rose, you’re too sensitive! It was an accident! I forgot it was there!” their mom shouted back, dropping her knife on the chopping board beside a piece of sinew.

  “Like hell you did!” Rose cried. “How much longer are you going to torture me? For the rest of college? For the rest of my life?”

  “I’m the one who’s tortured! I mourn that baby!”

  “In that case, you put that paper baby in a box and you bury it!” Rose thrust her finger at Josephine, at which point Violet had seen that her sister was shaking clear up to her shoulder.

  Violet had never seen Rose so wild with emotion. But while a part of Violet had wanted to peel her fourteen-year-old butt off the bay window cushion and go put an arm around her sister, another part felt like her spine was made of concrete. Violet had sat, frozen in place, naïve and baffled by the source of the argument.

  In fact, Violet had only been able to mobilize after her sister stormed out the front door, Josephine trailing behind her, screaming: “Every day I have to face the knowledge of who you are and what you’ve done! You are lost, Rose! You are morally and academically out to lunch! There’s no point to living the way you do it!”

  Violet could still remember what she was thinking as she’d mounted the stairs. She’d been secretly and unforgivably thrilled that someone other than herself was in trouble.

  Josephine’s office was a little room at the top of the stairs. Inside, there was a drawing desk, a goosenecked lamp, and at least a dozen yards of bookmarked art books. Much as the style bored Violet, even she couldn’t deny that Josephine knew her stuff. Her mother had always been most in her element when she was talking about the X-shaped composition of The Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew or the fact that Murillo’s Two Women at a Window were really common prostitutes.

  That said, what Violet had seen upon approaching Josephine’s desk was no Francisco de Zurbarán or Jusepe de Ribera. It was a color photocopy of a dead and possibly dismembered baby, its neck wrenched at a broken angle, as though someone had angled its slashed and bloodied face toward the camera lens on purpose. Its bloated umbilical cord (still attached) was slung on the other end over a bucket that was three inches deep with blood. In fact, blood was what Josephine might have called the “major theme of the composition”: It was smeared across the table. It was the viscous red shadow on the towel under and around the dead baby. It was the sheen on the instrument almost out of the frame—the one that looked like an oversized pair of tongs. The caption read: What a proud society we are: killing the defenseless in the name of a woman’s right to choose. In the upper right-hand corner was a friendly message from the sponsor: The Mid-Hudson Pro-Life Coalition invites you to stop the abortion agenda.

  That photo was the main reason Violet had gone vegetarian. Anytime she smelled beef, anytime she saw a bloody cut of meat, she saw that picture of the late-term abortion. As for the incident, Violet had never mentioned it to anyone. She’d let it sit—or rot, really—in the part of her mind that Rose had labeled the amygdala in her drawing of the human brain. Violet never again set foot in her mother’s office, and she actively avoided thinking about what she’d seen there—what it meant about her mother, who’d seemed to delight in the pain she’d caused, and what it meant to Rose, who’d gotten the hell out of Dodge because she couldn’t stand to have her personal struggles batted around for sadistic sport anymore.

  • • •

  Violet leaned her head against the phone box, and when the faintness passed, she dialed 411 for the number of Kingston Hospital. The woman on the switchboard said there was no one by Will’s name in the system and explained that he’d probably already been treated and released.

  So Will had no complications. It should have been a huge relief, but Violet wasn’t sure exactly what to make of it. Did it mean her mother had just blown a small thing out of proportion? It felt ominous—yet not entirely surprising—that everyone was purposefully leaving her in the dark.

  Violet pictured her brother at home on the couch in his girlish nightgown, their mother feeding him ice chips from the palm of her hand. The image was disturbing in more ways than one. Because as much as Violet resented pampered Will, she also wanted badly to protect him from the light of his life. It seemed like only a matter of time before Josephine betrayed him the same way she had betrayed Rose, in a way that was designed to seem “accidental” and utterly deniable.

  Violet thought Will would one day self-fulfill his mother’s prophecy exactly the way the rest of the Hursts had. Josephine said Rose was “lost” and Rose had gotten lost. Josephine liked to accuse Violet of being “crazy,” and out of nowhere, Violet had flipped her shit. Josephine treated Will like he was an extension of herself, and it seemed only a matter of time before he started treating people the same way she did. He was a good boy, but there was no way he’d grow into a good man with their mother bearing down on him, teaching him how to punish and manipulate.

  Violet had read about a deity who came to Buddha and asked, “Who is the best friend one has at home?” Buddha had answered: “Mata mittam sake ghave” (“Mother is the best friend one has at home”). But a shitty mother made either criminals or lifelong victims. The only real question, in Violet’s mind, was which one would Will become?

  After phone time, Violet and Edie were sprawled on the floor of the dayroom, playing a game of bingo that the ladies’ auxiliary had recently donated.

  “O twenty-four,” Edie said. “So what are you gonna do about Rose?” During afternoon group therapy, Violet had discussed Rose’s great escape and bizarre resurgence.

  “Bingo!” Violet was too dignified for victory dances. “Ignore her, maybe. I’m not sure I trust Rose. It feels like she’s only doing this because she wants something.”

  “Your turn to call …,” Edie told Violet. “So you’re not gonna write her back?”

  “Have you noticed some of the numbers are worn off these balls? This set
has to be fifty years old. How much do you think we’d make if we listed it on eBay?” Her attempt at a diversion didn’t work. There was a loaded silence; the other girls were staring slantwise at Violet while they stacked their bingo markers. “Pissed off as I was about the way Rose left, I was glad she got away. I always thought she was too. There’s something creepy about Rose coming back, especially now, at the height—the fucking zenith—of Hurst hysteria—”

  “Hold up,” Corinna said, using her bingo card to form a T for time-out. “Do you think your sister is living under a fake identity?” She didn’t give Violet a chance to say she didn’t know before she added: “That shit is hard. I’ve tried that. Making up names and addresses. Always worrying someone’s gonna recognize you while you’re pumping gas and call out your name.”

  “Why’d you run away?” Edie asked.

  Corinna shrugged. “Don’t know. I like the idea of clean slates.”

  Maybe it was Violet’s imagination, but everyone in the room seemed to exhale at once. Anyone who’d taken a whack at suicide knew that was a blank slate too.

  In a way, Violet’s sallekhana wasn’t all that different from Rose’s decision to take off. Fasting to death was the only way Violet could think of to put space between herself and her mom. It was the only way she could conceive of ditching her post as beloathed daughter and beloved scapegoat.

  Corinna wistfully twiddled her ID bracelet. “Seriously, though. Write that bitch Rose and ask her how she ran away without anyone catching on. After I leave here, I have to go back to sharing a trailer with my three-hundred-pound mother and her maggot-infested dogs. I need to know the methods of big sister’s magic. Please? I’ll even lend you a stamp.”

  Violet still had no idea what she was going to do when she got discharged. She refused to go home, yet the idea of cutting herself loose made her feel guilty and terrified. Guilty … because wasn’t it heartless to disown your own mom? Terrified … because TV or, maybe, society at large had taught her a person couldn’t succeed in life without a loving, supportive family. But if life hadn’t handed you great role models or lessons, weren’t you obligated to go out and seek some for yourself?

  Corinna had a point, though: How did a person do it? If it were summer, Violet could take a tent and live at campsites. But winter was coming, and Violet’s next-to-nothing savings wouldn’t cover a camper. She could hitch or take a bus south to warmer weather, but then what? Ironically, the only person who could teach Violet how to disappear completely was the same person she felt all too conflicted about. Very suddenly, all roads led to Rose.

  WILLIAM HURST

  WILL’S FATHER DROVE him ten minutes north of Poughkeepsie for lunch.

  Douglas pored over each wordy dish on the menu like there’d be a pop quiz later. For his part, Will didn’t know whether it would be ruder to ask the waitress to hold the truffle spread on the grilled cheese or to go with the macaroni and try to substitute cheddar for Gruyère.

  After Douglas ordered braised short ribs and iced tea, Will felt his shoulders relax. He’d been worried that his dad was going to order scotch.

  At the table beside them, a waiter was reading the specials with the gusto of a celebrity chef. Watching him, Will’s father leaned back in his chair. “Sometimes I wish I’d gone to culinary school,” Douglas said. “I love food. There’s just not much point in making it anymore. Your mother’s such a superior cook.”

  Will didn’t know what to say. He tried to imagine his father whipping up dishes instead of computer code. He’d never seen him so much as boil an egg.

  On second thought, Will seemed to remember, years ago, his father going on an ice-cream-making kick. One summer, before Rose left, Douglas had made giant batches of challenging flavors—white wine sorbet and jalapeño gelato. But in mid-August, his beloved ice cream maker accidentally found its way into the display at a Hurst family yard sale. If Will remembered right, it was sold for fifteen dollars and was never replaced.

  “You know, we met in a kitchen.” Douglas looked down at his stemmed water glass. He started spinning the liquid into a fury the way Will often saw him swish and whirlpool red wine.

  “You and Mom?”

  His father nodded. “We both had jobs at the same steakhouse. We were working our way through school. My mom had just died. Jo’s mom had thrown her out.” Douglas cast a sad look at the plate of heart-shaped garlic butter. “When I met your mother, she was so flirtatious, so enthusiastic. She was a waitress, I was a bus-boy. She wore this red lipstick; you never saw her without it. She used to be a nude model for life drawing at her art college.”

  “You took life drawing?”

  “No, she told me about it.”

  His father was opening up—this was rare—so Will didn’t want to break the spell by letting on that his mother had also told him about her modeling before. Perhaps other mothers would conceal the fact that they had once sprawled naked before a wolf circle of strangers, but Will’s mom was unique. Josephine had said it was a powerful thing, having all those eyes on her. It was a chance to “show her stuff” without being sexual. Even then, she said, she was being an educator—teaching one-day Raphaels about the human form.

  “So you were boyfriend and girlfriend when you worked at the restaurant?” It occurred to Will that any inside scoops about his parents’ romantic life could be helpful to his investigation.

  Douglas sighed. “It took at least six months to convince your mother to go out with me. She didn’t say yes until her boyfriend broke up with her. Clyde.” The face he made told Will he would still murder Clyde if given the chance. “Your mother was devastated. I found her crying in the walk-in refrigerator one day, and she told me all about how this guy had just packed up and told her she’d changed. And I said, ‘No, Jo. You haven’t changed. That guy just didn’t know you, that’s all.’ We were so young. Now that I’m older, I think both things can be simultaneously true.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Dad.”

  “No one changes quicker than a person you never knew to begin with.” His eyes dropped to the napkin in his lap. His voice sounded sad, but his expression said he lacked energy to carry the emotion through.

  Will nodded like he had a vague idea what Douglas meant. He didn’t. In fact, the whole conversation made him feel off-kilter.

  Will’s father rarely waxed philosophical. And he certainly never did it without a supersized bottle of wine at hand. For a second it occurred to Will that his father might have been drinking at work, but then Douglas didn’t have any of the other telltale signs. No red cheeks, no hairline sweat.

  Will acted interested. A spy’s acting skills were his number one weapon. “So you cooked in the restaurant?”

  “Only for a little while. I had just been promoted to line and prep cook when I quit. I used to love making soup. You can always tell how much work someone’s put into a good soup. You have to use bone stock. Gives it depth of flavor. My potato leek soup was like nothing you’ve ever tasted.”

  “Why’d you stop working there?”

  “The manager had some kind of problem with your mother. When he fired her, I left too.”

  Douglas remained lost in thought as the waiter set the plates down with fussy precision.

  Will had a flash of his mother as a big-eyed, leggy waitress with a tinkling laugh and a clever comeback for everything. His dad was a fool to think he’d find anyone—Carrie included—who was better than her. Carrie was a nupson. Carrie was a nothington.

  “I’m glad I decided on grilled cheese,” Will said. In his few days of wearing a hand splint, he’d gotten better at manipulating a fork with his left hand. But he still wasn’t good. He wasn’t restaurant-ready.

  His father was salting his food before tasting it—a nervous tic. “Oh yeah?” he said, trancelike. “Good, is it?”

  “I meant I only need one hand to eat it.”

  Douglas looked up from his side of butternut squash. “Oh,” he said with a small exha
le. “Oh of course, your hand. I keep forgetting how disruptive that must be.”

  To Will, his hand splint had become a near-constant reminder about the upcoming meeting with Trina. It was less than two days away. Somewhere, in the farthest recesses of his mind, a digital clock was counting those fifty hours down to the half second.

  But instead of mentioning this to Douglas, Will continued: “I’m glad I only have to wear the splint for a couple more weeks. It makes my hand look like the metal claw in one of those arcade games.”

  “I used to try to teach Rose how to beat those games. Skill has nothing to do with it, you know.” Typical Douglas, cutting straight to diversion. Straight to science. “The machines are programmed to allow someone to win every number of games. You just have to watch for a while, and count the number of losers in between two winners. But Rose never had the patience for it.”

  “Maybe she wanted to earn her prize.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe Rose was just used to being showered with the things she wanted. No work required. You know Rose.”

  No, Will thought. He wasn’t entirely sure he knew Rose. There was a ten-year age difference between him and his oldest sister. If the Hurst family was like a troupe of actors, then, in her time, Rose had been the star. The rest of the family hushed in respect when Rose entered a room. They stole glances. They followed her cues and avoided troubling her with mundane questions like, how was she feeling and what was new in her life? But no matter how much they paid attention, who Rose was on the inside remained a mystery.

  Since they were already talking about Rose, Will decided to begin his interrogation in earnest. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the authority of a bona fide cop. Will was going to have to use the fact that someone had already talked. That was what investigators were always doing on TV police shows.