The Grip Lit Collection

by Claire Douglas

  “Then don’t!” Her tone was joking, but her laugh had a serrated edge.

  When it became clear she wasn’t going to open the door, Will wandered down the hall to Rose’s room.

  He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been inside. Before Rose disappeared, the little room with its canopy bed and Holly Golightly posters had seemed adult and off-limits. Afterward, it was like a war zone; police had taken apart Rose’s paper lanterns and unpinned all her snapshots from the clothesline where she had them displayed.

  Now, Rose’s room was more childish than Will remembered. There were still teddy bears lined up on one bookshelf. There was still an old Girl Scout sash in plain sight.

  Will was looking for something to bolster his case against Rose. Something that definitely proved that she’d been back to stalk and shake up his family. Sure, Rose was pink macaroons and Violet was hemp seed crackers—Violet was macramé and Rose was rhinestones—but once you got past the surface, the younger female Hursts were one and the same. As far as Will was concerned, both his sisters were sick in the brain.

  He rifled through wire baskets. Hair-straightening balms oozed into nests of Velcro curlers that were just like his mom’s. And what was that about, anyway? Why did girls have to straighten their hair before they curled it? Will rattled through about fifty bottles of pink nail polish (if there were subtleties of shade they were lost on him—they all looked pink). All the brushes, and compacts, and hair dryer attachments.

  Will moved on to the dresser. He had almost forgotten the way his sister dressed. Everything that remained was bright, stretchy as second skin, low-cut in the back, front, or both. Still, the drawers seemed sparse to his eye. Will wasn’t sure how much Rose had packed when she ran away, but there seemed like a decent chance she’d sneaked back for more clothes.

  The police had done a thorough job stripping the desk. Not that Rose had left behind anything truly telling. She’d made off with all the electronic goodies her parents had bought for her freshman year at SUNY: laptop, memory sticks, external hard drive, and cell phone. Only a few college textbooks remained. As he was leafing through them, a page fluttered out onto the cabbage-rose rug. It was a folded piece of paper, a copy of Rose’s schedule from the spring before she ran away, likely printed off before she committed it to memory. Courses like ENG393 and GLG293 meant nothing to him, but he folded it into the pocket of his Scottie dog pants anyway.

  He sat on Rose’s bed and opened the journal again. Will flipped through the pages, slower this time, scouring for any tidbits he might have missed the first time. When he didn’t find anything, he flipped through the pages from the back.

  His heart screeched to a momentary halt. There, at week twenty-four, Rose had resumed her diary entries.

  At week twenty-four, I am feeling … Defeated. Also, trapped and too tired to find a way out. Thought I was fine about everything … memories of that giant maxi pad fading. Feel played, but there was no other choice if I wanted to finish school. Even if I transferred to community college and tried to pay myself, Mom still would have refused to fill out my financial aid forms. Of course, there’s no such thing as a forced abortion. The counselor asks, “Is anyone forcing you to do this?” And if you say “Yes,” they toss you back out on the street with the protesters. I did tell my counselor about the tuition issue. She told me financial strain is the number one reason women terminate, and then handed me a hospital gown.

  Feticide, Will thought. A naming word. The killing of a fetus.

  Will knew what an abortion was, thanks to the time he watched Dirty Dancing with Violet. But he never imagined Rose had anything in common with Penny, except for the fact that they both wore lots of leotards and did insanely flexible things with their legs.

  Nothing written on weeks twenty-five through twenty-six. Then out of the clear blue, on week twenty-seven, Rose got caps-y. Her straight-up-and-down handwriting started to slant.

  Picture on Mom’s desk is PROOF, clear-cut PROOF that it doesn’t matter what I do. ANY choice is the wrong one! Not because the course of action is wrong, but because, in her eyes, I am WRONG! I’m crumbling. I can’t shake the past, and there’s nothing to look forward to in the future now that the baby is gone. Opened up my sock drawer and found a pair of pink crocheted baby booties (mine? Violet’s?) on top. Evil bitch Mom claims she’s “never seen them before.” Opened my laptop and found some photographer’s online portfolio of newborn portraits. When I went to bed last night, my pillowcase smelled like baby powder. I’ve got to get out of here. I can’t live like this anymore.

  The sound of a motorcycle passing the house made Will jump a yard.

  It didn’t make sense. Will wouldn’t let himself believe Rose for a moment. Will’s mother had a certain set of expectations, high standards, but she was a mentor, not a tormentor. She was a prime example of the Mark Twain quote she’d taught him: “Really great people make you feel that you, too, can be great.”

  Bottom line: Rose was wrong. She was mad, and regretful, and making stuff up.

  The journal did seem to explain why Rose would come back to steal or play tricks on the family.

  It was nearing eight p.m. by Rose’s alarm clock. Feeling pleased with his detective skills and shocked by his findings, Will went downstairs to resume his nighttime routine.

  Doing it without his mom filled him with a sick, growing sense of anxiety. Was he allowed dessert? He skipped it just in case. Would Josephine be angry if he watched the digitally recorded Dancing with the Stars without her? To be safe, he watched a reality show about an animal behavior expert who went into people’s homes and went sarcastic on them: “Golly gee, owning a pit bull sure does make you more manly.” Or “A critter who survives on a bugs and plants in the wild doesn’t do so hot when you feed him a diet of Tater Tots. I wonder, why is that?”

  Come bedtime, Will was faced with another fraught round of decision making. Should he run a bath for himself? There was a huge likelihood he’d make a mess in the process, forget a damp towel on the floor, or drip water where he shouldn’t.

  Will took a chance and skipped the bath, but otherwise he followed his mom’s procedure to a T. The childproof caps on his prescription bottles didn’t even prove to be a struggle. He flossed meticulously, massaged baby oil into his shoulders and thighs, and white-knuckled it through a few pages of Anne of Green Gables.

  Why was his mother ignoring him? She never did that unless she was giving him time to reflect on his own bad behavior.

  One time, when he was eight or so, Josephine had given him the silent treatment for almost a week. They’d been eating apples together, and he’d made some thoughtless joke like, “Mom, seems like with your big teeth you could take really giant bites.” She’d frozen and then immediately left the room. In fact, after that, she left every room the second he walked into it. She’d talk to him in public, but the second they walked through the front door, her cold shoulder returned. Grocery store: chatter. Home: silent as a stone. Car pool: running at the mouth. Home: mum (and not in the way that was mom’s synonym). It had taken Will days to figure out the pattern, and by that time he’d literally had his arms wrapped around her ankles. He’d been sobbing, begging for her to acknowledge him in even the smallest way, even if it was only to trip over him.

  But it was different now. Now, Will had epilepsy. Now, leaving him alone meant he could have a seizure, bang his head, and bleed out before anyone was the wiser. Exhausted as he was, he found that his eyes stayed pinned open and his brain didn’t punch out for the day. Even after the punishment, was his mother still mad that he’d botched his CPS interview? He could hear occasional toilet flushings and the chatter of her bedroom TV—he knew she hadn’t slipped while getting out of the tub—but he still couldn’t shake a feeling like he’d lost her forever.

  He decided to rip a blank sheet out of his vocabulary notebook. He wrote his mom a long, vague letter saying he was sorry. He told her she was the most special person in his life. Slipping it
under her locked door, he returned to bed.

  Will awoke to the sound of his mother’s loud, wrenching sobs in the upstairs hallway. He threw off his blanket and was about to run to her when he heard footsteps and his father’s tenor echoing. He couldn’t tell if his parents were arguing or if Douglas was trying to talk Josephine down.

  “Please, please be a man, for once,” his mother was begging. “I can’t do everything. It’s the least you can do. Especially after you’ve been out God-knows-where, with your phone turned off for hours. You don’t see me demanding explanations, asking you if the sex was worth it.”

  Will’s father was speaking more softly, but Will could hear him mumble something about how his mother’s mind always went to cheating because that was the kind of thing she would do.

  “What is wrong with you?! Really, what is your problem? Do you think you’d feel better after a drink, Douglas? Is that it? Why don’t we go downstairs? I’ll mix you a martini and you can have a good cry. Then maybe you can open your ears and listen to me.”

  “I don’t want a drink, Jo.” It was the only time in the conversation that his father’s voice sounded loud and firm. “And I’m trying to listen to you. Tell me again what happened? And what exactly you want me to do about it?”

  Will heard his parents’ bedroom door shut as they drifted back inside. His stomach burned.

  Was it hours or minutes later that Will’s father shook him awake? The bedside lamp backlit its ugly plaid shade. Douglas was crouched on the floor, holding something in his lap. When Will’s eyes focused, he realized it was a piece of paper.

  “I know it’s late, but we really need to talk about this, buddy.” Douglas spun the paper around and Will recognized his own handwriting. It was the apology letter he’d written his mother before he went to sleep.

  “Oh, that,” Will said, trying to force down a yawn. “Mom was upset with me. I wanted to say sorry.”

  “Well, at least you knew enough to apologize. But this is one of those times when saying sorry doesn’t automatically make things better.”

  The wave of shame started at the crown of Will’s head. It dripped down onto his sagging shoulders. He felt disgusting and disgusted by himself, even though he wasn’t sure why.

  “Will? Will. Don’t cry. It’s all right. But we need to talk about that word. What it means, and where you learned it.”

  Was he talking about the interview—Violet’s drugs? Did his dad mean marijuana? As far as Will remembered, he hadn’t even said the word aloud. He’d only drawn it best he could on a piece of paper.

  “Violet taught me,” he told his dad. “The word, I mean. Because I walked in and saw hers by mistake.”

  His dad’s expression changed suddenly at the mention of Violet. Douglas’s eyes flashed from bafflement to horror before settling on a look of protective, papa-bear rage.

  “Leave your sister out of this. That word is a slur, especially when someone without one says it to someone who has one. It’s derogatory. That means it takes something away from the person you say it to.”

  Will wanted to say he knew what derogatory meant.

  As if reading Will’s mind, his dad went on to say: “I shouldn’t have to tell you this, buddy. Aren’t you the guy whose tests showed he was gifted in reading and vocabulary? You’re a very smart boy, Will. I think you know that. And I know socializing is hard for you.”

  Will had his quilt balled in his fist. Why did someone who had never taken any interest in Will’s conditions get to wake him up in the middle of the night to tell him to hurry up and get over them?

  He opted for Violet-esque sarcasm: “Thanks, Dad. Good talk. Next time I’ll remember not to use the word marijuana unless I’ve smoked some.”

  “What?” Douglas’s face had paled. The little lamp brought out the tired grooves in his forehead. “You think I’m here to talk to you about the word marijuana?”

  Will shrugged.

  “Will, I was talking about the word cunt. During your piano lesson, you called your mother a cunt.”

  Will’s breath caught. He was looking at Douglas without seeing him. He rewound back to that afternoon’s lesson. He saw his dumb hand prodding the keys. He saw his mother on the fainting couch, her feet massaging each other in sensual, satisfied motions.

  Will had never dared think the word his father was accusing him of speaking, but maybe there was a chance he’d called his mother something? Some name she’d misheard?

  “Will?” His father had him by the shoulders now. “Your mother told me you called her a cunt. I’m going to ask you again, did you call your mother … that name?”

  Will began to nod, but he was a second too late.

  “Right,” Douglas said, strangling one bedpost as he rose to his feet. The doorknob slammed against the wall as he flung Will’s bedroom door open. He froze for a second at the threshold but didn’t glance back at Will. Instead he barked, “Go to sleep.”

  VIOLET HURST

  VIOLET HANDED IN her stamped envelope to Rose at the nurses’ station, and the nurse handed her a slip of paper back.

  “What’s this? A receipt?” Violet joked, but the woman’s sagging face didn’t shift.

  “Phone message.”

  Violet unhalved the pink paper and quickly realized the call had been logged because it was a message from CPS. Beneath the While You Were Out heading a nurse had printed Nicholas’s name and checked the box that instructed Violet to Please call. The nurse’s handwriting was anally legible, possibly a reaction to years of dealing with doctors’ pretentious chicken scratches. In the space for notes, she had penned: FYI, both addresses you submitted were not residences. They are UPS stores. Rose must keep P.O. boxes there.

  At a quarter to dinnertime, Violet was resting her head on the gray table in the visitors’ lounge, waiting for her father to finish his progress report with her therapist.

  Under the soupy fluorescent glare, Violet unfolded Rose’s letters and examined them again. Rose must have known Violet would assume she was writing from her home addresses. It was so unfair for Rose to pass her UPS address off as her home, keeping herself firmly in the shadows herself, beyond consequences and out of Violet’s reach.

  “Hi,” Douglas said suddenly, just as Violet was refolding the letters and stuffing them in the ankle of Edie’s borrowed boots.

  “Hey,” she replied, choosing not to go in for a hug.

  After they took their chairs, the room filled with an eerie, underwater hush. “Are you going to a meeting tonight?” Violet said, just to say something.

  “I think I’ll try to make the seven thirty at Saint John the Divine.”

  “That’s my favorite thing about meetings—the way people talk about them like movie times.”

  “Your therapist says you’ve been attending them every day.”

  As usual, her dad turned formal, almost lawyerly whenever he dealt with her, especially in a crisis. She would have much rather he cursed and screamed.

  Violet nodded. “Five meetings in five days.”

  “Do you find them beneficial?”

  “I appreciate the honesty people show there,” she said pointedly. “Your speech was really honest. But harder to appreciate, obviously, because it made me feel lied to. I didn’t know you were trying to”—she had to fight the sarcastic tic on the coming word—“recover.”

  “No,” he said. “No, I haven’t told anyone.”

  “Why not?”

  “It seems to me everyone in this family has secrets. Some of your secrets have come to light this week.”

  It was a very subtle, Hurst-like shifting of blame, and Violet felt her face harden in spite of itself.

  “Also,” Douglas said, “I didn’t want anyone to sabotage my efforts.”

  “You mean Mom.”

  “I mean, anyone.”

  “But you were”—Violet couldn’t bring herself to use the word wasted—“drinking the night you brought me here. Who sabotaged you, then?”

  “Oh,
Violet, people slip. That night was a stumble, not a fall. Addiction is a chronic, relapsing disease. It’s not easy. In order to succeed, I have to put sobriety in front of everything else in my life.”

  Violet was not in the mood for a canned recovery-speak answer. “Is that so? You have to put sobriety in front of your kids? Even if one of them’s in the hospital? And the other one’s stuck at home all day with no friends and no one to talk to? It seems to me you’ve been putting yourself first for a long time. And how honest are you really—when you got blackout drunk less than a week before your rousing speech?” Violet’s hands were shaking. She was finding it difficult to keep her voice down.

  “I know what I did,” Douglas said. “I’m not sugarcoating it. My sponsor, Kerry—”

  “Kerry.” Violet had failed to make the connection during the meeting. Over the past few months, she’d heard him taking lots of calls from Kerry, but it had sounded like a woman’s name. Carrie.

  “Yes, Kerry. I know him from the Sterling Forest office. We’ve been examining what I was doing and thinking prior to me taking that first drink. That way I can get better at spotting the warning signs and avoiding future slips.”

  “The warning signs?” Violet was livid. “How’s this for a warning sign? Our family is so miserable that my sister ran away. Ran away because our mother was terrorizing her. Want another warning sign? You let everyone think that I slashed up my brother, when you were too slaughtered to remember how it happened. How’s this for a red flag? Child Protective Services came to our house to investigate the welfare of my brother, your son.”

  Douglas’s eyes were bloodshot, blazing with rebuff. He shook his head. “No, they didn’t.”

  “Yes, they did.”

  The color drained from Douglas’s cheeks, and for a moment he looked like a statue from one of Violet’s childhood story books—a villager turned to stone. “When? When did CPS come?”

  “I don’t know! You’re the one who’s been home! I’ve been here. I only know because the guy—the caseworker—came to see me.”