The Grip Lit Collection

by Claire Douglas

  “He tried,” Will said. “He was going to hire an investigator to track her down.”

  “I know. It took me weeks to talk him out of it. I don’t think I’ve fully relaxed since. A part of me worried he’d done it anyway, behind my back.”

  Will thought back to the night in the kitchen. “That’s why after I hurt myself, I had to say Violet did it.”

  He’d been trying so hard to be a good, helpful boy, washing the crystal pitcher while his sobbing, hysterical mother spooned risotto out of the dishwasher with a silver ladle. But the delicate goosenecked handle was so slippery when wet. After it crashed to the slate floor, sending up a spray of brilliant shards, Will was so horrified with himself that he hadn’t thought twice. He’d immediately reached for the largest shard at the same time his mom had closed her fist around his. It wasn’t in anger, she’d insisted later. She was just trying to stop him. But Will hadn’t known that. Will had seized anyway, and slammed his chin into the corner of the kitchen island. After she’d picked the shards out with tweezers came the long, eastbound ride to the hospital, Will trying not to bleed on the seats, and Josephine saying over and over, Violet’s to blame. You wouldn’t have dropped it if she hadn’t upset you, screaming like a banshee and waving that knife around. Violet did this to you, Will. Tell the doctor Violet did it.

  She hugged him so hard, his ribs nuzzled his organs. “I know this has been hard on you,” she said. “I wasn’t lying when I said the hospital was the only safe place for Violet. She won’t go anywhere with me. She treats me like I have a forked tongue and horns. I couldn’t take any chances. I had to get her away from your father. I have to get us all away from your father.”

  For the first time, his mom’s overprotective streak made sense. Of course, she’d kept Will close. She’d done it to keep Will safe from the predator in their own home.

  “What—I mean what did Dad do to Rose?”

  “Oh, Will, honey. I don’t think you have the stomach for it. There’s a reason why Rose had to hide her relationships. Why she was so reluctant to date. It made your dad so jealous and, at the same time, he was so fascinated with Rose and her potential sex life. I’d find him drunk as a sailor in the laundry baskets, inspecting Rose’s underwear.”

  Will instinctively put his hands over his ears.

  “He hit Rose once. Because she had told him Jason Blake had asked her to the homecoming dance.”

  Will was shocked. “Rose said she sneezed while she was putting on her dance tights and kneed herself in the face.”

  His mother shot him a look that said he was dumber than she thought.

  “Dad took me to a new doctor today,” he said. “He said my epilepsy was some reaction to trauma. He said my autism isn’t real.”

  “Your autism is real, Will. As for the trauma, we’ve all had a lot of that. Between Violet’s constant outbursts and your father’s drunken abuse.”

  He was searching his mind for something to say—a way to convince her that he really was on her side, even after everything she’d done and made him do—when he glanced out the window of Rose’s darkened bedroom and saw the flames curling.

  “Mom!” he said. “Mom! Is that fire in our yard?”

  “That’s our cedar hedge!” she cried.

  Running together for the fire extinguisher, Will thought he saw her squelched smile. Rose was here. The idea thrilled her at least as much as it terrified Will.

  “Stay in the house,” she said. “Your sister might still be out there.”

  He obeyed, even though he wanted to run outside and scream for Rose, the contemptible coward, to show herself. He watched through a downstairs window while his mother’s silhouette sent up clouds of dust. He cracked the window and heard the extinguisher spray. It sounded like exsibilation, like the collective hisses of a disapproving audience. When it didn’t work, she ran for the garden hose.

  Will woke up late the next morning, his eyes bleary from a long night of hunting for Rose’s journal. His head spun with fear and a sense of the unreal, remembering how he’d looked under bath mats and swept his hand behind dresser mirrors, hoping, for his mother’s sake, to find it taped to the back. When it got late enough at night to be considered early morning, Josephine had dismissed Will from the search. Will had peered in one last time on his dad and felt a sharp jab of hatred. He hated himself for the way he’d let Douglas manipulate him. To think he’d helped his dad crack Rose’s e-mail. To think he’d momentarily dropped his guard and warmed to a monster who’d raped or beaten his sister or worse.

  He got up and put on the clothes his mother had laid out for him: chinos, a shawl-necked sweater, and a very bold, very prep-school plaid shirt. It meant a big day awaited. Something—he didn’t know what—called for business casual.

  Downstairs in the kitchen, bacon hissed in the pan. His mother was scraping burnt toast with a paring knife.

  Rose’s journal was sitting in the dead center of the kitchen island.

  “Where was it?” Will asked, smoothing a hand over the lavender cover.

  “Bookshelf,” she said quietly. “Hiding in plain sight.” She brought the knife near her lip in a gesture that said shhh.

  Will flipped to the third-trimester section, but Rose’s post-abortion entries were gone. Revisionist, a naming word.

  “I tore it out,” Josephine said, wobbling poached eggs onto two plates. “I won’t have anyone thinking my Rose went crazy. That’s not her. That’s not who she is.”

  Will wondered why, then, his mom was okay with people thinking Violet was crazy.

  “It’s different with Violet,” Josephine snapped, and Will felt like he had a fishbowl brain, like she could peer in anytime she wanted and see every thought circling around in there. There was a instant of tense silence. She pushed Will’s plate toward him. “Violet’s coming home today. We have to eat and go pick her up.”

  Will felt a sudden rush of blood. His legs went weak with anxiety.

  Josephine ate a neat corner off her toast. “Don’t look at me like that. I’d keep her there if I could, but the doctors think she’s stable and our insurance company wants to send her home. It will be fine.”

  “No, it won’t.”

  “It will. Let me talk to her.” She grabbed his chin and gently lifted his face to look at hers.

  “She’s going to hate me,” he said, looking down at the contrast between his tan loafers and the gray tiles.

  “I don’t think you have to say anything. No harm, no foul. That’s how I see it. She’s not going to have a criminal record. And she needed to be in the hospital anyway. She was hallucinating. She was on drugs.” When he failed to respond, her tone sharpened. “Will, she’s made peace with it all, that’s what her doctors said. If you change your story now, it’s just going to confuse her. She’s still a little fragile and confused. We need to baby her for a week or two.”

  Will was thrown by his mom’s sudden, unexpected tenderness for Violet. He felt his face go pink with envy. “I’ve been thinking,” he said. “Do you think I should change the password on Rose’s old e-mail so we don’t have to worry about Dad looking through her messages?”

  “You know the password?”

  Will nodded. He saw his face reflected in the kitchen window. He saw his little prune mouth, his eyes a touch too wide. He was trying to hide the satisfaction he still felt at hacking Rose’s account.

  “Do it right now,” Josephine said. “Before your father wakes up. Make it something we’ll remember. Change it to ChristLove.”

  Will tried not to make a face. Moments later, in his mother’s office, his father’s speech about careless passwords rang in his memory, and he made the O in Love a zero. When he got back to the kitchen his eggs were ice cold and rock hard on his plate.

  As they were getting ready to go to the hospital, Douglas rolled downstairs. That was really how it looked, like he was trundling: a five-ton construction machine on a wobbly track. His body weight hung off him, and his gray-clammy face l
ooked like something that had been left under a fast-food heat lamp. He was still wearing his clothes from last night. Will might have felt bad for him, if only he didn’t know what he knew. Now, when he looked at his dad he saw drunken depravity: loose flesh, sticky breath, ready fists. Just hearing about what he’d done to Rose had made Will feel defiled too.

  Douglas picked up the journal, and a vein sprung out of his forehead. “What’s going on?” he asked.

  Josephine turned her back and sent her plate clattering into the sink. “We’re going to pick Violet up from the hospital. That’s what’s going on. You’re welcome to stay here and do whatever you need to do. Call your sponsor, et cetera.”

  Douglas looked at Will.

  Will looked down at his bread crusts.

  Douglas stormed to the cabinet and removed a mug. He pulled the coffeepot out of the machine, found it empty, and slammed it back. He looked bewildered and aggressive, like a shaken sleepwalker. All the while, the journal was still in his hand.

  Just then Douglas looked out the window. His hand touched the pane and left a mark. He stepped back, aghast. “The hedge,” he said. “Jo. What happened to that hedge?”

  “I don’t know, Douglas.”

  “The police station—” he started. “Did you tell them about that when you went to the police station? Violet couldn’t have done that. She’s still in the hospital.”

  “We went to the police station. Will and I took care of it.”

  “What did you tell them?” A panicky tone had crept into his voice.

  “Everything. The hedge, the e-mails. Well, we didn’t have the journal, but we told them about it. You could do everyone a big favor and drive it over there while we’re out. That is, if you feel all right to drive.” She said this last part slowly, looking at Will in a way that implicated him too.

  Will’s father slammed the journal down on the counter. “I have not been drinking, Josephine!”

  “Oh, right!” she said, with a sarcastic whip of her neck. “Just like you weren’t drinking that time you passed out on the Amtrak and woke up in Niagara Falls? Just like you weren’t drinking that time you told me—in front of everybody at the IBM Christmas party—to get my next husband to pay for Will’s piano lessons?”

  Will felt her behind him, putting a hand on his shoulder. It was supposed to be a supportive gesture, but he couldn’t help thinking she’d literally put him in the middle. He stood there like a stunned human shield. His collar felt wet and he realized he was crying.

  Will wondered, did conversations like these happen in kitchens all over town, beneath chalkboard grocery lists: MILK, LIGHTBULBS, EGGS, POPCORN? He used to think they did. He would have sworn they did. He’d see other parents in church, pecking each other on the cheek during the part of Mass when everyone exchanged “Peace be with you,” and he was dead certain it was their one weekly show of affection. He would have bet his life that every husband in the world was like Douglas, and every wife was like Josephine. But now he wondered … He wondered if every twelve-year-old’s mother really did bathe him, call him stud, affectionately pinch his butt. He wondered if every father really got slowly pushed out of the family like something old and injured, until, fighting mad, he tore them all to pieces.

  Douglas aimed the journal at Will’s mother like a gun. “You are the meanest, nastiest, most contemptible bitch I’ve ever known!” He was all eyeteeth when he shouted, and the word bitch left his mouth with a messy spray of spit.

  Josephine grabbed Will’s hand and gave it a squeeze that said, Do you see now? Do you see how abusive?

  “A lesser man, Jo … A lesser man would beat you half to death.”

  Will squeezed his mom’s hand back twice like a secret code.

  VIOLET HURST

  THEY ARRIVED WITH an olive branch. Actually it was a bunch of red gerbera daisies and a foil happy-face balloon. To Violet, the latter seemed cunning and layered with meaning. No question Josephine had chosen it knowing that the same image that read “supportive” to the staff (How sweet! They want her to be happy!) had an entirely different message for her daughter: Smile, little bitch, and pretend everything’s fine.

  Violet stood as they approached. An hour after Sara-pist had signed Violet’s discharge papers, the staff had finally found the clothes she’d been wearing when she arrived. Her jeans were still mud-and-grass-stained from her tantric romp in the Fields’ field, and they felt tighter than they had when she arrived on account of all the bland comfort food.

  “Viola.” Her mother cupped her cheek, then wrenched her close for a spine-crunching hug that made Violet’s skin crawl. “Honey. I can’t tell you how much we’ve missed you. You’ve really missed your sister, haven’t you, Will?”

  Will kept his chin aimed at his shoes, but his eyes slowly rose to look at her. He looked like he was afraid Violet would bite him.

  “I’m so sorry, Will,” Violet said. “I’m still kind of fuzzy on exactly what happened, but I know I never ever wanted to hurt you.” Out of the corner of her eye, she caught her mother’s smile. It was steel-bright, triumphant.

  “We appreciate that. Don’t we, Will?”

  Will nodded. His head was still down; his rag-doll hands still hung at his sides.

  “We’ve been talking, Will and I, and we’ve decided that if you apologized and if you promised never to do drugs again, then we could both forgive you and welcome you home. So, do you? Promise never to do drugs?”

  “I won’t take drugs again,” Violet said, thinking maybe her mother really was making a liar of her.

  “Fantastic. Will, why don’t you give your sister a hug. Go on. What was that word you told me the other day? The one that reminded you of Violet? You came to me and said, ‘Mom, I miss my favorite …’”

  “Autotonsorialist.”

  “Well, go on. Tell Violet what it means.”

  Will’s voice was a near-whisper. “It means a person who cuts their own hair.”

  Violet waited until she was in the car to power on her cell phone after its weeklong hiatus. Her mother was busy humming along with some dismal and pretentious cello concerto, and Will, in the backseat, was staring at the road with trademark intensity—a look that said if he looked away, even blinked, the car would careen off course. The phone buzzed five times in Violet’s palm and the messages told a heavily abridged story of her week:

  Message One. Friday night, from Finch: FERN GULLY IN FRENCH=BEST TRIP MOVIE YET!

  Message Two. Friday night, from Finch: YOU ARE CRYSTA. AND I AM THE HUNGRY GOANNA LIZARD IN AMOUR WITH YOU.

  Message Three. Saturday morning, from Imogene: U OK? WOULD’VE TEXTED BACK SOONER BUT KEPT STARING AT SCREEN, TRYING TO FIGURE OUT WHAT PHONE WAS. JASPER (BAD TRIP) SAID BOMB DETONATER.

  Scrolling through her outgoing messages, Violet realized she’d sent a string of gibberish messages to Imogene and Finch all the way to the hospital. The most lucid read: SNAPCRAKKAHBOOM! And: ROWS GOOD BUT LEFT WAY IDEALLY SUIT!!!!!!!

  Message Four. Saturday morning, from Imogene: R U AVOIDING US BECAUSE FINCH PROFESSED HIS LOVE? :) HE’S BEEN INTO YOU THIS WHOLE TIME, JUST BEEN STRESSED OVER MOM.

  Message Five. Saturday afternoon, from Imogene: WTF ARE YOU? DID U GET IN TROUBLE WITH SOCI-JOSIE?

  Violet cast a quick glance at her mom. She couldn’t remember when exactly they’d started calling Josephine Josie the Soci (the soci was short for sociopath).

  Message Six. From Rose’s number: LET’S MEET AT THE OLD ROSENDALE LITTLE LEAGUE FIELD. WHAT TIME WORKS FOR YOU? MIDNIGHT? 1 A.M.? ARE YOU THINKING YOU’LL SNEAK OUT AFTER BED?

  Violet instinctively hid the phone, afraid her mother would see.

  Josephine turned the radio down. Her new blond hair made her look like a factory-defect Soccer Mom Barbie. “So, tell us about the hospital. What was it like? What did you learn there?”

  “What did I learn there?” As though commitment were a summer internship.

  “Yes, Viola.” There was her mother’s real voice, the
sharp one that lurked beneath her public upspeak. “I don’t know about your Buddha, but my God gives us the opportunity to learn from our mistakes. He teaches us lessons.”

  Violet fought the urge to beat her head against the window. Instead, she propped her elbow against it and leaned her cheek into her hand. “Well, let’s see … I learned a padlock in a sock makes a deadly weapon. I learned that cigarettes are currency. I learned that if you let sugar, bread, and fruit rot in a shampoo bottle for a month, you can get drunk off it.”

  Her mother raised her voice indignantly. “Oh, it’s all so funny, huh? Getting high as a kite, scaring everyone, costing us hundreds if not thousands in medical bills, injuring your brother? By the way, he may have forgiven you, but I’m not there yet. So you’ll have to excuse me if I don’t see the humor.”

  “Sorry, Mom. Stupid joke, I guess. I was just trying to lighten the mood.” She remembered Edie’s words about manipulating narcissists. She had to pretend to sweeten her mother, even as the idea made her flesh crawl. “I learned a lot of things in there.”

  “For instance?”

  “For instance, I’m not sure I want to be Buddhist anymore. It was just a fad, like you said. Peer pressure. I was trying to fit in with the Fields, who are acting weird around me anyway.”

  “Aha. So you’re willing to agree with me about those people now?”

  “Yeah. I see now what you mean about their do-nothing lifestyle.”

  “And they smell unpleasant.”

  “Yes, they smell unpleasant.”

  Her mother cackled and took her hands off the steering wheel long enough to clap her hands in delight.

  Edie was right. Her mother was shockingly gullible when it came to compliments and concessions. Violet thought and added: “Stinking or not, I still have to find time to get my homework from Imogene.”

  Violet hit Reply on Rose’s text: 1 A.M. CANNOT COME SOON ENOUGH.

  Violet meant it. She was going to have the sister she always should have had—the sister she would’ve had if their leering mother had left well enough alone. In between all the jealousy and distrust, they had shared small sisterly moments. Violet remembered a weekend when—sick with chicken pox, quarantined in the guest room—she and eleven-year-old Rose outlined each other’s spots with a felt-tipped pen. She remembered the way they used to fight giggles over the way three-year-old Will called his Rambo action figure “Rainbow.”