Mother, Mother: Psychological suspense for fans of ROOM. Koren Zailckas
by the way—are a national landmark.” She said it in the same tone he’d heard her use to help sell his sisters on colleges she liked.
Will felt a pang of guilt when he realized Violet might fall behind in school and not get into her first-choice college, Bard, now.
His mother seemed to read his mind. “Will, either she’ll get better or she won’t. It doesn’t have anything to do with us now.”
Will was still starving when they arrived at home and found a car idling in the driveway at Old Stone Way. He expected his father, but the car in question didn’t belong to Douglas. It was as compact and green as a lime. At the rear dash, a scrum of stuffed animals begged for rescue.
At the Hursts’ front door, a wide woman in a trench coat looked casually up from her clipboard.
“Can I help you?” Josephine asked, opening the driver’s-side door.
The woman hobbled over on a bad hip and thrust out her hand. “Mrs. Hurst?”
His mother nodded. “And you are?”
“My name is Trina Williams. I’m from Child Protective Services.”
IT WAS BARELY lunchtime, and Violet was already tired of being cooped up all morning. She’d always felt sanest in the great outdoors, especially when there was compost in her cuticles and maple pods in the ends of her long-ago hair.
Even during Violet’s bad trip, her mood had instantly improved after her friends brought her outside. The Fields’ eco-contemporary sat on ten enchanted acres, the Mohonk mountains guarding it from the south side like a high garden wall. The wind pulled the leaves across the lawn in crested waves. Violet saw vortexes and patterns in the hellfire sunset. This, she decided, was all she ever needed or wanted in life. She wanted only to wrap herself up in the misty red-gold dead of autumn. She wanted to make these three enchanted creatures—Imogene, Finch, and Jasper—her permanent family.
Imogene rode Finch’s BMX bike around the driveway while Violet stood on the rear pegs. Finch smiled beatifically behind the twirling flames of the copper fire pit. His face bloomed red and gold with reflected flashes.
“Hurst, you remind me of that Inuit story about the Stone Child,” he’d said.
“What?” Violet had asked. By that time, she had been lying on her back, her cheek in the overgrown grass, doing a slow improvised backstroke through a pile of dead leaves.
“So there was this orphan, right? And his mom and dad died in a bear attack. He lived by himself, angry and starving to death. All he had was a rock the same size as he was. He wrapped his arms and legs around it and refused to let go.”
Violet had a thought that it sounded like her parents’ relationship: doting Douglas clinging to an ice-cold hunk of rock.
“That’s how he got the nickname the Stone Child,” Finch continued. “The villagers thought he was out of his fucking mind. But that bat-shit little boy didn’t let go. He just kept clinging to the thing, until one day, the big rock broke in two. And inside was the most perfect girl he could ever ask for. She gave the Stone Child bows and arrows and a harpoon. They got married and had kids.”
“What the fuck does that even mean?!” Jasper cried.
“And what does that have to do with Violet?” Imogene asked, shrieking with laughter.
“I was just trying to say Violet is intuitive. She reminds me of some of the great healers.”
Violet felt all her organs flush hot and pulse.
Her cell phone had squirmed uncomfortably in her pocket. It was a text message from Josephine:
WE NEED YOU AT HOME. YOUR FATHER AND I HAVE DIVORCE ON THE TABLE.
After passing her phone around the group—Violet had to make sure she wasn’t tripping hard enough to imagine that—she texted the wary response: WHAT??? ARE YOU OKAY?
“It’s about time,” she’d told her friends. Her parents’ relationship wasn’t like Beryl and Rolf’s, or anyone else’s she knew. It was like a business arrangement, where her father provided the capital and her mother funneled money out the back. The only “business” they were in was denying reality and their true natures, and business had been failing ever since Rose ran away.
Violet’s phone buzzed with Josephine’s reply: YES, I’M OK. DINNER. I MEANT WE HAVE DINNER ON THE TABLE. MY PHONE CHANGES MY WORDS. COME HOME NOW.
They’d practically pissed themselves laughing. Violet rode her bike home via the town rail trail. The clouds on the horizon had darkened, and the bent trees looked a bit like they were clawing for her.
As Violet pedaled, she’d hatched a plan to fake a migraine and duck out on family dinner. She rehearsed everything she was going to say under her breath. She thought of the mantra for peace of mind—asato ma sadgamaya—which meant roughly, “lead us from darkness to the light / from knowledge of the unreal to the real.” Maybe she’d been having auditory hallucinations, but the bike’s spinning wheels had sounded like a sitar.
High on seeds, Violet would have much rather slept on the rail trail if she’d had her choice. Climbing off her bike, she found the front door locked. The more she tapped the brass door knocker (nobody answered), the more she began to feel like a stranger. Pacing back and forth on the personalized doormat (HURSTS, it read in severe, serifed letters), she’d started to feel like a home intruder.
Finally, knowing full well that her mother hated the sound, Violet hit the doorbell and listened to the dissonant electric sound of “When the Saints Go Marching In.”
The door had snapped inward, and Josephine’s grimacing face popped out.
“Why did you ring the doorbell?” she asked. “I hate that sound. That’s no exaggeration. I hate it. Douglas! Haven’t I told you to reprogram that thing?! It’s not your fault, Violet. It’s that father of yours.”
Violet had stepped into the foyer, where the chandelier seemed to bloom open like a crystal chrysanthemum, and felt like she’d crossed a psychic threshold that could never be uncrossed. Violet had wanted to retreat to her bedroom, but she couldn’t seem to vocalize anything. “It’s locked,” she finally said, tapping her temple with one finger.
“Let me smell you,” Josephine said, backing Violet against the door. “Have you been smoking cigarettes? You’re eating tonight. You’re eating something. Do you understand me? I hope you’re hungry, little girl.”
Now, in the hospital, Violet really did feel like a little girl. She felt as utterly aimless as she did during summer vacations when her mother used to confiscate her books as punishment for fighting with Rose. Since she was no good at sitting still to begin with, Violet decided to walk every inch of the resident area. She perused a cart of books donated by a ladies’ auxiliary (it was mostly graphic horror and super-inappropriate “throbbing manhood” smut). She scanned the patient art that had been stuck to the bulletin boards with packing tape (presumably tacks could be swallowed or used to self-harm). A handprint collage returned her thoughts, for the billionth time, to Will. For all the times people had questioned her about him, no one had told her how he was doing. She wondered whether he was home from the hospital. She hoped he wasn’t in pain.
After she’d done the full tour, Violet headed down the long hallway toward her room. She was nearly there when a nurse headed her off.
“Violet, right?” the woman asked. “Your mom dropped this at reception when she came in for paperwork.”
Violet felt a rush of blood as she reached out for the envelope. Any letter her mother left was sure to enumerate all of Violet’s faults. Or else, allude to the punishment she should expect when she got home.