The Children(89)

Guinevere held her cheek. How many times had Edith caught them slipping a hand into a party guest’s jacket pocket and looked away without a blink?

“I’m your mother. I know how you work, how you think, the secrets you’re keeping.” The things Edith said were confident things, but her eyes brimmed with something desperate. “I’ve written whole books about you, kid. I know all there is to know.”

Guinevere’s mouth dropped open. That her mother seemed to believe this pushed her past caring. “You don’t know shit,” she hissed. “The kids in your books are fake and stupid and we hate them. They’re nothing like us. They’re nothing like anyone. Only babies could think they’re real. They’re—puppets.”

Edith’s first response was split by a dry smoker’s cough. When she was done, she swiped a thumb over her lips and said, “Fake and stupid, okay. Tell that to the four million people who’ve bought my books.”

And Guinevere straightened like she’d been pinched. My god, the revelation. It smacked into her like a wave of cold club soda.

“I will tell them,” she said. “When I get away from you, I’ll tell them everything. I’ll tell them what kind of mom you are. How we never went to school, how all the homeschooling stuff is a lie. I’ll tell everyone all we have in the kitchen is whiskey and cocktail onions, and nobody ever takes us to the dentist unless we already have a big gross cavity!”

She was reaching, feeling for all the things she’d wondered about. Surely it wasn’t like this for the kids who grew up in ranch houses, on cul-de-sacs. It wasn’t like this for the families she saw in E.T. and Poltergeist, or read about in Beverly Cleary.

“Go ahead,” she went on. “Send me to boarding school so I can tell everyone. I can’t wait. I’ll tell them you’ll let anyone in our house, so long as they talk about how amazing you are. How Jonathan is always here, being awful, and how after that man put his hands all over me, Dad just gave me a pocketknife, instead of actually promising to protect me.”

Her mother’s mouth hung open stupidly. “What man? Llewellyn didn’t tell me about a man.”

“Yeah, right! I’m sick of it, Mom. I’m sick of your friends eating all our food and making a mess and playing music when I want to sleep. I’m sick of everyone looking at me when all I’m trying to do is walk through a room. I never want to hear that I’m pretty or I’m famous or I should smile or that everyone wants to be me ever again. Why would anyone want to be me? I hate being me! I hate my life, and I hate you!”

Edith watched her with what looked like fascination. Like her daughter was a piece of furniture she’d never really gotten the point of that had just jumped up and started dancing. This look lit a fire in Guinevere’s chest that spread to her head, where it burned away all caution and made her say the most reckless possible thing.

“I’m gonna tell them what you do, Mom.” She said it quietly. Knowing nothing, sure of nothing, speaking into that shivering void she pictured sometimes as snow. Falling relentlessly on the other side of a window, swallowing up the visible world. “What you did to Arthur and the rest of them. What you did to Dad. I’ll tell everyone.”

The words rose out of nothing like a string of handkerchiefs pulled from a magician’s hat.

Now Edith was listening. She looked at Guinevere as if she’d just peeled her face off, revealing a serpents’ nest. Her own face had a varnished sheen, sweat and a kind of expressionless shock.

Very softly she said, “Arthur. Borelli, you mean? There’s a deep cut.” Her hand was pressed to her cheek, as if she were dredging up a distant memory. The veins in her eyes stood out like pink ribbons. “I don’t remember you even meeting him. Nice kid, I wonder what he’s up to. And your dad.” A tiny trip on the word. “What’d I ever do to him?”

She delivered it almost comically. A one-liner, meaning, What did I ever do besides marry him? So we could tear at each other’s metaphorical guts like metaphorical eagles for the rest of our wedded lives?

The courage was draining out of Guinevere. On the fumes of it she said, “I don’t know, Mom. You tell me.”

Because she really didn’t know. She’d been pulling at threads lying loose in the dark of her mind—bright visitors and sudden departures, and most of all the loss of the old Llewellyn—and trying to weave them. If Edith denied it with passable confidence, she might have believed her.

Instead, a strange expression flickered over her mother’s face, swift and bright as sheet lightning. Pride. As if, whatever there was to tell, she felt no shame at all.

Then the look was gone. Edith dipped her chin, the overhead bulb casting long Harlequin shadows under her eyes. “Enough with the dramatics. I want that necklace back by sundown. There are worse things in this life than boarding school.”

What an exit line. Spoiled a little when she tripped, catching herself on the wall before disappearing around the corner. Heading upstairs, probably, to check their rooms, every inch.

Guinevere stood alone, black spots bobbling in her sight. She didn’t know what she wanted to happen or what had changed or why exactly she was crying. She did it as quietly as she could, eyes closed tight.

And then—it was the strangest thing—she felt the unmistakable sensation of embrace. Not from her own inadequate arms, but from the air itself. The house’s permanent odor of warm wood thickened. Sweet and dusty and faintly metallic, as if all the copper fixtures had begun to sweat. Good girl. Bright girl.