“How so?” Roza’s brow knit.
“I don’t know. She doesn’t say anything. It’s just how she acts.” Last Christmas, I’d walked into the kitchen to see her casually embracing Emma, my stepsister. Her eyes had met mine over the top of Emma’s head. For a second she’d looked startled and vaguely disgusted, like I was a gnarly spider that had appeared on the wall.
“It’s like she wishes I would disappear.” The tears spilled over onto my cheeks. “So I wouldn’t remind her of everything. It’s like I’m this ugly ghost.”
“Oh, darling.” Roza jumped up and came back with a silk handkerchief from her desk, as she had last time. And once again I felt bad about blowing into it. But the fabric felt smooth and gentle against my face. Therapy with Roza, indeed.
“I understand now.” Roza touched my knee. “Why Wren was so important to you. And why her betrayal was so cruel.”
“Yeah.” I relaxed back against the cushions. “Well, her childhood was bad too. Much worse than mine, actually. Physical abuse, that kind of thing. So it felt like a big deal for us to have each other.”
“You need to compare?” Roza asked. “Physical abuse versus emotional neglect? Some might say the neglect is worse. Because it negates your very existence.”
“Well.” I shrugged, confused. “I don’t know. I guess it felt less intentional. Less punishing. But both are bad, right?”
Roza brooded for a minute, gazing down into her lap. Finally she looked up at me. “I’m going to tell you a story, dear. Is that all right?”
“Of course.” Anything to stop thinking about Mom.
“It’s about my own best friend. Mila.” She looked up at me. “She was the one who died when I was writing Devil’s Tongue. I’ve talked about her plenty, but something I don’t share is that she was half-German. I found out in the sixties, long after the war. One day she just decided to share that her late father had been a Nazi officer. He had become drawn to her Jewish mother and started a relationship with her, protecting her throughout the war.” Roza took a thoughtful sip of tea. “Now, my mother’s first husband died in a camp. My mother survived because she was beautiful and very lucky. She was an expert seamstress and sewed and fixed uniforms for the officers. And provided other services to them, too, of course. But Mila’s mother had been lucky too. Or unlucky, depending on what you think of Stockholm syndrome. Mila’s father had made up fake papers for her mother. She was blond, so she could pass as a German. After the war he’d taken her to Berlin, where they’d had Mila. He left the army and went back to being a lawyer. When he died of a heart attack, Mila’s mother took her back to Budapest. Anyway. Mila showed me pictures and told me about the atrocities he’d committed. I never even knew if they were real or if she just made them up. But as she spoke, there was a little thrill in her voice. She felt shame but also excitement, even a strange kind of pride.”
Roza was quiet until I finally prompted: “That must’ve been a lot to process.”
“Yes. But I processed. And then you know what I decided to do?” She looked up with a smirk. “I decided to punish her. I didn’t speak to her for weeks. She would show up outside my house every day just waiting for me to come out and talk to her. And you know, it made me feel so much better. The power imbalance shifting back. It was very cathartic. And I realized it was possible to change things.” She set down her cup. “Eventually, I allowed her back into my life. We were friends again. But when she got sick, I realized my punishment hadn’t been enough. There was still more reckoning to be done, for the sins of her parents. I don’t know who or what decides these things. But it was very clear to me what was happening.”
I nodded, unsure of how to respond.
“You want a moral to the story, yes?” Roza reached out and grasped my hand. “Here’s one. The moral is that we don’t need to worry. The appropriate punishments will be meted out to the appropriate people. Often in this very lifetime.”
On one hand I felt honored, being ushered into Roza’s confidence like this. On the other, I felt vaguely disappointed. It was like reaching the cave of a guru I’d been searching for for years, hoping for a revelation, and being given a trite affirmation.
Roza let go of my hand and patted it. “Up until now you’ve given and Wren has taken. It’s time to take. How can you use what she’s given you? Turn it into something of your own? Step into your power?”
“I don’t know.” I felt suddenly confused, unmoored, as if there had been some drug in the tea. I looked down into the milky cup. I wouldn’t put it past Roza, but this was my own uncertainty.
Roza was right. I needed to step into my power. I wasn’t sure what that meant yet, but something told me it would have to come out on the page.
Roza smiled, like she’d been in my brain to see this tiny silent shift.
“Don’t forget that word,” she said. “？‘Power.’？”
Excerpt from The Great Commission
“Daphne.” Florence’s gaze was steady. “You need to listen to me.”
Daphne felt a bubble of hilarity rising in her throat and pushed it back down. Imagine: Florence, the middle-aged spinster, telling her to stop just because she was jealous.
“I’m listening.” Daphne smiled at Florence, keeping her gaze bland. It was easy; she’d used the blandness as a cover in her previous life. You couldn’t imagine the things you’d overhear working at a restaurant: men bragging in detail about their conquests, women complaining about the state of their marriage beds and bodies. And this was from the mouths of wealthy folks.
Before the restaurant, she’d been a barmaid. It had been impossible to escape attention then. She’d kept her dress just loose enough to fall away from her bosom, enduring the leers. That was the way to get tips. It wasn’t something she was proud of. It was just survival.
She and her friend Jillian would laugh at the men while counting their pay. Jillian had shown her how to roll the bills and stash them in her bodice, in case someone accosted her on her way back to her miserable boardinghouse room. And it was Jillian who’d saved her from getting fired that one night, after a smelly customer pulled Daphne down and planted a wet kiss on her lips. Daphne reacted immediately, slapping him across the face. Normally the man would’ve just been thrown out, but he was a dockmaster and a big spender at the bar. If not for Jillian cooling down the manager, Daphne would’ve been sent away without a second thought.
That night Daphne had been so unsettled that Jillian had walked her home through the drizzling rain, holding an umbrella over them the whole way. Daphne invited her in for a hot tea to warm up before she went onward. Somehow, Jillian made the sad little place feel a little more bright and merry. They hung up their wet dresses over the stove and had burrowed under Daphne’s covers in their slips. Jillian convinced her to add a dash from her flask to their tea, and then…
Blandness. Pleasantries. Masks. It had gotten her hired at the restaurant. And perhaps it had made Horace fall in love with her. A hollow husk of a person, smiling in polite agreement—in their dining room, their parlor, their bed.