Somewhere, a little voice reminded her that maybe what she’d wanted most of all was for Aldo to refuse her, to kiss her hand and say: Not tonight, Regan, not like this, not when you’re not mine. But he hadn’t even said that, not really, and now she felt nothing but loathing for the way she could only hate herself and still place no blame on him.
Her art. That was what he wanted.
She glanced down at her bag, contemplating the pills. She would take them, go to bed, and then tomorrow she would tell Aldo it was over between them, whatever it even was. It was done now, she had a boyfriend, she got swept up like she always got swept up; nothing they’d done was new or strange or even different. You asked too much of me, she thought to say. You wanted more from me than I am even worth.
Art. She’d never even been good at it, not really. Not in the way he would expect from her, and not in the way he would want. Her art would not satisfy him because it wasn’t art at all, wasn’t anything. Art was emotional truth and she had none of that, not one single truth, and this bag was proof of it along with everything else.
And anyway, it was one of her failures, and those were meant to belong exclusively to her.
Regan shook her head at her reflection—speaking of failures, a voice like her mother’s whispered in her head—and left the bathroom, wandering to her father’s office. She wasn’t technically allowed inside, but for once he wouldn’t be there. He would be sleeping soundly along with everyone else; except perhaps Aldo, but coincidentally the office was the room in her house that was furthest from where he was.
She cracked the door carefully and flicked on the light, wandering inside. Her father hadn’t decorated it himself, so in terms of personality, it was indicative of extremely little. Revelations as to John Regan’s private self were limited to the fact that he was neat, organized, and in possession of mass amounts of paper. He liked things in their place, as he always had.
Regan wandered over to the file cabinets, opening them and skimming the tops of her fingers over the tabs. Madeline, the good daughter. Charlotte, the problem. Somewhere in here he had probably actually filed them. There probably existed a folder to represent her, or at least the version of her that the paperwork could prove. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we have here an over-privileged child, a child with too much imagination, a child who never learned to submit herself to the authority of reality, a child who became a woman who still hadn’t learned, and who would never learn, which gambles were worth it to take.
“This again,” Helen had said that evening, dark eyes flicking to Aldo.
“This again,” as if Rinaldo Damiani were simply a familiar antic. Just the latest piece of evidence in the file of what Regan was.
I tried to fuck him and he said no, Mom. He’s different, he doesn’t want me.
Of course he doesn’t want you, Charlotte. Look at your behavior, it’s reprehensible.
No, Regan thought, interrupting her own imagined conversation. No, you have it wrong, that’s not what Helen would say. She would say it about Marc, maybe. Helen thought of Marc as elevated somehow, an impressive file, his value recognizable even with her dislike of its contents. But no, Regan’s flaws were where Helen and Regan had always privately agreed, so what was more important was where they disagreed. “He’s worthless, he’s going nowhere, a bad influence on you”—as if Regan were still a child who could be influenced, a half-formed personality still vulnerable to change.
So no, Regan would say to her mother, I tried to fuck him and he said no, and Helen would say: Good, you’re better off, don’t ruin things with Marc, you’re only getting older and soon men will be looking for someone who isn’t you. Someone who’s maybe you, but younger, because wildness doesn’t age with grace.
Time, Regan thought suddenly, you-and-me still somewhere in the fumble of her pulse. Time had haunted Helen the same way it had bewitched Aldo. Time had made a mockery of them both, in different ways.
Amid the warps and stammers of her thoughts, Regan turned to find a painting beside her on the wall. It was a rare decorative item that John Regan had chosen for himself, having purchased it from a friend. He’d been attracted to the austerity of it, he said. Regan had been six or seven at the time, listening to her father praise the painting the same way he praised Madeline, with pride and conviction and surety. His voice had said: This painting is good, this is an excellent painting, and in response, Regan had thought: Then I will be like that painting.