“That,” she says, coming out to rinse her cup and then going back inside the stall.
“Okay.” I set it to the side. “Um . . . bleach spray, two bottles of air freshener, and a bottle of Drano.”
“Perfect. All of that.” The stall door opens with a click and she wipes her hands on a paper towel before pumping hand sanitizer from her own purse all over them. “Sorry for being gross and not flushing the toilet. I don’t want him to hear and think we’re done.”
“Lucky for you I’m not terrified of menstrual blood like the asshole out there.”
“Oh, God, don’t make me laugh right now,” she hisses. “I need to concentrate.” Then she grabs the big trash can near the door and carries it over to the sink, pulling the top off and assessing the contents with a glance. Getting on her knees next to me in front of the cabinet, she sets her purse down with us and pulls out a shiny square from it, unwrapping the tinfoil to reveal a brownie. She sets the pastry to the side and tosses the foil at me.
“I need little balls, marble sized.”
She unwinds the toilet paper with the efficiency of a seasoned TP-er, which I can’t imagine is the case. She dumps the loose paper into the garbage can in layers, squirting hand sanitizer and the vodka that she’d found earlier onto the mess. By the time I’m done with the balls of foil, she’s filled the can.
I glance at the door and then back at her as she feeds the balls of foil into the now-empty bottle of hand sanitizer and adds the bobby pins from her purse. Then she unscrews the bottle of Drano and, with the steady hands of a girl who can victory-roll her hair, pours the liquid into the bottle, over the foil balls.
“What are you doing exactly?”
She lets out a long breath, screwing the top of the bottle tight. We kneel there, the bottle between us, and there is nothing but fear in her face when she answers.
“Building a bomb.”
— 46 —
Abby: How He Hooks Her
She goes to dinner with Raymond. She dates him. She falls in love with him.
She does everything he wants, because it’s the same things she wants, and what I want . . .
Well, it doesn’t matter.
“I’m tired of the game, baby,” she tells me one night when I’m helping her get ready. “I’ve been doing this a long time. And I’m not getting any younger.”
She hasn’t been getting any younger all my life, it seems. She’s always fretted in front of the mirror, looking for lines that aren’t there because Botox, and complains about flaws that have never existed in her almost-too-beautiful face.
“You’re perfect,” I tell her, because that’s what I’m supposed to say.
I hand her the diamond earrings Raymond gave her on their third date and she fixes them in her ears. He gave her a pair for me at the same time—little studs, a rich girl’s first diamonds—and Mom cooed for days about how thoughtful it was and I wondered how I’d ever thought she was smart, because this was just basic love bombing. She taught me this.
It’s all wrong. It’s been wrong since Katie, but I thought it’d get better once I proved that I could do better. And now I have no way to prove that, because I have no one to con.
I get a brush to stroke through her hair, trying to lose myself in the rhythm of it as she dabs perfume on her pulse points.
“I think . . .” She looks down, staring at her hands. She strokes her ring finger, starting at the top of her French tip and ending where a ring would lie. “I think this could be good for us.”
“This?”
“Raymond.”
“How?” It comes out of me in a disbelieving huff.
“He wants to take care of us.”
“You taught me to take care of myself.”
“And look where that got you,” she snaps.
My hands drop from her head, my fingers curling around the brush handle.
“You need a father,” she says. “Clearly.”
I don’t know want to think about what she means. So much lately, I’m half guessing, half hoping there’s another meaning than the obvious—that she’s mad at me for Katie. That she thinks it’s my fault.
It makes me feel like something hot and heavy’s pressing into my head, my neck buckling under the weight of it.
“And just think,” she continues. “You’ve spent all this time playing at being an amazing daughter. So being one for real will be a piece of cake.”
I stare, unable to wrap my head around what she’s saying. “I’m already a daughter,” I remind her. “I’m your daughter.”