I need you to promise you won’t tell anyone, their mother said. Because other people might not understand.
Dara promised. Who, after all, would she tell.
And I need you to promise you understand. And forgive me.
Her mother’s voice breaking over the word forgive. A word Dara couldn’t remember her mother ever using before. Along with sorry.
Now is the time, Dara had thought. To tell her she was leaving, with Charlie. But she couldn’t make the words come, the stone in her chest now in her throat.
Dara, her mother said, more firmly now, I’m your mother.
But Dara couldn’t speak.
Dara, tell me you understand. Tell me you forgive me.
But Dara couldn’t and she started to feel sick, her body keening over.
You have to leave.
The voice wasn’t her mother’s but Marie’s. Marie standing in the doorway.
Mother, you have to leave.
The look on her mother’s face, so surprised. So full of wonder.
Marie Durant, their mother said, her voice trembling, this is a private conversation.
Mother, you have to leave. Marie so stoic. So certain. The certainty of the Sword Swallower, lifting her blade.
The look on her mother’s face—like a queen dethroned.
And then that next night, their anniversary. The only time their parents ever went anywhere together and alone. They’d both been drinking and her mother had locked herself in the bedroom, refusing to put on her dress until he nearly tore the door from its hinges, threatening to drag her out in her nightie to pretend this one night a year that you’re my wife. My wife. And that tomorrow she could go back into her playroom with the children, with all the pretty little boys.
Dara and Marie were hiding in their bedroom, in this room. Dara and Marie wanted it to be over and they were glad Charlie was still at the studio and couldn’t hear.
You can’t drive, their mother was saying. Give me those keys. Give them to me. I know where we’re going.
Eventually, they heard the car engine shudder and spurt.
I know where we’re going.
Peeking out the bedroom window, they’d watched the car lurch out of the driveway and into the blue night.
* * *
*
Now, more than fifteen years later, Dara stood at that same window, looking at Marie.
“Dad mostly drove,” she said finally. “But that night she wanted to.”
Marie looked at her, her eyes blue and limpid.
“Yes, that night she wanted to,” she whispered. “So she did.”
* * *
*
Without either of them deciding, Marie followed Dara into the master bedroom, sidestepping Charlie’s slippers and climbing into bed after her.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered to Dara.
Marie smelling like toothpaste, pushing gently against Dara’s back, little scratches, hands tangling, like when they were kids.
“It’s okay,” Dara said. Somehow, she was glad to feel her there. To smell her smells—the Band-Aids and baby powder and the sweetness of her sweat.
She was finally starting to slip to sleep when—
“Where’s Mama’s blanket?” Marie whispered. Mama. She hadn’t called their mother that since they were very little. “Mama’s fur blanket. The rabbit blanket.”
Dara’s eyes shuttered open.
The rabbit blanket. It wouldn’t go away, would it, like seeing it in the basement only days before, kicking it across the floor toward the furnace. She’d made it come to life and then Marie had dreamt about it and now it was back again.
“You hated it,” Dara said. “And it gave you hives.”
Marie had wanted to throw it out when their parents died. She thought it looked like an animal hide left behind by a hunter. Which it was, really. Later, she’d claim it gave her hives and then, suddenly, it did. Pink wheals across her belly, on her thighs.
“What did you do with the rabbit blanket, Dara?” Marie asked, clutching at Dara’s back. “Do you and Charlie still take it out? Remember that blanket, how electricity would run through it. How it would hold it and spark?”
Dara could feel what was coming, could feel it vibrating in the air, and it was more than she could bear.
“We loved that blanket,” Dara said, even as she saw herself kicking it across the basement floor.
Marie was crying now and she was always so lovely when she was crying, her skin flushed and downy like a baby’s, her lashes fluttering.
“Dara,” she said, and kept saying it. “Oh, Dara. It was wrong. It was wrong and as long as we stay here we’ll never escape it.”