Sharp Objects

Chapter Nine

I fell asleep, accidentally and hard, at nine o’clock, woke to an angry sun at seven the next morning. A dried-out tree rustled its branches against my window screen as if it wanted to climb in next to me for comfort.

I donned my uniform—the long sleeves, the long skirt—and wandered downstairs. Gayla was glowing in the backyard, her white nurse’s dress brilliant against the greenery. She held a silver tray on which my mother was placing imperfect roses. My mother wore a butter-colored sundress that matched her hair. She was stalking through the clumps of pink and yellow blooms with a pair of pliers. She examined each flower hungrily, plucking off petals, pushing and prying.

“You need to water these more, Gayla. Look what you’ve done to them.”

She separated a light pink rose from a bush, pulled it to the ground, secured it with a dainty foot, and clipped it off at its root. Gayla must have had two dozen roses on her tray. I could see little wrong with them.

“Camille, you and I are going shopping in Woodberry today,” my mother called without looking up. “Shall we?” My mother said nothing about the square-off at the Nashes the day before. That would be too direct.

“I have a few things to do,” I said. “By the way, I didn’t know you were friends with the Nashes. With Ann.” I had a catch of guilt for my taunting her about the girl at breakfast the other morning. It wasn’t that I truly felt bad that I’d upset my mother—it was more that I hated any debits in her column.

“Mmmm-hmm. Alan and I are having a party next Saturday. It was planned long before we knew you were coming. Although I suppose we didn’t really know you were coming until you were here.”

Another rose snapped off.

“I thought you barely knew the girls. I didn’t realize…”

“Fine. It will be a nice summer party, a lot of really fine people, and you’ll need a dress. I’m sure you didn’t bring a dress?”

“No.”

“Good then, it will be a nice chance for us to catch up. You’ve been here over a week, I think it’s time.” She placed a final stem on the tray. “Okay, Gayla, you can throw these away. We’ll pick some decent ones for the house later.”

“I’ll take those for my room, Momma. They look fine to me.”

“They’re not.”

“I don’t mind.”

“Camille, I was just looking at them, and they’re not good blooms.” She dropped the pliers to the ground, began tugging at a stem.

“But they’re fine for me. For my room.”

“Oh, now look what you’ve done. I’m bleeding.” My mother held up thorn-pricked hands, and trails of deep red began to roll down her wrists. End of conversation. She walked toward the house, Gayla following her, me following Gayla. The back-door knob was sticky with blood.

Alan bandaged both my mother’s hands extravagantly, and when we nearly tumbled over Amma, working again on her dollhouse on the porch, Adora plucked teasingly at her braid and told her to come with us. She followed obligingly, and I kept waiting for those knicks at my heels. Not with Mother around.

Adora wanted me to drive her baby blue convertible to Woodberry, which boasted two high-end boutiques, but she didn’t want the top down. “We get cold,” she said with a conspiratorial smile at Amma. The girl sat silently behind my mother, twisted her mouth into a smart-ass smile when I caught her staring at me in the rearview. Every few minutes, she’d brush her fingertips against my mother’s hair, lightly so she wouldn’t notice.

As I parked the Mercedes outside her favorite shop, Adora requested weakly that I open the car door for her. It was the first thing she’d said to me in twenty minutes. Nice to catch up. I opened the boutique’s door for her too, and the feminine bell matched the saleswoman’s delighted greeting.

“Adora!” And then a frown. “My goodness, darling, what’s happened to your hands?”

“Just an accident, really. Doing some work around the house. I’ll see my doctor this afternoon.” Of course she would. She’d go for a paper cut.

“What happened?”

“Oh, I really don’t want to talk about it. I do want to introduce you to my daughter, Camille. She’s visiting.”

The saleswoman looked at Amma, then gave me a wavering smile.

“Camille?” A quick recovery: “I think I’d forgotten that you have a third daughter.” She lowered her voice on the word “daughter,” as if it were an oath. “She must take after her father,” the woman said, peering into my face as if I were a horse she might buy. “Amma looks so much like you, and Marian too, in your pictures. This one, though…”

“She doesn’t take after me much,” my mother said. “She has her father’s coloring, and his cheekbones. And his temperament.”

It was the most I’d ever heard my mother say about my father. I wondered how many other salesladies had received such casual tidbits about him. I had a quick vision of chatting up all the store clerks in southern Missouri, putting together a blurry profile of the man.

My mother petted my hair with gauzy hands. “We need to get my sweetheart a new dress. Something colorful. She’s prone to blacks and grays. Size four.”

The woman, so thin her hip bones poked from her skirt like antlers, started weaving in and out of the circular racks, creating a bouquet of splashy green and blue and pink dresses.

“This would look beautiful on you,” Amma said, holding a glittery gold top to my mother.

“Stop it, Amma,” my mother said. “That’s tacky.”

“Do I really remind you of my father?” I couldn’t help asking Adora. I could feel my cheeks get hot at my presumptuousness.

“I knew you wouldn’t just let that go,” she said, touching up her lipstick in a store mirror. The gauze on her hands remained impossibly unsmeared.

“I was just curious; I’d never heard you say my personality reminded you of…”

“Your personality reminds me of someone very unlike me. And you certainly don’t take after Alan, so I assume it must be your father. Now, no more.”

“But Momma, I just wanted to know…”

“Camille, you’re making me bleed more.” She held up her bandaged hands, now pocked with red. I wanted to scratch her.

The saleslady bumped up on us with a swatch of dresses. “This is the one you’re absolutely going to have to have,” she said, holding up a turquoise sundress. Strapless.

“And what about sweetie-pie here,” the woman said, nodding at Amma. “She can probably already fit into our petites.”

“Amma’s only thirteen. She’s not ready for these types of clothes,” my mother said.

“Only thirteen, good god. I keep forgetting, she looks like such a big girl. You must be worried sick with all that’s going on in Wind Gap now.”

My mother put an arm around Amma, kissed the top of her head. “Some days I think I won’t be able to take the worry. I want to lock her away somewhere.”

“Like Bluebeard’s dead wives,” Amma mumbled.

“Like Rapunzel,” my mother said. “Well, go on, Camille—show your sister how pretty you can be.”

She trailed me into the dressing area, silent and righteous. In the little mirrored room, with my mother perched on a chair outside, I surveyed my options. Strapless, spaghetti straps, cap sleeves. My mother was punishing me. I found a pink dress with three-quarter sleeves and, quickly doffing my pants and shirt, pulled it on. The neckline was lower than I’d thought: The words on my chest looked swollen in the fluorescent light, like worms tunneled beneath my skin. Whine, milk, hurt, bleed.

“Camille, let me see.”

“Uh, this won’t work.”

“Let me see.” Belittle burned on my right hip.

“Let me try another.” I rifled through the other dresses. All just as revealing. I caught sight of myself again in the mirror. I was horrifying.

“Camille, open the door.”

“What’s wrong with Camille?” Amma chimed.

“This won’t work.” The side zipper was sticking. My bared arms flashed scars in deep pink and purple. Even without looking directly in the mirror I could see them reflected at me—a big blur of scorched skin.

“Camille,” my mother spat.

“Why won’t she just show us?”

“Camille.”

“Momma, you saw the dresses, you know why they won’t work,” I urged.

“Just let me see.”

“I’ll try one on, Momma,” Amma wheedled.

“Camille…”

“Fine.” I banged open the door. My mother, her face level with my neckline, winced.

“Oh, dear God.” I could feel her breath on me. She held up a bandaged hand, as if about to touch my chest, then let it drop. Behind her Amma whined like a puppy. “Look what you’ve done to yourself,” Adora said. “Look at it.”

“I do.”

“I hope you just loved it. I hope you can stand yourself.”

She shut the door and I ripped at the dress, the zipper still jammed until my furious tugs yanked the teeth apart enough to get it to my hips, where I wriggled out, the zipper leaving a trail of pink scratches on my skin. I bunched the cotton of the dress over my mouth and screamed.

I could hear my mother’s measured voice in the other room. When I came out, the saleswoman was wrapping a long-sleeved, high-collared lace blouse and a coral skirt that would come to my ankles. Amma stared at me, her eyes pink and darting, before leaving to stand by the car outside.

Back at the house I trailed Adora into the entryway, where Alan stood in a falsely casual pose, hands stuffed into his linen trouser pockets. She fluttered past him toward the stairs.

“How was your day out?” he called after her.

“Horrible,” my mother whimpered. Upstairs I heard her door close. Alan frowned at me and went to tend to my mother. Amma had already disappeared.

I walked into the kitchen, to the cutlery drawer. I wanted to just look at the knives I once used on myself. I wasn’t going to cut, just allow myself that sharp pressure. I could already feel the knifepoint gently pressing against the plump pads of my fingertips, that delicate tension right before the cut.

The drawer pulled out only an inch and then jammed. My mother had padlocked it. I pulled again and again. I could hear the silvery clink of all those blades sliding onto each other. Like petulant metal fish. My skin was hot. I was about to go call Curry when the doorbell insinuated itself with its polite tones.

Peering around the corner, I could see Meredith Wheeler and John Keene standing outside.

I felt like I’d been caught masturbating. Chewing the inside of my mouth, I opened the door. Meredith rolled in, assaying the rooms, letting out minty exclamations of how beautiful everything was and sending off waves of a dark perfume more suited to a society matron than a teenage girl in a green-and-white cheerleading outfit. She caught me looking.

“I know, I know. School days are over. This is my last time to wear this actually. We’re having a cheer session with next year’s girls. It’s sort of a torch-passing thing. You were a cheerleader, right?”

“I was, if you can believe that.” I hadn’t been particularly good, but I looked nice in the skirt. Back in the days when I limited my cutting to my torso.

“I can believe it. You were the prettiest girl in the entire town. My cousin was a freshman when you were a senior. Dan Wheeler? He was always talking about you. Pretty and smart, pretty and smart. And nice. He’d kill me if he knew I was telling you this. He lives in Springfield now. But he’s not married.”

Her wheedling tone reminded me of just the kind of girls I was never comfortable with, the types who peddled a sort of plastic chumminess, who told me things about themselves only friends should know, who described themselves as “people persons.”

“This is John,” she said, as if surprised to see him beside her.

My first time seeing him up close. He was truly beautiful, almost androgynous, tall and slim with obscenely full lips and ice-colored eyes. He tucked a shock of black hair behind his ear and smiled at his hand as he held it out to me, as if it were a beloved pet performing a new trick.

“So, where do you guys want to talk?” Meredith asked. I debated for a second about ridding myself of the girl, worried she might not know when, or how, to shut up. But he seemed in need of company, and I didn’t want to scare him off.

“You guys grab a seat in the living room,” I said. “I’ll get us some sweet tea.”

I first bounded up the stairs, slammed a new cassette into my minirecorder, and listened at my mother’s door. Silence except for the whir of a fan. Was she sleeping? If so, was Alan curled up next to her or perched on her vanity chair, just watching? Even after all this time, I hadn’t even a guess as to the private life of Adora and her husband. Walking past Amma’s room, I saw her sitting very properly on the edge of a rocking chair, reading a book called Greek Goddesses. Since I’d been here, she’d played at being Joan of Arc and Bluebeard’s wife and Princess Diana—all martyrs, I realized. She’d find even unhealthier role models among the goddesses. I left her to it.

In the kitchen I poured out the drinks. Then, counting out a full ten seconds, I pressed the tines of a fork into the palm of my hand. My skin began to quiet down.

I entered the living room to see Meredith with her legs dangled over John’s lap, kissing his neck. When I clanked the tea tray down on a table, she didn’t stop. John looked at me and peeled himself slowly away.

“You’re no fun today,” she pouted.

“So, John, I’m really glad you decided to talk to me,” I began. “I know your mom has been reluctant.”

“Yes. She doesn’t want to talk to much of anyone, but especially not…press. She’s very private.”

“But you’re okay with it?” I prompted. “You’re eighteen, I assume?”

“Just turned.” He sipped his tea formally, as if he was measuring tablespoons in his mouth.

“Because what I really want is to be able to describe your sister to our readers,” I said. “Ann Nash’s father is speaking about her, and I don’t want Natalie to get lost in this story. Does your mother know you’re speaking to me?”

“No, but it’s okay. I think we’ll have to agree to disagree about this.” His laugh came in a quick stutter.

“His mom is kind of a freak about the media,” Meredith said, drinking from John’s glass. “She’s an extremely private person. I mean, I hardly think she even knows who I am, and we’ve been together for over a year, right?” He nodded. She frowned, disappointed, I assumed, that he didn’t add to the story of their romance. She removed her legs from his lap, crossed them, and began picking at the edge of the couch.

“And I hear you’re living over with the Wheelers now?”

“We have a place out back, a carriage house from the old days,” Meredith said. “My little sister’s pissed; it used to be the hangout for her and her nasty friends. Except for your sister. Your sister’s cool. You know my sister, right? Kelsey?”

Of course, this piece of work would have connections to Amma.

“Kelsey tall or Kelsey small?” I asked.

“Totally. This town has way too many Kelseys. Mine’s the tall one.”

“I’ve met her. They seem close.”

“They’d better be,” Meredith said tightly. “Little Amma runs that school. Be a fool that got on her bad side.”

Enough about Amma, I thought, but images of her teasing lesser girls by those lockers bumped around in my head. Junior high is an ugly time.

“So, John, are you adjusting all right over there?”

“He’s fine,” Meredith snipped. “We put together a little care basket of guy stuff for him—my mom even got him a CD player.”

“Oh, really?” I looked pointedly at John. Time to speak up, buddy. Don’t be pussy whipped on my time.

“I just need to be away from home right now,” he said. “We’re all a little on edge, you know, and Natalie’s stuff is everywhere, and my mom won’t let anyone touch it. Her shoes are in the hallway and her swimming suit is hanging in the bathroom we share so I have to see it every morning I shower. I can’t deal.”

“I can imagine.” I could: I remember Marian’s tiny pink coat hanging in the hall closet till I left for college. Might still be there.

I turned on the tape recorder, pushed it across the table toward the boy.

“Tell me what your sister was like, John.”

“Uh, she was a nice kid. She was extremely smart. Just unbelievable.”

“Smart how? Like good in school, or just bright?”

“Well, she didn’t do that well in school. She had a bit of a discipline problem,” he said. “But I think it was just because she got bored. She should have skipped a grade or two, I think.”

“His mom thought it would stigmatize her,” Meredith interjected. “She was always worried about Natalie sticking out.”

I raised my eyebrows at him.

“That’s true. My mom really wanted Natalie to fit in. She was this sort of goofy kid, kind of a tomboy, and just kind of a weirdo.” He laughed, staring at his feet.

“Are you thinking of a particular story?” I asked. Anecdotes are Curry’s coin of the realm. Plus, I was interested.

“Oh, like once, she invented this whole other language, you know? And a regular kid, I mean it’d be gibberish. But Natalie had the whole alphabet figured out—looked like Russian. And she actually taught it to me. Or tried. She got frustrated with me pretty quickly.” He laughed again, that same croak, like it was coming up from underground.

“Did she like school?”

“Well it’s hard to be the new kid, and the girls here…well I guess the girls anywhere can be a little bit snotty.”

“Johnny! Rude!” Meredith pretended to push him. He ignored her.

“I mean, your sister…Amma, right?” I nodded to him. “She was actually friends with her for a little bit. They’d run around in the woods, Natalie’d come back all scraped up and daffy.”

“Really?” Considering the scorn with which she’d mentioned Natalie’s name, I couldn’t picture it.

“They were real intense for a little bit. But I think Amma got bored with her, Natalie being a few years younger. I don’t know. They had some sort of falling out.” Amma learned that from her mother—the glib discarding of friends. “It was okay, though,” John said, as if to reassure me. Or him. “She had one kid she played with a lot, James Capisi. Farm kid a year or so younger that no one else talked to. They seemed to get along though.”

“He says he’s the last one to see Natalie alive,” I said.

“He’s a liar,” Meredith said. “I heard that story, too. He’s always made stuff up. I mean, his mom’s dying of cancer. He’s got no dad. He has no one to pay any attention to him. So he throws out that wild story. Don’t listen to anything he says.”

Again I looked at John, who shrugged.

“It is sort of a wild story, you know? A crazy lady snatches Natalie in broad daylight,” he said. “Besides, why would a woman do something like that?”

“Why would a man do something like that?” I asked.

“Who knows why men do such freaky stuff,” Meredith added. “It’s a gene thing.”

“I have to ask you John, have you been questioned by the police?”

“Along with both my parents.”

“And you have an alibi for the nights of both killings?” I waited for a reaction, but he continued to sip his tea calmly.

“Nope. I was out driving around. I just need to get out of here sometimes, you know?” He darted a quick glance at Meredith, whose lips pursed when she caught him looking. “It’s just a smaller town than I’m used to. Sometimes you need to get lost for a little. I know you don’t get it, Mer.” Meredith stayed silent.

“I get it,” I offered. “I remember getting very claustrophobic growing up here, I can’t imagine what it must be like to move here from somewhere else.”

“Johnny’s being noble,” Meredith interrupted. “He was with me both those nights. He just doesn’t want to get me in trouble. Print that.” Meredith was wobbling on the edge of the sofa, stiff and upright and slightly disconnected, as if she were speaking in tongues.

“Meredith,” John murmured. “No.”

“I’m not going to have people thinking my boyfriend is a fucking baby killer, thank you very much, John.”

“You tell that story to the police, and they’ll know the truth in an hour. It will look even worse for me. No one really thinks I’d kill my own sister.” John took a single lock of Meredith’s hair and pulled his fingers gently from the roots to the end. The word tickle flashed randomly from my right hip. I believed the boy. He cried in public and told silly stories about his sister and played with his girlfriend’s hair and I believed him. I could almost hear Curry snort at my naiveté.

“Speaking of stories,” I started. “I need to ask you about one. Is it true Natalie hurt one of her classmates back in Philadelphia?”

John froze, turned to Meredith, and for the first time he looked unpleasant. He gave me a true image for the phrase curled lips. His whole body jolted and I thought he’d bolt for the door, but then he leaned back and took a breath.

“Great. This is why my mom hates the media,” he grumbled. “There was an article about that in the paper back home. It was just a few paragraphs. It made Natalie sound like an animal.”

“So tell me what happened.”

He shrugged. Picked at a nail. “It was in art class, and the kids were cutting and painting, and a little girl got hurt. Natalie was a little kid with a temper, and this girl was sort of always bossing Natalie around. And one time Natalie happened to have scissors in her hand. It wasn’t like a premeditated assault. I mean, she was nine at the time.”

I had a flash of Natalie, that serious child from the Keene family photo, wielding blades at a little girl’s eyes. An image of bright red blood mingling unexpectedly with pastel watercolors.

“What happened to the little girl?”

“They saved her left eye. Her right was, uh, ruined.”

“Natalie attacked both her eyes?”

He stood up, pointing down at me from almost the same angle as his mother had. “Natalie saw a shrink for a year after, dealing with this. Natalie woke up with nightmares for months. She was nine. It was an accident. We all felt horrible. My dad set up a fund for the little girl. We had to leave so Natalie could start over. That’s why we had to come here—Dad took the first job he could find. We moved in the middle of the night, like criminals. To this place. To this goddam town.”

“Gee John, I didn’t realize you were having such a horrible time,” Meredith murmured.

He began to cry then, sitting back down, his head in his hands.

“I didn’t mean that I was sorry I came here. I meant I’m sorry she came here, because now she’s dead. And we were trying to help. And she’s dead.” He let out a quiet wail, and Meredith wrapped her arms grudgingly around him. “Someone killed my sister.”

There would be no formal dinner that night, as Miss Adora wasn’t feeling well, Gayla informed me. I assume it was my mother’s affectation to request the Miss in front of her name, and I tried to imagine how the conversation might go. Gayla, the best servants in the best households call their mistresses by their formal names. We want to be the best, don’t we? Something like that.

Whether it was my argument with my mother or Amma’s that was the cause of the trouble, I wasn’t sure. I could hear them bickering like pretty birds in my mother’s room, Adora accusing Amma, correctly, of having driven the golf cart without permission. Like all rural towns, Wind Gap has an obsession with machinery. Most homes own a car and a half for every occupant (the half being an antique collectible, or an old piece of crap on blocks, depending on the income bracket), plus boats, Jet Skis, scooters, tractors, and, among the elite of Wind Gap, golf carts, which younger kids without licenses use to whip around town. Technically illegal, but no one ever stops them. I guessed my mother had tried to withhold this bit of freedom from Amma after the murders. I would have. Their fight squeaked on like an old seesaw for nearly half an hour. Don’t lie to me, little girl…. The warning was so familiar it gave me an old feeling of unease. So Amma did occasionally get caught.

When the phone rang, I picked up, just so Amma wouldn’t lose her momentum, and was surprised to hear the cheerleader staccato of my old friend Katie Lacey. Angie Papermaker was having the girls over for a Pity Party. Drink a bunch of wine, watch a sad movie, cry, gossip. I should come. Angie lived in the New Rich part of town—huge mansions at the outskirts of Wind Gap. Practically Tennessee. I couldn’t tell from Katie’s voice if that made her jealous or smug. Knowing her, probably a bit of both. She’d always been one of those girls who wanted what anyone else had, even if she didn’t want it.

I knew when I saw Katie and her friends at the Keenes’ home that I’d have to submit to at least one evening out. It was this or finish transcribing my talk with John, which was making me dangerously sad. Plus, like Annabelle, Jackie, and that catty group of my mother’s friends, this gathering was likely to yield more information than I’d get through a dozen formal interviews.

As soon as she pulled up in front of the house I realized that Katie Lacey, now Katie Brucker, had, predictably, done well for herself. I knew this both from the fact it took her just five minutes to pick me up (turns out her home was but a block away) and what she picked me up in: one of those huge, stupid SUVs that cost more than some people’s homes and provide just as many comforts. Behind my head, I could hear the DVD player tittering with some kids’ show, despite the absence of kids. In front of me, the dashboard navigator was providing unnecessary play-by-play directions.

Her husband, Brad Brucker, was studying at her father’s feet, and when Daddy retired, he’d take over the business himself. They peddled a controversial hormone used to bulk up chickens with horrific rapidity. My mother always sniffed at this—she’d never use anything that put such a stunning rush on the growing process. That didn’t mean she eschewed hormones: My mother’s pigs were pricked with chemicals till they plumped and reddened like squirting cherries, till their legs couldn’t support their juicy girth. But it was done at a more leisurely pace.

Brad Brucker was the type of husband to live where Katie said, impregnate Katie when she asked, buy Katie the Pottery Barn sofa she wanted, and otherwise shut up. He was good-looking if you looked at him long enough, and he had a dick the size of my ring finger. This I knew firsthand, thanks to a slightly mechanical exchange my freshman year. But apparently the tiny thing worked fine: Katie was at the end of her first trimester for her third kid. They were going to keep trying till she had a boy. We really want a little rascal running around.

Talk of me, Chicago, no husband yet but fingers crossed! Talk of her, her hair, her new vitamin program, Brad, her two girls, Emma and Mackenzie, Wind Gap ladies’ auxiliary, and the horrible job they did with the St. Patrick’s Day Parade. Then sigh: those poor little girls. Yes, sigh: my story on those poor little girls. Apparently she didn’t care that much, because she was quickly back to the ladies’ auxiliary and how scattered it had become now that Becca Hart (née Mooney) was activities director. Becca was a girl of midtier popularity from our days, who shot to social stardom five years ago when she snagged Eric Hart, whose parents owned a sprawling Go-Kart, waterslide, mini-golf tourist trap in the ugliest part of the Ozarks. The situation was quite reproachable. She’d be there tonight and I could see for myself. She just didn’t fit in.

Angie’s house looked like a child’s drawing of a mansion: It was so generic it was barely three-dimensional. When I entered the room I realized how much I didn’t want to be there. There was Angie, who’d unnecessarily dropped ten pounds since high school, and who smiled demurely at me and went back to setting out a fondue. There was Tish, who’d been the little mommy of the group even back then, the one who held your hair when you threw up, and who had occasional dramatic crying jags about feeling unloved. She’d married a guy from Newcastle, I learned, a slightly dorky man (this in hushed tones from Katie) who made a solid living. Mimi draped herself over a chocolate-leather couch. A dazzling adolescent, her looks didn’t translate into adulthood. No one else seemed to notice. Everyone still referred to her as “the hot one.” Backing this up: the giant rock on her hand, courtesy of Joey Johansen, a gangly, sweet boy who’d sprouted into a linebacker junior year, and suddenly demanded to be called Jo-ha. (That’s truly all I remember of him.) Poor Becca sat amidst them, looking eager and awkward, dressed almost comically similar to her hostess (Had Angie taken Becca shopping?). She flashed smiles to anyone who caught her eye, but no one talked to her.

We watched Beaches.

Tish was sobbing when Angie turned the lights on.

“I’ve gone back to work,” she announced in a wail, pressed coral pink fingernails across her eyes. Angie poured wine and patted her knee, stared at her with a showy concern.

“Good God, sweetie, why?” Katie murmured. Even her murmur was girlish and clicky. Like a thousand mice nibbling crackers.

“With Tyler in preschool, I thought I wanted to,” Tish said between sobs. “Like I needed a purpose.” She spat the last word out as if it were contaminated.

“You have a purpose,” said Angie. “Don’t let society tell you how to raise your family. Don’t let feminists”—here she looked at me—“make you feel guilty for having what they can’t have.”

“She’s right, Tish, she’s completely right,” offered Becca. “Feminism means allowing women to make whatever kind of choices they want.”

The women were looking dubiously at Becca when suddenly Mimi’s sobs popped up from her corner, and the attention, and Angie-with-the-wine, turned to her.

“Steven doesn’t want to have any more kids,” she wept.

“Why not?” Katie said with impressively strident outrage.

“He says three’s enough.”

“Enough for him or for you?” Katie snapped.

“That’s what I said. I want a girl. I want a daughter.” The women pet her hair. Katie pet her belly. “And I want a son,” she whimpered, staring pointedly at the photo of Angie’s three-year-old boy on the mantel.

The weeping and fretting went back and forth between Tish and Mimi—I miss my babies…I’ve always dreamed of a big houseful of kids, that’s all I’ve ever wanted…what’s so wrong with just being a mommy? I felt sorry for them—they seemed truly distraught—and I certainly could sympathize with a life that didn’t turn out as planned. But after much head nodding and murmurs of assent, I could think of nothing useful to say and I ducked into the kitchen to slice some cheese and stay out of the way. I knew this ritual from high school, and I knew it didn’t take much for it to turn nasty. Becca soon joined me in the kitchen, began washing dishes.

“This happens pretty much every week,” she said and half rolled her eyes, pretending to be less annoyed than bemused.

“Cathartic, I guess,” I offered. I could sense her wanting me to say more. I knew the feeling. When I’m on the edge of getting a good quote, it seems like I can almost reach inside the person’s mouth and pluck it off their tongue.

“I had no idea my life was so miserable until I started coming to Angie’s little get-togethers,” Becca whispered, taking a newly clean knife to slice some Gruyere. We had enough cheese to feed all of Wind Gap quite prettily.

“Ah, well, being conflicted means you can live a shallow life without copping to being a shallow person.”

“Sounds about right,” Becca said. “Was it like this with you guys in high school?” she asked.

“Oh pretty much, when we weren’t stabbing each other in the back.”

“Guess I’m glad I was such a loser,” she said, and laughed. “Wonder how I can be less cool now?” I laughed then too, poured her a glass of wine, slightly giddy at the absurdity of finding myself plopped right back in my teenage life.

By the time we returned, still lightly giggling, every woman in the room was crying, and they all stared up at us simultaneously, like a gruesome Victorian portrait come to life.

“Well, I’m glad you two are having such fun,” Katie snapped.

“Considering what’s going on in our town,” Angie added. The subject had clearly widened.

“What’s wrong with the world? Why would someone hurt little girls?” Mimi cried. “Those poor things.”

“And to take their teeth, that’s what I can’t get over,” Katie said.

“I just wish they’d been treated nicer when they were alive,” Angie sobbed. “Why are girls so cruel to each other?”

“The girls picked on them?” Becca asked.

“They cornered Natalie in the bathroom after school one day…and cut her hair off,” Mimi sobbed. Her face was wrecked, swollen and splotchy. Dark rivulets of mascara marked her blouse.

“They made Ann show her…privates to the boys,” said Angie.

“They always picked on those girls, just because they were a little different,” Katie said, wiping her tears delicately on a cuff.

“Who’s ‘they’?” Becca asked.

“Ask Camille, she’s the one reporting this whole thing,” Katie said, lifting her chin up, a gesture I remembered from high school. It meant she was turning on you, but feeling quite justified. “You know how awful your sister is, right, Camille?”

“I know girls can be miserable.”

“So you’re defending her?” Katie glowered. I could feel myself getting pulled into Wind Gap politics and I panicked. Catfight began thumping on my calf.

“Oh, Katie, I don’t even know her well enough to defend or not defend her,” I said, faking weariness.

“Have you even cried once about those little girls?” Angie said. They were all in a bunch now, staring me down.

“Camille doesn’t have any children,” Katie said piously. “I don’t think she can feel that hurt the way we do.”

“I feel very sad about those girls,” I said, but it sounded artificial, like a beauty contestant pledging world peace. I did feel sad, but articulating it seemed cheap to me.

“I don’t mean this to sound cruel,” Tish began, “but it seems like part of your heart can never work if you don’t have kids. Like it will always be shut off.”

“I agree,” Katie said. “I didn’t really become a woman until I felt Mackenzie inside me. I mean, there’s all this talk these days of God versus science, but it seems like, with babies, both sides agree. The Bible says be fruitful and multiply, and science, well, when it all boils down, that’s what women were made for, right? To bear children.”

“Girl power,” Becca muttered under her breath.

Becca took me home because Katie wanted a sleepover at Angie’s. Guess the nanny would deal with her darling girls in the morning. Becca made a few game jokes about the women’s obsession with mothering, which I acknowledged with small croaks of laughter. Easy for you to say, you have two kids. I was feeling desperately sulky.

I put on a clean nightgown and sat squarely in the center of my bed. No more booze for you tonight, I whispered. I patted my cheek and unclenched my shoulders. I called myself sweetheart. I wanted to cut: Sugar flared on my thigh, nasty burned near my knee. I wanted to slice barren into my skin. That’s how I’d stay, my insides unused. Empty and pristine. I pictured my pelvis split open, to reveal a tidy hollow, like the nest of a vanished animal.

Those little girls. What’s wrong with the world? Mimi had cried, and it had barely registered, the lament was so commonplace. But I felt it now. Something was wrong, right here, very horribly wrong. I could picture Bob Nash sitting on the edge of Ann’s bed, trying to remember the last thing he said to his daughter. I saw Natalie’s mother, crying into one of her old T-shirts. I saw me, a despairing thirteen-year-old sobbing on the floor of my dead sister’s room, holding a small flowered shoe. Or Amma, thirteen herself, a woman-child with a gorgeous body and a gnawing desire to be the baby girl my mother mourned. My mother weeping over Marian. Biting that baby. Amma, asserting her power over lesser creatures, laughing as she and her friends cut through Natalie’s hair, the curls falling to the tile floor. Natalie, stabbing at the eyes of a little girl. My skin was screaming, my ears banged with my heartbeat. I closed my eyes, wrapped my arms around myself, and wept.

After ten minutes of sobbing in my pillow, I started pulling out of the crying jag, mundane thoughts bobbing into my head: the quotes from John Keene I might use in my article, the fact that my rent was due next week back in Chicago, the smell of the apple going sour in the trash basket by my bed.

Then, outside my door, Amma quietly whispered my name. I buttoned up the top of my nightgown, pulled my sleeves down, and let her in. She was wearing a pink flowered nightgown, her blonde hair flowing over her shoulders, her feet bare. She looked truly adorable, no better word.

“You’ve been crying,” she said, slightly astounded.

“A little.”

“Because of her?” The final word was weighted, I could picture it round and heavy, making a deep thump in a pillow.

“A little, I guess.”

“Me, too.” She stared at my edges: the collar of my nightgown, the ends of my sleeves. She was trying to glimpse my scars. “I didn’t know you hurt yourself,” she said finally.

“Not anymore.”

“That’s good, I guess.” She wavered at the edge of my bed. “Camille, do you ever feel like bad things are going to happen, and you can’t stop them? You can’t do anything, you just have to wait?”

“Like an anxiety attack?” I couldn’t stop staring at her skin, it was so smooth and tawny, like warm ice cream.

“No. Not really.” She sounded like I’d disappointed her, failed to solve a clever riddle. “But, anyway. I brought you a present.” She held out a square of wrapping paper and told me to open it carefully. Inside: a tidily rolled joint.

“It’s better than that vodka you drink,” Amma said, automatically defensive. “You drink a lot. This is better. It won’t make you as sad.”

“Amma, really…”

“Can I see your cuts again?” She smiled shyly.

“No.” A silence. I held up the joint. “And Amma, I don’t think you should…”

“Well I do, so take it or don’t. I was just trying to be nice.” She frowned and twisted a corner of her nightgown.

“Thank you. It’s sweet that you’d like to help me feel better.”

“I can be nice, you know?” she said, her brow still furrowed. She seemed on the edge of tears herself.

“I know. It’s just that I’m wondering why you’ve decided to be nice to me now.”

“Sometimes I can’t. But right now, I can. When everyone’s asleep and everything’s quiet, it’s easier.” She reached out, her hand like a butterfly before my face, then dropped it, patted me on the knee, and left.