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.”
