Sharp_Objects - Flynn

“I don’t think so, Momma.”

“Headstrong. Like those girls. I tried to be close with those girls, those dead girls.”

“What do you mean be close with them?”

“They reminded me of you, running around town wild. Like little pretty animals. I thought if I could be close with them, I would understand you better. If I could like them, maybe I could like you. But I couldn’t.”

“No, I don’t expect so.” The grandfather clock chimed eleven. I wonder how many times my mother had heard that growing up in this house.

“When I had you inside of me, when I was a girl—so much younger than you are now—I thought you’d save me. I thought you’d love me. And then my mother would love me. That was a joke.” My mother’s voice swept high and raw, like a red scarf in a storm.

“I was a baby.”

“Even from the beginning you disobeyed, wouldn’t eat. Like you were punishing me for being born. Made me look like a fool. Like a child.”

“You were a child.”

“And now you come back and all I can think of is ‘Why Marian and not her?’”

Rage flattened immediately into a dark despair. My fingers found a wood staple in the floorboard. I jabbed it under my fingernail. I would not cry for this woman.

“I’m not so pleased to be left here anyway, Momma, if it makes you feel any better.”

“You’re so hateful.”

“I learned at your feet.”

My mother lunged then, grabbed me by both arms. Then she reached behind me and, with one fingernail, circled the spot on my back that had no scars.

“The only place you have left,” she whispered at me. Her breath was cloying and musky, like air coming from a spring well.

“Yes.”

“Someday I’ll carve my name there.” She shook me once, released me, then left me on the stairs with the warm remains of our liquor.

I drank the rest of the sours and had dark sticky dreams. My mother had cut me open and was unpacking my organs, stacking them in a row on my bed as my flesh flapped to either side. She was sewing her initials into each of them, then tossing them back into me, along with a passel of forgotten objects: an orange Day-Glo rubber ball I got from a gumball machine when I was ten; a pair of violet wool stockings I wore when I was twelve; a cheap gold-tinted ring a boy bought me when I was a freshman. With each object, relief that it was no longer lost.

When I woke, it was past noon, and I was disoriented and afraid. I took a gulp from my flask of vodka to ease the panic, then ran to the bathroom and threw it up, along with strings of sugary brown saliva from the amaretto sours.

Stripped naked and into the bathtub, the porcelain cool on my back. I lay flat, turned on the water, and let it creep up over me, fill my ears until they submerged with the satisfying whulp! of a sinking ship going under. Would I ever have the discipline to let the water cover my face, drown with my eyes open? Just refuse to lift yourself two inches, and it will be done.

The water stung at my eyes, covered my nose, and then enveloped me. I pictured myself from above: lashed skin and a still face flickering under a film of water. My body refused the quiet. Bodice, dirty, nag, widow! it screamed. My stomach and throat were convulsing, desperate to pull in air. Finger, whore, hollow! A few moments of discipline. What a pure way to die. Blossom, bloom, bonny.

I jerked to the surface, gulped in air. Panting, my head tilted toward the ceiling. Easy, easy, I told myself. Easy, sweet girl, you’ll be okay. I petted my cheek, baby-talked myself—how pitiful—but my breathing hushed.

Then, a bolt of panic. I reached behind me to find the circle of skin in my back. Still smooth.

Black clouds were sitting low over the town, so the sun curled around the edges and turned everything a sickly yellow, as if we were bugs under fluorescents. Still weak from the encounter with my mother, the feeble glow seemed appropriate. I had an appointment at Meredith Wheeler’s for an interview concerning the Keenes. Not sure it would yield much of import but I’d at least get a quote, which I needed, having not heard a word from the Keenes after my last article. Truth was, with John living behind Meredith’s house now, I had no way of reaching him except through her. I’m sure she loved that.

I hiked over to Main Street to pick up my car where I’d abandoned it during yesterday’s outing with Richard. Weakly dropped into the driver’s seat. I still managed to arrive at Meredith’s a half hour early. Knowing the primping and plumping going on in preparation for my visit, I assumed she’d set me out back on the patio, and I’d have a chance to check in on John. As it turned out, she wasn’t there at all, but I could hear music from behind the house, and I followed it to see the Four Little Blondes in fluorescent bikinis at one end of the pool, passing a joint between them, and John sitting in the shade at the other end, watching. Amma looked tan and blonde and delicious, not a trace of yesterday’s hangover on her. She was as tiny and colorful as an appetizer.

Confronted with all that smooth flesh, I could feel my skin begin its chattering. I couldn’t handle direct contact on top of my hangover panic. So I spied from the edge of the house. Anyone could have seen me, but none bothered. Amma’s three friends were soon in a marijuana-and-heat spiral, splayed face down on their blankets.

Amma stayed up, staring down John, rubbing suntan oil on her shoulders, her chest, breasts, slipping her hands under her bikini top, watching John watching her. John gave no reaction, like a kid on his sixth hour of TV. The more lasciviously Amma rubbed, the less flicker he gave. One triangle of her top had fallen askew to reveal the plump breast beneath. Thirteen years old, I thought to myself, but I felt a spear of admiration for the girl. When I’d been sad, I hurt myself. Amma hurt other people. When I’d wanted attention, I’d submitted myself to boys: Do what you want; just like me. Amma’s sexual offerings seemed a form of aggression. Long skinny legs and slim wrists and high, babied voice, all aimed like a gun. Do what I want; I might like you.

“Hey John, who do I remind you of?” Amma called.

“A little girl who’s misbehaving and thinks it’s cuter than it is,” John called back. He sat at the pool’s edge in shorts and a T-shirt, his feet dipped into the water. His legs had a thin, almost feminine coating of dark hair.

“Really? Why don’t you stop watching me from your little hideaway then,” she said, pointing a leg toward the carriage house, with its tiny attic window sporting blue checked curtains. “Meredith will be jealous.”

“I like to keep an eye on you, Amma. Always know I have my eye on you.”

My guess: My half sister had gone into his room without permission, rifled through his things. Or waited for him on his bed.

“You sure do now,” she said, laughing, her legs spread wide. She looked gruesome in the dark light, the rays casting pockets of shadows on her face.

“It’ll be your turn some day, Amma,” he said. “Soon.”

“Big man. I hear,” Amma called back. Kylie looked up, focused her eyes on her friend, smiled, and lay back down.

“Patient, too.”

“You’ll need it.” She blew him a kiss.

The amaretto sours were turning on me, and I was sick of this banter. I didn’t like John Keene flirting with Amma, no matter how provocative she was being. She was still thirteen.

“Hello?” I called out, rousing Amma, who waggled her fingers at me. Two of the three blondes looked up, then lay back down. John cupped some pool water in his hands and rubbed it across his face before turning the corners of his mouth up at me. He was tracing back the conversation, guessing how much I’d heard. I was equidistant from each side, and walked toward John, sat a good six feet away.

“You read the story?” I asked. He nodded.

“Yeah, thanks, it was nice. The part about Natalie at least.”

“I’m here to talk a little bit to Meredith today about Wind Gap; maybe Natalie will come up,” I said. “Is that okay by you?”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“Sure. She’s not home yet. Not enough sugar for the sweet tea. She freaked, ran off to the store without makeup.”

“Scandalous.”

“For Meredith, yes.”

“How are things going here?”

“Oh, all right,” he said. He began patting his right hand. Self-comfort. I felt sorry for him again. “I don’t know that anything would be any good anywhere, so it’s hard to gauge if this is better or worse, you know what I mean?”

“Like: This place is miserable and I want to die, but I can’t think of any place I’d rather be,” I offered. He turned and stared at me, blue eyes mirroring the oval pool.

“That’s exactly what I mean.” Get used to it, I thought.

“Have you thought about getting some counseling, seeing a therapist?” I said. “It might be really helpful.”

“Yeah, John, might quell some of your urges. They can be deadly, you know? We don’t want more little girls showing up without their teeth.” Amma had slipped into the pool and was floating ten feet away.

John shot up, and for a second I thought he was going to dive into the pool and throttle her. Instead, he pointed a finger at her, opened his mouth, closed it, and walked to his attic room.

“That was really cruel,” I said to her.

“But funny,” said Kylie, floating by on a hot pink air mattress.

“What a freak,” added Kelsey, paddling past.

Jodes was sitting in her blanket, knees pulled to her chin, eyes trained on the carriage house.

“You were so sweet with me the other night. Now you’re so changed,” I murmured to Amma. “Why?”

She looked caught off guard for a split second. “I don’t know. I wish I could fix it. I do.” She swam off toward her friends as Meredith appeared at the door and peevishly called me in.

The Wheelers’ home looked familiar: an overstuffed plush sofa, a coffee table hosting a sailboat replica, a jaunty velvet ottoman in lime green, a black-and-white photo of the Eiffel Tower taken at a severe angle. Pottery Barn, spring catalog. Right down to the lemon yellow plates Meredith was now placing on the table, glazed berry tarts sitting in the center.

She was wearing a linen sundress the color of an unripe peach, her hair pulled down over her ears and held at the nape of her neck in a loose ponytail that had to have taken twenty minutes to get that perfect. She looked, suddenly, a lot like my mother. She could have been Adora’s child more believably than I. I could feel a grudge coming, tried to keep it in check, as she poured us each a glass of sweet tea and smiled.

“I have no idea what my sister was saying to you, but I can only guess it was hateful or dirty, so I apologize,” she said. “Although, I’m sure you know Amma’s the real ringleader there.” She looked at the tart but seemed disinclined to eat it. Too pretty.

“You probably know Amma better than I do,” I said. “She and John don’t seem to…”

“She’s a very needy child,” she said, crossing her legs, uncrossing them, straightening her dress. “Amma worries she’ll shrivel up and blow away if attention isn’t always on her. Especially from boys.”

“Why doesn’t she like John? She was implying he was the one who hurt Natalie.” I took out my tape recorder and pressed the On button, partly because I didn’t want to waste time with ego games, and partly because I hoped she’d say something about John worth printing. If he was the prime suspect, at least in Wind Gap minds, I needed comment.

“That’s just Amma. She has a mean streak. John likes me and not her, so she attacks him. When she’s not trying to steal him away from me. Like that’s going to happen.”

“It seems a lot of people have been talking, though, saying they think John may have something to do with this. Why do you think that is?”

She shrugged, stuck her lower lip out, watched the tape whir a few seconds.

“You know how it is. He’s from out of town. He’s smart and worldly and eight times better looking than anyone else around here. People would like it to be him, because then that means this…evilness didn’t come from Wind Gap. It came from outside. Eat your tart.”

“Do you believe he’s innocent?” I took a bite, the glaze dripping off my lip.

“Of course I do. It’s all idle gossip. Just because someone goes for a drive…lots of people do that around here. John just had bad timing.”

“And what about the family? What can you tell me about either of the girls?”

“They were darling girls, very well behaved and sweet little things. It’s like God plucked the best girls from Wind Gap to take to heaven for his own.” She’d been practicing, the words had a rehearsed rhythm. Even her smile seemed measured: Too small is stingy, too big is inappropriately pleased. This smile just right. Brave and hopeful, it said.

“Meredith, I know that’s not what you thought about the girls.”

“Well, what kind of quote do you want?” she snapped.

“A truthful one.”

“I can’t do that. John would hate me.”

“I wouldn’t have to name you in the article.”

“Then what would be the point of me doing the interview?”

“If you know something about the girls that people aren’t saying, you should tell me. It could direct attention away from John, depending on what the information is.”

Meredith took a demure sip of tea, dabbed at the corner of her strawberry lips with her napkin.

“But could I still get my name in the article somewhere?”

“I can quote you elsewhere by name.”

“I want the stuff about God plucking them to heaven,” Meredith baby-talked. She wrung her hands and smiled at me sideways.

“No. Not that. I’ll use the quote about John being from out of town and that’s why people are so gossipy about him.”

“Why can’t you use the one I want?” I could see Meredith as a five-year-old, dressed as a princess and bitching because her favorite doll didn’t like her imaginary tea.

“Because it goes against a lot of things I’ve heard, and because no one really talks that way. It sounds fake.”

It was the most pathetic showdown I’ve ever had with a subject, and a completely unethical way to do my work. But I wanted her fucking story. Meredith twirled the silver chain around her neck, studied me.

“You could have been a model, you know?” she said suddenly.

“I doubt that,” I snapped. Every time people said I was pretty, I thought of everything ugly swarming beneath my clothes.

“You could have. I always wanted to be you when I grew up. I think about you, you know? I mean, our moms are friends and all, so I knew you were in Chicago and I pictured you in this big mansion with a few little curly tops and some stud husband investment banker. You all in the kitchen drinking orange juice and him getting in his Jag and going to work. But I guess I imagined wrong.”