Acts of Violet(5)
“Mrs. T thinks this would be good for me.” Raising her chin to a stubborn angle, her voice is firm as she says, “I think so, too.”
“Good for you how?” Oh, how I want to sweep those flyers to the floor or, better yet, shred each one by hand. She doesn’t remember the fallout from the last time she had that many eyeballs on her. She believes her anxiety and phobias are innate, like the mole above her lip or her strawberry allergy. “You throw up anytime you have to give a speech to more than two people. You won’t even do karaoke.”
“All the more reason I should speak at the vigil. Face my fears and all that.” She grabs the stack of flyers and holds them to her chest like a shield.
“Face your fears … in front of thousands of strangers. Like an extreme form of immersion therapy.” Nodding, I pretend this is a sound plan. “So when you were a kid and went through your phase of being deathly afraid of water, should I have taken you on a cruise and thrown you overboard? Because that’s kinda what Mrs. Toback is doing to you here.”
Quinn goes pale at the suggestion and mutters, “I thought parents were supposed to be supportive and shit.”
Before I can respond, Gabriel steps in, putting a hand on each of our shoulders. “Okay, let’s take it down a notch.” He turns to me. “I know you’re just looking out for our daughter, but we gotta trust her to make her own decisions and take risks once in a while.” He turns to Quinn. “And you know your parents are supportive ‘and shit,’ but I think you might be forgetting how hard it is on your mother dealing with all the extra ten-year anniversary hysteria.”
Still sullen, Quinn shoots me a doubtful look. “Is it hard on you, though? You seem more annoyed than anything.”
Of course I’m annoyed. I’ve been immersed in the purgatory of my sister’s disappearance for the past decade. I think about her every fucking day. But since I prefer to avoid big emotional displays, I get criticized for not caring enough about her absence (mostly by people I don’t know, sometimes by the one I gave birth to). It’s bad enough every anniversary brings up extra Violet worship, but something about round numbers makes people lose their minds. Why is ten years more noteworthy than nine or eleven? It’s all so arbitrary. Yet I’m being inundated with reminders of my sister—online and off—when avoiding the tidal pull of her memory is already impossible. So yeah, I’m annoyed, along with other things I can’t verbalize, not even to my husband or daughter.
Something about my weary silence chastens Quinn. “Sorry, Mom,” she relents. “Is that #violetisback stuff messing with you, too? I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t stop checking the posts…”
Oh god, all I need is for her to get her hopes up again. “You know none of the photos are really her, right? It’s all a fad or some bullshit marketing gimmick…” Gabriel squeezes my shoulder, silently urging me to take it easy. “But yeah. It is kind of messing with me, to be honest.” My hands need something to do, so I rinse off the head of lettuce and tear it by hand into a salad bowl. “There’s just so much happening all at once. Books, podcasts, TV shows. It’s easier to handle when it’s more sporadic, you know?”
“Yeah. It’s a lot.”
“If I can be extra honest,” I say, “I didn’t even want to go to the vigil this year.”
“You never want to go,” Gabriel and Quinn say in unison. “Jinx,” they add and share a chuckle. Must be nice to be so in sync.
I return to the knife block, grab a blade, and take my frustration out on the tomatoes.
“At least this year we can skip the I’m-not-going-to-the-vigil tug-of-war,” Quinn says.
“Right.” I don’t turn around as I chop away. “Because being the grieving sister and supportive mother takes top priority. And how lucky am I? This year, not only do I get to be judged by more people than ever, but I also get to worry about my daughter having a panic attack in front of all those extra people. Can’t wait.” Damn. We were so close to having a pleasant dinner.
A glance over my shoulder and I catch the reassuring smile Gabriel gives Quinn, the let-me-handle-this nod. But I won’t be handled, not this time.
“Sweetheart. Don’t get upset,” Gabriel murmurs in my ear and massages the back of my neck. “I know how much it sucks for you to go.”
No, he doesn’t. Nobody does.
Just recalling last year’s vigil makes my skin crawl—the pain and tedium of the whole thing. How many times would I have to endure the same compliments heaped on my sister by people who didn’t actually know her, the same questions and speculations? Every year, by the time we get to the moment of silence, I have to clench my jaw shut to keep from uttering the screams that have been boiling inside me for hours.
“How could you all let her fool you for so long?” I want to shout. “She didn’t care about entertaining or enlightening anyone, she only wanted to get paid.”
I’ll be standing there, fake-smiling as someone blathers on about how Violet changed their life and wasn’t her work so important and wasn’t she a gift taken from us too soon, and it’ll be all I can do not to shatter that reverence and howl, “She wasn’t a hero, she was a liar and a cheat. None of us meant anything to her, not even me. We were all just her marks.”