Acts of Violet(94)

CAMERON FRANK: Right … [clears throat nervously]

QUINN DWYER: Hey, Mom, I didn’t fully get it before, but you’re right. Apologies that begin with “I’m sorry if” do sound totally insincere.

CAMERON FRANK: [nervous laughter] I see neither of you are going to make this easy for me. Okay, how about this. I’m sorry, truly sorry, for any discomfort or disruption I caused either of you in pursuit of this story.

SASHA DWYER: That’s a much better apology. You can hear the difference, right, Quinn?

QUINN DWYER: Oh yeah. Not just in what he’s saying, but how he’s saying it. Definitely more sincere this time.

SASHA DWYER: Night and day. Hey, Quinn, how long do you think it’s gonna take before he asks if I wrote the takedown?

QUINN DWYER: I think he’ll get you comfortable with some easier questions first, like fun childhood stuff about growing up with Aunt Violet. Right, Cameron?

CAMERON FRANK [STUDIO]: When both Sasha and Quinn agreed to appear on the podcast, I was thrilled. But at this point, I was thinking it might’ve been a better idea to interview them separately. I couldn’t help but wonder if they’d concocted a strategy ahead of time to disarm me and take control of the conversation.

At the same time, historically, some of the most successful interviews I’ve conducted have occurred when I let the subject set the tone and pace, letting the discussion progress organically. I figured my best bet here was to go with it, even if that meant asking a thorny question sooner than I’d anticipated.

CAMERON FRANK: Actually, Quinn, I’d like to ask you about being in Violet’s act. What do you remember about performing with your aunt on LateFridayLive?

QUINN DWYER: Not much. I was only seven.

CAMERON FRANK: There must be something you could recall about it.

QUINN DWYER: It’s funny, because I’ve seen that clip of me and Aunt Violet so many times, but I don’t know how much of it is me remembering it versus creating memories based on watching it. I can picture myself doing the act with her, but I can’t bring up anything that was going through my head at the time. I don’t even remember rehearsing it. All I remember is how afterward everyone told me I did such a great job, how convincing I was when I was pretending to drown. But I must’ve not been convincing enough, because things got shitty not long after, and I stopped hearing from Aunt Violet. I thought I must’ve messed up badly to drive her away like that. Years later, I started getting panic attacks, and I’ve had issues with anxiety ever since. This irrational part of me became scared that if I did the wrong thing, I’d drive other people away.

SASHA DWYER: Honey, you didn’t drive Violet away, I did. And your panic attacks didn’t start years after you performed with her, they began as soon as you got back from LA. Along with the night terrors, and your aquaphobia. I could barely get you to bathe because you were petrified of the water. You weren’t convincing in Violet’s act because you were good at pretending to drown—you almost did drown. But I was worried bringing up the trauma would make it worse somehow, so I denied it. Not the best move on my part.

QUINN DWYER: I knew something went wrong, I could just never pinpoint it. So I blamed myself. Like, if I performed better, maybe Aunt Violet would call once in a while, or at least send a postcard.

SASHA DWYER: Quinn, you have absolutely zero fault in all this. I hate that you ever blamed yourself for any of it. Maybe I went too far cutting her off completely, but the more time passes, the more you don’t know how to fix things.

QUINN DWYER: I get that now. You kinda had to shield all of us from her toxic side. Though it never fully made sense how weirdly protective you were of her reputation around me. Especially when that takedown came out. Even while you were being accused of writing it.

CAMERON FRANK: Actually, since you brought it up, why not get into it now. Sasha, were you responsible for creating or writing the content for violetisafraud.com?

SASHA DWYER: I was not, but there’s no way to prove a negative, so I don’t expect people to believe me.

QUINN DWYER: I didn’t always believe you. But I believe you now.

Aunt Violet was a phenomenal magician. But she was … careless in a lot of ways. That’s why Dad protected you from her worst and you protected me from her worst—and kinda the rest of the world, if you think about it. Someone who makes that much of an effort to save her sister’s legacy would’ve never written that takedown.

SASHA DWYER: That means so much to me.

QUINN DWYER: Are you being sarcastic?

SASHA DWYER: Fifty percent. Force of habit.

CAMERON FRANK: So hang on, just to confirm some of the specifics in that essay—

SASHA DWYER: We’ve gone into enough specifics. Airing out our dirty laundry is bad enough, I’d appreciate it if we weren’t forced to describe each tawdry item in detail.

CAMERON FRANK: Understood. Just one last question about the takedown: Do either of you have any ideas about who might’ve written it?

[long pause]

CAMERON FRANK [STUDIO]: As the two women go quiet, Quinn shrugs and sits back, a stunned look on her face, like she said way more than she expected to. Sasha gnaws at her lip and bears a more intense expression, as if waiting for the right words to surface then debating whether or not to speak them.

SASHA DWYER: I have no way of proving this, just like I have no way of proving I didn’t write the takedown … I think Violet wrote it herself.