Just Like Home(85)
No, the only thing to do is wait Daphne out. There is no reasoning with her now.
She’ll come back to her senses soon.
“He’s not going to explain anything to anyone,” Daphne continues. Foamy saliva is gathering at the corners of her mouth and her eyes are too bright. “That’s the whole goddamned point. He’s taking the blame for what you did, so that you can have a life.” Two tendons stand out in the front of her neck. “I told him to just get rid of the boy after what you did, but he went to the hospital anyway and now he’s gone. There’s not even going to be a trial, do you understand? There’s not going to be a trial because he doesn’t want them to ask you any questions.” Her eyes shine bright with a wash of tears. “He picked you. He picked you over me, and now he’s just going to go away to prison for however long they tell him to go. You won.”
Vera doesn’t understand how she’s supposed to have won. She doesn’t understand how she’s meant to be the victor in a contest that has left her here, alone with Daphne, without her father. She wants to ask why he would make this decision without talking to her about it, why he doesn’t want anyone asking her questions—but Daphne isn’t finished.
She takes a shuddering breath, closes her eyes, and speaks without looking at her daughter. “So. Here’s what’s going to happen. We can’t afford boarding school without your father’s salary, which means you have to stay here. You’re going to stay in your bedroom and homeschool yourself until the day you graduate or the day you turn eighteen, whichever comes first. You can finish a homeschooling program faster than regular school, I bet, without any distractions. And then you’re on your own.” She holds up her hand and counts off the rules on her fingers. “You don’t talk to me about your father. You don’t talk to me about your problems. You don’t rub this in, no matter how smug you might feel about it.”
Vera breaks before she can even think about what she’s doing, because she can’t let it stand, she can’t let it pass unremarked. “But Mom, I don’t—”
There’s a popgun crack. Pain flashes through Vera’s left temple and her vision goes sideways for a moment as her head snaps to the right. She clutches the side of her head and slowly, slowly, she looks to her mother as she realizes what’s happened.
Daphne is breathing hard through her nose, her hand still raised, the knuckles already red where they struck Vera’s cheekbone. “I told you,” she says, lowering her hand slowly, her voice breaking. “I told you not to talk. I don’t want to hear your voice. I don’t want to hear your lies. Don’t—don’t you ever speak to me unless this house is on fire, do you understand?”
Vera swallows hard, her hand still pressed to her temple, which is throbbing with sick heat. Tears well up in her eyes, unbidden, and spill over her cheeks without her permission. She swallows a hiccup. She needs to cry like a little kid, full-throated and choking, but she knows in her bones that she mustn’t cry like that in front of Daphne. Not now. Not ever again.
Daphne tugs at the bottom of her shirt, not that it needs straightening. She closes her eyes and lets out a breath. “Now,” she says softly, evenly, her eyes still shut, “you’ll go to your bedroom and stay there until I can stand to be in the same room as you.” She purses her lips for a moment, then continues. “You will not turn me into a woman who strikes her child. I’m a better mother than that.”
Vera can’t move. She wants to leave this room, wants to hide in her bedroom with the chair pushed under the doorknob, wants to run away from home and never come back, wants to run into Daphne’s arms and breathe in the hairspray smell of her shoulders and feel the unmoving certainty of the way her mother never, ever, ever hugs her back.
She’s stuck like that, paralyzed, until Daphne opens her eyes.
Daphne does not look at Vera as though she is seeing her daughter. She does not look at Vera as though she is seeing a human being. She looks at Vera as though she’s looking at some small damp animal that got into the mudroom in the night and died, like she can smell the death of it and resents having to dispose of it.
Vera walks into her bedroom and closes the door. Her hands and feet are numb and her eyes are dry and her belly feels hollow. Everything she does feels like she’s doing it in a movie, like there’s a camera following her around and recording each of her movements. She can hear her mother’s footfalls, can hear her walking into the kitchen for a glass of wine from the big bottle by the stove.
She needs to cry, but she doesn’t want Daphne to hear.
She opens her closet and pulls out the laundry basket that’s in there, shoves aside some shoes, and tucks herself inside. The heavy door swings almost all the way shut, leaving her nestled into a dark pocket of the house her father built. She snaps her fingers four times, and the door draws in toward her by one last inch, closing with a soft thud.
The sound of Daphne moving through the house disappears. It’s dark and quiet and safe. Vera presses her back into the corner of the closet, where two walls meet. She imagines strong, steady arms holding her, a friend who understands that she didn’t mean for any of this to happen, a friend who will let her cry as much as she needs to. A friend who will tell her that she is good. She knows it’s childish to depend so much on an imaginary friend, but she needs someone, anyone.