The Elizas: A Novel(90)

Memories come back of my mother changing on me, growing silent, angry. Telling me Eleanor was in France, then taking it back. And then I see myself meeting Eleanor in the parking lot near school. My ass in that booth at M&F, taking that sip of champagne. Leonidas—there he is!—and I going out with Eleanor to that club. My mother hunting me down the morning I awoke woozy and sick in Eleanor’s suite. Telling me the truth. Me not believing it. Doubt creeping in. Leonidas making me promise not to see her that last night. But I went anyway.

I can hear myself screaming, but I can’t stop. I cover my ears to block out the sound, but it just echoes inside my head. I can feel my knees buckling again, and from the end of a long, long tunnel I have the vague sense that Bill is trying to lift me to stand. My legs are limp and boneless. I can’t move.

The memories bulldoze on, crashing, crashing. Details I’d packed into the novel: Aunt Eleanor handing keys over to my mother so she could take possession of her chopped-up, meringue-like house in the Hollywood Hills.

“It’s the least I can do, Francesca,” she said. “At least accept this.” And my mother looked so angry, so doomed, but we’d moved in, hadn’t we?

Waking up in Eleanor’s bed at the Magnolia and seeing her slow-dancing with Dr. Singh in the front room. And afterward, after she was dead, Leonidas looming over me at that pizza parlor, which I’d stumbled to, fled to a back hallway, and stayed there. I remember smelling Eleanor’s bile on my hands and nearly puking. Leonidas was furious at me because I’d gone against his wishes, but he said that at least we could go to the police now.

“No, we can’t,” I said. “She’s dead! She’s dead!”

“Quiet!” he hissed, glancing in horror over his shoulder. We were only steps away from the pizza ovens, but the music was cranked so loud, it didn’t seem like the guys working behind the counter heard us. Still, Leonidas dead-lifted me and dragged me out an emergency exit at the back. “You can’t go around saying that,” he moaned. “Eliza, we have to get you out of here.”

But instead of going back to the dorms, I found myself at my parents’ front door. My mother opened it and went pale. Bill pushed through and grabbed me by the arms before I fainted.

“What did you do?” he whispered. “Eliza, what did you do?”

I blurted it all out. Everything, in lurid detail, starting with Eleanor showing up at my dorm that morning. Then I got to my revelation about what she’d done to Thomas, and then how Dorothy—Eleanor—had confirmed it. My mother went white.

“No,” she said. “Thomas shot himself. With that gun.”

“You really believe that?” My laugh was cruel. “Dorothy did something to him to poison his mind—and then took him to doctor after doctor, trying to get pity, trying to get attention, exactly in the way someone with Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy works. You’re the one who schooled me on this disease—you should have made the connection. Maybe he pulled the trigger of that gun, we’ll never know—but she was the one who basically put it in his hands.” I shake my head. “How can you not see? How can you look at my situation and not understand what she did to him?”

My mother pressed her hand to her mouth, but there was a light in her eyes. All sorts of emotions crossed her face. Horror. Guilt, maybe. Regret.

And then she shot into action.

“Get inside,” she told me, pressing her hands on my shoulders. “You’re not talking to anyone else about this. No one. We’ll do the talking for you. What you did, you did out of self-defense, but it’s better if people don’t even know about it. Okay, Eliza? Okay?”

Then the memories come to a screeching halt. My brain goes still and silent. I open my eyes and look around. Bill has sat me down on a chaise inside the pool area. The water is flat, untouched glass. I can hear a Taylor Swift song lilting from the Dr. Roxanne set.

I have to stand. I have to move. I jiggle my legs and arms wildly, hoping to shake the memories free. I need to get rid of this brain, rid of myself. That I have forgotten something so huge, so devastating, seems like a crime in itself. I rise and stagger away from Bill, half-blind.

“Eliza?” I hear Bill calling out. “Eliza, what are you—”

And then I see it: a rippling, blue, welcome respite. I tumble toward it, arms wheeling around, and then I leap. The space between ground and water is lovely. I wish I could open my arms and fly.

As soon as I hit the water, the pain inside me begins to dull. The voices stop, the memories subside. I open my eyes and enjoy the blue bubbles. I give in to sinking. My lungs start to give out, but something inside me tells me that I just need to wait. It will feel bad, but then it will get better.

And then the pain will be gone.





From The Dots


That same evening, Dot felt drunk as soon as she opened her eyes. The room wobbled vertiginously, and her stomach burned with acid. She was in her old bedroom at her parents’ house. She couldn’t quite remember how she’d gotten here.

Something was happening outside the house. She pushed back the curtain on her window. A police car rolled into the driveway.

She cracked open the bedroom door and listened as an officer stepped into the foyer and talked to her mother. The cop said Dorothy’s name. Dot’s throat tightened, everything she’d done tumbling back to her. This was it. She had to confess.