Sharp Objects(26)

Amma kicked me again under the table and smiled emphatically, as if some important matter had been settled. She swung a corner of the garment she was wearing over her shoulder, and I realized what I’d thought was a housedress was a cleverly wrapped blue sheet. My mother noticed, too.

“What in the world are you wearing, Amma?”

“It’s my maiden cloak. I’m going to the forest to play Joan of Arc. The girls will burn me.”

“You’ll do no such thing, darling,” my mother snapped, grabbing the honey from Amma, who was about to soak her ham further. “Two girls your age are dead, and you think you’re going to the forest to play?”

The children in the woods play wild, secret games. The beginning of a poem I once knew by heart.

“Don’t worry, we’ll be fine.” Amma smiled in a cloying exaggeration.

“You’ll stay here.”

Amma stabbed at her ham and muttered something nasty. My mother turned to me with her head cocked, the diamond on her wedding finger flashing in my eyes like an SOS.

“Now, Camille, can we at least do something pleasant while you’re here?” she asked. “We could have a picnic in the backyard. Or we could take out the convertible, go for a drive, maybe play some golf over in Woodberry. Gayla, bring me some iced tea, please.”

“That all sounds nice. I just need to figure out how much longer I’m here for.”

“Yes, that’d be nice for us to know also. Not that you’re not welcome to stay as long as you want,” she said. “But it would be nice for us to know, so we could make our own plans.”

“Sure.” I took a bite of the banana, which tasted like pale green nothing.

“Or maybe Alan and I can come up there sometime this year. We’ve never really seen Chicago.” My hospital was ninety minutes south of the city. My mother flew into O’Hare and had a taxi drive her. It cost $128, $140 with tip.

“That’d be good, too. We have some great museums. You’d love the lake.”

“I don’t know that I can enjoy any kind of water anymore.”

“Why not?” I already knew.

“After that little girl, little Ann Nash, was left in the creek to drown.” She paused to take a sip of her iced tea. “I knew her, you know.”

Amma whined and began fidgeting in her seat.

“She wasn’t drowned though,” I said, knowing my correction would annoy her. “She was strangled. She just ended up in the creek.”

“And then the Keene girl. I was fond of both of them. Very fond.” She stared away wistfully, and Alan put his hand over hers. Amma stood up, released a little scream the way an excited puppy might suddenly bark, and ran upstairs.

“Poor thing,” my mother said. “She’s having nearly as hard a time as I am.”

“She actually saw the girls every day, so I’m sure she is,” I said peevishly in spite of myself. “How did you know them?”

“Wind Gap, I need not remind you, is a small town. They were sweet, beautiful little girls. Just beautiful.”

“But you didn’t really know them.”

“I did know them. I knew them well.”

“How?”

“Camille, please try not to do this. I’ve just told you that I am upset and unnerved, and instead of being comforting, you attack me.”

“So. You’ve sworn off all bodies of water in the future, then?”

My mother emitted a quick, creaky sound. “You need to shut up now, Camille.” She folded the napkin around the remains of her pear like a swaddling and left the room. Alan followed her with his manic whistling, like an old-time piano player lending drama to a silent movie.

Every tragedy that happens in the world happens to my mother, and this more than anything about her turns my stomach. She worries over people she’s never met who have a spell of bad chance. She cries over news from across the globe. It’s all too much for her, the cruelty of human beings.

She didn’t come out of her room for a year after Marian died. A gorgeous room: canopy bed the size of a ship, vanity table studded with frosted perfume bottles. A floor so glorious it had been photographed by several decorating magazines: Made from pure ivory, cut into squares, it lit up the room from below. That room and its decadent floor had me awestruck, all the more so because it was forbidden to me. Notables like Truman Winslow, the mayor of Wind Gap, paid weekly visits, brought fresh flowers and classic novels. I could glimpse my mother on occasion when the door opened to admit these people. She’d be in bed always, propped up on a snowdrift of pillows, dressed in a series of thin, flowered robes. I never got to go in.