Mother, Mother: Psychological suspense for fans of ROOM

“I don’t remember. Everyone keeps asking me that. When are they going to stop asking? I keep saying, I don’t know.”

“Do you think you need to be admitted to the hospital?”

All the feeling trickled out of Violet’s arms. An old childhood fear—claustrophobia—set in.

“Please don’t make me stay,” Violet whispered.

“I know you’re frightened. People come here, and the idea of the hospital is scary. But you’re going through some difficult things, and the people here are trained to handle difficult things. You’re on a journey. The lights are out right now, but they will come on again. For the moment, I think we should give you a bed and a pill to help you get to sleep.”

“I’m afraid to go home,” Violet confessed. “But I don’t want to stay here.”

“I know, honey. But according to what your parents told us, you said and did some things that make you a threat to yourself or others. So we need to keep you here.”

The walls of the office seemed to constrict. Violet cast a helpless glance at the Audubon nature calendar that hung on the wall behind the nurse’s shoulder. October’s photo was a redwood forest—the kind of woodland scene that could make a person feel very awed and alone.

“For how long?” Violet asked.

“The next seventy-two hours.”

“There’s one more thing I haven’t told you.”

The counselor crossed her arms and blinked once.

Violet exhaled in a great gush. “I saw my sister last night.”

WILLIAM HURST (#ulink_6e50c853-de1a-5293-b3a4-d607070583a8)

THEY DIDN’T USUALLY have school on Saturdays, but they’d fallen behind on account of prepping for Will’s coming math Regents exam. The state said students with disabilities only had to score fifty-five out of a possible hundred percent in order to pass. But it was important to both Will and his mom that he score at least a seventy-five. That was the grade that indicated “college readiness,” and it was Josephine’s endgame that Will graduate early and go on to Columbia in four years’ time.

“We don’t have to push ourselves too hard today,” Josephine said. “But a little bit of social studies will take our minds off last night. After that, I have to drive to Violet’s hospital and sign some forms. Does that sound okay?”

Will nodded. He adjusted his costume beard over the bruise on his chin. He fashioned his sister’s black bowed headband around his neck like a tie.

Ever since the controversy at Stone Ridge Elementary last fall, Will really had come to think of the breakfast nook as his new school. This had required some adjusting, of course. Gone were the familiar sights and smells of learning: pencil shavings, lunch-box rot, the stab-and-drag sound of chalk against a blackboard.

Sure, Will still nursed a few aching, phantom limbs: recess, book fairs, games of Heads-Up, 7-Up with lazy substitute teachers. When he confessed to missing weekly job assignments like “board eraser” or “math shelf helper,” his mom put him in charge of keeping her orchids evenly moist. When he got word of his former classmates’ field trip to watch Othello at the Rosendale movie theater, Josephine had, in her words, “done one better.” She’d driven Will to the city to see the real deal at the Met. She’d even bought him a new brass-buttoned blazer for the occasion.

When Will realized he’d never be in another school play, his mother had the idea to organize a one-man performance of Edgar Allan Poe’s “Annabel Lee.” He’d recited it in the Hursts’ formal sitting room, for an audience of Perrier-sipping ladies, mainly Josephine’s various girlfriends and golf partners from the Rondout Country Club. The verse had wormed its way into his long-term memory, and months later, Will still found himself crooning it under his breath:

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,

Went envying her and me—

Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,

In this kingdom by the sea)

That the wind came out of the cloud by night,

Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

“Where’s the tea?” Will asked his mother.

Social studies usually began with a game called “Tea at the White House.” They would both dress up as famous people from history, and together, in character, they talked about how they grew up, how they died, and what made them famous. There was usually iced tea in a heavy crystal pitcher.

“There’s no tea today,” Josephine said irritably. “Just pretend.”

“Okay.” Will rose from the table, trying to make himself six feet, four inches tall. “I grew up in a one-room log cabin in Kentucky …” He trailed off. He asked his mother why she wasn’t in costume. She was supposed to be dressed like Florence Nightingale.

Josephine didn’t seem to hear his question. Her gaze lingered over a patch of condensation on the windowpane.

Will insisted on running upstairs to his parents’ bedroom to fetch a lace doily for his mother to wear on her head.

He pushed the door inward to reveal his father sitting on the bed, wearing only a towel. His cell phone was cupped to his ear. His pleading voice was unfamiliar, so very different from the managerial tone that he had used to persuade Will to join the Boy Scouts.

“I made a mistake,” Douglas said. “I need to see you. When I’m in a place like this I just can’t see the light. Are you hearing me? I can’t see the fucking light.”

Somewhere toward the end of his father’s plea, the doorknob hit the closet door with a clatter.

Douglas startled at the sound. His rimless glasses were off and his eyes were tear-swollen.

“Sorry, Dad,” Will said, swiping the doily from the top of his mom’s mahogany jewelry box and swiftly closing the door behind him.

“Did you know Dad’s on the phone?” Will asked his mother when he went back to the kitchen.

“So?”

“So it sounded like a funny conversation, is all.”

Josephine’s crossed arms and knitted brow put Will on edge.

“What do you mean, funny?”

Will scoured his brain for the right word. He needed something accurate, but also something that was sensitive to his mother’s feelings. Words meant a lot to his mother, so they meant a lot to Will. He spent a lot of time trekking through the dictionary. He filled notebooks with long and unusual nouns that might impress her (rastaquouère: a social climber; widdiful: describes someone who deserves to be hanged).

“Not funny, ha-ha,” he said. “More like funny, strange. Maybe Violet called him?”

“Oh, Will,” Josephine said. “You’re still really worried about Violet, aren’t you? I told you, she can’t hurt anyone where she is now. They won’t let her call anyone for quite a long while. Now, let’s get back to tea at the White House. You were telling me about yourself, Mr. Lincoln?”

Will, as Abe, cut straight to the part he knew his mother would like best. “When I was nine, my mom drank bad milk and puked herself to death,” he said. “I used to tell people, ‘All that I am, all that I hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.’”

Josephine’s eyes went slushy and sad in the corners. She gave a weak smile and touched the hand splint Will got at the ER last night. Then she leaned in and kissed the bandage on his chin. Somehow, it made Will’s stitches hurt less.

Will decided to leave a few things out of that morning’s tea. He didn’t tell his mother about Abe Lincoln’s older sister, Sarah, who raised him after his mother died. He also omitted the part about Abe’s younger brother, Thomas, who died in his cradle. No one likes to talk about dead babies. And his mom definitely didn’t like to speak about older sisters.

Shame and defensiveness hung, like skunk spray, around Josephine whenever someone mentioned Will’s oldest sister, Rose. Most people in town wouldn’t touch the topic with a ten-foot pole, knowing precisely how much pain it caused the Hursts. But every so often, one of the well-meaning but half-demented old ladies at Saint Peter’s Church would ask whether thespian Rose was in the latest production at Ulster Performing Arts Center. Josephine usually responded with something polite and evasive like, “No such luck,” and quickly moved on to praise the play’s actual female lead. But Will knew she wished the rest of Stone Ridge would get with the program and forget Rose at least half as quickly as she’d forgotten all of them.

A little more than a year ago Rose had run away with her boyfriend and disowned the Hursts. “Just give her space,” Violet had said when Josephine told the family about the hateful details of Rose’s final phone call. “You all talk about Rose like she’s so much younger than she is. She’s twenty. When you reach adulthood, ‘running away from home’ is generally known as ‘moving out.’”