Play nice, p.14
Play Nice, page 14
part #1 of 2025 Series
To be fair, I am incapable. Painting is one thing, but I’ve come to realize there’s no way I can replace a countertop or put in hardwood floors by my lonesome. Those Instagram Reels are deceiving, but there’s no deceiving a deceiver.
If I’m doing this, I want to do it right. Hiring a professional will pretty much decimate my savings, but I consulted with a few Realtors who assured me it’ll be well worth it. No risk, no reward. The satisfaction of leaving this place unrecognizable will be so sweet, the scent of it wafting toward me like a pie left to cool on a windowsill.
“Thank you for coming by. I’ll be in touch. Appreciate your time, hon,” I say, closing the door on contractor number one.
I tell the second I will call him by the end of the week. I know I’m going to hire him, but I don’t want him to think me too eager.
After the contractor appointments are done, I change out of my Oxford dress and into my paint clothes. My suitcase is on Leda’s bed, zipped shut because I have zero confidence this house is rodent-free. It’s definitely not bug-free either. Every day I’m here, I discover at least one dead fly.
I open it up and unzip the inner compartment, where Mom’s book is.
I take it out carefully. I empathize with the binding of this fifteen-year-old paperback, in how it’s struggling to keep it all together.
There’s a tear in the front cover that I don’t remember being there before. It must have happened in transit. I run my finger over it, tracing the damage.
A thought. A conspiracy.
Did Daphne find the book? Did she go through my things when she was at my apartment? Is that how the cover got torn? Is that why Leda asked me about it?
I kneel on the floor, chew on my thumb for a minute. I wouldn’t put it past Leda, but I’d be surprised if Daphne invaded my privacy in that way. The three of us never crossed those lines, read each other’s diaries, anything like that.
I flip the book over and over in my hands, then open it up to the last chapter—of what I have, anyway. I still haven’t found the back half of the book anywhere in the house, and I still haven’t been able to bring myself to track down another copy. I’m afraid of the empty margins, the blank spaces without my mother’s notes to me. Afraid of her absence on the page. I’m afraid of what I don’t remember. Afraid of the truth. Afraid of the fiction.
I’ve read this part already. More than once.
But I read it again.
* * *
At Father Bernard’s insistence, I began taking the girls to church. I prayed with them at night. They were reluctant. Confused. Dee was openly angry. Elle was more measured in her disapproval. She wrote me an essay arguing against the Catholic Church, which she slipped under my door one morning.
Cici was unbothered. She seemed to genuinely enjoy mass. When I asked her why, she said, “It’s like a show. They wear costumes and sing.”
I was frustrated with my daughters, and they were frustrated with me.
They couldn’t see that I was trying to protect them. Nothing I did seemed to be working.
My sleep was plagued with bad dreams. I’d be running through the house, looking for my daughters, and they wouldn’t be there. I’d look around and there’d be blood on the walls, the floor, my hands. I’d scream for them until my throat was raw. I would wake up to that cruel, horrible laughter.
The house began to smell, to stink of rot. The girls complained. I burned candles. I burned sage.
Three weeks went by until the inevitable. Until my ex came to the door when he dropped off our daughters, red-faced. I could see every vein in his neck, and the angry one on his forehead was in danger of bursting.
“You’re taking them to church?” he said.
“They’re my daughters, too.” I’d been preparing, so why did I feel so unprepared? “I want them to learn about faith. About goodness. Have values.”
He balked. “They are good. They have values. I’ve taught them values. They don’t want to go. You’re forcing them.”
He would always do this. Twist my words. Of course you were good. That wasn’t what I meant, and he knew it.
“I’m their mother,” I said, because I had no other argument. Not one that I could remember in the moment, with him there in front of me, screaming. I was paralyzed by him, by his anger.
“You’re not even Catholic!” he said, throwing his hands up. “I don’t know what you’re playing at. Is this for the judge? To position yourself as some pious, God-fearing mother? You’re not doing this for the girls; you’re doing this for yourself. You’re so selfish!”
Believe it or not, this depiction of your father is generous. This conversation was far worse than I portrayed it.
He took a moment to catch his breath. “No more church. No more forced prayers. You’ll be hearing from my lawyer.”
* * *
—
My stomach churning, I set the book aside, realizing I just used it to ruin my own day. What a thing, in retrospect, to watch the dominoes fall.
The house is quiet, and it occurs to me that I’m waiting for something to happen, some disturbance. I’m fine with being alone in the house, but I don’t want to wonder if I’m alone in the house.
I get up and go look for Austin’s note with his phone number. The note is where I left it, on the coffee table.
Beside it, my sketchpad is open to the drawing I did last night. My cosmic “Leave Me Alone.”
There’s a new addition. Small, in the bottom corner, in the center of a constellation, floating in the galaxy.
A response.
NO
19
Hey,” Austin says, walking up the driveway. I sit on the front steps with the last two cans of White Claw. My can is already empty. His is probably warm. I’ve been out here for the last hour. I couldn’t keep staring at the sketch. At that word, the little smiley face. Playful and defiant. Exactly my style. I might be charmed if I weren’t terrified.
I texted Austin to come over. Now here he is.
“Thought you might be…Are you okay?” he asks, brow furrowing. His concern is endearing. He wears jeans and a plain black V-neck T-shirt. His chain. I can see some chest hair. Just enough. Not too much.
The only way I’ll go back in the house is if he’s with me, which is so pathetic it makes me want to scream.
“Clio?”
“Yes,” I say. “And no. Yes, I’m Clio. No, I’m not okay.”
He kneels in front of me, pushes my hair out of my face. “You want to talk about it?”
I shake my head and offer him the White Claw. “Here. I saved this for you.”
He accepts the can. He pops the tab and takes a sip. “Mm-hmm. Warm.”
This makes me laugh. It’s a miracle I can find anything funny right now, and it makes everything funny.
A demon drawing a smiley face? Hilarious.
My laughter turns manic.
“I’m sorry,” I tell Austin, attempting to catch my breath.
He takes it in stride. He sits beside me on the stairs. “No need to apologize. I’m just glad you texted. I was waiting.”
“Aw. Say, do you have any weed?”
“I feel like I’m at work.”
“Only I’m full of youth and vitality.”
“You’d be surprised, the vitality in that place,” he says. He takes another sip of warm White Claw. “You’re using me.”
“You’re letting me.”
Another sip. “All right. I’ll be back in five. You can finish this.”
He hands me the can.
“Wait,” I say, accepting it. “I’ll come with you.”
He raises an eyebrow. “You want to come over?”
“What? Do you not want to introduce me to your mother?” I ask, grinning.
He reaches his hand out. I give him mine. He says, “I wanted the drink back, but okay.”
I pull my hand away.
“I was kidding. Give me your hand.”
“You lost hand-holding privileges.”
“You told me not to be cute. You said cute was a turn-off.”
“That was then,” I say, standing. “This is now.”
The two of us walk down the driveway, and by the time we get to the end, we’re holding hands.
It feels good to step into the cul-de-sac. To put the house behind me for a little while. Out of sight, out of mind.
“Molly Ericson lived in that house. Do you remember her at all?” he asks, pointing to a house on the left with a red door and blue shutters, a flagpole out front sans flag. “Braces. Glasses.”
“Nope,” I say.
“Not just me, then? You don’t remember anyone?”
“No one specifically. I…” I reach for my snake charm, slide it back and forth along the chain. “I don’t know. I don’t remember a lot from that time. Is that weird?”
“I guess it was—what?—eighteen years ago? Incredible. And you weren’t here for that long.”
“No. No, not really,” I say, finishing the White Claw and tossing it into a neighbor’s recycling bin.
“It felt long, though. To me, at least. When you’re a kid, a week is forever,” he says, turning down a driveway. “This one.”
Austin lives in a generic Colonial. Brick up to the awning that covers the narrow concrete porch, yellow siding at the top. Wide windows with brown shutters.
He leads me in through the two-car garage, which is crowded with cobwebbed bicycles and cracked plastic snow sleds and deflated soccer balls and broken hockey sticks—like a sad museum of a happy childhood.
There’s a single stair up to the door, which he opens for me.
His house smells like cheap candles. It’s decorated like it’s the set of a family sitcom. There are pictures of him and his brothers everywhere. His brothers on their respective wedding days with their standard blond brides. Baker with two other kids that I assume are his siblings or cousins.
“Hey, Mom,” Austin calls out. “I’ve got Clio with me.”
I follow Austin through the living room to the kitchen, where his mom sits at the table with her laptop open in front of her. She closes it and looks up at us.
Her chestnut hair is cut into a bob. There are gray streaks in her bangs. She wears drugstore reading glasses, a black zip-up cardigan, and baggy light-wash faux denim pants. No jewelry apart from a pair of gold heart-shaped studs. There’s something so comforting about her appearance. I never had a mother who looked like a “mother.” Mom never wore an outfit without ample cleavage, and Amy still dresses like a Y2K teenager. But this woman in front of me is straight out of the catalog. Classic Mom.
“Hello,” she says. “I’d stand but…”
There’s a cane leaning against the table.
“That’s all right. I’ll join you,” I say, pulling out a chair and sitting to her left.
She takes off her glasses and sets them down. She studies me for a moment. “You’re stunning. You look so much like her. Alex.”
“Thank you,” I say, smiling.
“You want some water?” Austin asks. “Mom? Clio?”
“Some tea?” she says.
“Yes, please,” I say. “Tea.”
“I was very sorry to hear about her passing,” she says.
“I appreciate you saying so. I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.”
I don’t even know Austin’s last name, so I can’t call her Mrs. Whatever.
“Dawn,” she says.
“It’s nice to meet you, Dawn,” I say. There’s a bouquet of pink and yellow tulips on the kitchen table. I take a moment to admire them. “Austin mentioned you and my mom had coffee a few times?”
“Oh, yes,” she says. “Back then. And recently. She would come to the house every so often, with Roy.”
“You knew Roy?”
“I met him a few times. Nice man. Interesting job,” she says. She’s being polite but testing the waters, which I respect.
“From what I’ve heard, demonology is actually a very dull profession,” I say. “A lot of paperwork, surprisingly.”
Dawn laughs, and I think I love her.
Austin watches us from beyond the island. He leans against the counter waiting for the kettle to boil. His hair mats to his forehead. It’s hot in here. Stuffy.
“What did you think of her?” I ask. “My mom.”
It’s too direct a question, and a wave of unease passes through the kitchen. Across Dawn’s face. Across Austin’s. The kettle whimpers, louder, louder, on the precipice of a scream.
I could justify my bluntness, add disclaimers, but I let it hang. I want her honest answer. I want her to meet me where I am. I think she will. I’m not fooled by her CVS reading glasses and Kohl’s sweater. She raised three sons on her own and has MS. She’s not some delicate flower, some vanilla suburban pearl clutcher. Especially not if she willingly had coffee with my mother more than once.
Austin turns off the burner just as the kettle shrieks. Another moment passes in silence.
Dawn tilts her head. Her eyebrows pinch together. Austin sets a ceramic mug down in front of her, one with a pastoral scene painted on the side. A deer in a meadow.
“She wasn’t like anyone I ever met before. I found it refreshing. I went over to introduce myself after Jackson moved her in. I brought her cookies, and she thanked me but said she wouldn’t eat them. She invited me in and poured me a glass of wine. It was four in the afternoon.”
Austin brings me a matching mug, only instead of a deer there’s a fox. He joins us at the table with a glass of water.
“She was very open with me. She told me about her situation with her ex-husband. Your father. She told me about you and your sisters.”
“Her entire life saga, sparing no detail, I’m sure.”
“Yes,” Dawn says, watching her tea bag steep, deep in thought. “She didn’t say anything about the house, though. I didn’t know about any of that until the book came out. Then we had all sorts of traffic on the street. No one was happy about that. About the attention.”
“That first Halloween was crazy,” Austin says. “The cops showed up.”
“I heard she lost custody and moved out. I waited for her to put the house up for sale, but it never happened. I didn’t see her again until, gosh. I can’t remember. Until Jackson was at Rutgers. You were in high school, I think,” she says, turning to Austin. “I saw a car in the driveway one afternoon. She came over. She brought me cookies. And wine.” She pauses, smiling at the memory. “Told me how she was living with Roy in Connecticut, but she couldn’t sell her house in case the possession was…dormant? I think that was the word she used. That’s the first time she spoke to me about any of that. Maybe because the book was out, there was no point dancing around it. But I wondered…”
“If she made it all up?” I ask.
“Yes,” she says. “She wrote in the book about Jack, but it wasn’t how he remembered it. And he was sixteen at the time, not in college. He has no recollection of saying anything, alluding to anything. There was nothing funny about the house until, well…as frustrating as it was to have the commotion on the street, I never held it against her. She had a tough time. I related to that. And I can’t imagine what it was like to lose her children. If it knocked a few screws loose…I understand.”
“Thank you,” I say. “There aren’t many people who knew her who I can really talk about her with. Alexandra is a touchy subject with my dad, my stepmom, even my sisters, honestly. I have my aunt, but that’s complicated, too. And then demonologist Roy and the rest of the occult society of Connecticut or whatever. Everyone has their biases. It’s difficult for me to trust anything they have to say, wondering if they’re trying to sway me, to get me to see her the way they want me to. And then there’s her book, which is fiction. Of course.”
She nods and takes a cautious sip of tea.
There’s something she’s not telling me.
I wonder if Austin senses this or if he’s just anxious to grab the weed so we can head back to my house, get high, and get naked. He stands up. “Be right back.”
“I appreciate your honesty,” I tell her. A thumb on the bruise.
She gives me a quick closed-lip smile. Limited eye contact.
“Dawn,” I say, reaching out and tapping her mug. “You can tell me. Whatever it is. I want to know. I can handle it. I’m tougher than I look, but you know how that goes.”
A real smile this time. Though a bittersweet one. “You’re a real spitfire, aren’t you?”
“A blessing and a curse.”
She takes a slow, ragged breath. “I think…I might have been the last person to see Alex alive. I don’t think she was well…at the end.”
“What makes you say that?”
“She came over earlier that day. I went out to get the mail. It takes me a while to get up and down the driveway. She saw me and came hurrying over. She seemed out of sorts, but I didn’t want to say anything. She was sensitive to people thinking she was a nut.”
“ ‘Out of sorts’?”
“Disoriented. She was slurring her words. She might have been drunk. I’m sorry, Clio. Maybe I should have called someone. I don’t know.”
“Who would you have called? It’s not like her getting day drunk was a rare occurrence,” I say. My reassurance is genuine. My resentment unfounded. Yet they exist in tandem, threads of the same rope. It’s not Dawn’s fault that my mother is dead. But if she had acted on her intuition, her concern, maybe things would have turned out differently. Maybe not.
“I asked her if she was all right, and she said…she said, ‘Our demons get us all in the end.’ Then she told me she would see me later and walked off. Turned around and went home. I didn’t follow her. I wish I would have. I keep thinking about it.”
