Chapter 37 - The Woman of the House

The last time Mother and I were alone together, we were sitting under the harsh fluorescent lights inside her room at the New Hope Mental Health Facility. Metal bars lined the only window in the room and the door was locked from the outside. Even through the thick cement walls, I could still hear the high-pitched wails of patients in nearby rooms. Through the square window on the door, I saw one of the nurses, Tina, run down the hall carrying a sedation shot toward a particularly unpleasant scream.

Tina had always been nice to me, unlike the other nurses, who preferred to stay away from the pathetic daughter of a dying psychopath. She talked to me like we were friends, even though I didn’t know her last name. Once, she asked me point-blank why I visited the crazy old hag as often as I did.

“I’ve worked here for ten years,” Tina had said, her voice low and serious. “And there’s one thing I know to be true: There’s crazy, and then there’s evil. Make no mistake, honey, that woman—your mother—is as evil as they come. No one would blame you if you walked out of here and never came back.”

“I know,” I said as I played with the scarf wrapped around my neck.

“So why do you do it? Why do you visit her? All she does is torture you. I mean, she sure as hell tortures us.”

I shrugged. “She’s my mother.”

Tina looked disappointed by my answer, but I couldn’t tell her the truth: I liked to watch Mother suffer. I put up with her insults and abuse so I could have a front-row seat to her long, drawn-out death. When she had one of her coughing fits, blood would spatter onto the handkerchief in her hand, and I’d watch wide-eyed while my insides warmed with satisfaction. Sometimes, I’d even have to cover my face to hide my smile.

Mother’s room smelled like a mix of sweat and shit. My nose bristled at the smell as I sat down in the plastic chair next to her bed.

“How are you today?” I ventured, feeling a mix of excitement and nerves as the question left my mouth. Mother had never looked worse. Her forehead was damp with sweat and her cheeks were sunken in. A tray of uneaten food was at the foot of her bed, and even with the help of her oxygen mask, her breathing was heavy and raspy. It was only a matter of time before her lungs gave out. She was going to die soon, I thought. I could feel it.

“What kind of question is that? ‘How are you?’ ” she said, imitating me. A cough interrupted her fun. Once she caught her breath, she continued. “I’m dying, you idiot. I feel like shit. Make yourself useful and turn on my stories,” she said, pointing to the remote. I clicked through the channels looking for reruns of the daytime soap operas, but found none. “Here, give it to me,” she said, holding out her hand, black and blue from all the IVs that gave her fluids. When she couldn’t find the soap operas, she launched the remote at me, hitting me square in the lip. I cried out, like a dog whose tail had been stepped on. One of the nurses, a man, unlocked the door from the outside and poked his head in.

“Everything okay in here?” he asked.

“Mm-hmm.” I nodded, holding my bottom lip. “Just clumsy.” I should have known Mother would throw the remote at me. It was my fault for not seeing it coming.

“She walked right into the door. She’s always been that way. Two left feet would be more useful than whatever this one’s got,” Mother said, pointing at me.

“You want some ice?” the nurse asked.

“No, I’m fine. Thanks,” I said, trying to sound as casual as possible while I put the remote back down on her bed.

He closed the door behind him when he left.

“Are you trying to get me in trouble?” Mother said, her eyes wide and empty. “Hey! Use your one working brain cell and answer me, you dimwitted idiot.”

“No,” I said softly, almost to myself.

“What did you say?” she said, as if energized by my embarrassment.

“No, I’m not trying to get you in trouble.”

“And this is how you repay me for all I’ve done for you? By locking me up in here? Took care of you your whole life. Gave you everything you ever wanted. And this is what I get? The second I get sick, you offload me to these fucking strangers.”

“It wasn’t me,” I said under my breath.

“Huh?”

“I said it wasn’t me. I didn’t put you in here; the judge did. It was court ordered.” I knew better than to argue with Mother. It never got me anywhere, but I couldn’t help myself. She couldn’t blame me for what she had done.

“You and that dumb prick of a judge,” Mother said, sitting back in the hospital bed. “It was a setup, you know? The whole thing. I know you were behind all of it. I just know it.” Mother waved a bony finger in the air.

Mother never took responsibility for how she ended up at the facility. She didn’t pull one of the gas nozzles out of its holder and douse the whole station in gasoline. And she certainly wasn’t the one who lit a match and stood by laughing while it went up in flames, nearly killing the two people locked inside. Despite multiple witnesses and security footage that placed her at the scene of the crime, it wasn’t her. According to Mother, it was all a grand scheme organized by me to put her in a mental health facility where we both knew she would eventually die.

In my opinion, the judge was gracious when he sentenced her to stay here. A couple weeks after she arrived, she was diagnosed with lung cancer and given two months to live. If it wasn’t for a court-ordered psychological examination, she would be in prison, left to rot inside a general population cell. Instead, she was ordered to live out the rest of her cancer-stricken days in a hospital bed while nurses monitored her twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

“Wipe that smug look off your face,” Mother said before she let out a dry, hollow cough. I watched as her body tried to expel the cancer eating away at her lungs, but it couldn’t. It was too late. “You think you’re so much better than me, don’t you? Well, you’re not. You and me? We’re the same. You’ll die alone. Just like me.” I knew she was trying to get a rise out of me. And even though it was a prediction I’d heard a thousand times before, this time I wasn’t strong enough to resist the bait.

“No, I won’t,” I shot back.

She pushed herself up using one of her emaciated elbows. Her eyes narrowed.

“I won’t die alone, Mother. I have—”

“Who?”

My face turned red with embarrassment.

“No one! That’s who!”

“That’s not true. There’s a…um…” I swallowed hard. I was going to prove her wrong. For once, I was going to be the one who had the upper hand.

“Don’t tell me. You met someone?” Mother’s mouth twisted into a smile.

“Well, sort of. He’s—”

“What’s his name, huh? This mystery man.”

“I’m not exactly sure.” My voice trailed off.

Mother threw her head back and laughed. It was a silent, all-consuming laugh that made her whole body tense. “You don’t even know his name!” she said once her head was upright. “You’re in love with him, but you don’t even know what his name is! Oh, this is good.”

“I’m not in love with him. I don’t really even know him. I just…I—”

“You what?”

“I’ve seen him around at the coffee shop, and he looks…I don’t know…”

“Go ahead, spit it out!”

“He looks nice, that’s all.” My chest is hot. I wasn’t proving Mother wrong. All I was doing was giving her more ammunition with which to humiliate me.

“And I bet he wears a slick suit and tie to work too. Doesn’t he?” My face reddened in response. “I knew it! You’re in love with some hotshot financial guy who doesn’t even know you exist,” Mother said, clapping her hands.

I swallowed hard. She was right. “We don’t know each other, not technically, but—”

“Oh please,” Mother said while she adjusted herself in bed. Her hospital gown was loose around her collarbone and shoulders. “A man like that could never love someone like you.”

“You don’t know that,” I quietly protested.

“Please. Just look at you. You’re a worthless little secretary. You live in a disgusting studio apartment and you’ve never so much as been kissed! Tell me, what would a man like that see in a person like you? Just look at what you’re wearing.” I looked down at my outfit, wishing I could disappear. “A baggy turtleneck from the thrift store that hides your bee-sting tits really drives him crazy, I bet. No, a handsome guy like your mystery man will end up with some leggy blonde who knows how to do her makeup, like a weather woman or someone who works in marketing. You know the type…” Listening to Mother describe the sort of woman that the guy from the coffee shop would one day marry made my brain hurt. “A beautiful woman who’s just biding her time at a marketing job until she meets Mr. Right…” Suddenly, I felt nauseous. “Someone who knows how to cook…”

“Stop,” I said, shaking my head with my eyes closed. “Just stop.”

“…Someone who will have his babies…”

“Please.”

“Not someone like you, who doesn’t have a maternal bone in her body.”

“That’s not true,” I said as my chest grew hot. I wanted her to stop, but she wouldn’t. She was having too much fun watching me squirm. I was an ant under the sun. She was the menace holding the magnifying glass.

“Unless you walk out of here and magically transform into some fancy blonde bimbo with big boobs and a short skirt, he’ll never give you so much as a second glance…”

From my spot in the plastic chair next to Mother’s hospital bed, I chewed on a rogue piece of skin on my thumb. I realized I had no claim over the guy from the coffee shop, but still, I felt drawn to him. There was a kindness to his eyes and a gentleness to the way he thanked the barista that made me think there were good people in the world after all. Mother tainted that thought. Thanks to her I felt hollowed out, rejected by a man I didn’t even know.

“He’ll never love you, Rose.” Mother’s voice was light and chipper, the way it always was when she was at her cruelest. “Why would he? Huh? You’re too weak and stupid to even stick up for yourself. What would a guy like that see in someone like you anyway? Nothing. That’s what. You just wait. Soon he’ll have a gold wedding band on his left finger and a blonde wife waiting for him at home…”

Tears welled up in my eyes. All the years of being told I was nothing. Worthless. Stupid. Dumb. It showed in the bags beneath my eyes and the stiffness in my shoulders. Like waves crashing against a rock, Mother had worn me down. Her ruthlessness eroded my sense of right and wrong and clouded my judgment.

Something inside me snapped. Or maybe it clicked into place. One moment I was sitting in the chair and the next, I was lunging at her. My hands wrapped themselves around her throat. I wanted to shut her up once and for all. Her eyes were wide with surprise. Then a smile curled at the corners of her lips, daring me. My jaw was tight as I stood over her, my hands pressing harder and harder against her throat. I could do it, I thought. I could snap her frail neck in half with my bare hands. Her legs shook wildly beneath me as her hands scratched at mine, trying desperately to bring more air to her already weak lungs. But I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t like Mother. I couldn’t almost kill someone and feel nothing afterward.

Then she took in one long gasp of air. That’s when something hard hit me on the side of my head. I stumbled backward, letting go of her. Once I regained my footing, I realized she held the remote in her hand. A wild amusement lit up her eyes at the sight of blood trickling down my face. She tilted her head back, revealing the veins in her neck, and laughed. It sounded wild and animal-like.

“What’s so funny?”

“You’ll never be rid of me, Rose. Never.” Yellow teeth stood like spaced-out gravestones in her mouth as her sinister laugh filled the room.

The more Mother laughed, the hotter my face got, burning with years of mistreatment. My ears were drowning in the sound of her laughter, and I couldn’t hear myself think. She was cackling so hard she couldn’t catch her breath. The more she laughed, the more she gasped for air. That’s when she reached for her oxygen mask. Her hand searched the blankets on her bed but couldn’t find it. It had fallen during our fight. I stared at the contraption on the floor. Her eyes went wide. Panic nestled itself across her face.

Mother was right. As long as she was alive, I would never be rid of her. Years of abuse that were buried deep within the shadows of myself kept me rooted in my spot. Her hands scratched at her throat, desperate for the air her body couldn’t provide. Her eyes bulged as they stayed locked with mine. While she convulsed on the bed, a calmness spread throughout my body. My shoulders relaxed, my mouth parted open, and I took in one long breath. Finally, I felt like I could breathe.

I thought a nurse would barge into the room at any moment and catch me withholding the one thing that would bring Mother relief, but no one at the understaffed facility came. The seconds ticked on like minutes, but eventually the heart rate machine let out a monotone sound, breaking me from my trance. Mother was still. Her lips were a dark shade of blue, and her eyes had rolled back into their pale sockets. Her mouth was cracked open, as if she was in the middle of delivering an insult that would never come. Finally, after all these years, Mother was quiet.

Just then, Tina came trudging through the door.

“Her lungs finally gave out,” I heard myself say as Tina turned off the monitors.

“Her lungs finally gave out,” I said as I grabbed my coat and walked out of the room.

“Her lungs finally gave out,” I said to my reflection in the metal elevator.

“Her lungs finally gave out,” I said to the homeless man I passed as I scanned my ticket to board the train.

I said the words over and over again until I believed them. By the time I spotted Brian on the other side of the train car, drunkenly swaying from side to side, I did.

—

Inside the boathouse, a coldness floods my body. My teeth clank together. Except they’re not my teeth anymore. They’re Mother’s teeth now. She’s inside of me. I can feel the blackness of her soul expand into the deepest corners of myself. My right hand moves through the air on its own. I watch as my fingers wiggle all by themselves before my eyes. A wicked smile twists across my face. Her face. Before tonight, Mother controlled my thoughts. She was the voice inside my head that I heard my entire life. But now, she controls my body too. She has complete power over me, while I’m stuck inside myself.

My right leg takes a step forward. My left follows suit. Soon, I’m walking out the door of the boathouse into the dark night.

You deserve this.

Mother is right, I think as she leads me toward the shore below. After what I did to Mother, to Helen, I deserve this. Mother’s darkness was always in me. From the day I was born, it sat against my spine and cradled the base of my head. It was the soft, gooey part of my stomach lining and was hidden in the tingly parts of my fingers. It was every lie I ever told. And every person I hurt. I tried to suffocate it, stomp it out, deny it, but that only made it worse.

Mother forces me to the water’s edge. The lake is a black hole in front of me. “Don’t do this,” I try to say, but all that comes out is a terrible screeching noise.

You did this to yourself.

Then I feel the cold sting of the lake against my feet. No matter how hard I try to fight to stay on the shore, my arms don’t move. They’re limp at my sides. I can’t fight her; she’s too strong. With every breath and every step I take, she becomes more confident. I know because I can feel her growing bigger inside of me. Soon the lake is at my feet. Then it’s at my waist. The water is cold and chaotic as whitecap waves thrash against me. I brace myself against a big wave as it approaches, but it’s no use. It swallows me up as I stand unmoving and pulls me down underwater. In my head, my arms are flailing at my side and my feet are kicking violently beneath me as I try to swim up to the surface, but in reality, my body is paralyzed as I sink deeper and deeper into the lake. Water fills my lungs. Pressure pushes against my temples. The light from the boathouse gets farther and farther away the deeper I descend. It was always going to end this way, I think. There were never any other options, no alternatives. No matter what decisions I made or how hard I tried to run away from my past, this was always going to be the outcome. Mother and I are connected, tied together by an invisible cord, bound to destroy each other in life and in death. Mother wins. I lose. I always lose.

Just before I feel like I’m going to pass out, a streak of blonde catches my eye. Entangled between thick strands of seaweed, I see the shape of a woman. She reaches out a stiff hand toward me, a lifeline. That’s when I see half of her face is gone, eaten by fish, and her blue eyes have dulled with death. But still, her features are unmistakable.

Angela Walsh.

Then everything goes black.