January 9, 2018
When I get home from work, the first thing I see is that stack of flyers, hot pink papers glowing from the top of the credenza like they’re radioactive. I drop my keys into a candy dish beside the stack. These damn things are plastered all over town, and now they’re in my home.
I grab the flyers without looking at them and follow the sound of lighthearted bickering coming from the kitchen.
“Do you know how many sudoku apps there are out there? You can do, like, millions of puzzles for free, without killing trees.” Quinn’s earnest voice trails down the hall. I reach the doorway and find her at the stove with Gabriel, both facing away from me.
“But I get so much more pleasure from sudoku when tree murder is involved,” Gabriel says, stirring a pot of chili, which infuses the room with an aromatic combo of garlic and cumin. “And you won’t bring the trees back to life by taking that away from me.”
Quinn holds up a paperback with 222 Sudoku printed across the glossy cover in blue letters. “It’s just such a waste. I hope you’ll at least recycle it.” With a scoff, she tosses it onto the dining table.
“Careful, kiddo, you’re starting to sound like that preachy vegan you brought to Thanksgiving last year.” He spots me before Quinn does and winks, tilting his head at our daughter as if to say, Can you believe this one?
“I’m nowhere near as annoying as Nancy Travino. How dare you?” Her head whips over to see what Gabriel is looking at. “Tell him, Mom.”
“I don’t know, I think you’re one earnest lecture away from Travino territory. You need to cut us old people some slack when it comes to printed media. Besides, I have something better for the recycling bin.” A satisfying thud as I drop the stack of flyers on the counter. “Why do we have these? And since when do I not get a proper hello?”
“Hi, Mom.” Quinn shuffles over to me. “Should we hug now or after we argue?” She uses her palms as imaginary scales, weighing the decision.
Opening my arms, I say, “I’ll take a hug now. And we don’t need to argue at all.”
Embracing my daughter feels like hugging a rack of clothing with all the layers she’s wearing, a nesting doll of baggy T-shirts, sweaters, and hoodies. “I see you decided it would be easier to wear all your clothes instead of packing a bag.” Over Quinn’s shoulder, Gabriel looks up from stirring and breaks into a grin. Good one, he mouths at me. I air-kiss him and then real-kiss Quinn’s cheek, catching a whiff of the cinnamon gum she’s always chomping on. “Aren’t you supposed to be on your way to Baltimore for some job fair?” It’ll be months before Quinn graduates from college and moves out, though I’m already bracing myself for a wicked and prolonged bout of empty-nest syndrome.
“It’s a renewable energy conference and career fair. I decided to have dinner with my parents and drive down early tomorrow instead. Because I’m a good daughter like that.”
“You’re okay, I suppose.” I ruffle her short mop of dark wavy hair, which she inherited from Gabriel, and she squirms away, casting a nervous look at the sheaf of pink flyers. “All right, enough with the niceties. What’s the deal with those?”
Uncertainty flutters across her face and settles into the tight corners of her mouth. “Funny story. Maybe not funny, but … So I was at Lowe’s the other week—the smoke tree needs to be repotted, and if I don’t do it no one will—and I ran into Mrs. Toback. We checked out the gardening area, and she did her nosy thing, asking how my last year at SJU was going and did I know what I was gonna do after graduating. I told her I dropped out months ago to fulfill my beekeeping dreams and start my own line of artisanal honey.”
“Quinn…”
“Okay, so maybe I told her I could go different ways with an environmental science degree, and I was still figuring that out, and maybe the topic of bees didn’t come up. But we got to talking about Aunt Violet because Mrs. T always finds some way to mention her—and of course the vigil came up, and her being one of the organizers. She asked was I sure I didn’t want to say a few words or read a poem or something because it would mean so much for a family member to speak, and we all know it’s not gonna be you.”
My nostrils flare. “She did not say that last part.”
“Stop trying to freak out your mother, kiddo.” Gabriel gives me a don’t-mind-her shake of his head.
“Of course she didn’t say that … but it was kinda implied.” Her shoulder twitches up in a partial shrug.
“I swear, that woman is such a pest. She gets judgy because I don’t feel comfortable addressing a horde of thousands, and now she’s hounding you to do it.” I open the fridge and rummage around for salad ingredients, feeling a sudden urge to chop things up with a big knife. “So how’d you get out of being roped into her vigil shenanigans?” I ask her.
A pause and her dark doe eyes glint. “I told her to fuck off.”
My gasp is involuntary. “You did not.”
“Mom, can you stop acting like we’ve never met before? I was super polite to Mrs. Toback. Like always. I even insisted on carrying a twenty-pound bag of fertilizer to her car for her, which is when I told her I’m not so great with the public speaking…” She grabs my wrist before I can reach for the knife block. “Actually, could we have the rest of this conversation away from the sharp objects?”
I back away from the counter slowly until my hip grazes the kitchen table. “What’s going on? What did you do that I’m gonna hate?” A downward glance at the stack of flyers, and I see now these are different from the ones wallpapering Willow Glen. There’s a new name in the list of featured speakers. “Quinn, what the fuck?”
“Mrs. T thinks this would be good for me.” Raising her chin to a stubborn angle, her voice is firm as she says, “I think so, too.”
“Good for you how?” Oh, how I want to sweep those flyers to the floor or, better yet, shred each one by hand. She doesn’t remember the fallout from the last time she had that many eyeballs on her. She believes her anxiety and phobias are innate, like the mole above her lip or her strawberry allergy. “You throw up anytime you have to give a speech to more than two people. You won’t even do karaoke.”
“All the more reason I should speak at the vigil. Face my fears and all that.” She grabs the stack of flyers and holds them to her chest like a shield.
“Face your fears … in front of thousands of strangers. Like an extreme form of immersion therapy.” Nodding, I pretend this is a sound plan. “So when you were a kid and went through your phase of being deathly afraid of water, should I have taken you on a cruise and thrown you overboard? Because that’s kinda what Mrs. Toback is doing to you here.”
Quinn goes pale at the suggestion and mutters, “I thought parents were supposed to be supportive and shit.”
Before I can respond, Gabriel steps in, putting a hand on each of our shoulders. “Okay, let’s take it down a notch.” He turns to me. “I know you’re just looking out for our daughter, but we gotta trust her to make her own decisions and take risks once in a while.” He turns to Quinn. “And you know your parents are supportive ‘and shit,’ but I think you might be forgetting how hard it is on your mother dealing with all the extra ten-year anniversary hysteria.”
Still sullen, Quinn shoots me a doubtful look. “Is it hard on you, though? You seem more annoyed than anything.”
Of course I’m annoyed. I’ve been immersed in the purgatory of my sister’s disappearance for the past decade. I think about her every fucking day. But since I prefer to avoid big emotional displays, I get criticized for not caring enough about her absence (mostly by people I don’t know, sometimes by the one I gave birth to). It’s bad enough every anniversary brings up extra Violet worship, but something about round numbers makes people lose their minds. Why is ten years more noteworthy than nine or eleven? It’s all so arbitrary. Yet I’m being inundated with reminders of my sister—online and off—when avoiding the tidal pull of her memory is already impossible. So yeah, I’m annoyed, along with other things I can’t verbalize, not even to my husband or daughter.
Something about my weary silence chastens Quinn. “Sorry, Mom,” she relents. “Is that #violetisback stuff messing with you, too? I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t stop checking the posts…”
Oh god, all I need is for her to get her hopes up again. “You know none of the photos are really her, right? It’s all a fad or some bullshit marketing gimmick…” Gabriel squeezes my shoulder, silently urging me to take it easy. “But yeah. It is kind of messing with me, to be honest.” My hands need something to do, so I rinse off the head of lettuce and tear it by hand into a salad bowl. “There’s just so muchhappening all at once. Books, podcasts, TV shows. It’s easier to handle when it’s more sporadic, you know?”
“Yeah. It’s a lot.”
“If I can be extra honest,” I say, “I didn’t even want to go to the vigil this year.”
“You never want to go,” Gabriel and Quinn say in unison. “Jinx,” they add and share a chuckle. Must be nice to be so in sync.
I return to the knife block, grab a blade, and take my frustration out on the tomatoes.
“At least this year we can skip the I’m-not-going-to-the-vigil tug-of-war,” Quinn says.
“Right.” I don’t turn around as I chop away. “Because being the grieving sister and supportive mother takes top priority. And how lucky am I? This year, not only do I get to be judged by more people than ever, but I also get to worry about my daughter having a panic attack in front of all those extra people. Can’t wait.” Damn. We were so close to having a pleasant dinner.
A glance over my shoulder and I catch the reassuring smile Gabriel gives Quinn, the let-me-handle-this nod. But I won’t be handled, not this time.
“Sweetheart. Don’t get upset,” Gabriel murmurs in my ear and massages the back of my neck. “I know how much it sucks for you to go.”
No, he doesn’t. Nobody does.
Just recalling last year’s vigil makes my skin crawl—the pain and tedium of the whole thing. How many times would I have to endure the same compliments heaped on my sister by people who didn’t actually know her, the same questions and speculations? Every year, by the time we get to the moment of silence, I have to clench my jaw shut to keep from uttering the screams that have been boiling inside me for hours.
“How could you all let her fool you for so long?” I want to shout. “She didn’t care about entertaining or enlightening anyone, she only wanted to get paid.”
I’ll be standing there, fake-smiling as someone blathers on about how Violet changed their life and wasn’t her work so important and wasn’t she a gift taken from us too soon, and it’ll be all I can do not to shatter that reverence and howl, “She wasn’t a hero, she was a liar and a cheat. None of us meant anything to her, not even me. We were all just her marks.”
Every year, I have to listen and stay silent.
This year, I’ll also have to listen to my daughter heap accolades on a woman who almost killed her. And stay silent.
I don’t know if I can show that much restraint.
“I’m not gonna have a panic attack, Mom.” Quinn’s exasperation brings me back to the present. ...
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