pull off my baggy clothes and strict shoes, dive in, and escape.
Car lights pierced the cold dusk.
The vehicles contained my aunt, plus about a dozen other Rileys—older ones, younger ones, men and women—stern upholders of the family’s hard, respectable philosophy. “You’ve humiliated us in public. This is the last straw. We want you out of here,” my aunt said. She stood there in my yard, a strong, stocky woman with my mother’s russet hair but nothing resembling any charm. She was about sixty, and my mother, I realized in passing, would have been a little more than seven years younger, if she’d lived. Suddenly I could see my mother— Mother , I thought of her, for the first time—in a way I’d never imagined before. Smiling and kind, loving and doomed. I’d heard glimmers about my aunt’s hard feelings toward her over the years. Duller and stauncher, my aunt had always been the family’s girdle, while my mother had been its crown.
“Did you hate my mother?” I asked. The question leapt out like a snake’s tongue. In the course of one day, I’d rejected an award, thwarted my aunt’s orders, been claimed by three clearly notorious women, and talked back. My aunt scowled and buttoned a long gray coat tighter around herself. The other grim Rileys traded grim looks.
“Were you glad she fell from grace?” I persisted. I was vibrating, picking up Lilith’s goading song and singing it myself.
My aunt’s face contorted. “She threw away her life. She had everything a girl could want. What happened to her was her own fault.”
“When I was born, did Grandmother and Grandfather Riley take me away from her against her will?”
That froze my aunt. The others shifted unhappily. I studied their faces, watching anger mix with embarrassment, and I saw the answer. My heart squeezed in on itself, then began to weep for ruined joy. “I see. She did want me, but they took me away from her. And she couldn’t bear it.”
I stepped forward, my voice rising with the movement. “Wasn’t that enough punishment? You killed her . Did you have to make my life miserable, as well?”
“You weren’t meant to be born,” my aunt spat out. “You’re a mistake of nature, you’re just a sickly thing, you’re nothing like a normal person, and you’re a lying troublemaker, to boot. Whatever happened in the lake between you and that little girl will cause gossip forever around here. And those females . . . those flashy women who waltzed into our business today—they can say whatever they want about being your kin. I don’t know, and I don’t really care. They only feel sorry for you, Alice. Or they want something from you. They figure you’re a celebrity. Yes. That’s it. That’s why they came, Alice. To see what they could get out of you.”
All of that was a possibility, of course. Here I was, throwing fuel on the funeral pyre of my only secure life, insulting the tepid indulgence of people who had cared enough to tolerate me for thirty-four years, and I couldn’t really defend three strangers who secretly claimed to not only swim with the fishes but to be fishes. I said nothing and began to sink inside my own skin.
“We’re going to buy this cabin from you,” my aunt went on, smirking at my fading defiance. “You’ve got some savings already, and with the money from this house you can start over somewhere new. Somewhere where people won’t know about you. It’ll be better for you and us, too, Alice.”
She was confiscating my home. My only familiar surroundings. Telling me, too, that I had to give up my job at the pet shop. Give up every road and byway, every shop window and face and faded country house and breath-strangling mountain vista, every face I knew and every person who shared my last name. I would be even more alone in the world—just weak, sickly, odd Alice, nobody and nothing, floating free on a tide of strangers and strange places.
I held out my hands, trembling. “I’ve done
Car lights pierced the cold dusk.
The vehicles contained my aunt, plus about a dozen other Rileys—older ones, younger ones, men and women—stern upholders of the family’s hard, respectable philosophy. “You’ve humiliated us in public. This is the last straw. We want you out of here,” my aunt said. She stood there in my yard, a strong, stocky woman with my mother’s russet hair but nothing resembling any charm. She was about sixty, and my mother, I realized in passing, would have been a little more than seven years younger, if she’d lived. Suddenly I could see my mother— Mother , I thought of her, for the first time—in a way I’d never imagined before. Smiling and kind, loving and doomed. I’d heard glimmers about my aunt’s hard feelings toward her over the years. Duller and stauncher, my aunt had always been the family’s girdle, while my mother had been its crown.
“Did you hate my mother?” I asked. The question leapt out like a snake’s tongue. In the course of one day, I’d rejected an award, thwarted my aunt’s orders, been claimed by three clearly notorious women, and talked back. My aunt scowled and buttoned a long gray coat tighter around herself. The other grim Rileys traded grim looks.
“Were you glad she fell from grace?” I persisted. I was vibrating, picking up Lilith’s goading song and singing it myself.
My aunt’s face contorted. “She threw away her life. She had everything a girl could want. What happened to her was her own fault.”
“When I was born, did Grandmother and Grandfather Riley take me away from her against her will?”
That froze my aunt. The others shifted unhappily. I studied their faces, watching anger mix with embarrassment, and I saw the answer. My heart squeezed in on itself, then began to weep for ruined joy. “I see. She did want me, but they took me away from her. And she couldn’t bear it.”
I stepped forward, my voice rising with the movement. “Wasn’t that enough punishment? You killed her . Did you have to make my life miserable, as well?”
“You weren’t meant to be born,” my aunt spat out. “You’re a mistake of nature, you’re just a sickly thing, you’re nothing like a normal person, and you’re a lying troublemaker, to boot. Whatever happened in the lake between you and that little girl will cause gossip forever around here. And those females . . . those flashy women who waltzed into our business today—they can say whatever they want about being your kin. I don’t know, and I don’t really care. They only feel sorry for you, Alice. Or they want something from you. They figure you’re a celebrity. Yes. That’s it. That’s why they came, Alice. To see what they could get out of you.”
All of that was a possibility, of course. Here I was, throwing fuel on the funeral pyre of my only secure life, insulting the tepid indulgence of people who had cared enough to tolerate me for thirty-four years, and I couldn’t really defend three strangers who secretly claimed to not only swim with the fishes but to be fishes. I said nothing and began to sink inside my own skin.
“We’re going to buy this cabin from you,” my aunt went on, smirking at my fading defiance. “You’ve got some savings already, and with the money from this house you can start over somewhere new. Somewhere where people won’t know about you. It’ll be better for you and us, too, Alice.”
She was confiscating my home. My only familiar surroundings. Telling me, too, that I had to give up my job at the pet shop. Give up every road and byway, every shop window and face and faded country house and breath-strangling mountain vista, every face I knew and every person who shared my last name. I would be even more alone in the world—just weak, sickly, odd Alice, nobody and nothing, floating free on a tide of strangers and strange places.
I held out my hands, trembling. “I’ve done
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