Girl of Rage (17 page)

George-Phillip had respected Adelina’s wishes for thirty years and not revealed himself to his daughters. But she was missing now, and they were all in danger, and now he had to keep his own counsel. No matter what it did to his career or his own personal aspirations.

He got out of the car and began to walk along the narrow plaza fronting the river, then along the Vauxhall Bridge. He was well aware this was the sort of behavior that would see him lambasted in the tabloids.
Giant Eyebrow covers
the Thames
, or something equally offensive. But sometimes you simply had to get away. As he walked across the bridge, he studied the headquarters of the Secret Intelligence Service, towering over the bridge and the river. The green glass and stone building was oppressive, a pile of stone and glass straight out of Orwell’s
1984.
What was truly astonishing was that the plaza between the SIS and the river was open to the public, access to the building and its grounds blocked by a high steel fence.

Inside, it was another story. Inside that building, George-Phillip barely kept control of the pulse of a hundred nations. Some people questioned the need for such an apparatus. Those people wondered why the SIS spied, why they had intelligence operatives operating in every nation on earth, why they worried about nuclear proliferation and terrorists and jihadists. But those people had never looked at the bodies of women and children scattered across a street, destroyed by the bombs of terrorists. People who questioned the need for SIS didn’t understand that the purpose of an intelligence agency was nothing more than to protect.

All the same, sometimes the weight of this calling wore down on George-Phillip. The weight of constantly having guards. The weight of his daughter Jane being whisked from primary school to home to other locations with a full complement of guards, because his family was not safe.

The weight of his decisions was what wore him down. His decision to leave behind Adelina, even when he knew that she suffered at the hands of that son of a bitch Richard Thompson.

Adelina
, he mused.

Sometimes he liked to play
what if
games. What if he’d gone to Spain instead of the Army the year after his father died? What if he’d been in Madrid the day of the coup? It wasn’t
that
unlikely.

It was ridiculously unlikely. He’d been in school, determined to finish his final year before going into the Army. Struggling with his own identify after his father died in a drunken car accident. Adelina had been helpless that day, and ever since. Here it was thirty years later, and he’d never been able to help her.

What if,
he sometimes thought. What if they’d said,
the hell with it,
and made a run for Brazil or Thailand or Burma or anywhere else far from the reach of CIA or SIS? What if he hadn’t been such a coward?

He paused halfway across the bridge and looked out at the river. It was a grey, cold day.

What would Carrie or Andrea say? If they knew he was their father? If they knew he’d not been courageous enough to fight for them?

Well. It might be too late. It might wreck everything he thought of as a life now. But he was going to fight for his daughters. And … if she’d let him … for his love.

Adelina. February 16, 1984.

“No. I can’t see you again.”

“Adelina, I must see you.”

At his words, she felt the blackness reaching out and grabbing her heart again. Because she
wanted
to see him. She wanted to so badly she could taste it.

She knew that could be nothing but disaster.

“I can’t see you,” she whispered.

Very slowly, she hung up the phone and closed her eyes, shutting out the darkness.

Jessica. May 2.

Jessica felt her stomach rumble. She hadn’t eaten in almost an hour, and for days she’d been constantly ravenous. She hugged her legs tighter to herself and looked out at the water. The talk with her mother had been full of unwelcome revelations, not the least of which was that her father was a rapist.

Or Adelina
claimed
he was. After all, her mother was a lunatic. All of Adelina’s daughters knew that. She took enough drugs to tranquilize an elephant. She had fits and breakdowns. She cried randomly and had panic attacks that terrified all of them. She’d more than once freaked out and injured her daughters with both her words and her slaps.

“Jessica?” her mother said.

“Leave me alone,” Jessica whispered.

Adelina sighed and stood. Jessica didn’t watch her walk away. Instead, she stared out at the ocean and fought to preserve her anger at her mother.

It wasn’t that hard. All she had to do was remember too many incidents to count. Especially the worst one, the broken cello, the memory that had preserved for all time her memory of her sister Carrie as a saint and her mother as the devil.

Jessica had been six years old, and it had to have been late October, because she remembered she and Sarah had gone to the Halloween party at the Brewer’s old Victorian up the street. Jessica had dressed as an angel, and Sarah as a witch. Black and white. They’d run around holding hands through most of the party and gorged on candy until Sarah threw up on Randy Brewer’s Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets LEGO set. Randy, five years older than they were, punched Sarah. Sarah threw up again, while Jessica screamed, and their mother took the two of them and Alexandra home in a huff, complaining loudly the whole way that none of her daughters knew how to behave.

The next morning, everything in the house seemed ominous. Their father stayed locked in his office, not an unusual state of affairs, but Mother had been in the dining room the entire morning, sobbing. Jessica didn’t remember where Alexandra had been that morning. Maybe she’d had a sleepover.

“Stay out of her way,” Carrie whispered that morning. “Don’t go downstairs, I’ll bring you some breakfast.”

“What’s wrong?” Sarah asked. As always, Sarah had no sense of self-preservation. She’d constantly antagonized their mother.

“You wouldn’t understand, it’s something with Julia,” Carrie had said.

“Who’s Julia?” Jessica had asked.

“Sister, stupid,” Sarah said.

“Don’t call me stupid!” Jessica shouted. “She’s hardly ever here. How would I know?”

“
Are
stupid,” Sarah said. Then she reached out and pinched Jessica’s arm.

“Stop it, both of you!” Carrie whispered urgently. “Mother’s crazy today.
Don’t
bother her!”

Sarah looked at the floor and said, “Sorry, Carrie.” Her voice was low.

Jessica pinched her back. Sarah swiveled her wide open blue eyes to Jessica and stared. She didn’t cry or say anything, but her lips curled up in a caricature of a smile.

“
Stop it!”
Carrie said again. “I’m going to call Julia, and then get you guys some breakfast. Stay up here and out of trouble, okay?”

So the twins stayed in Carrie’s room playing with Andrea, who complained because she was hungry. But all three of them knew better than to go downstairs. It had been weeks, maybe even months, since their mother had a breakdown. But they knew.

It was a long twenty minutes later before Carrie came back upstairs. Andrea was crying. “I’m hungry,” she cried.

“It’s okay, Pooh Bear,” Carrie whispered. She began handing out donuts and small cartons of apple juice.

“I wanted grape juice,” Sarah said.

“It’s all they had at the 7-11, Sarah. Maybe you can have some grape juice later?”

“Okay,” Sarah whispered. Her eyes watered.

Now, at eighteen, Jessica understood just how awful it was that their older sister had to sneak out to the convenience store to get them breakfast, out of fear of disturbing their mother who was somewhere near the kitchen. But that was soon overshadowed.

They all froze at the sound of footsteps coming up the hardwood stairs.

“Carrie?” The voice was tremulous, shaky. It sent a chill down Jessica’s spine. Their mother had been crying, and that was never good. “Carrie? Where are you? Who were you on the phone with?”

Carrie whispered, “Hide the food.”

As the girls scrambled to push their donuts and juice boxes under the bed, Carrie stood up and walked toward the closed door. Stark terror filled Jessica as her big sister opened the door.

“In here, Mother,” Carrie said.

Mother staggered into the room. Her face was puffy and red, and her hands were clenched, wringing each other. “Who were you on the phone with?”

“Um, a friend from school,” Carrie said.

“
Which
friend?”

“
Witch friend
,” Sarah said. Then she giggled.

“What did you say, young lady?” Their mother’s eyes narrowed.

Sarah’s eyes widened. Ridiculously so. Always defiant, she bared her teeth a little and rolled her eyes and said, “Witch witch witch witch.”

“How
dare you?”
Mother shouted, raising her hand to slap Sarah.

That was the moment everything changed. Because seventeen-year-old Carrie grabbed her wrist.

“You’re not hitting her,” Carrie said. “Not anymore.”

The response was instant. Adelina swung her other open hand and slapped Carrie across the face. “
You
don’t tell me what to do!
You
don’t touch me,” she shouted, slapping Carrie a second time.

“Stop!” Carrie cried out as she stumbled back. “Stop, you crazy bitch!”

Mother screamed something unintelligible, and Sarah and Jessica grabbed Andrea and dragged her under the bed. The scuffle got louder, as their mother screamed, and Carrie screamed back, wordless sounds of rage. Then there was a loud crash, and Carrie was on the floor looking stunned next to her cello. Their mother had staggered back to the door, a look of horror and crazed grief on her face.

Mother swept out of the room without another word, and Jessica and Andrea swarmed out from under the bed. Carrie was on her back, her eyes closed in pain. Her cello was on the floor beside her, the neck snapped from where she’d fallen over it.

“I
hate
her,” Carrie whispered, balling up into a fetal position. “
Hate.”

Jessica didn’t remember what happened after that, except that Sarah had hidden under the bed all morning, crying and refusing to come out and whispering, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Carrie,” over and over again.

The next fall Carrie had left for college, and Jessica never saw her play the cello again.

But she’d won one thing. Their mother never hit any of them again after that.

How was Jessica supposed to reconcile
that
with the image her mother painted of the wronged, raped woman struggling to survive a near psychotic husband? How was she supposed to ever,
ever
think of Adelina Thompson sympathetically?

“I hate you,” she whispered, her words barely carrying over the sound of the surf crashing against the shore down below.

“What?” her mother said.

Jessica looked up from her knees and said, “I hate you. You weren’t a mother to us. Ever. And now you’re taking away my father too? I
hate
you.”

Adelina flinched. “I deserve it,” she whispered. “I don’t expect you to forgive me.”

“I don’t know how you can even think of forgiveness,” Jessica said. “You made our lives hell,” she cursed. But as she said the words, tears ran freely down her face.

“I’m sorry,” Adelina replied.

“I don’t accept your apology. I never will.”

Jessica turned away. Remembering Carrie’s screams as she shielded her sisters from their crazy mother. Remembering Sarah sobbing under the bed for hours. She remembered Andrea packing to leave for Spain again, never knowing that the reason her parents didn’t want her was because her mother had an affair. You couldn’t tell a pretty story and apologize and expect everything to be better. You couldn’t erase a lifetime of hurt.

Fuck her,
Jessica thought.

Adelina. February 17, 1984.

“Come, Julia.”

Julia wore a tiny blue dress with patent leather shoes and a matching belt. Lately whenever she moved it was at a dead run, slightly tilted forward with her arms behind her, as if smashing her head into a wall or the floor would be the most natural thing in the world. Completely in character, Julia ran forward at a dead run, straight toward the marble counter behind which sat the stunned concierge.

“Stop!” Adelina called out, reaching out with one hand while she simultaneously tried to balance the stroller, two bags of groceries, her purse and a cup of coffee. Something had to give, and it was the coffee, which fell on the floor and erupted in a brown explosion. Julia’s feet slid in the sticky mess even as her arm stayed gripped with Adelina’s, and she started to swing around in a great circle as the first bag of groceries fell to the floor.

Inside the bag, a bottle of something smashed open. Peanut butter, maybe, or apple sauce. God forbid it be the wine.