The Murmurings (8 page)

Yet, the fact is, he does. Dr. Keller knows all about us, all about Nell. And if he knows all of Nell’s secrets, what if he somehow knows mine, too? Snippets of my conversation with Evan stream through my brain. I think about institutions and experiments, doctors with malicious intentions. I busy myself
with chores—dusting, straightening, sweeping. I check on my mom, who is buried under her comforter with her back to the bedroom doorway. I lock all the windows and doors, partly out of habit, though now I feel compelled to double-check them once I’m done. I try to erase the voice of Dr. Keller from my mind like I erased his message. I do this for the rest of the day and into the night—tossing and turning instead of sleeping.

I’
VE SPENT ALL DAY ON
edge, and not just because of everything that happened yesterday with Evan, or even the message Dr. Keller left for my mom. Aunt Becca’s coming over for dinner tonight. This could mean one of two things: either Mom will be in great spirits because she’s forced to get out of bed and interact with family, or Mom will completely fall apart because she’s forced to get out of bed and interact with family. Falling apart will set her back a good month (and set me back God knows how much longer).

“Hand me the pepper grinder,” Mom says more to the steaming pot on the stove than to me. I have absolutely no idea what she’s making, but so far I’ve seen noodles, butter, onions, peppers, and about ten different spices disappear
into the scratched-up blue saucepot that hardly has any more Teflon on its bottom.

I hand the pepper to her over her shoulder, and our fingers brush as she takes it.

“Thanks, hon,” she says offhandedly.

She’s trying. At least, I think she is. So far, so good. Of course, Aunt Becca hasn’t shown up yet.

“Should we have a salad?” she asks, still talking to the pot.

The steam is starting to make her sweat, and the heavy brown waves around her face are curling with the humidity. Still, all I smell is whatever she’s putting into her concoction and the faintest whiff of her conditioner. No booze. She’s standing at the stove—two steps from the liquor cabinet—but she hasn’t had a drop of alcohol since she’s been in the kitchen.

“Definitely salad,” she answers herself almost too decisively, peering into the fridge and rummaging through the crisper.

She puts me to work chopping random vegetables and throwing them into a wooden bowl. I’ve almost forgotten my anxiety over this evening when I hear a knock at the door.

“I’ve got it,” I say, dropping the knife and hustling to the front door.

Aunt Becca plants a rushed kiss on my temple before
handing me one of the two paper grocery bags she’s balancing on her hips.

“How’s she doing?”

I bite my tongue before blurting that I have no idea, that I shouldn’t have to keep tabs on my mother, that I’m not exactly fine myself. My face hurts from forcing a smile for everyone else’s sake. All so Mom can recover from
her
loss.

“Who knows?” I say instead, mustering my best
I’m coping
tone.

“Guess we’ll know soon enough,” she says before whisking past me into the kitchen.

We eat in the breakfast nook, the three of us quietly marveling at the creation Mom’s managed to slap together. I have to admit, I had my doubts. And I still can’t exactly name whatever it is that she’s made. But it’s warm and savory, and I’m so happy to be eating it. Aunt Becca brought a crusty sourdough baguette and some cheese, and I’m wolfing it down so fast I’m about to slip into a bread-and-cheese coma.

“What kind of cheese is this anyway?” Mom asks before slathering a slice of baguette with the soft white stuff.

It makes me irrationally giddy to see her eating.

“Camembert, I think,” Aunt Becca replies. “Who knows? I grabbed the first thing I found next to the bread.”

“I can’t remember the last time I’ve had really good
cheese,” Mom says with nostalgia, and I wonder if she’s working up to more important things to remember fondly. “I don’t think I’ve had really good cheese since Mom died. Do you remember how she used to be such a food snob?”

“Yes!” Aunt Becca climbs onboard. “She was always bringing the girls those fancy French cheeses made from goats’ this or that. The girls loved it, didn’t you?” She turns to me.

I shrug. Nell had taken to Nana’s eccentricities more than I had. I suppose I didn’t have the right sophistication—the same quality that made Nell so good at poetry. She and Nana had always had more in common.

“Do you remember that trip we all took to Oregon?” Aunt Becca continues the happy memory game. I’m still just glad to be eating a home-cooked meal.

“Oh God, the cheese factory! I’d almost forgotten all about that!” Mom starts to laugh, and it sounds out of practice in her throat. Still, shaking off the cobwebs is a good start. The Oregon trip was one of the only out-of-state vacations I remember. Mom and Aunt Becca got some sort of discount for going to a hair show.

I watch Mom’s face closely from the corner of my eye, and though she looks a little nervous, her smile doesn’t disappear as she forks the next bite into her mouth.

“Do you remember that, Sophie?” Aunt Becca tries to draw me in, no doubt hopeful that a shared memory will start the healing process right here in the breakfast nook over a plate of mystery noodles.

“Sort of.” I’m hoping if I don’t join in, this conversation will pass. This sort of reminiscing can’t end well.

“She might have been too young,” Mom says.

“I guess she was pretty young. But don’t you remember, Sophie? You have to remember. You were the one who almost got us kicked out for stealing crackers from the gift shop!” Aunt Becca hoots, looking at me with a rapt attention that only comes with remembering something that was fun once upon a time.

But her face is tight, desperate, like she’s trying to re-create that feeling all over again.

She’s talking so fast, I can’t stop her before she says, “And then you told the security guard that you weren’t stealing it. You needed it for your low blood sugar. Ha! How could a girl your age even know what that was? And then to pull that out of thin air, I just couldn’t believe—”

“That was Nell,” I correct her quietly.

For a second, we all sit in silence, forks resting on our plates.

“That’s right. I’d forgotten that. She was always coming
up with . . . ” Aunt Becca trails off as I shift my gaze between the two of them.

Mom’s face stiffens. She hasn’t looked up since I invoked the unmentionable name of Nell.

“Yep, I remember,” Mom finally says, reaching slowly for another hunk of cheese and spreading it on some bread with a zombielike movement.

“Only she didn’t make up
everything
, did she?” I aim the question at my mother, but I’m hoping Aunt Becca catches some of my tone too. I’m suddenly overwhelmingly suspicious, like they’ve conspired to keep me in the dark all these years. I have absolutely no idea where it’s coming from—maybe it’s everything Evan told me yesterday, all the stuff his aunt and uncle kept from him about his cousin—but the feeling pours over me like oil on a blazing fire.

“It’s not that simple,” Mom’s answer is infuriatingly quick, and she reaches for another chunk of cheese and slathers a second piece of bread before she’s touched the one that’s already on her plate.

“Yeah, but it kind of is. I mean, either she made everything up, or she believed what was happening to her was real,” I push on.

“Sophie,” Aunt Becca cautions. I’ve been warned away from this topic too many times. I’m through walking on egg
shells. I’m through being responsible for the sake of everyone else while I suffocate under my own questions. Questions like why nobody at Oakside ever told Nell that she was crazy. And why Mom and Aunt Becca went along with whatever treatment Dr. Keller proposed, like the drugs she talked about in her journal. And what happened in the mirrored room.

“No, seriously. Which was it? Because either way, I can’t see why Nell would have run away unless there was something else. Something, I don’t know, that they were doing to her at Oakside. Or
making
her do.”

I can see my mom’s and Aunt Becca’s shoulders rise in unison, like a barricade against my questions. Still, not a word leaves either of their lips. We all chew on silence like it’s a sourdough baguette smeared with Camembert.

“Is somebody going to answer me?” I demand, slapping my hands on my thighs like a two-year-old.

“Goddamnit, Sophie, drop it!” Mom says, setting her water glass down hard and gripping the edge of the table. “You have no idea what you’re even asking about.”

“You’re right. I don’t, which is exactly why I’m asking—”

“I
said
drop it,” she repeats through gritted teeth, her jawbones jutting out below her earlobes.

Mom’s eyes spark in my direction as if I’ve betrayed her, as if somehow she knew I would all along. I want to scream at
her, to stand up from the table, to slam the door and never come back.

“I think I’ve had enough for tonight,” Mom says, finally unlocking me from her gaze and starting to clear the table.

“Miri, let’s go for a walk or something,” Aunt Becca tries, pretending I’m no longer at the table.

“It’s too hot.”

When Mom reaches for a glass in the cupboard near the stove, that seals the deal. She’s done with both of us for the night.

Aunt Becca finally ventures a glance at me with anger or pity, I can’t tell. Anyway, I think she’s aiming it at the wrong person, and I shoot her a look that I hope tells her so.

“Miri, we need to talk,” she tries again, attempting her firmest older-sister tone, which never worked on Mom, even when she wasn’t like this.

“I’m done talking,” Mom mumbles.

“Well, I’m not,” Aunt Becca persists.

I have to say I’m impressed. Well, I
think
I’m impressed. Nobody’s listening to what I say anymore tonight.

“I’ve got a number for you,” she continues, and I know she’s dangerously close to pushing Mom past her breaking point.

“Of a guy? Not in the mood,” Mom makes a bad attempt
at a joke. These days, her jokes are like mine: full of acid.

Aunt Becca fixes a stern gaze at the bottle in Mom’s hand. “Of an AA chapter. It’s three blocks away on Pima. They meet Tuesdays and Thurs—”

“God, Becca. Seriously, not this again.” Mom sounds more like a teenager than I do.

I’m instantly pissed at Mom, and I want to throw my plate of food right at her head. Not that I’m any huge fan of Aunt Becca at the moment for stonewalling me about Nell, but at least she’s trying to get us all to move on. Anything’s better than staying in this limbo. But it’s like Mom’s completely given up. And right now, that’s all I feel like doing too. My head is pounding like a snare drum, and if it weren’t still more than a hundred degrees outside, I’d probably run until I hit Mexico.

Instead, I slide from my chair without saying good night to Mom or good-bye to Aunt Becca and drag myself down the hall toward my bedroom. In my wake, I can hear them arguing, their sisterly voices sounding nearly identical the more walls I put between them and me. My bedroom looks somehow foreign in the orange dusk that slips in through the window. Being in there isn’t any more comforting than being in the kitchen with Mom and Aunt Becca.

I push open Nell’s door and lie down on her bed, the box
of her Oakside belongings right where I left it on top of her dresser. I close my eyes to block the sight of it, to block anything that isn’t the picture of Nell curled up on this very bed, knees under her chin, and a journal splayed across the bedspread, left hand flying across the page as the poetry spilled from her mind. I want to remember the way she used to pull my hair into tight braids after a nighttime bath and instruct me not to toss and turn in my sleep. In the morning, she would unravel the coils to reveal wavy hair just like hers, just like I’d always wanted. I want to remember how she used to tell me, her voice strained and urgent, that if I ever thought I saw things that no one else saw in the dark, if I ever heard things when no one else heard them, to know those things could never hurt me.

I let my head sink into Nell’s pillow, trying as best I can not to crease the sheets I’ll only let myself lie on top of. My mind wanders to the times after Mom had gone to bed, exhausted from ten hours of making people’s hair gorgeous, and Nell would tell me about what she heard when she was alone. She said she thought she might be going crazy, only there was something about the way she would push on the words, as if pressing a cut to make it bleed more, that made me think she
wanted
to believe she was going crazy. Because then whatever was scaring her wasn’t real. I replay those late-night scenes in
my head, imagining myself saying something that might have helped her, that might have made things different. I picture myself telling her what she used to tell me: Whatever it is, it can’t hurt you. I imagine my words releasing Nell’s shoulders from their vise around her ears, her eyes softening and her pupils returning to their normal size inside her deep-green irises.

But then the image is shattered. In my mind, Nell’s face twists at the approach of something only she can see.

What is it, Nell? Tell me what it is.

She shakes her head as if I can’t understand. As if I won’t
try
to understand. She looks like a child, small and afraid, her bottom lip trembling.

Nell, tell me what to do. What can I do?

But she can’t hear me, and then, I can’t hear anything but the faintest whisper. It’s more tonal than a whisper. Like mumbling. Words indistinguishable from one another slur together like overlapping shadows. The wispy sounds fill my ear and command my attention. Nell’s face has gone completely still, and soon she’s rising from the ground, and flipping over like an upturned hourglass. An invisible hand grasps her toe, drags her up the wall, and suspends her from the ceiling so that she’s ready to listen to the words I can’t quite hear from the thing I can’t see.

As Nell listens, her face goes slack, her eyes widen, and her body drains of life. One leg falls to a bend behind her straightened knee, a ballerina poised in upside-down relevé. And as her eyes find me one more time, they plead and apologize and accuse in one stare before losing the light behind them.