The Deadwick Daily’s headline the next morning shouted JUDGE SAYS POISONOUS PATTY WATTS MUST PAY. Reporters said the jury’s deliberation was the quickest in the history of our county. Mom was found guilty of aggravated child abuse and sentenced to five years. She couldn’t contact me unless I said so. By now, she’d been in prison a few months. This was the longest we’d ever gone without talking.
I wanted to leave the café and get away from Vinny King. He was only interested in Rose Gold the Freak Show. Still, I answered the rest of his questions. Vinny was just the messenger. I needed him to get out my version of the truth. Without him, I had no money to fix my teeth. I could already see my blinding white smile. Strangers would return my grin instead of cringing.
My little trooper, she said.
“How do you think your ma got so—pardon my French—fucked up? Anything happen when she was a kid?” Vinny was enjoying himself now.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” I said.
I gazed out the coffee shop window. An icicle fell off the roof and shattered on the sidewalk.
Vinny watched me, his tongue making sucking noises against his teeth. I silently dared him to ask what I knew was coming next.
“Your ma sounds a little crazy. Do you ever feel kinda sorry for her?”
Every single day, I wanted to scream.
But people didn’t get excited by stories of forgiveness. They wanted bridges to burn. They wanted dramas that made their own lives feel normal. I was starting to get it.
I turned my head from the window to stare at Vinny. I imagined a falling icicle stabbing one of those baby blues. An ocular kebab.
“Not even a little bit,” I lied.
5
Patty
Rose Gold and I stand at the front door of my childhood home, my throat clutching a cry. I take Adam from her so she can search her purse for the house keys. Holding the baby—watching his little fingers and toes wiggle—calms me. I remember why I’m here.
Rose Gold sighs in frustration. She digs deeper into her purse. I sneak a peek around while I wait. To the right of the garage are the woods. When I was young, they went on for miles, but by the time I moved out, a strip mall had replaced half the trees.
Across the street is the Thompsons’ wretched house. When I was a kid, the two boys were always playing with scrap metal in the yard, their faces covered with dirt, even first thing in the morning. “Like barbarians,” my mother would cluck, watching them from our window.
The Thompsons intrigued me because they had a horse. I never saw the horse leave its pen. Until, one day, it was gone. The Thompsons too. No one knew where they went, but they didn’t take any of their junk with them. Now the yard is littered with knee-high weeds, spare tires, and fast-food wrappers. I guess this is still the hangout for Deadwick’s derelicts.
I can’t believe the Peabodys never hassled someone into cleaning up the place. What an eyesore out their front window.
Behind the garage is the pool deck David, my dad, and I built. I take a few steps toward the deck. The wood has splintered, the paint is chipped, and the giant hole in the middle of the deck is still empty. Dad had grand plans for an aboveground pool, but never got around to finishing the job.
Rose Gold finally pulls her keys from her bag, unlocks the front door and steps over the threshold, but not before taking Adam back from me.
“Hello, handsome.” She smiles, rocking the baby, touching his cheeks, and kissing his forehead. She has forgotten about her mother. He is all she cares about.
We’ll have to fix that.
I follow close behind and find myself face-to-face with my old living room. Dark wood paneling still covers the walls. The steel blue carpet is worn and needs to be replaced. The furniture is sparse: two brown BarcaLoungers, a coffee table, and an ancient television. The walls are bare—no family photos, no art, nothing. The place is somehow less welcoming now than it was when I was a child.
“How long have you lived here?” I ask. Rose Gold motions for me to follow her down the hallway to the bedrooms.
“A few months. I haven’t had time to decorate with the baby and all.”
We walk toward my parents’ bedroom. The door is closed. Rose Gold pushes it open.
The first thing I notice is the color, or lack thereof. Everything is white, from the walls to her bedspread to the dresser. Even the crib in the corner is made of white wood. I would’ve bet my left boob I’d find some combination of pink, purple, and sea green on her walls. Those used to be her favorite colors.
Her bed is tidy, although the pillow is deflated on one side, as if the stuffing has been torn out of it. There are no photos of Adam or me or anyone else. Every surface is clean, organized, characterless. The room reminds me of a psych ward crossed with a convent.
I realize Rose Gold is waiting for my reaction, so I bob my head. “It suits you.”
She keeps moving, entering my childhood bedroom. “I thought you could stay in this one.”
The walls are sponge-painted lilac. The one piece of furniture inside the room is a flimsy twin bed with a plain white sheet. I suppose it would be unreasonable to expect my daughter to give me the master bedroom. I’m in her home now, a guest—long-term if I play this right.
I follow her gaze upward. Painted on the ceiling are two giant lifelike eyes. I yelp and jump back. The eyes are blue and watery, like they’re upset with me.
Rose Gold chuckles. “Those Peabodys sure had a strange sense of humor.”
I have a hard time believing the Peabodys were responsible for commissioning this “art.” Even when they were young, their idea of a wild night was staying up until ten to play chess. They were the types to decorate their house with the kids’ school crafts. Someone with talent painted these eyes.
Scooting closer to the door doesn’t help. The eyes watch me wherever I am in the room. They’ll have to be painted over. Immediately.
“And this is, as you know, the third bedroom,” Rose Gold says from my older brother’s room, across the hallway. I close the door to mine, eager to put the eyes behind me. I glance inside David’s room, empty except for a handful of unopened boxes. I can still picture the desk covered with doodles, the leather journal shoved under the mattress, the Swiss Army knife on the nightstand, spear-point blade out. I rush past the room and stop in the bathroom all four of us shared.
Rose Gold follows me, clutching Adam. “Everything okay?”
I loosen my grip on the countertop and smile weakly at her in the mirror. “A lot of memories in this house.”
Rose Gold returns my smile. “I thought we could relive some of them. I’d like to learn more about my extended family.” Rose Gold never met her grandparents; my father’s been dead almost forty years, my mother for thirty.