“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“Of course I care about you,” her mother said, with a stiff air of injured dignity. “Even after you said you would help me before leaving me out to dry. Not that it seems to matter to you that your brother was going to take me for everything I was worth and leave me out on the streets.”
Middle class living is not ‘the streets,’ Mom. But apparently this was the narrative her mother had committed herself to, and she seemed to like the sound of it. As if she were some suburban Blanche Dubois, languishing away in genteel poverty.
Jay drew in a deep, angry breath, blinking away the sight of all the piled-up boxes in her apartment. Thinking of all the times she wasn’t sure if she was going to make her rent payment for the month, and the nightmares she had about being forced back to the place she’d run screaming from. Thinking of all the tears she had shed from feeling sofuckingalone.
And all this time, her mother had flounced around, doing whatever she wanted. Only calling when it suitedherandherneeds.She never even asked me what happened that night, Jay realized, the knowledge hitting her like a splash of icy water. Even Nick, as callous as he was, had asked.
She’s looking for a reaction from you, a voice like Nick’s whispered.Don’t let the bitch think she’s made you weak.
“Why did you ask me to go to Nicholas?” It was the first time she had put her nebulous suspicions into words, and the sound of them in the silence was ugly and jarring. “What did you think I could possibly do that would make him change his mind?”
There was another pause, longer this time. Jay thought she heard murmuring in the background. “Because you were close.” Holding onto the phrase she’d chosen before, the first time she’d called Jay at this very same apartment, she went on, “You were the only one he listened to.”
“Not since he was ten. I hadn’t spoken to him for almost nine years when you—is there someone there with you?” Jay asked abruptly, as the sound of voices rose again.
“No,” her mother said shortly. “I’m just out. Running my own errands—like a normal person. Perhaps you’ve forgotten what that’s like, now that you’re back living at that house. You didn’t exactly check to see if it was convenient to call first.”
“And you did during the fifteen times you called me?” Jay said. “Answer the question.”
“Don’t raise your voice at me, Justine. My god, you always did think you were better than me, didn’t you? Resenting me, looking down your little nose at me just for doing what had to be done.”
“You mean marrying Damon? Wow, great job on that one. Maybe one of the songs in your sets should have been ‘Stand By Your Man.’”
Her mother scoffed. “At least I got paid for it.”
Jay made a sound like she’d been punched. She sat up so suddenly that the floor jolted. As she put her now-unsteady feet down, she struggled to hold onto the wine bottle and anchor herself against the tumultuous maelstrom her apartment had become.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I think you know damn well what it means. You’re not that innocent.” There was a burst of static as her mother breathed out an angry laugh. “Do you think I’m blind, as well as stupid? Maybe you didn’t see what he was like when you left, but I did. Iknew. That wasn’t a man regretting the loss of hissister.”
Jay set down the bottle. It fell over and rolled, sloshing wine over the carpet, but she didn’t notice. “What are you accusing me of?”
“He denied it, too.” She sounded smug now. “But men don’t shell out ten grand for something they don’t think they can ride or screw.”
Someone next door pounded on her wall in reproof. Possibly because of the shouted ‘fuck’—she knew they had children. If she were slightly distressed, she might have been embarrassed. But right now, she felt as if she were trapped inside a glass box and the walls were slowly closing in, squeezing every molecule of air from her lungs.
At least I got paid for it.
“Even when he was a child, he was a nasty little freak,” her mother was saying. “You could tell what kind of man he was going to be by the way he would just stare through you. Sometimes I looked into those empty eyes of his and I knew that he was dead inside. But he loved you, didn’t he? You made him loveyou.”
“Oh my god, are you jealous? Jealous ofNick?Youwere supposed to love me, Mom. You were supposed to protect me. From them. From everything. And instead you—” She broke off, struggling to draw in a choked breath. Tears rolled down her cheeks. “Did you throw me at him like some kind of sacrificial lamb? Is that what you’re telling me? You used me as a pawn toget your fucking money because you saw me as some kind of—burden?”
There was another one of those staticky bursts. “He was never going to hurt you.”
(Don’t defend her. She sold you to me.)
Pain exploded in Jay’s right hand. She could feel the plastic of her phone resisting, ready to crack. That made two of them. “And that makes it better that you sold me out?”
“Don’t act like we were on the same side. It was always the two of you against me. You were embarrassed of me and he—he just hated me. But he was never on your side, either. Men like him and his father only care about one side on a woman and it’s the same one you turned on me.”
Oh my god.
“I suppose he didn’t give you anything after all that. I figured he wouldn’t, when I didn’t hear back from you. He really is his father’s son.” She laughed angrily. “A cheat and a liar, screwing everything that moves. That’s his real inheritance.”
“That’s not true.” The words felt like shards of glass in her mouth. “Nick’s nothing like his father. Damon was a fucking monster. Nick is—”
