“Come on, Mom,” Melanie dismissed, drying her light brown hair with the towel. “He’s really nice, and we have a lot in common.”
“Like what?”
“Music. He listens to all the groups I like, even Killing Joke. And you should see his stereo, it’s huge.”
“Melanie.” Ann leaned forward as if concentrating. “Are you telling me you were in this boy’s house? Alone?”
“He doesn’t live in a house. He lives in the church basement.”
This didn’t sound right. “He lives in the church? What about his parents?”
“He doesn’t have any; he’s an orphan. Grandma gave him a job as a custodian or something.”
Grandma, Ann thought sourly. It was one obstruction after the next. Ann’s mother was regarded as the town’s matriarch, loved by all. Melanie was making friends here. Martin wrote better here. Where did all this leave Ann?
On the outside, she answered herself. “I just don’t think I approve of your hanging around with some boy you just met.”
“I’m not a little kid anymore, Mom. I’m an adult.”
“Is that so?”
“Let’s not argue.” Very abruptly, Melanie took off her robe. She sat down naked at the antique vanity to comb her hair.
Ann swallowed her shock. Melanie had never disrobed in front of her, at least not down to the skin. But she did so now as if it were natural. Ann felt she should comment on this immodesty, but what could she say? Certainly, there was nothing unnatural about a mother seeing her daughter unclothed.
“Mom, what’s wrong?” Melanie could see Ann’s face in the vanity’s big framed mirror. “You act like you’ve never seen me naked.”
“Well, I haven’t really. Not in years.” But she thought: She is an adult. Melanie’s body had indeed blossomed. She’d been skinny as an adolescent, boyish. Now her breasts had filled out, and the straight lines of her early teens had given over to a nice feminine shapeliness. The firm orbs of her breasts jogged slightly as she combed her hair out in the mirror. Then she stood up, just as abruptly, and turned. Ann couldn’t help but glimpse the fresh young body from head to toe.
“I’m growing up, Mom.”
“I know, honey. Sometimes that’s a hard thing for a mother to realize, that’s all.”
And it was, wasn’t it? Her shock reverted to a dim despair. Melanie had bloomed into womanhood nearly without Ann’s even knowing it. Too busy, she regretted. Too busy trying to make partner to even notice your own daughter growing up.
Melanie quickly slipped into a pair of black acid washed jeans, then pulled on a dark blue “Car Crash Symphony” T shirt. Ann felt like an old curmudgeon sitting on the bed.
Melanie kissed her on the cheek. “I’ll be home early.”
“Bye.”
But Ann had wanted to stop her, to ask her something that had been bothering her of late. Are you a virgin? she’d wanted to ask. But how could she ask something like that without sounding even more curmudgeonish?
Melanie left.
Ann felt old, depressed, naive—all at once. A glance out the window showed Martin wandering off into the looming woods, seeking his muse. How much more distanced could Ann feel from the people in her life? She and her mother were constantly at odds. She didn’t understand Martin’s creative joys at all. And her daughter had grown up right under her nose.
She sat back down on the bed. And my father’s dying, and I hardly ever even knew him.
A tear threatened to form in her eye.
Then she shivered…
Slup slup slup, she heard …slup slup slup…
The vertigo returned. The glaring red vision streamed again through her mind: a fisted hand plunging the knife down. Blood spewing. Naked breasts and belly quivering each time the blade buried itself to the hilt…
—
Chapter 19
“Oh, hello, Ann.”
Ann gave a start. The double doors to the den abruptly slid open, and standing there was Mrs. Gargan, redolent with cologne.
“How are you today, Mrs. Gargan?”
“Oh, I’m fine. What are you up to?”
But Mrs. Gargan’s stiff posture and stiff, make-upped face made Ann feel sidetracked. Past her shoulder, Ann could see her mother and several friends looking through a photo album at the table. Mrs. Gargan’s rigid smile and dark eyes seemed fixed on her.
“I’ve just been puttering around,” she said after a pause. “I thought I’d go upstairs and look in on my father.”
“Yes, of course. Feel free to join us later for tea.”
Yeah, right. Ann’s mother and friends flipped through the photo album as if in deep concentration. They commented quietly at each turn of a page. Ann couldn’t hear them.
“I will,” Ann balked. “See you later.”
She went upstairs as Mrs. Gargan headed for the kitchen. Ann could imagine the banality of joining her mother and friends for tea, pooh poohing over the album. Mrs. Gargan, of course, was just being polite. The stiff cordiality told Ann what she already knew: Ann was Lockwood’s prodigal daughter; she would never be fully welcome here.
Upstairs, the grimly familiar beep led her to the room. Her father’s cardiac monitor. Ann hated that sound. Milly was sponging off her father’s chest. The chest looked waxen, pale.
“Hi, Milly.”
The nurse turned, smiled. “Have you seen Dr. Heyd around?”
“No, not in a while. Is anything wrong?”
“Oh, no, no.” Milly fidgeted in a medical bag, hooked up a new IV. “Everything’s fine.” Her smile turned coy. “I’ve heard Melanie has taken a liking to someone.”
“Oh, yeah. Zack. Do you know him?”
Milly laughed, a strange reaction. “You don’t have to worry about him. Actually, he’s a very nice boy, very helpful. You might be put off a little by the way he dresses, but that’s kind of silly nowadays, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, I guess it is,” Ann said, though reluctantly.
“But you seem bothered by it, or something.”
Did she? I’m bothered by a lot of things. “Motherly concern, I suppose. Do things like that ever bother you?”
Milly laughed again. “My daughter’s a bit too young for Zack; she’s only fifteen. But as mothers we have to realize that eventually our daughters grow up. Didn’t you have a crush on boys when you were a teenager?”
Ann sat down, thinking. It was a revelatory question. “I guess I did,” she said. “But there never seemed to be many boys my age in Lockwood.”
“Well, that’s still pretty much the case, not many children at all, especially Melanie and Rena’s age group. Lockwood’s pretty remote, but I like it better that way. It’s safer. It’s more real, don’t you think?”
Ann shrugged. She remembered how bored she’d been in Lockwood as a child. It must be even worse for an adult. Now that she thought of it, she didn’t remember seeing many kids of any age around town, and not many established men. “What do you do for fun around here?”
“Lockwood may seem like the sticks to you, but actually, there’s a lot for a single woman to do.”
Ann recalled Milly’s rather militant statements about her social life, about men.
“It’s just that Lockwood is so different for you,” Milly went on. “If you’d lived here your whole life, you’d feel different. You’re talking about sex, right?”
The spontaneity of the question surprised her. But she supposed that’s what she meant all along. “I was just curious, that’s all. Your romantic life is none of my business.”
“You can say it,” Milly offered. “I’m no prude. You want to know how a woman in a town like Lockwood finds sexual satisfaction.”