Page 32 of Play Nice

The exorcism was scheduled for the following weekend. I asked my ex if he was available to take the girls, and he said he was. He didn’t ask any questions, and I was grateful I didn’t have to lie. He still didn’t know about the possession, and I thought I might be able to keep it that way.

Dee was fascinated with Ruth’s blue hair and tattoos. Elle had a crush on Jed. I was enamored with Roy, who was very sweet and attentive to Cici, even when she was peppering him with rude questions.

Their presence in the house made me feel safe.

—

Impatient, I skim ahead to the exorcism.

“I can’t take them,” he said. “I never said I would take them.”

“What do you mean, you ‘can’t take them’? We talked about this.”

“I didn’t know you meant this weekend. I thought you meant next weekend.”

“Why would it have been next weekend? That’s already your weekend!”

“Alex. Don’t raise your voice at me. It’s your weekend. This is the temporary custody agreement. If you can’t hold up your end of the agreement, we can discuss it in court,” he said.

He’d set me up to fail. It was intentional. I should have known it was too easy when I asked.

“Please,” I said, thinking about the exorcism, how it was too late to cancel and too dangerous to put off.

“Can’t. We’re going away this weekend,” he said. “We’ve had it planned for months, per our original schedule.”

“Oh, fuck you!” I said, finally breaking.

“Nice language, Alexandra. Do you speak that way in front of our daughters? Is that the example you want to set?”

I was so angry, I knew my only option was to hang up before I said anything worse.

I called Ruth. “Can they be here? Would it be all right for them to wait outside on the deck?”

“Um…yeah,” she said, not sounding confident. “That should be fine.”

On Friday night, I took my daughters to mass and to McDonald’s, which I rarely did.

I let them stay up late and watch TV. I let them sleep in on Saturday.

I allowed them sugary cereal, with cut-up strawberries and bananas to alleviate some of my bad-mom guilt, and I told them we were having company. Ruth, Jed, Roy, and Father Bernard.

“That guy?” Cici asked. “Hmm. I don’t know about that.”

“Is this about the haunting?” Dee asked.

“Yes,” I said. “They’re going to help make it go away.”

Cici burst into a fit of those wild, shrill giggles.

“Cici!” Elle said, plugging her ears, horrified by the sound. “Stop that!”

Dee reached out and shook Cici’s arm.

“No one can make it go away ,” Cici wheezed through her giggles. “It lives here.”

“ We live here,” I said. “This is our house. You, me, and your sisters.”

That got Cici’s attention. She went quiet and swiveled her head toward me. “It was here first !”

She jumped up from the table and ran downstairs. I followed her.

She’d shut herself in her room.

“Cici,” I said, knocking. I realized I was still holding the knife I’d been using to cut fruit. “Cici, open up.”

“It’s never going to leave, and neither are we!” she shouted.

“Cici, stop this.”

I tried the knob. Locked.

“Cici, unlock this door right now!”

She started her giggling again.

“This isn’t funny! This isn’t a joke. This is serious,” I said, pounding on the door. “Please, Cici. Open up.”

Her giggles got louder and louder, and I recognized something inside them or maybe hiding underneath—a distinction I couldn’t make—that terrified me.

The demon was laughing with her. Harmonizing with her.

It set something off inside me. Fury. I’d been on edge all morning, with the coming exorcism, with my ex-husband’s cruelty. Roy’s words echoed in my head: The demon living in the house has attached itself to Cici.

I lost it.

I beat against the door.

“No! You will not take my daughter!” I screamed. “You will not take her! You will leave this house! This is my house! My house! It’s mine! Cici is mine! You will not take her!”

The knife in my hand found its way into the door. I lifted it high and I stabbed into the wood. Over and over.

“I will bleed you out!” I heard myself say. “I will bleed you out!”

I wasn’t sure when Cici stopped her giggling. When it went quiet in the house, save for my screaming.

Elle and Dee stood in the hall, wide-eyed. Trembling. Aghast.

When I turned to them, they screamed and ran upstairs.

I called after them, but that only made them scream louder, run faster. They were afraid of me. I took a step back, looked at the knife stuck in the door, and was afraid of myself. For myself. For all of us.

I pulled the knife from the door, fell to my knees, and prayed.

The door opened, and Cici stepped out. She was pale, her hair standing on end. She looked at me, reached out and touched my face. Her hands were cold.

“I would never hurt you,” I said softly, setting the knife down on the carpet. She looked from it to me, back to it. “Never, ever, ever. You know that. Don’t you?”

“I know,” she said sweetly. “But what about you?”

“What about me?” I asked. I wanted to hug her, hold her tightly, but I couldn’t move. She must have known, because at that moment she wrapped her arms around me. She leaned in close, petting my hair.

Then she whispered in my ear. “You’re going to die here.”

—

The book smacks against the wall. The sound surprises me, even though I’m the one who threw it.

I sit and stare for a minute.

“Yeah. No.”

My legs are restless, and I’m chewing on my nails because why not? My manicure is already ruined. I call Aunt Helen again, but this time she doesn’t pick up. I’m upset. I’m upset and I have no one to talk about it with, which only makes me more upset.

I will bleed you out. I will bleed you out. I know it happened because I remember it happening, but the specifics of Mom’s version reframe my recollection, leave this sticky residue of doubt.

You’re going to die here. Absolutely not. I did not, would not ever say that. She’s making it seem like I was possessed or like the demon was over my shoulder, constantly whispering in my ear. But I would remember that, wouldn’t I?

I can’t deny that there’s something in this house. And she did die here.

Was she proving a point? Was it vindication? Was it her obsession? Was it inevitable?

Years of excessive drinking. Years of returning to this place, the stress of it. A self-fulfilling prophecy.

I get up and fish my vape out of my bag. I wish I had cigarettes. I’ve never in my life wished I had cigarettes.

My favorite vices are unavailable to me. I have no liquor and Austin is still at work.

I’m in the suburbs. There are no distractions here, no trouble to get into except for this.

So I walk over and pick up the book—its already fragile binding barely holding together, pages coming loose. I settle back on the couch, pull on my vape, and find where I left off.

I waited on the front steps, smoking a pack of cigarettes, drinking vodka out of a mug. I wasn’t proud of myself, of the state I was in, but I could no longer pretend that I was okay when I wasn’t.

Father Bernard gave me a passing glance as he went into the house, carrying a Bible and a briefcase. Ruth and Jed were uncharacteristically solemn.

Roy sat beside me on the step. He put his arm around me.

“Rough morning?” he asked.

“What gave it away?”

He smiled at me. “It’s going to be all right. We know what we’re doing. We’ve done this before.”

“It’s powerful,” I said. “It doesn’t want to leave.

And I don’t think…I don’t think it wants me to leave.

You said it’s attached to Cici…but I feel…

I feel like it’s attached to me, too. Like it wants something from me.

My attention. My time. My energy. And I’m giving in. And the more I do, the more it wants.”

What I didn’t admit to Roy then was that part of me felt at home in this.

That the pattern, the dynamic, was familiar to me.

That I’d spent my whole life trying to prove myself.

That I was used to being siphoned from. That destruction, invisible or unfathomable to outsiders, wasn’t anything new or extraordinary to me.

That as long as the demon remained in the house, in my life, I could point to it and say— this .

I still wanted it gone, but I didn’t know who I’d be without it.

NEED ME

Roy put his hand on my knee. What he said next proved to me that I didn’t need to admit anything to him, because he already knew.

“It’s what I always say, and my aunt, Ruth, Jed…

they all get sick of me, but it’s true. Demons are beings of attachment.

Ghosts, they haunt with their own purpose.

Sometimes they have messages they’re trying to deliver, but it’s more about conveying that purpose or posing questions.

Depending on why they linger, there can be peaceful coexistence.

But not with demons. They’re not content to coexist. They seek codependence.

Demons will figure out a way in, the most effective way.

You’re right to suspect it wants your attention, time, energy.

They love attention. They’ll learn how to get it from you.

They’ll engage with you to find your triggers. It turns into a dance.”

I put out my cigarette. “I seem to have a habit of picking the wrong dance partners.”

He stood and reached out his hand to help me up. “Maybe the right one will find you.”

—

I wonder if she incorporated this romantic subplot because she thought it would appeal to female readers, which I find pretty insulting, or if she did it for herself. Or if this actually happened and she found love in a hopeless place.

I think about the handsome grief-stricken man I met at her funeral. Why wasn’t he here with her when she died? Were they still happy at the end?

If he was her hero, her soulmate, why did she still die alone?

Maybe he did care, but he didn’t care enough. Maybe she thought she found someone who accepted her demons, but if he was really so good for her, wouldn’t he have encouraged her to exorcise them? To get and stay sober? To reconnect with her daughters? To sell the fucking house?