Page 35 of Play Nice

Before leaving the city, I buy a new sketchpad, some Sharpies, a bottle of vodka, a pack of cigarettes, and a hot pink lighter. When I get to Edgewood, I spread them out on the dining table, a grim but oddly satisfying tableau. I’m compelled to capture the image, so I do.

Dad calls me while I’m editing the photo, adjusting the brightness, and before I think better of it, I hit answer.

“Clio, your sisters told me about today,” he says. “What’s going on?”

“You knew that Mom didn’t burn me,” I say, picking up my new lighter, turning it over in my hand. “They lied to me. You lied to me. Everyone’s lying. That’s the irony. The only one telling the truth in this family is me. And I’m the one no one believes.”

“Clio, I’m coming over there to pick you up. Enough is enough.”

“Don’t. I have plans tonight.”

“?‘Plans’?”

“With a guy. So don’t show up here. You wouldn’t want to interrupt, would you?” I hang up before he can respond. I’m confident that I’ve deterred him, considering the awkward note and condom wrapper incident from a few weeks ago nearly sent him into cardiac arrest.

I put my phone down and light a cigarette. Take a drag.

Cough.

The stale taste of tobacco, the sting of smoke in my throat—it’s horrendous, and I hate it, so I take another drag. Another. Another before I stub it out on the table.

The rebellion doesn’t feel good, not like I wanted it to. I stare at the pack of Marlboros, something ugly that I thought I could have control over, that I could wield in my hands and feel powerful again. But I don’t feel powerful at all.

Dad and Daphne think I’m crazy. Leda and Tommy think I have a personality disorder. Mom is dead.

I open the bottle of vodka and take a swig. Unlike the cigarette, I like the way it burns.

I begin tearing out pages from the sketchpad. Slowly, methodically, careful not to rip them along the seam. I lay one out on the dining table, along with a Sharpie. One on the kitchen island. The coffee table. Daphne and Leda’s room. Mom’s room.

My room.

It’s cold in here. I set the blank sheet of paper and Sharpie on the bed.

Staring at the blank sheet, I’m reminded of something in the book.

I drop to my knees, check under the bed for the plastic bin where I would keep my drawings.

It’s still there.

I pull it out and open it up, releasing a cloud of thick, gray dust. Inside the bin are stacks of sketchpads and notebooks and loose sheets of paper. School art projects. Random drawings on napkins. There’s a manila folder and, inside it, my illustrations of the house. Must be twenty, at least.

I place them in neat rows on the carpet. I want to see them all.

I would do this a lot as a kid. Draw the same subject over and over in pursuit of perfection. I remember drawing these. I remember being frustrated, feeling like I could never get the house quite right.

I find my phone on the floor beside me. I take pictures of the drawings. I don’t know why.

None of them have blacked-out windows.

I reach for the Sharpie on the bed, lean over the nearest drawing, and scribble in the windows.

There’s movement at the corner of my eye.

I turn toward the closet, the door swinging wide.

In my head, a bell chimes.

Was that part real? What would Roy have to say if I called him and asked about the exorcism? How much did Mom make up?

What would Roy have to say if I asked him if he really loved my mother or if he just has a hard-on for demons?

The closet is shallow; I barely fit inside. Above me is the panel to the attic.

I’ve never been up there before.

I go upstairs to get the ladder, but before I can bring it down, there’s a knock at the front door. The ladder gets abandoned.

I open the door figuring it might be Dad, but it’s Austin.

“Hey,” he says, leaning in to kiss me. “Been a minute.”

“Yeah,” I say, turning away from him. I’m still in my Dolce dress, but I’m barefoot, my makeup smudged, hair tangled, drenched in sweat and covered in dust. I don’t want to be seen.

“Are you okay?” he asks. “Is this a bad time?”

I blink at him. “No.”

“No?” He rests his arm against the doorframe. I haven’t invited him in yet.

“You want to sit out here?” he asks, gesturing to the front steps.

“Yeah, okay,” I say, thinking about all the paper scattered around that I don’t want him to see, all the questions I don’t want him to ask. “Let me go get something first. I’ll meet you, just a sec.”

I run upstairs and grab the vodka. There’s less than I remember.

Austin sits with his hands on his knees. He accepts the bottle when I pass it to him, but he doesn’t drink. He reaches over and pulls one of my curls straight.

I’m hyperaware of my appearance. I want to shrink. I want the sun to set faster. I want darkness. I want shadow. I want to black out the world. I should have held on to that Sharpie.

I don’t want him to look at me the way he’s looking at me. With what might be concern or pity or fear.

I reach for the vodka and take a gulp.

“I watched your stories,” he says. “That’s how I knew you were here.”

“What?” I ask.

“Your stories. The pictures you posted.”

“What pictures?”

“Are you…” He laughs. “I can’t tell if you’re fucking with me.”

“Why would I ever do a thing like that?”

“Well,” he says, and I recognize something sour in his tone.

“Well?”

He stands and steps down to the walkway. “I’m kind of worried about you.”

“What do you mean?”

“You seem…”

“What? I seem what, Austin?” I say, suddenly on offense. He’s judging me. I knew he would.

He looks down at his Vans, runs his hands through his hair.

“You don’t need to worry about me,” I tell him. “I don’t need you to worry about me. That’s not what this is.”

“I thought…” He looks at me again. He expects something from me. He’s waiting for me to intuit what he wants to hear, and then for me to say those words and to be pretty while I say them.

So I say nothing.

Because what I want, what I need, is for him to just be here and not want or need anything from me.

I take another swig from the bottle.

A minute passes. He sighs and says, “I can’t tell if it’s me or if you’re dealing with…”

“Dealing with what? I’m sorry if it’s inconvenient that I don’t just exist to fuck you.”

His mouth falls open. He laughs. “What?”

“Never mind.”

“You can talk to me. About stuff. I’m not just here to hook up.”

“You don’t want to hear about my problems.”

“That’s…that’s not true. At all.”

“It is,” I say. “You’re here because I’m fun and because this isn’t serious.

I start crying to you about my feelings, then I’m not fun anymore.

Then I’ll be too much. And then you’ll go find fun someplace else, and then I’ll be alone and all fucked-up.

So let’s just quit while we’re ahead. It’s for the best. Because where was this really going, anyway?

I work in the city. I live in the city. And you live out here. In your mother’s basement.”

He adjusts the thin chain around his neck, bites his lip, nods. “For what it’s worth, you’re already alone and fucked-up.”

He starts to cross the lawn, walk away.

“For what it’s worth,” I say, “only douchebags wear chains like that.”

“It was my dad’s,” he says without turning around.

—

I sit on the front steps until Austin is out of view.

Until he is gone. I take another sip from the bottle.

Another. When I finally manage to stand, I teeter on rubbery legs, stumbling as I turn to go into the house.

I left the front door open, and a breeze comes through, pushing it all the way back against the wall. It’s like the house is welcoming me in.

The door slams itself shut behind me.

I crawl up the stairs on all fours, my balance off from the alcohol. I haven’t had anything to eat today except a few fries and a single shrimp. There’s no food in the house.

The sheet of paper on the dining table remains blank. As does the one on the coffee table. In the kitchen. In Leda and Daphne’s room. In Mom’s room. In my room.

“What? Now you’re shy?” I ask.

I eye the opening to the attic again, return upstairs for the ladder. But it’s too heavy, and I’m not coordinated enough right now to maneuver it down to my room. Or to climb it.

I’m alone and fucked-up.

In the dark.

The sun has set, and I engage in my new routine, turning on every light in this house.

I sit on the couch and wait for something to happen.

When the nothing becomes intolerable, I get up for my phone. Austin said something about my Instagram stories, didn’t he? I don’t remember posting anything to my stories.

I swear I left my phone on the dining table, but maybe I didn’t, because it isn’t there.

The book is.

This stupid book. This funhouse mirror fiction.

But what’s the harm in finishing it now?

What more damage can it do?

How badly do I want to find out?

“Why would you say that?” I asked her.

“Everyone dies, Mom,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“We’re not dying in this house,” I told her. “Say it.”

“Whatever.” She returned to her drawing. She would no longer engage with me.

I asked her if she wanted a glass of water. She didn’t respond.

I went into the kitchen, and Roy met me there.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “The demon’s hold on this house is strong.”

“Why?” I asked. “Why this house?”

What I was really asking was: Why me?

Why had I, all my life, come up against such adversity?

Would I never know peace? Was I cursed? What had I done to deserve my father?

Or these cruel men I seemed to gravitate toward.

The cruelty of my own body and the attention it garnered—so often unwanted.

The restlessness of my mind. The ruthlessness of motherhood.

What had I done to deserve these demons?