Page 6 of Play Nice

Helen leads me upstairs, down a hallway, then through a bedroom, and finally out onto a balcony with a wicker love seat, cushions stiff and dirty.

“Mind if I smoke?” she asks, slipping the cigarette out from behind her ear and into her mouth.

“Not at all,” I say.

“I’d offer you one, but your mother would kill me,” she says.

“Not sure she’s capable of that anymore.”

“Not if you were to ask any of these people,” Helen says, lighting her cigarette with a match. She closes her eyes as she takes a drag.

“You don’t believe in ghosts and demons and vampires and werewolves?” I ask her. “Ghouls and goblins?”

“No,” she says. “But I believed my sister. I believed in her belief. I never held it against her. Some people believe in God, a bearded man who lives in the sky. We don’t call them crazy, do we?”

“Depends,” I say, sliding off my loafers and tucking my feet underneath me on the sofa, getting comfortable for what I expect to be a weighty conversation.

“Alex had a hard life. Things she went through that you don’t know about, that your sisters don’t know about. Our childhood. Our father…” she trails off, takes another drag as she stares into space.

“Was abusive. And an alcoholic. Like Mom,” I say. Dad told us all about Mom’s hard life. Sat us down on multiple occasions attempting to explain her behavior so that we wouldn’t think it was our fault. “We knew. We know.”

Helen shakes her head. “You don’t. You may think you do, but…She was always on the defensive after your father…”

The disdain on her face flips my stomach, sends a legitimate chill up my spine. The temperature of the entire planet drops. The ice caps experience fleeting relief.

“Doesn’t matter,” Helen says, standing. She ashes her cigarette over the side of the balcony, looks out at the view of this quiet, picturesque Connecticut street.

“She found some semblance of happiness. Acceptance. With Roy, with these people downstairs. That’s what I choose to focus on.

That’s what brings me comfort now that she’s gone. ”

I sense the “but” coming.

“I just wish you and your sisters could have…” She stops herself. “It’s a shame. She loved you three so fiercely. Everything she did was for you. She knew she couldn’t protect you, so she tried to prepare you for the world. I hope you can appreciate that.”

“She didn’t try. She left us,” I say, catching myself off guard. I sound bratty and resentful, which is weird, because I swear I’m only one of those things.

“It’s not that simple.”

This is what my sisters meant about the twisting of narratives. Of the truth.

“I’m here, aren’t I?” I say, putting my shoes back on. It’s fine if Helen wants to lecture me—I figured she would—but I need to signal to her that I can up and leave whenever. That listening is my choice. The power in this moment belongs to me.

“You are. It’s disappointing that they’re not, though not surprising. Leda is firm in her thinking, and Daphne wants to keep the peace. You were always more open, even as a child. Very perceptive.”

“Thank you,” I say, relaxing back onto the cushions. “You’ve seen Leda, though.”

“I have,” she says, putting her cigarette out on the banister. She takes another out of a pack in her pocket. “She’s willing to see me, but we don’t speak about your mother. A condition.”

“Always a condition with Leda.”

Helen smirks. I recognize myself in her face, her expression, and it’s exhilarating.

This is the magic of family. The sense that you’re not alone in the universe, in your body, because there’s someone else out there who shares your DNA, who’s made up of the same stuff you’re made of.

I haven’t seen Helen in years, but I saw her earlier in the mirror. We don’t know each other, but we do.

And suddenly I miss my mother. Suddenly, I understand that she’s dead. That what I’m sharing right now with Helen, I’ll never have with Mom. She’s half of me, and she’s dust downstairs.

The sound of my sob shocks me. I try to choke it down.

“Sorry,” I say, clearing my throat, but now my eyes are leaking.

Helen stands where she is, watching me, lighting her second cigarette.

I appreciate that she doesn’t say anything, that she doesn’t try to comfort me.

That she doesn’t show any pity. Doesn’t react at all, which is just further confirmation of an understanding we share because of our genetic code or whatever, and it makes me even sadder.

Makes me wish Mom were still alive. Would she know me the way Helen does? Know what to do, what to say?

She would. She did.

A memory surfaces. Falling and skinning my knee in the Shop Rite parking lot. She picked me up, brushed me off.

It hurts right now, but by the time we get home, you won’t feel it.

But then there’s Leda and Daphne, my sisters somehow policing my thoughts. Reminding me that our mother didn’t love us. That she hurt us. My fingers find my scar, rub the rippled, silky skin.

And now here’s Dad, reminding me that winners look to the future instead of the past.

I take a deep breath, reach up and wipe the tears from my eyes. “I’m good.”

Helen nods. She opens her mouth to speak, but then changes her mind, pinches her lips.

I get up and walk over to her, carefully pluck the cigarette from her hand, and take a drag. Cigarettes are repulsive, but I’m making a point. Showing her that I’m an adult. That I can handle whatever it is she’s holding back.

She clicks her tongue, the way Daphne does. The way Mom did. “I assumed Leda would handle the logistics, but in the spirit of honesty, I don’t entirely trust her with your mother’s estate.”

“What estate?” I ask, passing her the cigarette. She takes it. “I didn’t think Demon of Edgewood Drive was a real moneymaker.”

Helen’s only response is an aggressive exhale into the silence between us.

“Not that I care about money. I don’t. I’d take her clothes. Her jewelry. You’re right not to trust Leda. She’d donate all that. Probably without telling me first.”

“If you want her clothes and her jewelry, you can have them. Alex didn’t have much money. She spent most of the last twenty years climbing out of the debt your father left her with.”

Again her wrath turns the air bitter. I pull my cardigan closed.

“It’s essentially just the house,” she says.

My eyebrows knock into each other. “What house? Her house here?”

Helen turns to me, equally confused. “No. Edgewood Drive.”

“What…what do you mean? She sold that house.”

My aunt scoffs. “Did your father tell you that?”

“No…” Though I’m not sure. I can’t remember who told me. If anyone told me. Maybe I assumed.

I’ve looked up the house before on various real estate sites, because of course I have. There’s a single super pixelated photo taken from the road. No other information, no sales history or whatever, which I figured was to protect the current owner. It’s not a normal property.

“But…she didn’t live there,” I say. “Right? How has this never come up?”

“Why would it? That house is quite the sensitive subject for everyone, is it not?”

“That’s a polite way to phrase it. Very diplomatic. Still…”

“Would I board a plane and turn to the person next to me to chat about Nine-Eleven? Walk into a burn unit and ask if anyone needs a light?”

“Okay. Wow. You’ve made your point.”

“To answer your question, Alex moved out about a year after she lost you girls. She moved in with Roy here in Connecticut. But she didn’t sell the house.

She believed it was possessed and that she had a moral responsibility to rid it of evil before passing it on to some other family to suffer there as you all did.

She hung on to it. She and Roy spent time there over the years trying to exorcise it—to some success from what I understand.

I did my best to talk her into selling, but she couldn’t bring herself to put it on the market.

I think it was hard for her to let it go, for as much pain as it caused, it’s the last place she had you girls.

Where you were all together.” She puts out her cigarette, flicks the butt over the side of the banister.

All the world’s an ashtray. “In a way, I’m glad to know she was there in the end.

In a place where she felt close to you and your sisters. ”

My hands find my snake charm. I rub it between my fingers as my brain somersaults inside my skull, trying to work out something I already know but just don’t want to believe. “She was…wait. She was where in the end?”

“In the house. At Edgewood. Leda didn’t tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“She was there when it happened. The heart attack. She died there.”

Of all the places to go. I can accept her dying, but I can’t accept her dying there .

“Must have slipped Leda’s mind,” I say.

“Mm. Must have,” Helen says.

“I don’t get it. What was she doing there?”

“She’d visit sometimes. When she missed you and your sisters. And to make sure…”

“Make sure what?”

“That the demonic activity remained dormant.”

“Ah.”

“Your judgment is wasted on me, I’m merely the messenger,” Helen says.

“I didn’t approve. Didn’t think it was good for her mental or physical health to be there.

Turns out, I was right. But so often, being right means nothing but winning a round of a losing game.

What an empty victory. My sister is gone.

The house is still there. And it’s yours now. And Leda’s and Daphne’s.”

The thought of the three of us going back, pulling up to the end of that sleepy suburban street, up the long, cracked driveway.

Seeing the house waiting there, shaded among the trees.

That clunky 1970s shed-style split-level with such uninviting sharp angles.

Narrow windows that didn’t let in enough light or air.

The uneven stone pathway that led to the splintered stairs, wooden railings always wet, stinking of rot.

The front door painted black, heavy and thick, but like all the other doors at 6 Edgewood Drive, it would allegedly open on its own and slam itself shut.

How many mornings did I wake to find that front door wide open, a dead animal on the welcome mat?

Offerings from the stray cats we would feed, which Mom took as proof.

She thought that the cats were making sacrifices to the beast within the walls.

That they could sense the sinister supernatural presence.

“Well then. I should probably go see Roy about that vial of holy water.”

Helen laughs, then offers me her arm. “Shall we?”