dresser open and empty, dozens of delicate lace bras and panties thrown on the carpet like so much debris. Every necklace she owned appeared to be hanging from the wrists of her outstretched hands. Her eyes were swollen and red from crying.
“What are you doing?” Marcy asked, although she knew the answer well enough to mouth the response along with her mother.
“I have nothing to wear.”
Marcy shrugged and turned away. So it was starting again, she thought, her stomach twisting into a series of tight little knots. Why had she come up here? She could have simply eaten her breakfast and left for school with nothing more than a casual shout of good-bye up the stairs, as Judith had done, as her sister did every morning. No way Judith was ever going to find herself in this position—standing in the doorway of her parents’ bedroom, her mother naked in front of her, at least a dozen beaded necklaces dangling from her arms like tinsel on a dried-out Christmas tree.
It had been almost a year since the last occurrence, a year in which her mother had dutifully followed her doctor’s orders and stayed on her medication, a year without major incident, a year of relative calm. A year in which Marcy had allowed herself to be lulled into a false sense of security. A year in which she’d permitted herself the fantasy that they were a normal family, that they could actually be happy, that she might be able to relax her guard.
Which was all it took for everything to go to rat shit, she realized when she saw her mother standing naked in the middle of the room—one moment when you weren’t looking.
“Maybe you could help me, darling,” her mother was saying, several long beaded necklaces falling from her wrist to the floor as she beckoned Marcy forward. The necklaces slithered across the carpet and came to rest at Marcy’s feet, where they coiled in on themselves like brightly colored snakes.
Venomous snakes, Marcy thought, taking a step back. “I’ll be late for school.”
“This will only take a minute.”
“You should get dressed.” Marcy stared just past her mother at the orange-and-black Calder lithograph on the far wall. It embarrassed her to see her mother in the nude, her once slender body now flaccid and lined with unflattering veins. “You’ll catch cold.”
Her mother laughed, incongruous tears streaming down her face. “You don’t catch cold from being naked, silly girl. You catch cold from a virus. Everybody knows that.”
“I have to go.”
“No. Please don’t leave me.”
“I’ll call Dad.”
“No, you can’t do that. He’s in court all day today. A very important case. We can’t disturb him.”
“Then I’ll call your doctor.”
“He’s on holiday.” A note of triumph crept into her mother’s voice, as if she’d been planning this for some time.
Marcy crossed the room toward the en suite bathroom, opened the medicine cabinet above the sink, and began rifling through the various creams and lotions for her mother’s medication. “Where are your pills, Mom?”
“Gone.”
“What do you mean, gone?”
“I flushed them down the toilet.” Again, that disturbing note of triumph.
“Please tell me you’re joking,” Marcy said, lifting the cover off the toilet and staring into the empty bowl. The joke’s on me, she thought.
“I stopped taking them weeks ago. I don’t need them anymore, darling. They were just making me sick.”
“They were making you well.”
“Then I’d rather be sick,” her mother said stubbornly.
“I have to go.” Marcy walked briskly out of the bathroom, heading for the door. “I’m going to be late.”
Her mother’s hand on her arm stopped her. Another necklace rolled off her wrist and dropped to the floor, coming apart on impact, its delicate orange beads scattering in all directions. “Why don’t you wear any makeup, sweetheart? A little blush or mascara would do wonders for you, take some of the emphasis away from your hair.”
In response, Marcy grabbed a pair of shapeless gray sweatpants from the bed and thrust them against her mother’s chest. “Get dressed, Mom.”
“Please, won’t you stay with me a little longer?”
“I can’t. I’ll see you later.”
“There’s so much cruelty in the world,” her mother said, triggering the start of another crying jag. “All those poor abused children and animals, all those people dying in poverty.” She sank to the floor. “Sometimes I feel such despair.”
I don’t have the patience for your despair, Marcy thought. “I have to go. I have a French test first period.”
“Then you should run along,” her mother said, abruptly shifting gears, both hands waving