The Blessed - By Tonya Hurley Page 0,26

a direct contrast to the harshness of the conversation that had just taken place in the living room. Colorful scarves were draped over her lampshades just inches from catching fire, exactly how she liked it. A vivid kilim rug–upholstered footrest and a bottle-green leather wingback chair, large coffee table books stacked up with cushions thrown on top for seating on her lush sheepskin rug, burlap feed-bag pillows, a huge cement pot filled with succulents in every shade of green, incense holders, and an impressive collection of extraordinary silk robes and caftans.

She switched on her Moroccan lantern, lit a stick of incense, grabbed her favorite heirloom afghan from her bed, and wrapped herself inside it as she sat down at her desk—an antique door that she had propped up on sawhorses. Her enormous gray Maine coon cat, which she named Elizabeth of Hungary, jumped up onto her lap. She stroked her back and stared at her curiosity cabinet filled with her collection of beautiful, rare things that she’d collected over the years—an antique wooden hand that she used to hold her vintage necklaces, a collection of antique thimbles, and vibrant glass-winged butterflies, once alive and free, pinned to a board. She, like her mother, loved to collect beautiful things. She often felt her mother counted Agnes as one of her pretty possessions. And she was done with being part of her mother’s collection.

Agnes held her head and began to cry. She knew that her mother was right. Not about everything, but certainly about him. Right then, she wasn’t sure what hurt more, her arms or her ego. They were both so badly bruised.

She pressed a fingernail into the least healed portion of her wound, bit her lip, and forced a wince. In a way, having an open gash was convenient, more so than the tiny little injuries she’d been inflicting. Now there was a big enough target to deliver the sufficient dose of pain and discomfort she felt she deserved.

She didn’t cut, or pick, or break her fingers and toes as a general rule. She punished herself by refusing to be herself. Denying herself. To go along with the life her mother had plotted out for her. Until recently. She’d begun choosing guys and friends on her own, letting her hair grow, literally. Not happier, necessarily, but freer.

Her mom just put it all down to hardheadedness, a phase she was going through. And there were times that she, Agnes, felt that way. But this wasn’t one of them. Her mom was too rigid, too angry over her divorce and the fighting and scratching she had to do to rebuild her life, or as her mom liked to say “repositioning herself.” She couldn’t be heard any longer. Where once she felt like her mom’s “prized possession,” she had lately become just another obstacle, an insubordinate ingrate.

“I have no idea what to do.” Her mom’s voice seeped through the door and into her room. “She’s ruining her life. And mine.”

Agnes scrolled through her smartphone playlist for one of her favorite songs, “Summer Lies.” She popped the phone into her speaker dock, pressed play, and dragged the volume bar as far as it would go. It had special meaning for her after the whole Sayer thing, but more importantly, it could drown out the hurtful conversation going on right outside her door.

All the sweetest things you said and I believed were summer lies

Hanging in the willow trees like the dead were summer lies

I’ll never fall in love again.

Whichever neighbor or relative her mother had chosen to bitch to over the phone, it was the last straw for Agnes. She knew she couldn’t stay there any longer. She stared out her bedroom window for a while, watching a car parked across the street disappear in the twilight, giving up a precious spot on their busy street for a different destination.

I whispered too but the things I said were true

and I gave up my whole world for you

The sudden touch of the sheer curtains blowing away from the sill and lapping her cheek seemed to her like the billow in a sail that had just caught a breeze and was ready to leave port.

I pine and wane, pale and wan, never knowing

when it’s dawn, curtains drawn, hiding in my room,

wasting away, cutting myself.

The song was over. She opened the window, fastened her bracelet tight under her bandage, and climbed out into the garden of her Park Slope parlor-floor brownstone, hopped the fence that bordered her yard