in.”
“And without you I’d be all alone?”
“Who else would stand by your side?”
He was right, of course, my Pepper-Man. Without the secret, I was no one, just an awkward girl whom everyone feared, even my own sister.
He was my best friend, Pepper-Man, the one and only I could count on.
In those dark and painful nights, I felt loved.
* * *
The summer following Olivia’s party, Mother and I fought day and night. My diet was a constant topic of debate: not so much sugar, not so much cream, I would grow fat and curve all wrong. I was already putting on, she said, though I knew she was wrong about that. Whatever I ate, Pepper-Man just sucked the energy right out of me again.
I was a fury of anger and spite; I gorged myself on buttered cookies, drowned my treats in cream. I stole Mother’s lipstick and wore it to church. My usual expression was a sneer, and I perfected chill in the mirror. I didn’t hide my gifts from Pepper-Man anymore, but put them proudly out on display. My room grew into a fearsome wood of twigs and fallen leaves, brilliantly colored feathers, acorns, and sharp rocks.
Mother didn’t know what to do with me. She kept eyeing me sideways with a mixture of repulsion and worry in her gaze. She never imagined us growing up, I think. She had only envisioned herself as the mother of toddlers. She had never considered that we would blossom and become adults in our own right, slither from her grasp as we had from her womb, not hers anymore, but belonging to ourselves. Who would she be then, when her son grew a glossy beard and her daughters walked in high heels? No longer the blushing bride, for sure. No longer the young and beautiful mother. Her daughters would knock her off the throne, prettier and more desirable, if only by the grace of youth.
Olivia was caught in the crossfire most of the time. She would crawl up next to our mother and offer soft cheeks of comfort whenever there were tears, perfect pearl-shaped droplets that caught in Mother’s lashes. Olivia would be the teddy bear, the sweet child to hug and kiss and make everything feel all right whenever I had been a horror, hurling dinner plates at the walls. I will never forget the looks she gave me, that little tangerine-marzipan girl; dark eyes throwing daggers across the room, accusing me for making our mother sad.
Our brother Ferdinand said nothing while the stoneware flew. He did some half-hearted fencing exercises in the garden, read books on chess and World War I. He was still such a quiet and shy boy, and our shouting gave him headaches. He lay like a pale ghost in bed, cold cloth on his forehead, while Fabia brought him tea on a tray. It wouldn’t be long before Mother decided he would do better away from home, and they shipped him off to boarding school, convinced that he would thrive in a more “wholesome” environment with no mad sister running around.
He didn’t, of course. Our brother never did thrive.
My father, like a bear, just watched it all. His eyes were peering from behind folded newspapers, or across the kitchen table where pieces of his rifle were laid out to be cleaned, from behind the hooks of his fishing gear, across the clubs of his golf set, he peered.
Watched.
It was late that summer, after a very long school break, when the last good china plate went crashing to the wall, Mother finally made good on her threat and set up an appointment with Dr. Martin.
* * *
You both know all about Dr. Martin, of course, and that book he wrote: Away with the Fairies: A Study in Trauma-Induced Psychosis. You might even have read it yourselves. You, Penelope—picking it up at work, perhaps—opening it fearfully while chewing your lunch, choking on tomato wedges and sticky cheese whenever something unpleasant came up. And you, Janus—you really ought to read it, if you haven’t already. You would like it, I believe—it would appeal to your analytical mind.
In its pages, Dr. Martin recounts our time together since I had first appeared in his office as a scrawny girl of twelve, right up until I married and found no further reason to continue our paid discussions. He also tells of those in-between years when he was merely my friend, and how he re-entered his role as my psychiatrist after Tommy Tipp died, and