Margarette (Violet) (17 page)

Margarette watches from her darkened bedroom
window as Tommy finally gives up and drives away. It is his daily ritual. But,
she notices, today he gave up after only two minutes. At first he stayed on her
porch for up to half an hour, in a combination of ringing the doorbell,
knocking on the door, shouting, sitting down, and at one point even what looked
to be crying. He knew she was inside, he yelled, because he could see her light
was on. After that time she turned out the light and never bothered to turn it
on again once it got dark. She now reads at her desk with her curtains drawn.
To avoid Tommy she considered not reading at all after dark, but she quickly
found she couldn’t do it. Her book is her savior. It is what keeps her sane, if
only sane in a fantasy world.

After her talk with his father at the funeral she
wanted nothing to do with the Gallagers, and for a second she entertained the
idea that she wouldn’t even ask Tommy to take her to his house so that she
could pick up her clothes. She was willing to leave everything in his house—until
she remembered the book. With the help of her cousin she was able to retrieve it.

Margarette had almost left with just the book but
her cousin, curious about the little house she had never set a foot in, had
gone investigating and discovered her closet; she insisted that Margarette
couldn’t leave behind all those expensive clothes. Designer dresses, underwear
and shoes all were stuffed in trash bags, and as the car pulled away Margarette
felt she made out like a bandit in a quick getaway.

And then she was back in her house, alone as she
had always been before. It was the day of her lost child’s funeral and her
mother was not home. She almost broke down and cried then. She should have, but
she just lay on her bed and instead contemplated an alternate reality where
none of this happened. An hour later Tommy showed up and then she did cry. But
she refused to see him.

Nothing real means anything to her anymore, so she
reverts to her imaginary life where there is no pain. She quickly gets stuck in
a loop of waking pain and immediately plummeting into her fantasy. Nothing
changes until she runs out of provisions at home and has to walk to the
convenience store. It is there an article in the newspaper catches her eye.

The book.
Her book
. It is being made into a
movie. She grasps the paper with shaking hands. The article is about the relatively
unknown actor who has been cast to play Simon. Margarette looks at him and
feels hours pass by and she is still staring. He is beautiful. He is perfect.

It is more than an obsession now. What was just a
fledgling of a thought congeals into an actual plan in her mind, and a week later
the papers with personal information that she stole from the bank are covered
with notes. She has researched a trip, making cryptic calculations on scraps of
paper. Motel weekly rates; classifieds with a few circled ads; even college
admissions office numbers. She has thought through it all. How much money would
it take to take a bus, train, car or horse? Where would she stay when she was
there? How could she even survive alone?

She has to move. Every day that she spends locked
in her room she can almost feel the world slowly spin under her, the rotation
pushing her back against her will, holding her inside the horrible town. She
feels the scrutiny of her tears and nothing soothes her hurt until she thinks
about
him
.

Simon.
He was cut from a white cloth of an
oxford shirt. His hair is golden brown in the sun and black at night. At every
turn he is a gentleman to all, but falls in love with only one girl
. Margarette.

***

In the dimly lit kitchen of her house, Margarette closes
the refrigerator door and jumps as she sees her mother standing right next to
her.

“Mother!” she exclaims, startled.

“You put on weight,” her mother says.

Margarette feels like she accidently stepped on a
scale as she looks down. “It’s been a while since you saw me.”

“And you gained weight.”

“I’m older, too.”

“What is that you wearing? In my house you will
not wear indecent clothes.”

Margarette’s mother obtained a male friend in
Margarette’s absence. Some guy she met at the hospital; Margarette never
commits his name to memory. Her mom and the boyfriend don’t like the way
Margarette dresses around the house. Her shorts are too short, her shirts too
tight.

She gets the sense that the new boyfriend is
trying to
Lolita
her; Lolita being her and her mother being the victim
of the interfamily rapist boyfriend. But that could just be her imagination
creating the perfect excuse to make her run. Or maybe the guy is just more
caring than she is used to, making her feel like he’s being too aggressive with
his attentions. She has several reasons, valid reasons to split, and she is
able to convince herself it could get worse.

But she doesn’t want to antagonize her mother, not
so close to the day of her impending escape.

“I’ll go change right now,” she says, and runs to her
room. There she secretly schemes as she looks at the book she filled with
money; all that she earned while working at the bank and whatever she took from
Tommy’s pockets when she did his laundry—an old trick of hers.

For some reason the idea of going after the guy in
the book doesn’t seem so crazy. Her life was empty before the Plan. She knew
daydreaming didn’t fix the problem and that it was just a temporary solution.
That she would eventually have to face reality. The Plan gave her a purpose,
gave her hope. A future.

The day she first saw him on that piece of paper she
took up running, although she would only run on a back road behind her house. Maybe
it was the idea that she could finally leave behind the sad past few months
what pushed her forward. But she ran, thinking the Plan through, ran and ran
until she was exhausted. She lost weight despite her mother’s opinion; it was
easy for her since she didn’t care to be alive and not eating saves money.

The Plan is simple. The information she stole from
the bank includes addresses and account transaction history for none other than
the writer himself
. At the bank she was able to confirm it was indeed
his account that she was spying on because of a large chunk of his deposits
came from the book’s publishing house. She has the writer’s address and phone
and a one-way ticket to him. He would lead her to her destiny. And her destiny
is Simon.

She knows she doesn’t have much to offer him. But
away from Coyote Falls she could reinvent herself. She will apply for
college—psychology department. Away from the prison of this small town and its
narrow-minded inhabitants she will thrive. She will become someone new; someone
that no one will ever believe grew up in a place like this.

She gets up early the next morning with a tote bag
and a book bag full of clothes and the book that Paulie gave her. At the last
minute she throws her yearbook in the book bag, too. Checking that she has
everything and her cache of saved money, she leaves quietly out the back. It is
early, and she has hours to go before boarding, but she wants to leave before
her mother wakes up.

By nine o’clock she has lost her nerve and goes
back to the house. She feels weak that she didn’t make it to the station. She
doesn’t know why the fear set in then, after she had already taken the step.
The backdoor clicks and she sneaks back up the stairs to her room. She had even
written the schedules down on a scrap of paper in her pocket. She puts her bags
down and automatically pulls out the book, just to stare at it, begging for
strength.

Margarette tries to smile at herself in the
mirror; her dress has wrinkles on it and she barely has any makeup on. What was
she thinking going like that? She bends to take off her boots when she sees her
mother in the mirror.

“Oh hell, what are you doing in here?” Margarette
asks.
And what is it with the crazy horror-movie sneak attacks
?

The noises have apparently woken her mother and
led her into Margarette’s bedroom, without time for her to hide her precious
belongings.

“What are
you
doing?” Her mother counters,
her arms at her hips.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? Don’t ‘nothing’ me, little girl. What in
the devil are you doing?” Her eyes turn to the bags on Margarette’s bed and she
gasps. “You think you can just leave? This is not a hotel for
whores
.
You are beyond grounded, and I forbid it.”

“Why can’t I?”

She doesn’t sense the emotional shift in her
mother’s persona until the question was asked. “Because I need you to be here,”
her mother says unhappily, and breaks down crying.

Nothing but manipulation
.

“How is it possible that you can make that sound
like bad thing? Any other kid would love to be needed, but living with you is
horrible. I can’t stay here!”

“Your wickedness made it that way,” her mother
says, wiping her eyes. “That’s why the Lord took back your child. Contort with
the serpent and spin in his filth.”

Margarette’s palm presses into the bed as she
fights falling to the floor. Anger keeps her on her feet, but the poison in her
mother’s words stings deep under her skin. Her head shakes at her mother’s
verse. “What is wrong with you?”

“You got a blessing to start over. You should be
thanking the Lord for the gift.”

“Mother, be quiet.”

“The Lord is speaking loudly enough for both. You
need to change your ways.”

“You’re never here for me. Instead of blaming me
or affirming your beliefs you should blame yourself. I need a mother, not a
magistrate.” Margarette opens her backpack on the bed and grabs the book to put
it back inside. Her decision to leave has been reinforced.

“You’re carrying a Bible?” her mother asks, quasi
neurotic, her eyes fixed on the book in Margarette’s hands.

Margarette scoffs. “No. It’s just a book.”

“No, it’s not,” her mother says, as her eyes
register the book’s title. In a firm mother voice she commands, “Give it to
me.”

Margarette shies under her mother’s firm voice.
She has seen her mother go crazy too many times, and it always starts with that
voice. “I’m borrowing it from a friend,” she says, trying to deflect her mother’s
anger.

“Margarette Marie,” her mother says dangerously,
rolling her Rs through both.

Her mother takes it from her with a faint
glimmering in her eyes. Her eyes well up. “It is the book of the Devil.”

“What? No….”

“The Devil wrote this filth and my daughter reads
it. The church has told me about this, but I never suspected you. Oh, how I’ve
fallen. My own flesh and blood is carrying the tool of the Devil!” She sobs
exaggeratedly.

“No, no devil or anything,” Margarette says.

“We’re going to burn in hell! You see what you’ve
done? Oh heavens… you see what you’ve done to us? We’re burning, child!”

Margarette looks around and then back at her
mother. “I don’t see any fire….”

Mother points holding the book above her and shouts
Bible verses.

“Can you just talk to me?” Margarette calls over
the sermon. “Stop reverting to stuff you hear and say what you think. I want to
hear you talk to me….”

But her mother sputters damnation about the hell
bound book.

Margarette starts to get truly scared of her
mother’s reaction. She needs to get the book back, but she isn’t sure how to retrieve
it short of beating her mother to death with a blunt object. She focuses on the
vein sticking up on her mother’s forehead and thinks maybe it would pop and she
would have done herself like a rage aneurism suicide. She catches herself
thinking about her mother’s death. Maybe her mother is right and the book does
make Margarette think evil thoughts, but deep down she knows she was born like that,
or learned it from her parents. It is really what she chooses to do with those
thoughts that makes her different.

In a sudden, but calm even tone, Margarette says,
“Well, if it is, and I’m not saying it is….”

“
The Devil’s post. Sent with evil stamps to
deliver books filled with lies that taint the soul
….”

“… Then it exudes evil.  And you’re touching it.”

Her mother shrieks and drops the book face down in
the middle of the room. She kicks it away from her and runs out of the room. “I
am going to destroy that thing!”

Think quick, Margarette
! She looks around
the room and her eyes fall on her small bookshelf above her desk.
Aha
.
An idea comes to her. She grabs her First Communion bible, which looks and
feels just like Paulie’s
Comeunion
. She swaps the books quickly, throwing
the Bible on the floor and
Comeunion
back into her bag, along with a box
containing a rosary from her First Communion.

She hears her mother ascending the stairs, and
looks down at the Bible on the floor and sees the giant intricate cross etched on
the front. Margarette falls to her knees and she reaches out for the book,
flipping it to hide the cross seconds before her mother enters. They face off
like an old western; Margarette holding a lie, her mother holding barbecue
kerosene fluid and matches. Margarette’s eyes open wide with shock as she
realizes what her mother plans to do.

She is shocked at her mother’s choice of weapons.
She thought her mother would get a broom, gloves or a kitchen tongs to move the
book. “No, Mother. Don’t do that.”

“I will destroy it!” Her mother nabs the book from
Margarette, griping the edges with her bare hands, and wincing as if it hurts
to hold it. She steps to the bathroom and a minute later the smell of burning
paper reaches Margarette’s bedroom.