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Oh! The relief to be gone from that state of our imprisonment! For the first time in years, I began to relax—a little.
I’m so ready for this psychotic ride.
Full of gratitude, I smiled at the very, very fat woman who filled the aisle with her brilliantly gowned body.
So this nice lady just helped you out when everyone else was giving you dirty looks and complaining and you just have to keep pointing out how fat she is? I forgot about the audacity of this girl lol.
Also, not just “fat” but “very, VERY fat” ???!
Your good fortune I be on your bus, and can take you to my own doctor-son, who is very best doctor.
Seems sus.
Both Chris and I watched, fascinated, as the mammoth black lady made gestures and signals that left the driver as frustrated as we had been.
MAMMOTH?!
Like a fat mother hen, Henrietta Beech hustled us up the long brick walk to the front veranda and there I hesitated, staring at the house, the double black doors.
Not just a mother hen, a FAT mother hen.
He was a large man wearing a pale gray suit with a white carnation in his buttonhole.
I most definitely read that as “butthole.”
And so I’d said it.
Cathy: promises she won’t overshare.
Also, Cathy: tells every single detail in a long winded rant.
She really said, bitch, I said what I said. *dojaaaaa*
“Cathy and I used to swing from the ropes we tied to the attic rafters, so she thought we could become aerialists, with some practice.”
wut
“No!” I snapped. “I can’t cook. I’m a dancer. When I’m a famous prima ballerina I’ll hire a woman to do the cooking, like you do. I don’t want to be stuck away in some man’s kitchen, washing his dishes and fixing his meals and having his babies! That’s not for me.”
Jesus Christ Cathy.
“Don’t,” Chris whispered. “Kiss me good night, and there won’t be any bedbugs here.”
Seems manipulative to me.
Dr. Paul didn’t seem the same man whose eyes followed me around when we were in the “home” side of his house.
“Yes, God favored Henny and me that day he put you three on that bus. I lost one family, and grieved for them, and fate was kind enough to send me another, ready-made family.”
This screams I-killed-my-family LOL
“I really don’t like the way he keeps looking at you, Cathy. His eyes follow you about all the time. Here you are, so available, and men his age find girls your age irresistible.”
DIS GUS TANG!!!!
But how fascinating to know that men of forty were susceptible to girls of fifteen.
Cathy, I wouldn’t say that’s a hard flex lol.
I knew that garden for what it was. For I’d been there before in my dreams.
This is so creepy.
“You look disturbed, Cathy. Why?”
Perhaps bc your 40 year old ass is giving off sex vibes to a 15 year old.
Just a wild guess.
“I love you too, Carrie. I always wanted a little girl with blond curls and big blue eyes, just like yours.” But he wasn’t looking at Carrie. He was looking at me.
I really wish I could post gifs here.
My face is little Chloe in the back seat with that disgusted face lol.
“Darling, I adore blond girls with blue eyes in pastels, so why not wait until you’re older to wear all those brilliant colors?”
🥴
Love, it was such an encompassing word, different from sex and ten times more compelling.
Chris and I had used the last of our stolen hoard of money to buy Paul a luscious red lounging robe, and a brilliant gown of ruby red velvet for Henny—size fifty-eight!
Bruh 🤦🏼♀️
“Then we’ll use your room. Carrie can sleep through a war.”
Bruh WHAT?!?!
I know what kind of payment you want!” I took my hands and ripped open the peignoir so the skimpy bodice of the aqua nightgown was revealed.
😳😳😳😳
“What the hell are you doing sitting on my lap half naked? Why did you let me do what I did?”
✨accountability✨
“Just use me when you need me, and that will be enough.”
CATHY CUT IT OUT
I never dreamed anyone as fine and noble as Paul could have ugliness in his life too.
Gurrrrlllll, you are a poor judge of character.
“Why? I won’t rape you.”
UM???
“I am trying to control my temper. It would be nice if you could control yours.”
Honestly, fair.
“I dream every night of being in New York, on stage. I see my mother in the audience staring up at me with disbelieving eyes. She wanted to kill me. I want her to see me dance and realize I have more to give the world than she does.”
I loved her, and I wanted her, and in the end I raped her—or so she said time and again.
I’m sorry, what now???
The water was only knee-high.”
I thought you couldn’t drown in only that much water. Like as a grown adult with fully developed fight or flight and nothing holding you there lol.
Scotty’s a different story.
“Tell me how a wife should be on her wedding night. I wouldn’t want to disappoint bridegroom.” “I will tell you no such thing!” “Then I’ll just pretend you’re my bridegroom, and I have just come from the bathroom after getting un-dressed. Or maybe I should undress in front of you. What do you think?”
Paul: I raped my wife multiple times then she killed herself along with my son.
Cathy: let’s fuck!
“You’re playing a dangerous game. You’re trying to seduce me and you’re very lovely and very hard to resist. But your place in my life is as my daughter—nothing else.”
Steel, covered over with frilly, silly tulle tutus!
get it gurlllll
“I think you are a mean, nasty, ugly girl to torment Carrie!” said Lacy.
Pop off Lacy!!
“Young man,” shot out Miss Dewhurst, “nobody tortures my girls but me!”
Weird flex.
“Stop!” I cried when I felt his lips pressing down on mine. “Leave me alone! You don’t love me like I want to be loved, for what I am. You love me because my face is like hers! Sometimes I hate my face!”
This..... is alot to unpack.
Freud would have a FIELD DAY.
“Isn’t there one thing modern medicine can do to help her grow?” I asked Paul.
#HumanGrowthHormone LOL
When I was done no one would have guessed I was only seventeen.
I just want this bitch to turn 18 already so I don't have to hear about all these people being obsessed with a minor.
Not that 18 makes it honorable but you know what I mean.
“I’ve been slaving to make you a cake that tastes as good as your mother’s,” I interrupted, “and then you don’t show up!” I brushed past him and pulled the casserole from the oven.
Seriously who does Cathy think she is????
Happy Birthday to Paul.
Idk why but this is sending me LOL.
Not "Happy Birthday Paul!"
"Happy Birthday TO Paul"
I questioned back, carefully setting down the cake with twenty-six candles, for that was the age he appeared to me, and the age I wanted him to be.
It's Cathy's world and we're just living in it. Lol.
Dizzy, I suddenly fell to the ground!
That's what drunk, bipolar swinging will do to ya, Ca-the-rine.
“I wanted to give you a shiny silver Cadillac for your birthday, but I didn’t have enough money. So I thought I’d give you second best—me.”
Babe, I'm never putting my value after a god damn car LOL.
“Catherine! Hurry, hurry, come!”
VOM
Good-bye, Christopher Doll—now you are set free.
She really followed the "you get over one guy by getting under another" magazine bullshit rule LOL.
“Yes,” I said defensively, “of course I do. I’m supposed to feel stunned by lightning bolts so I stiffen out and go unconscious and then I’m split wide apart into atoms that float around in space and then gather together and sizzle me with tingles so I can float back to reality with dream-stars in my eyes—like you had.”
Babe, if you're going UNCONSCIOUS from finishing then we maaaaaay have a problem lol.
I felt strange with Chris now, like I’d betrayed him.
Ah, yes. Cheating on your literal brother with your guardian.
That was what loving Paul was like for me when I was seventeen and he was forty-two.
RED FLAG RED FLAG RED FLAG
“Stop being so damned nervous. They’re only people out there. You don’t think I’d come back here to dance with a girl who wasn’t sensational, do you?”
FUCK Julian.
What an ass.
“We both knew it couldn’t last, Catherine. From the beginning I warned you, April just can’t marry with September.”
