Private Rites

by Julia Armfield

The problem, of course, has always been her father, the sense of him shattered across her—first broken and then embedded. You act like this, as Jude said once, because you were raised by a psychopath who made you believe everyone was somehow in opposition to you or out to con you or waiting to abandon you. Irene had told them this was pop psychology and then gone away and brooded on it. The problem has always been the way her father treated her mother, that he loved her and then ceased to love her, the way this withdrawal caused her first to unravel and finally to die. The problem has always been the way he left them alone in the house for long periods, the way he spoke to his daughters, the way he pitted one against the other—left each to struggle for a love they should have known they couldn’t earn. The problem has always been squaring one fact with another, her father’s great ease and easy cruelty. That’s good, he would say, in response to something Irene would tell him about her work, and the sun would shine.