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He was mad about her. She was just mad.”
“After her father died. She took an overdose … pills or something. I can’t remember exactly. She had a kind of breakdown.”
“Ready, darling?” she asked. Tanya was smiling, but she sounded nervous. She’s afraid of Max, I thought. I wondered why.
I hate causing him pain—and yet sometimes I desperately want to hurt him, and I don’t know why.
huge part of my life is missing. That I’ve denied I want children, pretending I have no interest in them, that all I care about is my art. And it’s not true. It’s just an excuse—the truth is I’m scared to have kids. I am not to be trusted with them. Not with my mother’s blood running through my veins.
there’s an aggressive side to Gabriel, a part of him I only glimpse occasionally, and when I do, it scares me. For those brief moments it’s like living with a stranger.
Like kathy, an unknown side, a stranger
I closed my eyes and stretched out on a friendly rock that was molded to my shape. And I felt at peace at last.
“That you don’t like Max. You never have.” “That’s not true.” I could feel myself going red.
Something happened between max and alicia, maybe affair?
I took another table, facing in, not out, by the air-conditioning unit. There’s not much light—it’s cold and dark, which suits my mood.
He wouldn’t meet my eyes at first. Or was it me, not looking at him?
“You don’t remember kissing me? You don’t remember grabbing me?” “Alicia, don’t.” “Don’t what? Make a big deal out of it? You assaulted me.” I could feel myself getting angry. It was an effort to control my voice and not start shouting. I glanced out the window. Gabriel was at the end of the garden, standing over the barbecue. The smoke and the hot air distorted my view of him, and he was all bent out of shape.
Max grabbed my arm hard and pulled me toward him. I lost my balance and fell onto him. He raised his fist and I thought he was going to punch me. “I love you,” he said, “I love you, I love you, I love—” Before I could react, he kissed me. I tried to pull away but he wouldn’t let me. I felt his rough lips all over mine, and his tongue pushing its way into my mouth. Instinct took over. I bit his tongue as hard as I could. Max cried out and shoved me away. When he looked up, his mouth was full of blood. “Fucking bitch!” His voice was garbled, his teeth red. He glared at me like a wounded animal.
...more
“Alicia, don’t say anything to Gabriel,” he said. “I mean it. I’m warning you.”
Did he frame her?
don’t believe that Max is in love with me. I believe he hates Gabriel, that’s all. I think he’s madly jealous of him—and he wants to take everything that belongs to Gabriel, which includes me.
So, for the moment, I’m going to remain silent.
I feel safer, somehow, having it on paper. It means I have some evidence—some proof. If it ever comes to that.
He pricked his finger on one of the thorns. A bloodred teardrop. It was perfect.
Thorns, jesus
may not have been a happy child, but during the time I spent under the willow tree, I felt a similar contentment to lying here with Gabriel. And now it was as if the past and the present were coexisting simultaneously in one perfect moment. I wanted that moment to last forever. Gabriel fell asleep, and I sketched him, trying to capture the dappled sunlight on his face. I did a better job with his eyes this time. It was easier because they were closed—but at least I got their shape right. He looked like a little boy, curled up asleep and breathing gently, crumbs around his mouth.
I feel full of hope.
I was curious about the terms of Gabriel’s will.” A slight intake of breath, and Max’s tone instantly sharpened. “His will? I really don’t see the relevance—” “Was Alicia the main beneficiary?” “I must say, I find that rather an odd question.” “Well, I’m trying to understand—” “Understand what?” Max went on without waiting for a reply, sounding annoyed. “I was the main beneficiary.
No one is born evil.
“A baby cannot hate the mother, without the mother first hating the baby.”
A tormented, abused child can never take revenge in reality, as she is powerless and defenseless, but she can—and must—harbor vengeful fantasies in her imagination.
Rage, like fear, is reactive.
Whatever the provocation, not everyone in this world would have picked up the gun and fired it point-blank into Gabriel’s face—most people could not. That Alicia did so points to something disordered in her internal world. That’s why it was crucial for me to understand what life had been like for her in this house, to find out what happened to shape her, make her into the person she became—a person capable of murder.
Justifying his own bad decisions
Gabriel was quite possessive, I think. She stopped calling,
“He killed himself. Hanged himself. Upstairs, in the attic. I found the body.” “That must have been terrible.” “Yeah, it was tough—on Alicia mostly. Come to think of it, that’s the last time I saw her. Uncle Vernon’s funeral. She was in a bad way.”
Alicia's dad killed himself too??? Jeez
“I never believed it, you know. That she killed Gabriel—it didn’t make any sense to me.”
she wasn’t like that at all. She wasn’t a violent person.”
I could feel Lydia’s hostile eyes on me the whole time. There was madness in her gaze; I felt quite sure of that.
“You want to hear about Alicia? I’ll tell you about her. She’s a little bitch. She always was, even as a child.”
Bitch aunt yikes
All my kindness? Do you know what she did to me?” “Mum, please—” “Shut up, Paul!” Lydia turned to me. I was surprised how much anger was in her voice. “The bitch painted me. She painted me, without my knowledge or permission. I went to her exhibition—and there it was, hanging there. Vile, disgusting—an obscene mockery.”
It reminded me of my own escape from home at the age of eighteen, fleeing my father. It was all too obvious who Alicia was running away from—Lydia Rose.
Kathy nodded. A sympathetic squeeze of my hand. She was a good actress. I could almost believe she cared. “How are rehearsals going?” “Better. Tony came up with some good ideas. We’re going to work late next week to go over them.” “Right.” I no longer believed a word she said. I analyzed every sentence, the way I would with a patient. I was looking for subtext, reading between the lines for nonverbal clues—subtle inflections, evasions, omissions. Lies.
I pushed away the laptop with disgust. This must stop, I thought. This way madness lies. Or was I mad already?
Perhaps there was nothing to it. Perhaps it was entirely innocent and Kathy really was going to meet Nicole on Thursday. Perhaps. Only one way to find out.
“You know, you sound more like a detective than a psychiatrist.”
Gabriel portrayed as Jesus, crucified, hanging from the cross, blood trickling from his wounds, a crown of thorns on his head. His eyes were not downcast but staring out—unblinking, tortured, unashamedly reproachful. They seemed to burn right through me. I peered at the picture more closely—at the incongruous item strapped to Gabriel’s torso. A rifle. “That’s the gun that killed him?” Jean-Felix nodded. “Yes. It belonged to him, I think.” “And this was painted before his murder?” “A month or so before. It shows you what was on Alicia’s mind, doesn’t it?”
“She’s impossible to read.” “That’s the point—it is a refusal to comment. It’s a painting about silence.”
Alicia was so intensely alive.… It was hard to take your eyes off her.”
“Alicia didn’t love him. She hated her father. She despised him.”
She hated him ever since she was a kid—ever since her mother died.” “But—then why try to commit suicide after his death? If it wasn’t grief, what was it?” Jean-Felix shrugged. “Guilt, perhaps? Who knows?” There was something he wasn’t telling me, I thought. Something didn’t fit. Something was wrong.
He smiled, and again I felt a slight repulsion: I found something about Jean-Felix hard to stomach.
Jealousy of him?
Jean-Felix coveted the art. Otherwise he would have visited Alicia at the Grove. He would have stuck by her—I knew that for a fact. A man never abandons a woman like that. Not if he loves her.
Alcestis returns from death, alive again. And she remains silent—unable or unwilling to speak of her experience. Admetus appeals to Heracles in desperation: “My wife stands here, but why does she not speak?”
I’m not sure I believed everything he said. Something about it didn’t ring true.
have the feeling I let him down. It’s a feeling I’ve always had about Paul, since we were kids. I’ve always failed to live up to his expectations of me—that I should be a mothering figure to him. He should know me better than that. I’m not the mothering type.
You’re horribly behind.” He laughed that annoying laugh of his. My expression must have given me away because he added quickly, “Only joking.
Mayb not fond of jean
He went on complaining, self-justifying, self-pitying, boring me to death. He never asks me anything. He doesn’t have any actual interest in me. Even after all these years, I’m just a means to an end—an audience of the Jean-Felix Show.
Well, I’d rather be lonely than be with the wrong person. That’s why I never had any serious relationships before Gabriel. I was waiting for Gabriel, for someone real, as solid and true as the others were false. Jean-Felix was always jealous of our relationship. He tried to hide it—and still does—but it’s obvious to me he hates Gabriel.
