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The cane, the hammer, the TV being on, the dolls in her dad’s chair . . . it all felt wrong. She looked at the dolls. Whatever had happened, they’d seen it all, but they weren’t about to tell.
High in the shadows someone had done an ugly job of nailing the attic hatch closed, hammering every piece of scrap wood they could find over it and hacking off the pull-down string at its base.
It felt wrong. The boarded-up hatch, the busted vent, the hammer, the cane, the TV. Her mom’s purse on the end of the counter. Something had happened right before her mom and dad had left their house for the last time. Something bad.
Whenever Louise got anxious, her dad always said, You know, Louise, statistically, and there’s a lot of variance in these numbers, but in general, from a strictly scientific point of view, everything turns out okay an improbable number of times.
“This is my house,” Aunt Honey said, “and I don’t want anyone calling anyone else an ‘a-hole’ when what they mean to say is ‘asshole.’ That includes you, Gail. Say what you mean, or get out.” “Mark’s a total asshole,” Constance revised.
In San Francisco, people only grudgingly uncorked a bottle of wine at parties and they always had multiple nonalcoholic options. Here they just assumed you were drinking the second you sat down, and for that, Louise was grateful.
Women talked about their mother’s cooking in the quiet, tragic whispers they reserved for somebody dying of cancer.
We’re as normal as every other family.
“I’ll come right out and say it,” Mercy told them. “Strange noises, bad vibes, your mom and dad recently passed— Your house is haunted and I’m not selling it until you deal with that.”
You’re like some kind of emotionally abusive octopus entangling everyone in your word tentacles.”
For their mom, nothing beat the stretch of holidays that started at Halloween and came to a climax on New Year’s Eve with Pizza Chinese. That night, the Joyners hosted a party in every room. For once, their mom didn’t cook; instead she and their dad ordered Chinese food and pizza—everyone’s favorite foods—in enormous quantities, and it had come to be known as Pizza Chinese.
It wasn’t true. He was lying. She didn’t try to kill Mark. Pupkin did.
Mark was cleaner but he looked like exactly the type of guy who’d go to a Waffle House at three in the morning after shooting a haunted puppet.
She was having a nervous breakdown in Waffle House.
Sadie came around the corner in a big old yellow tank of a station wagon and I don’t want to be inappropriate but sexy girls in big beater cars is the most beautiful sight created by God. I was more in love with her in five minutes than I’d ever been with anyone in my life.
Hiding from the fact that we weren’t going to change the world with our tiny talents. Everyone realizes that at some point, right? It’s part of growing up. You realize you’re not going to be the star of the show. You realize you’re going to be lucky to scrape by and pay the rent.
He’d grown up and left his imaginary playmate behind. Over the years they’d forgotten all about Spider. Pupkin hadn’t. —
What do you say after you cut off your brother’s arm?
She thought about all the other mothers she’d read about who the websites and papers called “crazy.” Maybe they’d only been trying to protect their children, too.
“There are cursed puppets on eBay?” Louise asked, wondering if this was something she was already supposed to know. “Dolls,” Aunt Gail corrected. “I’m not sure if puppets and dolls are the same, theologically speaking, but eBay is rife with them. Barb’s calling is to keep them out of innocent hands. On long weekends and federal holidays we spiritually deactivate them.”
“I’m an atheist,” Mark said. “Pish,” Aunt Gail said, dismissing him. “You’re a Presbyterian, just like your parents.”
I’m going to fight Mom’s puppets, Louise thought. Four weeks ago I was a product designer with a child and now I am going to fight my mom’s puppets with a shovel and . . . oh, God, Mom and Dad, please help me now.
“Because you’re real, Pupkin,” Louise said. “And nothing real can last forever. That’s how you know you’re real. Because one day you die.”
She cried because at last it hit her that time only moves in one direction, no matter how hard we wish it wasn’t so.
When Louise was little, her mom had loved her without reservation, without hesitation, but Louise wasn’t born knowing how to do that for someone else. These stuffed animals were how she had first learned to love something that couldn’t always love you back. They were how she had learned to take care of something that relied on you completely. They had been training wheels for her heart, and now it was Poppy’s turn.
