Chapter 22
Her hair was a wild halo of silver. She had on leopard-print leggings and an oversized T-shirt that read OREGON: FIFTY MILLION BANANA SLUGS CAN’T BE WRONG. She was wearing hot-pink Crocs and carrying something in her left hand. I had never been more glad to see another human being in my life.
“You!” screamed Gran Mae. “How are you still alive?”
“Clean living,” said Gail, coming into the dining room. She took in the scene with a glance. “I’m sorry that it took me so long to get here.”
“You can turn right around and go back where you came from, witch.”
Gail shook her head. “Go back to the grave, Mae Mills,” she said, in a voice like the tolling of a bell. “You have no place here.”
The afternoon light blazed through the sliding glass door. It made her shine like an avenging angel. Against the wall behind her, etched starkly against the pale paint, I saw the shadow of a hooked beak and mighty wings.
An hour ago, I’d have thought I was imagining things. Right now, it didn’t seem so much normal as inevitable. Of course Gail would cast the shadow of a vulture. In a world where Gran Mae had returned in a body puppeted by rose vines, why wouldn’t she?
“This is my house,” spat Gran Mae. “You can’t order me in my own house!”
“It’s Edie’s house,” said Gail.
Gran Mae looked ready to spit. “Edith is my daughter. This is family business, not yours.”
She dragged her fingers over the tablecloth and I saw green stems coming from the tips like claws. Ah, I thought, very calmly. That’s what was combing my hair.
I guess it wasn’t sleep paralysis after all.
“Edie,” said Gail, looking at Mom. “Tell her to leave, and I can force her out.”
“You can’t.” Gran Mae looked contemptuous. “Tell her to leave, Edith.”
Mom’s eyes were huge. She looked from Gail to Gran Mae and back again.
“Do it.” Gran Mae’s voice cracked like a whip.
Gail didn’t speak. She just lifted the thing she carried at her side. It looked like a spray bottle.
I stepped sideways and put my hand on Mom’s shoulder. Her hand came up to cover mine and her voice shook but she was still the toughest woman I’d ever known.
“Mother,” she said, “I’d like you to leave now.” And then, because it was Mom, she added, “Please.”
Gail took another step forward, raised the spray bottle, and sprayed Gran Mae directly in the face.
The rose puppet shrieked. Petals dropped away from her cheeks and her hands shot up to cover them.
“Go back where you belong, Mae Mills. Leave the living alone. If you cannot find the way, I will show you.”
“You?” hissed the puppet between her hands. “I know the way better than you ever will, you miserable, classless witch.”
Something passed between them. It felt like I was standing next to a speaker at a concert and the bass thrummed through my chest, even though there was no sound. Gail staggered, catching herself on the back of the chair, and then sprayed the puppet again.
“Go. Back.”
Phil must have finally cut himself free, because he jerked his chair back and nearly fell over. His sneakers were bloody, but he rose to his feet and pointed the knife at Gran Mae.
“Fine,” Gran Mae spat, lowering her hands. “Fine. You know best, all of you. You think you’ll do so much better without me, don’t you?” Her face twisted into a smile. “You think it’ll be so much better if I just butt out? Fine. I’ll go.” Rose petals drifted down from her hair. She took a step back toward the sliding door.
“Go, then,” said Gail, breathing heavily. I wondered what it had cost her, whatever she had done.
Gran Mae laughed softly. The petals were falling in earnest now, flaking away from her face. “I’m going. Maybe you’ll learn what happens to people who don’t appreciate all the sacrifices that kept them safe.” The ladybugs on her tongue began to spread out, crawling out through the gaps in her skin. “The underground children get them.”
“The underground children aren’t real,” I said. “You made them up.”
“I can’t tell you anything, can I? But you’ll wish you listened.” There were larger holes opening up in her face now, with only shadow and rose stems behind them. “I didn’t make them. My father did… and they’re very, very angry.” Her hands were only rakelike rose stems now, as the petals piled at her feet. “The roses said stay away. I put jars of teeth and nails at the roots to keep the children out, but you were so smart, you dug one up and made a gap.” Her lips dropped away in rolled pink petals. A ladybug crawled out of her eye socket. “Father’s blood wasn’t enough. They wanted more. Now I suppose they’ll finally get it.”
“Get out,” grated Gail. “You aren’t welcome here.”
“Very well,” whispered the rose puppet. It was only stem and thorn now, a scaffold of green in human shape. “If that’s the way you all want it. This is no longer my house.”
And she fell apart, very quietly, the stems going brown and weathered gray, and collapsed into a heap of leaf mold on the kitchen floor.
Mom staggered. I moved to catch her. “It’s all right, Edie,” Gail said. “It’s all right. She’s gone. I think.”
“Really?” asked Mom hoarsely. She steadied on her feet. “Really gone?”
“I think so.”
“What did you spray her with?” I asked. “Holy water?”
Gail looked down at the bottle in her left hand as if she’d forgotten it. “Oh,” she said. She turned the bottle so that I could see the label.
“Weed killer?”
“Look, I don’t approve of industrial herbicides, but in this case…” She looked embarrassed. “I try to stay organic, but Japanese honeysuckle really doesn’t respond to anything else.”
“Excuse me,” said Phil, “but can someone tell me what… the fuck… is going on?”
To this day, I don’t know what Gail would have said, because at that moment, the floor dropped out from under us and everything went black.