CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
This was not the mother I had left in a drunken stu-por in her lonely man-sion.
That mother was cold, dis-tant, am-biva-lent to-ward my very ex-is-tence. Porce-lain skin, flow-ing bronze hair, those cheek-bones, that body, yet so de-void of emo-tion, of ma-ter-nal in-stinct, that it had made me feel fun-da-men-tally un-wor-thy for nearly two decades.
No, this was the mother from the paint-ing.
Green eyes dulled to a mossy gray. The skin around her mouth sag-ging into low jowls. Lack-lus-ter gray hair shot through with tepid gin-ger. Her hips wide and sway-ing, her breasts full and droop-ing like roses at the end of a long sum-mer.
It was her, but it wasn’t, but maybe it was.
Which one was real?
“Penny,” she whis-pered hoarsely once more, and then she ran to me.
I couldn’t ex-plain why I was not afraid of her, the same way I was afraid of my own dop-pel-g?nger. I couldn’t un-der-stand why, as she bar-reled to-ward me, at once fa-mil-iar and strange, I opened my arms wide and let her em-brace me. I couldn’t fathom the flood of emo-tion that rup-tured in me, a break-ing dam, a tidal wave, the fu-ri-ous gush of a river hurtling to-ward the ocean, as we fell into each other.
She was a few inches taller than me, and my hair was soon warm and wet with her tears. I pressed my face against her chest and sobbed too, with-out re-ally un-der-stand-ing why.
Pulling back only a frac-tion, she cupped my face in her warm, rough hands. “It’s you,” she mur-mured, the words bleed-ing into each other. “It’s re-ally you.”
“And you’re re-ally you,” I croaked, so cer-tain that it filled me with a deep, pen-e-tra-tive ache.
“Oh, my girl.” The tears fell in unashamed sheets, and I could barely see through my own. “I love you. I love you so much.”
I wanted to say it back, but I couldn’t. I just shook and shook and shook, wrap-ping my arms around her ever tighter. I felt like that four-year-old in the mir-ror, small and afraid but, for the first time in liv-ing mem-ory, com-forted by my own mother.
“I’m sorry,” Mum said in a rush. “I’m so, so sorry.”
“What for?” I asked, but I knew. I just wanted to hear her say it.
She sniffed fiercely, press-ing the heels of her hands into her eyes to stem the tears. I keened with recog-ni-tion—I did the ex-act same thing. “For ev-ery-thing that im-poster ver-sion of me has put you through for … god, for your whole life.” A whim-per-ing noise. “You de-served so much more.”
“How do you know?” I asked, sud-denly hot with em-bar-rass-ment. “Can you see it? All of it? What’s hap-pen-ing out there?”
Now that we were a lit-tle apart, I no-ticed that the dress she’d worn in her por-trait was in rags around her heavy-set frame; it had lit-er-ally burst at the seams. The vi-o-let swathes barely cov-ered her.
“Cer-tain scenes play out in the mir-rors,” she ex-plained. “The big mo-ments. Watch-ing help-lessly as that … as that … hor-ri-ble ver-sion of me slowly de-stroyed you. My baby girl. My beau-ti-ful, bril-liant girl.”
The back of my throat tast-ing of silt, I choked out, “I never felt like I was enough for you.”
“My love, you are all I ever wanted in my life. You are all I ever needed.”
“But I still couldn’t keep you sober. I couldn’t make you happy.”
“It should never have been your job to make me happy.” The words were both fierce and ten-der. “I was sup-posed to make you happy, make you warm and safe and loved. I have watched four-year-old you play chess against your-self too many times to count. If I could have just got-ten down on the floor next to you, asked you ques-tions about your ideas and your strate-gies … god, I would have done any-thing. I would do any-thing. And it is the great-est agony I have ever known to re-al-ize I will never get those years with you back.” Her whole body wracked with sobs.
Tum-bling emo-tions gath-ered speed in me, a snow-ball turned avalanche, un-til they were so fe-ro-cious I was ter-ri-fied of be-ing buried be-neath the aching weight of them.
It was ev-ery-thing I’d ever wanted to hear in my life, and yet the cir-cum-stances were so far from how I imag-ined. Why couldn’t I have just had this mother all along? I hated Or-lagh, hated the Masked Painter for steal-ing this woman from me.
But like Davina said, where did the blame ever re-ally start? Did I re-ally hate Or-lagh and the Masked Painter? Or did I just hate the world that had pushed my young, naive mother into this ru-in-ous de-ci-sion?
The pain of what could have been was al-most too much to bear.
“My dad…” I started, but I didn’t know how to fin-ish. Didn’t know what I was even try-ing to say.
She sank to the ground. “I robbed you of that too. Al-though I sup-pose with-out this grotesque choice of mine … I wouldn’t have met him. And you wouldn’t ex-ist.”
It was true. I was quite lit-er-ally born from my mother’s in-se-cu-ri-ties. Was it any won-der I was the way I was?
Mum took a deep, steady-ing breath. “You know, by now, who he is. The Masked Painter. But your fa-ther’s real name was Basil. Basil Hall-ward.”
Basil Hall-ward.
The name was so fa-mil-iar. When I fi-nally placed it, I gasped.
“The founder of Do-rian?”
They’d named a whole the-ater af-ter him.
“The one and the same. He named the place af-ter his first-ever sub-ject—Do-rian Gray. He was hope-lessly in love with the man, and in truth, I could never have lived up. When he met me, I think he was just a bored he-do-nis-tic bi-sex-ual crav-ing re-lease by any means nec-es-sary. Per-haps not even bi—per-haps just bored. I think that was why he was so ob-sessed with paint-ing new por-traits. To make oth-ers with whom to revel into eter-nity. What bet-ter place to find a con-stant sup-ply of new im-age-ob-sessed sub-jects than a drama school?”
The cold sim-plic-ity of it took my breath away. A whole elite in-sti-tu-tion built on this rot-ting heart—built on the nar-cis-sis-tic fears of peo-ple just like me. The puls-ing or-gan-ism of the un-der-world grow-ing stronger and stronger be-neath it. Could it ever be de-stroyed, with-out de-stroy-ing the whole of Do-rian and ev-ery-one teth-ered to it?
“Do you know who the new Masked Painter is?” I asked. “I was never able to fig-ure it out.”
Mum shook her head re-gret-fully. “I’m afraid I don’t.”
“Have you tried to get out of here?” I whis-pered.
“Ev-ery sin-gle mo-ment of ev-ery sin-gle day.”
“Does that mean I’m stuck here now too?” My voice was tiny and afraid even to my own ears.
“Oh god.” She ran wrin-kled hands over her face. “You’re here. You’re here. Are you al-right? Are you hurt?”
I was hurt in too many ways to name, so I an-swered a dif-fer-ent ques-tion—one she had not asked.
“The paint-ings—peo-ple are be-ing killed through them. From the in-side. From in here. We think … we think the or-gan-ism is de-stroy-ing it-self. And I think it took my friend Catalina.” Catalina. The thought of her was an axe to my heart. “Did you see Or-lagh? Her corpse is just back there.”
Mum’s face twisted, half sad-ness and half dis-gust. “I saw her.”
“I just— I don’t un-der-stand.” My mind was be-gin-ning to pin-wheel once more. “Which ver-sion of her is real? The one out there? Or the one in here? Are you the real you?”
An im-me-di-ate, in-sis-tent nod. “I’m cer-tain of it.”
I shud-dered. Be-cause that meant the skele-tal, haunted ver-sion of me that had started to chase me through the labyrinth was the real me too.
So what did that make this me? The im-poster?
Or were we both real, in a sense?
And most im-por-tantly—how could I de-stroy one with-out de-stroy-ing us both?
I had to be-lieve there was a way to bring us back to-gether into one body. One sin-gle body, free from hor-ri-fy-ing an-chors, from por-traits con-nected to a lim-i-nal un-der-world where night-mares lived and breathed. To bring this soft, lovely mother out into the real world too.
My heart grew a hun-dred sizes at the thought. It was ev-ery-thing I’d ever wanted.
“I love you,” I said, and I felt it so sharply it was like the tip of a sword against my heart.
But it did not have the im-pact I ex-pected. Mum started shak-ing vi-o-lently, lean-ing back against the gray-sil-ver paint-ing be-hind her and sink-ing to the ground. Like a mar-i-onette doll cut loose of its strings. “Oh, baby.”
“What is it?” I asked, crouch-ing down be-side her. I wanted to hold her hand in mine, but it still felt too strange to ini-ti-ate phys-i-cal con-tact with her af-ter so long be-ing treated like a leper.
“Ev-ery-thing I have ever done has been out of love for you.” The ex-pres-sion of her face was not one of love, though—it was one of hor-ror.
“What do you mean?” I asked, feel-ing fran-tic now, wrong-footed. My pulse skit-tered like a stone skip-ping over wa-ter.
My mum’s body stilled, and she stared at a fixed point on the sky-ground, her eyes pinned wide. “When I watched Or-lagh lure you into the Masked Painter’s lair, the way she had me, I—”
“It was you,” I fin-ished, as my brain fi-nally caught up.
My stom-ach turned over, feel-ing like a slab of raw meat in-side me.
“You killed Or-lagh.”