41. Chapter 41
Grace
Ihesitate on the threshold of the old house.
In the month since I left, the place has changed.
Or maybe it always looked like this, but I was too close to notice.
Star jasmine overtakes the stair rail, the front door is swollen with mid-spring dampness, and the windows look like clouded eyes peering out from an asylum.
My own front door, only a metre from Mother’s, is locked tight, but I’d rather go to the scene of my dead marriage than return to the prison of my childhood.
“Let’s go to mine,” I say, fumbling with my keys. “I never got to check how the movers managed everything.”
“And sit where—on the floor?” Mother scoffs, shaking her head. “No, Graciously. We’ll go to our house and sit in comfort.”
I’m quiet as Mother unlocks her door. The smell that clings to her clothes, almost but not quite hidden by her perfume, is the cloying scent of a house so colonised with mould that it's been eating itself for years. I grip my keys, reminding myself that I’ve got a way out. I can leave anytime.
So I step inside, my breath stopping short as Mother closes us in.
“There, now. It’s always good to be home, isn’t it, Graciously?”
“No.” I meet her liquid eyes in the half-light of the entryway. “Mother, I need to know right now: do you really think Nate was involved in Nick’s death? Do you have proof?”
She squeezes past me, heading further into the house. “Come sit down in the kitchen, lovey. You didn’t give me much notice at all, but I’ve got one of my frozen lasagnas in the oven. It’ll be ready by now.”
I close my eyes briefly, refusing to believe that this was a waste of time in addition to being a serious disruption of my marriage.
What kind of a marriage is based on lies, coercion, and death…?
I rushed away from Nate’s office to come to Dunedin because I needed to get to the bottom of Mother’s accusations before she decided to move against him legally.
He didn’t know they were in something of a standoff, that she’d managed to match his accusations of chronic abuse with murder.
I can’t regret my haste in leaving when I did; how else could I have managed this on my own? But now I have to handle Mother.
I follow her, the smell of the lasagna increasing with every step, and I already know I can’t eat the thing.
Loaded with noodles, light on sauce—I can already feel my inflammatory response to all that gluten, the pain seeping from my belly into every limb.
Nevertheless, I sit at the kitchen table, keeping my phone tucked out of sight.
I find myself wanting to hear Nate’s voice, to see if he’s sent me more texts.
Mother turns to me before I can check, a large pan of lasagna in her hands.
“Just smell that, Graciously! I doubt that man fed you anything this nice in that nasty house of his.”
“Nate’s house is gorgeous,” I answer, automatically sliding a silicone mat into the centre of the table to prevent the hot pan from scarring the wood. “He built that horseshoe house I designed myself, years ago.”
Mother takes off her oven mitts, setting them aside a little more forcefully than necessary.
“Well, I’m sure it was nothing like the home you and Nick had together.”
“You’re right. The home Nate made for me has no mould and no damp.
” The words are out of my mouth before I can consider them, and I realise that I’m furious.
We are at the scene of my own slow death, and Mother is trying to give me more.
I meet her eyes before I continue. “And there was no husband pretending I’m too delicate and unhealthy for affection in Nate’s house.
He’s a better husband than Nick ever was. ”
“Graciously!” Mother puts a hand to her chest, pretending to clutch at her heart.
“I’m surprised to hear you talk about your own home and husband that way.
” She shakes her head, retrieving a knife from the block on the counter.
Uncovering the lasagna, she looks at it carefully before making a cut.
“Now, I think you’re just too hungry to be right in the head.
What did Nick used to call it?” She gives a saccharine giggle.
“Ah yes, you’re hangry, that’s all. My poor, hangry girl.
We’ll get you fed and you’ll see things clearly. ”
“I’m not eating that, Mother.”
She disregards my statement, setting a large piece of lasagna on a chipped plate in front of me. Steam rises from the sticky-dry mess. My stomach roils as I suppress my chronic drive to comply.
“You need proper care, Graciously, starting with letting me handle things for you. That nasty man will be taken care of, and we’ll have you right as rain within a week or two.
That’s what’s so special about coming home.
You can always pick right up where you left off.
” She sits down opposite me with her own portion of lasagna. “Eat up, lovey. It’s perfect.”
“I said no.” I push the plate to one side, my eyes meeting Mother’s. “Now tell me why you’re so sure Nate was involved in Nick’s death.”
Her smile goes rigid, her cheeks sucking in as she chews before forcing the food down. I find myself wondering if she, too, is Coeliac. It runs in families, after all. Rather than taking satisfaction at the notion, I feel only grief. For her. For both of us.
Mother frowns, and I know some of my thoughts have shown on my face.
“We can’t have such a serious talk when you’re in this state, Graciously. Have a bite or two, and I’ll show you what I’ve found that incriminates your so-called husband.”
I waver. She’s being kind and caring in a way that is familiar and frightening, even as I’m realising how tightly bound the two of us still are. Mother and daughter, a matching pair who have cut one another into damaged shapes.
Only… I never damaged her.
I close my eyes, reminding myself of all the work I’ve done with Dr Eileen.
We’ve worked hard to track and acknowledge each misstep, small and large, resulting in a reckoning with myself as a person whose body attacks her own tissues.
Mother might be the same, though she’s exteriorised the attacks—onto me.
I think of what Mihi would say were she faced with this situation, with a mother bent on the destruction of a piece of her own self.
I think of my friend’s face while we fed the lambs, whose mothers died.
Mihi would grieve, too. And then she’d stand tall in her own power, leaving maternal and filial harm where it belongs.
Outside the whenua.
When I open my eyes, I’m ready.
“Mother,” I begin, “I have Coeliac Disease and we both know it. I can’t have food like that lasagna, now or ever. Tell me what I need to know or I’ll have to leave.”
I expect her to make a show of throwing the entire batch into the rubbish. I expect her to start crying without tears. Or to fall to the floor in anguish at my refusal. She does none of those things.
“I used to feed you by hand when you got like this.” She stands up and steps slowly around the table, her smile still in place. “And look at you. So hungry you can’t even remember that you were cleared of Coeliac years and years ago. Remember, Graciously?”
I feel my breath freeze, panic threatening to replace the oxygen in my lungs. It’s worse than the pan going into the bin. No, I’m regressing all the way back, and Mother is standing over me—the kitchen knife in one hand, a fork in the other.
I’m five again, trying to refuse the food I know will hurt.
I’m twelve, a pincushion for doctors who can’t find any answers.
I’m twenty-two, marrying a man who’ll keep feeding me poison while Mother smiles from the corner.
There’s no way out because I’ve helped to create this mouldy prison of compliance. And I want—so badly—to open my mouth and obey.
Her smile flickers wider, as if she senses my struggle.
“You’re scarred after everything that man has put you through.
” Her head tilts to one side as she lowers the knife to cut my portion of lasagna into bite-sized pieces.
“He took my poor little girl and now she’s confused.
But Mother took care of him, Graciously, and now it’s time to let Mother take care of you, too.
I promise it’ll all be better very soon. ”
“W-what do you mean you took care of him?” I ask, my voice scraping from my raw throat.
Mother ignores the question, poking a dry bit of noodle onto the knife.
She brings it to my lips, even as my phone vibrates under my thigh.
Nate, or someone else? I’m about to answer when Mother lunges, the edge of the knife swiping at me.
My phone falls on the floor, the screen protector cracking, as I jump up from my seat to avoid the blade.
Terror makes me heave, acidity working its way up from my belly and into my throat.
Mother’s liquid eyes are all pupil as she’s poised over me, waiting for me to accept everything she’s really offering on the end of that knife. Not proof against Nate. Not an explanation for Nick’s death. Nothing but more of the same: poison and death disguised as maternal love.
Except I’m not the daughter she made me into.
I’m not five. Or twelve. Or twenty-two.
I’m here. I’m now. I have a man who loves me enough to do terrible things to make me healthier. I have a friend I love to help and a dog I can cuddle and a house I dreamed into existence.
I stand slowly, my eyes never leaving her.
“I said no.”
She bares her teeth, a vein pulsing under one eye.
This would be the time I’d usually yield, panic forcing me to obey.
This time, I reach for the food she’s trying to weaponise against me.
The lasagna pan is hot enough to hurt, but I take a tight grip on it anyway. My eyes go from the knife to her face.
“Tell me what you’ve done to incriminate my husband,” I say, my voice low and deadly, “or I’ll break this pan over your head.”