FOR MY ENTIRE LIFE, I understood on some basic level that my mother was insane. Maybe I didn’t dwell on what specifically happened when I was two or four or five. But the flashes of memory I did have were never warm and fuzzy. I didn’t picture my mother reading me a bedtime story or associate her with fresh-baked cookies.
Cold winter nights, when the wind howled through the mountains and the walls quaked from the unsettling power of it, I thought of my mom. Dank basements, the smell of rust, the tang of blood, I thought of my mom. Falling off the monkey bars at school one day, the funny popping sound my shoulder made when I landed, and the even louder sound it made when I whacked it against a tree trunk to pop it back in, I thought of my mom.
She’d been insane in the truest sense of the word. Unpredictable, unstable, unreliable. Driven by wild ambitions and deeper, darker bouts of despair. She loved, she hated. I was her best girl, her favorite daughter. Now, be a good girl and stand still, while she dropped a bowling ball on my foot.
In my mother’s world, to love someone was to hurt someone. Therefore, the more she hurt me, the more I should feel adored.
Insanity is genetic, you know.
I’d spent most of my adolescence terrified I’d wake up one morning suddenly overwhelmed by the need to hurt someone. I’d start hitting my friends, screaming at my aunt. I’d stop compulsively cleaning my aunt’s mountain B&B and start ransacking the rooms instead.
I’d go to bed Charlene Rosalind Carter Grant, and wake up Christine Grant, terrorizer of small children everywhere.
Fortunately for me, that never happened.
But I don’t think my younger sister had gotten so lucky.
MY FIRST THOUGHT WAS that my sister would take our aunt back to New Hampshire, to her cozy B&B tucked away in the White Mountains. But that involved a three-hour drive north. Plus, just because you’re crazy, doesn’t mean you’re stupid—my aunt ran a business in her home, meaning the place would be crowded with witnesses.
Far better for this final family reunion—my own little Cambridge rental. One room in a historic house occupied by a single older woman. I hoped for my landlady’s sake that she had been out today. I doubted any of us would be that lucky.
I parked across the street, at the Observatory. After 5 P.M. on a Saturday, the parking lot held only a scattering of automobiles. Dark had fallen completely, the street lamps casting a feeble glow which reflected off the white snowbanks.
I’d planned for Tulip to stay, but the moment I opened the truck door, she bounded out, using my lap as a springboard. She ran a couple of quick circles in the snowy parking lot, clearly happy to be on the move. I contemplated rounding her up, forcing her back into her four-wheeled prison, but in the end, I didn’t have the heart for it.
Instead, I called her to me one last time, kissed her on the top of the head, and thanked her for being the best dog in the world. She whined a little, wagged her tail, then shook her white-and-tan body as if to ward off a chill. She trotted across the parking lot, moving away from my unit, off on some adventure that maybe someday she’d tell me about, if only I were alive to hear.
I watched until she disappeared around the side of the brick buildings. My throat was thicker than I wanted it to be. I patted my coat pockets, fidgeted with the scarf wrapped tight around my neck.
I had spent a year planning, preparing, and strategizing.
Now I simply heard my mother’s words, back inside my head: Everyone has to die sometime. Be brave.
I headed across the street for my landlady’s darkened home.