Our parents had many friends here. Like the McMahans, many of these friends offered to open their houses to us, for “as long as you want.”
Of course, Jenna could not accept such hospitality forever. Soon she would make decisions, rent a place to establish a home.
“When things settle down. When things are less crazy. When I see where I will be working. When the trial is over . . .”
Mom spoke to us with a smile but it was a strained and unconvincing smile. It seemed likely (to us) that our mother would be working in Ann Arbor but she postponed making decisions; we looked at several places to rent, so that we could move out of the McMahans’ house, but no place was quite suitable. Where once Jenna Matheson had been capable of quick assured judgments now she seemed baffled by choices, the more choices the more baffled, and could put off for days the simplest of decisions—whether to say yes to another invitation to accept another award or honor in Gus Voorhees’s name, or whether to say, in a breathy whisper “No! No more.”
Once, when Naomi answered the phone, it was our Matheson grandmother in Evanston, Illinois, demanding to speak with Jenna; told that Jenna wasn’t home, grandmother Matheson complained tearfully to Naomi that her daughter never returned calls from her or from her father, had not replied to their repeated invitations to visit and to stay with them, had not even cashed checks they’d sent to her . . .
“Why won’t your mother speak with us? Is she so busy, doesn’t she want our help, what have we done?”
Astonished and embarrassed Naomi promised her distraught grandmother that she would tell her mother to call that very night.
(“Oh God, is my mother bothering you? Don’t answer the phone, don’t even bother checking the ID. Just don’t answer. I will go through the messages after they accumulate. I promise.”)
Though Darren and Naomi had come to hate Ann Arbor they did not want to move to Birmingham. Above all they did not want to enroll in Birmingham schools—new schools! Almost every year of their lives, new schools. Our mother had destroyed our family by refusing to move to Ohio with our father but we’d moved anyway, eventually—to the McMahans in Ann Arbor.
“You and Dad care a lot for women’s rights, children on welfare, abortions—what about your own children’s rights? Don’t we have any?”
We’d put this question to Mom more than once. Darren’s brainchild he wielded against her from time to time like a switchblade knife.
We’d never dared to ask Dad, not quite.
Mom had no reply to this rude question other than nervous laughter. It was her strategy (we supposed) to pretend that her dear clever children Darren and Naomi meant to be funny.
Later, after Dad was killed, and Darren had been reading about the killing online, as he’d been forbidden, Darren said with a smirk: “All those years, we were ‘collateral damage.’ We never knew.”
“ALL WE WANT for you children is to have normal-seeming lives. We will do what we can. We love you!”—our Voorhees grandfather welcomed us to the big old white Colonial house with a two-floor foyer and a glittering chandelier provoking the mad thought to skitter through Darren’s sick brain—Ideal for swinging like a monkey.
Grandma Adele hugged, kissed us. Melissa may have hugged in return, stiffly.
Yes, our grandfather did say normal-seeming. Grandpa Clem (as he hoped we would call him) did not say normal—he was not naive.
Grandma Adele was such a silly idea! Just because our grandfather had married this powdery-faced “chic” older woman with bright lipstick, hopeful eyes, and red-rinsed hair, and just because she was (we had to admit) very, very sweet, very nice, very patient, very kind, very considerate of us, her step-grandchildren, why would anyone expect us to be nice to her?
Well, of course—Melissa was nice to both our grandparents.
Perhaps because she was adopted, and not of our Voorhees bloodline, Melissa did not hate with quite the fervor we hated; or rather, Melissa did not seem to know hate at all.
Within a few days of moving into the elder Voorhees’s house Melissa snuggled with Grandma Adele watching 101 Dalmatians on the large-screen TV in the sumptuous walnut-wood-lined den while Darren and Naomi skulked in their respective rooms upstairs with doors shut.
(Eventually, Naomi went to knock softly on Darren’s door. Just could not stay away from her brother though his response—Yeh? What the fuck do you want?—was not encouraging.)