“Candy?” called Joyce from the living room. “In here, dear.”
Even in the midst of this nightmare, Nessa couldn’t help but hear everything Joyce said as a poorly acted, badly written script.
She tried not to track any blood into the living room.
How stupid! Who gives a shit? Isabeau was dead, and Daltrey had a gun to his head.
Nessa ran into the living room, and there sat her mother on the couch, like the soap opera queen she was. Beautifully coiffed, manicured, still gorgeous after all this time.
And suddenly Nessa was like a little girl, seeing her mother for the first time in years, and she had to throttle the compulsion to run to her, to throw herself into Joyce’s lap.
Because this woman was threatening her son. Had killed her husband. Had tried to destroy her.
“Where’s Daltrey?” Nessa demanded.
“Oh, he’s fine,” Joyce said. “He’s up in his room with Brandon.”
The initial stab of pain for her poor, stupid brother was overcome by her new and fresh hatred of him for holding a gun on her son. The first thing she was going to do, once they knew who they’d been harassing all this time, was to kick the shit out of her brother. He was having a ball, apparently, in Joyce’s good graces.
“Well, let’s get right to it,” Joyce said briskly, rising from the couch, as if welcoming a talk--show guest. “Give me your phone.”
Nessa did. Joyce powered the phone down and put it in her pocket.
“Mom, it’s me,” Nessa said. “I’m Rosie. Look at me.”
“My child is dead,” Joyce said. “My child would never leave me unless she was dead.” She straightened her blouse hem and put her hands on her hips, looking around the room. “Now, you sit over there,” she said, pointing at the wingback chair. “The light is best there, I think.”
Joyce was directing. This was the ultimate reality show to her.
She recomposed her face into a pleasant smile. “From that chair you can also see the TV. So that you have continued motivation to follow my directions, I’m going to leave it on, so you can see what’s happening upstairs.”
There on the screen was Daltrey, lying on his bed, motionless, a gun to his head.
“He’s not moving! What have you done?” Nessa shrieked. “He’s already dead, isn’t he?”
“Oh, no need to worry. I need him alive. I gave him some Nyquil to help him sleep.”
Nessa prayed that this was true.
“How are we doing up there?” Joyce called up the stairs.
Nessa stared at the screen as the gun withdrew from it and a gloved hand gave the thumbs--up sign. Nessa watched Daltrey and finally saw his chest rise and fall. He was alive. And Nessa would do anything to keep it that way. Anything. Whatever Joyce wanted.
Anything.
“Please, Candy, have a seat,” Joyce said, indicating the wingback chair.
Nessa sank into it, and Joyce knelt before her, and a waft of Chanel No. 5 overwhelmed her, activating an olfactory memory of long ago.
“Mommy,” Nessa whispered, watching Joyce tie her ankles to the chair legs with bungie cords, but seeing instead Joyce tying four--year--old Rosie’s tennis shoes.
Joyce hesitated for a fleeting second, almost looked up into Nessa’s face, but then she took a larger cord and tied it around the chair at waist level, leaving Nessa’s arms free. Joyce tucked a blanket around Nessa so that the bungee cords wouldn’t show.
“We’re going to videotape this,” Joyce said. “It’s going to make amazing TV. The grief--stricken junkie confessing on screen to accidentally killing her best friend. And to killing her nanny with a frying pan in a fit of drug--fueled aggression.”
With a shock, Nessa realized what this was. Joyce was auditioning. This was a talk show, a Lifetime movie, and a reality show all rolled into one. Her magnum opus.
Joyce stood back from Nessa’s chair to evaluate her set decoration. She nodded, satisfied.
“Mom,” Nessa said, focusing on Joyce’s eyes, willing her to see her daughter, “remember that time when Brandon was in the hospital, and we went down to Dana Point and pretended to be movie stars? You were Sigourney Weaver and I was Dakota Fanning. Remember?”
“And then, Candy, for the finale,” Joyce said, as if Nessa hadn’t spoken. She held up a length of rubber tubing and a syringe wrapped in a Kleenex, presumably to keep her fingerprints off them. “You’re going to give yourself this shot of heroin.”
Nessa’s salivary glands doubled their output at the sight of the hypo. Damn her own body for continuously betraying her.
Nessa held her breath to make her face turn red and then pointed at her forehead, where a pink V always appeared when she did so. “Remember this, Mom?” she said, her voice frantic. “You used to call it a stork bite, but you also used to say it made me look like a Klingon. Remember how much it would stand out when I got mad? You’d stand me in front of the mirror and say—-”