It was fine that she was insulting me. These words didn’t sting so much. If she was talking about Nonie and my father, she wasn’t talking about Eva. I hated to hear Eva’s name come out of her mouth.
As though our minds were one, it was the next word she said. “Eva.” She repeated my daughter’s name again and again, as though tasting it. Taking it for her own. “Eva, Eva, Eva.” Shaking her forefinger at me, she scolded. “You coddled her, you know. You needed to let her be more independent. She liked coming to my house when you weren’t with us. I’d let her sit at my dressing table, and I’d comb her hair and let her put on my jewelry. Mama doesn’t let me play with her jewels, she said. Nonie brushes my hair. Mama hurts my hair when she brushes me. That cute little lisp. I loved that cute little lisp!” She shook her head with eloquent dismay. “I was a better mother than you were. Press would sit with us and tell us how pretty we were together. Salt and pepper. And she would put her tiny hand on my cheek and pat it, and then she’d kiss me. She always smiled, Charlotte, when she was with me. With us.” Her face turned pensive.
The music stopped for a few moments and the sounds of the room washed over me: quiet moans, grunts. If it hadn’t been for the low laughter, we might have been in a barn instead of the candlelit theater. What was happening to J.C.? Where was Press? He’d left me to Rachel. Rachel in her costume with madness in her eyes. Why hadn’t I seen it before? But I knew the answer. I had loved her. I had thought I knew her, but I’d been so horribly wrong.
“I used to think about you dying. I asked Press why you couldn’t just die, but he would never talk about it. He loves you, you know. In his own way. Not the way he loves me, of course. But I think he grew fond of you, Charlotte. You’re like some great yellow dog: obedient and friendly and cheerful. I hate how cheerful you are.” She mocked me. “You have to make the best of it, Rachel. You’ll have a baby in time, Rachel. Be nice to your mother, Rachel. Not all of us are so lucky, Rachel.” She shuddered. “I wanted to slap the smug little smile off your face. I had to watch you—watch Olivia make a fuss over you with your pretty blue eyes and your stupid pedigree. She didn’t really like you either, you know. She was as fake as she could be, but you ate it up. Poor, dumb Charlotte. She was just using you. Press was just using you as a brood mare. What did it feel like, brood mare? He almost left you when you had Eva first, you know.” She paused to take a sip of her wine, then put it aside. “‘Girls should be drowned at birth,’ he said.” Then she laughed, imagining her own joke.
I tried to edge away as she climbed onto the cushion beside me, her warm body pressing against mine. Now it wasn’t just her breath that overwhelmed me, but the cloying scent of recent sex. Rachel smelled like sex. Rachel was sex. And I suddenly understood why Press had wanted her. What man wouldn’t want Rachel? Now that she’d given birth, she was fecund. Ripe. It was no use trying to get away from her. She pressed herself against my hip and laughed.
“Press used to tell me about fucking you. He said it was like fucking a mannequin the first few times.” She pressed her lips against my ear, and her breath made gooseflesh run down my side. “Didn’t I teach you anything, Charlotte? I should have come into your bed. All those nights we were alone. So close. It was my duty to get you ready for Press, but I let him down, poor thing, because I don’t really care for girls.” I felt her teeth bite lightly down on the edge of my ear. “He told me you learned to give good head, though. It made me a little jealous when he told me about it. But do you know what he was doing when he told me about it? He was touching me here. . . .” She cupped my breast in her hand, running her forefinger slowly over the nipple, but I could hardly feel it. My head filled with the sound of a thousand bees—some horrible humming that rose in pitch, and then I realized it was a sound that I was making or trying to make, willing her away from me. I squeezed my eyes shut, wishing her away.
“Jesus, Charlotte. Are you crying?” She took her hand away. “Aw. You poor thing. Am I scaring you? Did you think I was going to do something terrible to you? You poor stick.” She moved away slightly. “Don’t worry. Nobody wants you. Don’t you understand that now? Press didn’t want you from the beginning. He just got used to fucking you. And he wanted your stupid babies.”
She climbed down from the pedestal. “No. Not your babies. Just sons.”