Goodbye, and Thank You for Inviting Me

Sarah-Lisa’s many apartments joined together to make one house was like a white rat maze and Veronica couldn’t find her way out. She found an office, a guest room, a palatial bathroom. All she wanted to find was stairs. The stairs led to her mother. But the stairs were nowhere in sight. She turned down a hall and ended up in what had to be Sarah-Lisa’s room.

Of course Sarah-Lisa had a canopy bed. She had everything. She even had a dog she didn’t deserve.

She took in Sarah-Lisa Carver’s well-organized vanity with its mirror and its lip glosses and fancy brush set and the matching nail scissor and emery board. Sarah-Lisa had a cloth-covered bulletin board covered in notes from Athena—Dear S-L, C U after school xoxox—and so many pictures of the two of them having so much fun.

Sarah-Lisa’s dresser was right next to the vanity and had a perfect glass animal collection and a tower of powder blue boxes from Tiffany proudly displayed on top. Veronica opened Sarah-Lisa’s drawers. All her cashmere cardigans were inside, folded perfectly and arranged by color, just like the clothes in Mrs. Carver’s closet.

She put a navy blue one next to her face. It was soft and smelled like it had been washed in expensive perfume. Veronica took it to the vanity, carefully laid it over the mirror, and cut off all the pearl buttons. She went back to the dresser and took out a pale blue cardigan. She cut its arms off. She cut holes in the armpits of an ivory one. One by one, she destroyed all of Sarah-Lisa Carver’s cashmere cardigans.

When she was finished she put the scissors back on the vanity and was overtaken by the strangest sensation. She’d left her body. She was there, but she wasn’t there. She was at a distance, watching herself in the bedroom of a fancy girl named Sarah-Lisa Carver. She needed to find the hall that led downstairs. She would find her mother and they would go home. Oh, to be home, to have a few days without having to see any of those girls. She wanted her mother but came face-to-face with Athena Mindendorfer instead. Her blood stopped moving through her body. It coagulated like Jell-O.

“Veronica! What are you doing?” Athena asked.

Veronica couldn’t answer the question. She’d messed up all of Sarah-Lisa’s pretty sweaters. But she hadn’t planned it. She couldn’t explain anything. She walked out of Sarah-Lisa’s room, away from the damage and away from Athena, who would never choose her over Sarah-Lisa. She was in her altered state of being. Detached. A spectator. Her life wasn’t her own. What happened here tonight was scenes from a scary movie of a life that belonged to someone else. She didn’t need to be afraid.

She escorted her disembodied self down the stairs, which had suddenly appeared before her. She wished she’d thought to do this earlier; leave her body, be here by not really being here. It solved so many problems.

Sarah-Lisa came down the stairs behind her, holding half of the desecrated pale blue cashmere cardigan, followed by an army of hysterical girls. There was shouting, and in the midst of a huge commotion, which should have shaken her to the core, she felt very little. The real Veronica was somewhere else, safe and sound, protected by her numbness.

Sarah-Lisa waved her cashmere remnants in Veronica’s face and Sarah-Lisa’s mother shook her and stripped off her white fur jacket.

She thought she heard her mother tell her to say, “Thank you for inviting me,” so she did. She thought she heard Sarah-Lisa’s mother telling Mrs. Morgan that her daughter needed a psychiatrist and Mrs. Morgan saying something like, “Thank you very much, she has one. Plus two as parents. One plus two equals three. Good night.”