CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

KATE AND ERIK lie facing each other—blinking in the half-light, chuckling into the folds of pillows.

At this proximity, his face looks like one of those enormous Easter Island statues. “Well, apparently Anita and Rob. She says they talk late into the night about all sorts of stuff.”

His mouth twists to the side. “They are a little weird. But if it makes you happy . . .”

For some reason this reminds Kate of how Erik used to brag ironically that he was going to keep her barefoot and pregnant. And everyone laughed because no one said that sexist stuff anymore, so somehow that made it funny. But it also made her kind of sick.

Someone else has considered the same thing. She can feel it. Somewhere in the house, someone else is awake. She’s had this ability ever since the kids were born. Sometimes it’s the high-pitched hiss of a TV tube, but she could swear sometimes it’s merely the sound of eyeballs blinking.

Kate slips out of bed. When she reaches the downstairs rec room, blue light glows from down the hall.

Couldn’t be; his laptop is dead. The glow is coming from the room across from his.

Her daughter jumps in her chair and clicks the mouse, furiously closing windows.

And then Kate remembers again her parents storming in, turning the room upside down, reminding her that nothing really belonged to her at all. She hovers at the door, now fully understanding their fears and the illusion of her daughter’s autonomy—hers to give, hers to take. For now.

Kate hasn’t been officially invited in here in over a year. The kids were in charge of cleaning their own rooms at fifteen. Army surplus netting with plastic leaves hangs from the ceiling and the green light fixture above casts a dim jungle shadow all over the walls and bed. Kate battles the urge to pick up the dirty clothes strewn across the floor. It seems Samantha moved most of her stuffed animals to the upper shelves and they need a good dusting. Her lower shelves now house library books on primate pack dynamics, McFarlane action figures of rock stars and ghouls (difficult to tell the difference), sunglasses for every occasion, empty nail polish bottles.

“Mmm, I dunno, Mom.” Samantha looks nauseous, but she opens the window back up. She sighs. “I guess you have a right to know.”

Kate drags over the ratty Spongebob ottoman that her daughter has had since age seven. She sits on it and takes over the unfamiliar Mac mouse.

“Blogging My Sojourn. Hmm.” Kate roots around in her molars with her tongue.

It’s a simple site—no pictures or graphics—with only one link: Sojourn Reclaimers, but the visitor stats are in the thousands. Kate reads the profile. Fits the stereotype: middle-aged woman, lost and alone, failed lesbian relationships, various addictions, a damaged childhood, all contributing to the type of personality that goes from one extreme to another. Like most blogs it’s a rambling, narcissistic confessional.

Kate bounces around the week’s entries. With Samantha watching her, she feels more like a voyeur than she usually does online. She can’t focus.

Samantha huffs, takes the mouse back, and heads for the archive. “I got curious about Sojourn a while back. Wondering what the heck they were doing to Lucy.” She scrolls up and down until she finds it. “Listen to this, Mom.”

. . . the girls remind me of us at their age. Rangy little minxes who want to watch the stars and change the world. They’re already itching to get out of Dodge and sing their own song. Make it big. The age-old cliché. How can I tell them that the flip side of the cliché is that all they want to do out there is drain the brightness? They’ve already had a small taste of that cruelty. It will steal the magic parts they should never give away. It won’t want the real person, it will only want the product.

Music has forever been an opportunist. It’s always there, ready for an ear, waiting for the energy of release. These girls are just a new instrument.

I don’t know, maybe they’ll make it. Maybe they’re stronger. Vicky and Ed are better parents than mine were, after all. And at least their girl isn’t a lesbian. Got a hockey-jock for a boyfriend. But still, I’m scared for that little baby goth.”

“I’m sure it’s only a coincidence,” Kate mutters, though her skin tingles.

“I’ll bet. Give me that.” Kate takes command of the mouse again and frantically clicks all over the screen to find the Close Window button. Apparently the Escape key on a Mac is only for decoration. “I don’t want you to read any more of this,” she says with a hiss.

Erik and Kate have kept an eye on their kids’ social media accounts, but they’d never thought to protect them from something like this.

Kate finally locates Shut Down. “I need to make sure this is okay for you to see. Promise me you won’t read any more until I do.”

“All right, honey.” She kisses Samantha’s forehead. “Get to bed. Everything’s going to be fine.”

Kate creeps to the kitchen, grabs one of Erik’s pale ales, and pads downstairs to his office. The computer dongs its greeting like Cinderella’s first stroke of midnight. As she opens the web browser, fascination and horror crawl over her same as they did when she sprinted across the lift bridge to outrun the Wicasa Queen.

How is it that she, Katherine Louise Andern Larson, someone so ordinary, should have this thrust upon her? If the blog was this easy to find, it won’t be long before everyone knows about it.

Near the end of my stay, my group leader had decided I was a lesbian because I’d been molested by a man. They wanted to hypnotize me, vacuum out the details. I wouldn’t let them. Guess I didn’t want them to be right. But either way, I wasn’t letting these people that far into my head.

While my parents were visiting me at the Sojourn campus, my group leader encouraged them to offer whatever they could think of. So Mom spilled what she thought was the magic moment.

Apparently, when I was five, my parents left my brother to babysit me while they went to a party. When they came home, my brother was passed out drunk on the couch. And I had wandered in from my bedroom to sit in front of the TV watching his porn. The women were “doing bad things to each other,” Mom said.

—Do you know how hard it is not to laugh when your mom says stuff like that in front of other uptight people?—

Anyway, that night my dad beat my brother “within an inch of his life” and kicked him out. I don’t remember any of this, but the whole story was enough to send Mom bawling out of the therapy session to sit in the car.

Until that day, I’d never realized that’s why my brother left. He went to work on the ships that year. So, in a way, his death is my fault. We all had a hand, our crappy little family. Suppose that’s another reason why I stayed away for so long and why I’d stayed in Europe when I knew my father needed bone marrow donors. That and the fact that I became his punching bag after my brother died, while my mother stood in the kitchen. Of course, I didn’t mention any of that to the group leader. Something about my parents always left me tongue-tied, as if to acknowledge their fuck-ups made it all so absolutely true.

Posted by Liesl ~ 6:00 PM ~ 3 comments

Patrice commented:

Finally we know. Satan has had his hooks in you for a very long time. But you can get back on track. If you can just hang in there, the kingdom will be yours.

Down4Jesus commented:

I’m beginning to see what an uphill battle this is for you. I’m a little conflicted here. Don’t get me wrong. I think we can all change with God’s love. But I’m not sure this is right for you. There’s something off here.

Rolf68 commented:

I don’t know what to say to this Liesl, except it wasn’t your fault. None of us here wanted any of this for you. And I’m sorry there wasn’t someone else better to help you process it. But we’re here for you now.