Beautiful Malice Read Free Page B

lived only in degrees of pain.
    “I bet you have,” I say, as warmly as I can.
    “Oh.” Her voice is once again crisp, businesslike, all emotion under control. “Listen to me hogging the conversation like this. I bet you want to speak to Daddy. He’s not here, darling, but I can get him to call you later.”
    “That’s okay. I’m having a friend over for dinner, actually. Maybe I’ll call tomorrow.”
    “Oh, I’m so glad you’re having some fun.” I hear that catch in her voice again, then her quick cough to bring her voice back under control. “Have a lovely evening. I’ll tell Daddy to call you tomorrow. Don’t you call. It’s our turn to pay.”
    When I hang up, I feel flat, all excitement for the evening ahead gone. I regret having made the call. It hasn’t made me happy—and I’m certain that it has only made Mom more miserable. It’s always this way with Mom, these days. She’s always talking, always planning, always full of ideas and pragmatic conversation. It’s as if she can’t bear to be quiet or to allow herself a moment’s silence. This way, she gives herself no space to remember, no room to think about what she’s lost. It also prevents the person she’s speaking to from getting a word in, from talking about something she would rather not talk about, from mentioning Rachel.
    The modern way to grieve is to talk about it, to let yourself cry and scream and wail. My counselor said we must talk. And I tried, that long, long first year after Rachel was killed, to talk about what happened, to express my sadness, to verbalize our loss, to own my despair. But Dad refused to listen and Mom would cut me off, change the subject, and if I pushed it she would start to cry and leave the room.
    I gave up. I felt as if I was torturing her and I became thoroughly sick of myself, of my neediness. In talking about it, I’d been seeking forgiveness, absolution from the feeling that Mom and Dad blamed me for what happened. But I was asking the impossible, I soon realized. Of course they blamed me—for my cowardice, for my escape, for my having lived. We all knew that if one of their daughters had to die, it should have been me.
    And I no longer believe that there is any better way to cope with bereavement. There is just a shitload of pain to carry—a permanent and dreadful burden—and talking about it doesn’t remove that load or make it any lighter. Rachel died in the most horrific way imaginable. Words are useless against the harsh truth of that. Rachel is dead. She is gone forever and we will never again see her lovely face, never again hear her music. She is dead.
    Why we should need to wallow in this reality, relive it again and again, poke and prod and examine it until our eyes are bleeding, our hearts crushed with the horror and inconceivable sadness of it, is beyond me. It cannot possibly help. Nothing can help. If Mom needs to be stoic, to pretend that she is fine, to hide her despair behind a transparent veil of crisp efficiency and businesslike conversation, then that’s okay by me. It seems as good a way as any to go on with her diminished life.
    I press my forefinger into the small circular scar above my knee. It’s the only physical evidence I have of the night Rachel was killed, the only physical injury I suffered. The wrong girl died that dreadful day. And though I can’t actually wish that I’d died instead of Rachel—I am nowhere near brave enough to be a martyr—I know too well that the better sister died.

4
    R achel walked onto the stage and the crowd fell silent instantly. She looked beautiful, tall and striking; her red velvet dress—which I knew Mom and Dad had paid a small fortune for—accentuated her height and poise. She was only fourteen, but onstage she could have passed for a woman in her twenties.
    Mom squeezed my hand excitedly, and I turned sideways to smile at her. Oblivious, she stared up at Rachel on the stage, her lips pursed in that funny expression she