It’s early, but Emma is already at her typewriter. She’s exhausted, hasn’t even dressed yet, but Charles will be arriving soon and she wants him to find her at work. They’re nearing the end of the book and she’s finding it almost impossible to write. She wants the boy, Zack, to get away from his mother, escape their squalid, sorry life. She imagines him rescued by his aunt, a shadowy but important character in the book. Rescued, taken away-as she hadn’t been. She can see him playing in the sun on the fresh green lawn of his aunt’s house. Safe. Happy. Saved.
But no, Charles won’t hear of it. He says it would read like a tacked-on Hollywood ending; it would lack dramatic punch and tragic resonance, sabotage the climax they’d been building up to. He’s been fierce and unrelenting on this point, has mocked all of her objections. There’s only one way to end it, he insists: have Zack kill his mother. Not pretty, but honest. Bold. Horrifying. • •
That March night, as the soft snow fell outside the window, the small town lay curled in on itself and Emma lay coiled on her bed, her body covered with wounds and welts, trembling with fear and rage, staring at her bedroom door, barricaded with all the room’s furniture, waiting, almost afraid to breathe, her mother, the devil, in the middle of a three-day speed-fueled fit, a fury, and then suddenly-she must have crept close-a crashing as she threw her skinny venomous body against the door again and again and again, screaming, and the furniture started to slide across the floor and her mother started to laugh and Emma realized with a sudden clarity that her mother was insane and so was she, they were both crazy, sick crazy, and she hated her mother for making her crazy, wanted only to kill her, and then the door was halfway open and Emma looked out at the snow and it was so pretty…
And so Emma writes, each word like blood, and dreams of when it will be over. And then what? She hears his key in the door and quickly lowers her head, hoping to feel his lips on her neck. Instead he says, “Good morning,” and moves to the kitchen area.
“Good morning,” Emma says, looking up. Charles hasn’t shaved, his hair is greasy, and there are dark circles under his eyes. He looks drawn and bloated at the same time. He’s carrying a shopping bag, which he sets down on the counter. Some food, some wonderful treats, Emma thinks. But he reaches into the bag and lifts out a fishbowl.
“What’s that?” Emma asks.
Charles pulls out a water-filled plastic bag in which two goldfish are swimming and dumps them into the bowl. “Goldfish.” He holds up the bowl like a proud little kid. “Are you all right, Emma?”
“Why goldfish?”
“Impulse. I had them when I was a boy.” Charles sets the bowl on the counter and studies the fish. “Beautiful, aren’t they?”
Emma nods.
“It’s amazing they don’t go mad, swimming around and around in such a small space all their lives,” he says.
“How would we know if they did?”
“Go mad?”
“Yes.”
He lights a cigarette.
“Did you ever have fish?” he asks.
Emma shakes her head.
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
“For some reason, I imagined you as the kind of girl who would have kept fish. A turtle maybe?”
“No.”
“I thought it might be interesting if Zack had them.”
“In the book?”
“Yes, silly. In the book. Don’t you think a child in his position would try to create a world, even a world as small as a fishbowl, where he could be in control? Where there was no chaos and pain, just gentle swimming hour after hour?”
Emma doesn’t answer.
“Am I working you too hard, Emma?”
“No.”
“I know this is all terribly complicated, with Anne and the book and us. I’m sorry to put you through it.”
He comes toward her and she prays he’ll touch her, stroke her. But when he gets close he turns and walks into the bathroom.
“I look a wreck, don’t I?” he asks.
“A little tired,” Emma says.
“It is a strain.” He goes and lies on her bed. “Only one thing to do, get to work. Cures all ills. Read me what you’ve got.”
Emma looks at the goldfish, swimming in restless circles around the small glass bowl. Why are they looking at her like that?