Motherthing - Softcover

Hogarth, Ainslie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593467027 ISBN 13: 9780593467022

Verlag: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2022

Inhaltsangabe

A NEW YORK TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • A darkly funny take on mothers and daughters, about a woman who must take drastic measures to save her husband and herself from the vengeful ghost of her mother-in-law.

“A quirky, gruesome, utterly original feminist horror experience.” —The New York Times Book Review

When Ralph and Abby Lamb move in with Ralph’s mother, Laura, Abby hopes it’s just what she and her mother-in-law need to finally connect. After a traumatic childhood, Abby is desperate for a mother figure, especially now that she and Ralph are trying to become parents themselves. Abby just has so much love to give—to Ralph, to Laura, and to Mrs. Bondy, her favorite resident at the long-term care home where she works. But Laura isn’t interested in bonding with her daughter-in-law. She’s venomous and cruel, especially to Abby, and life with her is hellish.

When Laura takes her own life, her ghost haunts Abby and Ralph in very different ways: Ralph is plunged into depression, and Abby is terrorized by a force intent on destroying everything she loves. To make matters worse, Mrs. Bondy’s daughter is threatening to move Mrs. Bondy from the home, leaving Abby totally alone. With everything on the line, Abby comes up with a chilling plan that will allow her to keep Mrs. Bondy, rescue Ralph from his tortured mind, and break Laura's hold on the family for good. All it requires is a little ingenuity, a lot of determination, and a unique recipe for chicken à la king…

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

AINSLIE HOGARTH is the author of three novels. She lives in Canada.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

1

The night Ralph’s mother flayed her forearms, a woman in a red dress handed him a business card. I know how woman in a red dress sounds because I thought the same thing at first. When I got back to the ICU waiting room with our sodas, I said, what do you mean woman in a red dress, a Jessica Rabbit type came va-va-vooming down the hall, pendulum hips pounding sound waves into the souls of dicks?

Christ, said Ralph. No. He cracked his soda and took half of it down. The dress was floor-length, thick cotton, a chaste cream turtleneck underneath. She would bring ambrosia salad to a church potluck, you know what I mean? Secretly hates her nephews, never swims in public. Would definitely take in and gaslight a feeble sister.

I frowned. What do you know about ambrosia salad?

I know it’s got marshmallows. Isn’t that enough? Then he paused, still hitched to the red-dressed woman’s memory: nice hair, he said, more to himself than to me. Very—he searched for the right word—muscly braid, hanging in front of her shoulder all the way down to her waist. White-blond, but not fine. Fuzzy around her face. And those eyes.

What about her eyes?
He started with how the woman had glided up to him, gently, as though he might spook. And he might have, absorbed the way he was: elbows on his knees, fingertips together, mesmerized by the slow jellyfish motion he made with his hands. The card appeared in front of his face, and with a whispered spell, Thank you, sir, it was in his hand. He looked up, seized so completely by her bottomless brown eyes that the waiting room’s relentless torments—flickering fluorescents, tacky surfaces, cast of swollen-eyed kin—evaporated completely.

Then I arrived with the sodas.

Soda because if either of us has more coffee, our colons are going to disintegrate. But we need caffeine, have to stay awake. Poor Ralph isn’t leaving this hospital until he knows for sure whether his mother is going to make it. There would be no go home and get some rest for Ralph; no we’ll call you when we have more information. Ralph just wasn’t that kind of son.

“Bottomless brown eyes,” I repeat, wincing as I open my can, a mysterious habit with an origin I’ve buried for good reason I’m sure.

“They were strange. Almost frothing.” I sip my soda, slurp the rim. “Brown hot tubs.”
He frowns. “You’re thinking about diarrhea.”

“Well, obviously, Ralph. You’re thinking about diarrhea too.”

“Only because I know that you are.”

“Perfect body temperature, thick enough to hold you. Might actually be better than water.” He admits with a shrug that it would be nice to sag nearly suspended, perfectly warm, in a pool of slack shit. “It would have to be ethically sourced, of course.”

“Of course. Completely voluntary.”

“Naturally. Oh, except . . . well, I don’t know.” He sinks in his seat, starts to bring his hand to his chin, then thinks better of it, reminded by the conversation, perhaps, of all the bodily fluids that’ve passed through these rooms. A sensible instinct that I’ll now try to keep in mind for myself.

“What?”

“I mean, do we want to lounge in the feces of someone who’s old enough to consent to it?”
I shift into the soothing articulation of mutinous AI: “Ethically extracted from exclusively breastfed infants, ORGANICA baths are available in three therapeutic densities, and—” I stop, struck with the realization that hot tubs are essentially artificial wombs: our bootleg attempt to revisit that safest, most perfect, capital-H Home, and therefore the worst imaginable thing to be describing to someone whose mother is currently dying. I set my soda down on the side table, drag my hands down my face.

“You really shouldn’t do that in here,” Ralph warns.

And of course he’s right, I’ve forgotten already. I rub my hands on my thighs instead, cleansing them against the exfoliating grain of the denim.

“Maybe we should get a hot tub,” I suggest, a gently used surrogate with deep, jetted seats and a marbled liner.

“I don’t know. Seems like a whole culture.” He whispers the word culture.

“Culture,” I mimic him. “Pervert culture.” 

“Plus they’re expensive. And where would we find all that human shit?”

He smiles, blows a little laugh from his nose, then glances warily at the mechanized double doors, which would, sooner or later, wheeze open with information about his mother. His genuine love for her is evident in his expression right now, the muscles of his mouth and forehead clenched, anticipating the loss already, all the luster leeched from his skin.
Her depression had become, it sounds awful to say, just so grating in the days leading up to this: cloying and relentless, with no end in sight as far as she was concerned, having refused all forms of medication and therapy, but now that she was quiet, now that she might be gone, Ralph was being pummeled by the full typhoon of his love for her, one of life’s cruelest tricks, that the extent of this love waits to reveal itself.

I burrow beneath his arm and he pulls me into him, my length along his, ear against his chest, the top of my head grazing his jaw. I draw his hand to my mouth, take a nip of his skin between my teeth, try to suck the sadness from his pores like venom. He shakes it free as he always does when he’s not in the mood for my biting and drinks more of his soda.

Humans like to put their mouths on the things they love. I remember seeing two mothers on the subway once, babies wrapped snug to their chests with their sleep-soft mouths gaping skyward. “Have you chewed on her feet yet?” one mother asked the other. “Oh, God, yes,” the other mother replied.

I imagine the gentle pressure I’ll apply to my own baby’s foot one day, practice longingly on my bottom lip, the bounce of her new flesh between my teeth. And how she’ll look at me without recoiling, letting me because she doesn’t know any better. She won’t even realize that we’re not the same person, not for a while.

I’ll encourage Ralph to have a bite, and he’ll be just delighted. Though he likes their necks best, protected by the pressed flesh of cheek and chest. He likes their translucent fingernails too; the indents of their knuckles and knees; how quickly their profound suspicion becomes puzzled amusement becomes wriggling joy.

I’d chew on Ralph’s feet if he’d let me; if it’d soften the razor-sharp edges of what he’d just seen: his own mother, still as seaweed, washed up on the basement carpet, which was so saturated in blood that it squished beneath his feet and wrung pale around his knees when he slid to her side. No, no, no, no, he muttered, fumbling for a pulse, relieved to find the gentlest vein still whimpering in her throat.

He screamed, CALL AN AMBULANCE! So I did, right away, without asking, without thinking. They said, Nine one one, what is your emergency? And I said, I don’t know! I hollered down to Ralph, Ralph, what happened? And he shouted back, Mom’s had an accident, there’s blood everywhere, so that’s what I told them: My mother-in-law’s had an accident. There’s blood everywhere! Maybe Ralph didn’t realize at first what’d happened, thought she’d accidentally snapped her veins against that kitchen knife’s cold blade.

A short...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2022
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593467027
• ISBN 13: 9780593467022
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 288
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: GPSR Kontakt; gpsr@phaidon.com; ; Zähringerstraße 24; Berlin; 10707; Deutschland