Where There Are Monsters E-Book

Breanne Mc Ivor

• Herausgeber: Peepal Tree Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Seitenzahl: 266

Beschreibung

Breanne Mc Ivor is a bold new voice in Caribbean fiction. The Trinidad of her stories is utterly contemporary but also a place defined by its folk mythologies and its cultural creations, its traditions of masking and disguises. Her stories confront the increasing economic and cultural divisions between rich and poor, the alarming rise in crime, murders and an alternative economy based on drug trafficking. Their daring is that they look both within the human psyche and back in time to make sense of this reality. The figure of the loup-garou, the violent rhetoric of the Midnight Robber – or even cannibalism lurking far off the beaten track – have become almost comic tropes of a dusty folklore. In Mc Ivor's stories they become real and terrifying daylight presences, monsters who pass among us. Her great gift as a writer is to take us to unexpected places, both to seduce us into a kind of sympathy for her monsters of greater and lesser kinds, and sometimes to reveal a capacity for redemption amongst characters we are tempted to dismiss as shallow, unlikable human beings. The problem, in a world of masks and disguises, is how to tell the difference. In these carefully crafted stories, with room for humour, though of a distinctly gothic kind, Breanne Mc Ivor reaches deep into the roots of Trinidad folk narratives to present us with very modern versions of our troubled selves.

Leseprobe

BREANNE MC IVOR

WHERE THERE ARE MONSTERS

Thrice he assayed, and thrice, in spite of scorn, Tears, such as Angels weep, burst forth: at last Words interwove with sighs found out their way.

John Milton, Paradise Lost

For my mother, with love

CONTENTS

Where There Are Monsters

Ophelia

Things We Do Not Say

The Course

Present

The Boss

Red

Where We Are Monsters

The Cannibal of Santa Cruz

Pembroke Street

Never Have I Ever

Kristoff & Bonnie

Robber Talk

The One Night Stand

WHERE THERE ARE MONSTERS

OPHELIA

Ophelia’s words are tinkling in my ears. They smell like cut grass just washed with rain. I want to breathe her. Strip her. Peel her skin and get to the heart of the woman buried under her layers of poise.

We are at rehearsal in the sprawling National Academy for the Performing Arts. The empty red seats roll back in waves before us. Ophelia is on her cell phone.

I wait until she hangs up. “Ophelia?”

“Yes?”

I want to lean forward and press my fingers on the hardness of her collarbone before pulling her plump bottom lip between my teeth.

“Marcus?”

“Yes?”

“You called me?”

“Oh, yes.”

She sits on the stage, script spread out before her with all her lines highlighted in yellow. She is not wearing stage make-up but she already looks like the lead actress.

How could a woman named Ophelia not be an actress? I wish we were performing Hamlet. She would be herself, of course, peering out at me from the wings.

I can hear myself. To be or not to be – that is the question.

My words are the choking smoke that heralds the start of a fire. Whether ’tis nobler in mind to suffer –

“Marcus?”

“Sorry.”

Ophelia’s forehead crumples.

“I was wondering if you wanted to meet to brainstorm on Saturday?” I ask. “I still think we can work on our first scene together?”

Ophelia whips out her phone, finds her calendar. The light illuminates her face as she opens it. “What time on Saturday?”

“One?” I say, hoping. Please, God. Give me this. Give me an hour with this woman in a coffee shop. Give me her hair, twisted into ringlets that sink into one another. Give me the stomach-shudder when her shirt slips off her shoulder and I see her flesh crossed by a bra strap. Give me –

“Can you do one-thirty?”

I can do anything you want.

“Marcus?”

“Yes, of course – Jardin in the mall?” I try to say this as if I am the type who goes to Jardin des Tuileries instead of Tecla’s vegetable stand where I haggle over the price of an avocado.

“Sure,” Ophelia says. “That sounds like a treat.”

Would she taste my desperation if we kissed – that sour, morning-after taste that I can never brush out of my mouth? I won’t mess it up; I won’t think crazy thoughts – all mixed metaphors and fantasies while I remain tongue-tied.

“Great,” I say. “I’m looking forward to it.”

Ophelia tucks her curls behind one pixie-pointed ear. Touching her would feel like the sun hitting my face first thing in the morning.

Already my head-voices are telling me that this is madness. How could somebody like Ophelia ever want anything to do with me? She probably rolled her eyes when she saw my name on the cast list.

Ophelia smiles – more a lifting of the lips – before returning to her script.

Our director wants us to spend time reading the lines, and living the characters before we begin performing, but I can already see her weaving her character’s clothes over her own. Her pink dress – which only a moment before was elegantly gathered around her wasp-waist – seems to hang off her frame as if she has made herself thinner.

I return to my script and try to ignore her. I imagine my character as he is portrayed in Act One: young, grasping – a ghetto youth determined to claw his way out. Not such a hard thing for me. I even look the part – dark and scrawny, like a weed springing up from a pavement crack.

*

I’d first visited this theatre as a secondary school student. My mother was in between jobs, and someone had stolen the government-sponsored boxed lunch that was supposed to prevent boys like me from going hungry. My stomach was lashed with acid. It was as if I was reduced to this single need. Eat. Eat. Eat.

That first time at the theatre, my nostrils quivered as they inhaled beef patties being seared in the cafeteria. The programme was on my lap, but in the dimness, the only word I could discern was the play’s title: Steel. The tenor steelpan, glittering on the front cover, looked like a pizza. The indentations that formed the notes could have been pepperoni.

I trailed my tongue along my wrist to lick the salt from my sweat.

And then the bright lights winked and popped and the steelpans – hidden in the pit beneath the stage – rumbled. My emotions ebbed and flowed with the tenor pans. The guitar pans were like fingers strumming my vocal chords. I didn’t even realise I was humming until a classmate shouted, “Oh God, man, hush your stink mouth!”

But even he could not pull me away. The crimson curtains rose and Winston Spree Simon was sitting on stage reading a newspaper. I even forgot it was an actor since the real Spree Simon was long dead. He was so engrossed, I wanted to know what the headline was. I had never seen such arrow-like focus.

The play was a love story between an African man and an Indian woman. When they first touched, I felt it in my marrow; and when the racial tensions threatened to smash their love to pieces, my indignation fell in droplets down my face. I wanted to sweep the characters into my arms and save them.

Then it was over.

After that, there was only one job for me – acting.

*

After rehearsal, Ophelia saunters over to her new Honda Civic. “Can I drop you somewhere?” she asks.

I imagine Ophelia driving into my neighbourhood, leaving behind the two-storey houses with landscaped lawns, forcing her car down narrowing streets with corner stores jutting off the pavement, men smoking outside bars, whistling at her.

“It’s OK, thanks,” I say.

“All right, Marcus. See you Saturday.” She leaves with one last pop of her horn.

I stand on the pavement, stick my thumb out and wait. A taxi with a dented fender screeches to a stop.

“Diego?”

“How deep in Diego Martin you going?”

“Quarry Street.”

“I not going that far in.”

He drops me at the bottom of my hill in front of Tecla’s vegetable stand. The swollen pawpaws on her wooden table make my stomach contract. Still, now isn’t the time to spend money. I’ve heard that a coffee in Jardin can cost $25.

“You buying, or you just drooling on my fruits?” Tecla asks.

“Just drooling,” I say.

“Well, you go have to drool another time because it looks like it go rain.” Tecla hauls the table into her small shop.

Halfway to my house, the downpour starts and the galvanised roofs play their most popular song. Plink. Plink. The droplets find their way inside my shirt collar and merge with the sweat on my back.

Plink. Plink – Who the hell do you think you are, Marcus Blackman? Asking a girl like Ophelia on a date?

It’s not a date. It’s a brainstorming session.

Liar!

Plink.

I’m not a liar.

Plink.

Liar.

Plunk.

I see our biggest metal pot nestled between clumps of brown, desiccated grass. Who put it out there? It’s too early for my mother to be home.

“What happened?” I ask.

“You know we eh have no water for a week. I collecting rain water,” she says.

In the kitchen, she is kneading dough. We both know that I don’t give a rat’s ass about some stupid pot – with a bottom burned black from making too much pelau – sitting in the scrap of earth we call “the garden”.

The clock behind the stove reads 3:35 p.m. She should be at the Gatcliffes, working.

“Why are you home?” I ask.

“Well, you see… we was very busy this week. The Mister had guests staying over. So in between making lunch and a bottle for the baby, I prop she up in the crib. I didn’t leave she long. But Miss Gabrielle find she. She tell me some story about how the baby can’t breathe, give me big speech about how is God who send she to she daughter…”

The words are sandpaper rubbing my skin. That Gatcliffe job pays eighteen dollars an hour and they let her take home food after the family has eaten.

I want to pull that blasted pot from the garden and smash our house to nothing. I want to tear at that part of my mother that thinks it is okay to leave a baby propped up in its crib.

Jesus, fuck. Don’t I deserve at least one parent who isn’t a total piece of shit?

“So I tell your father you will come down to he bar this Saturday coming. He say he go pay you twenty dollars an hour.”

“This Saturday?”

“Marcus, I know you studying and already have that small work by Chin’s at night, but just until I get something…”

“I’m busy this Saturday.”

“You busy?”

“With my play.”

“But you only getting paid for that after they sell tickets.”

“Yes, but if I want to get paid at all I have to rehearse.”

“Is just one Saturday. Tell them you sick.”

I am sick. I want to rain cuss words on this churchgoing woman.

I try to hold on to Hamlet’s lines and Ophelia’s eyes when I walk up my hill. But it’s hard to hold on to poetry when my head is crowded with, “Marcus, we have no water… Marcus, you done by Chin already? …Marcus, I fire the job.”

Please, please-please, God! Give me this – just one date. Give me the chance to let go of this hill in Diego Martin for one hour.

*

The dry season is back , and one cheap plastic fan can’t hold it at bay. The sweat slicking my back has made my T-shirt a second skin. I’ve been holding my phone for almost an hour.

Procrastinating.

Call him!

Rehearsing.

“Hey, Pops. Marcus here. Look, I can’t make it this Saturday. I’m so sorry.”

“Hey, Pops. Look, there’s this girl…”

“Hey, Pops. It’s your son. You made half of me. Do you have to make me work for $160? Can’t you just give it to me because we need it…”

“Hey, Pops. I can do this Saturday but I need to take a long lunch break. 12:30 to 2:30…”

I need this. This is a woman who makes air lighter, who makes words brighter, who lifts lines so that a playwright isn’t just a writer but a god. I squirrelled away dollar after dollar so that I could afford this. Give me this one thing.

Call him!

His phone rings.

Once.

Twice.

Please answer…

Another ring.

Please don’t answer.

Fifth ring. “Hey, Pops. It’s Marcus.”

*

The bullets have opened a hundred eyes in the body and each one weeps blood. I peer through the lower corner of our curtain at the figure lying face-down on the road. All I can think is, Did this bastard have to get shot on Saturday?

The loss of a life is abstract when all you want is a woman – so badly, that you feel her even though you’ve never touched her. You taste your name in her mouth although she’s never said it the way you want her to.

Probably another gangster anyway.

I pace in the kitchen as the clock ticks away. The heat has ironed our plastic tablecloth onto the table. It burns my fingertips, my scalp, the back of my throat…

I can’t be late. I already begged my father to give me a two-hour lunch break. I can’t come in a second after he expects me.

I should send Ophelia a message saying I can’t make it. My grandfather had a stroke; my mother had an asthma attack. These are problems she will understand. If I tell her I can’t leave until the police cart a dead body off the road, or at least throw a white sheet over it while they interrogate the residents – none of whom have seen anything – she would probably call the director and demand a change of cast.

I told my father I would get there for eleven. I have to leave now, especially because word of the shooting would have spread, and taxis would stay clear of our area.

“All right. I’m going,” I call to she of the no-job and no-savings.

“Now? You know you can’t go nowhere.”

“I’ll be late.”

She steps into the kitchen. “Marcus Blackman, you and I both know these men don’t like witnesses. What if they think you meddling in their business? What if they think you going to the police, eh? What if they decide the easiest thing is to shut you up? Better you late than –”

“What do you want me to do?”

“I’ll call your father. Ask him to lend us the money.”

“I’m going.” We both know that my father is not that type.

As I open the door, it is as if I’m swallowing a jar of coins. I never understood why the smell of blood leaves the taste of metal on your tongue. I push my hands into my pockets and look down. I know I can’t look left or right. If someone is on the lookout for witnesses, I shouldn’t appear too curious.

I’d spent the morning heating water on the stove so I could have a warm bucket-bath instead of splashing cold water under my arms and on my groin. I bet Ophelia’s family have a couple tanks behind their house so they don’t even realise when the water goes. I imagine Ophelia’s naked feet as the droplets slip down her ankles and pool around her heels on the marble tiles.

And I, who made the effort to be fresh, am undone by the sun. Sweat soaks my armpits until when I’m finally at my father’s bar, I’m sticky and late.

“Marko? You like your sleep too much, boy!” My father pushes a damp J-cloth into my hands. Chunks of carrot and what looks like chipped cashews are plastered to it.

“Moreno vomit on my toilet seat for the second week in a row,” he says. “You come in time for the wipe up.” He points his chin in the direction of the bathroom.

I should be sitting up in bed, learning my lines. Instead, I stoop beside the toilet and sweep the chunks of Moreno’s stomach into the bowl and flush the toilet.

It is not yet midday, but it’s Saturday and you could set your watch by the drunks who frequent this place. Sometimes, a sober man steps in who drinks just Coke. He will make his way to the backroom and sit, though I’ve never learnt – and wouldn’t want to learn – what business my father transacts there.

The door of the stall swings open and cracks me on the back of my head. It’s Brathwaite, the Bajan with the limp, who is always drunk by lunchtime.

“Markkkko,” he says. “I thought you stop working here.”

“Use the next stall, Brathwaite.”

His fat fingers unbuckle his belt, and the tiny hooks of his zipper part. He flops out of his pants and piss is dripping from his member before he can angle it towards the toilet. I turn my face away but that can’t stop the smell – like a fish at the market with the scales still on.

Brathwaite shakes himself, leaving yellow globules on my shoes.

“Your father say you acting.” Brathwaite has a sneer in his voice. He stuffs himself back in his pants and lumbers off. I pull toilet paper from the roll and press it into my shoes.

Maybe I should have packed a change of clothes? Crept into the mall and passed wet wipes under my arms and along my back and shed this sweaty shirt and jeans.

“You taking your time today,” my father says when I emerge from the bathroom.

“Brathwaite almost peed in my face.”

“What the ass your face doing by Brathwaite cock?”

I say nothing.

“Squeeze out the cloth and wipe the tables,” my father says.

I can’t bring myself to run the same cloth over the counter. I wet another J-cloth and begin.

Eric Skerrit who – twenty years ago – sang a calypso that actually made it to the radio, is arguing with someone I cannot see across the bar. “Come over here and say that to my blasted face!” he shouts.

I step around him.

“Marko? What happen? You can’t wipe where I sitting?”

I have to lean over him to wipe the table. The fatty flesh of his arm presses into my chest.

“You ever hear of the Lord Executioner?” he asks.

“Aren’t you the Lord Executioner?”

“Damn right. Back in the day, I was the calypsonian to execute them all. But these youths, they don’t know.”

“It’s a shame,” I reply. What I want to say is, can you blame them for not knowing a drunk who had one hit song over the course of fifty years? I leave before he can start warbling his way through the scraps of his song that he still remembers.

Further down the bar, I come to a yellow lump crusted onto the counter and try to work it out with my nails.

“Like you’re having a bad day.”

I look up. It’s Keron. He is wearing a white Calvin Klein polo and leaning against the bar drinking a Coke. I resume trying to force the crust off the counter and my nail splits.

Keron pulls out a switch blade. He flicks it open and scrapes the crust off with the tip.

“How much does he pay you?”

“Enough.”

“Enough?”

“Yes. Enough.”

“Good,” he says. The ice in his Coke clinks as he drinks.

I keep my head down and wipe the table harder.

“If you ever want to make more than enough, you can talk to me.” Keron speaks so softly I’m not sure I heard him correctly. “All I need is someone to go to San Fernando and bring a package up here for me. I’ll give you a thousand for your first trip. It only goes up from there.”

“Keron!” My father rarely yells and it takes me a while before I realise that it is he. “Is my son you talking to there.”

Keron almost drops his Coke. “Sorry. Sorry, man. Sorry.”

He almost cuts himself closing the switch blade. When my father walks over to me, Keron vanishes into the back.

“What he tell you?” my father asks.

“Nothing.”

“Good.” My father holds the big watch on his wrist up to my eyes. “Go on. And you have something to do? Go early. I paying you the same. Once you come back, eh?”

“Of course. Thank you.”

Thank you!

*

I am far enough away from my hill that I can find a taxi.

“I’ll take it by West Mall,” I tell the driver.

“You’ll take it before that,” he throws back. When he stops by the flyover, I realise he has no intention of going further.

The starch I ironed into my shirt melts into flaccidity as I walk the rest of the way to the mall.

As I step inside, the blast of cold air chills the sweat on my face.

I hurry to the chrome and glass bathroom. In the mirror, I see a whitehead blossoming on the tip of my nose and squeeze it until the oil, bacteria and dead cells splatter. I wash my face, scrubbing my nose.

I imagine Ophelia’s eyes – liquid-gold – looking at me over a cup of tea. She can’t see me as I am – shirt spattered with sweat stains. The cigarette smoke from the bar clings to the creases in my clothes so that when I move, it’s as if someone has just lit up. I soap my hands frantically, hoping that the smell will mask the lingering smokiness.

I breathe into my hand and the sour taste on my tongue tells me that my breath stinks. I’ll order a cup of coffee as soon as I get there. The earthy smell will disguise it.

What if she wants to kiss my cheek first?

I pump liquid soap into my hand and slurp it from my palm. It coats my tongue with the flavour of chemicals. I gag and almost spit it out, but I force myself to swish it from cheek to cheek, folding the liquid under my tongue before I release the sticky salmon paste into the sink. I breathe into my hand again and inhale cheap chemicals. I inspect my shirt, which looked so crisp hanging on my door this morning.

If I get there early, I can position myself so that my left arm is across my body. That should block some of the worst sweat stains. Will I have to get up when she comes in?

OK. OK. Marcus, you’re OK. You know what you’re going to ask her: How was your morning? Learning your lines OK? Me too… I agree; it’s the most challenging part of the play. But you would never think it from watching you on stage.

I cup my hands under the tap and drink some water. Each taste bud is screaming. I pull my comb out of my pocket and try to shape my curls. Unlike Ophelia’s, they are too tight-knit.

I have never stolen before, but if only I knew how to get away with it, I would nab a Calvin Klein polo like the one Keron was wearing. Desperation makes you imagine yourself walking into Jardin in white cotton, more expensive than anything you’ve ever owned.

I check the time. I can’t hide in the bathroom forever.

I weave through mothers and their children, couples holding hands and teenagers plugged into their iPods. I stop outside Jardin and look in.

Cupcakes, iced in crimson, tangerine and lime, stand in tiers under their glass casing. A waitress in a pink-and-white striped apron is slicing quiche Lorraine. My no-breakfast, no-lunch stomach clenches.

And then, Ophelia – sitting at a table for two in the far corner of the room.

Waiting.

She is wearing a cream dress with wide sleeves that flutter as she turns the page of her book. All the light is whisper-soft around her. Her edges blur and bleed like an impressionist painting. Her lips are the inside of a shell, pressing against one another as she reads – a self-kiss.

I want to ease a finger between them, part her mouth and touch her tongue. She does not look up. Takes it for granted, perhaps, that the world will look at her. Ophelia sits like her portrait is being painted – legs crossed lightly at the ankles, navel pulled towards her spine, shoulders fully spread.

How could I ever think I could walk in here and place myself in front of her?

I reach for my phone and tap in her number. My grandfather had a stroke. My mother had an asthma attack. I’m so sorry I can’t make it.

Her phone rings.

Once.

Twice.

I’m standing where she cannot see me. I watch her hand disappear inside her purse and emerge with her phone. I’m so sorry.

“Ophelia…?”

*

I walk back to the bar, already spinning stories in my head. I see myself a thousand dollars richer, sauntering into Jardin in a rich-boy polo that is crisp and clean, and made of thick cotton that will soak up any sweat.

I apologise to Ophelia and tell her coffee is on me since I wasted her time.

I hope Keron is still at the bar.

THINGS WE DO NOT SAY

Bridgette’s feet are killing her. The four-inch Jimmy Choos had seemed like a good idea when she’d ordered them online. Claret-coloured heels – just the right combination of classy and strappy. Shoes always make or break the outfit.

Now though, she feels as if the shoes have broken her feet. She’s taken them off to drive home, but it still feels as if they’re biting into her toes. She’ll ask Eliot to rub her feet when she gets home. He’s a meticulous masseur, his fingers always find her pressure points as if he knows what it’s like to live in her skin.

Their third anniversary is coming up. Bridgette isn’t sure what to get him; not just because he can afford almost anything he wants but also because he seldom seems to want anything at all. She’s been toying with the idea of getting herself lacy black lingerie and dressing up for him, but that seems self-indulgent; isn’t that more of a gift for her? She supposes she can get him another puzzle. The harder the better. He spends hours sorting the pieces into plastic containers of similar colours before fitting them together.

She’s still thinking of it as she pulls into their garage. Maybe she can just ask him what he wants? He’s never set much stock by surprises anyway.

She tosses her shoes aside as she enters the house. They are the only colour in their quartz and steel kitchen – it was once featured in an interior design special in Caribbean Beat. The photographer had showed up with a team to clean the kitchen before taking pictures. After a close inspection, the team admitted that the kitchen could not possibly be any neater than Eliot kept it. Bridgette makes a mental note to pick the shoes up before he does.

Eliot walks into the room. “What’s the meaning of this?”

“Uh… I was going to pick them up,” Bridgette says.

“Not that. This.” He holds a book up to Bridgette. On the canary yellow cover, the words Lusting After Love are scrawled in orange.

“What is that?”

“A book of poems. It came in the mailbox.”

“So?” She takes the book from Eliot. It’s only then that she sees the author’s name, written in a much smaller font: Dahlia Van Devender.

The pain in her feet spreads to her legs. She wants to sit down.

“Open it,” Eliot says.

There is a table of contents. Some information on the publishers. And then the dedication: “For Bridgette, my burgundy bride”.

Bridgette can’t look at Eliot.

“I don’t know what this means,” she says.

“You don’t?” Eliot’s voice is excited. He has his chin in his hands like when he’s thinking about the best place to start on a puzzle.

The last thing Bridgette wants is Eliot trying to solve the mystery of the book. She thinks of all the people he knows, the calls he can make.

“Firstly, this has to be a pen name,” Eliot says. “Nobody is born with a name like that. Besides, I know all the Dutch families in Trinidad and there are no Van Devenders.”

He tries to take the book back but she flings it away from them. She’d been aiming for the kitchen island but overshoots and it lands on the floor.

Eliot takes a step as if he is going to pick it up but then reconsiders.

“Look,” Bridgette says, “I know Dahlia. I know she was writing a book but I had no idea that she was going to…” She glances at the book furtively.

“What does burgundy bride mean?”

“I have no idea.”

“Why don’t you ask her?”

“Sure.”

Eliot takes another step towards the book. Bridgette can tell that he’s not sure whether he should pick it up or not.

In an attempt to distract him, Bridgette says, “Those shoes weren’t the best buy.”

“No?” Eliot heads straight over to her shoes and picks them up. “What seems to be the problem?”

“They’re too tight across the toes.”

“Want me to take them to the shop in the mall to see if they can stretch them out?”

Eliot turns the shoes over in his hands.

“Yes please.”

Bridgette strides over to the book, snatches it up and turns it face down on the countertop. Did he read it? She cannot imagine Eliot suffering through a book of poems. On the other hand, almost any man would feel compelled to read a book dedicated to his wife.

Maybe it hasn’t occurred to him to read it? If so, she shouldn’t plant the idea in his head by asking if he did.

“Did you… did you stop at the Arabic place for dinner?” Bridgette asks. That question somehow feels wrong.

“Yes,” Eliot says. He drops the shoes into a plastic bag and ties the top. “Do you want mashed potatoes or rice?”

*

Bridgette and Eliot dated for seven uneventful years before he proposed. They rarely fought. If anything upset Bridgette, Eliot worked assiduously to make it better. If it was something he did, he promised not to do it again and, for the most part, he didn’t. If it was something outside them, he figured out how to deal with it. A boss who put his hand on her thigh? One phone call and she had a new boss. An excruciating toothache that started throbbing at 2:00 pm on a Sunday? He knew a dentist who would love to open his office just for her.

Eliot himself never seemed to be upset by anything. Bridgette sometimes thought of him as someone who had learnt how to be human instead of being an actual human. He got by in most situations, but once in a while she had to help him out. When his mother died, the Ewing-Asquith family outdid themselves with fits of sobbing, paragraphs-long Facebook posts talking about what a good woman she was and orders for new, larger-than-life portraits of her to be hung in their houses.

Eliot was not sure what to do in the midst of this mêlée. Bridgette could tell that he was sorry but he didn’t seem capable of feeling an emotion as extreme as grief.

Bridgette knew that his mother had been the type of woman who kept a stack of plastic cups just so the helper wouldn’t drink out of her good glasses, and made the gardeners drink from the hose. The first time Bridgette had dinner with Eliot’s family, Mrs Ewing-Asquith “forgot” to set a place for her and then asked Bridgette, at the table, whether her parents had ever taught her the proper way to hold a fork. Bridgette doubted that the heart-wrenching tributes pouring in for Eliot’s mother (including an ass-kissing obituary published in Catholic News) were true. But she also knew that Eliot couldn’t appear to seem callous.

So she helped him write the eulogy for his mother’s funeral, where he described her as a role model who put family, friends and God before earthly things. (This was a lie so blatant Eliot had second thought about saying it, but Bridgette promised him that this was the sort of thing people said on such occasions.)

In bed that night Bridgette was thinking there was not a single instance in the last ten years when she’d seen Eliot sad or angry. If the death of his mother didn’t do it, a thing like a book wouldn’t either.

Although that depended on the contents of the book.