Vacations from Hell

I throw on a batik beach dress and slide my feet back into my flip-flops. There are cuts speckled across my ankles where flying glass sliced my skin, but I am fairly sure that no one will think the red dots are anything but mosquito bites. I pick up the bottle on my way out. It feels heavy, heavier than if it were full of water. When I tilt it, the liquid inside makes a thick, sloshing sound.



Damaris is in the kitchen, frying bacon in a pan. She says nothing, but I can see her watching me out of the corner of her eye as I take a highball glass from the cupboard and fill it with ice. I unscrew the top of the plastic bottle Mrs. Palmer gave me last night and pour the liquid over the ice. It glops slowly out of the bottle neck, thick as lava. It smells vaguely medicinal, like herbs. As I stare at it, Damaris reaches around me and drops a slice of lemon into the glass. “There,” she says. “Tell him it is for his headache.”



I nod at her and take the glass out onto the deck. Evan is still lying in his lounger, but now his eyes are open and there is some color in his skin.



He won’t remember anything? I said to Mrs. Palmer last night in her glass garden, souls like bits of shining jagged teeth glittering all around us. You promise?



He won’t remember, she had promised. Only the vacation. The sun. The sand. And then the accident.



My mother is sitting in a chair next to Evan, fussing and trying to get him to hold a cold washcloth against his face; he pushes her hand away fretfully, but at least his voice is strong when he tells her no. She is wearing dark sunglasses again, but they don’t hide the discolored skin of her cheek. I take a long look at both of them before I cross the deck to the shaded alcove where Phillip sits with the newspaper open on his lap.



“Hi,” I say.



He looks up, his narrow, cold face expressionless in the sunlight. There is no guilt in the way he looks at me, no inner admission that last night he did something that, even if my mother forgives, I do not. But I doubt Phillip is interested in my feelings, either way. He has never thought of me as a person at all, with the power to bestow forgiveness or withhold it.



It has to be fast, not slow, I’d said to Mrs. Palmer. I don’t want it drawn out. I want you to take it all at once.



She’d smiled with sharp, white teeth. All at once, she’d promised, and handed me something flat and shining and sharp. A bit of broken mirror.



Evan’s soul.



It’s yours, she said. To keep, or to break it open to return it to him entirely.



I slid it under my bed last night, where it lay reflecting the moonlight. I’ll break it open tonight, I told myself. Break it and give Evan back his soul. I’ll do it tonight.



Or tomorrow.



I thrust the drink out toward Phillip. In the sunlight it looks like ordinary water, with a pale lemon wedge floating in it. Still, I can hear the hissing whisper of the thick liquid sliding over the ice. Or maybe I’m imagining that. “Here,” I say. “Damaris sent this out for you. She said it would be good for your headache.”



He frowns. “How did she know I had a headache?” I say nothing, and after a moment he sets the newspaper down and takes the glass from my hand. “Thank you, Violet,” he says in that stiff, formal way of his.



And he takes a swallow. I watch his throat as the liquid goes down. I have never watched Phillip with such fascination before. At last he sets the glass down and says, “What kind of juice is that?”



“Aloe,” I tell him. “Damaris says it’s good for healing.”



“Folk nonsense.” He snorts and reaches for his paper again.



“There’s one more thing,” I say. “That woman, the one Evan was helping, well, her car’s still broken. She said Evan couldn’t figure out how to fix it.”



Phillip snorts. “I could have told her that. Evan doesn’t know anything about cars.”



“She was hoping you’d take a look at it for her,” I tell him. “Since you know. You probably know more about this stuff than Evan does.”



“That’s right. I do.” He picks up the glass again, drains it, and smacks his lips. “I guess I ought to go help the poor woman out.” He stands.



“That would be great.” I point down the path. “She lives there, in the pink house, the one that looks like a flower. She’s expecting you.”



And she is. He’s my stepfather, I had told Mrs. Palmer. He’s strong, stronger than Evan. Older. And he hits my mother. Just like your husband hit you.



Phillip pats my shoulder awkwardly. “You’re a good girl, Violet.”



No, I think. That is one thing I am not. Because somewhere in the pink house, Anne Palmer is waiting, Anne Palmer with her red lips and her garden of glass, and her mirrors that take your soul. I watch as Phillip jogs down the path, a little stiff in his new flip-flops, the sunlight bouncing off his head where he’s starting to go bald. I watch, and I say nothing. I watch, because I know he is never coming back.