Slits

By Carol Murphy

Teenager Angela wishes she could understand her odd family. Her mother is thornily difficult, her father is harshly distant, and her siblings offer no help, even after a terrible school incident. Struggling with self-injury, Angela's plight intensifies at a parochial school sheltered within a tight coastal community. Strange family events, anxious friends, insensitive adults, and confusing occurrences swirl in a cloudy confusion. Then after a dreadful accident, Angela enters a psychiatric hospital with a special wing just for teens. An attentive therapist senses her turmoil, but small revelations seem only to increase the teen's fierce façade.

 

What is wrong with Angela, her family, her parents, and especially her mother? Why are answers so hard to come by?

 

All seems lost until a herd of horses and Angela's best friend Cali help point to a different way of thinking and believing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: eLectio Publishing
• Release date: Apr 19, 2023
• ISBN: 9781632134417

Book preview

CAROL MUPRHY

eLectio Publishing

Little Elm, TX

Slits

By Carol Murphy

Copyright 2017 by Carol Murphy. All rights reserved.

Cover Design by eLectio Publishing.

ISBN-13: 978-1-63213-441-7

Published by eLectio Publishing, LLC

Little Elm, Texas

http://www.eLectioPublishing.com

5 4 3 2 1 eLP 21 20 19 18 17

The eLectio Publishing creative team is comprised of: Kaitlyn Campbell, Emily Certain, Lori Draft, Court Dudek, Jim Eccles, Sheldon James, and Christine LePorte.

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Publisher’s Note

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

This book is dedicated to my family who always encouraged me to write.

Beginnings

A lock is better than suspicion.

~Old Gaelic saying

Angela’s mother would not have wanted her to take anyone to the bank, let alone Cali. But her mother was dead. There was nothing she could say or do now. So the first thing Angela did was call Cali.

You have to go with me, Cali. You have to. I can’t go in there alone. Angela was panting, her voice barely audible over the phone.

Cali had been expecting the call. What about your sisters and brother?

Anthony and my sisters are going through the house. My mother specifically divided up tasks in her will, and you know the family. Everyone always did what mother wanted. This assignment is mine. Anyway, my mother gave away anything of value years ago, so they aren’t worried I’ll find some costly piece of jewelry. Angela paused, her breath slowing. Cali waited. There was a hushed silence and then a cough before Angela added, My mother told us that there might be some letters or maybe other papers, but I just can’t go alone. My mother . . . Angela’s voice trailed off into a sigh.

A vision of Valerie came suddenly, and Cali felt a growing apprehension, just like she had as a teenager. She tried to shrug it off. Valerie had been a dark enigma, a woman who seemed jaggedly formed even though she had always been stunningly beautiful, even with the cancer, even at the end.

Sure, Angela, you know I’ll come.

How long will it take you to get here? Angela was breathless still, sitting in her car, unable to open the bank door alone, staring at it as if it were a jailhouse entry. Maybe I’ll get some coffee.

Well, I have to drop off the kids at the neighbors, and then I’ll come over—about fifteen minutes. Where are you?

Just sitting in my car in the parking lot, looking at the bank. She watched as a stylish middle-aged couple went in. The man, gray at his temples, opened the door, holding it elegantly for the woman who wore a lavender trench coat and gloves. They reminded Angela of her parents, or rather of what her mother expected from her father. Valerie picked out all her husband’s clothes, even his underwear. Angela sighed. Sometimes she was sick of everything always coming back to her parents, particularly her mother. God, she was forty-two. Would she ever understand her mother, her father, them together, her whole family for that matter?

Will you be all right till I get there? Cali knew the silences.

Yes, sure. Another sigh. I just wish I was free. I’ll be waiting. She clicked the cell phone off.

Fifteen minutes later, Cali found her friend gripping the steering wheel. An imperceptible tremor that had started in Angela’s foot was spreading up through her spine into her hands, but she stared straight ahead, then jumped when Cali knocked on the window. She rolled down her window. I don’t know if I can go in there. Why did my mother want me to do this? It seems so personal.

Your mother was . . . different. Why, my mother . . . Oh, never mind. She stopped and looked up then back at Angela. Well, let’s not compare mothers now. We did enough of that for years. She put her hand on Angela’s arm. Come on, Angela. We’ll just go in, get whatever is in that box, and leave. We won’t even look through it if you don’t want to. You can give it all to your sisters. Let them have fun with it.

Angela slowly got out of the car, locked it, and stood there for one full minute just looking at the bank. Okay, she said. I guess I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.

The bank was stuffy with a jumble of men and women. The roped waiting line was long and snaked its way around workstations where a couple of customers were writing on slips. A bored guard stood near the entrance tiredly looking around, and the couple who had come in earlier was seated with a well-dressed female bank employee under a sign that read Home Loans. They looked distraught, a look Angela saw daily in her therapy practice. She wondered if her face looked like that now too.

Cali touched her friend’s shoulder. The line for the safety deposit box has no one in it. We can get in right away.

Angela walked slowly to the back of the bank. Thank God Cali had been home. She looked at her friend, and her heart smiled. They had supported each other for a lot of years.

Angela handed the clerk the power of attorney and key, signed the slip of paper, and then held onto the counter. She felt a bit nauseated. All three walked to the back. The clerk stopped and turned to look at Angela. She was young, and this was her first job. You know I have to check to see if anyone besides you is allowed.

Cali spoke up. She can’t do this alone. As small as Cali was, her forceful look challenged the clerk.

Well, I’ll ask, and if anyone says anything, I’ll tell them to talk to you both. The woman looked away.

She led them to the vault, took both keys, and inserted them into the locks. She opened the small door and pulled out the long box. Angela shuddered when the clerk handed it to her. They all went to a booth. Angela and Cali sat down. I don’t know . . . Angela began.

Look, I’m right here. We’ll do this together. It’s only papers. Nothing your mother can say or do can hurt you anymore. Angela didn’t move, so Cali opened the top slowly. But there was only one lumpy envelope with Angela’s name on it, nothing else.

Angela held the envelope for some time, turning it over and over, her hand passing over her name written in Valerie’s unmistakable script. Gradually she picked at the seal until the envelope opened. Cali’s eyes widened as a pair of silver stork-shaped scissors slipped out of tissue, falling with a clink on the metal table, and with it Angela’s sudden intake of breath. The short note on fine paper was addressed only to Angela.

I should have given these back to you years ago, right after your father died. They were in his desk drawer, the one he always kept locked. Maybe then they would have helped me explain. I did try to be a good mother. You were the youngest. I hope someday you will forgive me.

Cali put her hand on her friend’s shoulder, releasing Angela’s wail that echoed within the walls of the cubicle, reverberating throughout the bank and then floating into the parking lot and finally down the hill into the sea.

Time stopped.

1

School Days

But I don't want to go among mad people, said Alice.

Oh, you can't help that, said the cat. We're all mad here.

~Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

The morning drizzle had turned to showers during lunch recess, persuading the school’s occupants into a melancholy mindlessness and encouraging repetitive glances at the clouds through large classroom windows. Sister noticed and sternly called student names, even though she too couldn’t help but feel the irresistible tug to peek outside.

A rose-scented mustiness drifted in through the door left ajar and mingled with the murmur of persistent rain. Flowers filled up with rain water, dumping their bowls onto stems and flowing in rivulets down to the leaves where clear liquid globs gathered to eventually plop silently to the soil below, threading into unhurried water tendrils that seeped quietly into the ever-widening pools. The well-kept dirt would leisurely become muck. Delightful days would follow when rain boots were essential if merely to jump into those wonderfully dark puddles that created muddy splashes on starkly clean uniforms. Parents were called, of course. Students were not allowed to be simply dirty. Everyone knew the system, but only a few dared to disregard some of the rules now and again.

St. Agnes comprised several aged adobe structures, including a school, church, and convent, all atop a winding hill that was in the midst of surrounding country houses on the outskirts of a large neighboring town. Inside, everything had been modernized with new digital equipment, clean whiteboards, and sleek desks while the outside was meticulously kept look like the very day the buildings were erected. These surroundings were the result of three huge endowments from pleased families whose children and grandchildren had gone to the school. The only visible flaw was the one-way road originally created for horse-drawn buggies and small, slow cars. The county planning board limited county growth by dictating road use and maintenance, especially when neighbors, who did not have any interest in the school, complained of noisy traffic at planning meetings. So the route had over the years become a carpool nightmare with eventual school mandates stipulating grade-level times for the arrival or departure of student-filled 4-runners, trucks, minivans, and station wagons. The cost of litigating, then building, a wider road overshadowed the twice daily pilgrimages. And, after all, in the summer, all those vehicles were gone.

However, this one blemish vanished once people arrived at the crest because the parents, students, and faculty in grades kindergarten through eight easily had the most breathtaking views in the entire county. From the front of the compound, the vista stretched down over fertile farmland, forested on each side, and ran clear to the sea, while behind were lovely oak-studded hills that seemed to have no other living souls. Three adopted stray dogs, five cats, and even a huge