He has such a way with women.
*
After Vess turned off the lights and left the kitchen, Chyna leaned back in the pine captain’s chair, away from the table, because the smell of the ham sandwich sickened her. It wasn’t spoiled; it smelled like a ham sandwich ought to smell. But the very idea of food made her gag.
About twenty-one hours had passed since she’d finished her most recent full meal, dinner at the Templeton house. The few bites of cheese omelet that she’d had at breakfast weren’t enough to sustain her, especially considering all of the physical activity of the previous night; she should have been famished.
Eating was an admission of hope, however, and she didn’t want to hope any more. She had spent her life hoping, a fool intoxicated with optimistic expectations. But every hope proved to be as empty as a bubble. Every dream was glass waiting to be shattered.
Until last night, she had thought that she’d climbed far out of childhood misery, up a greased ladder toward phenomenal heights of understanding, and she had been quietly proud of herself and of her accomplishments. Now it seemed that she had not been climbing after all, that her ascent had been an illusion, and that for years her feet had been slipping over the same two well-lubricated rungs, as if she’d been on one of those exercise machines, a StairMaster, expending enormous energy—but not one inch higher when she stopped than she had been when she’d started. The long years of waitressing, the sore legs and the stubborn pain in the small of her back from being on her feet for hours, taking the toughest classes she could find at the University of California, studying late into the night after she returned home from work, the countless sacrifices, the loneliness, the ceaseless striving, striving—all of that had led here, to this dismal place, to these chains, into this deepening twilight.
She had hoped one day to understand her mother, to find good reason to forgive. She had even, God help her, secretly hoped that they might reach a truce. They could never have a healthy mother-daughter relationship, and they could never be friends; but it had seemed possible, at least, that she and Anne might one day have lunch together at any café with a view of the sea, alfresco on the patio under a huge umbrella, where they would never speak of the past but would make pleasant small talk about movies, the weather, the way the seagulls wheeled across the sapphire sky, perhaps with no healing affection but without any hatred between them. Now she knew that even if by some miracle she escaped untouched and alive from this imprisonment, she would never reach that dreamed-of degree of understanding; rapprochement between her and her mother could not be achieved.
Human cruelty and treachery surpassed all understanding. There were no answers. Only excuses.
Chyna felt lost. She was in a stranger place than Edgler Vess’s kitchen and in a more forbidding darkness.
In all her years, she had never before felt lost, not truly lost. Frightened, yes. Sometimes confused and bleak. But always she had held a map in her mind, with a route marked if only vaguely, and she had believed that in her heart was a compass that couldn’t fail her. She had been in the wrong place many times, but she’d always been sure that there was a way out—just as in any fun-house mirror maze there is always a safe path through the infinite images of oneself, through more fearful reflections, and through all of the enigmatic silver shadows.
No map this time.
No compass.
Life itself was the ultimate fun-house mirror maze, and she was lost in its nautilus chambers, with no one to turn to for comfort, no hand to hold.
Finally admitting that she had been essentially motherless since birth and always would be motherless, and with her only close friend lying dead in Edgler Vess’s motor home, Chyna wished that she knew her father’s name, that she had at least once seen his face. Her mother’s maiden name was Shepherd; she had never been married. “Be glad you’re illegitimate, baby,” Anne had said, “because that means you’re free. Little bastard children don’t have as many relatives clinging like psychic leeches and sucking away their souls.” Over the years, when Chyna had asked about her father, Anne had said only that he was dead, and she had been able to say it dry-eyed, even light-heartedly. She wouldn’t provide details of his appearance, discuss what work he’d done, reveal where he’d lived, or acknowledge that he’d had a name. “By the time I was pregnant with you,” Anne once said, “I wasn’t seeing him any more. He was history. I never told him about you. He never knew.”