Where had all the ants come from? They were suddenly everywhere in her bedroom, and it wasn't as if she had any food in there. The moving black sprinkles were mostly near one particular corner, close to the bedroom door, not even the exterior wall. There must've been about fifty to a hundred of them, all skittering about. Getting down on hands and knees, Maeve tried to ascertain their entrance point, but she couldn't quite seem to catch it--one scuttered from under the baseboard, but then another looked to come up from a teensy crack in the floorboards. Another was climbing down the wall, as if it'd come from an electrical outlet. With ants, it was usually pretty simple: locate the point of origin, set out a trap, throw down some diatomaceous earth or spray a bit outside, and they were done. But if she couldn't figure out where they were coming from, she'd just have to get rid of these and hope they hadn't signaled the ones back home yet.
Sighing, Maeve padded barefoot into the hall and toward the kitchen, where she'd placed a ton of household items she hadn't yet had time to find a place for. She grabbed a bottle of 409 and a handful of paper towels and returned to her bedroom, sprayed the gross little things, smooshed and swiped them up, and, after sitting and waiting in vain for any latecomers to show themselves, figured that was good enough for the time being. Battle, won. Victor--Maeve (for the time being).
The ants were easier to deal with than her daughter, anyway. When Maeve re-entered the kitchen to look for some Tylenol, she found Cora sitting at the kitchen table in her black pajamas and her black knee socks, a black beanie hiding her black hair. The stormcloud-of-a-girl had probably been there the whole time, observing, but Maeve had been so hell-bent on getting rid of those ants that she hadn't noticed. Why did Cora always insist on all that dark stuff? She certainly hadn't been raised that way. If she'd so much as cut her hair short, her mother would've slapped her. The one time Maeve had bought a two-piece swimsuit, she'd had to hide it under her bed, and even then, her mother had found it and literally thrown it away (after forcing Maeve to endure one of her frequent, fire-and-brimstoney come-to-Jesus talks). And that one time the old woman had caught Maeve with a smutty romance novel under her pillow? Oh, there were glares and reprimands and disappointed, shaming words for days.
Not that Cora's problems seemed to stem from sex or immodesty. In fact, Maeve would've liked her daughter to actually go make out with some people, maybe get a swimsuit of any kind, do normal teenaged things. But Cora just sat around and sulked, wrote probably strange poems in her beloved journals and brooded like a large crow in all her black clothes. If there had been anyone at all--any romantic interest or even a friend--in the town they'd left behind, Maeve couldn't have named them. In fact, Cora's lack of any connections had made her feel less guilty about moving the girl again. It'd been one of the factors in Maeve's decision to move.
Amongst other things.
Mostly, Maeve had to get away. It'd been a purely selfish motivation, but that didn't mean she hadn't seen good for her daughter in the change.
"We have to go to your school, today," Maeve remarked, rifling through a plastic tupperware on the counter where she'd thrown a bunch of medications. She knew the topic would be unwelcome.
And it was. Cora groaned, swore, but Maeve decided to ignore that.
"You start next week; I've got to register you."
"Can't you just go, then?"
"No, Cora. You need to get your schedule, and maybe you'd like to have a look around."
"I wouldn't."
Maeve sighed. "Well, whatever. You still have to go." She perked up a bit. "And, hey! Afterward, we can drive around town a little, see what this place is like, all right? I'm sure we can find some café or restaurant, maybe get some lunch."
She'd located the Tylenol, popped it open, dumped a couple into her palm, spilled a few in the process, bent to pick them up. The mundanity of it all was irritating. Twist the cap back on, toss the bottle back, grab a cup, run the sink--
"Mom!"
Maeve startled. "What?"
She looked to her daughter, who was staring at the faucet, then turned back to the sink. "It's no big deal," she asserted, noticing the water was a sort of translucent brown. "These pipes haven't been used in a while. It'll clear itself out."
"I'm not drinking that."
"You don't have to; there's bottled water in the fridge."
"Ew, wait—I took a shower last night! In that water?"
"There is literally nothing to worry about."
"How do you know?"
"I'll get it looked at, if it will make you feel better. But seriously, Cora, it's safe." Maeve filled a cup, drank her pills down with it, and raised the cup toward her daughter. "See? I'm not dead."
Cora narrowed her eyes, said under her breath, ". . . yet."
"What?"
"Nothing."
With a sniff, Maeve straightened a little. "Well, go on and get ready, then. We'll leave in an hour or so. And try not to look too . . . unfriendly." Not wanting to stick around for a sure-to-be-rude response, Maeve left the kitchen and returned to her room.
The movers had been kind enough to set up her bed frame, put the whole thing together for her. Or maybe that wasn't a kindness; maybe that's part of what she'd paid them for. In any case, Maeve was glad she hadn't had to put the thing together herself. It was a big, ugly bed frame, having been her mother's, carved with something supposed to be but actually quite uglier than cherubs' heads singing at the posts. The fat-cheeked things looked more as if they were in some unendurable agony than any sort of euphoric choral arrangements, and they'd always properly creeped Maeve out, even as a little girl. But it'd been a free bed frame, and in spite of its ugliness, she knew it was quite an expensive piece. At the least, Maeve could sell it if she ever needed to, make a little money off it, even if that meant she slept on the couch or floor.
The ants hadn't returned, thank God. Hopefully, that would be the last of them, but Maeve suspected it wasn't. Until she discovered the reason they'd come in, until she sealed whatever crack they'd slipped through, they were bound to return. Persistent little things, ants, and always looking to eat. Wasn't that what they were always doing? Covering some dead thing or some speck of food? Always eating. The way they'd been all over--
But she wouldn't think of that. She couldn't think of that, if she wanted to maintain her sanity.
Something else . . . think of something else . . .
The neighbors. Yes, the neighbors. The ones she'd met had seemed . . . not neighborly, Maeve shifted her thinking, turning to a box and pulling clothing from it to hang or fold into her dresser. There was that one old woman who'd been hesitant to talk to her, whom she'd caught as she was getting out of her car (another one of those elderly hobbling people who surely shouldn't have been driving). What had her name been . . . Didi? Dottie? She couldn't recall. The woman had told her only that she hoped the lawn around Maeve's new house would be mowed regularly, as an unkempt lawn brought down everyone's property value. Maeve had wanted to respond that nobody's property on this stretch could be of much value, regardless of lawns, but she'd instead forced a smile, made as much small talk as was bearable, and moved on. The couple she'd spoken to--Ann and Tom--were about as run-of-the-mill as older couples came. Two grown kids off in the world, no grandkids as of yet, one dog, retired both, liked the quiet . . . not the sorts who'd invite her and Cora for beer and brats on any given night of the week. Not the sort who'd come eat pizza and watch a trash show with her from time to time. Not the sort who'd share coffee and gossip about the others. Nope. They'd made it pretty clear they were the sorts who kept to themselves.
Now Alan, though--he'd been all right. Kind of good looking, and she'd been a little surprised to hear that he was alone with his son. He had said that boy was his son, hadn't he? She didn't entirely recall every detail of their conversation, seeing as she'd gone to say hello only after she'd had half a bottle of wine last night. It'd still been light enough, and she'd seen him pull out a lawn chair to sit on his porch and smoke. With just enough liquid courage in her, she'd gone to introduce herself, and he'd been friendly enough at least to offer her another chair.
He was not interested in women. She was certain of that. Not because she sensed those things particularly well but because he'd told her about as forwardly as could be expected. Looking back on that, Maeve felt slightly affronted, a little embarrassed, even, knowing now that he'd probably said as much in order to divert any attention she might have been giving his appearance; she hadn't picked up on that likelihood the night before. In any case, how and where his kid fit into the picture, she wasn't sure, and she wasn't going to pry, but she'd liked him more than anyone else she'd met on this dead-end, dead-quiet, dead-dull street.
They'd bonded over discussions of their wayward children.
Maybe Cora would get along with the boy. Alan had said, though, that his son (whose name she didn't recall, didn't even know whether she'd been told it) had graduated high school last year and was doing nothing with himself. Cora probably didn't need any more inspiration to do nothing . . . so best if she steered clear of the kid, on second thought.
If only Cora had some long-term goals! Oh, her grades had always been good. That was the only thing that kept Maeve from pressing too hard about the other things, like the weird attire and the moping about and the attitude. She knew that her daughter was angry at her, that she'd never forgive Maeve for uprooting her, for taking her from her grandmother's home and away from whatever life she'd had, but there were things Cora didn't know and would hopefully never know. The ire and wrath of her daughter were bearable compared to watching whatever breakdown would surely occur if the girl knew the truth.
There were just too many things to explain, too many black little corners to force light into, and there was so little purpose in destroying the girl. Better to protect Cora, to wait out her moods, to ride her waves of rage and hope for the best . . . because if Cora found out the reason they'd moved, and until Maeve sealed the cracks they'd slipped through, their troubles were surely bound to return, as persistent as those damned ants.