Pick the Lock, page 24
I fold it inside my hand while I fiddle with the glove compartment and then shove it in my schoolbag. Hiding things from Marta seems wrong, but if she knows about the Quick Start Guide and hasn’t warned me, then I feel any secrets from her are fair.
When we arrive home, I head inside, leave my backpack and balloons on my desk in the study, and head upstairs to change into something more comfortable.
Vernon Cook
1111 Spruce Street
February 6, 2025
RE: ACCOUNT SUSPENSION
Mr. Cook,
Your account has been temporarily suspended due to the following breaches of contract:
Ordering Violations
You have returned too many women with no relevant explanation.
In interviewing five of your most recent returns, System officials have learned that you made advances on two (2) women without their consent during the week of January 27. Consult the Handbook pages on Love Needs re: all transactions are required to be consensual.
Offering Violations
Your filed claim from November has been denied due to disputed information. You claimed your product was harmed, but our records show no such harm.
Your product has deserted her duties on more than six occasions. She was reported and returned prior to these desertions for being too assertive, arguing politics, and not being loving during her Love Needs (Suitors) appointments, yet you continue to offer her for Love Needs (Suitors). Please consult your Handbook for training resources and additional information on how to prepare Love Needs products for adequate System use.
“I am far more than adequate,” I say to myself in the mirror. I don’t know what to do with this letter now that I’ve taken it. I find the nonconsensual advances unsurprising, which makes me wonder how much I intentionally don’t think about my own life. As if I’ve been brainwashed the same as Mother.
Oh my God. We’re all brainwashed.
He may have only thrown the furniture at her, but we became the furniture. Or something like that. Either way, this letter has been sent to me by the gods. They would like me to somehow make sure that Finch sees it. Happy birthday!
Vernon is waiting at the bottom of the staircase when I come down.
“Happy birthday!” he says, arms out. I hug him. “Marta says dinner is at six.”
“Yes.”
“And you changed your cake order, she said,” he says.
“Growth and change are part of life, I suppose,” I answer.
He puts his arm around me as I walk toward my backpack. He squeezes my shoulder twice.
“No suitors for tonight,” I say.
“Of course,” he answers. “I hadn’t planned on it.”
“Mmm,” I say.
He peels off toward the kitchen as I head to the study.
“Happy birthday again!” Henry says from his desk. “I made you a card!”
It’s a picture of me and him, with frogs all around us. “Your drawing is really good! You should get that art tutor Vernon wanted to get for me.”
“Not gonna be an artist, but thanks,” he says. “What game are we playing tonight?”
“Toss-up between Clue and Life.”
He nods. I open my school computer and take a picture of the letter, just in case I lose the original.
“Where’s Mother?” I ask.
“She left after breakfast and hasn’t been back.”
I go to the kitchen.
It smells delicious. The oven is hot and the whole room is hot, the way it usually is when Marta is cooking a big roast. I peek through the oven window and see a big ham. On the stovetop is a large potato pot filled with peeled and chopped potatoes and a smaller pot with John Cope’s corn—a specialty that’s too hard to explain to those who don’t know it but it’s the best corn to eat with ham. And another pot, presumably for Marta’s famous ham gravy.
But no Marta and no Mother.
I look at the tube and consider going to Safe House, but it’s my birthday and I have a bit of homework so I go back to the study, open my school laptop. I think of how different I am compared to myself this time last year.
This time last year, I had never seen a home movie. I didn’t know my mother at all. I hadn’t been out of my house in four years. Now look at me. Nearly a fully formed Baby, I go to school every day and have friends who have slept over at my house and who I’ve had snowball fights with. And I’ve written an opera. About how Vernon lies to God. About suitors. About being the last to know what’s really going on. Though I’d guess that’s really Henry. Poor chap.
* * *
—
Dinner is delicious and my cake—a red velvet with buttercream icing—is perfect. Henry doesn’t love it at first, but eventually, he gets over the food coloring and has a second piece. Vernon hates red velvet cake.
That’s not why I chose it.
Mother arrived at the house through the front door an hour before dinner, holding a big wrapped box for me. I’m not sure how she’s getting away with not being locked up, but she and Vernon must have had a conversation because he has said three times already that this is just for Jane’s birthday while Mother reminds us she has to be back in London by Wednesday.
Finch is so quiet, I keep forgetting she’s even here. Not like I’d have invited her if I had a choice myself, but her presence has purpose. Gemma couldn’t make it on account of her having another job tonight. My stomach tenses to think it might be Love Needs, but I try not to think about it.
Marta clears the table and Henry, Mother, and I help her. It gives Vernon and Finch time to whisper with each other.
Home Movie—03.03.2025 (Twenty-four Minutes Ago)
Finch walks in the door and looks done with life. I meet her in the foyer. The copy of the letter is in my back pocket.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” I say.
“That’s new,” she answers.
“Sorry about the last few months. I’ve been bitchy.”
“No worries.” She hugs me and gives the two-kiss European hello on release.
I sigh.
“You okay?” she asks.
“I have something to show you but I probably shouldn’t.”
She looks concerned. “Is it something from school? Are you okay?”
“I’ll tell you about it later.” I hold my finger to my mouth in a shh motion as Vernon walks quietly into the foyer.
While the two of them talk in the foyer, I go to the cabinet where the Grammys are and reach up to the third shelf where Vernon has hidden more of Mother’s postcards. I replace them with the copy of the letter.
It’s a Party! / Family Game Night
We are sitting around the dining room table. Though Henry’s favorite game is Clue, I have chosen [The Game of] Life.
The first indication that this is going to be an interesting night is when Finch, after “meeting her future spouse” on her first turn, gets to the chapel and picks a woman as a wife.
Henry declares, on becoming a doctor (salary $20,000), that he would only ever be a doctor of animals or plants. “Humans aren’t my thing,” he says. Mother and I are teachers (salary $8,000). Vernon is a lawyer (salary $15,000) and is as smug about it as if he’d just passed the actual bar exam.
The gameplay is drab. We spin, move our little cars along, collect money, pay money, collect children in the back seats of our cars, play the stock market. Mother is acting as banker, so she is busy and in her element, handing out salaries when people pass spaces that read Pay Day!
Vernon hits the poison ivy space and loses a turn. Then, Finch lands on Revenge and makes him pay her one hundred thousand dollars, which clears him out. Henry is ahead of all of us, playing the stock market every chance he gets, while Finch moans about how no one told her the benefits of life insurance and the cash bonuses along the way.
Two turns later, Vernon lands on Revenge and asks Mother for one hundred thousand dollars, and Mother replies, “Why don’t you ask Finch for your hundred grand back? She’s the one who took it!” He presses her for the money and she tosses out an Exemption card from her stack of cards. Vernon sulks.
Henry spins the wheel for his turn. “Adopt a girl and a boy! Collect presents!” He holds his hands out for money and we all give him a thousand dollars.
Mother spins and lands on Lucky Day and wins one hundred fifty thousand dollars. Finch tries a Share the Wealth card on her, but Mother has another Exemption card. Finch meows. Henry looks at his hands. Vernon hisses, “Tss-tsss.”
I surprise myself. “What’s wrong with you?” I say.
Finch says, “What?”
“You’re not a hypnotist,” Henry says. He gives side-eye to Vernon. “We’re all here. We heard you.”
I spin and move. “Iceberg rams yacht! Sell ice cubes. Collect five thousand dollars,” I say. “Can we talk about how messed up that is?”
Henry says, “As if there are that many icebergs left to hit.”
Finch meows again.
“They talked about ice cubes like it was some kind of joke,” Henry continues. “Jane and I will be alive when the Bahamas drown and the plagues hit.”
Vernon—“Jesus, Henry. It’s Jane’s birthday and—”
“Yes, it’s my birthday and I think Henry’s right. Your generation is part of the problem.”
Marta nods as she delivers hot chocolate. “All of us.”
“Not me!” Finch says.
“Oh, I think you’re a bigger problem than anyone here realizes,” I say. I haven’t had any alcohol, though Vernon offered. I’m just feeling as bold as I did three years ago where my birthday gave me carte blanche to pummel my mother with boxes of Trivial Pursuit cards.
Finch hisses at this.
“Do you think you’re a cat?” Henry asks her.
“Come on,” Mother says. “Let’s keep playing. Henry will have us all beat if we don’t catch up soon.”
“I don’t even know why I’m playing,” Vernon says. “I can’t win.”
“It’s Jane’s birthday. That’s why we’re playing,” Mother says.
“Be a sport,” I say. “Eh, Vernon?”
Finch meows.
“Do you think you’re a cat?” Henry asks again. “It’s your turn. Spin.”
Finch spins and lands one space in front of me and my ice cube stand. I read, “Bridge out ahead! Back up fifteen spaces!” She throws her hands up in frustration, and Henry counts her back fifteen and places her car where it should be.
Henry’s next turn, he spins a ten and lands at the Day of Reckoning, cashes out his children, and makes his decision to keep going to Millionaire Acres.
Vernon is catching up, and when he lands on the Buy a Toupee space, none of us say anything about his bald spot because he’s very sensitive about it.
Mother and I both land on the same spot on the bridge. She exclaims, “Collect two hundred thousand dollars if you own stock!” She beats Finch’s Share the Wealth card with an Exemption, then hands me another Exemption card under the table in case the bitch tries it with me, too, but she’s out of cards.
If I can take a minute to draw the scene for you—
This doesn’t quite look like a family having fun on my birthday, but it’s close. Mother seems to be having fun. Henry is having fun. I’m having fun. Marta is having fun watching in between runs to the kitchen for drinks and snacks. Finch isn’t having fun—but she never does. And Vernon is just drinking a lot and he pretends to have fun the way he pretends everything—no Exemption card for that, old boy.
We’re not overjoyed like some commercial for soap or whatever. We’re just playing a game of Life. Henry will probably win and is on his way to Millionaire Acres, Mother and I are on the bridge to retirement, collecting two hundred thousand fake dollars apiece. Finch has just bought a yacht for thirty-six thousand dollars, and Vernon is about to spin the wheel.
Vernon spins a four and Henry reads the space, “You’ve been robbed! Pay thirty thousand dollars!”
Vernon pounds the table and yells, “This shit’s just like real life!”
We all look at him. He’s drunk, for sure, but he’s on the verge of something bigger.
“Have you been robbed in real life, Vernon?” Mother asks.
Finch spits, “You rob him every fucking day!” She looks like Madonna in that meme, pointing and screaming at Mother.
“She gives him everything he has,” Henry says.
“Let’s finish the game,” I add.
“What happened to this family?” Vernon bellows. “We used to be on the same team!”
He’s staring directly at Henry while Mother leans forward and spins. Henry ignores Vernon’s stare and reads, “Sell the cattle ranch, collect one hundred sixty thousand dollars.”
I toss out a Share the Wealth card and she has no Exemptions left, so she gives me eighty thousand dollars and takes the same for herself. When I spin and Henry reads, “Sweepstakes winner! Collect one hundred thousand dollars,” Finch leans in and whispers something to Vernon.
Vernon breathes uneven for a few breaths, and then in one fast move, he leans forward, flips the Life game board, little cars and blue and pink “people” fly everywhere, and then he stands up, balances himself with the back of his chair, and walks out of the room. A moment later, you can hear the slam of his bedroom door.
Marta comes in and starts to clean up the mess. Finch says, “I’m leaving,” and walks directly from her place at the table out the front door.
Mother is separating money into piles and reaches for Henry’s.
“I was finally going to win!” he says.
“It’s Jane’s birthday,” Mother says. “Jane wins.”
Henry smiles and hugs me. It’s weird. Also, he smells like wine.
* * *
—
Marta, Mother, Milorad, Henry, and I sit around a warm fire in the sitting room and I face a small pile of wrapped presents.
“You can open mine now,” Henry says. “It’s small and I—well, Marta got it for me while you were at school.”
I open it and it’s a gift card for concert tickets. My jaw drops. “Henry! This is for five hundred dollars!”
“I don’t know how much tickets cost, but maybe this way you can take friends?”
I hug him.
Marta and Milorad bought me some cool Bluetooth headphones, and Mother gives me the ukulele she bought in Salzburg.
I strum it until I find the chords for the Happy Birthday song, and they sing to me and Mother hugs me and this is family and you can’t tell me it’s not. No one is hurting anyone. No one is lying to anyone. No one is in a tube.
Once Mother goes back to London, we’re going to have to go back to pretending like this hour didn’t happen. “When you finish the opera,” she says, “we can work on the score.”
HOW THE RAT ARRIVED
I find birthdays tedious. Seems dumb to celebrate getting nearer to death.
Even when they celebrate my birthday, it’s stupid. I give their gifts away on the walk home—even the homemade ones. Jane caught me one time. I threw a picture she painted into the trash at the house and she must have seen it in there, pulled it out, ironed it back to flat, and then she gave it to me again. Loser.
Fact is, I don’t have a birthday. I was never born. I rose from hell like every other shape-shifter. By now you know this, right? You know but Jane doesn’t because her imagination isn’t nearly as advanced as yours is. She still thinks I lived all over the world in big mansions, living in luxury and horseback riding, when really, I was running through sewers, whispering secrets, causing wars.
I won’t keep it from you any longer. I did murder my great-aunt Lily Vandermaker—willingly, indeed. She was interfering with a System she didn’t understand, eating up that 1970s women’s liberation shit like it was real. Everyone knows women don’t mean a damn thing in the world.
Then, when Aunt Lily double-crossed me in the will, there was one obvious thing to do. Only I made sport of it. I’ve murdered millions of people—it’s easy. But making someone else murder a person, that’s something worth being proud of. And Vernon Cook is probably the dumbest and easiest puppet I’ve ever worked with. His hatred for my sister was already ravenous by the time I hooked him. Now I just need him to do the job so I can have my rightful place as head of this whole family.
ACT FOUR: SPRING
Reclaiming / Do Not Fuck with My Mother
Can you take me to the safe house?
The place where I can rest?
Can you hold my tired pretty head?
Can you tell me I’m the best?
Can you take me to the safe house?
It’s bright and pleasant there.
Marta makes potatoes.
Gemma curls and sets your hair.
It’s a giant roller coaster!
It’s the inside of your toaster!
Put my face up on a poster and
take a ride, inside, inside my bride.
Never mind the whirring clatter.
The words he speaks—they never matter.
He only aims to sever ties.
He only ever fucking lies.
Just enjoy the pitter-patter.
The words he speaks—they’re only chatter.
You have won the biggest prize.
You don’t believe his fucking lies.
(Take a ride, inside, inside my bride.)
I’ve got your mind, I’ve got your heart, I’ve got your fix.
