Motherthing

Abby Lamb narrates the night Ralph's mother, Laura Lamb, slices open her forearms with a kitchen knife in the basement of the house where all three live together. Ralph discovers Laura on the blood-soaked carpet and screams for Abby to call an ambulance. While Ralph paces the basement before paramedics arrive, Abby acts on a reckless impulse: She slides Laura's opal engagement ring off her finger and pockets it. At the hospital, a woman in a red dress hands Ralph a business card reading "Find out why," with a psychic's address on it. When doctors announce that Laura has died, Ralph asks Abby to drive him to the address. They find a Laundromat with a neon eye symbol in the window, but Ralph cannot go in. That night, Abby scrubs bloody boot prints from the floors, though the saturated basement carpet defeats her efforts. She buries the stolen ring beneath a bush in the backyard and climbs into bed beside Ralph.

The days that follow reveal the house's oppressive hold. Laura raised Ralph alone after leaving his father when Ralph was nine, living frugally and working as a 911 dispatcher. Ralph suspects Laura had borderline personality disorder, a diagnosis he never confirmed aloud. He and Abby moved in months earlier when Laura's depression worsened, but now Ralph cannot bring himself to leave. He sleeps in her unwashed sheets, replicates her habit of pinching curtains shut, and expresses guilt for failing to prevent her suicide. When Abby suggests they start fresh, he refuses. At the funeral parlor, Ralph demands Laura's opal ring and becomes agitated to learn it was not received from the hospital. Abby, privately tormented, realizes she has created needless suffering. Laura is cremated without the ring.

Abby's backstory emerges through interwoven memories. Her mother, Dani, cycled through volatile relationships, becoming whoever her boyfriends needed before resenting them for it. Dani once offered a boyfriend, "You can have us both," meaning he could have sex with both her and young Abby if he would stay. This phrase haunts Abby throughout the novel. As a child, Abby found comfort in a corduroy couch she named Couchy, stroking it the way lab monkeys cling to rolled-up socks given as surrogate mothers. She calls these substitute sources of maternal comfort "Motherthings," objects onto which a motherless creature projects enough warmth to survive. Abby met Ralph at a bar, and their first night together was marked by playful intimacy and mutual disclosure. Ralph described his own history with depression as feeling like a walking corpse stripped of the inner self that experiences joy. Abby came to see him as the person who made her real, who gave her life meaning.

Abby works as a support worker at the Northern Star Seniors' Complex, tending to elderly residents with devoted physical care. Her favorite resident is Mrs. Bondy, an elderly woman whose throat cancer has left her nearly voiceless. Mrs. Bondy once helped Abby understand why Laura could not love her: Abby was doing too good a job replacing Laura as the center of Ralph's world. At home, Abby treasures a 1930 Canadian cookbook called Secrets of a Famous Chef, which she found beside a donation bin and treats as sacred.

After bereavement leave ends, Ralph's condition worsens. He stops going to work and whispers to unseen presences in the dark basement. His hand is sliced open; he admits he thought Laura's ghost asked for his blood. He tells Abby he fell on the basement stairs, blacked out, and woke to see Laura sitting on the couch, flickering like a radio signal. Abby is skeptical but recognizes Ralph genuinely believes what he says. When Ralph asks her to stand alone in the darkened basement, she hears tapping, smells Laura's unwashed scent, and feels a presence closing in. She screams, and Ralph rushes down to hold her, the first genuine contact in days. Abby realizes that performing belief in the ghost brings Ralph back to her emotionally.

Ralph's condition continues to deteriorate. He tells Abby he is "dead," not merely depressed, and refuses to let her touch him. When Abby tells him she might be pregnant, he is devastated, saying he cannot risk passing his "plague" to a child. That night she gets her period, confirming she is not pregnant. She names the lost possibility Cal. In the bathroom, she glimpses a shape behind the shower curtain and hears Laura's voice say, "I told you you weren't pregnant."

One night Abby discovers the hole where she buried the ring is empty. Finding the medium's business card, she drives to the Laundromat address. Annie, the woman in the red dress who had given Ralph the business card at the hospital, leads her to a dim attic where Joan, the medium, an old woman with a clouded opal eye, conducts a séance channeling Laura's spirit. Joan becomes violent, screaming obscenities and shouting "You can have us both," echoing Dani's words. Annie translates: Laura has become more demon than ghost, cultivating darkness inside Ralph. If unchecked, he will harm himself. Annie tells Abby she must feed Ralph "something special" that proves "a mother's love," but refuses to specify what.

Meanwhile, Abby's professional life fractures. She learns that Janet Bondy, Mrs. Bondy's estranged daughter, plans to transfer Mrs. Bondy to Kingsmere, a notoriously unsafe care home. After Abby confronts Janet at the facility, accusing her of abandoning her mother, Janet files a formal complaint, and the administrator removes Abby from Mrs. Bondy's care. Abby then visits Janet at home, carrying a cooler bag and the kitchen knife. She pleads with Janet not to move Mrs. Bondy. When Janet refuses, Abby stabs her in the throat. She butchers meat from Janet's body following instructions in Secrets of a Famous Chef, packs it on ice, cleans the house, and leaves.

At home, Abby prepares chicken à la king from the cookbook, substituting Janet's flesh for chicken. Drawn by the smell, Ralph eats his first real meal since Laura's death. He follows Abby upstairs, apologizes for his behavior, and tells her he will get better. They have sex for the first time since Laura's death. Abby enters a dissociative state, asking Ralph to treat her as though she were lifeless. She sees a point of light she interprets as Cal arriving. She opens her eyes and sees Laura's ghost in the hallway, but the apparition is fading. Abby fixes her stare on it, and the ghost dissolves. Afterward, Ralph vomits, which Abby interprets as the final purging of Laura's influence from his body.

The next morning, Ralph cleans the kitchen while Abby strips the beds and opens every curtain. They sit together over a crossword, and Ralph begins to cry from gratitude. A knock at the door sends Abby into panic, certain Ralph has discovered evidence of her crime. But it is Irena, their neighbor, whose Pomeranian dug up Laura's opal ring from the yard. Ralph, overwhelmed, slides the ring onto Abby's finger. After Irena leaves, Ralph tells Abby he wants them to make a baby together. Abby, pressing a hand to her stomach, replies, "Too late."