Play Nice

The next morning, Clio opens the gift bag from the party, which was her friend, Veronica’s, soiree to celebrate her partnership with a jewelry company. The bag contains a white gold snake charm with diamond eyes. When Clio puts it on at the mirror, she recalls how much like Alexandra she looks.

She calls her dad, James, struck with an idea. She turns on helpless tears so that he offers to come get her because she hates taking the train. She realizes she doesn’t know how to mourn her mother, a woman who taught her by showing her what not to do. Alexandra lost control of her emotions, Clio thinks, and this makes Clio determined to remain in control.

When James arrives, he says Alexandra’s sister, Helen, called Leda with the news of their mother’s death. Helen hates James, though Leda has had lunch with her a few times since they both live in Boston. When Clio and James get to New Jersey, his wife, Amy, greets them, and Clio experiences her typical mixture of relief and unease about being “home.” Amy was the girls’ sweet and bubbly dance teacher before she became their stepmother.

Leda thinks she’s ugly because Alexandra used to tell her so, but Clio loves Leda’s face. Leda says that there will be a memorial for their mother, but neither she nor Daphne will go. Clio does want to go, however, and this causes conflict.

Leda anticipates the presence of Alexandra’s “weird associates,” and when Clio claims she can handle herself, her sisters remind her that James does “everything” for her. Finally, Leda and Daphne tell Clio that it’s about “safety,” insisting that she doesn’t remember how bad things were when their mother became mentally unwell after the divorce. Clio says she doesn’t care and goes to her room to be alone.

Clio has little to validate her memories of Alexandra, but she does have some. Clio has an eye-shaped scar on her arm, though she can’t remember how she got it. Everyone blamed her mother for it, but she never could. Clio thinks maybe her mother mentioned it in her book, Demon of Edgewood Drive: The True Story of a Suburban Haunting, but James made the girls promise they’d never read it. Clio thinks she’s the only one to care about Alexandra’s death, and she wonders why she cares so much.

Tommy, Leda’s husband, is happy to see Clio. Tommy is a social worker, and Clio loves him for his innocence and goodness. Clio wonders who they will blame for everything now that Alexandra, the “family scapegoat,” is gone. Everyone wants Clio to skip the service, but she insists, asking Tommy to go with her.

Clio asks if her sisters have read Alexandra’s book. Leda, shocked, denies it, but Daphne is curious. Clio says she hasn’t, and Leda calls it a bunch of lies. When Clio asks if they think Alexandra really believed in the “demon,” Daphne says “yes,” just as Leda says “no.”

Back at the house, Clio and Daphne smoke a joint on the deck. Clio says she’s serious about going to the memorial. Daphne claims that Alexandra’s people are going to talk about how much she loved them, but she reminds Clio that everyone in this house really loves her. Daphne wonders if love can look ugly and do “bad” things.

Clio and Tommy drive from New Jersey to Connecticut; it’s been 18 years since Clio saw Alexandra. She notes how attached she’s become to her snake charm. Clio looks the most like Alexandra, and she says this is why she was her mother’s favorite.

The memorial service is held in the home of Mariella, a psychic who knew Alexandra, and the woman greets Clio familiarly, though Clio has no knowledge of her. Mariella is, apparently, the aunt of Roy, who was Alexandra’s second husband. Roy is a demonologist and James’s opposite. He tells her how proud Alexandra was of her and her sisters, and how much Alexandra sacrificed for their safety. Clio knows that to agree with him would be a betrayal of her sisters, and of the truth. She sees their Aunt Helen, who ushers her away to speak privately.

Helen doesn’t believe in ghosts and demons, but she does believe what her sister said. Helen mentions Alexandra’s difficult childhood and their father’s abuse, and Clio says she knows. Helen insists that she thinks she does, but she doesn’t. Clio says that Alexandra left them, and Helen tells her it isn’t that simple.

Clio is surprised to learn that the supposedly possessed house on Edgewood Drive still belonged to Alexandra, and she left it to the girls. Clio thought she sold it, but Helen said Alexandra kept it out of some moral obligation to rid it of evil before passing it off to another family. She and Roy continued to try to exorcise it. That’s where she was when she died. Helen reports that Alexandra would go sometimes when she missed her daughters and to make sure the demonic activity stayed “dormant.”

Clio and Helen go back to the gathering, and Roy gives Clio a small pouch with Alexandra’s rings and a key inside. As others share memories, Clio recalls a time her mother took the girls to McDonald’s and then yelled at them about getting “chubby” because girls who are overweight get bullied. When she sees everyone looking at her, Clio realizes that she said the memory out loud.

The others’ stories seem to be about a version of Alexandra that Clio never knew. On the way home, Tommy says he’s proud of Clio for showing up and telling her truth. He admits that Leda knew about the house and that Alexandra died there; he says she doesn’t want to think about it. Clio decides that she can handle it.