Play Nice

“All the stories are about someone I don’t know. That I never knew and never will. This version of Mom is theirs, not mine.”

Clio’s willingness to attend her mother’s memorial and to listen to stories about a woman she “never” knew, according to her sisters, indicates her empathy and desire for understanding. This empathy is the quality needed to surmount problems with The Problem of Contested Memory and Perceptions. Clio’s exposure to this different “version” of Alexandra foreshadows how she will also come to know a different version of her over the course of the narrative.

“After reading Mom’s book and her frankly quite compelling footnote allegation, I found it difficult to hold my tongue around my father, to pretend like the seed of doubt hadn’t been planted in my mind. It made perfect sense why he hadn’t wanted us to read the book. When I looked at him now, his halo was askew.”

Clio uses a metaphor, comparing her new doubts about her father’s honesty and integrity to a “seed” that’s just been planted and which will grow into a much larger suspicion of his culpability in her mother’s history. She uses a second metaphor, comparing him to an angel whose “halo” is crooked, indicating that he is not as blameless in Alex’s story as he’s made himself out to be.

“This place caused a lot of pain and suffering. She was the one who put us all back together. Your sisters, especially.”

James credits Amy with repairing the family after Alex went “crazy.” The contrast between Alex and Amy’s characters highlights Women’s Likability as a Prerequisite for Empathy and Safety. Alex is blamed for breaking up the family, while Amy is credited for putting it back together. Alex is portrayed as aggressive and blameworthy, while Amy—who is deferential to James and more passively “likable”—is portrayed as nurturing and blameless.

“‘Now you’re in that house, and I’m having nightmares about the time she chased you down the stairs with a knife.’ A flash. A vision. A memory, buried deep, now bursting through the dirt like a zombie.”

Clio’s simile compares a long-forgotten memory to a zombie bursting from its grave after Daphne reminds her of a particularly heated moment. This highlights memory as a faulty, flawed thing, something characters must accept if they are to breach the gaps between their memories and accept each other’s ideas about what “really” happened. Clio’s sudden recollection—which differs from Daphne’s but is no less “truthful”—emphasizes The Problem of Contested Memory and Perceptions.

“Men are never selfish. They’re smart. Women are always selfish. You want to be single? Selfish. You’re a wife and mother and to do anything other than dote on your husband and children? Selfish. I want you and your sisters to learn to take that word as a compliment. Anyone who says that to you is trying to discourage you from doing what you want. That’s how you know you’re doing something right.”

Clio recalls a time when Alex responded to James calling her “selfish”; she told her daughters to interpret this apparent insult as a sign that they are taking steps to secure their own happiness rather than a man’s. Alex identifies society’s tendency to punish women for the same qualities it privileges in men, making it clear that for women to be “likable,” they are supposed to be sweet and obliging, not independent and self-interested. This highlights Women’s Likability as a Prerequisite for Empathy and Safety.

“Your father was always telling you he loved you, and you girls always said it back, said it to each other. I was never good at that. So much of my life I’ve felt like I’m pressing my nose to the window, watching everyone else be happy beyond the glass.”

Alexandra uses a rather sad simile, comparing her sense of emotional isolation to an actual physical barrier, as though she were confined inside while the rest of her family experienced affection and love outside. Her childhood trauma within her family of origin affected her ability to express and receive love in her chosen family later on, leading to feelings of isolation that resulted in retraumatization and, eventually, the vulnerability that allowed the demon to prey on her. This pattern of suffering highlights Haunted Domestic Space as an Archive for Trauma.

“So often we’re trained to ignore our intuition. That it’s impolite or irrational to be anything but sweet and nice, arms open, ankles crossed […] I was told so many times that my intuition was wrong when it was right that I didn’t know how to trust myself anymore. Men love a beautiful fool. Weak men, rather.”

Alexandra writes in her book about what happens to women in society. In short, they are taught to be “nice,” modest, and ready to receive and welcome others; they are not taught to listen to their own inner voices and follow their own desires. Failing to conform to this ideal usually results in negative social consequences; succeeding results in deeply personal ones, such as a learned inability to trust oneself. Her advice emphasizes Women’s Likability as a Prerequisite for Empathy and Safety.

“It was the single most terrifying moment of my life up until that point. It was also the most liberating. Here was someone who was substantiating my fear, confirming what I had known all along.”

When Mariella’s investigative team confirms what Alexandra knew all along—that her house is inhabited by something evil and exploitative—she is frightened and liberated by the knowledge that she wasn’t wrong, that she isn’t “crazy.” For so long, she’s been haunted by her suffering and characterized as “insane,” that she began to doubt herself and her thoughts about what is real and true. Her feelings portray the Haunted Domestic Space as an Archive for Trauma.

“It’s real. It’s real. It’s real, and now I know it. But I also know that no one will believe me.”

Clio here experiences the same self-doubt and fearfulness of others’ disbelief that Alexandra did. When Alex said there was a demon in her house, this claim was used to discredit her and deprive her of her daughters, though she was correct. Clio fears the same judgment, especially by James and her sisters, when she characterizes the home similarly.

“Dad and Amy went all out for their Memorial Day barbecue. If I were to be cynical, I’d suspect it’s because they can sense there’s something rotten in Denmark and are trying to settle the kingdom.”

Clio alludes to Shakespeare’s Hamlet, citing a line spoken by the guard, Marcellus, after he sees the ghost of Hamlet’s dead father, the former king. It’s an apt allusion because, like Clio, Hamlet recently lost a parent and will also be accused of going “mad” as a result of his grief. The allusion also highlights the emotional tension everyone feels going into the barbecue and presages the confrontation that will happen there.

“I smell burning. Fire—the hot annihilation of what was, of a belief I once held about something in my family history being good and pure.”

Clio realizes that James lied about the timeline of his relationship with Amy—that he did cheat on Alexandra, though he denied it then and even used her accusation to portray Alex as “unstable” and paranoid. This new understanding represents a major turning point for Clio in terms of her willingness to believe her mother’s version of events and question her father’s. This brings to light issues related to The Problem of Contested Memory and Perceptions.

“So this is what the paranormal does to a person. It separates your mind from your body, severs your logic like a gangrenous limb. It’s a unique suffering. One that inspires more ridicule than empathy.”

Clio’s simile, comparing the way paranormal trauma affects the individual’s logic to the severing of an arm or leg, highlights the severity of its influence. Everything one might be taught about what’s possible or not is completely upended by a reality that isn’t supposed to be possible. Not only must one contend with this distortion and the self-doubt and suffering it causes, but one must also deal with the negative way it prompts others to respond. This emphasizes the Haunted Domestic Space as an Archive for Trauma.

“‘Dad burned my book. Why isn’t that the topic of this conversation? Why is it my fault?’ ‘That’s…he shouldn’t have done that. But you can’t blame him for being upset.’ ‘I can, actually.’ ‘You crossed a boundary. You broke a promise. You lied,’ she says. ‘To all of us.’”

While Clio broke a promise she made to James not to read Alex’s book, James permanently destroyed something precious that belonged to Clio. He saw the annotations Alex made in her book, the way she attempted to reach out and help her youngest daughter to understand their shared trauma, and he actively prevented Clio from making her own decisions regarding how or if she wanted to interpret that information. However, Daphne’s anger is totally directed at Clio, as though she’s afraid to hold James responsible for his part in the confrontation. She has seen what happens when someone holds him responsible, and she doesn’t want him to treat her as he treated Alex. This highlights Women’s Likability as a Prerequisite for Empathy and Safety.

“It is about me. The whole family revolves around me. I’m the sun. That’s why you need me. You need me to apologize and make peace so you can all go back to pretending we’re normal and happy and that everything’s fine and has always been fine. And I’m done pretending.”

Clio uses a metaphor to compare herself to the sun, meaning that she feels like the center of the family. When something is “off” with her, it throws the whole family off-balance. She vows, now that she knows James cheated on Alex and burned Clio’s copy of Alex’s book, that she will no longer pretend that everything is fine; in other words, she won’t play the “likable” woman who acquiesces to James any longer, and that will likely upset the family’s dynamic. This emphasizes Women’s Likability as a Prerequisite for Empathy and Safety.

“I just broke an unspoken rule of influencer etiquette, and now they’re uneasy. We don’t sabotage; we support. If I were to publicly call out SLIP, what about Shine Inc.? Where do they source their diamonds? Did Veronica ever ask? And what about the face-tuning? What about the Photoshop? What about the lie of the lives we sell?”

When Clio gets back to the city and goes out with friends, she criticizes the business with which one friend recently made a deal, directly to that friend. Although she didn’t mean to do this, she stands by her assessment, and this makes other friends uncomfortable because they are supposed to be “support[ive]” and not call attention to “the lie of the lives [they] sell.” This also highlights Women’s Likability as a Prerequisite for Empathy and Safety: When Clio deviates from this Likability, her peers isolate her, just as her family does.

“How do you prepare your daughters for the world? How do you protect them? Do you tell them every ugly truth so that they understand? So that they know what to expect? Or do you fill their heads with dreams and hope for the best? Hope that they’ll want more for themselves and don’t settle for the way the world is, that they demand it to be better, and maybe because of that it will be?”

Alex struggles between wanting to protect her daughters from the world, encouraging them to be “likeable” in ways she is not, and wanting them to change the world, encouraging them to stand up to expectations that they perform some feminine ideal. Each of her daughters eventually finds a tenuous middle ground, just as Alex does, though no one is truly happy. Each longs for acceptance and love while also desiring independence from society’s expectations, and this combination simply isn’t possible.

“‘I have some memories. And then I have my sisters and my dad telling me what happened. I’ve been hearing their versions for so long, believing their versions for so long. And now, now I have my mom’s book’ […] A chance to tell him—to tell someone—the truth. Here and now. It’s not all fiction. The haunting is real.”

Clio longs to tell Austin the truth about the house and the demon, in part, because no one else in her family believes it (to her knowledge). This illuminates The Problem of Contested Memory and Perceptions because Clio feels isolated by her version of truth. It conflicts with her sisters’ and her dad’s, and even—to some extent—her mother’s, and the desire to be believed is significant.

“Everyone’s lying. That’s the irony. The only one telling the truth in this family is me. And I’m the one no one believes.”

It is ironic that Clio is the only person in her immediate family who is telling the truth about the house and what happened in it, and yet she’s the only person no one believes. She has stepped into Alex’s shoes. To believe the truth Clio tells would be tantamount to admitting that they were wrong all along and that Alexandra was right, and this is something most are unwilling to do. This unwillingness to believe either Alex or Clio, at this point, emphasizes Women’s Likability as a Prerequisite for Empathy and Safety.

“He’s waiting for me to intuit what he wants to hear, and then for me to say those words and to be pretty while I say them.”

Clio expects Austin to want her to perform the feminine ideal, which she often has done. She believes that he expects her to anticipate his desires and to look attractive while doing so, as this is essentially what James expects from women. She believes his feelings, not hers, are Austin’s priority, because the expectation that women be “likable” is so pervasive.

“And finally, a blurry selfie of me smiling, my eyes bloodshot, mascara streaming down my dirty face, hair a mess, snake charm dangling toward the camera.”

This line connects the symbol of Clio’s snake charm to her “unlikable” moments and impulses. She doesn’t look “pretty,” and she isn’t doing what her father (or her industry) wishes. Instead, she is pursuing the ugly truth of her mother’s house and life, which makes her appear “difficult” and blameworthy in the eyes of her society.

“You know, Dad thinks you’re having some sort of nervous breakdown. But I know better. I know you better. You’re just a fucking bitch.”

Even women are not immune to internalizing expectations for women’s Likability and weaponizing them against other women. Here, Leda confronts Clio, connecting her “bitch[iness]” to James’s claim that Clio is becoming mentally unwell. Leda knows Clio isn’t mentally ill because she knows the demon is real, but she still blames Clio for believing in it, as though Clio does it to upset the family. Leda’s behavior highlights Women’s Likability as a Prerequisite for Empathy and Safety as surely as James’s does.

“I’m making everything worse. I know I am, but I can’t stop. Daphne’s right. I can’t help myself. Watching the damage unfold feels startingly familiar. It feels like home.”

Just as Clio described her return to the house as a “reunion,” she is somewhat comforted by the familiarity of the chaos her actions create. She once watched while her mother’s choice to tell the truth created similar upheaval. However, rather than believing Clio or Alex, the family chooses to discount them as “crazy” and “difficult,” retraumatizing Clio in a way that is certainly harmful but feels soothingly familiar. This passage thus also highlights Haunted Domestic Space as an Archive for Trauma.

“I’m only its favorite because I’m game, down to play. Because I’m a good pawn. The easiest. The most fun.”

Clio once took pleasure in her knowledge that she was the demon’s favorite. However, once she realizes that this is the case because she’s the only one who paid attention to it, the only one who was willing to play, she no longer romanticizes its attention. This is a significant realization for her and helps to facilitate Clio’s dynamism.