9.14

Sunday night, I reread The Catcher in the Rye until I felt tired enough to fall asleep. Only I never got tired enough. And I couldn’t read, because reading didn’t feel the same.

Then you didn’t reread the book until you were tired enough to fall asleep. You decided to do that, but it didn’t work. EDIT YOUR FUCKING WORK.

I couldn’t disappear into the character of Holden Caulfield

But normally he super identifies with the guy. No wonder he’s so incredibly infuriating to read about.

So he decides it’s telepathic chat time.

Lena? You’re there, aren’t you?
I stared up at the blue ceiling.
It’s no use. I know you’re there. Here. Whatever.
I waited, until I heard it. Her voice, unfolding like a tiny, bright memory in the darkest, furthest corner of my mind.
No. Not exactly.
You are. You have been, all night.
Ethan, I’m sleeping. I mean, I was.
I smiled to myself.
No you weren’t. You were listening.
I was not.
Just admit it, you were.
Guys. You think everything is about you. Maybe I just like that book.

It’s kind of impressive that a book that’s writing its male character as basically a girl can still nail that male entitlement so well. He badgers her about how she was totally there because only he can be right, then she admits it because of course only he can be right.

She then explains she doesn’t know why she’s in his head right now or apparently even in general, so she’s just amazingly chill about surprise telepathy for some reason. And it isn’t even like it’s a personality trait of hers, because his own response is exactly as bland and ho-hum. People in this universe apparently just don’t give many shits.

He suggests asking someone about what’s up, to which she wonders who they possibly could, despite the fact everything seems to be saying she’s a member of a crazy supernatural clan so shouldn’t you have a long list of people you could consult on this? He says then maybe they’ll figure it out on their own, and she responds with don’t try. Don’t anything more like it. Where do books get the idea the best plot is people doing only the bare minimum they’re forced into?

He finally goes to sleep and dreams of drowning in green water. She says it’s her birthday and that he has to let her go.

I sat up in bed. My T-shirt was soaking wet. My pillow was wet. My hair was wet. And my room was sticky and humid. I guessed I’d left the window open again.

…

Okay, if I hadn’t obligated myself to seeing this through, this would be the ragequit point.

He’s been waking up with dirt. He knows he brings stuff back from his dreams. So he knows full fucking well what it means to be completely soaked after a dream of being underwater. He SHOULD be thinking right now that holy shit what if he can die in one of those dreams.

Instead he’s fucking thinking he left the window open. This book is shit. It will not stop being shit. Nothing can fix this.

Anyway Mammy Amma is still grounchy and reminds him to not mix with that Lena girl and he’s all wtf why does she agree with other people in the town? Other people are always wrong!

Then Link shows up.

“We got trubs.”
“I know.”
“Jackson’s got itself a regular lynch mob this mornin’.”

Yes. The book just went there.

No, it gets worse. Not only are they using lynch mob to refer to the white as snow descendant of slave owners Lena, but it’s composed of mothers who are going to complain at the school.

He repeats that Link’s his friend and in Gatlin you always know who your friends are.

Everything had already happened, ten years ago. For our parents, everything had already happened twenty or thirty years ago. And for the town itself, it seemed like nothing had happened for more than a hundred years. Nothing of consequence, that is.

Yes, the book carefully arranged things so that things happening includes the Civil War itself, because that involved rich white people getting their stuff burned. But the lynch mobs afterward, that wasn’t any big deal.

He talks about how Link’s mom sucks and is in that Confederate sewing circle thing and is totally different than his awesome mom who didn’t care about girl stuff and spent most of her time holed up in the library looking
at microfiche. SO WHY THE FUCK DO YOU NOT KNOW YOU COULD GO TO THE LIBRARY AND LOOK THAT UP IF YOU WANT TO INVESTIGATE SOMETHING?!

Link adds that apparently Lena’s just out of a mental institution, no way of knowing if that’s true, and Emothan focuses on how she’s totally not his girlfriend, to which Link responds with accusations of being whipped because if you aren’t currently beating or fucking your property, that’s what you are.

Link wasn’t big on subtleties, and I don’t think he could imagine hanging out with a girl for any reason other than maybe she played lead guitar, except for the obvious ones.

The writing was never that good but it’s really taken a dive. I can’t imagine how much worse it’s going to get if it’s already this bad after just a few chapters.

He spends half a second thinking that maybe she really is crazy, but we’ve established the women doing the talking are all evil and wear skirts, so.

Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Asher were talking to Principal Harper on the front steps. Emily was huddled next to her mother, trying to look pathetic.

So I guess the idea is that it’s all EMILY THE BITCH WHORE’s fault. How dare she not like the main character. How dare she.

Lena’s hiding out in the car and scribbling in her private notebook. They have a telepathic chat that turns vocal for some reason, though who knows what the distinction between the two is. She explains she can’t read minds and what’s going on with Ethan is unusual (she already explained this) and still not mindreading.

We just seem to—connect.” Even the word seemed hard for her to say this morning. She wouldn’t look me in the eye.

It probably means he’s her werewolf bondmate. She’s wondering if he’ll try to leave her if she tells him the truth and then she’ll have to tear half his face off to teach him a lesson.

Anyway blah blah never felt closer but he can’t tell her so he thinks about random bullshit. He tells her he knows what the parents are saying because everyone knows everything in Gatlin, except for the part where he was taken by surprise that all this was happening. So it’s not really that stuff doesn’t happen, it’s just he reacts to absolutely everything with bored disdain. Even the telepathy gets hit by this.

They then chat quickly about the dream. She confirms she also woke up with wet hair and also she’s bruised where he grabbed her, and why is it only she’s getting hurt by these dreams? Why can’t he have some marks where she tried to grab him? He’s said repeatedly she’s trying to hold on too.

Anyway, both of them are just curious why and neither is concerned that maybe next time they might actually drown. Or, possibly Lena knows because she seems to be a great actor when it comes to pretending ignorance.

He tries asking what’s up with her birthday, and she talks about the locket and explains what he’s learned and how mostly he doesn’t know except Amma’s super upset by it.

And my dad’s study is off-limits, where he keeps all my mom’s old books about Gatlin and the War.”

For christ’s sake, your dad comes out long enough for you to ask for those. You’re just a lazy boring asshole.

Anyway Lena’s decided to just not bother going to school. By the way, apparently the uncle’s name is actually Macon and they were just saying random shit back then when talking about his name? I don’t know. And it’s a really common surname so…why do people care so much about it being evil?

She emos a bit about how no one ever likes her and she tried to join the newspaper at my old school except you’ve had lots of old schools, do you mean “my last school” and even though they didn’t have enough people to even publish reliably they were all nope we’re full because everyone hates her or something I don’t know why did you want me to read this what is the point it’s boring and terrible and boring.

Then the black wolfdog appears. So it’s too slow and lazy to chase down a boy right in front of it, but it can make its way all the way over here.

The dog growled, the hair along its back standing on end. Mrs. Lincoln looked down at it with such revulsion, you would’ve thought she was looking at Macon Ravenwood himself. In a fight, I wasn’t sure which one of them would come out on top.

I hate this book. I hate the character and I hate the author.

The evil bitch who doesn’t like a growling stray dog then evilly says that the principal is going to tell Lena he’ll let her transfer to any other school because she’s not one of us and holy shit I could not give less of a fuck.

His day was boring, he gets home and tells Amma Lena wasn’t there today.

“Maybe that’s for the best. Trouble follows that girl around like Macon Ravenwood’s dog.

Since when do you know he’s got a dog? And if you know, how come no one else knew and they just thought it was a stray?

Then he lies about having a history project with Link and he’ll be gone to hang out at the library.

“You haven’t set foot in the library since…”
“I know.” Since my mom died.

If this is his actual reason for avoiding the one place that can actually answer his locket questions, it should have come up long before this. Hell, it should have come up when he was doing his little bitchfest about how there was nothing to do, instead of just saying it uses card catalogues therefore it sucks.

The library was home away from home to my mom, and my family. We had spent every Sunday afternoon there since I was a little boy, wandering around the stacks, pulling out every book with a picture of a pirate ship, a knight, a soldier, or an astronaut.

Except for how it sucks because card catalogue. You know, I’m starting to think his mom might have been added into this after the fact. She doesn’t seem to have the slightest impact on things.

The head librarian, because apparently the place is big and well trafficed enough for a bunch of librarians, was almost as great a historian as his mom was and had a PhD in African-American studies and incidentally, a search of the text says that’s the last time anyone’s going to be mentioning the word African, so yeah, unicorns and pixies were harvesting the crop.

I also knew there was no way Amma would stop me from going there. She wouldn’t even call to check up on me. Marian Ashcroft was family.

But apparently not the sort of family you chat with, since you’re so sure she’d never contact the woman any other time and happen to mention how supposedly you’d gotten over your library aversion.

He then explains that he’s planning to show up with the English assignment as an excuse to talk to Lena, because it’s not like he doesn’t already have perfectly good reasons to chat with her about the increasingly dangerous dreams and the random telepathy and the cursed vision locket.

“I can’t believe you just showed up here. I told you my uncle doesn’t like strangers.” She was already pushing me down the stairs. “You have to go. Now.”
“I just thought we could talk to him.”
Behind us, I heard the awkward clearing of a throat. I looked up to see Macon Ravenwood’s dog, and beyond him, Macon Ravenwood himself. I tried not to look surprised, but I’m pretty sure it gave me away when I almost jumped out of my skin.
“Well, that’s one I don’t hear often. And I do hate to disappoint, as I am nothing if not a Southern gentleman.” He spoke in a measured Southern drawl, but with perfect enunciation.

So apparently he quite likes strangers. Emothan goes on and on about how smart the guy sounds and how he’s so well dressed:

Macon Ravenwood was dressed impeccably, as if it was, I don’t know, 1942. His crisp white dress shirt was fastened with old-fashioned silver studs, instead of buttons. His black dinner jacket was spotless, perfectly creased.

Okay, see, half the reason we don’t dress as fancily as peopl did in the past was because having starched and ironed clothing requires other people to do work to get it all nice. The reason those southern plantation owners could dress so nice was because they had slaves doing their laundry.

Also, he is super pretty:

He could have been some kind of American movie star, from before they invented Technicolor, or maybe royalty, from some small country nobody had ever heard of around here.

So we are in full scale aristocracy worship here.

Also, yeah, Ethan’s gay. I don’t think there’s any heterosexual explanation left. He loathes the girls in their short skirts. He reports cattily on which girl is too fat to be liked by other boys and which girl gets all the boys trying to look down her shirt without the slightest personal interest in the subject, his interest in Lena revolves around how she’s different and he just wants to talk to her about things, but put a well dressed guy in front of him and suddenly he’s got opinions of his own about how very, very pretty that guy is.

He then goes on a bit about the guy’s searching eyes looking right through him and how My heart was beating so loudly I was sure he could hear it. and Ethan, no, he’s way too old for you.

Anyway, Mr. Hot Suit invites him to stay for dinner. We’ll enjoy a few Cubans in the conservatory after dinner, or are you more of a Cigarillo man? also, which is just confusing me more because did he magic up those and is just calling them Cuban or is he actually ordering and paying for them somehow?

Also, the wolfdog of death is called Boo Radley because the author picked To Kill a Mockingbird to namedrop and by god you are going to know it. Where did this start? I understand Twilight did it, is everyone taking their cues from that?

“Really, Mr. Wate, please join us. I so love company, and it’s been ages since Ravenwood has had the pleasure of hosting a guest from our own delicious little Gatlin County.”
Lena smiled awkwardly, “Don’t be a snob, Uncle M. It’s not their fault you never speak to any of them.”
“And it’s not my fault that I have a penchant for good breeding, reasonable intelligence, and passable personal hygiene, not necessarily in that order.”

He’s presumably too busy fantasizing about proposing to the guy on the spot to realize the fine southern gentleman just insulted every other member of his family, since none of them apparently were good enough to warrent an invitation.

Lena explains he’s just in a bad mood over the principal calling to say she’s on probation. Crazy pretty uncle is not impressed by that:

Probation would imply a source of authority.” He pushed us both into the hall in front of him. “An overweight high school principal who barely finished college, and a pack of angry housewives with pedigrees that couldn’t rival Boo Radley’s, hardly qualify.”

Yes because judging people solely based on who their great-grandparents are really makes you the not-asshole in this conversation. Also, book, seriously, stop comparing women to dogs.

Inside the place looks totally different and now it’s all old-fashioned though still spotless and gleaming.

Scarlett O’Hara could have swept down them in a hoop skirt and she wouldn’t have looked a bit out of place.

Whoever guessed the “research” for this was watching Gone with the Wind, you win!

Ravenwood had transformed into something entirely different since the last time I was there. It looked impossible, like I had stepped back in history. Even if it wasn’t real, I wished my mom could have seen it. She would have loved this place. Only now it felt real, and I knew this was the way the great house looked, most of the time.

Christ this is terrible writing. He just knows this is how the house normally looks, because, and for some reason it looked different before, because.

Why didn’t it look like this before?
What are you talking about?
I think you know.

I actually kind of like that Lena appears to be a pathological liar. I mean, it’s another roadblock to plot, but let’s face it, it’s not like the plot was going to be moving no matter what, and at least it’s a personality. That’s more than you can say about everyone else.

Pretty-Suit leads them to a ballroom that’s already got a third place setting for him, and also there’s a piano playing in the corner. He explains he doesn’t like towns and townspeople.

They have small minds and giant backsides. Which is to say, what they lack in interiors they make up in posteriors. They’re junk food. Fatty, but ultimately, terribly unsatisfying.” He smiled, but it wasn’t a friendly smile.
“So why don’t you just move?” I felt a surge of annoyance that brought me back to reality, whatever reality I was currently in. It was one thing for me to make fun of Gatlin. It was different coming from Macon Ravenwood. It came from a different place.

The only difference about it I can tell is that he’s actually opted out of the town while you continue to play along pretending to be friends while bitching about their minds and appearance.

Let’s just pretend this is him being hypocritical and when he leaves later he’ll have another realization like with realizing he’s so similar to the townspeople, this time that the reason he got upset at what the guy was saying was really that it’s the same thing he thinks and hearing it from someone else’s mouth made him realize how shitty his own thoughts were.

Anyway he won’t leave because Ravenwood is totally different from Gatlin and in fact he plans to make sure he picks a good successor for the place after he dies because It’s always been my great and terrible purpose, to keep Ravenwood alive. I like to think of myself as the curator of a living museum.”

Lena’s spending this whole time chiding her uncle to stop being so weird/stop deliberating bating the mundane kid.

He goes on a bit more about how super smart Pretty Suit is.

I tried to see the name of the book Macon was holding. “What is that, Shakespeare?”
“Betty Crocker, a fascinating woman. I was trying to recall what it was that the local town constituents considered an evening meal.

This is kind of funny though – here he’s assuming the guy just carries around random smart-people books the way he does, but no, Pretty Suit actually reads books for information.

“Speaking of hospitality, Lena, your cousins are coming out for the Gathering Days. Let’s remember to tell House and Kitchen we will be five more.”
Lena looked irritated. “I will tell the kitchen staff and the house keepers, if that’s what you mean, Uncle M.”

Yup patholigical liar.

She then explains Gathering Days is absolutely no big deal and just like an extra Thanksgiving pay no attention let’s move on so it’s probably going to be super important.

Pretty Suit leaves for a minute to deal with the food and he tries getting her to explain wtf is going on with the changing decorations and she just bullshits him about her uncle being into antiques and stuff and always changing the place aaround. He tries exploring a little and finds a package wrapped up that’s a book from the library.

My mom had gotten hundreds of packages like this one. Only Marian Ashcroft would bother to wrap a book like that.

Why his mom didn’t just get them out of the library she practically lived in is a mystery. I’m guessing it’s just to explain why he recognizes it.

When Pretty Suit sweeps in, he says that oh right, he remembers who Emothan is because he knew his mother – then clarifies that he means “Only through her work, of course. I’ve read everything she’s ever written. In fact, if you look closely at the footnotes for Plantations & Plantings: A Garden Divided, you will see that several of the primary sources for their study came from my personal collection.

So he knows her through her writing except she was getting his books out to do that writing. Also, for some reason he refers to her as Lila Evers and not with the last name of Wate, which may or may not mean anything I don’t know. Aside from that he’s presumably not a fan of Emothan’s dad.

Returning to the table, it’s covered in food

Only it wasn’t the kind of food that had ever been served in Gatlin. There was something that looked like a whole roast pig, with an apple stuck in its mouth. A standing rib roast, with little paper puffs on the top of each rib, sat next to a mangled-looking goose covered with chestnuts. There were bowls of gravies and sauces and creams, rolls and breads, collards and beets and spreads that I couldn’t name. And of course, pulled pork sandwiches, which looked particularly out of place among the other dishes.

I’m sure it was served historically. Stop going on about how the only part of Gatlin’s history that counts is what happened in your lifetime.

Anyway, he grits his teeth and starts shoveling the food down even though he’s already eaten three plates of supper at home. Emothan’s only consistent trait is that he’s a black hole on legs, so this isn’t a big deal. Then he decides to ask about the locket, and by ask, I mean pull out without any warning.

All the candles went out. The lights dimmed and then spluttered out. Even the music of the piano died.

Pretty Suit asks if he could maybe put that back right now, so he does.

At the other end of the table, Macon touched his fingers to the candelabra. One by one, the candles on the table came back to light. The entire feast had disappeared. In the candlelight, Macon looked sinister. He was also quiet for the first time since I’d met him, as if he was weighing his options on an invisible scale that somehow held our fate in the balance.

Yeah I’m sure his identical reaction to that of your beloved housekeeper means he’s probably very evil. Also, a lot of stuff has just vanished. Do you not even have object permanence? React to something already!

Emothan does at least have the wits to explain that he is so super sorry.

“Would you mind describing the locket to me?” It was more of order than a request. I didn’t say a word.

That’s the limits of “reasonable human behavior” we can expect from him, though. Pretty Suit is being ordery so fuck that!

Lena eventually picks up the slack and, for whatever reason, says where they got it instead of what it looks like.

Macon twisted his silver ring, agitated. “You should have told me you went to Greenbrier. That’s not part of Ravenwood. I can’t keep you safe there.”
“I was safe there. I could feel it.” Safe from what? This was more than a little overprotective.
“You weren’t. It’s beyond the boundaries. It can’t be controlled, not by anyone.

Interesting! If Emothan can just stick to the sidelines for the rest of this book, we might get to enjoy entertaining shitty slavery apoligia, as opposed to the boring nothing happens sort.

He also adds that Emothan is useless and shouldn’t be involved, so naturally Emothan thinks it’s a great time to argue that he’s totally involved and tied to the locket that’s freaking Pretty Suit out, because if he’s bothered when he thinks you’re just useless, I’m sure he’ll love to hear that actually you’re useless and also tied to the death locket of doom.

Pretty Suit sends a flower vase across the room without rouching it and starts looking super scary.

When he finally spoke, it was as if he was speaking to himself. “Five months. Do you know what lengths I will go to, to keep her safe for five months? What it will cost me? How it will drain me, perhaps, destroy me?”

Further interesting stuff! Let’s stick around this place.

But no, naturally Emothan just wants to leave. Pretty Suit adds that seriously, just put the damn locket back already, and anyway it was nice seeing him they’ll have to do this again some other time bye now Lena see him out.

as we passed through the main hall, I noticed something I hadn’t before.
The locket. The woman with the haunting gold eyes in the oil painting was wearing the locket. I grabbed Lena’s arm. She saw it and froze.
It wasn’t there before.
What do you mean?
That painting has been hanging there since I was a child. I’ve walked by it a thousand times. She was never wearing a locket.

Spooooooky. If only the book had more of these moments and less Emothan filler, it could actually be entertaining.