#elfrida marsh

[marshbevvie]

I made that little black ensemble based on the black outfit in the picture— that’s my mom! Elfrieda Marsh, also spelled Elfrida. I’ve been learning more about her, and she was super cool.

[strugglequill]

Her mother looked back at her, her lips pressed together so tightly they almost weren’t there. “You sure your dad wasn’t angry with you last night?”

“No!”

“Bevvie, does he ever touch you?”

“What?” Beverly looked at her mother, totally perplexed. God, her father touched her every day. “I don’t get what you—”

“Never mind,” Elfrida said shortly. “Don’t forget the trash. And if those windows are streaked, you won’t need your father to give you blue devil.”

“I won’t

(does he ever touch you)

“forget.”

“And be in before dark.”

“I will.”

(does he)

(worry an awful lot)

Elfrida left. Beverly went into her room again and watched her around the corner and out of view, as she had her father. Then, when she was sure her mother was well on her way to the bus stop, Beverly got the floorbucket, the Windex, and some rags from under the sink. She went into the living room and began on the windows. The apartment seemed too quiet. Each time the floor creaked or a door slammed, she jumped a little. When the Boltons’ toilet flushed above her, she uttered a gasp that was nearly a scream.

And she kept looking toward the closed bathroom door.

- Beverly Marsh and Elfrida Marsh in Stephen King, IT (p. 409) 🎈

[the-trashrat]

Frank Kaspbrak is very much alive and well,, Myra just told Eddie that he's dead bc he divorced her and is happily living in San Francisco with Elfrida Marsh 😌

[ellies-rambles]

Elfrida Marsh

So, I have a fair amount of headcanons/theories/opinions about Elfrida. (I'll be referring to her as El for the rest of this post.) First off, El reminds me a LOT of adult Bev. Now, this is a bit off topic: So, if El is like Bev, wouldn't Frank be like Eds. For example, both die before their wives. Moving on, I get the impression that she isn't at home all that much, that she's working the majority of the time. I also get the impression that Alvin only hurts Bev when El is not around. (Since she asked Bev if Alvin was touching her/harming her) Now onto the movies, we are told that El has died, and it seems highly suggested that she killed herself. ("Mama was sick, we know that's why she did what she did.") Next, it's heavily implied in the first film that Bev is sexually abused by her father, and I would say even more in Ch. 2 when he says Bev looks like her. Normally, this would be fine, but with everything else, HELLLL NO! That's all I have to say about Elfrida Marsh for now, bye!

[skeletonscribbles]

headcannon where Beverly's mom comes back to Derry to make amends with her daughter after what happened with her father and meets the other losers? (this goes along with the theory that bev's mom left instead of died)

oh INTERESTING. Elfrida’s actually there the whole time in the book, which is totally wild, but going off of the movie “missing mom” deal I think that:

-Elfrida left because Derry forced her out, not out of any lack of love or concern for her daughter. When the kids drive IT away for the first time, the spell is temporarily broken and Elfrida immediately realizes how much danger she’s left her daughter in, panics, and rushes back

-She shows up at the front door of the Marsh apartment to find Bev putting things in boxes, packing up for the move to Portland. She notices that everything smells like Clorox, and almost can’t breathe

-”Is he here, Beverly?”

-Bev turns around, sees her mom, and all they can do is stare at each other for a few awful, awful moments…and then Bev BOLTS, because she absolutely can’t deal with being in the same room as the person who knowingly left her in Alvin Marsh’s clutches

-but Elfrida stays in the apartment, hoping, and Bev feels like she has no choice but to come back around. when she does, Elfrida gives her as much of an explanation as she can, and prays that Bev understands…and Bev wouldn’t, except that she’s just fought this crazy fucking WHATEVER she just fought (she doesn’t remember all the specifics, even though it was just a few days ago) and anything is possible

-she doesn’t forgive her just yet, but she accepts that staying with her mother is 1. safe and 2. will allow her to stay with her friends

-and just to be sure that it is actually safe, she brings the Losers over pretty immediately to scope things out

-now, Elfrida grew up in Derry, and as such has a history with a fair amount of the adults in town

-which means that she is able to identify Wentworth Tozier’s child instantly from his buck-toothed smile and the speed at which he jumps from “Hello there Mrs. Marsh” to “OH FUCK ME SIDEWAYS”

-and she’s immediately full of such fondness - not only for Richie, the ghost of class-clowns past, but for Bev, for falling in with someone that she’s sure has all of the good-heartedness and smarts of his father

-she spots Zack Denbrough’s boy next. she knows him because he does not speak, and her eyes are drawn to him because Beverly’s eyes are drawn to him. she’s never trusted Zack Denbrough - even in school, there was something almost disconnected about him - but his son has a strange charisma that puts Elfrida at ease right away.

-that doesn’t change the fact that he’s not right for Beverly, though. he is really obviously not right for Beverly. he’s like…on another planet, and Elfrida’s chest seizes a little bit when she sees Bev trail after him like he’s the sun, because she did that, too, once upon a time, and look how things turned out for her…

-but as Beverly is watching, she is in turn being watched, and something about the heavyset Ben Hanscom makes Elfrida’s heart soar. he’s not from Derry, he doesn’t look like anyone Elfrida knew as a kid, and that’s good - he’s like a second chance offered up by the universe for anyone wise enough to take it. Elfrida hopes Bev grows to be wise enough to take it, but she knows she can’t push her - especially not now, when she’s still trying to earn her trust again.

-she is surprised, initially, to see both Stan and Mike included as part of Bev’s little group. she knows their parents, but not well - both sets of parents had secluded their families, knowing that Derry was particularly hard on minority groups. she’s curious - she’s always been curious to know what it’s like on the Hanlon farm, or in the Uris synagogue, and while Mike’s friendly smile confirms what she felt like she’d always known about the Hanlons, she can’t get a read on Stan. it feels like something terrible happened to him, somehow - something terrible that exists right under the surface, and if she pushes at him too hard, it’ll break out into the open and consume him entirely.

-she resolves to keep a close eye on Stanley Uris.

-the last one she notices is the one she struggles the most to place. she’d known both Frank and Sonia in high school, but she never imagined that they’d have a child that would grow up to look so…slumped, so small, so broken, almost. but when Eddie laughs….when the Tozier boy slings his arms around his shoulders, or leans in to whisper jokes in his ear, that was when she finally saw the Frank and Sonia that she had known. they were in his smile, his lit-up eyes, and his renewed energy, and  she couldn’t believe she hadn’t made the connection at first.

-(those RichieandEddie moments, she came to notice, were awfully frequent. Richie Tozier wasn’t a subtle kid…watching Richie with Eddie was almost like watching Went with Maggie, back in the day, and it was all Elfrida could do to hope they were being careful.)

-it took the seven of them a while to come around to Elfrida. their visits were infrequent at first - it was easier to go places that were known to be trustworthy in the days immediately following The Incident

-as time passed, though, and school started and things cycled, they began to realize that Elfrida wasn’t going away; that she was legitimately there to take care of them

-and slowly but surely, over the course of their high school years, the Marsh apartment became a safe-house for them

-it was where Stan came to arrange his life so that he could live the way he wanted to rather than how his parents expected him to. he applied in secret to several New York colleges at Elfrida’s kitchen table. whenever one of them would ask if they were sure he was making the right choice, he’d have the same answer: “this is the way it’s supposed to be. I just know.”

-it was where Bill Denbrough came when he wanted someone to pay attention to him. Elfrida and Bev were there to offer him the warmth and companionship his parents couldn’t give him

-it was where Ben Hanscom wrote and wrote and wrote - stories about the hurt he’d endured, epics about the weight he was losing and the path he was on now, and love poems, always anonymous, but everyone knew who they were for

-it was where Bill and Bev broke up; it was where Ben and Bev got together

-it was where Richie and Eddie came out: first separately, to Bev, and then to Elfrida, and then to the group, which led to the inevitable RichieandEddie conglomerate that Elfrida had foreseen from Day One

-it was where Mike laid out a series of theories about the town that only the seven of them understood. it was where they came to remember, because Elfrida was the only adult who would let them remember, because the guilt of her own forgetting never faded.

-she was punished for that. Derry infected her eventually, and she died from a fatal illness right after Bev left for college.

-she didn’t regret coming back, though. she served her purpose for those children, and she served it well.

-27 years later, they would remember her as well, and collectively, they would mourn her as a parent.

[stanleyuriis]

elfrida marsh : bevvie, one day you’re going to start having feelings toward boys-

beverly : i already do

beverly : they make me angry