theo stops for a long, long minute. the bent-neck lady. she always thinks about how telling it is, a grownup nell still referring to this apparition, this specter, real ghost or whatever it is, as the bent-neck lady. not the strangled lady or the fucking asphyxiated lady. the bent-neck lady. she takes a long pull of her shitty-to-moderate beer and gazes down into the bottom of the bottle.
shirl gets it. she keeps staring, thinking, like she has a real answer to her sister’s words (she doesn’t) and she gulps the last of this shit, finishing the bottom of the drink against her better judgment because it tastes like shit.
“no. no i don’t think they would,” she gets up, grabs another beer from where it’s sitting in the pack, pops it open with the edge of the railing and watches it foam a second before drinking-- again-- methodical and constant, for the warm buzz starting in her cheeks when nellie’s name burns hot in her ears. she remembers arthur’s empty spot and crying in her car on the way home. she never cries, but the abysmal ache in her gut had been painful. she’d just wanted to see her sister. “dad’s to fucking blame. so is mom, leaving us the hell alone like that. and the house? the house pushed all of it.”
she doesn’t quite know what she believes. one foot’s in logic, and the other’s in-- well, her ability to brush skin and fucking feel it like she’s professor goddamn xavier.
“you have to draw a line, shirl.” it comes out less harsh, more concerned. she doctors the bite around her words to be sure it’s a nibble and not a snap, “fifty dollars is way too much for food. and you can’t enable his habit. by this point, he has to learn that he’s on his own until he’s genuinely serious. we’re only rushing his death along. and nell--”
another drink. this one’s long. painful. she swallows down the ache again. you said you would do this for me. another gulp. she looks way away, now, peers into the dark, starless fucking night she can’t see into. nothing. it’s relieving, to think there are things in the world she doesn’t know.
“--you have to draw a line.”
