Eating the Cheshire Cat Read online

  Critical Acclaim for Eating the Cheshire Cat

  “Helen Ellis’s murderously comic novel . . . is bright as bubble gum even as it bats around issues of infidelity, betrayal, molestation, and self-mutilation.”

  —Mark Rozzo, Los Angeles Times

  “. . . sometimes shocking, often hilarious . . .”

  —Joy Jacobs, Vogue

  “If there is a prize awarded for Most Outrageous Opening Scene, surely Ellis is a prime contender. . . . This is a first novel with all the polish and style of a much-published author; it is mean-spirited, glorifies revenge, and is chillingly, killingly funny.”

  —Valerie Ryan, The Seattle Times

  “. . . dark, funny satire . . .”

  —Seventeen

  “The home of the Crimson Tide will never be the same. . . .”

  —Randall Curb, Oxford American

  “. . . darkly comic farce . . .”

  —Rhonda Johnson, Entertainment Weekly

  “. . . poignant . . .”

  —Jennifer Becker, Boston Herald

  “Southern Gothic never had it so funny as it does in Helen Ellis’s hilarious if chilling debut novel.”

  —Susan Larson, The Times-Picayune

  “. . . a crackling, crazy Southern novel . . . Ellis’s voice is funny, smart, and quick . . . while these might not be women we would choose to encounter, their stories, like good gossip—and good villains—are hard to resist.”

  —Sarah Dessen, The News and Observer (Raleigh)

  “Ellis barbecues the odd habits of Crimson Tide fans and Tuscaloosa society, serves it up with a hefty dollop of sex and society catfights, and finishes with just desserts. Tasty!”

  —The Tampa Tribune

  “. . . a down and dirty catfight of a novel . . . Eating the Cheshire Cat is a surprisingly engaging, darkly humorous debut that makes us cheer for the bad girls. Most of all, its shamelessly entertaining.”

  —Stephen M. Deusner, The Commercial Appeal (Memphis)

  “. . . darkly funny . . .”

  —Maureen Duffin-Ward, The Herald-Sun (Durham)

  “Ellis displays substantial insight into the nuances of Southern living. . . . But it is her deliciously catty humor and breathless storytelling that turn the Alabama of this Southern gothic satire into a chillingly funny Wonderland, complete with three desperate Alices.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Oh, the things these girls do to each other in the name of beauty, ambition, friendship and sisterhood! Eating the Cheshire Cat is a wicked, funny, page-turner of a story. Helen Ellis is bursting on the scene with a pitch-perfect voice. She is an original.”

  —Dani Shapiro, author of Slow Motion

  “In Eating the Cheshire Cat, Helen Ellis proves to our delight that you can take the girl out of the South, but you can’t take the South out of the girl. Consuming this quirky, original first novel will be pure pleasure to readers, Southern and otherwise.”

  —Rosemary Daniell, author of Fatal Flowers and The Woman Who Spilled Words All Over Herself

  “Eating the Cheshire Cat offers us a delightful new voice.”

  —Billie Letts, author of Where the Heart Is

  “Eating the Cheshire Cat is rich and lively and enormously funny, with the most outrageous mother-daughter duo south of the Mason-Dixon. My congratulations to Helen Ellis. I know readers will love this novel.”

  —Michael Lee West, author of American Pie

  “This is darkly Southern gothic humor, both witty and disturbing, that throws into sharp relief the madness lurking beneath obsessive social rituals.”

  —Georgia Metcalfe, Daily Mail (London)

  “With great verve and wit, Helen Ellis tackles head-on this fluffy pink corner of the American cliché, behind which lie sharp nails (fake, of course), a thousand hair-rollers and echoes of the horror flick Carrie. . . . A fine debut, and an immensely enjoyable read.”

  —Anthea Lawson, The Times (London)

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  This book is for my parents

  Mike and Helen Holmes Ellis

  who taught me the importance of a really good story

  Thanks to my Wednesday night workshop: Ann Napolitano and Hannah Tinti who read every word and taught me a few new ones—patience, trust, and fearlessness.

  Thanks to my friends from Tuscaloosa: Victoria (Vicki Buckley) Curran who listened to every story read aloud since we were sixth graders and Dr. Elizabeth (Liz Ponder) McGraw who explained what would happen when I did bad things to bodies.

  Thanks to the women in my family, Elizabeth and Boots, who read final drafts and screamed in all the right spots.

  Thanks to those who will always be invited to the party: Patti Stockinger, Kristen Fincken Mahan, Amanda Eubanks Mussalli, Audrey Rosenthal, and Ellen Miller.

  Thanks to Alain Wertheimer, Charles Heilbronn, and Koula Delianides, who gave me a “real” job which allowed me to fulfill my dream.

  Thanks to my mentors at New York University, who gave me the courage to put down a bad novel and go back to this one, and to Alice McDermott and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, who gave me the strength to start over again.

  Thanks to my agent, Chris Calhoun, and editor, Gillian Blake, who both read this book in one night and fought for it, bettered it, and brought it to life. And thanks to Joy Jacobs, who works just as hard and makes our team complete.

  Thanks to the vacuum shift at the Writers’ Room.

  And especially thanks to Alexander Haris, my love, my guppy, who after so many years surprises me still.

  “But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.

  “Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”

  “How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.

  “You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”

  —LEWIS CARROLL

  Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 1865

  And if a man starts to weaken,

  That’s his shame,

  For Bama’s pluck and grit have

  Writ her name in Crimson Flame.

  —ETHELRED LUNDY (EPP) SYKES

  “Yea Alabama” Fight Song, 1926

  PART ONE

  Wonderland

  Sarina

  ON THE EVE of her sixteenth birthday, Sarina Summers ‘got an overnight stay at Druid City Hospital. As her mother helped her through the emergency room doors, Sarina knew there was no turning back. This was it. She was serious about her future.

  “What happened to this child?” the doctor exclaimed. “This child is drunk as a skunk and her fingers are broke!”

  Sarina could not answer. She was totally shit-faced.

  “Honey?” Mrs. Summers said.

  “Miss?” said the doctor as he held Sarina’s eyes open by the brows. He lit up her pupils with a tiny flashlight. “Let me know if you can hear me.” He flicked the flashlight on and off. “Anybody home?”

  “Honestly,” said Mrs. Summers. “Does she need to be fully conscious for this? Could you just fix her fingers, please?”

  Sarina nodded furiously and tried to sit up on the gurney. She offered her hands to the doctor. She said, “Hurts.” The room was spinning faster now. Noises echoed. She fell back. The impact against the pillow pushed her long brown curls across her white-washed cheeks.

  “I know it hurts,” said Mrs. Summers and, with
her hands, combed the hair away.

  Sarina tried to focus her attention on how good her mother’s nails felt against her scalp. How the square-shaped acrylics were softer than what her mother grew naturally. It was a dull, comforting sensation. Her mother’s magic fingers. For a moment, she was calm. Sarina said, “Mmm.”

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Summers. “That’s my girl. Show the nice doctor that you’re ready.”

  Sarina felt the back of her mother’s hand against her jaw, her forehead.

  The doctor said, “What she’s ready to do is get her stomach pumped.”

  “Oh, no,” Mrs. Summers said. “No, that’s uncalled for. Fix her fingers. She’ll sleep it off. She’s drunk, not poisoned.”

  “I assure you,” said the doctor, “she’s as good as poisoned.”

  “Hurts,” said Sarina. She rolled her head from side to side.

  “Sarina,” said the doctor. “Are you with us? Can you tell us what happened?”

  Sarina kept her eyes shut. She choked back the sobs that crawled up her throat.

  “Mrs. Summers,” said the doctor, “I don’t know what kind of drinker your daughter is.”

  “She’s not one.”

  “Well, ma’am, she is one tonight.”

  Mrs. Summers crossed her arms and pressed down her breasts.

  The doctor said, “From the smell of her and from her limited response, I’d say she’s put down a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.”

  Sarina heard her mother let out a long sigh.

  The doctor said, “Believe me, I want what’s best for your daughter. Her fingers can wait.” The doctor motioned to a woman in green scrubs drinking something from a Styrofoam cup. He said, “Nurse, take this patient to room nine. Prep her and get the hose.”

  The nurse held the rim of the cup in her teeth and used her free hands to push Sarina down the hallway.

  Sarina reached her hands, the bones of her two smallest fingers sticking out of the skin like straws, first in the air, then over her head toward her mother’s voice as it fell away with the pace of the gurney.

  Sarina heard her mother ask, “Can’t I sit with her?”

  She heard the doctor’s voice. “Waiting room.” She heard him say, “It’s the right thing.”

  She lost them.

  The nurse pushed Sarina’s arms down. “Keep still. This will be over before you know it.”

  Sarina rocked in the darkness. The gurney like a hammock. The cool, clear corridor like her big backyard.

  The party was great, thought Sarina as the nurse pried her teeth apart and the doctor pushed the hard warm hose to the back of her throat and then down and down.

  “Don’t fight it,” said the doctor.

  “You’re doing so good,” said the nurse.

  Sarina tried not to gag. She tried to be still. Mom, she thought, You said the worst part was over. You didn’t tell me this part. “Hurts,” Sarina tried to say, but all that came out was a strained gurgling noise.

  “Almost over,” said the doctor.

  “You’re doing so good,” said the nurse.

  Sarina kept her eyes closed the way her mother had taught her (In painful situations, you want to keep yourself from seeing what’s happening). Sarina reasoned with herself. I’ll just go to sleep. Over the course of the evening, she slipped in and out of consciousness.

  When she came to, the light through the blinds showed her it was morning. She felt as if she had slept for a week. She bet her eyes were bloodshot. Her neck ached from the position her arms were set. They were raised like Barbie’s in the box. Outside the window of the closed metal door, Sarina could see the heads of her mother and the doctor.

  “Mother,” she said, surprised by the scratch in her voice. “Mom,” she said a little bit louder. She watched her mother turn her head, bring her hand over her mouth, push open the door, and take three long strides to sit on the bed.

  “Honey,” Mrs. Summers gushed, “how are you feeling?”

  “My throat hurts.”

  “I bet it does,” Mrs. Summers said. She looked accusingly over her shoulder at the doctor.

  The doctor said, “Sarina, can you tell us what happened?”

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Summers. “What on earth?”

  Sarina said nothing.

  “Did you fall?” said the doctor.

  “Did you shut your hands in the car door?” Mrs. Summers suggested.

  Sarina shook her head as the doctor and her mother continued to guess.

  “Volleyball?”

  “Did you stick your fingers in the fan?”

  “Moving furniture?”

  “Did that nasty camp trunk shut on you?”

  Sarina shook her head at all of these. She said, “I can’t remember.”

  “Well,” said the doctor. “In any case, you’re lucky your mother found you. That must have been some party.”

  “It didn’t happen at the party.”

  “I would have seen it,” said Mrs. Summers.

  “Ho-kay,” said the doctor. “I’ve given your mother a prescription to help the pain when you come off the morphine. Take one pill when you need to. They’ll make you sleepy, which is okay, but they’ll make you nauseous if you don’t take them on a full stomach.”

  “My throat hurts,” said Sarina.

  Mrs. Summers again looked over her shoulder at the doctor.

  “Well,” said the doctor. “Try to force something down. It will hurt a lot more coming up than it will going down. The nurse will be in to help you with your checkout.” He put his hands in his pockets and pulled the door open with his hands still in his lab coat.

  Sarina and her mother were alone.

  “How do your fingers feel?”

  “I don’t really feel them. I’m pretty woozy.”

  Mrs. Summers stood up and smiled down at her daughter. “You’ve had some birthday.”

  Sarina nodded.

  Mrs. Summers ran her fingers across the soft pad that covered the metal splint of Sarina’s left pinky. She frowned. She said, “They cut your nail.”

  Sarina twisted her mouth in disapproval.

  Mrs. Summers peered over the bed to examine Sarina’s other pinky. They were identical, like two pieces of chalk. Mrs. Summers lightened. She smiled as big as her face would hold. She said, “They’re going to be beautiful!”

  “I know,” said Sarina.

  The nurse came in.

  As she was helped out of bed, helped into a wheelchair, helped into her mother’s car, Sarina remembered her party the night before.

  The invitations had read, “Please Join Me for a Sweet Sixteen Luau!”

  Her mother had gone all out. She had cooked for days. She wrapped pineapple chunks in bacon and soaked them in honey. She went to Winn-Dixie and Piggly Wiggly and Kroger’s to gather enough from Alabama’s low supply of coconuts to gut them and make punch with the insides, drinks with the outsides. She bought tiny umbrellas and hung tissue-paper lanterns. She had the florist make leis for all the teenagers.

  When Sarina got home from the last day of tenth grade, she walked into the backyard, dropped her books, and spun until she could not stand it anymore. Hypnotized by the pastel colors and rented picnic tables, she dropped to her knees and fell back onto her hands. “Mom!” she said. “This is so great! I can’t believe you did this!”

  Mrs. Summers sat down on the cement step in front of the sliding glass doors to the den. She smoothed her bangs into her new bob haircut sprung loose by the humidity of the approaching summer. The haircut was meant to make her look thin. To make herself look thin, Mrs. Summers wore tunic tops, black pants, and two coats of Maybelline Great Lash. Mrs. Summers smiled at her daughter sprawled in the grass like a little girl. She said, “You’re not a little girl anymore.”

  “Maw-hum!” Sarina opened her mouth and rolled her eyes. She got to her feet and rushed to her mother. She sat in her lap and hugged her neck. “Stop!” She put her head against her mother’s. She said, “Gawd, it’s not like I
did anything special.”

  “But you will,” Mrs. Summers said. “You’ll do so many great things.”

  Sarina rolled her eyes again. She stuck her flat tongue between her teeth freed from braces a few weeks after Christmas. “Come on,” Sarina said, tugging her mother off the step. “Help me get ready. It’s an hour to five and you know one of the boys will show up right on time.”

  Mrs. Summers said, “Okay.” She pulled open the sliding door and followed her daughter into the den. As she slid the door shut, Mrs. Summers stared out into the big backyard. She thought, Once the sun goes down, those pines will almost look like palms. She said, “Did you see the roses your father sent? They’re in your room.”

  Sarina had reached her room by this point. She called to her mother, “Mom! Come on!”

  Mrs. Summers turned from the party-in-waiting. With her back against the glass, she prayed for it not to rain, then walked through the house to sit in her daughter’s room while Sarina put her hair in rollers, lined her lips, and asked for help with the zipper to the sundress they had chosen two months ago.

  After the party, Sarina grinned and swayed like a punching bag in the center of the kitchen.

  Mrs. Summers said, “Somebody’s had too much punch.”

  Sarina said, “Somebody spiked it!”

  Mrs. Summers looked at the ceiling. She put her index finger to her chin. She said, “I wonder who.”

  Sarina gawked. “You are too cool.”

  “I suppose I am,” said Mrs. Summers. She pointed to the glazed ham. “Put some tinfoil on that, will you?”

  Sarina did as she was told and helped her mother lift the ham and slide it onto the bottom shelf of the fridge.

  “That’s the last of it,” Mrs. Summers said. “You ready?”

  “Uh-huh!”

  Mrs. Summers slapped her daughter’s face so hard Sarina lost a clip-on earring. She studied her daughter, who stretched her eyes wide and bit her lip in an effort not to cry.

  Mrs. Summers frowned. “No you’re not.” She offered her daughter a sheet of Bounty to dry her tears. “I bet that smarts. Goddamn weak punch.”