The Covenant Strikes Again

A creepy mother-son moment that is not re-created here

I need to go to bed. Here it is. Let me know what you think with a pleasant comment, otherwise it might get turned into a character who is in love with animals.

I'm sorry that it's so long. But you all need to read the last part. Also, please note that the first scene was half inspired by the Covenant, and the other half by "A Case of You" by Joni Mitchell. It is quoted extensively.


The Halls don’t really seem to understand the concept of “searching for the one.” Looking for true loves means believing in true love, and believing in true love means that you must be capable of feeling it. The Halls don’t distract themselves with fantasies of things that to them, just aren’t that important. You can be happy with any number of people in the world. Isn’t that enough?

Sadie has been around for a long time in the family, and they kind of assume that she will be around for a lot longer. Why wouldn’t she be? She is from a good enough family that she doesn’t embarrass them, but from a family that isn’t as well bred as theirs, so there’s no reason for her to not want to join. Her and Brett seem to get along very well, and they see the way that she looks at him. Even two jaded and bitter people like Jerry and Susan Hall can understand how stupid it would be for Brett to get rid of someone like that.

But Sadie doesn’t feel secure at all as a part of Brett’s life, which is why she is so surprised when she has a conversation about it with his mother while Brett and Jerry were off smoking cigars and talking about whatever men talk about (most likely their penises). In fact, she is pretty surprised that his mother has the capacity to hold a conversation that isn’t about the pansy coasters she had recently pressed using flowers from her precious garden. According to Susan, colourful flowers floating between squares of glass make beautiful and useful coasters. Susan believes in this cause so much that she even pressed the flowers herself. She used a variety of pressed flowers or leaves you like; a collection of coasters is even more charming if each one is unique. Sadie had to admit that Susan was right; the coasters were both beautiful and useful in that they prevented condensation from attacking their beautiful antique coffee table. But that didn’t mean that she had any desire to spend very much time talking about it.

It had taken Sadie some time to realize how much of the time the Halls were drunk; perhaps when you’re that rich it becomes “classy drunk,” as opposed to the completely trashy and un-classy forms that she was accustomed to. They didn’t get into fistfights or cry or tell unsavoury stories involving Gold Bond, pink cardigans, and near-death experiences like her friends usually did. No, it simply made them chatty. But chatty in a way that they would have never been without all of those bottles of expensive red wine. They would talk about things that on any normal night, they wouldn’t even admit to themselves.

For reasons that Sadie failed to understand—she would later conclude that it was just better that way—Brett’s mother was wearing a creamy pink robe with a floral print and a fur collar. She was also smoking a cigarette, and drinking what looked like whisky. Sadie wasn’t quite sure why her voice was so raspy and cracked, since she never raised it above what kindergarteners would call an “indoor voice.”

“Jerry was a year younger than you when we met… Did I ever tell you that?” Susan asks Sadie.

“No, you never mentioned that.”

“He was the most beautiful man that I’ve ever seen.”

Sadie waits patiently for Susan to continue, since there is very little that she can say that would be appropriate right now. Her mind feels cloudy from cocktail hour, which often stretches into four in the Hall household.

“When I look at Brett, I see his father in him. They look so similar.”

“Attractiveness certainly runs in the family.”

“A lot of things run in this family, Sadie.”

“Brett mentioned that his aunt has diabetes.”

“Do you really think that I started this conversation so that I could share with you this family’s medical history?”

“I don’t know, maybe you wanted me to start searching for signs of pre-diabetes?”

Susan just slides on through, ignoring Sadie’s idiocy. It’s a gift, really.

“I see a lot more of Jerry in Brett than just his appearance. I see the way that he is with you. It’s Jerry all over.”

“Brett says that he doesn’t want to be like his father,” Sadie says quietly. There are some moments when you know that you’re about to hear something that you probably shouldn’t, that you can never really repeat, and that will change your life. Sadie could feel it in her bones.

“That’s the same thing he said about his father. Every child says that, but becoming like your parents is almost inevitable. It’s something you learn one day, that your parents weren’t perfect, neither are you, and you will repeat their mistakes because no one lives the way that they think that they will. No one is as good as they think that they can be.”

“I don’t want to say anything that Brett has trusted me with, but I think that you’re wrong about Brett and his Dad.”

“Think what you want, and make your own choices. I know a lot more than you give me credit for. Our family doesn’t find out things about each other by asking and talking. We find out by watching. I have watched Brett since the day he was born. I see the way that he looks up to his father, and how his image of him is completely shattering. He’s becoming a man, and trying to become the kind of man that he can be proud of. But if I know one thing about Brett, which he inherited from his father like his brown eyes, it’s that he will always do what is easy. It’s easy to marry the first girl he meets, but it isn’t easy to stay faithful.”

Sadie’s eyes strayed, as she worried that perhaps Susan’s words were even truer than she knew.

“You think that I don’t know about that?”

“I don’t know what you know.”

Sadie is starting to be uncomfortable, and wishes that Susan would have continued to talk about the coasters. Or perhaps, in an even better world, that she could get up and leave. She has always found Susan Hall to be disquieting; she thought that it was because of the quiet desperation that she hasn’t seen since a Tennessee Williams play. But now, she knows: she can see through people as if they’re ghosts. She knows their devils and deeds. She knows more about Sadie than she had ever thought was possible, and Sadie doesn’t like it at all. She feels as if she is lying naked in the sitting room, being eyed suspiciously by all of the tasteless dead animals that had been stuffed, probably in an effort to announce that the Hall family cares little about the welfare of animals.

“I see the way that you look at him. I know that you love him, and you’re afraid to tell him. Loving men like this is one of the hardest things that you can do. You need to know that one day, Brett will become Jerry. They are the same, and Brett is becoming more like his father every day. You really need to think about whether or not this is what you want.”
Susan gestured around the room, indicating to what Sadie hoped was not their large taxidermy collection. No, of course she was referring to her life. Does Sadie want her life? She sat in silence. She just didn’t know.

“Go to him. Stay with him if you can. But be prepared to bleed.”

* * *

“Didn’t you get my RSVP? I’m not coming to your pity party.”

“Fiona, stop being such an a-hole. It isn’t a pity party.”

“If you start playing ‘It’s My Party, and I’ll Cry If I Want To,’ I am definitely leaving.”

“I think that you are completely mischaracterizing what I just said. Isn’t it reasonable that I can’t be with Paul right now because I’m still not over Brett?”

“I get what you’re feeling—that you don’t want to jump into another serious relationship right away—but I’m really annoyed by everything else. It’s one thing for you to tell Paul that you want to take things slow, and continue on with the casual pace of your relationship, and let him decide if he can deal with it instead of the more serious relationship that he would prefer.”

“But wouldn’t it be completely unfair to go into this relationship knowing that I’m not ready? Isn’t it fair to warn him that I’m still not over everything that happened and that my paralyzing fear that something similar will happen again will probably completely cripple anything that goes on between us? I know that I’m better off without Brett— it isn’t that I am still waiting for us to get back together. But where’s the line? The line that divides one relationship and the next? How do I know that I can move on? I don’t know if I feel ready.”

“There will never be a right time. You will never feel ready. But you’ve been stuck inside your head for way too long, convincing yourself of how messed up you are, and not even considering that everyone has baggage of some sort or another. If you haven't discovered it already, Paul probably has baggage too. It's up to him to choose whether or not he wants to handle yours, and vice versa. And since he already knows at least a little about yours, and has pursued your relationship anyways, that's a pretty good sign that he'll continue to let you go at the pace you need, even if it hurts him. A different guy might not take what you’re offering.”

“Of course Paul has baggage, but his is probably in the luggage compartment or something. I carry mine around.”

“Well maybe you should stop.”

“If it were that easy, I would have a long time ago.”

“But Sadie, it is! Paul was right—misery has become your best friend. You don’t know what you would do without it. Well, maybe you just have to cast it off and see how it goes. Date Paul. If it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out. But you can’t say that you didn’t warn him. In fact, if your warning him didn’t send him off, I don’t know what will.”

“I think that I was being fair. I’m not ashamed.”

“It’s not how I would have said it.”

“Well it’s a good thing that you’re not me, then.”

“So what are you going to do? I think that you know already.”

Sadie did, and for the first time in so long, she felt good. Why not, she thought to herself. Well, she could think of a billion reasons why she could say no to Paul. But she couldn’t think of one that could balance out how much she wanted to say yes.
“I guess that I’m going to date Paul.”

The words were hardly out of her mouth when her phone rang. While the number came up as unlisted, she knew exactly who it was. That number was recorded in her brain, no matter how many times she had willed it to leave her. Her fingers remembered it, and it had taken everything she had for several months to stop them.

She wants to tell Fiona who it is. She wants to present several theories as to why he is calling, and decided whether to answer the phone based on the options. But her mind and her mouth seem to have stopped working, and all that she can do is what she has been conditioned to do. She answers.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Sadie? It’s Brett.” She may not have known from his voice; it was hollow and completely un-Brett-like.

“Hi, Brett. How are you?”

“I’m good. The weather has been pleasant, hasn’t it?”

“It’s been raining.”

“Right. How’s school?”

“What is it, Brett?”

“Oh, uh… So… MyDadDiedYesterdayAndINeedYoutoComeToTheFuneral.”