Heather O'Neill - Daydreams of Angels

That’s how Forester found them. Violet saw him first because her mother was asleep. She thought Forester was ugly from the moment she laid eyes on him. His cheeks sagged so much that they looked like jowls, and they were covered with acne scars. He had black hair that was thinning on top, and he put black powder on his scalp to hide the bald spot. He came right up to their table to talk to her mother and her.

“Do you find the service slow at this restaurant? I do believe that the waitress takes my order and then goes in the back and writes a chapter of her memoir before returning.”

The waitress seemed to know Forester well and she hooted at his joke. Violet’s mother, who was wide awake and flirtatious and happy now, also doubled up at what Forester had said. He was the type of man that could make women laugh. He had a sparkling wit. It made people forget his appearance and get excited anytime he walked into the room.

He insisted that Violet and her mother order whatever dessert they wanted from the menu. When her mother couldn’t decide which one she wanted, Forester insisted that they order all of them. It was clear that money was no object to him. Violet’s mother half-believed that they were in a dream as she sampled each of the desserts.

Violet had a chocolate egg covered in pink frosting on a plate in front of her. Forester looked at Violet and the chocolate egg with more desire than she could possibly understand at her age. When Violet bit into the egg, he looked as if he could taste it.

She blushed when their eyes met. Forester couldn’t stop looking at Violet. Violet knew that it was love at first sight. She knew that it was because of her that Forester married her mother.

Of course Forester had an enormous house. He lived in a three-storey stone fortress in Westmount. It was on the hill, and there was a garden with pink hothouse roses that looked like cancan dancers lifting up the fronts of their skirts. There were birds on the wallpaper in the living room. Violet wished that she could scream at the top of her lungs and startle all the birds so that they would fly away.

Forester thought Violet was unbearably lovely. He had needed her to belong to him in some way. If it couldn’t be as a lover, because she was only thirteen, then at least she could be his daughter. Once he met her, he could never not have her in his life.

At first, Forester tried everything to be nice to Violet. He gave her the prettiest room in the house. She left her clothes all over the floor and wouldn’t let the maid in. He hired an artist to paint her portrait, although she refused to smile. He enrolled her in Miss Laymore’s Finishing School for Girls, although she was largely a truant.

Violet flinched whenever Forester came into a room. She blushed when they made eye contact. He thought that she always looked at him with disgust. He found it insulting. Why couldn’t he simply go to the breakfast table and sit down and spread some jam on a piece of toast without being looked at with utter contempt?

It was ridiculous because he had climbed so high up in the world that surely he was now above the girl and her mother. They were penniless. He was a wealthy man with many, many friends. In fact, his friends had warned him about getting involved with the pair of them. You cannot help drowning people, he was told, because they will only drag you down with them.

Violet knew that Forester always thought that they were supposed to thank him for having rescued them. But Violet didn’t feel that they had needed to be rescued.

When he complained to her mother, the woman would weep and weep and say that she had no power over the girl whatsoever and it wasn’t her fault. One night there was a huge row because her mother asked her if she would put on a little dance number the way she used to in the little apartment in the east end. How stupid her mother was! Of course she wouldn’t dance in front of Forester.

Forester picked up an armchair and threw it at the wall. Violet just stared at him.

Violet wasn’t the only subject that Forester and her mother fought about. They were always fighting. He berated her for hours when they returned from going out on the town. He complained that she embarrassed him, that she came across as ignorant, that she told off-colour jokes and that she ate like a pig, that she was too friendly with the waiters and she came across as a slut.

He said her English was awful. He said that he couldn’t believe that he had ended up with a woman like her. He said that he was certain that all his friends could tell only by looking at her that she had a history. He said that they must be shocked, because surely everyone expected him to end up with a girl from Westmount with a similar background as him. Surely everyone expected him to end up with a girl with class.

Her mother mostly countered his accusations by sobbing. Every now and then her mother would let out a greater cry. As if this was some sort of defence. As if this was the only way that she knew of fighting back — by being weaker. And begging for pity.

“I know I’m a cow and a bore, but can’t you please forgive me? Can’t we somehow get along? Please don’t yell at me anymore.”

Violet was not allowed to come out of her room while they were fighting. Violet sat in her room, listening to his awful insults coming through the wallpaper.

Violet became prettier and prettier. At seventeen she had developed an elegant body. She had lovely new breasts that slung down in her dresses, and her legs were so long that she was always folding them in intricate ways so that people wouldn’t trip on them. One afternoon, Forester walked into the kitchen and found Violet sitting at the table, reading a book. She had on a little squashed black velvet hat with an enormous ostrich feather sticking up from the front of it and a long black coat that went down to her feet. The cat leapt up on the table. Violet put the book down and held up a tiny ribbon and dangled it in front of the kitten’s face, making it dance about. He could not believe that she was more adorable than even a kitten.

He didn’t know why it bothered him. He didn’t know why he wanted to reach across the table and slap her face. He was more and more outraged with her for reasons that he couldn’t put his finger on. He didn’t even know how far his thoughts about her would go, because he always stopped them. That infuriated him too: worrying about what was in his own head. And then he blamed her for this too. If she had made more of an effort to act like his daughter, then he would have thought about her more naturally as though she were his child and not a beautiful stranger.

Her mother would beg and beg and beg Forester to give her more money to buy Violet pretty clothes. The mother didn’t insist on any other sort of frivolity and was considerably less expensive than his previous wife had been, so he gave in once in a while. He would give her money that should have been enough for at least three or four dresses, but then they would spend it all on a single pink hat that turned up in the front. Of course it was a splendid hat. He had trouble looking at Violet when she wore that hat.

All these ridiculously splendid hats that he had paid for. Did she say thank you to him every time she left the house looking so pretty?

He knew that all the other girls would probably hate her because of those outfits. What was the matter with her mother? She was unhealthily obsessed with everyone finding her daughter attractive. She didn’t trouble her daughter to learn any other skill. She didn’t suggest she read or go to school or even have any manners or bloody well go and get some exercise.

It seemed to Forester as if Violet did nothing except daydream. The way that he remembered it, she only seemed to want to go out for walks when it was raining. Quite possibly so that she could catch a cold or some snivels so that she would have an excuse to lie in bed and nap in the middle of the day. She was able to stay in her room for hours and hours at a time because she liked to read. She had little piles of books all over her room. After she read them, she laid each one down as though it were a brick in a wall that she was building.