To the Manor Dead Read Online Free PDF Page A

that? Anyway, she met a crystal meth dealer in an all-night laundromat and shacked up with him way the hell out in the cornfields and when his meth factory exploded and blew him into a trillion little pieces, she came home. Meth kills brain cells, you know.” She took another hit from the hookah. “Sure you don’t want a toke?”
    “No, thanks. And … Rodent … is her daughter?”
    “Isn’t that Rodent the cutest little tidbit?”
    “She is pretty cute.”
    “Can you imagine—a meth dealer’s kid living at Westward Farm? Old Lady Livingston would croak. Course she’s already dead!” Then she roared again and switched the remote to a rock video and started to dance along from her seat, raising her arms and shaking her upper body in a joyous jiggle-fest. Then she stopped suddenly and looked at me intently. “Who’re you again?”
    Just as I opened my mouth to refresh the sieve that was her memory, a young woman in her mid-twenties walked in from outside. She looked casual but pulled together in slacks and sweater, carrying a book bag. She and Maggie exchanged a look of mutual antipathy.
    “Hello … Claire Livingston,” she said to me, extending her hand.
    “Janet Petrocelli.”
    “She’s looking for Aunt Daf,” Maggie said.
    Claire looked concerned. “Aunt Daphne lives in the south wing.”
    “I couldn’t find her over there, so I thought I’d check here.”
    “Daphne doesn’t come over to the north wing. Can we talk a minute?” Claire asked.
    I nodded.
    “How about a cup of coffee?”
    “Sounds good.”
    As she led me out of the room, Maggie called out, “I’ve got some mac ‘n’ cheese in the oven, give it a check-see, whudya?”
    I followed Claire down a long hallway, through a large pantry lined with glass-fronted cabinets, and into a vast kitchen that looked like Katrina’s twin sister had just blown through—sinks piled high with dirty dishes, food strewn around, open cabinets, grotty old pots on the stoves, a slightly rancid, moldy smell. One counter was taken up by an armada of bottles, vials, canisters of vitamins, protein powders, herbal boosters. There was a small television blaring, but there was so much snow the picture was barely visible. Claire switched it off.
    “First of all, I want to apologize for this household,” she said.
    “There’s no need.”
    “Yes, there is. Retarded monkeys wouldn’t live like this—but Livingstons would. I really should attack it all, but it’s just so overwhelming, and besides: a) Dad and Becky and Maggie like living this way, and b) if I did clean it up, two days later it would be right back to this. ” She gestured in disgust. “I do, however, keep my corner clean.”
    There was one spotless countertop with a coffeemaker. Claire got a bag of coffee from a freezer.
    “I’m worried about Aunt Daphne,” she said as she poured coffee into a brown-paper filter. “She’s always been profoundly self-destructive, but things seem to have spun completely out of control. And she seems frightened, somehow.”
    “Yeah, I sensed that.”
    “Since I’ve been back, I’ve been trying to negotiate a rapprochement between her and dad, but it’s hopeless, they just loathe each other.”
    “You don’t live here?”
    “Oh, good God, no. I’ve only been back for a couple of months and I’m leaving as soon as I can. I’ve lived in Seattle for six years and, for obvious reasons, come home as rarely as possible. But I’m teaching a course in American history up at Bard this semester. It’s just a one-semester fill-in, but I’m starting my career and Bard is a nice notch in my belt. Another reason I took the job is so that I could check up on my family, or what’s left of it. It’s been very depressing. Dad still acts like Napoleon on St. Helena, Becky—who is my twin by the way—has clearly inherited the Livingston gene for what I will kindly call eccentricity, and I just learned yesterday that my father wants to adopt Maggie, which