Heather, the Totality by Matthew Weiner.
Title: Heather, the Totality.
Author: Matthew Weiner.
Genre: Fiction, parenthood, thriller.
Country: U.S.
Language: English.
Publication Date: 2017.
Summary: A novel about family, power, and privilege. The Breakstone family arrange themselves around their daughter Heather, and the world seems to follow: beautiful, compassionate, entrancing, she is the greatest blessing in their lives of Manhattan luxury. But as Heather grows-and her empathy sharpens to a point, and her radiance attracts more and more dark interest-their perfect existence starts to fracture. Meanwhile a very different life, one raised in poverty and in violence, is beginning its own malign orbit around Heather.
My rating: 7/10.
My review:
♥ In fact, when she was set up with Mark, she nearly turned the date down because Mark's only prominent quality was his potential to be rich. Her friend, long married and on her third pregnancy, mentioned no other qualities. Karen's married friends seemed to be obsessed with the fact that they had never considered money's importance in their relationship, having gotten married so young. Now, deeper in life, they were distracted by it, sleepless as they debated their long-term security. Karen still wanted someone handsome. She felt it would be an unbearable compromise to stare at an ugly face every day and worry about her future children's orthodontia.
♥ She laughed and he looked at her, his face kind of changing with surprise and he said, "People don't get me sometimes." For Karen, this was lovely.
♥ With all the professional families and their well-bred but rebellious children, Mark slowly discovered who he really was: some version of the chauffeur's son. He had everything the others had but of lesser quality: an old-fashioned three-speed bicycle, no trading cards, unexciting and infrequent vacations and tennis shoes bought from the bin in the supermarket.
♥ By junior year Mark knew that he preferred to be quietly competitive and that he didn't get along with men because he hated the anonymous place they assigned him when they were in groups.
♥ He got attention for having a dead sister; still it was normal to him, and her long illness had made him so self-reliant that no girl could imagine his loneliness. His Sister's demise had most importantly made strangers of his Parents, as they rarely spoke to him, instead retreating intro a the mundane: cleaning, painting and repairing the house so worn down by the failure of their years-long rescue mission. By his senior year in high school they had moved on to the yard where gardening allowed them to spend time on their knees in the dirt, no different than the wet vegetables they picked and let rot in baskets by the snow room. Mark wondered if anything could ever relieve their silent, busy grief and resolved to be the achieving survivor for their benefit, but in equal measure he knew that massive financial success and a high, white-collar job would allow him to be reborn into a world where none of this had ever happened.
♥ He thought he would never get tired of having sex with her and he took that thought very seriously and knew they would marry.
♥ Why they had singled her out was a mystery to her but most likely the group had decided she was perfect for shouldering their insecurities, her natural shyness and silence having been perceived as confidence. As she rested her head on his chest, clasping him with her nakedness, she revealed that like Mark, she had suffered from the cruelty of the mob, but she had come to understand that you could never see yourself the way others did, and it was okay to appear isolated as long as you remember that you are not the way you are seen.
♥ Bobby spent most of his time alone. It was hardest in the summer, especially if the house was full of junkies and the TV had to be watched on mute. He would go down to the river which was littered with abandoned appliances and tires and feel lonely and sick because "he, too, felt thrown away," as a prison psychologist would one day tell him.
♥ By junior high, she had been ignored into full self-reliance and established a routine of locking herself in her room after school with a portable TV where she could escape to the saturated worlds of romance while having access to her body.
♥ He brushed her forehead and gave her a kiss on the cheek and said, "Where do you want to go on vacation? We can go anywhere." And Heather said, "Wherever you are, Daddy."
♥ He only agreed to be set up as a bonding experience with the leering former jocks in his office. He would, as demanded, announce his successes with these increasingly desperate women but then back away, having never revealed himself to anyone and finding the ultimate prize of sex alienating when won with false intimacy. He was well aware of how much Karen had changed his life so many years ago. In fact, he reminded himself of this often, ever since the new Trainee, an Asian girl of 26, had started asking for his coffee order.
♥ Bobby left the session happy and filled with the anticipation of something, his idea of himself joining with what he actually was. Whether it was someone else's dessert, a nice car he saw in a magazine or the girl in the bikini next to it, he was aroused constantly now when he thought about the things he could have. What the Doctor said was all true to Bobby; he was so damn smart that people bored him and he was a bright light among them with all the power in heaven, and he could rape them and kill them anytime he wanted because that's why they were on earth.
During his Mother's only visit, after he had convinced her that he had no money, he asked her if she always knew what he was. He tried to explain as bluntly as possible, that he was smart and powerful, etc., but he cut his explanation short, seeing she was confused, and they sat there a moment in the visiting room. She stared at him before saying, "Who the hell do you think you are?" Bobby greeted her question the way he had her thousand slaps to his face, smiling in answer since there was no point.
♥ Mark knew that he wanted to be a grandfather and of course see her happily married, but she would eventually be out of his life, one way or another, and he became so preoccupied with the near future that he feared he was wasting their special weekend days together by taking too many pictures and reminiscing about moments even as they were happening.
♥ The kitchen was still bright, too close to the next building for scaffolding, and as Karen caught her breath, she lingered in the low window, her hands on the narrow sill, looking down at the nine-story fall, contemplating the dramatic possibilities for permanent change.
♥ Bobby now knew everything he needed to know and that his plans were too modest and should go far beyond just locking her in a room and having her in every way from top to bottom in various poses and positions. He was going to have to kill Heather no matter what to not get caught but he kept thinking about the time he had gone to Catholic church at 13 with a social worker. He remembered that when he took the wafer and the wine he felt them really turn into something in his mouth, like a whiff of smoke from burning cocaine, ans after, he ran home on a rampage of bare-handed destruction and knocked over mailboxes and garbage cans and even splintered a car windshield with only his fist. He was sure then that this strength and power were from that tiny part of God he had eaten and he tried for months to take Communion again but the social worker was transferred and Bobby was too shy to enter a church on his own.
That night in his motel room, bobby lay rigid on the bed staring at her face on his phone, knowing that now that their eyes had met and because she was so precious to all, she would be his wafer and wine. He wondered what kind of white light he might become if he took her in even more ways after he had slowly strangled her. Bobby would have every part of Heather and they would be one inside him and he could be the beginning and ending of everything.
♥ It felt good for Mark to say this but he wished he could take it back when she grabbed a pillow and left the room. As he sat alone on their unmade bed, his anger turned inward because he knew he deserved all of this for gutlessly sharing real danger with his wife. He now understood that his was an emergency and not an excuse for the truth to come out between them. Karen's terrible words were clearly her envy out to destroy his closeness with Heather and he just had to be bigger and stronger now. He apologized to Karen with no caveats and agreed tat he was overreacting and that they were not going to move.
Karen slipped into bed next to Mark, full of false forgiveness. In her mind, nothing had been resolved and she felt no regret for what she thought, only that she'd said it out loud. She stole a look at him over the top of her tablet as he turned in his sleep and couldn't believe the funny, adoring man she had married had become a paranoid failure who didn't even see her. She turned off the light and thought of the future and imagined having a lover, maybe one of the handsome fathers at the school who was just looking for a thing, and she dozed off with her hand resting inertly on her sex, soothing herself the way she did when she was a child.
♥ Her Mother and Father were especially blind to feelings. Her Father denied he even had feelings and her Mother assumed everyone shared hers. Heather didn't know for years that her ability to see people's feelings and even feel them sometimes was unusual and when she discovered that the cruelty and rudeness that adults and friends inflicted on each other was unintentional or at least uninformed, she decided to withdraw, overwhelmed by the pain of typical human behavior.
♥ Heather had always felt beautiful and sensed what was fair and known that everyone wanted to try their best but seeing how different her parents were at home and how they couldn't share in each other's happiness made her question what she had done to their lives. She used to listen to their fights, sometimes even sneaking into their room to hide at the foot of their bed and pray for them to divorce so that her love would finally be divided equally between them and she could smile at the world without worrying that Mark or Karen would intercept it.
♥ The more difficult secret, which the world must never see, was the melancholy that lived just under her smile. Heather knew she should give it up or replace it with gratitude and she would gladly give it up if only it didn't feel so good to be sad. Her favorite moment each day was right after she put her phone on the dresser and before she fell asleep, when she listened to the traffic and thought about each lonely horn, so random, and all the adults and the places they were going and how they were in such a rush.
♥ Their zip code was almost number one on the list of the wealthiest in the country and her Father didn't make anything and her Mother didn't do anything and their apartment wasn't gigantic but it was unnecessarily lavish and velvet and they used too much and threw away too much and, worst of all, didn't care. How many tropical islands could they visit and still ignore the rampant poverty just over the resort fence? Her parents weren't bad people but they were living in a self-righteous delusion that they deserved everything they had.
She had tried to alert both of them separately to the injustice of their position but neither would fight and they individually referred to her, as if rehearsed, as their most prized possession: the thing that money could not buy. She knew what her parents meant by this, the love they were expressing, but she also knew they were poisoned with some disease of wealth that had turned them into half-people with coffee machines and cash registers where their hearts should be.
♥ She wanted to talk to him. She wanted to tell him that she wasn't like her mother, that she saw all people and knew that he was horribly forced to behave like a servant. She wouldn't condescend to him like some spoiled private school heiress who got to live there with everything. She could only guess at the deprivation and circumstances that brought someone to that point in their life and she wondered if he was intelligent and what his voice sounded like and if she could ever do anything for those who lacked. She could never tell her mother that she would be whole one day because she would act with her heart and give everything away, including herself if necessary, so that someone could benefit from their years of effortless accumulation. What she really wanted to do was tell the Worker that she saw him.
♥ He only wanted her to be his daughter the way she was now and never stop. Mark understood he had to let go of Heather and let her grow up and that he had to accept whatever their relationship became because that's what parents did. He knew that it would break his heart and that was normal.
♥ She also needed more people in her life. Being mostly with strangers had kept her in her head too much and she was frequently anxious and scattered. She had always wanted close friendships but now she saw that her whole life, some sense of competition had brought out people's worst behavior and most social interactions were shallow and boastful on all sides. Karen hoped that finding a confidante would be possible now that the ladies were all equally humbled by their rebellious teens, sexless marriages, food obsessions and real estate woes.
♥ She lay awake in bed that night and felt for him and how small he'd become as he marshaled his waning potency against imagined enemies.
♥ He turned in time to catch the Worker staring at him.
Their connection was brief but total and Mark felt his guts push down as if he was going to shit right where he stood. It was unmistakable now that an animal was in their lobby; eyes heavy-lidded with indifferent hunger, shoulders arched and taut, ready to pounce. Mark's heart thudded as he considered how long this thing would be on his doorstep, unsatisfied with anything but his child.
When the elevator opened Mark should have gone upstairs, changed into his running clothes and left, but instead he held the door with his forearm. His mouth was almost too dry to speak and he hoped he wouldn't sound scared as he asked the Worker if everyone was at lunch. He couldn't believe he had spoken, his voice so loud, every guilty syllable slapping off the marble walls. The Worker nodded yes, and Mark understood his mind had been far ahead that morning when he had erased that photo. In fact, it was probably hours ago even that he had decided what had to be done, readied himself for an opportunity, and begun covering it up.
♥ Bobby had seen many apartments this nice but only from a scaffolding and had never been inside one that wasn't demolished or under construction. It would have seemed bigger without so much stuff in it; still, he was thrilled with the white walls and green carpet and all the TVs and brass trinkets and he wanted to sit in the stuffed red furniture and have a whiskey from that crystal glass. He knew that these were the people that went to the movies all the time and ate in restaurants and flew on planes and had pictures of horses on everything. And he knew that all of this was his.
♥ She sat down next to Mark as he stumbled through a clear confession that was incriminating in every detail and as she listened, she became aware that he had ruined their lives and she slapped his face with full force. Mark didn't react, but took her hands one at a time and looked her in the eye. "I know in my heart. I am certain." He said, "Whatever problems this family has, there is no family without her."
She heard him and took in the whole room for a moment and saw from some bird's-eye view that they were small and alone.