Part 9: Victoria

The ride to the concert was tense. Victoria kept waiting for her mom to say something that implied she was coming in, for Hannah to say something that implied she was dropping them off down the street, or for her own frantic mind to come up with some way out of the situation. It seemed impossible. It felt like she was going to die. Her mom and Hannah - the two most powerful people in her life, the two people she couldn’t say no to - and any second now she was going to be stuck in between them. 

Victoria Brixton had never heard the phrase “an unstoppable force meeting an unmovable object,” and wouldn’t have tried to understand it if she did, but the concept it represented was one she knew intimately. 

She wanted to crawl deep down inside herself and never come out, like diving under the covers after a nightmare. 

She almost wished her mom had never gotten her the tickets at all. Almost. 

And throughout her torture, she had to keep up a regular conversation with Hannah. The worst fate of all would have been for Hannah to see how she felt. Although she sometimes suspected that Hannah could read minds, or at least Victoria’s mind, thankfully she was so wrapped up in her excitement that she wasn’t using her powers right now. She was rattling off everything she knew about Xander Cross’s own pre-concert rituals, and speculating where in the process he was at that moment, a one-sided conversation that required very little from Victoria. 

“ . . . and then he always turns off all the overhead lights, he hates those soul-crushing fluorescent lights they have in dressing rooms, and just lights a couple of candles instead, and some incense, and they do this whole little chant - it’s in Latin, of course - and some people, some ignorant people, think it’s about summoning the devil, but really it’s about enlightenment and truth.” 

The word “ignorant,” said a full notch louder than the rest of the words, was clearly directed at Mrs. Brixton, who had once gotten into a spirited argument with Hannah about Our Beautiful Misery. Victoria hadn’t quite been able to follow the thread of the argument, but knew as an article of faith that Hannah was right. 

Mrs. Brixton - Theresa, but only to other adults, and she reserved the right to revoke the privilege from them as well - was a formidable woman in her own right. A woman of Principle. (Victoria heard this as “principal,” and thought her mom was saying she was in charge of the family like a principal ran a school, which wasn’t entirely incorrect.) An ardent feminist in the seventies, she had married late in life, and had accepted the “misses” (she liked the idea of plurality, it reminded her of the royal “we”) but insisted upon keeping her own last name and giving it to the children. Her husband acquiesced, but perhaps only because his last name was Krump and so he wasn’t exactly bargaining from a position of power. 

Victoria and her older sisters, Alexandria and Catherine (all named after powerful female leaders, as Mrs. Brixton liked to pretend she herself had been, but it was a stretch), had all been adopted as babies, the unwanted children of sexually liberated teenage girls who had either left or been left by their male partners but still had some vestigial hangups about abortion. (Mrs. Brixton had half-wanted to lecture them, but self-interest trumped her principles.) None of this was ever hidden from the girls: they heard the stories so many times that they were sick of them. 

Mrs. Brixton had a job that made her perpetually tense and high-strung, or perhaps a job that suited someone who was already tense and high-strung. It was a chicken and egg situation. At work, she was in charge of a lot of people - twenty-two officially, about thirteen more in reality - and was either despised or feared. She took pride in this. There was no insulting name or negative reaction that Mrs. Brixton couldn’t reclaim as a badge of honor. 

“If I were a man,” she often said, “I would be called assertive and strong. But I’m a woman, so they call me a bitch.” 

Incidentally, Mrs. Brixton was often called assertive and strong, particularly in her performance reviews - though it is possible that these words were written with invisible scare quotes, a dog whistle for any male supervisor who might read them, a convenient way to get around the fact that you can’t call someone a “bitch” in a performance review. 

Another of her favorite lines was, “show me a woman with no enemies and I’ll show you a woman who never stood for anything.” 

But what Mrs. Brixton usually “stood for” was maximizing the efficiency and profitability of a pharmaceutical company, which like many enterprises (Our Beautiful Misery included) made an awful lot of money off the insecurity of young women. 

But as Principled as she was, she did also want her daughter to be happy. And though there were definite patriarchical overtones to the idol-worship that these teenage girls were engaged in, though the music world was undoubtedly full of predatory men - at least they had chosen it for themselves. At least it was a little better than the other trends she saw other teenage girls following - the preppy ones, replaying the archetypes of the fifties: the teenybopper and the tough guy, the cheerleader and the football player. 

At least this was a little bit subversive, wasn’t it? 

When she contended that Xander Cross was a Satanist, she was half-hoping it was true, because then at least she could have some respect for him. 

If only Victoria wasn’t such a follower. Sometimes Mrs. Brixton worried that she had oversold the value of female strength and independence, and that Victoria was paradoxically rebelling by becoming subservient. Other times, she was just thankful that Victoria had chosen a female role model rather than a boyfriend to treat with such reverence. On occasion, she found herself wishing that Hannah was her daughter instead, though this was only when she wasn’t actually around her. It was easy to admire her in the abstract. Up close, she was exasperating. 

Though she had bought herself a ticket to the concert as a matter of Principle, she knew now she wasn’t going to be able to tolerate a full night of screaming and melodramatic whining. 

“So what time am I picking you girls up?” she suddenly asked, interrupting an exegesis of the liner notes of Black Carousel. They were in the city now, about two miles away from the concert venue, and because it was Friday night and there is some correlation between Fridays and traffic that transcends human understanding, the traffic was especially heavy and especially angry. 

“OHMYGOD Mom,” Victoria responded automatically from the backseat. Lately, this was what she said every time Theresa opened her mouth. Next to her, Hannah smirked. The passenger seat was empty, as usual; Victoria refused to sit there when Hannah was present. (The one time she had suggested it, Victoria looked aghast: “And abandon Hannah?!”) 

“Glad to know I’m your God,” Mrs. Brixton responded. “But that doesn’t really answer my question.” 

“Ohmygod Mom,” Victoria said, actually meaning it this time. 

“Eleven? Eleven-thirty?” 

“What do you mean pick us up?” Victoria blurted out, just having processed her mom’s question. The words exploded out of her before she could think, but thankfully there were two different ways you could take it, and Hannah spoke first and saved her. 

“Yeah, you don’t have to pick us up,” Hannah said coolly. “I mean, wouldn’t you rather have a nice night out with Mr. Brixton without having to worry about us the whole time? You won’t have to keep checking your watch, you won’t have to deal with all the traffic -“ she gestured around them - “all the stress. You deserve a night off, you know. You work so hard.” 

“You can stop trying to manipulate me, Hannah,” Mrs. Brixton said, rubbing her temples. 

“Manipulate? I would never!” 

“Yeah, right. I’m picking you up after the concert, and that’s that. And you girls are lucky I’m not coming in there with you.” 

Hannah laughed out loud, the very idea a joke to her. She doesn’t know how close we came, Victoria thought. And she never will, she swore to herself. 

“If I didn’t have such a pounding headache, or if it wasn’t such terrible music, I would be.” 

“Well, we’d love to have you there,” Hannah responded. It wasn’t really sarcasm so much as it was a power move. Like how resting your hands behind your head, that great gesture of vulnerability, can actually be a signifier of confidence, because you know your enemy would never dare touch you. Hannah could put her head in the noose, press the knife against her throat; she could stand right up close to the edge of the cliff. No one would ever push her.

Including me, Mrs. Brixton reflected. A grown woman, a strong woman, but still intimidated by an adolescent girl. That was the real reason she wasn’t coming inside. The headache was an excuse - she couldn’t remember the last time she hadn’t had a headache.

Those last few minutes, sitting in rush-hour Friday-night traffic, Victoria Brixton was elated. She was the luckiest person in the world. The universe or fate or god or whatever was out there - Xander Cross himself, maybe - obviously wanted this to be the best night of her life.