Pretty Girls

“Optimism is a sliver of glass in your heart.”

Sam Carroll is an example of a person thoroughly chewed up and spit out by grief. This quoted metaphor is a great example of the visceral pain caused by the false hope people hold when they are avoiding uncomfortable realities.

“Her husband had made it clear that he wanted a big family. He wanted lots and lots of kids to inoculate himself against loss, and Claire had tried and tried with him until finally she had agreed to go see a fertility expert who had informed Claire that she couldn’t have children because she had an IUD and was taking birth control pills.”

This quote reveals exactly how sneaky Claire can sometimes be, especially when she is up against the wall that is Paul’s unflinching resolve to commit to something he wants. They are on very separate pages, and neither is vulnerable nor conciliatory enough to talk about a compromise.

“Eventually, she would find herself standing in this same place again with the detectives and the inventory and insurance and the bullshit. This was all Paul’s fault. He should be here. He should be taking care of all of this. That was his job. Claire Scott was furious at her dead husband for not being there to solve her problems.”

This quote reveals Claire’s learned dependence upon Paul. She has created a life where she is emotionally stunted by choice because it is easier to depend on someone else than to depend on herself or family members who may betray her or fail to live up to her expectations.

“Paul had ordered all the doors and windows from Belgium. They were solid mahogany with four-point locks that were easily bypassed when a crowbar smashed the leaded glass and one of the burglars stuck his arm through the window and turned the thumb latch.”

The irony of this quote is that even though the house is ornate and expensive, tailored to Paul’s exact specifications, its security is lax. The appearance of security is there, with the many cameras and safeguards, but these measures are far flimsier than they seem. The same is true of Paul’s psyche.

“Paul hadn’t just taken away Claire all those years ago. He’d taken away the connection that came from looking into someone else’s eyes and knowing that they understood exactly what you were feeling.”

Paul’s abuse has conditioned Claire so much that she seems like a wholly different person. This is the real poison of emotional abuse, that someone can be controlled so deeply that they cease to exist in their own personal state of being. Paul’s attempt at controlling Claire was a long-term death by a thousand controlling insults, and Claire was the perfect intended victim because she craved someone’s overarching protection rather than cultivate her own self-reliance.

“I cannot blame them. They are young women now. They are building their lives. Claire is around the same age as you were when we lost you. Pepper is older, though not wiser. I see her making so many mistakes (the drugs, the uncaring and unavailable boyfriends, the anger that burns so hot she could light an entire city), but I feel like I don’t have the authority to stop her.”

Sam describes his helplessness as situated in grief. Because he cannot pull himself out of mourning, he has neglected his relationships with his daughters. The inverse is also true: He cannot pull himself out of mourning because he feels he has failed in his paternal duty to keep his oldest daughter safe. This impossible double bind severs his family ties.

“Paul was in control all the time, so his fantasy would be to let someone else take over […] And besides that, a few years ago when she’d read Paul several passages from Fifty Shades of Grey, they’d both giggled like teenagers. ‘The biggest fantasy in that book,’ Paul had said, ‘is that he changes for her in the end.’”

Despite Paul’s violent sexual fantasies, he keeps a lid on his actual proclivities in front of Claire. However, his mockery of the male character changing for his love interest reveals that Paul does not respect compromise or change that he himself does not direct. This quote is a nod to Paul’s selfish motivations.

“Would Helen want to know where Julia was now? If Claire handed her mother an envelope and inside was the story of exactly what had happened to Julia, would she open it? Claire sure as hell would.”

The irony in this statement is that Helen truly does know the details of Julia’s death, and knowing the full details hurt and healed Helen in inextricable ways. The choice of knowledge is not as binary as Claire initially introduces it.

“Claire shook her head. She was scared that he wasn’t taking her seriously. She was also scared that he was. They were down the rabbit hole now. There was no turning back.”

Claire recognizes the futility of choice because there appear to be two opposite possibilities, but they both end up at the same frustrated place. Whether or not Claire is able to convince the police of the seriousness of the matter, the outcome is the same, rendering her careful decision-making as ultimately irrelevant to future events and choices.

“Their haggard expressions had become painfully familiar. She could tell they were slowly coming to accept that their little girl would not be coming home. Pretty soon, a year would pass, then another year, then the family would quietly mark the decade anniversary, then two decades, then more. Children would be born. Grandchildren. Marriage vows would be made and broken. And behind every single event would lurk the shadow of this missing sixteen-year-old girl.”

This quote exemplifies the generational persistence of grief in the absence of justice. Despite time passing and people growing, everything is tainted by the memory of fatal injustice, even for those family members who only hear the stories but weren’t present themselves.

“[T]he anguish of losing Claire was almost more overwhelming than losing Julia. Whatever had happened to her older sister had been a tragedy. Her rift with Claire had been a choice. Claire’s choice. And Helen’s, too. The last time Lydia had talked to her mother, Helen had said, ‘Don’t make me choose between you and your sister.’ To which Lydia had responded, ‘I think you already have.’”

Both Lydia and Helen are somewhat right in this scenario. Lydia wants her mother and sister to unequivocally believe her about Paul’s attempted rape, and Helen doesn’t want more grief to weigh her down. Unfortunately, Helen’s dismissal of the issue causes Lydia considerable pain, and Lydia’s insistence upon being heard drags Helen beyond her comfort point. There is a choice to be made by each party here, but every decision only leads to more pain felt by all. Helen’s attitude is to avoid that pain completely by pushing the truth farther down.

“Lydia remembered the first time she’d met Paul Scott. Her only thought was that Claire could do so much better. But the fact was that Claire had never wanted to do better [...] Lydia thought about how devastated Claire had looked at the cemetery. She certainly seemed to be grieving. Then again, Claire was always really good at behaving exactly the way people expected her to behave—not out of duplicity, but out of self-preservation.”

Lydia’s description of Claire shows how vulnerable Claire really is even when she is careful to hide it. Claire’s survival strategy as a young girl was to avoid anger and grief by seamlessly blending into everyone’s expectations. Her personality has molded around the grief of Julia’s death, showing how deeply people are affected by the injustices surrounding them.

“She told Rick, ‘The world stops for you when you’re pretty. That’s why women spend billions on crap for their faces. Their whole life, they’re the center of attention. People want to be around them just because they’re attractive. Their jokes are funnier. Their lives are better. And then suddenly, they get bags under their eyes or they put on a little weight and no one cares about them anymore. They cease to exist.’”

Lydia’s statement here may be cynical, but she expresses the reality of being a woman in modern society. It’s not that ugly women are unjustly persecuted but that the benefits to being pretty are so overwhelming that strictly gendered appearance becomes a highly motivating factor for many people, one that affects how people are treated by institutions and society.

“Eighteen years ago, Lydia had told her that the problem with Paul Scott was that he didn’t see Claire as a normal, imperfect human being. He was blind to her faults. He covered her missteps. He would never challenge her or scare her or infuriate her or stir up any of those fiery emotions that made it worthwhile to put up with a man’s bullshit. ‘Why are you saying all of that like it’s a bad thing’ Claire had demanded, because she was desperately lonely, and she was tired of being the girl whose sister had disappeared.”

Claire accidentally articulates a shocking power dynamic in her marriage. While everyone outside the marriage sees this dynamic as worrisome or abusive, Claire sees it as reassuring because in the bottom of her heart, she seeks reprieve from the constant grief and anger in her childhood. She has always needed someone to take care of her, and many times her family has failed her, so she corrected the lack of support herself, by marrying someone with significant control issues.

“All of the rugs were white. The hardwood floor was bleached oak. The walls were white. Even some of the paintings were muted whites. She wasn’t living in a house. She was occupying a sanitarium.”

This description of Claire’s and Paul’s house doubles as a description for their relationship. It is not filled with love and random memories that bring joy; it is clinical and empty, not built for human enjoyment but for human containment. The design of the house is part of Paul’s extension of control, and the clinical starkness alludes to Paul’s uncaring psychopathy.

“When Julia had first disappeared, everyone talked about how tragic it was that something bad had happened to such a good girl. Then the sheriff had floated his theory that Julia had just walked away—joined a hippie commune or run off with a guy—and the tone had changed from sympathetic to accusatory. Julia Carroll was no longer the selfless girl who volunteered at the animal shelter and worked at the soup kitchen. She was the strident political activist who’d been jailed at a protest. The pushy reporter who alienated the entire staff of the school newspaper. The radical feminist who demanded the university hire more women. The drunk. The pothead. The whore. It wasn’t enough for Julia to be taken away from the family. All the good things about her had to be taken away, too.”

Public opinion can turn from sympathetic to accusatory in the blink of an eye. This passage underscores the point that there is incredible sexist pressure upon young women to be perfect, or else they are to blame for whatever bad events happen to them. It is a prime example of the shaming and blaming that survivors and their families often endure in the pursuit of justice. The initial “image” of Julia fades to something completely different to adapt to the public’s misunderstanding.

“Claire felt like ten years had passed since she had sat in the back of the limousine with her mother and grandmother. She tried to remember how she’d felt. The purity of her grief had been such a luxury.”

The reason why Claire romanticizes her early grief is because it is easily understood. Her husband is dead, and she misses him. This stands in contrast with the other, more complicated griefs that she must deal with, like the frustration and abandonment from her family. The grief over Paul’s death is also simpler to accept than the grief over Paul’s horrendous crimes.

“The warden’s office was all cheap paneling and institutional green furnishings. As Ben would’ve said, ‘Think Cool Hand Luke.’ Every surface was either metal or fake wood. The warden was fat with a buzz cut and rolls of flesh almost obscuring his collar. His white shirt was short-sleeved and outfitted with a red and black clip-on tie. He smoked a cigarette as he studied me across his desk.”

This quote ties in with the depiction of an anachronistic police force; the metal and fake wood are not only deceiving but also uninviting. Referencing a popular ’60s crime film is a way of reducing the efficacy of the police to mere juvenile entertainment. This is not a place that is conducive to real hard work.

“Lydia rested her thumb on the big orange PLAY button. She looked at Claire. Red pill? Blue pill? Do you really want to know? And then her father’s voice: There are some things you can’t unsee.”

The sisters have come to a crossroads, and unlike many other moments of action where they can consider alternative options, there are only two choices here, one of which has everlasting consequences. Moreover, pressing play might not lead to answers, only more trauma, and they won’t know which until the film ends. The red pill/blue pill dichotomy can be paralyzing in how simple the choices can be.

“Why is it that we always neglect the things that matter most? This is a universal question, because through the days and weeks and months and years after your disappearance, I understood that I did not cherish you enough. I never told you that I loved you enough. I never held you enough. I never listened to you enough. You would likely tell me (as your mother has) that I could rectify this deficit with your sisters, but it is human nature to yearn for the things we cannot have.”

Sam philosophizes to try to process his regrets about grief and family because there’s no turning back and rectifying past mistakes. He states his theory of neglect as impossible to rectify, even though the steps to rebuilding his family alliances are very clear. He would prefer to philosophize about life’s impossibilities than undergo the grueling work of facing his grief and trauma.

“He is a man who is comfortable airing his opinions, and confident that every single word that comes out of his mouth is not just correct, but fascinating.”

Paul is not just confident, he is arrogant, and this is an apt description of how he assumes everyone appreciates his genius. This description also reveals that he is unaware of how much he rubs people the wrong way, so his arrogance may be blinding, foreshadowing a hubris that will eventually lead to his downfall.

“But back then, all of her parents’ anger seemed tied up in Lydia’s failure to take care of her last remaining sister. She was setting a bad example for Claire. She wasn’t spending enough time with Claire. She should try to do more things with Claire. Which made Lydia feel guilty, and when she wasn’t feeling guilty, she was feeling resentful. Maybe that’s why Claire had perfected the art of invisibility. It was a form of self-preservation. You couldn’t resent what you could not see.”

Due to their parents’ grief-induced neglect, Claire and Lydia both suffered in separate ways that continue to haunt their thoughts and behaviors. This shows that the effects of parental neglect can extend well into adulthood, as tragedy lingers in insidious ways.

“There is kindness in so many unexpected places. Can I tell you that I am the happiest I have been in a good, long while? That your sisters rushed to my side, and that my family surrounded me, enveloped me, and that I was finally reminded of the life we all shared before we lost you? It was the first time in almost six years that we all gathered in a room and did not hurt for the lack of you.”

Sam is overjoyed that his family rushed to his side after his stroke, but the irony is that once again, fear and grief brought the family together out of necessity. Such reunions are not forged to last before the past begins to intrude upon the present happiness.