Every story ever told has played upon instinctive fears and universal desires with variations based upon cultural beliefs and traditions — and the social mores of their times. The players within the stories are represented by characters that are quickly understood and accepted within the context of a given society. Over time, these two elements become tropes and stereotypes. Occasionally these forms can be combined into more unique stories with unexpected characters. Unfortunately, most modern filmmakers merely regurgitate mindless concoctions of exhausted types and tropes, serving huge portions of cinematic leftovers from the back of the fridge.
American cinema has emerged from a society that mistakes concessions for equality. The deep and malformed roots of stifling misogyny and delusional male superiority have created films that reflect long-held opinions, interpretations, and expectations of girls to women, sex objects to mothers, sirens to goddesses.
These characters have been extruded from mens’ overwhelmingly dismissive and oppressive ideas of women, becoming handy tools rather than legitimate people. Women are portrayed as they are believed to be: ultimately untrustworthy, insensible, calculating and manipulative to the point of perfidy, lacking fortitude, easily overcome by unfounded anxieties and fears, and, most insulting of all, culpable in their own suffering. In films, many of these projected traits have coalesced into the ubiquitous and banal form of the Irrational Woman — a staple character in the realms of suspense and horror.
Resurrection is an enigmatic story of suspense and horror that heavily relies on the Irrational Woman and the dependable, if tired, trope of paramnesia — the distortion of one’s memories and dreams, confusing them with objective reality.
It isn’t a great movie, but it is well-crafted and highly engaging. It can be viewed as an unnecessarily complex metaphor for a woman who conquers her demons, or conversely, as the straightforward tale of a woman destroyed by psychological torment.
Even the film’s title is elusive. Resurrection can indicate redemption and the return of something tragically lost, or punishment and the reawakening of the vile, unwanted dead. For Margaret Ballion (played superbly by Rebecca Hall), both seem to be true.
The film may be forgiven for implementing the irrational woman trope only because Margaret is not a simple tool, but instead an imperfect and complex person. She is a trinity of selves: the one she is determined to be, the carefully curated persona meant for others to see, and the inner self who yearns to be seen.
The Protagonist: Margaret
Margaret is not basic, nor is her story a PTSD metaphor. And, though it’s technically true that much of Margaret’s pain is self-inflicted, the catalyst is very real. As David Moore, Margaret’s sadistic manipulator, Tim Roth’s performance is a perfect balance of facile charm and adroit brutality.
Over twenty years have passed since Margaret fled the torment of isolation and mental abuse. In that time she has built a safe life for herself, a fortification to protect her against the diabolical monster that nearly destroyed her and to thwart every debilitating, insidious memory.
So many years on, Margaret is confident that she outpaced and outdistanced her terrible past and has deeply buried every horrific experience. But repression and denial are not freedom. Margaret fled the devil, she didn’t vanquish him or the demons that scrabble after her, inadvertently trapping herself as the sentinel of her own Hell.
Before the story begins in earnest, we watch Margaret running hard, with the focused determination of a competitor in training. Eventually, we learn that her intense regimen is actually a mechanism to cope with crippling anxiety — proving to no one but herself that she can hack it. For now it’s a simple metaphor for life.
Work Life
Margaret revels in her career as a well-regarded executive with a large biotech firm. She appears to thrive in this successful role, one in which she is more than proficient, she excels.
After giving a presentation about the trial results of a promising new psychiatric medication, Margaret beams with barely contained excitement. She declares the trial’s success as “fucking awesome,” but then good-naturedly teases the interns present to not tell anyone that she used profanity, as if they were middle-schoolers.
To further that point, Margaret also makes time to act as a sounding board and ersatz emotional counselor to Gwyn (Angela Wong Carbone), an intern with an asshole boyfriend. Margaret takes pride in this role as well. When she promises Gwyn that their sessions are confidential, assuring the young woman that she is “Fort Knox” when it comes to keeping secrets, it’s as if Margaret is speaking to a trouble teenager.
Motherhood
Being a mother is the role closest to Margaret’s heart. She enjoys an easy, convivial relationship with her soon to be 18-year-old daughter, Abbie (Grace Kaufman), who appears to be happily well-adjusted, with all the confidence of an only child.
While Margaret prepares breakfast, Abbie quickly takes something from her backpack before casually asking her mother if she wants to see something. Rather than responding with mildly suspicious hesitation (as most parents of precocious children would), Margaret is only curious.
Abbie reaches into her mouth and pretends to extract a tooth. Margaret seems naively surprised and asks Abbie, with some concern, if it’s her tooth. Abbie replies with teenage jocularity that, in fact, the large, tartar-encrusted tooth is not hers. Placing it on the counter she tells Margaret that it had “just appeared” in the coin pouch of her wallet that day. It’s unclear why Abbie doesn’t find the discovery disturbing or noteworthy, merely a convenient opportunity to gross out her mother.
Even Margaret brushes past the who-what-where-why questions as she is more concerned with Abbie leaving for college. “Smidge, promise me that you’ll be careful when you’re on your own at school.” Abbie flippantly teases, “I’m gonna be reckless Ma. Some frat guy hands me a pill, I’m just gonna take it…no questions asked.”
Personal Life
As a single-parent, for reasons unknown, Margaret’s personal life — although it hardly qualifies as either — is simple, unencumbered, and devoid of intimacy. For Margaret, sex is like having a beer, just another way of unwinding.
This particular evening, since Abbie is at a sleepover with her best friend, Margaret decides to call Peter (Michael Esper), her married workmate-with-benefits. She grants him permission to come over for a booty call, indicating that Margaret is fully in control of their interactions. It’s an interesting juxtaposition of power. Rather than enticing Peter to come over, Margaret allows him time with her.
First Cracks
Later that night, Margaret’s phone rings and goes unanswered. Despite being something of a worrier, she lets it ring as she believes Abbie is safely at her friend’s house. When it rings again, Margaret does pick up and immediately panics.
Leaving Peter behind, Margaret rushes to the ER and finds that Abbie is receiving the last of many gruesome stitches for a large gash on her leg. Personally, if I saw that sort of wound on one of my children, I would instantly freak out and demand answers from everyone. Margaret stays calm as Abbie explains what happened.
She and her friend were riding bikes — even though Abbie never learned to ride properly because Margaret felt it was “rather dangerous.” Abbie also confesses that she had “just a little” to drink and, being a good mother, Margaret neither scolds nor lectures.
Once safely at home, Margaret’s anxiety can’t be quite contained any longer. She firmly, and almost aggressively, tucks the bedsheets around Abbie, as if she were a small child. Less calm now, Margaret reassures Abbie that she has nothing to be scared of. Nothing.
As we’ll learn later, the implication that Abbie’s ineptitude is at fault is actually a clever ruse to veil over the more sinister cause. Conveniently, the accident has driven from everyone’s mind the inexplicable tooth that Abbie found.
First View of the Antagonist
The next day, while attending a small, dull work conference, Margaret isn’t focused. She looks around at the other attendees and sees a man sitting at another table across the room.
He’s an unremarkable middle-aged man in a dull corduroy jacket. He isn’t particularly engaged by the presentation in progress and idly looks about as if he were in a doctor’s waiting room.
Margaret however has frozen, like a small animal suddenly aware of a dangerously close predator. Waves of abject fear rise until Margaret is overwhelmed by a panic attack. As she hurries toward the exit, she darts a glance toward the man to assure herself that he hasn’t seen her.
With little effort, the filmmaker engages the Irrational Woman. As Margaret rushes from the room, we witness nothing more than Margaret glancing in the man’s direction. By choosing to not allow us a view of the man’s possible interest in or recognition of Margaret, the filmmaker has denied us “proof” that the man is truly present. Is the man even there?
If he were simply a figment of Margaret’s guilt-addled imagination the director would have shown us the man making eye contact with her. How else could the menace and perceived threat that Margaret is experiencing be conveyed to the audience?
With this deft misdirection, we easily begin to suspect Margaret’s stability. Margaret has become an irrational woman who may be an unreliable witness to her own life. In addition, when we discover that the man is someone whom she knew many years before, Margaret would be imagining him as he looked then, not a man who has aged twenty years.
Fear for Abbie
Free outside, Margaret regains some composure. But suddenly, and for reasons unknown, she becomes alarmed for Abbie. Margaret runs the distance one would normally drive (the aggressive running has proven worthwhile), bursts into their apartment, and grabs the door frame of Abbie’s room to stop herself.
Margaret stands in the doorway, disheveled, panting heavily, and sweating profusely while Abbie tries to figure out what’s going on. Catching her breath, but hardly her composure, Margaret tells Abbie that all is well; she’s just feeling “a bit off.” In the bathroom, ostensibly to shower, Margaret is overpowered by involuntary, heaving sobs of visceral anguish. Like Abbie, the viewer also wonders what’s going on.
Calmed down and cleaned up, Margaret searches online for “David Moore.” Entries for David D Moore, PhD, a molecular biologist are scrolled past, but the camera hovers over David S Moore, psychologist, a bit of misinformation the audience is meant to glom onto.
Margaret closes her laptop when Abbie comes into the room even though it is impossible for Abbie to see the screen and would have no reason to question what her working mom is up to. This covert behavior plays into the irrational woman trope and one wonders what the secrecy is about. It even brings to mind a favorite platitude of fascists: If you’ve done nothing wrong, you’ve nothing to hide!”
This implies that Margaret is behaving badly, we just don’t know how or why. As an irrational woman, this behavior furthers the suspicion that Margaret is becoming unhinged, and even worse, is being enigmatically duplicitous.
At Home With Abbie
Even Margaret’s attitude toward Abbie has taken a turn. When she tells Margaret that she’s going to her friend’s house, Margaret won’t allow it and there’s a brief struggle of wills. Margaret doesn’t use the plausible excuse of Abbie’s recent injury, but neither is she honest with her daughter. Margaret doesn’t explain that she’s afraid for her safety or the reason why. Instead, the best Margaret can come up with is, “You go out too often.”
Now stuck at home, Abbie falls asleep on the sofa next to her mother while they watch Carnival of Souls, itself a wonderful example of paramnesia. Its subtle placement here is the subliminal message that a woman’s reality may not be reality at all. With Abbie comfortably curled up next to her, Margaret sits guard. The on-screen conversation between Mary Henry and the clergyman smoothly coalesces into a dream.
Baby in the Oven
In spite of saying earlier that she didn’t want to cook, we hear the sound of a kitchen timer ticking away. When it chimes, Margaret briefly glances toward the kitchen, but shows no indication that it means anything.
The clergyman asks, “What attraction could there be for you out there?”
A sharp knock on the sliding glass door to the balcony startles her.
Mary Henry replies, “I’m not sure. I’m a reasonable person. I don’t know. Maybe I just want to satisfy myself…”
We only see Margaret’s face as she peaks into the darkness, before turning away from the glass. When Margaret becomes aware of something burning in the oven, she’s unfazed, as if her subconscious knows the heavy smoke is as unimportant as the timer she didn’t set.
Margaret rests on her heels and carefully opens the oven door. She wafts away the smoke with her hand without urgency and uses a kitchen towel to pull out the rack. We see a close-up of Margaret’s face, her expression puzzled, but not alarmed.
The smoke begins to clear and we see the charred body of a newborn. Rather than crying out and recoiling in shocked horror, Margaret gazes tenderly at the tiny body which isn’t burned, only covered with large black cinders.
Margaret carefully moves her hand toward the little face, lying inside the black void with its eyes closed. The baby’s mouth opens wide to release a newborn’s piercing cry. Gasping, Margaret lurches into consciousness, on the sofa with Abbie asleep next to her.
Walls Begin to Crumble
At the office the next day, Margaret sits at her desk looking tired but keyed up. Fortunately, a handy tool for alleviating Margaret’s anxiety is close at hand so she arranges a bathroom hook up with Peter. When things don’t go to her plan, Margaret becomes angry with frustration. It turns out that Margaret has a mean streak.
Though Peter is sorry that he’s unable to perform against a washroom sink, Margaret cruelly retorts, “If it’s not your thing, you shouldn’t have agreed to it.” This variety of gas lighting, generally used by disappointed, manipulative men, is another juxtaposition of power.
As Margaret’s carefully constructed walls begin to crumble, as yet unaware that they are being intentionally undermined, apprehension begins to prey on her mind. Abbie is finding her mother’s behavior discomfiting. When she notices Margaret staring at her from the doorway, Abbie tells Margaret that she’s being “creepy” and she wants to know what’s going on. “You’re being like, even more suffocating than usual.”
Even though Abbie is nearer an adult than a child, Margaret holds as sacred her responsibility to protect Abbie. To confide in her would be a weakness.
Margaret deflects and tells Abbie that, even though she’ll miss her when she’s away at college, she knows that Abbie is strong and capable of protecting herself. Following that half-truth, Margaret quickly threatens, “But know, if anyone so much as touches a hair on your head, I will find them and I will hurt them.”
Drinking With Abbie
Not the bonding moment that Margaret had perhaps hoped for, she abruptly challenges Abbie, “Hey. You wanna drink whiskey?”
Reeling from the change in direction, Abbie accepts the offer. Sitting a the table, Margaret pours modest amounts of booze into their glasses and asserts, “If you’re gonna drink, I better show you how.” Why and why now?
And so our mistrust of Margaret’s intentions expands. We no longer view Margaret as a typical overprotective mother. Instead, we see her as a manipulative doppelgänger. But to what end? Before the first swig, Margaret makes a fist, kisses it, and delivers the kiss via her fist — gently pushing away Abbie’s cheek. (It’s a peculiar gesture and Abbie doesn’t seem to know what to do with it any more than we do.)
It seems that Margaret believes the end justifies the means. So she gets Abbie slightly drunk, drugged in a sense, in order to keep her quiet and safe. With no other information to rely on, we are led to believe that Abbie is the victim of Margaret’s wavering sanity.
All is forgotten the following day and Margaret takes Abbie shopping for school clothes. They bicker in a good-natured way about Abbie’s preference for sweatshirts. Margaret admonishes, “If you go to school dressed like that people will think you’re weak and that is not something you want to project.” Does Margaret mean that it’s important to appear strong in terms of being taken seriously, or strong in the sense of not appearing vulnerable?
David Again
Then Margaret spots the man again, the man we now know is David Moore. He saunters through the department store, looking at nothing in particular as if he’s only in the store to kill time — or waiting to be seen.
As Margaret stealthily keeps David in view, the sounds of Margaret’s steps and her agitated breathing become louder, while the sounds of the busy department become muffled — another homage to Carnival of Souls.
Once she’s sure David is at a safe distance, Margaret drags Abbie by the hand and rushes from the store before speeding away.
The door of the apartment flings open and Abbie, angry and embarrassed, runs to her room, shouting, “Stop being fucking crazy!” Slamming the door behind her.
Margaret and Abbie now exist in two different realities. Margaret believes she’s protecting her daughter from some unexplained danger, but all that Abbie can see that her mother is losing her grip.
Margaret goes to her own room and sits on the bed in her underwear, holding her head in her hands and breathing heavily. The camera pans to show us Margaret’s back. There, on her bare right shoulder, are what appear to be the scars from cigarette burns.
Back at Work
At work the following day, Margaret chokes during a presentation, something that only days ago she would have sailed through. When asked for details of the drug trials, all she can manage is to repeat, “It’s in the packet” before being struck by another panic attack. She stands, unsteady before bumbing the conference table, which knocks over a pitcher of water.
“Sorry. Sorry…I mean, I aplogize,” before grabbing her bag and leaving.
It’s an interesting use of words. Margaret makes the distinction between the impotent, sorry, and the contrite intention of an apology, although she never apologizes for any of her more egregious behaviors.
Outside, Margaret sits on a park bench to get herself together. Like Mary Henry, she listens to the birds as she looks up at the bright green leaves of the sun-dappled trees above her. Margaret’s breath steadies and she’s visibly more calm and takes in her surroundings.
Talking to David
On a nearby bench across from Margaret, sits David, casually reading a newspaper, as if he were killing time while waiting for someone he was expecting.
With each appearance, David is physically closer to Margaret. Like a spider, spinning a cocoon around an insect stuck to a web it never saw. Margaret works up her nerve and walks to stand in front of him, but out of reach. Margaret asks what he’s doing there. David looks up, surprised, “Are you speaking to me?”
“Of course I’m speaking to you. Why are you here?”
He asks innocently, “What, in the park?”
Margaret tells him to stay away from Abbie and her.
David feigns confusion. “Well, you approached me, madam. I don’t know who you are.”
Margaret snaps, “Don’t play fucking games! Why are you here? Why now?”
He smiles and holds up his hands as if Margaret were threatening to throw something at him. “Okay. You are mistaking me for someone else.”
“You piece of shit. You motherfucking goddamn piece of shit!!”
“Ben is here,” David tells her, as he places his hand on his paunch.
“That is a lie!”
“Madam, if you’re going to raise your voice we’re going to go… We’re going to go back to the boulevard.”
“Don’t walk away from me. What do you intend to do?” Margaret seems to have no doubt that David intends to do something.
“I intend to go home, Margaret.”
Margaret looks vindicated. “So you do know who I am.”
“You introduced yourself to me. You came up to me, you shook my hand. You told me about Abbie. Don’t you remember?” David’s nuanced gas lighting is masterful. His sinister smile broadens into a hateful grimace. He bares his teeth to intentionally expose the gap where a single tooth is missing.
With a final, derisive sneer David indicates that he’s done letting Margaret waste his time. As he walks away from her, Margaret tells him again to stay away from her daughter.
Dealing With David
As she dresses the next morning, Margaret analyzes their encounter. “You introduced yourself to me… you told me about Abbie… we shook hands…” We’re meant to doubt Margaret’s sanity since she appears to be doubting it herself.
Useless Police
When she decides to go to the police, we know they’ll be useless, but it may also be true that she’s wasting their time. (This is another trope entirely, that of the useless cop purportedly hobbled by “the rules.”)
Margaret explains her concern for the safety of herself and her daughter to the officer behind the desk. True to form, he tells Margaret that there’s nothing the police can do about a man she last saw over twenty years ago who just happens to be in the same public spaces as she, and who has never initiated contact with her.
This very subtle misdirection hints at the idea that, because Margaret had always been the one to see David and to approach him, David may not exist and Margaret is actually going mad.
“But I know him. I know what he’s capable of.” The officer conveys to Margaret that she’s free to file a complaint and that he can provide a pamphlet with guidelines for dealing with a potential stalker. Margaret insists that she can’t just sit and do nothing. But the officer disregards her concern, leaving her with, “Be smart, be careful, and don’t hesitate to contact us if the situation escalates.”
Self Defense
The onus to protect herself and Abbie being placed squarely on Margaret’s shoulders, she has the locks to their apartment changed. Quietly, without Abbie being aware, Margaret gets a small handgun out of the safe at the bottom of her tidy closet.
The office is dim since nearly everyone has left for the day, but Margaret is still at her desk staring at nothing. Gwyn peaks in to mention that her internship will be ending soon and asks about the reference she is hoping to receive. As Gwyn is about to leave Margaret stops her and asks, “Do you think you could kill someone? I mean if you had to — them or you.”
It seems that Margaret feels that her previous, effortless platitudes of encouragement were valuable and deserve reciprocity. She proceeds to confide in Gwyn, or rather, begins to talk at the space Gwyn occupies. Naturally, Gwyn doesn’t want to appear rude or ungrateful and risk offending the person who will be writing her a letter of recommendation. Instead, she risks being Margaret’s captive audience.
Margaret’s Back Story
After graduating high school, she tells Gwyn, Margaret took a gap year. That summer, she traveled with her biologist parents (now dead), from London to a research facility on the Queen Charlotte Islands in British Columbia.
Meeting David
Margaret mentions that she drew a lot back then, that she had wanted to be an artist, but the island beaches didn’t inspire creativity. They were cold and boring and lonely. However it wasn’t all bleak; also on the islands had been a handsome, charismatic man named Dr David Moore, also a biologist.
He had noticed Margaret and she was flattered, naively excited in the way any sheltered teen-aged girl would have been. Margaret wryly notes, “Of course he noticed me. An 18-year-old in that remote place.”
David charmed Margaret’s parents first, being closer to them in age as he was near 40 when he met them. David ingratiated himself, and Maggie’s parents were enamored with this charming and intelligent fellow academic.
It’s unknown if her parents were aware that David would give Maggie wine and pills, but since Margaret remembers them as stupid, naive hippies, maybe they wouldn’t have been overly concerned. When Margaret asserted to them that she was “all grown up,” they believed her, and having known him for only a few short weeks, Maggie moved in with David.
At first, Margaret says, it was wonderful. David told her she was his muse, his inspiration — such heady praise to lavish on an inexperienced teen-aged girl! David made her feel, for the first time in her young life, important and appreciated.
David Turns Dark
Once completely captivated, it wasn’t long before David began to prey on Margaret’s childish cravings for attention. To prove her love, unquestioning devotion, and indebted gratitude, David began asking her for “kindnesses.” The first being that Margaret shouldn’t draw anymore.
But the cost of loving David, the fealty she paid to feel loved, became more and more onerous. Initial hardships soon became tests of Margaret’s will and endurance: hours of meditation, days of fasting, yoga poses turned to stress positions.
After Margaret’s successful completion these self-debasing acts, David would again envelop her with praise and affection. He would tell Margaret that he felt so inspired by her that “he could hear God whispering his name”. And, Margaret says, “I believed every goddamn thing he said.”
David was a cruelly adroit manipulator. His abominable methods seated deep into Margaret’s own mind that to love and be loved required self-denial, pain, subservience, humiliation, and self-mortification. He went about training Margaret to rely on him for everything, as one might train a dog.
No matter what David requested, no matter what he demanded of her, she could hack it. “And if I couldn’t, he’d tell me to burn myself with cigarettes.” With a hint of pride in her voice, she continues, “But I could hack that too.” But this cold comfort is at odds with the debilitating guilt she feels for taking it at all.
Ben
Winter came and her parents returned to London, leaving behind their all-grown-up teenage daughter in the lair of a predator. Margaret recalls, “I was so stupid and fucked up. It was five months before I realized I was pregnant.”
David’s monstrous selfishness required of Margaret that she not tell anyone about the pregnancy, effectively cutting her off from any possibility of support or care. David’s twisted hubris went so far as to forbid Margaret from giving birth. She tried to stop it, Margaret says, but it kept growing and David was no longer inspired.
Margaret gave birth on the bed of the man who owned her, inside and out, without her family, a doctor’s care, or pain medication. But, Margaret remembers, looking at her infant son, made all of the pain fade away — she now knew why she had been put on this earth.
Margaret named him Benjamin. For the next few weeks things were all right; “David didn’t pay much attention, but I cared for [Ben]…. I didn’t think I could love anything more than David.”
David Eats Ben
That his muse now had a muse of her own offended David. Although he had displayed no interest in his son, and though Margaret had never left Ben alone with him, when David asked her to go into town for supplies, Margaret did so.
It was the sort request that a tyrannized girl wouldn’t object to, or even question. The request may have even been wrapped up as the chance for an outing, a little time for herself. Or perhaps Margaret had been hopeful that David was finally warming up to their child.
Regardless, when Margaret returned from town, all that was left of her son were two of his tiny fingers, sitting on the counter like kitchen scraps. Margaret begged David to tell her what he’d done with the baby, but all David would say is that he’d eaten him up. David would say, over and over, “He’s in my belly now, Maggie.”
Margaret Escapes
After that, Margaret tells Gwyn, she wouldn’t get out of bed and stopped eating. She knew her baby was dead, but David would repeatedly insist that Ben was alive, inside of him. He would hideously torment Margaret, telling her that he could feel Ben moving, that he could hear him crying out for her.
David had demoralized Margaret so completely, he had shattered her sense of self and reality to such a degree that, after time Margaret too could hear the baby’s cries. She found cold comfort in the idea that, although Ben was trapped and suffering inside David, he was alive.
David tortured Margaret in this way for weeks, he wouldn’t allow Maggie to come near enough to listen for her baby until his demands were met. The brutality finally became too much for Margaret and there was nothing to do but run.
Margaret took David’s truck and some money and fled east, across America, where she thought David could never find her. How could she have known about the power of Google?
Margaret looks toward Gwyn, but only to arrogantly congratulate her. “I’ve never told anyone that in my life you should be honored.” Even though Gwyn is noticeably upset, Margaret continues, “I let him hurt me. I let him poison my brain with lies, and then I let him kill my child, and then I ran.”
Margaret doesn’t apologize for taking advantage of Gwyn and only offers a tepid “sorry” — admitting that she shouldn’t have said anything. To add insult to injury, Margaret tells Gwyn to “just go home and forget it ever happened.”
David Demands a Kindness
That night, thinking more about her interaction with David in the park, Margaret remembers that he mentioned “the boulevard.” It isn’t that Margaret has cleverly discovered a clue, she’s merely picked up David’s carefully placed bait that he knew would lead Margaret to The Boulevard Hotel. As well as Margaret thinks she knows David, he knows her better.
In the morning when Margaret drives to the hotel, she is just in time to see David walking across the street to a nearby diner. She follows him inside and watches.
Cafe Chat
Without surprise or hesitation, David addresses the woman he’d supposedly never met before with a comfortable and familiar, “Good morning Maggie. Take a seat darling.” Margaret is wary, but does as she’s told. David smiles, but only with his mouth and tells Margaret that she’s still beautiful.
Margaret fires back that he looks like shit and tells him to get out of town, now, otherwise she will do whatever she has to do.
David takes on a mollifying tone, “Relax. We’ll be fine. All of us. Me, you… Abbie.”
“Are you threatening my daughter?”
“Threaten?! God no. I don’t make threats. Seems to me you’re the one making threats at this table.”
“You’re goddamn right I am.”
David questions her about Abbie’s father. He already knows Margaret isn’t married. He wants to disturb Margaret. When she tells him that Abbie doesn’t have a father, David is sardonic, “Oh. Well, that’s quite a trick.”
“No it’s not.” With feigned nonchalance, but with her eyes held closed, Margret hurries through her reluctant confession. “I went to bars. I met men. It was easy.”
“Does she have your magic? You’re gifts?” He chuckles. “She’s certainly not a gifted cyclist, right?”
The only possible way David could have known about the accident was if he had been there. After all, he had been able to plant his extracted tooth in a high school student’s wallet — following her to a friend’s house would have been as easy as showing up in a park or a department store. Margaret informs David that she went to the police and that she could have him arrested at any time.
He calls her bluff. “Arrested? For what? Drinking tea in a diner or sitting in a park? What?” Margaret again asks why he’s there.
David is done with small talk. “Because, he’s still inside me. Here. Suffering. Every day he cries…he screams, ‘Where is Mother? Why did she abandon me?’” Shut up. “I tell him to let go. I say, ‘Your mother ran. She ran from her baby.’” No! Lies! David’s continues his barrage, “But he refuses, he just hangs on. I mean, he should hate you…”
Margaret falters, “You’re lying…”
“But he yearns for you.” The phrasing is odd, as an infant does not yearn for its mother. For all his cleverness, David is projecting his distorted feelings for Margaret onto the memory of her son.
“Insane fucking pig.”
David irately flings back, “You protest too much! I know you know. He’s alive. I’ve kept him so. I took good care. He’s here, you know, thanks to my charity. Any minute, I could change my mind. I could purge the boy — put him out of his fucking misery.”
“I thought you didn’t make threats.”
“Well, if the boy’s dead, where’s the threat?”
“What do you want?”
“I want… a kindness.” The word alone frightens Margaret. “It would be, I think right…” Continuing as if the thought only just occurred to him, “If from now, you didn’t drive to work. Instead, you walk. Barefoot. No shoes, no socks, you know, every day.”
“And then what, hmm? Then what?”
“I’m giving you a gift. You see that, right? Do this simple thing, and life goes on undisturbed.”
“Until the next thing, and the next, and the next. I know how this works.”
“No, no, no, no, I promise. You just do as I ask. You don’t follow me, you don’t meddle in my affairs, you just do this and I vanish.” He is setting up Maggie for failure just as he did twenty-two years ago, guaranteeing that the cycle of pain will always reset.
“You arrogant fucking…I don’t do what you say anymore. You understand? I don’t negotiate. I don’t take orders. I don’t look away.” Margaret’s lack of self-awareness here is unfortunate. “So whatever you think that you’re doing, it’ll fail. Because I’ll be there, ready. Come after me, come after my child, I swear to God, I will kill you.”
David leans forward and taunts her. “You kill me, you kill him.”
“There is no him.”
Fiendishly, David tells Margaret that he just wants her to be happy. With a show of being offended by Margaret’s ingratitude, David stands and pulls rumpled cash from his pocket and puts the contents down forcefully on the table.
The director ensures that Margaret (and the audience) take note of his room key with its bright red tag. “Barefoot. Every morning.” David snatches the key from the table. “We wouldn’t want any more accidents.” David’s threats may not be overt, but they are clearly understood.
Margaret Walks to Work
Margaret walks to her car in the parking garage the next morning. Every step is a refusal to comply with David’s absurd demand, but she looks around. Margaret knows that David isn’t lurking there, but she knows that he will be monitoring her. Margaret is annoyed by her shaken confidence, but takes off her shoes anyway and shoves them into her bag.
In spite of the distance, the “kindness” is one that she can hack. In the square out front her office building, Margaret surveys her surroundings and slips her shoes back on.
With impotent rage, Margaret shouts into the air, “Happy now, you piece of shit?! Now you disappear! Now you fucking disappear!”
Paranoid at Home
That evening, before sitting down to dinner with Abbie, Margaret firmly closes the drapes. Abbie says quietly that she thinks Margaret needs to see somebody. “Oh?” Margaret walks back to the sliding door and double-checks that it’s locked.
“I think you’re having an episode.” That Margaret has previously struggled with her mental health is a reminder for the audience that Margaret is unstable, implying that Margaret’s troubles are all in her mind. After all, the irrational woman is almost always the cause of her own turmoil.
Margaret tells Abbie that everything is fine and promises her that she has nothing to worry about. “That said, I’m gonna need you to help me out by being extra careful for a little bit.”
Abbie wants to know why. Margaret is reticent, only conceding that the man’s name is David and that he’s British. But Abbie is astute, pointing out that Margaret has never before mentioned any other British people at her work — a novelty she would surely have shared with Abbie.
Margaret gaslights her own daughter, telling Abbie that she’s sure she did.
The Boulevard
That night, while Abbie is asleep, Margaret heads to The Boulevard Hotel again. “Hotel” is dishonest; it’s more of a flophouse. The surly woman at the front desk tells Margaret that there’s no David Moore staying there, so Margaret rents a room for the night in order to get upstairs.
Despite her assertion that she knows what David is capable of, Margaret isn’t at all skeptical when she finds his door unlocked, nor is she incredulous when she discovers Ben’s baby blanket. As David is a man with no sentimentality, why would he have saved this bit of fabric for two decades? He kept it because he knew that, one day he could use it to punish and torment Margaret. There is no room for suspicion now.
Margaret sits on the floor, clutching the blanket and crying, when the woman from downstairs bursts through the door, shrieking like a banshee, “Get out!”
Fearful Dream
In her bed, Margaret falls asleep holding the blanket and dreams of her son. Ben is swathed in a bright, out-of-focus haze. He’s lying on his blanket on what appears to be a table or counter and in the background light, is an amorphous shadow.
As it slowly approaches Ben, the shadow is now an unidentifiable male presence. His arms reach toward the baby and Margaret lurches awake and gasping for air. Rushing into the bathroom, Margaret sees in the mirror that she seems to be lactating. It’s meant to be viewed as a hallucination, in spite of the fact that spontaneous lactation is a real thing.
Margaret is becoming more frantic. As she’s about to leave for work, she tries to get a response from Abbie who is still angry with Margaret. Through the closed door, Margaret loudly asks Abbie to text her, every hour on the hour, with a simple, OK. When Abbie still refuses to answer, Margaret resorts to bribery, offering Abbie twenty dollars per text. Margaret leaves and then we see Abbie, not sulking and resentful, but huddled on her bed, tucked into the corner and looking afraid.
Imagine David Dead
After another barefoot walk to work, Margaret changes clothes and goes back to the area of the shabby hotel. She hides nearby to spy on David. Once again Margaret’s timing is preternatural, and she’s just in time to see David walk away from the diner. Margaret carefully follows him until it’s grown dark. David has chosen to sit on a solitary bench under a traffic bridge, an easy body-dumping distance from the river. Only one street light illuminates the deserted spot.
Now that she knows where to find him, Margaret makes a dry run of her next move. The next afternoon Margaret returns to the bench. She thinks that she’s cleverly and stealthily outsmarted David, so there’s no chance he could be spying on her from a distance. Margaret stands behind the bench and pantomimes holding a gun toward the back of David’s head. Imagining the bullet shattering David’s skull is very satisfying to Margaret.
An Intervention
When Margaret returns home she is stunned to find Peter standing in her living room talking with Abbie. It’s an intervention. With no one else to turn to for help, Abbie had called to ask for his help.
Margaret is livid. “How dare you come to my house uninvited!” Peter justifies being there because Margaret hasn’t been to work in a week. He gently says that both he and Abbie are worried about her.
Margaret haughtily assures him that she’s “handling it,” although Abbie and Peter have no way of knowing what “it” even means.
“I’m doing what I have to do to protect myself and my daughter from harm!”
“What harm?” Peter wonders. Margaret snaps that it’s none of his business.
On his way toward the door, Peter tentatively offers Margaret the card a psychiatrist, enraging Margaret and she accuses him of overstepping. “I owe you nothing! I would do anything to protect my children!”
This is the first time Peter has heard anything about “children” and asks Margaret when was the last time she slept. He means well, but he’s fortunate that Margaret has nothing at hand to hurl at his head.
Abbie is left alone to confront her mother. She had called Margaret’s office and learned that a man named David Moore had never worked there. Forced into a corner, Margaret admits that David is someone from her past and that he’s dangerous, but Abbie accuses Margaret of trying to manipulate and control her, which she certainly has. Margaret’s inexplicable and erratic mental state has begun to traumatize Abbie and she no longer feels safe with her mother. Margaret promises Abbie that “it” will all be over tomorrow.
Attempted Murder
In the dark, back under the bridge, David sits on the same bench, resting his head back as it was in Margaret’s fantasy. Her approach is stealthy, but the sound of the pistol being pulled from her bag is clearly audible. As Margaret raises the gun with a quavering hand, David doesn’t move.
He says flatly, “You kill me, you kill him.”
Of course Margaret isn’t able to pull the trigger, hobbled as she is by David’s Svengali influence and the fact that she isn’t a cold-blooded psychopath. Margaret has played into David’s hands and an untenable dilemma. Since she lost her nerve to murder David, she resorts to the threat of murder. And, as irrational women do, Margaret puts herself in a worse position.
Holding the gun in her shaking hands, Margaret moves to face David, but she’s too close. He leaps forward and wrestles Margaret to the ground, wrenching the gun from her, and pulling them both toward the ground.
Can’t Kill Ben
He stands over Margaret and spins the gun’s cylinder. He smiles as he jokes, “Don’t move. I’ve got a gun.” He tells Margaret that the reason she couldn’t pull the trigger was because Ben was there, in David’s belly.
“He’s dead and you fucking killed him.”
“You know, he’s very upset that we’re arguing. Listen. Listen. You hear him cry? Shh. Listen. Can you hear?” He grabs Margaret by the hair and roughly presses her ear against him. The cajoling tone becomes an angry challenge. “Can you hear?”
Margaret sobs, “He’s dead.”
“Listen to your son.” From within the ambient noise of the traffic above, Margaret hears the faint wail of a baby.
“He can’t understand why you allowed this to happen. Why you let him get hurt.” David is a mental and emotional sadist. Even if she could grasp that David just admitted that he had killed the baby, she’s powerless now.
David twists the knife with abominable cruelty. “What kind of mother abandons her child when he needed her most? Are you going to fail him Maggie? Again?” David pauses. “Is Ben inside me?”
Margaret tries to spit up at David in defiance. “Stay away from my daughter.”
A New Kindness
“She’s just a substitute.” David shoves Margaret away. “I held up my end. But you, you followed me, you tried to kill me, in breach of our deal. I think… I think this calls for a kindness.” He demands that Margaret be in the nearby park from 2:00 am until dawn, and to “assume the position.”
“Go near [Abbie], I’ll kill you.”
“If you want to keep her safe, then you do as I ask. It’s that simple. I hold up my end, Maggie. Always have.” He carelessly brandishes the gun and warns, “This is not the time for recklessness.”
He walks away, leaving Margaret on the ground. She repeats softly to herself, “I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you.”
Abbie Leaves
All sense of time has been obliterated. There’s no telling how long Margaret has been sitting on the floor of her living room resting her against the couch. She hasn’t been eating or sleeping and she looks ghastly. Abbie calls to Margaret from where she’s standing, holding her packed bags.
Delirious, Margaret wishes her happy birthday. Abbie tells her mother not to come after her and not to call. “Baby, I fucked up. I just left him there… with that man. I should burn in hell for what I did.”
“Go to the doctor. You’ll be okay.”
The front door closes behind Abbie and Margaret finally understands what’s happening and chases after Abbie. Abbie flees to the Lyft and jumps into the car and it speeds away.
Margaret doubles over panting as if she’s about to be sick, but then she notices Peter watching from the doorway of a nearby building. Every ounce of misplaced rage has been unlocked.
Margaret mutters, “motherfucker” before rushing at Peter like a Fury. Margaret violently tackles him to the sidewalk and accuses him of spying on her. She stands and punches Peter squarely across the face. She angrily berates him; her children are in danger and she doesn’t have time for his bullshit.
Peter is sympathetic but not strong — the polar opposite of David. Still on the ground, Peter says to Margaret that she’s sick and needs help. And that he’s in love with her.
Margaret’s disdain is blunt, “Fucking men. You can’t stick your dick into anything without deciding if you love it or hate it.” She grabs his collar and pulls him closer. “You don’t love me, you just annoy me. Impede my mission once more and I’ll beat you until you’re dead.”
The Mission
Margaret goes back home to prepare for the next step in her mission. But now she’s weak from lack of food and sleep and collapses. It’s dark when she regains consciousness.
She leaves a desperate voicemail for Abbie and then goes to the park. As a kindness to David, Margaret holds a near impossible stress pose until dawn.
David Visits Work
A few hours later Margaret goes through the motions of dressing for work. Her coworkers look on as she walks to her office looking unkempt and wrecked. As she sits at her desk, barely aware of her surroundings, Margaret gets a call from reception to inform her that there’s a man there to see her.
Peter and Gwyn watch through the glass walls of Margaret’s office. Once again, the director purposely offers no visual or verbal clue as to the reason for their concern. Are they worried for Margaret’s declining mental state as she sits alone, or are they wondering about the stranger sitting across from her? It’s another misdirection meant to remind the audience that David Moore may not actually exist.
David begins with calculated small talk, asking about Margaret’s choice of Ballion as her chosen surname, rather than keeping her real name of Walsh. “Margaret Mary Walsh. It’s a fine name.”
He makes sure that Margaret knows how clever he is for hunting her down in spite of her new identity. That point made, he moves on. “So tell me, how was it last night? They still work don’t they — the kindnesses. Ease the pain. Quiet the noise. Make you proud.” Margaret sits quietly without looking at him and David smiles, pleased with himself.
He tells Margaret that he’s the only one in the world who truly understands her and knows what she’s capable of. David reminds Margaret that he’s the only one who can see the hole in her heart. But of course, he can, he’s the one who inflicted the damage.
“This… life,” he continues, “this character that you’ve created, Ballion, did you think that she would fill it? Did you think that this job would fill it? You made a daughter to fill the hole, but even that didn’t work because nothing will heal you. Nothing except him.”
His tone softens and he instructs Margaret, “Come to this room tonight. Ten o’clock.. It’s been 22 years, Maggie. Be with your son.” Never once has David referred to Ben as “his” or “ours.”
Helping Gwyn
At the end of the day, Margaret is still at her desk and holding Ben’s blanket to her face. When Gwyn enters, Margaret surreptitiously pushes it into her bag. Tomorrow will be Gwyn’s last day and she wants to check in again regarding the promised reference letter.
Margaret asks, “You haven’t seen that guy again have you? The asshole?” Gwyn says she hasn’t and Margaret praises her strength. After their last encounter, Gwyn gets nervous and tries to leave, but Margaret stops her and states, “I helped.” Then it becomes a question. “I helped right? I helped you with…things.” Gwyn tells Margaret what she needs to hear. “Good. I’ll make sure your letter is glowing.”
The Final Battle
As she promised Abbie, Margaret is planning to end the nightmare.
That evening, Margaret records a video for Abbie, telling her that if she’s watching it, something went wrong. Margaret tells Abbie that she had written her a letter, years ago, that explains the entire truth about all that had happened to her. Margaret apologizes for lying, for hiding the truth, for being unable to make everything okay.
“I hope you understand why I needed to do what I did. And if you don’t, I’m sorry. But I know that when you have children of your own, you’ll understand. When you become a mother, your own life doesn’t mean so much anymore. You become disposable.”
Meeting in David’s Hotel Room
At 10:30 that night, Margaret arrives at the nice hotel room David has rented for their meeting. He opens the door and looks genuinely pleased to see her. He says, “So glad you could come by” as if it had been an invitation and not an immutable request. Soft, romantic music plays in the background. All is staged for David to reward Margaret with his praise and affection once again.
Margaret enters the room and David locks the door. “You look wonderful.” (She looks terrible.) Then he glances out the window to the river and makes a joke about having a room with a view. (Surely a reference to EM Forrester’s novel of the same name.) “I got some wine. Do you want a glass?”
Margaret asks, “Where is it?”
“Hmm?”
“The gun. Show it to me.”
“It’s in the river. No more of that now. I got you a little something.”
He places an envelope on the bed, taps it, and backs away to sit on a chair by the table in the middle of the room. It was as if he set down a bit a food for a stray animal and then backs away to gain its trust.
Recollecting First Meeting
In the envelope, Margaret finds an old, folded piece of paper. It’s not exactly a drawing, there’s no discernible image, only hundreds of tiny circles, some filled in, some outlined, placed carefully on common graph paper.
“I saved it for you. I remember you were drawing that when I first laid eyes on you, on the beach. Every morning, there you’d be on that beach with your pad, no matter the weather, working for hours on that same drawing. You didn’t know I was watching you.”
“Oh, I knew. I always knew.”
“Of course, you always could see right through me.” Not a gracious nod to her shrewd perception, only muffled sarcasm.
“Just watched and watched. Never said anything. And then there you were, at our place, getting my parents shit-faced on that disgusting homemade wine. It was very clever, what you did. You knew exactly what you wanted.”
David’s smile disappears as he nods in agreement. “Yeah… But so did you.”
“I was a child. A stupid child. And you just kept coming over and over,” becoming angrier with every syllable.
“But then one night, there you were, at my door — and within minutes, a world that had seemed so cruel, so disordered, became… immaculate.”
David’s tone, his expression, his body language convey the underlying sentiment of, “You’re welcome.”
He continues reminiscing, before decreeing, “That time, that life we made was… holy. It was perfect.” David could mean the life they lived together, whereas, to Margaret, the perfect life they made was Ben.
“God, Maggie, I’ve missed you so much.” David takes a long pause for effect. Then he sighs and pretends to be nearly overcome by these sentiments before dimming the lights.
Reintroducing Ben
He sits on the foot of the bed next to Margaret and tells her in a hushed voice, “We’ve both missed you, Maggie.” He whispers to Margaret, “He’s awake. He’s moving. Would you like to feel?” David leans back on his hands, presenting his paunch. “Come here,” David coaxes, “it’s okay.”
Margaret seems repulsed, yet slowly reaches out her hand, placing it on David’s belly. David is an unrelenting sadist. He guides Margaret, “There. Feel his little hand reaching out for you? Hmm? You wanna talk to him?”
David covers her hand with his. “He can hear you. It’s all right.” David firmly presses against her hand. “Nothing will happen. I promise.”
“Ben…?” Margaret gasps and recoils, trying to pull her hand away.
“It’s okay. He says hello. Put your hand right here. He needs you, Maggie. Do you want to say hello? To your son? Hmm?”
Maggie nods. “Say hello to your boy,” David says, as if he’s guiding Margaret toward some psychological breakthrough.
“Hi…Baby. My baby.” It’s reminiscent of Hall’s movie, The Awakening, in which her character debunks charlatans who also preyed on grieving mothers.
“Tell him how you feel. Anything you want. He’s here.”
Margaret falters, “Ben. Ben, I…I’m sorry. I’m sorry for…for being a bad mom.” Margaret begins to sob
David tells Margaret, “He forgives you,” as he draws her into his consoling arms.
David appears compassionately concerned and, over Margaret’s desperate sobs he says, “He loves you.”
Having broken her down into complete submission, David is now prepared to lavish Margaret with affection and he rocks her gently back and forth. “You’re forgiven. You’re forgiven.”
Those words release twenty-two years of repressed agony and Margaret sobs violently. Breathing raggedly, Margaret says, “Oh David. David, he’s alive? He’s alive. Inside you….”
“Yes.”
Concern for Ben
With this unequivocal affirmation of her son’s existence, Margaret’s concern for her son surfaces, “…and suffering!
“No, no, no. He’s happy now,” David cajoles. “He’s happy now. You’re here. He knows that you love him.
Margaret is firm. “He needs to be fed. He needs to be held. He needs his mother.” David denies every assertion as Margaret speaks them. Margaret stands.
“He has his mother! You’re right here with him. You just… You need to relax.”
“I failed him.”
“No, no, he loves you.”
“I left him, and you put him inside.”
“I had no choice, you know that.” He had no choice but to kill the baby? Why? “But I brought him back here to you.” David expects Margaret to accept the weaponized memory of Ben as a gift.
With bitter sarcasm, Margaret thanks David for bringing him back. “I have him now. And he has me. And I think…I think, that we don’t need you anymore.” Margaret pulls a serrated steak knife that she had duct taped to her forearm.
The Fight
David is surprised and alarmed. “What are you doing, Maggie?” He tries to convince Margaret to sit back down so they can talk.
“I will do anything for my children!” Margaret brings down the knife with forced, slicing David’s ear.
David attempts to regain control. “You need to calm down. Baby’s crying. He doesn’t like that we’re angry.”
Margaret steps closer again and raises the knife to strike David a second time. David holds out his hand, pleading with the sound of panic in his voice, “No. No, please! Let’s just talk. Let’s just talk…”
He lunges and tackles Margaret, landing on top of her and forcefully takes the knife from her hand. “Don’t move or I’ll stab you in the fucking neck.”
David gets to his feet and drops to sit on the bed. “Why?! Why did you do that?!,” he shouts. “I can’t fathom this. I came to you with the greatest gift, and this is what you do?! Without me, there is no him. Can’t you see that? We’re one and we love you!”
As she listens, Margaret watches David and carefully positions herself into a sitting position against the dresser. She pulls up her pant leg to reveal a second knife duct taped to her calf.
“Stop that, Maggie!” His voice quivers, “No more. Just… Stay where you are.”
Margaret is about to attack when David stands up to reason with her, “Drop it! Just…” David leaps forward, grabs Margaret by the shoulders and pins her against the wall. But the knife is still firmly in her grasp and she stabs David in the side of his belly.
Using the knife that he’d wrested from her, David plunges it into the back of Margaret’s shoulder. She falls to the floor, seething with rage. David stumbles back, partially seated on the bed. He watches Margaret crawl toward him in spite of her painful injury.
Breathless and bleeding from his wounds, David begs, “No, Maggie. Please, no more. No more. We need to go to a hospital. Together we can do it.” Margaret continues to drag herself toward him. “We can fix this. We can fix this, Maggie.”
Margaret collapses with her hand on David’s foot. Confused and on the verge of passing out, David says, with apparent genuine concern, “ Oh, God, someone’s hurt you. But I’ll save you. I’ll save you.” Dr Jekyll, promising to protect her from Mr Hyde.
Holding onto David’s leg, Margaret pulls her head up to the point that she can look up at him. David mistakes this for supplication. “We can be family.”
Still holding David’s leg, Margaret pulls the steak knife from her shoulder and slices through the tendon of David’s ankle. He shrieks in agony and slips off the bed to the floor. Margaret struggles to her feet and staggers over to the phone next to the bed, and detaches its long cord.
She ties David’s hands to a leg of the bed, his arms extended over his head. David pleads in earnest, “Maggie please. You’re murdering your own son. God it stinks! It stinks in here.” It’s baffling, perhaps he shit himself. David lashes out spitefully, telling Margaret that she’s a terrible mother.
“I am a good mother.”
“You’re a murderer,” he says. Margaret straddles him. He says, “You kill me, you kill him.”
“Then I’ll have to do it while you’re alive.” Margaret yanks the knife from his side and pulls open David’s shirt. Not listening to his pleas for her to stop, Margaret stabs the knife into David’s body.
Now barely conscious, David murmurs, “It’s not my fault. I just did what you wanted. I would have done anything. Because I see you, Maggie. I see you.” With his last, quiet breath carry away the words, “I see you.”
Saving Ben
Margaret is panting from the exertion of cutting David’s body open. She carefully reaches her hands into the gaping, blood-filled cavity, but she can’t feel what she’s searching for.
Snarling and enraged, Margaret rips open David’s abdomen and frantically pulls intestines out, dropping them onto the floor. Margaret pauses, her face calm and relieved. Nestled inside David is a tiny newborn.
Margaret smiles and whispers, “Hey you.” Margaret gently lifts out the baby. “It’s good to see you again,” she whispers sweetly. Sighing with relief, Margaret whispers to Ben, “I saved you.”
Margaret kneels near David’s mutilated corpse. Her stooped back hinders our view, but she is cradling something in her arms, something she imagines to be Benjamin. The horrifying truth is that Margaret is likely holding David’s heart.
Epilogue
Suddenly, we’re back in Margaret’s sunny apartment. Abbie zips a bag closed and smiles as she surveys her emptied room and then walks into the warm glow of Margaret’s room.
“I’m all packed.” Margaret is sitting up in bed, as if she’s convalescing. Margaret looks refreshed and lovely with Ben, swaddled in her arms. Margaret asks Abbie if she’d like to hold him, as if Abbie has come to visit her in the maternity ward and Margaret is handing him to his sister for the first time.
Margaret’s happiness is palpable seeing Abbie and Ben there next to her bed. Margaret kisses her fist once again and Abbie leans down to meet her mother’s gently placed knuckles. Perhaps it’s a cruel-to-be-kind metaphor?
“Thanks, Mom.” She carries Ben out toward the hallway, talking playfully to the baby.
Abbie calls to her mom from the doorway. “I just wanted to tell you, I’m not scared anymore. You made everything okay. So, I’m not scared.” The very words of gratitude that Margaret has yearned to hear. She is a good mother.
As Abbie speaks, their voices become slightly muffled, almost as if they’re underwater. Margaret smiles at Abbie, almost coyly before the colors desaturate into cold grays. Margaret turns her face, looking at us with a fixed gaze. Like the colors of the world around her, Margaret’s smile fades and tears well in her eyes. Just as everything goes black, Margaret gasps.
Meaning of the Last Scene
It’s clear that this nightmare is the culmination of the full psychotic break brought on by her deadly confrontation with David. Margaret reawakens into hopeless darkness and with the realization that David was right — without him there is no Ben.
While Margaret could be easily (and wrongly) blamed for razing her own life, ultimately it was David’s machinations that destroyed them both.