Ellison
“Everyone has a job,” I say. “This happens to be mine.”
My feet dangle off the dock, and my big toe barely skims the water. There’s been a drought, and the water level is down. Typically, I could cool my entire foot in the large pond, but this isn’t my lucky day. It’s been a week since the press conference, and my parents have mellowed out enough that I finally felt comfortable asking for permission to visit Henry. They, of course, said yes, making me feel silly for waiting as long as I did.
Henry sits beside me and messes a towel over his dark brown hair that’s cut close to his scalp. He jumped into the dark water. I didn’t. My thoughts are too complex for me to be wet, too heavy for me to float, and I sort of have an irrational fear of drowning.
“That’s the point, Elle.” Henry dries off the skull tattooed on his biceps. My father hates that tattoo with a passion. “Most seventeen-year-olds are flipping burgers, working retail or serving ice cream. They ask if you want sprinkles on top or fries with an order. They aren’t fleecing grown men for money, and they aren’t living in hell posing for pictures.”
I’m two hours away from my home in Lexington and at our grandmother’s farm so I can soak in whatever time I can with Henry. He’s stateside for now, but for how long, he has no idea. But that’s how the army works—one day you’re here, the next day you’re gone. As long as Henry keeps returning and what he does makes him happy, I’m okay with what my parents consider his bad employment choice.
“Dramatic much?” I nudge my dry arm against Henry’s wet one. When he nudges me back, drops of water he hadn’t toweled off fall on to my tan shorts and dark green lace tank. “You make what I do sound so scandalous.”
The wind ruffles the leaves on the trees surrounding the pond, and the sound is like millions of people clapping at my witty comeback.
I love this place. It’s one of the lone spaces in the world that seems to get me. I love the towering oaks, the old worn wood of the dock and the even older tiny and broken farmhouse at the top of the hill. My father’s family has owned that house and this land since 1770-something. The Monroes are rooted in Kentucky, so deep there isn’t a back strong enough to yank us out.
“Scandalous.” Henry throws the towel over his bare shoulder, and I can’t help but notice how he resembles my father’s side of the family. Dark hair, dark eyes, chiseled jaw and sharp features. Someone who people automatically pay attention to and respect when they walk in the room. “I think scandalous is a good word for when you hate what you do.”
“Hate’s a strong word.”
“Are you changing your mind and telling me you enjoy what you do? That you like being the belle of the ball at your dad’s fund-raisers?”
No, but... “I do get a very awesome allowance, and Dad bought me a car. Mom and Dad told me to think of working the campaign trail and going to the fund-raisers as a part-time job with great perks.”
“Doesn’t change that you hate it.”
“I have a feeling I’d also hate handing out Happy Meals and wiping down tables finger-painted in profanity with ketchup. And last I heard, they only pay minimum wage.”
Henry cocks his head in agreement, but he’s worse than a dog with a bone. “But it does rip out a piece of your soul each time you pose for the camera.”
What he’s saying is true. I’ve been helping my father on the campaign trail and fund-raisers for the past two years. I don’t do much besides smile, nod, make polite and useless conversation and look pretty in photos.
To prepare for these functions, my mother and her stylists fix me up, and I’m transformed from plain me to the girl people enthusiastically stand in line to take pictures with. It’s unsettling when someone changes me from who I am to someone I’m not, so when I glance in the mirror it’s like falling through the looking glass to another side of me that shouldn’t exist.
In my bedroom at home, I’m glasses, jeans and my hair is up in a ponytail. Outside of my room, I’m wearing the latest fashions, in full contact mode, and people feel the need to tell me things that are so cheesy that it’s physically painful to not roll my eyes. They’ll tell me I have hair so golden it must have been hand spun, have blue eyes that rival the ocean and possess a beauty so unusual that even grown men can’t help but stare at me longer than should be legally allowed.
People look, but they never see me.
“Being on the campaign trail isn’t so bad.” It’s an honest answer. “Sometimes it’s awesome. How many seventeen-year-olds can say they’re helping to change the world? Besides, it’s just for one more year. After I graduate, Mom and Dad promised I can quit working on the campaigns to focus on college, which they are paying for.”
My parents aren’t stupid, rolling-in-it rich, but before my father was elected to office, my father’s medical practice did well enough, and Dad had saved for my education. They saved for Henry’s education as well, but he left school one week after returning to Harvard for his junior year.
Henry came home and had a fight with my father that was so loud my mother whisked me away from the house. When we returned, Henry was gone, only to reappear three months later after joining the army.
Mom and Dad had never been so angry. Mom cried, and Dad wouldn’t speak to anyone. When he finally did, he mumbled about how Henry was one of the most intelligent people he knew and that he had trashed his entire future. Mom and Dad were miserable. They fought, we fought, I cried and they cried, and I hid in my room.
Henry was twenty-one, I was fifteen, and sometimes it still feels like yesterday. Even after all these years, Henry’s relationship with Mom and Dad is strained, and I’m my family’s version of a United Nations Peacekeeping Delegation.
“Fine,” he says. “Working on the campaigns is a fast-food job on crack, but what do you call the fund-raisers?”
I smile then, and it’s only about ten percent bitter. “It’s called working for the family business.”
My cousin turns his head to look at me. “Is that what the cool kids are calling it now?”
He can be such a pain in the butt. “If Dad owned a restaurant, would you give me a hard time if I was a waitress?”
“Your dad doesn’t own a restaurant.”
“If I worked in his medical practice, would you give me a hard time?”
“It’s not his medical practice now. He put his part of the practice in a trust while he’s in office. But let’s say the practice was still his, then yes, I would pay you a hundred dollars I don’t have if you told me you were working for your dad’s medical practice.”
“Liar.”
Hand in the air as if swearing on a Bible. “Honest truth.”
“You don’t like me working for Dad.”
“No, I don’t like you raising money and campaigning for him. If he wants a life in politics, that’s his choice, but he should have never dragged you into it.”
I sigh, because I hate this cyclical conversation we’re wasting our precious time having when we already don’t see each other nearly enough. When Henry was ten, his parents died, and my dad took him in and raised him as his son. Henry’s my blood cousin, but I love him like a brother, and he loves me back with the same ferociousness.
“I’m seriously sick and tired of explaining this to you. This is a family business. Dad doesn’t have enough money to finance his own campaign, which means we need donors, and I’m good at asking for money.”
“Then work for commission at a sales job. I got a friend who owns a car lot—”
I cut him off. “When I was eleven, Dad asked both of us if we were okay with him running for governor, and we both said yes. I was sitting next to you on the couch, and you were excited about the idea.”
Henry’s only response is to glower at the water, and I’m currently mad enough that I’m perfectly content with a monologue. “He asked me last year if I was okay with him running for the US Senate seat, and I said yes again. He made it perfectly clear that his involvement in politics was going to have an effect on me, that there would be media pressure, and I don’t care. Dad is a good man, and he is doing great things. Our country needs more people like him.”
“Does your dad have any idea how playing perfect for him tears you up?”
I don’t want to answer because I’m not just playing perfect for the public. I also might not be mentioning to Mom and Dad how uncomfortable the fund-raisers make me. But I do like being useful to Dad, and I do like knowing that helping him is helping those in need. So I go for a nonanswer. “In case you haven’t noticed, Dad is doing a fantastic job with this state. We’re ranking higher in education. Our unemployment rate is the lowest in years...”
“Nine out of ten house dogs sleep more during the day.”
Evil side glare on my part.
“Numbers and percentages are just that—theoretical things people assign whatever value they want to it. You gotta remember there are real humans behind the numbers.”
“I know that.”
“Do you?” he shoots back, and any worthy comeback I would have had with anyone else dies on the tip of my tongue. I will not strike verbal blades into someone who willingly places his life on the line to protect my freedom.
But that doesn’t mean I won’t give up. I’m too competitive for my own good, and then I have this stupid pride that I can’t seem to shake. “I only attend a handful of fund-raisers a year, and they aren’t nearly as bad as you think.”
Yes, at the fund-raisers I have a list of people to go around and make pleasant conversation with. Yes, I take pictures with donors who have asked for a few minutes of time with me because I’m the pretty daughter of the governor. Yes, I smile a lot when I don’t feel like smiling. Yes, I pretend to be someone I’m not for the span of a few hours to make others happy.
Yes, I usually end up going home exhausted and feeling like I’m an alien in my own body because I spent the entire evening impersonating whoever it is a perfect governor’s daughter should be. Yes, I may have called Henry crying about a particular tough fund-raiser, and he hasn’t let that lapse in judgment slip.
“Your dad uses you, and your mom isn’t much better.”
His harsh words cause me to flinch, and I stare at the glimmering water below to help calm the anger simmering beneath my muscles. Maybe if Dad and Henry sat here by the water together they could work things out. “What happened between you and Dad?”
Like the hundreds of other times I’ve asked, Henry stays coldly silent.
“Whatever it is,” I say, “whatever may have happened, you know it won’t change how I feel about you.”
Henry, of course, ignores me. “I wouldn’t be pushing you so hard if you were happy.”
“I am happy.”
“Because they tell you that you are and you believe them.”
Anger snaps so loudly within me I’m surprised the ground beneath us didn’t tremble. “Explain to me what I have to be unhappy about?”
“You angry now?” he pushes.
“Angry?” My mind is spinning. “Is that what you want?”
The light in his eyes is nearly my undoing. “Yes. You’re at your best angry.”
Mom and Dad say I’m at my worst. “I have a family who built a prominent medical practice, who owns a beautiful home, a mother who adores me, a cousin who loves me, friends, a fantastic school, and I have one of the world’s best fathers. My father listens to me. In fact, he listens to everyone. He gives a voice to the voiceless with the laws he’s been enacting. I know you and Dad have your issues, but he’s a great man, and I won’t let you tell me differently. How’s that for angry? And so you know, you don’t get to push your problems on to me.”
The ice in his eyes drops the temperature surrounding the pond twenty degrees. He loves me, I know this, and if he is able to look at me with his current expression, then I can’t imagine being his enemy. “You’re happy?”
“Yes.”
“You have everything?”
“Yes.”
“Then why did you sign their name on the permission slip so you could remain a finalist for the internship?”
I seriously need to stop telling him things.
Birds chirp in the background during our silence. I don’t know how to explain to him how much Mom and Dad love me. I don’t know how to explain that when they see me, they see all the horrible things that went wrong in their lives and how they want me to have and do better. “Mom and Dad are overprotective.”
“I think you mean controlling. You’re not twelve. You’re not fourteen. I bought that bull protective story then, but I’m done buying it now.”
When I was young enough to believe in fantastical worlds beyond my own, Henry would tell me stories of how the beams of sun shining off the pond were really millions of tiny fairies waving hello, and if I swam underwater fast enough I could catch one.
The story was great until one day I swam under the water too deep for too long. After he saved me and I had coughed up half the pond, Henry broke the news to me it was a made-up story.
As long as I can remember, Henry has been my guardian angel. Watching over me at every turn. But as Mom explained to me, Henry has his own issues. Losing his parents greatly affected who he has become: protective of me, but rebellious of Mom and Dad.
It makes sense. I was never a replacement, but he saw my parents as trying to be permanent substitutes. Mom said Henry once accused them of trying to wipe out his parents’ memory. Nothing could be further from the truth.
I love Henry, more than he can imagine, but since Henry left home, he has tried to make life a battle with him on one side and Mom and Dad on the other. Can’t he see we’re all on the same side?
I suck in a deep breath and readjust so I’m facing him. “Sometimes I have bad days, but that doesn’t mean I’m unhappy. Do I love being on the campaign trail? No. But they do pay me for it, and it helps Dad. Do I love the fund-raising? No. But I love Dad. If he knew the fund-raising was tough on me, he’d never let me to do it. I believe in him, plus he’s my dad. I don’t help him because he’s using me or forcing me. I do it because I want to help.”
Henry shakes his head as if he’s disgusted. “Then what was that phone call a few weeks ago?”
“It was a bad day. If you’re going to freak out every time I have a bad day and call to talk, then I’ll stop calling.”
A twitch in his jaw informs me he doesn’t like that solution. “I just want you to be happy.”
“I know.” Because he loves me.
Henry rubs his neck, and when he looks over at me the sadness in his eyes causes a lump in my throat. “I promise I’ll listen better and keep some of my opinions to myself. Just do me a favor. Don’t shut me out, okay?”
“I won’t.”
“Then tell me the truth about you and this Pierce guy.”
My head falls back and I groan. “There is nothing going on between me and Drix.”
Would I love for there to be something between me and Drix? Yes. Is there something between me and Drix? No, and he made it perfectly clear in my kitchen that he would be keeping a safe six foot distance from me at all times. Am I still hoping that maybe we can be friends? Yes, because I like Drix. Talking with him was easy and there isn’t a lot easy in my life.
“Nothing?” Henry pushes.
“Nothing.”
“That picture on TV made it look like you were into him and he was into you.”
“Can I borrow your knife? I sort of want to stab you.”
Hands in the air. “All right. Consider me backed off. Want a grilled cheese sandwich?”
I laugh because that’s the only thing my cousin knows how to cook. “I would love a grilled cheese sandwich.”
“Then let’s go.” He stands, offers me his hand to help me up, and the two of us walk barefoot in the grass toward the small house where my dad used to live.