Chapter Twenty-Eight - Chella
I have no clue what’s happening right now, but my mouth is hanging open in shock. What did he just say? I blink my eyes hard three times and then look over at my father.
He’s scowling. And shaking his head at me. “Well, Chella, if you were trying to challenge me tonight, you certainly succeeded.”
“Don’t look at her,” Smith says. “Look at me. I’m the one talking to you.”
Oh, my God.
The gaze my father drags over to Smith is nothing short of pure disgust. “You’re no longer a part of this conversation, Mr. Baldwin. This is a family matter between my daughter and me. So you can either sit here and keep quiet or you can leave. Those are your options.”
Smith opens his mouth but I grab his arm. “Smith,” I say softly. “Just let him talk. Please.”
Smith doesn’t stop staring at my father but he does stay quiet.
“Daddy, why are you here? You told me two weeks ago you weren’t coming for Christmas so I made other plans. I don’t mind rescheduling for you. You know that. But it’s rude to ask for this last minute.”
My father inhales deeply though his nose. He’s still a very handsome man. But it’s a very curated kind of handsome. Daily sessions with a private trainer, his fingernails are perfectly manicured, his hair gets attention from the best DC barbers. His hair is almost pure silver—at least he doesn’t dye it. And his skin has been smoothed by a plastic surgeon.
Smith is polished. Very much so. But he’s not perfect in any way. He’s always got a flaw on display. Like tonight. His hair is kind of wild. Not the neat slicked-back look he usually wears.
I like it. I like the mess.
“You may not be aware of this, Marcella, but I haven’t dated since your mother passed three years ago.”
Jesus Christ. That’s what this is about? Two conversations about my mother in one day? Just what the fuck?
“But I’ve met someone.” My father stops to clear his throat. “She’s… twenty-three.”
Smith’s laugh is loud, but short. Kind of a classic Ha!
“I see.” That’s about all I have to say about that.
“I just wanted to let you know I’m moving on in life.”
“OK,” I say. “But I don’t know why you felt this deserved an unannounced face-to-face meeting. Is there more to this? Like, is she pregnant?”
Another incredulous burst from Smith. My father glares at him.
“She is,” my father says.
“Well, that explains the accusation you just lobbed at Chella,” Smith interjects, unable to stay quiet any longer. “Feeling guilty much, Senator?”
My father ignores him. “We’re getting married next week. You’re not invited and I didn’t want you to hear about it on the news.”
I wait for the stab of pain. The kind that comes from betrayal, but there’s nothing there in my heart. Just a few weeks ago I’d be devastated by this announcement. But now? I shake my head at my father. No. He has no power over me anymore.
“I came here to say goodbye, Chella. To the life you were part of. To your mother. I loved her once and I hope she’s found her peace in death. But I can’t—won’t—be trapped in that life any longer. I’m moving on.”
The three of us sit there in silence for several seconds.
Is there anything left to say?
“Are you finished?” Smith asks, his voice low and calm.
My father just looks at me, frowning. “I hope he’s the one, I really do, Chella. He’s pretty much what you deserve.” He drags his eyes over to Smith who stands up and extends his hand to me. “I know who you are, Mr. Baldwin.”
“Good,” Smith says. “Let’s go, Chella. I don’t think there’s anything left to say.”
I take his hand and draw in a deep breath as I stand up, looking down at my father. “I’m sorry I was never the daughter you felt you deserved. And I hope this new family gives you what you need.”
I don’t say goodbye. It’s not even necessary. I just let Smith lead me through the restaurant. We collect our coats and wait for the valet to bring my car in silence. I let him drive us home. And when we’re sealed up tight inside the dark garage, with nothing but the sound of silence between us, he sighs and says, “I’m so fucking sorry.”
I open my door and get out. Smith does the same.
“Don’t be sorry,” I say as we walk to the door of the house. “This has been coming for a very long time.”
Smith opens the door and places a hand on the small of my back, ushering me inside. He drops my keys on the table where I usually keep them. The lights are all on, like he left in a hurry. And when I walk through to the kitchen, I notice just how much of this place already belongs to him.
“Do you want me to call Bric for you?” Smith asks.
I shake my head and start climbing the stairs.
“Chella,” Smith calls after me.
I just keep climbing.
“Chella?” Smith calls again.
I guess if he had something to say, I might stop and listen. But he’s speechless. And my name isn’t enough to pull me back from this… this darkness.
When I get to the top floor I start taking off my clothes. I hang up the dress, slip on a white bathrobe, and start the water for the tub.
Smith is standing in the doorway of my room. Not in, not out, but between.
“What?” I ask him as I go looking for a bubble bomb in my closet. “Just say what’s on your mind and then get out. I don’t want to talk about it and I don’t want company tonight. Go back to the Club and leave me alone.”
I find what I need and go back into the bathroom. Smith is in that doorway before I can close it up. Whatever. If he wants to gawk at me while I take a bath, who cares?
I drop the bubble bomb in the hot rushing water and stand there watching them form. When I’m satisfied with their progress I drop my robe and step in. It’s hot, but not hot enough to keep me from sinking down and going under.
I let the calm thunder of the water drown out my life on the other side, close my eyes, and relax.
He can’t hurt me. He cannot hurt me.
And he didn’t. I feel so much nothing inside my heart, there’s an echo in there.
I sit up and rub the water out of my eyes so I can open them.
Smith is still standing in the bathroom doorway. We stare at each other for a few seconds and then he says, “Do you know why I liked you so much?”
“When?” I ask. “When did you like me so much?”
“That first night. After I took you home I looked you up on the internet.”
“Oh,” I say, looking away.
“There’s not much about you online. Before you took this job at the gallery, anyway. There’s plenty about you recently. But it’s the stuff that came before that intrigued me.”
“I’m not talking about it.“
“Just listen to me, Chella. OK?”
I shrug and start playing with the thick, frothy white bubbles.
“When I found all the gaps in your childhood I was excited.”
I give him a sidelong glance from the corner of my eye. “Why?”
“Because my childhood is the same way. Did you look me up, Chella? On the internet?”
I nod. “Yes.”
“And what did you find?”
“Not much.” I shrug.
“Don’t you think that’s kinda cool?”
When I glance up at him this time, he’s smiling. “What’s cool about it?”
“That we were both secrets.”
Secrets.
“I don’t know if that’s true about you, but I was a secret. My parents couldn’t have children. They tried for years and years. They considered a surrogate, adoption, all that IVF stuff. And just when they were about to give up, my mother got pregnant. She was forty-three years old.”
I sit up in the tub, unable to curb my curiosity, and stare at him as he talks. He’s still smiling, like all of this is a happy memory.
“And even though they did all the tests and they came back with good news—their child was normal. Perfect—I wasn’t, Chella. I wasn’t even close to perfect.”
“What do you mean?” I ask, looking down at my bubbles again. “You look pretty perfect to me.”
“Well, that’s the thing,” he replies softly. “Perfect on the outside is only half the story, right?”
I swallow hard and nod at him. “What happened? With your parents?”
He’s frowning when I look up. Shoving his hands in his pockets as he leans against the doorjamb. “They sent me away. To special schools.”
“But there’s nothing wrong with you, Smith. Why did they send you away?”
He sighs, but it doesn’t come out like regret. Or sadness. Maybe resignation. “I didn’t talk until I was four. And then no one could understand me. Language was hard. It didn’t make much sense. And even when it did start making sense and the words came out, I stuttered so bad, it didn’t matter. They still couldn’t understand me.”
I draw my legs up and hug them to my chest. “How old were you? When they sent you away?”
“Five,” he says. “As soon as they realized I was damaged. Too damaged to take out in public. Too damaged to show off at parties.”
“That really sucks.” I sigh.
“No,” Smith says, shaking his head. “No. It was the perfect answer for me. I was raised by a speech pathologist named Claudia. Claudia Kramer. She was an amazing mother. Like, perfect, you know? She baked cookies and made costumes for Halloween. She didn’t work, didn’t have to. My parents paid her well over a hundred grand a year to take care of me. Help me talk, help me adjust. We lived in this amazing little house up in the mountains near Aspen. I didn’t go to school, I had private tutors. I had the best fucking childhood, Chella. All because my parents threw me away.”
I look away, sadder now than when I first got in this tub.
“My parents still pretended they were my parents, but by the time I was… maybe ten or eleven… I was Smith Kramer in my head. I was very smart, no matter how bad my language skills were. I took the GED at sixteen and my mom, Claudia, she helped me take courses at a local college. I didn’t have much to do up there in the middle of nowhere, so I learned things. I got smarter. But my parents were old by that time. Mr. Baldwin was in his late sixties and Mrs. Baldwin wasn’t far behind.”
“How did you get so rich?” I ask. “If your parents didn’t… bond with you?”
He shrugs. “They had one heir. Me. For better or worse, I was their biological child. So I got it all. Every fucking penny of it. Over sixty billion dollars, Chella.”
“Fuck, Smith. I didn’t know anybody had that kind of money.”
“I lost some of it in taxes. Which was fine, even before I realized there’s no way to lose that kind of money. It grows on its own, Chella. It’s so big, it just grows. And the day it hit me that I’d never run out, no matter how much I spent or how much I lost through carelessness, it made feel sick inside.”
“So,” I whisper, “you decided to give it away.”
He nods. “And like I told your father, it’s not as easy as it sounds. That’s what I do all day. I don’t even think I’ve told this story to Bric or Quin. I don’t think they even know what I do all day. They know I give everything away. They know I only take donations and refuse to buy myself things. That’s why Bric lets me live at the Club.”
“You want to know my secrets,” I say in a low voice as I wiggle my toes under the water and stare at the bubbles. “You’re telling me this so I’ll tell you mine.”
“I want you to know I’m OK.”
I look up at him again.
“I’m fine. They hurt me. What they did, how they reacted, it hurt me, Chella. But I had love. I had everything I ever needed and more. I was lucky. I want you to know I realize that.”
I press my lips together as the tears heat up my eyes.
“And I’d like to know if you were loved too. Whatever that secret is, Chella, I don’t care about it. I just need to know if you were loved. If you feel lucky now that it’s over.”
I start sniffling as I shake my head. “I wasn’t loved, Smith. I was used. And even though I understand that his rejection tonight, his repudiation, was for the best—for all of us—I don’t feel lucky. At all.”
I pull the plug and stand up. Smith hands me an oversized fluffy white towel and watches as I wrap it around my body. He hands me another one to put around my wet hair. And then he follows me out of the bathroom, retreats to stand in the bedroom doorway, and watches as I dry off and get dressed in a t-shirt and shorts.
“Where did you go, Chella?” he finally asks when I’m pulling back the covers of my bed, ready for sleep. “Just tell me that. Where did you go when they made you disappear?”
I turn the lights out and climb in bed. Smith is backlit from the light filtering in from downstairs. Just a black shadow surrounded by white.
“I was with my mother,” I say. “She was crazy. Mentally ill in a way I still don’t understand. She was consumed by religion. We lived in… church places. Where the faithful meet for spiritual retreats.”
“Like a cult?” Smith asks, confused.
And yeah, I guess if I had to put a word on it, I’d call it that. But I say, “No, not really. It was all legitimate. They were all affiliated with real organizations.”
“Hmmm,” is all he has to say about that. “Where was your father for all this?”
“DC,” I say. “He let her do whatever she wanted. He doesn’t believe in divorce. And he wasn’t willing to risk his career to make things right. He felt it was… a good compromise. For me.”
“What’s that mean? I don’t understand that last part,” Smith says.
“No,” I say. “Me either.” I turn over in bed, my back to him now. “Goodnight, Smith. Thanks for playing along tonight. I appreciate it.”
“Goodnight, Chella,” he says, after about a minute of silence. And then he pulls my door closed, blocking out the light. Leaving me alone with the dark with my shame.
That’s all I have left now, right?
It’s just me and my shame.