Chapter forty-five:

 

 

I get up from the floor by her feet and I take a step back.

But there’s fire in her eyes and she sees me dissolving before her. She closes the gap that I just made. She places a hand on my chest.

“Are you just like him too?” she asks, and there’s such misery inside of her. I see it in the air surrounding her, the way she bends the universe to her will.

She’s using me, abusing my trust. She’s an expert at that. I guess that makes me an expert at being used.

Well I don’t have any trust for you anymore, Carrie, I want to shout, but I don’t, because when I open my mouth to speak it’s like she’s stolen the air from the room. Her fingers reach inside my mouth and her fingers stretch down my throat where she grips my voice, strangling the words away.

“I bet you knew,” she says, and I shake my head in horror, still uncertain of what she’s saying but petrified of the truth. “I bet you knew that your dad was a pervert too,” she says with her acid tongue.

I sort of knew what her dad did. I sort of knew what he was like. I sort of heard people talking about her. And she sort of hinted so many times. She hinted though, and never spoke the full truth. Was she protecting me all this time?

But my dad?

My dad?

I didn’t know. I don’t know. I don’t understand.

“I bet you knew and it got you off.” She laughs but I don’t think it’s funny, and she doesn’t look like she finds it funny either. “Do you know what he liked to do best? Should I tell you?”

I shake my head no, but her eyes are far away and she isn’t listening to me anymore. She isn’t even here anymore. She’s gone, back to then, away from the now, and you should always stay in the now and never look back. That’s what I was told. That’s what I was taught. Though I know sometimes it’s tempting. Too tempting. To take a peek at what was. To let history open its doors to us. To let them creak on their hinges blowing dust motes into the air as the past invades the present.

“Do you remember the day you left me in the kitchen with him?”

“Yes,” I say. My stomach feels funny. It hurts and aches. It feels both sick and numb as I picture my childhood home and the kitchen with the sunny yellow blinds at the window and the pans that stacked up together in formation next to the stove, one-two-three, their red handles neatly tucked away.

“I asked him to help me. I cried when he said there was no helping girls like me. That was the first time. But I knew it wouldn’t be the last. I’d seen the way he had looked at me. It was the same look that my dad gave me when he saw I was growing into a woman. When my breasts were barely breasts and my hips were nonexistent. And I knew then that all men were the same.” Her face looks angry and bitter. It’s not nice, but it matches her bruises which are ugly and dark, just like her childhood.

“I wasn’t like that,” I say quietly. “I wasn’t the same. I’m not.”

“Weren’t you? Aren’t you?”

I shake my head no. I’m defiant in this. No, I’m not like that. I never have been.

“You were just a boy. But look at you now, all grown up.”

“I’m a man now,” I say, but I think, Am I the same as my dad? As Carrie’s dad? Carrie’s dad was bad, but mine was good. I don’t know what he’s like now because I haven’t seen him in so long.

Carrie throws her head back and laughs. “Yeah, you’re all man now, aren’t you?” She steps away from me. “And you take just like a man too.”

“I…I…” I try to speak but the words are still lodged. Still being strangled. I don’t understand what she’s saying. She’s making no sense at all. “Please don’t be mean, Carrie.” I say, and I know I sound like a pussy. Benny would slap my face if he heard me now. But I can’t help it.

Her words are ugly and so is her face when she says them.

“Don’t be mean? It’s not always about you, Ethan. Sometimes it’s about me!”

“Always!” I yell back, my voice loosening. “It’s always been about you, Carrie!”

And I mean it. For me, it has always been about her. My words affect her. For a split second I see them sink into her skin like salve to soothe a cut. But then it’s gone again. Her walls are back up, higher this time.

“Your dad said I was asking for it. He said girls like me always were.” She’s still looking at me with fire. “But I wasn’t asking for it, Ethan. All I was asking for was someone to look after me. Someone to protect me!”

And then she’s screaming the words at me, like I’ve gone deaf and I can’t already hear her, but I can, Carrie. I can hear you just fine.

“I never asked for any of this! I just wanted someone to love me,” she sobs.

“Don’t we all?” I say back, my tone pleading. And I mean me, really. I mean that’s all anyone ever wants—love. We all want to be loved, and that’s all I ever wanted from her. But she never loved me. I reach for her but she pulls away.

“Don’t touch me!” she screams, and cries, and wails. And it’s pitiful, like that one time a few months back when I saw a group of teenagers kicking that cat in an alleyway. It sounded pitiful and yet full of anger as it cried out in pain.

I helped it then, and I’ll help her now. Even though she doesn’t want me to. She will when it soothes and calms her. Just like the cat that scratched and spat at me. When she starts to feel better. I’m a giver, not a taker. I won’t take from Carrie. I’ll give and give until I make her whole again. Because right now she is not whole. She is broken into fragments of herself, and they are all mismatched between this new Carrie, the old Carrie, and the Carrie she could have been.

You could have been so much more, Carrie. We both could have.

I reach for her again and she tries to pull away, but I don’t let go this time. This time I hold onto her with every ounce of strength I have. And I let her fight against me but I still won’t let go. And none of it seems to matter anymore. None of my anger or sadness, my grief or tears for a wasted life and a life wasted. None of it matters as her words slip into my soul and begin to make sense.

I’m not stupid, I want to say, but I have been. I see that now.

I’ve been so very stupid not to have seen it. But when I squeeze my eyes closed, I remember I did know after all. I just blotted it out. So fixated was I on making things right, that I forgot what was initially wrong.

Why, Dad, why? I want to say. Because I didn’t understand then, and I don’t understand now.

“How could you forget, Ethan?” she says angrily. “How could you forget what he did? Are you really that messed up inside that head of yours that you could forgive him?”

No, Carrie, it’s not like that, I think.

But I don’t say it, because I worry she may be right.