CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Because Of, In Spite Of
When I wake up, it’s cool and clear, with a bit of fog floating over the water. This is August on the coast of Maine: the opposite of Boston, where it can be so oppressively humid in late summer.
Sneaking out of bed without waking Chris, I make coffee and take it out front, where I gaze out at the beautiful coastline and warm my hands on my steaming mug.
Despite the gorgeous weather and the scenery, though, I can’t shake the feeling of dread that weighs on me. Maybe it’s just that I’m tired. Chris will probably tell me later that he slept through the night, but in fact, his sleep was severely disturbed. I know that he had nightmares, and I barely slept because of his thrashing and because of my worry. Chris is asleep now, though.
James and Estelle are entwined in the hammock that hangs between two trees on the far side of the lawn. I smile. They must have slept out here last night. I like seeing my brother taking care of her. Well, as much as Estelle will allow anyone to take care of her. He’s doting and affectionate without being pathetic.
I read the news on my Kindle for half an hour before James appears. He looks like hell.
“You need a coffee, huh?” I ask.
“Yeah. Thanks.” He pulls a sweatshirt over his head and sits down in the wicker chair across from me. When he rests his elbows on his knees and puts his head in his hands, I realize that something is very wrong.
I go to the kitchen and take my time making him a double espresso. Everything has been going so well, so James’s obvious stress concerns me. I think I was right: I am going to have to brace myself for this day. When I return, he is sitting up again, but his expression concerns me.
“Blythe, I need your help.”
I sit. “Anything. What’s going on?”
He looks away. “I don’t even know how to say this … I don’t know what to do or why …”
“Is it Estelle?”
“This is really uncomfortable.”
“It’s okay, James. You can tell me anything.”
He starts talking, but he still can’t look at me. “I really care about her, you know? I do. I think she’s fantastic. Sure, she’s got this kind of tough exterior and all, but she’s super sweet, too. She’s smart, and funny, and wild.” He pauses. “It’s the wild part that … It’s not right, Blythe.”
“Honey, I don’t understand.” He’s getting visibly upset, so I move and kneel next to him. “What do you mean?”
“In … in bed.”
“Oh.” I can see why this is uncomfortable for him.
“I don’t want to talk about this, but I have to, Blythe.”
“I’m here. You can tell me.”
“Look, I know some people like … rough sex, or whatever, right?”
“Um, sure.” He’s right; this is not a talk I want to have with him, but I keep at it. “And she wants that. From you.”
He nods.
“And you don’t want that,” I say.
He shrugs. “See, I kind of did. I mean, a little rough. Like, there’s fun wild and then … there’s not fun.”
I shake my head. “What do you mean by ‘not fun’?”
“She wants me to … hurt her. It’s been building. It started with smaller stuff, stuff that was okay, and I guess some of that was fine with me, but she’s asking for more and more. And it’s freaking me out. We’ve been fighting because I can’t do what she’s asking.” He takes a deep breath. and his eyes fill with tears as he finally looks at me. “Blythe, last night, she asked me to hit her. Hard. Jesus, she wanted me to leave bruises, and she was crying and begging me to … She was freaking out on me. I’ve never seen her like that. Or anyone like that. I can’t do that to her. I won’t do that. I couldn’t hurt her. Ever.”
“Oh my God, James.” I am so taken aback that I don’t know what to say yet, but I throw my arms around him and hug him close.
“Why would she ask me to do that?” He puts a hand on my arm and squeezes. “Do I seem like some guy who would do that to a woman? Is that it? Is there something wrong with me? We were outside, in the yard, and she … God, she was trying to get me to shove her around and shit. She started yelling at me, saying that other guys have given her what she wants, and maybe she’ll have to go find someone else. She said that maybe I’m too … naive, or whatever. Too inexperienced for her. What she wants, though? That’s not right, is it? I can’t do it, and I don’t understand why she’d want me to. I really like her, Blythe, I do, but I don’t get this, and it’s scaring me. What am I supposed—”
Chris’s voice is shaking as he interrupts us. “James?”
I turn to him. His expression is pure disbelief, but I am less surprised. I remember the bruise that I saw on Estelle’s hip when were on video chat. And I remember her crying in our dorm room. Repenting.
James looks panicked. “Chris, I swear to God, I didn’t—”
“I know you didn’t. I know you wouldn’t.” He crosses the porch and drops onto the wicker sofa. “You didn’t do anything wrong. This is not your fault. At all.” He rubs his hand over his face. What a thing to wake up to. “Blythe? Do you mind if I talk to James for a few minutes?”
“Of course not. I’ll be in the kitchen.”
I walk into the house through the living room and notice Zach crashed out on the couch. Eric must have been snoring loudly, because the old couch is certainly not comfortable. I spend two hours in the kitchen, cleaning, planning dinners for the next few days, fussing around. I don’t want to talk to anybody right now, so I’m glad to be left alone in here. Later, Zach pops in for coffee, but he’s exceptionally sullen and quiet, and he lets me chop vegetables for the grill in peace.
James and I go downtown for lunch. He doesn’t want to talk about Estelle anymore, and neither do I. My brother is obviously terribly embarrassed, which I get, so I don’t press him on the issue, but he looks better as the afternoon goes on. Being with me seems to help him, so that is a good thing. Just as we finish lunch, I get a text from Chris. He is taking Estelle to Seal Cove, and asks if he can take Jonah. I tell him of course. Jonah loves that trip. Chris and I have been there a few times. It’s a magical walk down a mossy, rocky path to the cove, and on lucky days, you arrive at the beach to see tons of seals sunning themselves on the rocks. I hope today is a lucky day.
But I know that it’s starting. The storm. The one in the increasingly dark sky and the one on the ground.
James and I take one of the touristy boat rides through the harbor. He is one of the volunteers who helps raise the giant red sails. Despite what has happened with Estelle, he is able to smile into the bits of filtered sun that hit his face as he pulls on the thick rope that soon flaps loudly in the wind. I am very lucky to have him back in my life. I take a video of him with my phone and then have him pose with the ship’s mascot, an enormous black Newfoundland.
I want to delay going back to the house, so I persuade James to walk through busy downtown Bar Harbor. We get ice cream and browse in the bookstore. I buy him some clothes for school from one of the sporting goods stores, even though he insists it isn’t necessary. After we’ve exhausted the hilly streets and nearly every store, James stops me. “Blythe. I want to go back. I need to see Estelle. Make sure she’s okay.”
“Of course.” So I take us home.
I pull the car up to the house and put it in park, but James doesn’t move to get out. “She’s probably angry at me for telling.”
“No, she won’t be. You did exactly the right thing. Did it help to talk to Chris?”
“Yeah. I still don’t understand, but he made me feel better. Do you get it? Why she would … you know, want that?”
“I’m afraid I might, James.” I hand him the keys. “Take Estelle out for dinner or something if you want. I’m going to find Chris.”
But I don’t have to find him because I know where he’ll be. And I’m right. I walk slowly across the upper lawn, down the wooden stairs to the lower yard, and then to the beach and the long dock that stretches into the ocean. Chris is sitting on the end, his feet hanging over the edge, and Sabin is lying down behind him holding a beer can with one hand and petting Jonah with the other. My dog seems to be on high alert, panting and thumping his tail as he looks around.
“C’mere, Jonah.” I clap my hands, and he races down the dock to greet me. I kneel down and scratch the scruff of his neck. “You watching over the boys? Huh? Yeah?” He bounds away and plants himself back next to Sabin.
I step over Sabin, who appears to be sleeping, take off my shoes, and sit next to Chris. He puts his arm around me and kisses me. “Hey.” He sounds as tired as he looks.
“Hey. How are you? And how’s Estelle?”
He sighs. “I don’t know how to answer you.”
“Blythe, Blythe, Blythe!” Sabin thumps the deck with his hand, and I turn around. He is drunk. Really drunk.
I glance at Chris. “I know,” he says. “I know.”
“Hi, Sabe.” I lean back and rest my head on his stomach.
“Where you been today? I missed you, B.”
“Out with James.”
“Oh. First I thought you and Chris were locked up in your room again. I mean, Jesus, you two are like rabbits. It’s never just you and me anymore. But then he came back, and you stayed away.”
“I’m sorry. We’ll do something tomorrow. Just the two of us.” I don’t want to have any kind of conversation with him. I can tell he’s way too drunk to make any sense, and if I say the wrong thing, he could get irritable. “Promise.”
“Okay, B.” He pats my head. “It’s just that I miss you, and you’re missing everything.”
“What am I missing?” I ask lazily. I love Sabin, I do, but I wish he’d go to his room and sleep this off. I want to talk to Chris alone.
“Like, did you even know that Zach and Eric broke up last night? Huh?”
I sit up. “Chris, did you know this?”
“No. Sabin, what the fuck are you talking about? They couldn’t have broken up.”
Sabin laughs. “Jesus, you two are so fucking out of it. You haven’t noticed anything wrong? The fighting? The snarky comments?”
Chris and I really have been in our own world.
“Zach’s been on the couch for two weeks. According to him,” Sabin starts as he heaves himself up and slouches forward, “they’ve never even slept together. Can you believe that shit? I mean, they sleep in the same bed, but that’s it.”
“What?” This surprises me. They are so affectionate and loving in public. “That’s why they broke up? That doesn’t sound like Zach.”
“No, dummy.” Sabin finishes his beer. “Eric broke up with him. He says that Zach wants too much of a commitment or whatever. But the good news is that now maybe I’ll have someone to hang out with. Someone who’s not all coupled up and shit.” He reaches for Jonah. “I do have this guy, though. Right, buddy?” He lets Jonah lick his face while he pats him.
Chris is frozen. Estelle is asking my brother to smack her around, Eric just broke up with his long-term boyfriend, and Sabin is, once again, incredibly drunk. Sabin babbles incoherently to Jonah while Chris stares out at the ocean.
“Everyone is crumbling,” he says softly so that Sabin can’t hear. “I can’t believe this. They’re crumbling, do you see it?” Chris gets up, walks around Sabin, and hops off the deck to the sand.
I watch him as he searches the beach. He’s looking for stones. It takes a while, but eventually his pockets are full, and he starts skipping them across the surface of the ocean. He works his way up and down the beach, and he wades through the water to stand in front of me. Chris looks incredibly sad today. I kiss him and then nudge him to turn around and sit in front of me so that I can rub his shoulders. The tension he carries is enormous.
Sabin is still playing with Jonah, stroking his fur. “Hey, Chris?” Sabin is slurring something fierce now. “Do you remember … ,” he starts. “Do you fucking remember those two dogs that our father used to have?”
Chris tenses noticeably. “Sabin …”
“I’d totally forgotten until now. Remember? He was such a fucking bastard. Do you remember? He had two dogs for a while, right? And I remember this one time … Christ, what a sick asshole … he put their food dishes on the floor and he hit ’em with something while they ate.” He closes his eyes and pulls Jonah in close. “I don’t get why they kept eating. I mean, there’s our father, hitting ’em with a … with a … what was it? A belt?”
“Sabin, stop.”
“No, c’mon, Chris. I’d forgotten about this until now. What was it? Must have been a belt.”
The man I love hangs his head. “No. No, it wasn’t a belt.” I stop rubbing his shoulders and quickly pull him in so that my arms are around him. He reaches for my hand. “It was a switch. He’d made it from the willow tree in the yard.”
“Right. That willow tree.” Sabin laughs, and it is one of the worst sounds I’ve ever heard. “A switch. Yeah, so he’s yelling about what fucked-up animals they are, and every once in a while, he’d let them have it. For nothing.” Sabin leans his head against Jonah. “No one’s gonna hurt you, boy. Jesus, Chris. Those poor fuckin’ dogs.” Sabin lays back down on his side. “Shitting rainbows,” he says with a laugh and then immediately passes out.
Jonah curls up protectively next to him. “He’s okay, Jonah. He’s okay,” I try to reassure all of us.
“No, he’s not okay, and you know it.”
Chris takes a stone from his pocket and hurls it while I hold him. He throws another. “The thing is, Blythe? My father never had dogs.” He throws again. “He had me. And he had Sabin.”
Inside, I explode. I rage. I cannot begin to process what he has just said because the ramifications are enormous. I’d known, I’d felt, that it would be bad. Very bad. But not like this. The scope, the vast depth, of their father’s madness is something that I cannot begin to take in. This is a man I will forever feel only vehement disgust and hatred for. What he has done to the people I love most in this world … It is incomprehensible.
For an entire hour, we don’t talk. The sky, however, speaks to us in distant rumbles of thunder. Chris shivers. I keep him as close to me as possible, and we just watch the tide come in. I let the tears cover my cheeks and fall to his shoulders because it would be impossible not to cry, but I don’t melt down in front of him. I can’t because he isn’t.
He slides off the dock and collects stones again. It’s a routine that will ground him, I know. “It wasn’t constant, and it wasn’t usually like … what Sabin just told you,” he says from the shore. “We went to school, played sports, had friends. But then that would change. We … or I, mostly … weren’t hurt all that often. Months at a time would go by where things were normal enough. Six, eight months of near total normalcy. Sometimes a whole year. But when it happened, it wasn’t usually about … direct hits. It was usually about stamina, endurance. Wearing me down. Sometimes wearing us down.” He is incredibly rational now, overly logical about this. It’s his protection.
It takes another twenty minutes of silence and stone collecting until he is ready to tell me what it was like to grow up with a monster for a father. As I hear details of how the people I love were brutalized in ways that I could never have imagined, I move next to Sabin and run my hands over his arms, then lifting up his shirt, looking for scars that maybe I never noticed. While I don’t find any, I am not reassured. I take in what Chris tells me with as little visible reaction as possible. I need to be brave for him, as he has been brave all his life.
“My father was very sick,” Chris says. “Psychotic, to some degree, probably. He built up my body and tried to tear apart my mind.”
“But you’re still here.”
“I am.
“And Estelle, Eric, and Sabin, they’re here also.”
“I thought that I’d protected them enough. Estelle thinks God protected her. After everything I did, she fucking believes God is the reason our father never touched her.”
“But you’re the reason.”
“Yes, but now I see that I didn’t protect her. I stopped him from going into her room one night, and I paid the price the next day, but even though he never got into her room, I still failed. I failed them totally.”
“Oh, Chris, no. You didn’t fail. How could you have protected them? You were a kid. This shit isn’t supposed to happen. But I know you, and I know that you did more than anyone could have. Than anyone should have to do.”
“I thought they’d all be okay, Blythe.” The mix of desperation and anger in his tone is awful. “I thought that … we would get out, and it would be over. But look at them. They’re all a mess, aren’t they? I fucked up.”
“No, no you did not. Christopher. They love you, and they are devoted to you. Always. I knew that the minute I saw you with them.”
“Oh Jesus, Blythe, come on. Look at Estelle. She’s sucked your brother into this mess now, too. This is my fault. I should have gotten us away from my father whatever the cost. I thought being torn apart from each other would be the worst thing. I was horribly wrong.”
“It is not your fault that your father was out of his mind. That he hurt all of you. Maybe he didn’t touch them the way he did you, but they … saw.”
“Yes. They did.”
“Can you imagine the guilt they carry? Not only the terror, but the guilt?”
Chris shakes his head. “For what?”
“Because they couldn’t protect you the way you protected them. They didn’t share everything that you went through.”
He wipes his eyes and turns into me. “I thought because he never went after her or Eric that they would be all right. She’s certainly not all right. And even Eric. Breaking up with Zach, not being able to sleep with him? That’s because of this. And Sabin. God, Sabin … We’re all irreparably broken.”
Chris and I sit facing each other, my legs over his.
“You are not broken. I love you,” I tell him.
“You only think you do. You don’t know everything.”
“I will love you no matter what.”
“We’ll see.”
“Nothing, nothing will ever change how much I love you.”
“My back. Those scars? Do you want to hear about that?” He’s daring me to listen, perhaps threatening me with the truth.
I can hear this because I can do anything for him. “If you want to tell me, yes.”
With his head buried against me, he talks in a whisper and tells me about the night that his father nearly killed him.
“You know how you don’t remember some of the days around the fire? It’s the same for me with the night I got these scars. I don’t know exactly what happened before or after. I vaguely remember exhausting work with no point, and threats. Endless threats. I think he had me move … I don’t know … blocks of some kind in his art studio. That was his style. He liked to torture me by giving me unbearably heavy things to hold, and making me stand still with them for hours. I think this type of thing went on for days during this episode. All I know is by the time evening arrived, I was tapped. I was so weak by then. He’d left us alone that night. Gone out and wasn’t home when we went to bed. I know we had dinner. Or I think we did. I don’t know. I don’t remember that part.”
“That’s okay.”
“Then it was late. After midnight, I’m sure. He pulled me from my bed. Grabbed me by the neck and dragged me down the stairs. Something about how a New York gallery was backing out of a deal. They’d commissioned a bunch of pieces, and … He wasn’t making any sense. The house was dark, and he kept bumping me into walls and furniture while he pulled me. The next thing I knew, my head was in the toilet. Underwater. He held me down, and I just wasn’t strong enough to fight back. Then he’d pull me up for a second, explain that we were a drain on him and that’s why his work was suffering. He’d make us move again. A new location would help. My head would go under the water. Over and over. At first, I thought he would just let up quickly and leave me there. I couldn’t breathe, but I was sure that he would stop, and I could go back to bed. All I wanted was to go back to my room.”
I inhale and exhale deeply so that Chris will breathe with me. And he does.
“He didn’t stop, though. He just kept going and going. I had this belief in a future and in escape, but the longer it went on, the less I believed. I started to fight him, but there was nothing left in me. And then he held me down harder, and I knew he wasn’t going to let me up again. That I was going to die. I was … very sure of that. I was going to die, and that was that. I don’t even think that was his intention. I think it would have been an accident. He couldn’t have wanted a dead kid on his hands, right? It wasn’t planned. He was just completely crazed.
“And then I heard this weird sound; even as I was drowning and dying, the sound came through to me. Suddenly his hands were off me, but it still took me a second to push myself out of the water. Then I understood what the sound was. His fucking volunteer’s pager was going off. That always trumped everything. So he turned it off, and he just left me there while he drove away.”
“I was coughing and trying to get air. I just wanted to get back to bed, so I crawled out of the bathroom to the bottom of the staircase. I reached up for the railing and walked about five or six steps up. Then I got too dizzy. I just couldn’t stand. I still couldn’t breathe.”
I inhale deeply again, reminding him that right now he does have air. “Of course you couldn’t. Nobody could have.”
He is still talking in a whisper, so softly that I have to strain to hear him. Like a little kid telling a secret that he isn’t supposed to. “I started to fall backward down the stairs. I managed to stay upright, but I couldn’t really figure out my footing … So when I hit the landing I just stumbled hard across the floor. Because I couldn’t see, and I couldn’t get my balance … I was so disoriented. That’s when I crashed into the glass display case. It was this giant floor-to-ceiling monstrosity that my father had built to keep a bunch of my mother’s things in. She had china and these silly little glass animals that she loved. That’s what I fell into, and the entire thing shattered around me.
“It must have made a hell of a noise because Sabin woke up, and you know how nothing wakes him. Apparently I passed out for a few minutes, not long. When I came to, the lights were on, and he was crying and fishing me out of the glass. I kept telling him that I was going to be okay. But I didn’t know how much blood there was yet. He got me upstairs to our bathroom and pulled out glass from me for half an hour. When I fell, I must have … ripped open my back on something. Maybe glass, maybe one of the metal shelves. I don’t know. Sabin wanted to take me to the emergency room, but I wouldn’t let him. Because you know what was crazy? There was something good about what happened. I mean, really, really good. I knew that it was over. Nothing would happen again. My father didn’t want to get caught, and he’d get caught. This had gone too far. It was too … visible. I just suddenly wasn’t afraid anymore.
“Sabin stopped the bleeding by putting pressure on my back like I asked him. He bandaged me up with piles of gauze and tape. And we left the mess of glass and blood on the floor for my father to clean up. Sabin stayed in my room that night. He stayed up all night, sitting up against my door just to make sure. But I knew it was over, and I knew what to do.
“The week before, I’d found out that when I turned twenty-one I’d be in charge of most of my mother’s estate, including the house. I don’t like to think that she knew what he was like, but … her will gave everything to us. So maybe she knew, and that’s why she left me in charge. So I threatened him. If he stayed the hell away from my family—my family—I’d let him keep that fucking palatial house that he loved so much. He could keep working, he could keep being the Goddamn local volunteer hero, he could keep his image that he valued so much. But he wasn’t going to touch any of us again, or I would take it all. Every bit of it.
“That night, after Sabin patched me up, I had him leave a note on top of the broken glass and my blood. It read, No more. Or I take it all. When we got up the next day, everything had been cleaned up. My father never said anything about it, of course. But after that, all the shit stopped. He wouldn’t give up that house, or the studio in it, or my mother’s money.
“I went to college nearby for my freshman and sophomore years, and so did Sabin for his freshman year. We didn’t want to risk leaving the twins alone with him. Then we all went to Matthews together.”
“So that’s the night that my father tried to kill me. He would have, too. I’d be dead if it weren’t for his pager going off. So there’s no God, no divine intervention. Just a page that happened to come through when I needed it the most.”
Chris holds me tightly, still not looking at me. “Now you know. Now you know how completely and irreparably broken I am. I may have lived, but I am too damaged for you. I am not the person you think I am or the one you deserve.”
Before I can protest, he kisses me. And the longer he kisses me, the more I know that he is trying to say good-bye to me and good-bye to us. Eventually he pulls away.
“I was afraid this would happen. Being with you? It brought everything back just like you said it would. It makes all of it worse. No, don’t look at me like that, Blythe. This is not like what you went through. I told you not to fight your past and to let it into your life because I knew it was something you could deal with. This is different. I can see now that we will never escape this. It was better before when I could hide and just stay with the future. We can’t pretend that you don’t know this truth, and we can’t pretend that this will work between us. I wish that I could be somebody else, but what’s happened to me is inextricably part of who I am. Who I will always be. It made me the person who you think you love. And so you love me either because of that or in spite of it. Both of which are unbearable.”