by Rachel Kane
One thing Val didn’t like was being questioned about his emotions. I could feel his hackles rising, as he took a step back. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said.
“Okay, okay, I’m not going to quiz you about it,” I said. “But there’s more going on here than just that. It’s a mess, is what I’m saying. It’s complicated, and it feels like the easiest solution for now is for Mother to just move on…and let us have the house, even if we don’t have any plans for it, even if we’re not going to do anything with it right now.”
He sighed. “I defer to your greater wisdom of human nature. I have to say, though, that if we brought this level of imprecision and muddle to our business, we’d be closing the doors within a week.”
“All right, so let’s go downstairs and clear things up.”
“It’s a damn fine opportunity for the youngsters,” Nicholas was saying as we walked into the dining room. “Ah, let’s ask the boys what they think.”
“What we think about what?” I asked, pulling out my chair.
“We were talking about your interest in painting,” began Nicholas.
My mother looked in pain, there at her seat at the head of the table. A dignified pain that tried not to show itself, but pain nonetheless. I wondered just how badly her conversation with Val had gone. Val wouldn’t know, he didn’t pick up on this stuff. I could picture her pleading with him to let it go, drop the subject for now, but he would just keep questioning and questioning. Like a lawyer. Like…Micah.
I wonder what he’s doing right this second. Is he thinking about me?
“Theo has begun painting again,” announced Val, as though it were important news. “I saw one in his room. Very black. Is it going to be a painting of Micah?”
I flashed him a look. “What the hell are you talking about now, Val?”
He stared back blankly, unwilling to change course. “I saw the preliminary sketch you made of Micah, the one with all the shadows. I thought you were going to paint what he looked like the other night when you two were standing on the dock talking.”
The entire table was silent. Did they all know? How did they all know? Was everyone standing at the windows when Micah had kissed me?
I looked down at my plate.
Mother cleared her throat. “Nicholas was wondering, Theo, whether you would help him organize a scholarship for young painters.”
“It takes an artist to truly know another artist,” he said. “To grasp a young person’s true potential.”
“Why are you asking me? I’m not an artist anymore. I gave all that up. I gave everything up, and it’s still going on, to this day.”
Mother sighed. “Why must every meal be like this? First your brother, now you.”
Nicholas looked from one of us to the next. “I’ve missed a beat.”
“Theo sent Val to harangue me about the house one last time. And as usually happens when he doesn’t get his way, he’s in a sulk.”
“I’m not in a damn sulk,” I said. “I’m tired of talking about it. I feel like we haven’t accomplished a single thing this weekend. You want the house? Fine. Take it. Burn it to the damn ground, for all I care.”
Val had that puzzled look on his face. “But upstairs, you just said—”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “What I say, what I think, what I do…no one cares about any of that. When it comes to me and my decisions, nothing matters but the greater good. Isn’t that right? Obedience to the Family Whim, that’s my whole purpose in life. Never mind that she does whatever she wants, can destroy it all with a word, and never once has to worry about the ramifications or about who she hurts—”
“That’s enough, Theo,” she said, in that charming purr she used to use to tell her guests they’d had enough to drink. The voice all charm, the eyes all poison.
“I think it’s good to get all this out in the open,” said Nicholas. “Let’s just talk it through. Damn fine thing, open communication.”
“There is nothing to get into the open,” she said, turning to him. “Theo has been handed every gift life has to offer, and it’s never enough. It has spoiled him. I always said we were spoiling him, but would his father listen? No. You can’t spoil children, they’re not fish, he’d say. Theo is like a child with his hand thrust through the crib bars, a toy gripped so tightly in that hand that he’s stuck, he can’t get his hand free, because not once does it occur to him that all he has to do is drop the toy.”
Consuela had half entered the room, wheeling the dinner cart before her, but she stopped.
Everything stopped. The whole world.
Val looked anguished. He had never liked raised voices. He would argue about an issue until dawn, but once temper entered into it, he didn’t know what to do.
Nicholas had his eyes closed, as though trying to find his inner balance before responding.
And Mother? She was pushing herself back from the table, away from her empty plate and empty glass and shining silver. Making her escape.
“Don’t bother,” I told her. “I’ll make it easy for you. I’ll be the one to run off. I have a lot of work to do tomorrow, the work that keeps you rich, the work that lets you lounge around whatever part of the world you choose, with whomever you choose, spouting whatever judgmental poison you choose. Val, if you want to stay, you can, I’ll have the car sent back for you tomorrow.”
But I didn’t go home. No.
I shoved boxes into the back of the car. Brushes I couldn’t use, canvases dusty with age, old paints… I didn’t need any of it. I could have replacements ordered, a whole set, a whole studio, if I wanted, at the snap of my fingers.
I wanted these. I wanted my past, useless and dried up as it was, and I wanted it away from her. Race-car curtains and wooden toy boats from when I was a boy, ticket stubs from all the concerts I’d gone to as a teenager.
“You don’t have to do this right now,” Val said, standing next to the car. He was agitated, shifting from foot to foot.
“You heard her. She made her choice.”
“I still think the house—”
“Not her choice about the house. Her choice about me.” I wedged another box into the trunk. I should have called for a moving van, but that would’ve taken time and patience, neither of which I had anymore.
“Theo, sometimes when people are angry, they say things—”
“Yes, yes, thank you Val for your keen insight into human nature. Oh god, I’m sorry, look, I don’t mean to lash out at you, don’t look like that. None of this is your fault. You’ve been surprisingly good about the whole thing.”
“I think I should stay,” he said. “I can still make it to the office by 9 tomorrow, and that will give me time to talk to her.”
“Do what you think is best,” I said. “But honestly, I don’t think you’re going to be able to convince her of anything.”
As the car began to pull away, I looked back and saw Val, still in the gravel drive, lit red by the taillights, staring after me with a helpless look. But of all of us, Val was the least helpless. The sturdiest plank. He’d be the last to sink, when the boat went down.
To think, I’d been unsettled earlier by the idea of him needling Mother with questions. To think that her feelings had been foremost in my mind.
Spoiled child indeed.
Crib. My god, what had I done to touch that nerve?
I’d swiped a bottle from the house. The whole thing? Consuela had asked uncertainly, the liquor cabinet key rolling between her fingers.
Yes, the whole thing.
Are you coming back, little Teo?
It was raining in Corinth when I arrived. Sunday night, and the town was already asleep. The best time to arrive in a city is late at night; that’s when you see its true character, its soul. And Corinth, true to its roots as a small town railroad crossing, had gone to bed, curled up under the blankets and turned off the lights.
We stopped in front of an unremarkable apartment building, one down-market enough that I ha
d to double-check that I had the right address. Really? But yes.
There was an intercom system, and I pressed the proper button. A few short words, and the door buzzed to let me in.
The entrance hallway was grim, reminding me of nothing so much as a dorm for college students, the nicked furniture and scraped floors, a general sense of untidiness and age. I made no judgments as the creaking elevator dragged me up to the fifth floor.
Up here the doors were very close together. The walls must be like paper. One fluorescent was blinking fast, a seizure-rate that made the hall seem like a dream, liminal and unreal.
Before I could knock, he opened the door for me.
“Micah,” I said…and then I cried.
16
Micah
“You know what’s dumb, I don’t even blame her. Not really. We’re not on different sides, if you think about it.”
When a man in distress shows up to your door unexpectedly, you don’t ask questions, especially when he thrusts a half-full bottle of whiskey in your hands. I felt nervous, no, electrical, watching him settle onto the fold-out loveseat that served as my bed. “I think I have ice,” I said, opening the little refrigerator with its tiny freezer compartment.
He wiped his eyes. “I really am sorry. What kind of grown man bursts into tears like this?”
I thought perhaps the missing half of this bottle might have something to do with that, but I didn’t want to say. Instead I got us two glasses with a couple of ice cubes apiece. “It’s fine,” I said. “Don’t worry about it.”
“It’s fine is our new motto,” said Theo, accepting the glass, and the whiskey I poured into it. “Is it fine that I barged into your life with no warning? It’s because you’re the only person in the world who would understand. Well, Val understands in his own limited way, but… You can’t really talk to Val.”
He’d been like this since he walked in, hinting and hinting at what he wanted to say, apologizing, but not getting to the point, and it had my heart pounding with anticipation. Was he going to deliver devastating news? Is that why he was so emotional?
I wanted to bundle him up. What a strange instinct. He was by all accounts a brilliant businessman and yet right now every fiber of my being wanted to reach out to him, to comfort him, to tell him everything was going to be okay.
“Tell me what happened,” I said.
But he was looking around the room. “You live here?”
I’d been hoping he wouldn’t notice his surroundings. “I do. It’s very efficient.”
“So is a prison cell. When you bring people over, what do they think?”
I savored the whiskey before answering. “Simple, I don’t bring people over. You’re my first guest, outside of a couple of friends. Congratulations.”
“I’m surprised that you managed to fit a couple of friends in here. Did the oxygen run out?”
There wasn’t anywhere else to sit, so I nudged him to one side of the loveseat and sat next to him. “I like it,” I lied. “When my last relationship broke up, I had to give up a great house, but I hadn’t realized what a burden a house is, really, when you’re on your own.”
“God, my entire life is hearing people complain about houses,” he said, leaning back and pressing the base of the glass against his eyelids. “She’s going to sell. She’s determined.”
“Okay,” I said, my heart sinking a little. “If that’s certain, then I can start planning.”
“You’re so practical. Tell me it bothers you, okay? Tell me it breaks your heart as much as it does mine.”
We’d been doing this little dance around each other since the moment I’d seen him in the foyer of the house, demanding a drink. A moment of emotional vulnerability, paid for by instantly closing ourselves off, moving on to other topics, things where we didn’t have to be emotional. Only allowing ourselves glimpses of what was going on inside our hearts.
But he’d torn that open tonight, coming to my house in tears. There was no hiding the way he felt.
Could I be that brave?
All I wanted to do, was to talk pragmatically. To begin looking for apartment listings, to talk to people about possible jobs for my mom, to get life back on track as quickly as possible.
To hide from feeling anything about anything, and return to the numbed normalcy of the to-do list.
My glass was cold in my fingers, and a bead of condensation rolled from the side of the glass onto my thumb. I lifted my thumb, drew a stripe through which I could see my drink more clearly.
“I was so mad at you for such a long time,” I said, my eyes never leaving my glass, not daring to look over at him. “The way you left, without any word. I kept hoping and hoping I’d hear from you again. Hoping you’d say something that would make it all make sense. Even if it was just to break up with me, to define it, to make it clear. Anything would have been better than the waiting. If you want to talk about things that can break someone’s heart, your silence did that to me.”
“Are you…are you still mad?”
I sighed and shook my head. “I don’t think so. I don’t know anymore. These days I reserve my anger for when it’s useful. Like this damn case I’ve been dragged into, another bastard who thinks he’s above the law, who thinks he’s too good to follow the rules, and whines and complains when he gets caught, and now it’s my job to extract him from the consequences of his venality.”
“I blew up at my mom tonight,” he said. “I might have yelled. I’m not positive.”
“We’re not normal people, Theo. Normal people don’t act like this.”
“It’s my family’s fault,” he said. “Or maybe I mean it’s the money’s fault. Once you put that much money together, it’s like a black hole, it collapses under its own weight, it develops its own gravity. You can’t escape it. It’s always pulling at you, affecting all your decisions. It warps you.”
I shook my head before taking another drink. “I don’t think that’s right. I don’t think it helps to blame something abstract like money, or even blame your family.”
He chuckled, and opened his eyes. “Have you met my family?”
“We’re adults now,” I said. “We make our own choices. Nobody’s forcing you to work for your family. Nobody’s forcing me to work for criminals. You make a choice in one direction, and then the next choice in that direction gets easier, so you follow that one, and then the next, and next. You keep following the path of least resistance, not realizing you’re getting lost in the forest.”
“Ah, so my mom is right, this is all my fault.”
I set my glass down on the tiny table next to the loveseat. “It’s not a matter of fault. This isn’t court. There’s no guilt or innocence. For the most part, everybody does what they think is right. Or at least, what they think is okay.”
“There’s that word again.”
“It seemed right for me to take your family’s offer to pay my way to college,” I said. “Among all the available options, it seemed like the best one, even though it would’ve taken me away from you temporarily. And I’m sure you thought you were doing the right thing too.”
“Damn it,” he said, “I wish you had come with me to Paris. We could have defied my family. I wouldn’t have lost you then.”
“Well, I’m here now,” I said.
A silence fell over the room. I don’t think I’d realized quite what I was saying, until the words were out.
“Are you?” he said, a simple question behind which lay a thousand other questions. “Are you here, right now, with me?”
“I missed you so much, Theo.”
“Do you forgive me?”
I’m not sure when he reached out and brushed the hair from my forehead. If I were putting together the sequence of events to describe to a jury, I would have had a hard time explaining, because Theo had a way of collapsing time when I was around him. The past became the present. The warmth of his fingertips now, brought to life every other memory of that warmth.
I was l
ike an amnesiac who suddenly remembers the world around him.
“Of course I forgive you. It was my fault too, I should have made more of an effort, I should have tried to find you, I should—”
Words cut off by the touch of his lips to mine. The taste of whiskey on his tongue, his fingers slipping between shirt buttons to find my chest.
“You said this isn’t court,” he whispered against my chin, trailing down to my throat. “No fault, remember?”
An artist studies geometries, the lines and angles all around him. I could feel Theo observing with hands and mouth the angle where my neck met my shoulder. How would he paint the skin, the little bumps of pleasure and excitement, each hair on my arm rising to meet him?
“My heart,” I whispered, and he took it as a command, laying his head against my chest. The doctor come to heal me.
A murmur from him: So fast, a drowsy tone that suggested languorous summer afternoons instead of the chill autumn that surrounded us.
Was this a choice? Which path was this, the one of least resistance? When people said that, did they mean there was another path available, the one of most resistance, a rocky upslope hard to traverse, or were there an infinity of paths, each with its own particular resistance?
I felt myself trying to resist him, understanding that if I took the easiest path, I was treading on dangerous ground. What could happen, with a man like Theo? Volatile, tortured, a man of risks and chances.
“Maybe we should…” But there were no words to finish that sentence, no way to describe the dark shadows on this path. My shirt had opened with no resistance, as though it had already made its choice. And my body? How had I come to be half-lying, reclined with him both beside and above me, his hands exploring my ribs like they were piano keys, as though he were playing an old tune that only the two of us could remember.
Was it possible to take one of those middle paths, somewhere between resistance and acquiescence? I sensed that’s the way it would always be with Theo. At times his path would be dark, and you would be lost in the woods, thinking you were on your own. But at the last minute he would reach out and pull you into the light.
