by Rachel Kane
I was starting to understand what she meant. It wasn’t just Theo. The family itself was a hungry lion, devouring everything in its path.
“No,” he said, startling me. “I’m not going back to Corinth.”
“What? Theo, come on, you don’t need to—”
“I have to talk to Val. I have to tell him what’s going on. And then… And then I have to pack.”
The phone slipped out of my fingers and clattered to the floor.
His voice, down by my feet, tinny and small: Hello? Micah, did I lose you?
“You…have to pack,” I said, once I’d picked the phone up.
A long pause. “I can’t tear the family apart.”
“If you stay, you’re doing the opposite. You’re staying together with them.”
And with me.
Remember me? The man you thought you loved?
The man you’ve already left once for your family, for the good of the company?
Surely you’re not going to do it again.
All these things I wanted to say, but how could I say them when he was so sorrowful?
“I know it won’t make sense to you,” he said. “I know that. My mom announces she has cancer, I pack my bags and move. In what possible world does that make sense?”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
“But it’s because you aren’t part of my family,” he said. Calmly, as though it were a sufficient explanation. As though I hadn’t grown up with him, as though I hadn’t seen his family every day of my youth.
“You’ve got to do better than that,” I said. “You owe me a better explanation.”
That calmness fell away with his next words.
“You know how this ends,” he said. “You know how it always ends. It doesn’t matter if it’s Missouri or something else. Something’s always going to pull us apart, Micah. The family always ends up coming first. I don’t know how, I don’t know why, but they always do.”
“This has nothing to do with your family,” I tried to explain. “Your family and your company are two different things. You have to see that. You have to know the difference. And anyway, after this shock, you can’t possibly make a decision. You can put it off, you know? You don’t have to go right away. You shouldn’t, not after finding this out from your mom. You need some time to reflect, some time—”
“I don’t know why,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what I think. It doesn’t matter what I feel. It never has. Don’t you understand, Micah? Don’t you get it? They always do this. They pull the strings. They can pull me away from whatever I want, whatever I need.”
“It’s just money. Fuck money. Quit your fucking job and move to Corinth with me.”
“So I can live in your little studio apartment with you and your mom?”
“Damn it, Theo, I’m just saying, there are a million options here, and you don’t have to run off right now. You… You don’t have to leave me.”
Because I didn’t care about the rest of it.
“There’s so much going on—”
“I don’t care, Theo. I don’t care about your business, or your house, or anything else. Let it all go. Just don’t leave me, not after I finally, finally have you back. Isn’t this important to you? Don’t you feel it between us?”
“Of course I do! Jesus, Micah, what do you think, that I’m sitting here not thinking of you at all? Do you think it doesn’t kill me, the idea of leaving you again?”
“Then…don’t. This hold they have over you… You’re not a kid anymore, you don’t have to do what they say, you don’t need them.”
“I wish I’d seen you again a year ago. Everything would have been different. We would have had time together.”
“Don’t do this, Theo. Please.”
“I feel so lost. I don’t feel like I’m in control of my own life. I never have been. Is that why I drink so much? Is that why everything always feels so tenuous, so chaotic?”
“Come see me. Just for a while. Just long enough to talk it through.”
“My life is too easy and too hard at the same time,” he said. “I don’t understand what’s happening to me. I never do. You don’t want to be with me, Micah, trust me. I don’t deserve you. I never have. I’m a dog on a leash, and they’re yanking me away, they’ve always been able to do that. I’m not even a person anymore.”
“Listen, we can talk about this, we don’t have to decide anything right now, we can—”
“I’m so sorry. Goodbye, Micah.”
* * *
“Braddock Moore is on the line again,” said Debra. “He wants to know…Micah? Are you okay?”
I touched my face. I was crying, without realizing I was crying. “Sorry. Could you just give me a minute?”
“I’ll tell him you’ll call back.”
My door creaked shut.
Sometimes at night, a storm will break while you’re asleep. The sky goes white with lightning, thunder explodes through the air, and you sit straight up, your heart racing, knowing there’s an emergency, every nerve in your body poised for flight, but you don’t know what’s going on, you haven’t had time to process it yet, to tell yourself, oh, a storm. In that moment, before your mind is working, it’s your body speaking, telling you danger, danger, without knowing what it is.
That’s what my body was doing now, except it was saying sorrow, sorrow, without my mind being able to keep up with what had just happened.
As though my stomach and my hands and my shuddering breath had known things my mind couldn’t yet catch up.
The first clear thought that went through my head was: I should have been able to talk him out of it.
I’m a lawyer. I’m really good at arguing. I can pick apart a case, point by point, and find all its flaws, find the logical inconsistency at its heart, expose it to the world, show why it’s false, show why I’m right, my interpretation is right, my argument is correct, believable, makes sense of things.
But if I’m honest, I think I knew what he was going to do, back when we were together last night.
There had been a distance in his eyes, as though he was already traveling away from me.
He had touched me, and I had touched him, and we had gone through the motions that look like love, but I think he wasn’t even in the room when it happened. He was already feeling that gravitational pull, the power his family held over him, something I had never in my life understood.
What he was telling me today, as incoherent as it sounded, was just the same thing his body was telling me yesterday.
That I meant less to him than his family did.
I meant less to him than a company.
The easy interpretation of that would be that money mattered to him more than me, but I knew it wasn’t the money. Theo had never been greedy.
He was just someone who had never believed in himself, who had never believed in his own power.
I remember how shy he had been when he was painting me, back then, that final summer together. How nervous he had been to show me what he was working on, as though I might say a word and destroy everything he had done.
Like I ever would. Like I would ever say a word against him.
I was the one person who had unfailingly been on his side, no matter what. The one person who listened to his dreams and really believed in them.
And my payment?
I would be all alone. That’s what you get for believing in people.
I should have known. The minute I walked into that hallway in Harrison House and heard his voice, I should have turned and gone back to my car.
Theo was never going to be mine. He never had been mine. That had always been an illusion. I’d done nothing more than borrow him from his real life, a life where he never painted, never sketched, a life where all the things I loved about him were cast aside, so he could be the perfect servant to his family’s legacy.
So he could be the help.
I’m not sure when I began throwing files. I wasn’t even aware tha
t I was angry, until the rage was so huge inside me that it was like bursting into flame, papers flying around me, handfuls of them, cast all through the air, my phone, the laptop, everything in reach, thrown far from me.
I didn’t even know I was shouting, until Bernard’s footsteps came pounding up the stairs and the creaking door flew open and he asked me what was wrong.
“He’s gone,” I said, gesturing around my office as though I were describing a break-in, as though Theo leaving could explain the chaos and mess. “He’s gone, Bernard. He left me all alone.”
It had happened again, just like before.
Whenever I think I can be happy, whenever I think my dreams are coming true, reality sets in.
I’m not good enough to be loved.
I’m not good enough for anyone to choose me.
I never have been.
I never will be.
I try so hard to be good, and what do I end up with? A wrecked office, a pointless life, a gangster on the phone wanting me to sell my soul, a heart like a blank page, like an empty room, like the great void of space, the blackness of the sky over the lake on a hot summer’s night, pinpoints of stars reminding you how empty it all is, how much nothing there is in the sky.
As above, so below.
So much nothing inside me.
I slumped against my desk like I was falling, like everything else in the world had vanished, and I was in the great void of space, the terrible emptiness.
27
Theo
The short flight from Corinth doesn’t serve alcohol, but that was okay, because the airport lounge certainly does, and I needed serious anesthesia before getting on that plane, before facing Val again.
Besides, sitting in a dark corner gave me time to compose myself. I didn’t need some damn flight attendant worrying over me.
A few stiff drinks to make everything okay again.
This drink helps protect me from my mother’s cancer.
This drink keeps me safe from thinking of Micah.
And this one? This one is dedicated to Harrison Holdings. Greatest damn company in America. The secret engine of all commerce. Actually, might need two drinks for that one.
“To commerce!” I said, raising my glass to no one.
I slept until our landing jostled me awake, my mouth fuzzy, my skin too hot, my mind unclear. A bad nap. “Headache,” I said, scowling. “Maybe a tumor.”
“You can’t show up like this,” said Val, looking at me with distaste. “Where is your suit? Why haven’t you shaved?”
“Congratulations,” I said, unsteady on my feet. I put my hands on his desk to hold myself up. “You get your way. I’m going to fucking Mississippi.”
“Missouri.”
“Wherever. I am, as ever, your obedient servant. Mother has cancer.”
“You need to go home and sleep this off, get a shower, and— What? What do you mean, Mother—”
“It’s in her brain,” I said. “I’m not drunk.”
“Just hold on a moment, what are you talking about? She hasn’t told me anything—”
“They never do, do they? Why don’t you keep alcohol in your office, Val? Don’t you ever feel the need? Don’t you ever need to shut the neurons down, make them stop sparking all over your head? Don’t you ever feel anything?”
He stiffened. “Would you please—”
“Dad never told us he was sick. Why didn’t he tell us, do you suppose? He and Mother kept it from us, until he was on his death-bed.”
I’ve rarely seen Val truly angry. He was angry now. Furious with me. I could tell. It’s just that I didn’t care. He was getting what he wanted. He couldn’t ask anything else of me, could he?
“He didn’t want us to worry,” said Val, through clenched teeth.
“Love worries. That’s what it does. When you love someone, you can be concerned. You can be scared. It’s all part of the package. It’s all there in the fine print, when you love someone. All the guilt and pain and agony, it’s your payment for the happiness.”
“I need to call Mother,” he said. His hand was on the phone. “I need to find out what’s wrong.”
“What’s wrong is, all our lives, they’ve treated us like robots. Like nothing matters but our duty, our responsibility. They don’t allow us to feel for them. They keep us at arm’s length, at a distance. Even our names, Val. Theophilus, Valentinian. Naming us for Roman emperors, priming us for takeover of the family empire. That’s all they saw in us, the continuation of the company, of the legacy.”
He was dialing the numbers, but I put my finger down on the hook, hanging up his call.
“Damn it, Theo—”
“Talk to me. To me, not to her. Tell me there’s something wrong with this family. Admit it to me. You’ve given up everything too, Val. A normal relationship with our parents. Any hopes and dreams…did you have hopes and dreams? Surely you must have. You were young once. What did you think you would do with your life? Surely not this. No child dreams of this.”
What was that flicker I saw on his face? Was it uncertainty? Was it recognition that I’d told the truth?
“I wasn’t like you,” he said. “I didn’t have lofty dreams of being a great artist. I never had any dreams at all. I don’t understand dreams.”
I blinked, my hand still down on the phone.
It occurred to me that he was telling the absolute truth.
“I never wanted anything for myself,” he said. “Not like you, always demanding one more cookie, one more hour to stay up, one more television show. I’m not sad about it. I’m never sad about anything. Why can’t you be like me, Theo? Why can’t anyone be like me?”
“It wasn’t a lofty dream,” I said. “I didn’t care whether I was world-renown or anything, I just wanted to paint. It’s what spoke to me, it’s what has always spoken to me.”
“It was still unrealistic,” he said. “What did you expect, that the family would pay for your art school, then just keep paying while you painted your pictures? That’s not a career. It’s not doing something useful. I had to get you to give that up. You weren’t going to do anything with painting. You couldn’t help, if you became a painter.”
He slid down into his seat and stared at me.
I don’t think I ever truly understood just how much my brother needed me, until I heard the pain in his voice just then.
“I can’t be like you,” I said in a soft voice. I carefully lowered myself into the chair on the other side of his desk. “I’m not like you. It all hurts me so much. When I told Micah I was leaving… I can’t describe the pain to you. I honestly don’t think you’d understand.”
He shook his head. “I doubt I would.”
“Have you ever loved anyone?” I asked. “Ever, in your life?”
“Not like that. No. I don’t suppose I have. But then, how would I know? I can’t see what’s inside you, I don’t know if the things I feel are like the things you feel. Feelings…are always a puzzle to me. Don’t you think that’s why Mother didn’t tell us? Because of all the feelings it would bring up? Isn’t that why Father didn’t tell us about his own illness?”
“Tell me to stay here,” I said. “Tell me the Missouri deal is off. Say that I’m more important to you than this company. I don’t care if you understand how I feel, I don’t care if you’ve never had your heart broken, I’m telling you I’m in pain, that I’ve just left the only man I’ve ever truly loved, for the second time.”
“You don’t understand,” he said, “the quarterly—”
“Oh my god.” I could feel my face pale, could feel the coldness in my fingers. “You’re going to say something about numbers.”
“The investors—”
“Our mother is dying, I’m broken-hearted, and you are about to quote numbers to me. What is wrong with you, Val?”
But I could see I had lost him.
Some people hide their pain with anger. Some people hide it behind booze or drugs. Some manage never to hide it at all
, but bulldoze everyone around them with it.
For Val, it had always been different.
I thought of him, on the way to Dad’s hospital room, silently thinking through his plans, all the eventualities, creating his strategy.
Keeping the numbers foremost in his mind.
That’s where he hid his own pain, behind a curtain of numbers.
I don’t think I’ve ever looked at my brother like this before.
I never understood just how much he needed me. Not because of the family legacy or because of my father’s deathbed wishes. But because he couldn’t function without me.
He needed someone who understood the world. Someone who understood people.
Without ever actually putting it this way, he’d gotten me to sacrifice my life, to give up everything, to help him.
He was still doing it right now.
All my life, I’ve been asked to sacrifice for my family.
It’s supposed to be a good thing, right? Noble. Big-hearted. You give up things for the good of others, and it’s moral, it’s right.
That’s not what this was. This wasn’t noble sacrifice.
This was giving everything away, and never getting anything in return.
This was trying to fill the void with drinks and laughter, because your family has emptied you out and left you with nothing.
It wasn’t love. This had nothing to do with love.
Micah was making a good sacrifice. He was going to take his mother in. He was going to work hard to make sure she was comfortable. And in return, he would strengthen the love in his family. She would be so grateful, and would find ways to pay him back. Not to compensate him, it wasn’t a transaction, but it was just what you do.
Every day, you give a little of yourself to the people you love, and they give a little of themselves to you as well. And when times are hard, you give a little more, not expecting some equal return, not expecting this to be an investment, it’s just what you do.
But in my family, it had always been one-way. Oh yes, I’d gotten money. Tons of money, a nice apartment, liquor off the highest shelf.
