by Lisa Lace
Lucy bites down on her lip awkwardly.
I cast her a sideways glance then my shoulders slump in defeat. “Why are you giving me that look?”
“Honey,” she says softly, “please don’t bite my head off, but I kind of see where Henry is coming from. Connor takes an awful lot without giving anything back.”
“So? That’s what kids do to their parents.”
Lucy rubs my arm slowly. Her eyes are full of sympathy. Her voice is soft and careful. “I know you’ve been raising him—and you’ve done an amazing job—but you’re not his parent, sweetie. By the time parents have kids, they have money in the bank, houses, partners. They’re ready to support another human being. You didn’t have that choice. You’ve got Connor through to adulthood, but eventually, you have to let him go it alone.” She leans forward to catch my eye. “That’s not to say that you won’t always be there for him—of course, you will—but one day, there has to come a point where you’re not supporting him financially anymore.”
She crosses her legs, then rubs my back. “Now, if Connor was in school or working, or being a good kid, I’d say, yeah, by all means, keep paying for him because it’s helping him get to where he needs to be. But that’s not the case here, is it? All the time, energy, and money you’re putting into supporting him is going straight to his dealer.”
My eyes fill with tears. “You think I’m as good as giving him the drugs, too.”
“No, sweetie. No,” she replies emphatically. “I think Connor is taking advantage, and I think he’s old enough and smart enough to know exactly what he’s doing. I know you don’t want him to go through what you went through—to be in his early twenties, feeling like he’s all alone without a lifeline—but you’ll never abandon him. Even parents have to let their chicks fly the nest eventually. Most kids turn eighteen and go off to college or join the workforce. If you expect the same of Connor, you’re only doing what every parent up and down the country does. You’re not abandoning him, you’re preparing him for the world.”
I chew over her words. “Henry said something similar. He said I’m sheltering him from the real world.”
“Maybe he said it insensitively, or maybe he shouldn’t have said anything at all because it’s early days, and it’s not his place. It’s probably not my place either, but anyone who cares about you is eventually going to say the same thing. I know I’m only thinking about how hard looking after Connor is on you, and I’m sure Henry’s is only thinking about the same thing. Don’t take as criticism what’s meant as love.”
I smell the marijuana before I get anywhere near the apartment door. When I finally open it and step inside, the odor of weed is overwhelming. From inside, I can hear laughter and the sound of video games. People are stamping their feet, shouting, and making noise.
What if the neighbors hear? The landlord could kick us out. Someone could call the police.
I quickly open the door and step inside. The place is filled with a druggy fog that makes my eyes water and chest tighten at the same time as my head starts to spin.
There are six young men in their late teens and early twenties sitting in my apartment living room. They’re all facing the TV screen as two of them play some violent video game, and a bong sits proudly on the middle of the coffee table. Traces of grass litter the surface, and there are empty chip packages and take-out containers everywhere.
Among the video game cases, bong, and garbage, I spot a little bag of some white powder, and fright squeezes all the air out of my lungs. I don’t want Connor going down that path. I also spot some pills—ecstasy? I feel my lungs tighten in fear as I realize I have no idea what any of these guys are on or what kind of influence they’re under.
I shut the door quickly behind me, put down my purse, and confront Connor. He’s sitting at the center of the group, lounging back with his eyes red and watery, his legs spread lazily apart, a blunt hanging from his hand. I stand in front of all six of them, put my hands on my hips and confront Connor. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
He takes in a long, slow, deep breath, then releases it with just as much effort. “Lissy, these are my new friends.” He starts to name them, pointing around the circle. “Prezzers, Goose, Dyno—”
“I don’t care what their names are,” I hiss. “I want them out. Everyone, out!” I point toward the door, but nobody moves. I start to gather up armfuls of trash and collect empty beer bottles. “I said, get out!”
Connor starts chuckling in a dazed, slow way. His friends start giggling, too. Everybody stays where they are.
As I look around, I spot more damage. There’s a spill on the sofa, greasy fingerprints on the tabletop. A picture of Mom has been set face-up on the table and used as an ashtray. When I see it, I burst into tears.
I throw down all the trash I’ve gathered and grab one of the men by his shirt, trying to haul him out of my apartment. I begin to scream. “Get out! I said, get out! Get the fuck out of my house!”
They all continue to laugh. Connor pushes me off his ‘friend.” “Chill, Lissy,” he drawls. “We’re just hanging.”
I point at the photograph. “That’s our mom.”
Connor is emotionless. I see his eyes move to the picture, but he either doesn’t register, doesn’t care, or is too numb to respond.
I grab the picture off the table and take it into my room. I sit on my bed and cry my heart out as I use my sleeve to try and wipe away the ash. Mom looks back at me with a bright, radiant smile.
I sit in my room for thirty minutes, hoping that the group will leave, but as the minutes tick by and they show no sign of leaving, I start to panic.
I know that if anyone smells the pot, or if the landlord sees the damage, we could be evicted, and then I could risk losing everything. My only other option to get them out is to call the police, but then I risk getting Connor arrested on a possession charge.
After a long time of crying and panicking, there’s only one person I can think of who would care to help me.
I pick up my cell and call Henry.
He answers after the first ring.
“Lissy!” he says. “I’ve been trying to call you all day, but I guess you were at work. I wanted to apologize for everything I said this morning. I shouldn’t have said anything. I’m an idiot. I’m sorry.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I say quickly.
He hears the tone of my voice and his own fills with concern. “What’s wrong?”
“Connor’s here with a bunch of people I don’t know. They’re smoking and doing other stuff, and I can’t get them out. If I call the police, Connor will probably get arrested.”
“I’ll be right there.”
Henry doesn’t hesitate. I hang up, my chest pounding with panic. I have no idea what one preppy, British son of a Duke is going to do against six drug-fueled thugs, but I have nobody else I can rely on.
Henry
I get changed into a pair of jeans and a non-descript black hooded sweater before I race toward Harvard Square to hail down a taxi. The last thing I want to do is show up looking like a nark and immediately cause trouble.
My blood pumps fast with adrenalin as I make the ride across town. My hands curl and uncurl into fists as I prepare to fight if I need to. I picture Melissa alone in an apartment full of smoking thugs, and I feel a surge of rage and an innate sense of protection. She deserves better.
I arrive at Melissa’s apartment in under twenty minutes, and quickly race up to her floor. I knock on the apartment door, and it’s Lissy who answers.
She practically falls into me as she throws her arms around my neck. Her eyes are red and swollen from crying, but her skin is gray. “I’m so sorry,” she whispers.
I squeeze her tightly. “Don’t be sorry. I’ll sort this out.”
Melissa stands back so I can step into the apartment. I take in the scene before me; six men between nineteen and twenty-two or twenty-three, a bong, a little baggy of something stronger.
I ro
ll up my sleeves, then step into the middle of the room and clap my hands. “I think it’s time to go, lads.”
All six of them start laughing. They take it in turns to mock my accent. In their cannabis haze, it’s the funniest thing they’ve ever heard.
I grab one of them by the scruff of his shirt and haul him up from the sofa. “I said, it’s time to leave.”
He swings at me. I duck, then sock him in the stomach. When he folds in half, it rouses the others, and they begin to rise slowly from their chairs.
The first one up draws back his hand in a fist and manages to hit me square in the jaw. I pull my weight back, then pummel into him, shoulder first. He drops like a sack of potatoes, falling between the coffee table and sofa. I straddle him and lift my fist to hit him again, but then I hear Lissy sobbing. I leave my hand hovering in the air and turn over my shoulder to see her crying with her hands over her mouth.
I let the guy go and rise to my feet. I hold my hands up to show the others I’m done fighting, and step back.
I turn to Connor and point my finger in his direction. “You’re a disgrace. Your sister provides for you; she pays your way, keeps a roof overhead, buys your clothes, your food, and everything else. And this is how you repay her? You lost your mom, and now you think the world owes you something. Maybe it does. But not her. Not Melissa. She doesn’t owe you a damn thing. Everything she gives, she gives out of the goodness of her heart.
“From what I hear, your mom was a good woman. And maybe Lissy’s too kind-hearted to say it, but I’m not: she’d be ashamed of you right now. Lissy can only see the good in you and wants to protect you, but I don’t know you from Adam, and all I see is a grown man acting like a child because he found out young that life isn’t easy.
“If you don’t start treating Melissa with some respect and gratitude, then one day, she’ll leave your sorry ass to fend for yourself, and you’ll be smoking your weed under a bridge somewhere.
“Your sister believes in you. Don’t let her down.” I turn back to Melissa and take her hand in mine. “Come on, Lissy. You can stay with me tonight.”
I turn back to Connor and his cronies. “If you’re not all cleared out and all this cleared up by the morning, I will call the police, and I don’t care if each and every one of you ends up behind bars. You might get a slap on the wrist for the weed, but that—” I point toward the baggy, “—will land you somewhere you don’t want to be. Get some self-respect, Connor, and sort your life out.”
I circle my arm around Melissa’s waist and escort her to her bedroom so she can pack an overnight bag. She’s shaking like a leaf. “I’m sorry,” she repeats. “I’m so sorry.”
I squeeze her arm. “It’s okay. Let’s get you somewhere safer.”
She looks up at me and touches my cheek with regret. “You’re bruised.”
“Don’t worry about it. It’ll heal.”
Melissa finishes gathering her things, and we leave the apartment. She starts to panic once we’re on the pavement outside.
“They’re going to destroy the place.”
“They’re stoned,” I say. “Within an hour, they’ll all be passed out.”
“What about that other stuff? What was it? Cocaine? Heroin?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know.”
“I don’t want Connor taking that.”
“You can’t stay and watch over him with all those other guys there. It’s dangerous. All I care about is getting you somewhere safe. If there’s damage, we’ll deal with it in the morning. Connor will be all right.”
I have to keep my arm around her to steer her away from the apartment block. Even with all the chaos inside, I can tell she’s reluctant to leave. She wants to keep Connor in her sight and stop him from making the bad choices he’s almost certainly going to make.
“What if he overdoses?”
I pull her to a stop and take her shoulders in an effort to talk some sense into her. “What if one of them pulls a knife? What if one of them gets you alone in a bedroom while Connor’s too stoned to know what’s what? Connor has made his own choices. You’ve got to decide whether you want to share in the consequences or walk away now. You tried to help him, Lissy, but he doesn’t want to be helped. The only way we can guarantee he doesn’t take anything else tonight is to call the police and stop this thing right now.”
She hesitates, her eyes brimming with tears. “I can’t do that. He’ll get arrested. There’s probably enough weed in there for him to be charged with dealing.”
“Then there’s nothing you can do.”
We walk back toward Harvard Square and the bridge. Melissa is shivering. She’s only wearing a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. I take off my hooded sweatshirt and wrap it around her shoulders. “Thanks,” she whispers.
I put my arm around her. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get them to leave.”
“Don’t be sorry. It was awful of me to ask you to come at all and bring you into all that mess. The last thing I want to do is drag you into all of this. I won’t do it again.”
“If it keeps you safe, I’ll do anything.”
“I know you walked away for me. I appreciate it, Henry.”
“I need to learn to face my problems without my fists,” I tell her. “It was best I walked away.”
“This is meant to be a new leaf for you, and I’m creating a whole new world of trouble.”
I look down at her and smile. “Who’d have thought you’d be the one getting me into sticky situations, huh? I’m the one who’s meant to be trouble.”
She smiles back, her tired, worried eyes full of affection and gratitude. “You? You’re no trouble at all.”
We arrive back at my apartment, and I suggest Melissa take a shower while I make us both a cup of tea. She smiles when I suggest that. “What a very British solution.”
“There’s nothing a nice hot cuppa can’t solve.”
Twenty minutes later, she appears again, dressed in her cozy pajamas with a bumblebee print. Her hair is wet and tousled, her skin pink and shiny from the shower. I’m already sitting on the sofa with two cups of tea in place on the coffee table.
She sits beside me, curling her legs up under her and leaning into my shoulder. She closes her eyes like the weight of the whole world is on her shoulders. “Tonight was hell.”
I pull her close and kiss her forehead. “But you made it through.”
She twists to look up at me. “Only because you were there.” Her expression is full of regret. “I’m sorry for what I said this morning. I was wrong when I said you’ve never had to take care of anyone—you take care of me.”
“I’m sorry, too. I acted like it’s an easy thing to tell Connor what to do, but I know it’s not. I mean, look at tonight. How could you ever lay down the law faced with that? I never appreciated how frightening it must be at times.”
“The only thing that scares me is the thought that Connor might throw his life away, get hurt, or even killed. He would never hurt me.”
“He doesn’t have to. All he has to do is bring you into dangerous situations like the one tonight for something to go wrong.”
Lissy sighs. “Connor doesn’t think about things like that. He doesn’t see the harm in ‘chilling’ with his friends. He thinks I don’t understand, even though I’m the only one who can. He’s desperate to feel like this misunderstood outcast, but I’ve been through the same thing. I don’t know why he treats me like the enemy when it should be us against the world. I’ve never had a shoulder to cry on. Sometimes I wish Connor would recognize my heartache the way I recognize his.”
“Sometimes it’s easier to be the misunderstood rebel than admit you’re stuck in a situation outside your control.”
Melissa fixes me with an intent, knowing stare. “What do you mean?”
“I think it’s why I’ve done the things I have. I was raised in boarding schools—I went to Eton when I was thirteen and was there three terms a year until I was eighteen. I hardly saw my parents.”
“I hated it there. I was bullied terribly by some older boys. The teachers brushed it off, and I couldn’t communicate with my parents. It was then that I started to misbehave and cause trouble because it felt like nobody was looking. I was invisible.
“After I started acting out, there were suddenly people around me. People gathered for the entertainment, I guess. Anyway, I stopped feeling so alone. When I was making people laugh or getting a reaction for doing something stupid or reckless, I felt seen. Is that stupid?”
Melissa shakes her head. “I don’t think so.”
I continue. “Soon it became habit to break the rules and push boundaries. I liked the way it felt when people were paying attention, for a change.”
“You’ve always had my full attention.” Melissa wraps her arm around my waist and cuddles close to me. “I think you’re fascinating; the smartest guy I know, funny, delightfully British.”
I laugh. “And you have mine. I will never stop being amazed by you, Lissy. You have an inner strength I’ve never seen before.”
“Do you think so? I feel like I’m falling apart.”
“You’re not. And if you ever feel like you are, I’m here for you.”
She lifts her face to kiss me. The kiss is soft and gentle, different from the kisses we’ve shared before.
We talk for hours, but it feels like minutes. We share private, intimate details of our lives. Melissa tells me all about her childhood, how she coped with the loss of her mother, her custody battle for Connor.
I tell her about a youth spent in boarding school, living in my brother’s shadow, and how I regret all the mistakes I’ve made.
As the night passes, we connect on a real and deep level. I find that with Melissa, there’s no more pretense. I’m not invisible. She sees more of me than anyone ever has before. And, as she tells me about her life, her hopes, her dreams, her fears, I feel I see her, too.
Melissa is selfless and loyal to a fault. She’s ambitious, hard-working, noble and kind. And I think I love her.
