He stops and takes in the room. In the way parents would take stock of a situation if their child was suddenly cornered by a lion. “Come with me,” he orders.
“No!” I throw my shoulders back. “I’m a freak.” God help me, I look straight at Proctor. “I can’t process this. Can’t deal with this.” I lunge for the door, and Roy grabs me by the shoulders.
“There’s nothing wrong with you.”
“Other than my mother and her half-brother decided it was a good idea to make a baby.” I relax like I’m going to sag against him long enough for his grip to loosen and I free myself. Gavin immediately blocks the doorway. Proctor is still in the same position, studying me.
“We don’t know if the information is correct. I wasn’t trying to hide it from you. We agreed we’d look at it in the morning.”
“What are you gonna do? Trap me in here like a wild animal? I need to run, to do something, to bash my head into a tree trunk or…” I toss my arms up. “Get out of my way.”
Roy widens his stance and looks as big as a Mack truck as he blocks my path to the door. “Not going to happen. We’ll go back to the house and wait for the therapist.”
The more spun up I get, the calmer he is, and it’s driving me insane. “No! I need pain,” I scream. “And splitting me open with your cock is not going to do it.”
Gavin coughs and turns his back to us. Proctor’s eyes are too bright, like he’s found his new favorite toy.
I did accomplish something, because Roy is fuming and his neck muscles bulge as his green eyes cut into me. “In. The. House.” He points toward the door. “Now.”
“Oh, no you don’t. You aren’t my father.” My laugh is hysterical. I twist the engagement ring from my finger and throw it at him. My aim is true. It bounces off his chest and lands somewhere behind the sofa. “We aren’t together anymore. We aren’t anything anymore. You’ve been hiding things from me since I met you. I’m done.”
“Daisy, please, I’m not letting you go running off.”
I can’t take being trapped in here with him. I make a run for the door, only to be picked up by Roy. I’m not Daisy anymore. I’m an animal fighting for release. I’m struggling to keep the awful truth from replaying inside my head.
“Give it to me,” Roy orders.
My eyes whip around, and Gavin has something in his hand. “No.” My legs pinwheel, desperate to keep whatever Gavin has away from me. “What is that?”
“A sedative. Something to calm you.”
“Boy,” Gavin barks. “Not a good idea.”
“This is wrong. Please, Roy, don’t do this to me.”
He takes me to the floor with his body pinning me in place, his knee on my thigh. I’m fighting him with everything I have, but it’s impossible, and my head rolls to the side. Proctor has knelt to watch. The sharp jab of the needle into my upper thigh stills me. Roy’s knee lifts.
I look up at his tortured eyes as I drift off. “I’ll never forgive you.”
I can pick out voices, the meaning of words as unknown to me as a foreign language. The tone behind them, I can decipher. Roy is arguing with Gavin. I’m lifted, and there’s the movement of walking. A car…I’m in a car. The seatbelt crossed over my chest. The snap as it’s engaged. Again lifted, and now there are female voices. Oh, it’s my aunts. Warmth blooms in my chest. Roy’s talking. The soft murmur of my aunts’ voices. They’re crying. And still more talking.
“Sister.”
Charlie is here. I’m sad, and I don’t know why.
“You don’t need me anymore.”
What? “Charlie,” I murmur.
“She’s coming around,” Roy says.
There’s emptiness where Charlie used to be. “Don’t go.”
“I won’t, baby.”
It’s Roy, but I meant Charlie. Why is he leaving?
“Stay alive,” Charlie whispers. “Be happy. For me.”
“No!”
“Daisy, it’s alright. We’re with you,” Aunt Stella reassures.
I don’t want to open my eyes and wake up and remember the awful truth nipping around the edges of my memory.
“Give her some space,” says a female’s voice I don’t know. “She’s at the edge of consciousness now.”
My tongue sits like a lead weight inside my mouth. I blink my eyes open.
“Daisy, dear.” Aunt Mae comes into focus. “Thank God, you’re awake.”
And there’s Aunt Stella with her arm draped around her twin like she’s holding her up. A rough, warm hand takes mine.
“Relax into it. You’ll be fully awake soon.”
I’ve had this sensation before, when I’ve awakened from a dream and can’t move. I read somewhere the name is sleep paralysis. Right now, it’s a bit frightening, and I dart my eyes around the room. I’m at my aunts’ home. Roy is sitting beside my prone body on the well-worn sofa. Fire is burning, and the wood smoke mixes with the smell of coffee and something sugary and freshly baked. An attractive woman with dark hair, dark skin and large eyes is smiling at me. I don’t know her.
“I’m Doctor Angela Wilkins.”
It’s coming back to me now. She must be the therapist. Why is a therapist here? Why am I on the couch? Why am I in my aunts’ home and not at Roy’s?
“You drugged me.” The words are bitter in my mouth.
“I did.” He rakes his hands through his hair. “I didn’t know what else to do.”
I manage to sit up and bat his hand away. “You could have let me go.”
He clears his throat and stands up. “I’ve told them everything. Shown them the file.”
With their eyes on me, I can’t look up; I twist the band around my wrist.
Aunt Mae is the first to speak, “We’re so sorry, dear.”
Aunt Stella continues, “We had no idea you were hurting yourself. Or what happened with Charlie. We knew something was off—”
“I know,” I whisper. “I know.” And I do. I’ll never blame them because they’re faultless in all this.
“And the Stanwycks…” Aunt Stella’s voice drifts, and she has to regain her composure. “We’d heard about old man Stanwyck. He was a mean man to his family and others.”
“His boys,” Mae sighs. “They were a bit wild, but never like their father.”
“They probably had no idea they were related.” Stella lets out a sob.
It’s not that I don’t care in general. It’s that I don’t care right now. I’m numb, frozen, and unable to mentally climb out of the drug-induced fog. I need time and quiet. I need my home.
“Am I free to go?” I cut my eyes to Roy. “You aren’t going to drag me off to an asylum or sedate me again, are you?”
“Daisy,” my aunts exclaim in unison.
Roy’s still and lethal and handsome. “What would you have done if I hadn’t?”
I didn’t think he was going to apologize. “We’ll never know.” I stand, tentatively. “I’m going home,” I state.
Everyone talks at once.
I walk past my aunts and Roy and the doctor and stand in the foyer. “Follow me if you need to, but don’t try and stop me. I can’t think in here.”
“She’s right,” the doctor says.
I don’t even pretend to care what she has to say.
“When you’re ready.” She hands me her card. “To talk or whatever.”
I know she’s doing her job, and she’s probably great at it, but I want nothing to do with her. Without taking the card, I walk out the front door. With each stride, my legs grow stronger and the burden of secrets I’ve carried for so many years is sloughing away. But instead of a lightened load on my shoulders, I have another equally onerous burden settling on my back. My whole life I’ve wanted to know who I am. Didn’t turn out quite like I expected, did it? In fact, it’s fucking hideous.
Behind me, a twig snaps and footsteps crunch on the forest undergrowth. It’s Roy being conspicuous so as not to startle me. I love him. I hate him.
My gait i
sn’t its usual steady self and what should take a half hour drags on and on until finally, the chimney of my little house is in sight.
“You won’t tell Mr. Stanwyck, will you?” I ask without turning around.
“No.”
What would Mr. Stanwyck do if he knew? Right, who am I fooling? He probably does know, and maybe that’s why he’s always looked at me like he does. I’m something to be ashamed of, something that should be hidden away in an attic, or a nuthouse. I’m the Antoinette Rochester in this story, not the Jane.
Proctor is standing beside the ubiquitous black Suburban in his usual attire of dark suit and white shirt and hair brushed back from his face. Are his scars self-inflicted? Or was he captured and tortured? So many different scenarios run through my mind. Like he knows what I’m thinking, he watches me with too-bright eyes, opens the back door of the SUV, extracts a generic cardboard box, and drops it on the ground.
“All the information I have, including what Mr. Barnes gave you.” Roy walks around and beside me, so we resemble a triangle with the box sitting between us. “It’s yours.”
It makes sense now, in a twisted my-family-has-an-incest-problem kind of way. “Charlie didn’t know whether to continue the family tradition and fuck me, or embrace me as a sister. Either way, he was aware we were irrevocably screwed.”
“Yes.” Roy’s back to his usual posture of feet wide apart and hands fisted at his sides.
I meet Proctor’s eyes. “Burn it.”
His lip lifts at the corners, enough to make a priest cross himself as if it would keep the demons at bay.
“The documents, they could be useful to you.” Roy, as always, is practical.
In this moment, Proctor and I are kindred spirits, though I know my maladjustments will never challenge whatever is going on in his cranium. I nod, and he pulls a lighter from his pocket.
“Daisy.” Roy steps into my personal space. “Don’t do this.”
“Why?” I tilt my head a la Proctor. “Is there anything I don’t know in there?”
I’m pleased when Roy steps back and shakes his head. “Photos, some original…can’t be found again, and documents to back up your claim.”
Ah, yes, my claim to the Stanwyck money. With old families, it’s always about the money. “I don’t want anything from him.” I bend and turn the box over and lift it up to reveal a mountain of paper and photos. My mother’s face is on top, staring at me, accusing me.
The small, metallic sound of Proctor’s lighter has me stand and step back. He bends and sets the pages ablaze. We stand there in silence while everything burns, the photos the brightest in colors of purple and red and green until my mother’s face is dark ash.
“My razor,” I demand. “I want Reggie’s razor.”
Roy’s tortured look cuts through my numbness. “I can’t.”
Hasn’t he learned by now he can’t save me?
“I’ll give it to your aunts.”
“Fine.” I turn my back on them and run my fingers along the fender of the old Buick, the one Reggie gave me. I walk up my front porch steps and stand at the door like a marionette waiting for the puppeteer’s manipulations. “I don’t have a key.”
Of course, Roy does and opens my door for me. “Nothing has changed between us.”
I don’t want his touch and skirt past him, closing the screen door between us. “Everything has changed.” It’s hard to meet his eyes. “Stay away from me, Roy.”
“You’re free. No more secrets. Should I have kept it from you?”
“Like you weren’t going to?”
He tilts his chin up. “You’re right. I would have destroyed the information about Alistair and your grandmother.” He holds his hand up when I try to speak. “Because there is not one shred of verification and…why put you through this? What is the fucking point of it?”
“Goodbye, Roy.” I shut the door, lock it, and grab a Coke from the fridge. This pain is unnecessary and cruel, and I asked for it, begged for it, and in the end, Roy has freed me from my secrets. It’s…I’m not the Daisy I used to know anymore. I want her back. Unbelievably, I want Charlie back. All I can do now is breathe and eat and sleep and pretend like I’m living until, one day, this doesn’t hurt anymore.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Day one after the revelation, I make an appointment with a therapist in Leesburg. She came highly recommended by my GP.
The waiting room is painted a neutral shade of light gray. The furniture bought together and looking contrived and pretentious. The magazine selection ranges from Popular Mechanics to Home and Garden to Town and Country. Nothing to excite the patients, nothing to scare them either; all I want to do is vomit in the fake ficus pot.
I didn’t sleep last night, just sat in the kitchen and watched the front door for no reason. My cell phone danced across the kitchen table with calls from Roy and my aunts and, surprisingly, Proctor and Gavin. I knew they were all terrified I was hacking my wrists to bits with a kitchen knife. I wanted to. I even laid all the knives out on the table in front of me and spoke with them, like they were conspirators in my imagination. They’re still there, lined up like a torturer’s play kit, waiting for me.
The doctor—I realize I don’t remember her name—has opened the door and waves me inside her office. Like her waiting room, she’s gray and calm and serene in a way that makes me want to slap her silly. Is that normal? Probably not.
After the introductions are made, and she clarifies her approach to therapy for her fucked-up-in-the-head patients, she settles back and waits. I guess I should speak now. I do not.
“Why are you here?”
Hearing those three words, I realize she will not be able to help me. There’s too much backstory to fill in, too many details she will never understand. I talk to her about how my emotions are numb. She explains this is normal and expected when one is going through a mental trauma such as divorce or death or any loss. I almost laugh. How mundane. Would my story shock her? Would she refer me to another therapist? To a psych ward? Or a medical study eager to know the effects of inbreeding in humans? I remember reading in school about the Pharaohs marrying their sisters, keeping the bloodline pure. Well, here I am, more Stanwyck than the Stanwycks themselves.
On the drive home I tried to notice the fall foliage but didn’t. I’m like the static on the old TV set we used to have. When I was little, before Reggie had cable installed, we had an antenna strapped to the chimney to bring in the TV signal. I remember turning the knob to tune in the channel and how the static had a particular noise. Right now, inside my head, a constant static blocks everything out.
When I pull up to my house, Roy’s leaning against his Mercedes, looking a decade older than the night before. “I want to talk,” he says.
“I’m talked out,” I reply and walk past him.
“I need you.”
Agony opens up inside me and threatens to wrap its arms around me and pull me into its depths. I trip and right myself. “Don’t,” I warn as he reaches out his hand to me. “I can’t. I can’t.” And run inside and slam the door behind me.
I make it to the bathroom seconds before I dry heave into the toilet. I’m nauseous if I eat. I’m sick if I don’t eat. I am misery. Too tired to make it upstairs, I grab the afghan and curl up on the couch and sleep.
For a full twenty-four hours, I sleep and, when I do roll off the couch and check the time, I’m only doing so to calculate when I can go back to sleep again. I use my hands on the steps to help me make it up the stairs and remove clothing on the way to the shower. My hair first, next I quickly use the razor so as not to get too attached to it, and shave my legs and pits. The sudsy washcloth glides over hip bones too pronounced and rib-bone peaks with valleys in between.
I step into too-loose jeans. They used to fit, but now hang off my hips like boyfriend jeans. Just to spite me, my breasts ache, my nipples like hot pokers. When I walk into Mangler, my aunts do their best to comfort me. I’m naked without my secrets, like
a tortoise without its shell.
“I need things normal, okay?” I plead with my eyes.
“Okay, dear.” Aunt Mae lines up the delivery orders for the day. “Things are picking up with everyone getting their linens for Thanksgiving.”
“And this.” Aunt Stella places a manila envelope before me. “From the photographer in New York.”
A large label with my name and address, and Mario R. Stain typed in the left corner with the studio address. I’d forgotten about the photo shoot and my plans to use the money to renovate my aunts’ home. That was before the revelation.
“Perhaps it would be best if you canceled.” Mae brings me a cup of coffee along with a chocolate-covered donut. “There’s a dozen waiting for you in the back.”
Her voice is too hopeful. “No, thanks.” Almost past the doorway to the back room, I stop. “Thank you, for everything.” I don’t wait to hear anything they have to say.
I stop off at the market/gas station on Atoka Road and get an egg salad sandwich. It tastes better than chocolate chip cookies. Eggs used to make me retch; now I’m thinking of having another one. Who am I?
My cell vibrates in my back pocket. “Vincent.”
“Love, whatcha doing?”
“Deliveries.”
“Ah, well, do you still want me to go with you?”
The modeling… “Yeah, I do.”
“The family’s in Paris, so the apartment is all ours. Ben’s driving us.”
Ben’s the family chauffeur, who usually drives Vincent’s mother. “Great. Can’t wait.” I sound like a death row inmate giving my last words.
“Everything alright, love? You sound a bit off.”
Roy, my aunts, everyone has been right. I do need to speak with someone, but it’s not doctors I need, but Vincent. “Do you think you could come over tonight…I need to talk.”
“Ohhh,” his reply is immediate. “Roy problems? Has he gotten kinky on you? I’m your man, love.”
I giggle. Impossible. “See you at eight.”
“Ciao.”
And the hours roll on, and I keep breathing, and the world keeps spinning. When I get home, I clean my house and steer clear of my knife-centric kitchen table.
Secrets In Our Scars Page 33
