by N. K. Smith
I wasn’t even sure he’d show up since I got nothing in reply to my e-mail, but I didn’t want to think about the possibility that he’d really turn me down.
So when the bell rang, I ran to the door, smiling when I saw him. He wasn’t looking at me, but he was here and that was enough.
Dinner was awkward. Tom was trying to drive the conversation, but finally gave up and finished his food early. He retired to the armchair with a beer in his hand.
“Did you like the curry?” I asked Elliott tentatively after Tom went to the other room.
He nodded. He didn’t even try to use his voice to respond. It brought tears to my eyes. I wanted to know what he was thinking. I wanted to know if he was all right. I wanted to know if we were all right.
I put down my fork and stood up. Taking his hand, I pulled him up and led him up the stairs to my room. The dishes could wait.
When we were alone, I asked him, “Do you hate me?”
“N-no.”
He still wouldn’t look at me and I could barely look at him.
“Do you still want to be my boyfriend?”
“Yes.”
“Why are you—?”
“I c-c-can’t give you things y-you w-want.”
He was talking about sex. I moved over to my dresser and started fiddling with the little music box. “It doesn’t matter. We shouldn’t even... I mean, it’s not important.”
I could handle not having sex. I would have to.
“W-w-w-what?”
I didn’t turn around to look at him. It would be too painful and I might not be able to say any of this.
“It’s just confusing as hell. I still want to be your girlfriend, but I don’t think it’s smart for us to...”
“B-b-b-b-but I c-c-c-can t-t-try...” He looked so beautifully broken. Everything in me wanted to fix all the little broken pieces.
“I get why it’s difficult for you. I understand what you’re going through. You know I do.”
“A-a-a-a, b-b-b-b...” he tried, but no actual words came out.
“I’d rather not be sexual with you than force you into something you’re clearly uncomfortable with.”
He was chewing on his hand now and I hated it. I took it from his mouth and held it, wiping away the wetness with my thumb. I’d caught him in time. He hadn’t broken the skin in a new place.
“We can be, you know, physical or whatever, but I don’t want the goal to be sex because that just screws it all up.”
“B-b-but I c-c-can w-w-work at it.”
“I know you can, and I know you have. I mean, it’s clear that you...” I stopped, not wanting to make him feel defective. “You’re not ready for all that.”
He was depressed. It wasn’t hard to see.
“I love you, Elliott.” His eyes finally locked with mine. “And I hate seeing you in pain and shit, so I’m backing off before I break you.”
“I-I-I w-w-won’t b-b-b-bbbrreak.”
“How do I know that? You won’t talk to me about shit, and it’s cool because I know how hard it is to deal with, but you know what happened to me. I know nothing about what happened to you. I don’t know what your father did to you.”
He pulled his hands back and took a step away from me. I feared that yet again I’d said the wrong thing. He continued to move back until he was in the corner between my wall and my door. The palms of his hands were flat against the wall.
The action confused me. The corner would be the last place I’d have chosen to put myself.
“I-i-i-i-i-it w-w-w-w-wasn’t mmmmmmy ffffffffff....”
Oh.
“... fffffather.”
Oh, shit.
That left one person, unless it happened in foster care.
I took a step toward him.
“You don’t have to tell me. I’m not trying to get you to tell me.”
I took another step. It was clear that he was shaking.
I wondered if he ever admitted to himself that this shit happened to him. He rarely spoke about his brother and now I knew why. Maybe that meant that he rarely even allowed himself to think about what happened. If something existed only inside of someone, inside their head, and no one else knew about it, it wasn’t really real, was it?
He looked like he could pass out any moment, but I was proud of him for not having an attack. His hand was off the wall now, twisted around so he was biting the meaty part beneath his pinky finger. I continued to move to him slowly.
My goal was to keep him calm and get his hand out of his mouth. If I could do that, I could lead him to my bed and lie with him. The nearness would relax him.
This was not why I had invited him over.
When I was close enough, I carefully pressed a gentle hand on his stomach. Then I took his hand out of his mouth.
I now hated every member of his biological family.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, not really sure if I was apologizing for backing him into a corner or if I was merely commiserating with him as a kindred victim.
His eyes were clamped shut and his head was upturned as he struggled for breath.
I wanted him to know, like I’d said before, nothing he could say, no scars he could show me, would change how I felt about him. He was freaking out and I needed him to relax and know that I loved him. I loved every bit of him. As scary as that was for me, I did. I loved his smile and his scars. I loved his hope and his pain. Knowing for certain what had happened to him didn’t change that.
Sometimes things between us were better without words, so once I had his hands in mine, I pulled them over my shoulders and stepped into his arms. I heard the rapid thumping of his heart and felt his chest rise and fall quickly, but felt satisfaction when his arms tightened around my shoulders.
I felt the shaking of his body and I hated it.
It took a long time, but I finally coaxed him out of the corner. He was still tense when we made it to the bed and although he lay down with me, his hand was back in his mouth. It didn’t seem like he was biting it though.
There were a million questions that I wanted to ask, but it wasn’t the time. Elliott kept everything so tightly locked up that I didn’t think he really even knew what happened to him until the box was opened and the secrets slipped out.
I knew next to nothing about his brother, but now I knew that he’d...
Jesus. I could barely think about that shit myself; it wasn’t a wonder that Elliott had issues saying it.
After a while he took his hand out of his mouth and we looked at each other for a long time without speaking. It was disarming to stare so deeply into his eyes and yet somehow it was comforting. I got this feeling like I truly knew him in the most profound way someone could know another person.
I still had no idea how the situation with Elliott and his brother happened, and if it was like what happened to me or something different. But now I knew that someone he should’ve been able to trust took something from him. Something priceless that could never be given back.
“I-I w-w-w-want to mmmmake llllll-llllove w-w-with you, SSSophie.”
I cringed at the terminology. The whole “making love” thing always set me on edge. It seemed so... dramatic and unrealistic. Making love wasn’t about body parts being inserted and withdrawn. Making love was what Elliott and I always did. We came together and shared the little parts of ourselves that no one else was privy to.
Now was not the time to correct him on word usage though, and if I said something different, he’d focus on the words and wonder if I didn’t really love him, so I went with it.
“Me too, but I think...” Dear Flying Spaghetti Monster, was I really saying this? I took a deep breath and continued. “I think we should wait.”
He didn’t say anything, but his hand mo
ved to my hip. I scooted closer. My head nestled in underneath his chin. I loved being held by him.
“I-I d-don’t wwwant to w-w-wait.” He paused and then said, “Y-y-you c-can’t save me from w-what’s already hhhhappened. I wwwant to be with you.”
I could’ve asked him if he wanted to talk about his past, but I knew that people who said talking about it made you feel better had never experienced shit like we had. There were so many things involved in our silence. The things that happened to me, that happened to him, were shameful. They were disgusting and it was bad enough to live through them once; who in their right mind would actually want to talk about it and live through it again? These were unspeakable things.
Elliott told me that he wanted to have sex, but I wasn’t quite sure he could actually follow through with it. It wouldn’t be his fault and I knew that, but I didn’t think I could keep going this way. I felt so bad after each failed attempt. Even when he was actively pursuing the touching, I still came away feeling like I was forcing him to do things he didn’t want to.
I didn’t want to keep feeling like that, but if we stopped altogether, he would internalize it until he convinced himself that I didn’t want him.
“Fine, but,” I said, pulling away from him just enough to see his face, “you’re in control of everything. I’m not going to initiate it and if you start getting...” I was going to say “weird,” but I stopped. “If shit starts getting messed up, I’m stopping it.”
He said nothing, so I nestled back against him and enjoyed the sensations of just being close to one another.
A few days later, Andrea came over to use the elliptical. She burned way too many calories. She’d told her mom that she’d be staying for dinner, so I made it healthy. While she was in the kitchen with me, I dropped little tips about how she could eat a lot of carrots for only thirty calories, and how she could make noodles out of zucchinis and save all the starch and about a hundred calories.
No longer tied to being buzzed or numbed out on drugs all the time, I’d begun to notice a whole host of things that I hadn’t before. Andrea was an example. I’d thought she looked sick before I gave up pot and all that, but once I saw her with sober eyes, I realized how bad off the girl really was. Her hair was thin and dull, her eyes sunken, and her skin had gone beyond pale; it was a shade of gray. I hated seeing her die slowly of malnutrition and starvation.
Tom tried to help with Andrea. It made me happy that he tried. We attempted a couple different things to help us connect, as Wallace would say. He didn’t drink nearly as much as he had in past months, and twice a week we had to have dinner together, followed by some kind of activity, which usually turned out to be watching something on TV.
Two weeks ago, we tried to build a puzzle, but both of us decided it wasn’t for us and gave up. We played cards instead. He taught me how to play Texas Hold ’Em and I actually had fun. It was strange and awkward, but it was something.
On Wednesday we had therapy with Wallace. I never liked therapy with Tom because no matter how well we did throughout the week, all the stupid shit came out and it felt like any progress we’d made was erased. I knew it really wasn’t. I knew that Wallace’s therapy helped create those good times when we were at home, but during our sessions that progress sometimes seemed a long way away.
“She started calling me Tom instead of Dad when she was nine,” he said.
“Do you remember why that was, Sophie?”
I sighed and brought my knees up to my chest. “Because I saw him maybe eighty days out of the year. I figured a dad had to be around more than that.”
“Did your mother use the love you had for your dad against you?”
I couldn’t bring myself to acknowledge the question. It would mean admitting that at one time I’d loved him.
He got tired of my silence and answered for me. “She made Sophie burn the gifts I sent her.”
“Did you want to distance yourself from him? I bet it hurt less to think of him as just some guy named Tom instead of your dad.”
I hated it when she did that. She was right, of course, but I hated it, so I wouldn’t admit it. “He didn’t act like a dad.”
“Sophie, I tried.” His voice was so sad, almost desperate. I almost felt sad for him. “When you came up for the summers, I tried to set up play dates and take you places, but I--”
I hated having to sit here and listen to his pained voice, so I said, “You did fine. I’m sure I didn’t act like a good daughter, so whatever.”
Silence settled upon us until she said, “We could probably take up the rest of our sessions together talking about the past, but I think it’s important to check in with each other about the future. Tom, what do you want for and from your daughter?”
He scratched his neck before smoothing down his goatee. “Uh, well, for the future, I just want her to be happy. I don’t want to hear her cry ever again. I’d like for her not to hate me so damn much, but I’d settle for her calling me dad again.”
“Sophie? Same question.”
“What do I want for Tom in the future?” I clarified and continued at her nod. “I guess I want him to be happy, too. What do I want from him? Nothing. I mean, I think we’re good, right?”
I looked to Wallace for an answer, but she drew my gaze to my father. “Right?”
“I’ll never get back those years with you, but I want you to be in my life for longer than until you graduate.”
I looked away again. That deep pool of anger inside of me was welling and flooding and it would soon bubble out. He could say things like that all he wanted, but they meant nothing. He still hadn’t saved me when I’d needed him. He’d still stopped calling and drank beer and banged some other dude’s wife instead.
He sighed and his shoulders slumped. He looked old. His eyes matched the pleading tone in his voice as he spoke. “I can’t make up for not knowing what was happening in your life. I can’t. I know that I messed up with that. I should’ve done things differently but the fact is that I didn’t. And here we are.”
I picked at my jeans. “Here we are.”
Weeks were flying by quickly. I finally turned eighteen. It was going to be a quiet day spent with my boyfriend. Tom gave me a pair of new hiking boots and some rock-climbing gear. I guessed it was his way of letting me know he wanted to start doing those things with me again. It reminded me that summer was right around the corner. I started looking forward to the end of school. It would be wonderful to have all day to spend with Elliott.
My birthday was the first Saturday I’d had off in a while. Elliott and I were going for a drive somewhere since it was so nice out. He was going to pick me up at eleven, so after I ate and cleaned the kitchen, I headed down to the basement to put in a half-hour on the elliptical. Thirty minutes turned into forty-five, and then that gave way to just shy of an hour. I had completely lost track of the time.
I looked at the clock on the wall. Elliott should have been here at least fifteen minutes ago.
When I came upstairs, I found him sitting in the living room with Tom watching baseball. Elliott stood up as soon as he saw me. “Hi.”
I looked at him oddly. “Hi. Why didn’t you come get me?”
“Told ’im you were in the basement. Seems he wanted to see our Orioles kick some ass today.” Tom spoke without looking up.
Elliott gave me a nervous smile which told me he wanted to be away from my father as quickly as possible. I was still in shock that he’d been watching a game with him.
When we finally got upstairs, Elliott sat on my bed. I was nasty and sweaty, so I didn’t get too close, but I asked again, “Why didn’t you come get me?”
He looked anxious, his chest rising rapidly and his fingers curled around the edge of the mattress. “I-I-I-I d-don’t liiiike b-b-basements.”
Instantly I wondered what had happened to him in
a basement. Nearly all of the things I hated had stories behind them. I could only imagine the stories behind the things he hated.
I wasn’t going to ask him anything, but it seemed as though he wanted to be quite sure that I wouldn’t. He asked abruptly, “Wwwwwill you be ready ssssoon?”
“Just let me take a shower.”
He took me hiking in the woods and back to the stream. I was happy I’d brought my camera this time and started taking pictures. When I turned back around to snap one of him, I saw that he’d taken a bunch of stuff out of his backpack. Suddenly there was a blue blanket with a spread of food on top of it, surrounded by green grass.
“I-I-I mmmmade us llll-llllllunch.”
I smiled at him. “You’re so awesome.”
I wished he knew that. I wished he believed me every time I said it to him. I said it to him as often as I could.
“Hhhhhappy b-b-birthday, Sophie.”
He’d made sandwiches and a fruit salad. It was definitely a start. We sat and ate, giving each other little stupid smiles that probably meant something loving and kind. The ones I gave him were meant to say that at least, but I wasn’t sure if I was doing the whole “loving” thing right yet. I was easing into the terminology. I readily admitted to myself that I loved him, and I’d come to accept that he loved me, too.
It wasn’t something I told him every day, but I hoped my stupid schoolgirl smiles would silently let him know how much I really did.
Once the food was gone, we lay back and looked up at the blue sky. It was an absolutely perfect day. I hated to break the peace, but I wanted to talk. “So you were all quiet yesterday.”
After his session with his doctor, Elliott hadn’t said a word. He wasn’t rude, he was just quiet. I worried about him when he got like that.
I looked over at him and he nodded. “Do you like Dr. Emmanuel?”
