Chapter 39
39
NOW
THE FEAST THAT FOLLOWED WAS one for the books.
After Taz and Helene made their exit, Mom stood and clapped twice, like the queen she knew herself to be. The guests rose as one and hoisted their chairs high above their heads. They rearranged them into a circle stretching from one end of the porch to the other. While they worked, the bridal party—myself included, Karma dragging me along like a disoriented puppy—went around the side to the screened-in dining porch to fetch the table. We each cupped a hand under the heavy wood and lifted. Caleb and Clarence and the other men raised the table so high that none of the girls could reach. Karma jumped up and down.
“Absolutely useless,” said Clarence with a grin.
They carried the table out to the patio and settled it at the center of the circle of chairs. We set it with remarkable speed, probably because there were no frilly napkins or extra soup spoons involved. Just plates and glasses and candles and place mats.
And food. So much food.
I dragged the deepest breath I could manage into my chest. Drifted back to the patio railing.
I know where Henry is.
The rest of the group milled about. They didn’t know where to place their bodies; no name tags sat on the place mats. “Sit wherever,” said Wendy in a tone so cheerful it sounded prerecorded. “Taz and Helene want everyone to choose for themselves.”
Arms trembling, I flipped my body around to face the water. The wind that stirred the trees in the morning had completely dissipated. Not a ripple cracked the lake’s surface. I tried to take another deep breath. My lungs filled only halfway.
“Eliot?”
I turned around. Everyone at the table was staring at me. A pair of warm chestnut eyes bludgeoned my chest. Karma gestured to the spread and said, “Waiting on you.”
“Right.”
I walked over to the last open chair, between the two groomsmen I didn’t know. Manuel was right across the table. I tried not to make eye contact as I sat down.
Moments later, the door to Sunny Sunday burst open. Taz and Helene emerged, yanking the curtain from the wall as they did. Helene had changed into a short, flowery dress. Taz’s jacket was gone. They ran out onto the porch, holding the curtain, letting it flap behind them like an enormous cape. The table burst into applause.
After the newlyweds took their chairs, everyone dug in.
It was the most delicious-looking table I’d ever seen. Every bit was covered by the different dishes we’d listed in our group chat. Fettuccini alfredo. Pulled pork with an extra bottle of Sweet Baby Ray’s sauce. Deep dish pizza that looked suspiciously like Lou Malnati’s. Ceramic basins filled with salsa and guacamole and hummus ringed by a mountain of tortilla chips. And more. Not an empty inch of wood remained.
Of course. Leave it to Taz to choose everyone else’s favorite foods for his wedding.
And leave it to Karma and Shelly to make it all perfectly.
Any unoccupied table space held an uncorked bottle of wine. Along the perimeter, champagne waited in ice buckets. The whole thing looked downright medieval.
I couldn’t have been less hungry if I tried.
Oddly enough, even though I’ve been nothing short of an anxious mess for more than a decade, I’ve never had a panic attack. Never. But I suspected that I was slowly descending into one at that moment.
Karma eyed my empty plate. Trying to act normal, I dug into the nearest dishes at random, slopping a bit of each onto my plate. I even took hummus, which I’ve never actually liked.
When I looked back up, Manuel was staring at me. His eyes dropped to my plate, then raised slowly back up to my face. They narrowed.
I looked away.
The toasts began. Karma and Clarence went first, of course, giving a rowdy speech I couldn’t pay attention to but surely set a high bar. They concluded by saluting the evening sky with their champagne flutes and insisting that the new couple join them in a celebratory chug. Helene giggled and obliged.
As the toasts continued, I started cycling through the memories again. I couldn’t stop. That’s the thing about OCD. You examine yourself from every possible angle—how do I look as a lesbian? A cheater? A heartless bitch? You never thought that you were a lesbian before, but now that the possibility has arrived in your mind, you must examine it from every angle possible. Where logic talks, OCD screams. And by then, you’ve bought so fully into its hollering that you can’t tell which one was the truth and which one was the worry. And you think in circles, and the circles are endless, and they consume you, and you forget that you used to have a personality outside those circles.
Most of the time, the things I worried about were cruel illusions. Not this time. This time, I’d uncovered something truly horrendous. Truly unforgivable. I’d stolen something that didn’t belong to me, and I’d taken my father’s legs with it.
I did my best to eat—a bite of fettuccini here, a mouthful of pulled pork there—but I truly had no appetite. None at all. My body was shaking. My fists were balling into little claw shapes of their own accord, as if I were playing at being a wolf. My heart was hammering in my chest. I felt so oddly aware of my own breathing. Too aware. I feared, for a moment, that I would forget how to breathe at all.
I couldn’t help it; I glanced up at Manuel.
And immediately wished I hadn’t.
He was watching me shake. Watching my little clawed fists. For all I knew, he’d never stopped watching me. By then, his eyes had narrowed to previously unforeseen levels of suspicion. When my gaze landed on him, his eyes flicked up to meet mine. They narrowed even further. He pushed back his chair—clearly with the intention of coming over to speak with me.
I jerked my chair back and blurted out the word “Bathroom” to anyone who was listening. As I stood, the patio tipped onto its side. I caught myself on the back of Groomsman A’s chair.
“Are you all right?” asked Groomsman B. He grabbed my elbow in an awkward attempt to keep me upright.
“Yes.” I gripped the back of the chair and squeezed my eyes shut. When I opened them again, the patio stood upright. I blinked. The men were staring at me. Manuel was staring at me. I smiled feebly at the groomsmen and turned to run away. As I darted around the table and into Sunny Sunday, I felt Manuel’s eyes follow.
I burst through the bathroom door and teetered to the sink, catching myself with one hand on either side of the basin. My legs wobbled. I let go and sunk to the bathroom floor.
The door swung open and knocked into my shoulder.
“Shit,” rasped a familiar voice.
I cringed. The only door on the island with an actual lock, and I forgot to use it.
Dad’s chair bumped into the doorknob. His head peeked around the frame. There they were again—those eyes, both piercing and wrinkled. Careless but wise. Eyes that had seen fifty more years of life than I could even begin to imagine.
“Whoops,” he said. “My bad.”
He wheeled backward, attempting retreat.
“Dad.” I scrambled to my feet. “Dad.”
“What? What, what?” He pulled the door back open, hair flapping wildly.
Vertigo pulsed at the edges of my vision. I steadied myself on the bathroom sink.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
I blinked several times to bring his face into focus.
“ What , for God’s sake?”
The words bubbled out of my mouth all at once. “Can you fix me?”
“Fix you?” He shook his head, bewildered. “Are you broken?”
You have no idea.
“Yes.”
“How are you broken?”
I looked down. The tiles swirled. Then, quiet as a whisper: “They aren’t gone.”
“What aren’t gone?”
I shook my head.
“What the hell are you talking about, Eliot?”
“The thoughts. My things , as you call them.”
Pause.
“They aren’t gone.”
“They came back?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
I couldn’t respond. I just kept shaking my head, eyes on the tiles.
“Eliot.”
Shake.
“Eliot, look at me.”
I did. I looked up into the aging eyes of my father.
“You can tell me. You can tell me if they came back,” he said.
I swallowed. “Does it count as coming back if they never left in the first place?”
We stared at each other. He looked so old then, with his wheelchair and his wisps of blond hair.
“So, can you fix me?” I asked. I could hear the plea in my voice. It sounded pathetic. “Can you? The way you fixed yourself, your addiction? I mean, you did it all yourself, right? No rehab, no nothing. Can you show me how?”
“Eliot, I…”
What the hell am I doing?
“I…” He fiddled with his wheels, pushing them nervously back and forth. “I don’t…”
That man. That poor man. A lifetime flattened beneath the weight of a secret he should never have had to bear. Who, at almost seventy years old, had survived addiction and lost his legs and married three women and fathered six children and escaped death twice. Who probably never wanted me—the last-minute addition to our family, tacked on with fertility’s last breath. It was time to relieve him. It was time.
“No. Dad. Stop.”
“Stop what?”
And then, before I could stop myself: “I know what happened to Henry’s ashes.”
“You…” His face paled. “What?”
“His ashes. You told everyone you scattered them somewhere in the middle of the island. I know that’s not true.”
“You…”
“I know you lost them.”
He wheeled backward, away from my words.
“Or at least, you think you lost them. But that’s not true, Dad. That’s not what happened.”
“Eliot. You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“Yes, I do.” I stepped forward.
“No, you don’t. What are you doing, Eliot? Why would you say something so cruel?”
“Because it’s true, Dad.” I took another step forward. Another. “You didn’t lose Henry’s ashes. They weren’t lost.”
Dad rolled farther away. I chased him out into the main cabin.
“They weren’t lost. They were hidden.” I paused. “And I know where they are.”
His eyes shrunk, hardening to marbles.
“You remember the Fort? The one I built, way out in the woods?”
He nodded. His face was pale as lace.
“It’s not a fort,” I said. “It’s a tomb.”
His mouth dropped open. We stared at each other. The air brightened and darkened, lightened and ladened, released my lungs and squeezed my chest so tightly I could no longer breathe. It happened all together, all at once. And it felt to me then, as we stood across from each other—Eliot and Speedy, youngest and oldest, separated by a distance of almost three full generations—that my father and I were truly seeing each other for the very first time.
“I’m sorry, Dad.” My eyes started to well up. “I…I didn’t know back then. What I was doing. I thought I was doing something kind. For Henry. I didn’t…I didn’t know…” I inhaled raggedly. “I’m so sorry.”
I had no idea what he would say to me. To this one final confession. I felt just the way I had as a child, back when I first threw myself before him, begging for his forgiveness. I felt raw and naked and terrified. I braced myself for his response.
But then, “ There you are.”
I looked up. Manuel stood before the makeshift curtain. He paced forward. “I’ve been waiting for you to come back. You and I need to…” When he saw the look on my face, he stopped. “Oh.” Glanced down at my father. “Is everything all right?”
Speedy wheeled backward. Tires on sticky floorboard.
“Manny,” I croaked.
“What happened?”
“I lied to you.”
“What?”
A strange throb echoed at the base of my skull. “I’m sorry.”
“Eliot, what the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m sorry.” Tears started to drip down my face. “I’m so sorry, Manuel. I hate myself. I hate what I did to you.”
“Don’t…”
“I’m a bad person. I’m fucked up.” I was crying in earnest now. “I left you. I disappeared. And I didn’t even tell you why. You deserve to know why.”
“Eliot—”
“The thoughts I have…They’re disgusting. They’re awful. I can’t even say them out loud. I can’t…”
“Eliot.”
“No. Stop. You don’t know. You think you do, but…I’m sorry. I h-hate myself. I do.” I stumbled forward. Manuel caught me. I sunk into the depths of his arms. “I don’t understand…why my brain won’t just l-leave…leave me alone.”
I felt the tears try to disappear, like they always did, but I didn’t let them. I forced them out, wringing the sadness from my gut like the last drops of dirty dish soap. It was loud. That strange hiccupping noise, the one that sounds like laughter. Gulps and gasps, the constant search for oxygen.
When the tears finally started to subside, all was quiet. Speedy had vanished. Manuel’s chest rose and fell.
“Eliot.”
I didn’t look up at him. I was too afraid of what I might see.
“Eliot.”
I clung tighter to his body.
After a moment, two fingers landed lightly on the bottom of my chin. My neck crinkled as Manuel tipped my face up to look up at him. His eyes searched mine.
“What?” I asked.
“I wish…” he started, then trailed off. He glanced away, then back to me. “I wish you could see yourself the way that I do. The way that…that everyone does.”
I started to shake my head, but he stopped me. He laid one hand on either side of my face, stilling the motion before it could even begin.
“Eliot,” he said. “You are not a bad person.”
I tried to shake my head again. “You don’t—”
“Yes, I do. I know you. In fact, I know you better than I know anyone else on this entire planet. You’re…stubborn and impulsive and moody, and it’s next to impossible to get you to shut up once you get going.”
I coughed out a laugh.
“But you’re also my best friend. You’re the girl who defended me from bullies twice her size. Who made me sit through terrible dramatic readings in Spanish. Who took me into her family, who forced me to dance, who radiated sunshine so bright it was sometimes hard for me to look at. And losing you”—he choked—“losing you hurt more than anything I’ve felt in my entire life.”
Tears started to run down my face again.
“You are a daughter beloved by her parents, a sister adored by her siblings, and my best friend in the whole fucking universe.” He paused. “But you are not the thoughts in your head. Do you hear me?”
I tried to hear him. I did.
“Those thoughts—the ones that scare you so much? They don’t scare me, Eliot. They don’t scare me one bit. And you don’t…you don’t have to hold them all by yourself.” His hands gripped my cheeks tighter. “You never have. I’m here. I’m here, Eliot. Let me carry them with you.”
I choked on nothing, on air. I was falling. I was falling so fast.
“I have to tell you something else.”
My eyes flicked up to his. “What?”
“It’s about that night. The one right before I left for college.”
My chest constricted. My eyes fell.
This is it , I thought. I have to tell him. After what he just said…This is the moment where I come clean. When he finally hates me, once and for all.
But then—
“I already know what happened.”
“You…” My eyes darted back up. “What?”
“I know, Eliot. It…it took me a while, but eventually, I put it together.”
“But how—”
“You. The little kids. And the way your thoughts work, telling you you’re a lesbian when you aren’t or cheating when you aren’t or essentially anything you aren’t…I know how your mind works, Beck. I might even know it better than I know my own.” He paused, stooping to catch my eyes with his. “It wasn’t hard for me to put two and two together. A simple look at the history on my family’s computer just confirmed it. I knew, Eliot. I knew, and I tried to tell you the next day. I tried to tell you the next month. I’ve tried to tell you for three years straight, goddammit, but you won’t listen.”
“But…” I swallowed, unable to tear my eyes away from the pools of liquid chestnut staring so intensely at me. “But…if that’s true…then, why are you here? Why did you…You…You let me kiss you…” I shook my head. “I don’t understand .”
“I let you kiss me because I wanted you to kiss me, Beck. I already told you: you aren’t the thoughts in your head. And you certainly, without question, are not a pedophile. Or a cheater. Or a murderer. Or any of the things your brain so wrongly tries to convince you that you are. You are a good person , Eliot Beck. One of the best that I’ve ever known.”
I felt as if I could collapse. As if my legs would finally, after three years of carrying this secret, just collapse.
OCD made me want to give up. It made me think that it would be easier just to be alone. To cordon myself off from everyone who loves me, to protect them from me. It told me this story over and over again. It made this life sound so easy, so compelling.
But that story wasn’t true, was it? It was just a story. Because being alone was miserable. I hated life without my family. Without Manuel. I hated the loneliness, the constant crying. OCD wanted me to think that I needed to be alone. It wanted to isolate me. To tear me down. To make me think that all I need is it .
But now I see the truth.
My mouth opened. “Manny, I—”
“Eliot.”
When I looked over, I found Karma standing in the doorway to the patio beside Speedy. Speedy’s face was slathered in shock, pale white, as if he were still processing what I had said to him earlier. But when I looked at Karma…
Freezing cold water washed over me.
Her body was hunched over, her fists tight at her sides. Her face was screwed up, as if she were fighting a wave of fury. Breath dragged in and out of her nostrils, her chest rising and falling beneath her purple dress.
Speedy told her.
She knows, and now she hates me.
Beside me, Manuel looked between the two of us. “Eliot?” he asked. “What’s going on?”
I couldn’t look away from Karma. Her gaze was drill sharp and terrifying. Behind her, my siblings were starting to take note of the scene unfolding just inside the doorway. I saw Taz stand from his chair, saw Caleb crane his neck to try and get a better view. Everyone looked confused, even concerned. I opened my mouth—to say what, I’m still not sure—but snapped it back shut when Karma began to storm forward. Her eyes beat into mine like two bullets trained on twin targets. Her small legs swished back and forth inside the purple fabric, heels pounding the wooden floor. It took everything within me to not recoil. To not turn around and run. What was she going to do? Ream me out in front of everyone? Yell at me for stealing the remains of our dead brother? Hit me?
Instead, to my great surprise, she did none of those things.
She hugged me.
Her strong little arms wrapped around me, pulling me tight to her body. I went stiff beneath them, shocked at her embrace. She only hugged me tighter.
“You were so young,” she whispered against my skin. “You didn’t know what you were doing. It’s okay, Boose. You were just a kid. You don’t have to carry it alone anymore.”
I nearly choked on the air in my throat.
Over her shoulder, one by one, my siblings stood from the table and filed into Sunny Sunday, pulled inside by curiosity about what was going on with their sisters. I watched the scene register on their faces—Karma’s arms around me, my rigid body, Manuel confused beside us. And I watched as they all made the same decision: to walk right up to us and join in. First Taz, then Caleb, then Clarence, even Shelly and Helene. They walked around the side of us, or behind, and added their arms into the throng. They surrounded me, my family, one big mass of bodies enveloping me, pulling me close, acknowledging me in the way I had always so desired.
“You don’t have to carry any of it alone,” Karma whispered, and I knew she didn’t just mean Henry’s ghost.
And that’s when I started to cry.