55. THEO
55
THEO
By the time I am done telling her, it’s dark outside. The crickets chirp wildly in the overgrown grass around us. Someone is having a party in their backyard, and we can hear a bottle of champagne pop open and people cheering. Magdalen is silent the entire time but I see her eyes move frantically, watching her process the story in real time.
‘My mother?’ she says first and dips her head low. ‘Your father?’ Pressing her lips together tightly, her eyes leak with tears. I feel horrible that it’s me, again, making her this upset.
‘You were eight.’ She covers her mouth, and she lets out a guttural sob that breaks through the crickets’ chirp, and I feel my own eyes brim with tears.
‘My dad? How could they do this to him?’
My knees shake as I go to sit down on the bench again and I try not to notice how her body shifts slightly away from me. You knew this would happen, Theo. It would always end with her farther away. I stay parallel to her, careful not to touch.
‘I think...’ My voice feels drained after reliving the memory. ‘I think they’ve been doing it since university.’
I find myself relaxing into the relief that someone finally knows, that this weight can sit across two pairs of shoulders, and, selfishly, I’m relieved it’s Magdalen. Fuck, they could still be doing it now, but I don’t tell her this. I haven’t been back to the attic since that day, haven’t checked to see if the dust has settled back in place since.
‘Oh my god.’ Magdalen runs her hands through her hair, shaking her head, and I can tell she’s trying to put the pieces together from the past seventeen years. Every glance. Every family outing, shared meal, movie night in our living room. Who knows what they’ve done in the dark around us? I watch as the secret stains every holiday, birthday, celebration. While it felt nice for a second to have her underneath this veranda with me, knowing I’ve disturbed treasured memories makes me regret every word.
‘Why haven’t you told anyone?’
Why? Why don’t I speak to my mum just as much as I don’t speak to my dad? Why did I abandon everyone because I was running from a ghost in the attic? Why did it take me seventeen years and the green eyes of Magdalen Savoy to finally unravel this burden?
‘I think he choked the words out of me.’ I shrug in defeat, my eyes watering at the truth. ‘Every time I want to say it, to confess to my mum or Anika or even your father, I’ll get this panic attack. Like I can’t remember how to breathe any more or my lungs turn into concrete and, fuck, it was easier to keep pushing it back. Even when I think about it by myself, I’ll wake up somewhere I don’t remember walking to. It’s all so fucking weird.’ I shake my head, mortified at how this one little moment has manifested into a lifetime of isolation. ‘So I just stopped trying to say it.’
Magdalen continues to look out at the dark backyard but then looks to me, sorrow deep in her eyes. ‘No one that young should have to carry such a heavy secret,’ she whispers.
When a cry breaks through the still of the night, I don’t realize it’s me until Magdalen wraps her arms around my shoulders, rubbing the length of my back tenderly. Closing the space I left between us. My hand covers my mouth, trying to hold it in, trying to shove the memory back inside.
‘It’s okay, Theo. It’s okay.’ She holds me tighter, her cheek pressed against my shaking shoulder.
‘I should have told someone.’ I’m heaving. Salty tears pour down my cheeks, my neck, and I’m sure they coat Magdalen’s arms, too.
‘Yes,’ she agrees, the heat of her face warming the crease in my shoulder. ‘But you shouldn’t have had to. You keep doing things you shouldn’t have had to.’
For the next hour, we both sit on the bench until my cries turn into hiccups and soon, I can’t even lift my head. So I drop my head in my hands and tell her about finding her mother upstairs the day before I left, after she maimed Magdalen. That she was crying on the floor of her bedroom when I walked up those stairs. That I fucking comforted her, the wrong Savoy. My face is swollen; my skin feels red and itchy.
The last time I had seen Vittoria cry was in the attic that day. I suppose she remembered that too because she broke out in another fury of tears and loud sobs and kept apologizing to me.
‘If I had known she just fucking abused you, I would have never forgiven her.’
Magdalen stills at the mention of her mother. ‘You forgave her?’
‘I was leaving. It felt like I could at least forgive one person.’
Her hands slip off me, a coldness stretching around me, and I instantly ache for her body around me again.
‘How could you forgive her?’
‘If it was between forgiving your mother or my father, the choice felt obvious.’
‘My mother—’ she starts but stands up abruptly.
‘Your mother what?’ The same feeling I got when we were together in the ocean descends on me. Of her omitting. It’s like I can see her burning holes in the photos, wanting to alter her own memories for self-preservation. Still, I don’t push.
‘You idolize my father,’ she says. ‘And you watch your father fuck my mum and then go on a three-month excavation in Egypt with him, where he talks about how perfect his fucking wife is, and you say nothing?’
What do I say? Yes, I’ve learned to forget. To shut up and listen to Dr Savoy explain the origination of monogamy, of giving your soul to another human, even when it’s with the woman who has stolen away my childhood. How do you interrupt and say, ‘Excuse me, but your wife has been giving her soul to my father while taking yours.’
She has taken out parts of him so slowly that it’ll be too late before he realizes he can’t stand straight if she doesn’t remind him how. Dr Savoy, for all of the accolades and discoveries, would crumble without sitting down with Vittoria at the kitchen table every day when he gets home. So you don’t say anything. You stay silent and hope you’ll eventually forget seeing the black mascara smudged under her eyes, and how she rocked herself sadly.
‘We all have to forgive eventually,’ I say lamely. ‘It’s easier than carrying this shit all the time.’ Do I believe this? In theory. But knowing about Vittoria’s abuse of Magdalen makes it difficult to keep my promise of forgiveness. My hands ball into tight fists until the wooden bench scrapes the skin of my knuckles raw.
Magdalen whirls her head. ‘This is bullshit.’ Her voice is barely above a whisper, but the weight of what I’ve told her is heavy in every word. ‘I don’t see you forgiving your father ever , right? But just because my mum can cry a little, it doesn’t make her any more redeemable than him.’
‘My father and your mother are not the same.’
She dips her head and pulls at her hair. ‘You don’t know anything about my fucking mother,’ she says harshly. ‘All these years of us claiming to be these successful families, here we are. Selfish, broken, abused.’ The last word slips out and I know she regrets it by the way her body tenses, as if feeling the aftershock of her admission.
‘I am so sorry for what you had to witness, Theo. But to know that my father has been living underneath the shadow of her mistakes all these years...’ She shakes her head. ‘And that you knew .’ She angrily wipes away the tears that have resurfaced and I can feel her leave me before she even says the words. I don’t try to wipe the tears away, because this is the end. I should let myself cry at the end.
‘You knew and you ran away.’ To think that I found the love of my life. I should have known it could never be that easy. I say goodbye in my mind before she does, and this time I know she cannot read my thoughts. Connection severed. A limp string lying between us.
‘You knew and you fucked me.’
‘I know.’ I knew every time I kissed her, touched her, breathed her name and thought of being inside her, that it would eventually end because I knew and continued to want her anyway.
‘I should go inside.’ Magdalen stands up. I want to scream.
‘I should, too.’ I stay seated, my body unable to process such a heavy loss. It happened so quickly, no time to mourn. I try to stand up but it’s like my bones have been hollowed out. They’re still here but they’re less.
‘You should hug your mum,’ Magdalen says.
‘Will you tell anyone?’ I ask dumbly. How could I lose you before I even told you that I love you?
‘I don’t know,’ she says and sighs. ‘The wedding is in two weeks. I don’t want to ruin everyone’s excitement.’
‘Of course. I understand.’
‘I’m going to leave now.’
‘Sure.’ Stay.
‘I’m sorry for you, but I have to go.’
‘Stop apologizing, Magdalen.’
‘Sure,’ she says in defeat. ‘I’ll see you at the wedding.’
All the years of panic attacks are nothing to the emptiness of watching Magdalen go back inside her house, away from me. Because of a secret from seventeen years ago. If I had known that this is what Dr Savoy spoke about, I would have come home to her every weekend. I would have read her favourite books and sat next to her at dinner. We could have had time. I used to think that the more time between me and that awful memory meant it would consume me less. But now? My hands clasp tightly together, my muscles shaking in exhaustion. To think, people get lifetimes of this love, and all I have to cherish are a few summer nights.