Letter Twenty-Four #6
Eleanor gasped. Libby’s blue eyes bulged—Bree’s, too. Michael grabbed my hand, squeezing it tight. Nic and John, at the head of the table, gaped at me. As for you, Casey, you clutched your forehead, muttering, “Oh, dear God.”
“So,” I said, leaning over the table. “Are we talking back in high school? College? Last summer? Last week?”
Libby didn’t answer, didn’t seem capable of answering, seemed frozen in shock, maybe, but she turned bright red—and that’s when I knew. There was no if about it. That two-faced bitch was sleeping with my dad.
Next, I shot a curious look at your dad.
“What about you, John? Do you let my dad sleep with your wife occasionally? Or do you get in on that, too? Are you and my dad also sleeping together?” I waved a hand at all three of them.
“How does this little arrangement work exactly? And did you think you could hide it from us forever?”
“Michael,” Nic said through clenched teeth. “Get her out of here right now.”
“Come on,” Michael said, trying to pull me to my feet. “Let’s go upstairs, okay?”
“Yeah,” I said, fuming as I jerked my arm free.
“Let’s get rid of Elliot. Let’s lock Elliot away.
Let’s put her someplace she can’t ask questions or point out how every person sitting at this table is a liar.
Everyone here is so quick to point fingers at me, to talk about all the bad shit I’ve done, but none of you want to take responsibility for all the bad shit you’ve been up to.
Every single person at this table is hiding something.
Some of you are hiding big things. Life-altering things.
Things that hurt people. I’m not the only one with this particular problem, just the most obvious offender, because all the rest of you are so damn good at pretending you’re perfect.
Whenever I lie—whenever my actions are harmful—I’m made to go to therapy and write letters and beg for forgiveness.
But that doesn’t happen to any of you. None of you have ever, in your whole lives, been punished quite so severely for all the ways your actions hurt people.
And now my dad—who’s actually the biggest offender of all, who fucking lies about everything—tells me I’m a lost cause and everyone’s giving up on me. ”
It’s worth noting that my speech likely hadn’t sounded quite as eloquent—or half as lucid—as I’ve written it here.
“Now, hold on,” Nic said. “I never said you were a lost cause, Elliot. I never said anyone’s giving up on you, either.”
“You fucking implied it!”
“Elliot!” Eleanor barked, fingers pressed to her temples, eyes squeezed shut. “For heaven’s sake, enough with the language.”
“No one’s giving up on you, Elliot,” said John, tossing a sharp look across the table. “But we’ve had enough, okay? We’ve reached our limit. We’re tired of the little revenge schemes, and we’re tired of you hurting this family.”
“And what about all the ways this family has hurt me? You hide things—like this relationship, for example. Like pictures of my mom. Like her full name. You evade my questions. You lie. You all do. And I’m supposed to just sit back and accept that?
To let it go? To pretend all the hiding and lying and evading is okay?
” My words began to wobble here. “Do you have any idea what it feels like to be lied to by every adult in my life? To have my questions repeatedly dismissed by the very people who claim to love me?”
John and Nic dropped their gazes to the table. They, at least, had the decency to appear guilty. Eleanor, too, her hand trembling slightly as she reached for her champagne flute and quickly drained it.
“Elliot, honey,” Libby said, leaning past Michael to look at me.
“You want to know more about your mother? She did things very similar to what you’re doing right now.
She used secrets as weapons to hurt people when they didn’t behave the way she liked.
She would divert attention away from her own shortcomings to point out the shortcomings in others.
She did incredibly hurtful things to your father—and, rather than apologize, she acted as if he deserved to be hurt. ”
I leaned back in my seat, blinking at Libby. “So what you’re saying is, I am like her. I’m like this horrible, toxic woman who did nothing but hurt my dad.”
Had Libby and John lied to me about that, too?
“You’re not exactly like her,” said Libby. “Just close enough that it scares us.”
And there it was: the answer to my question.
If my behavior had escalated to the point you no longer wanted to be with me, and Michael believed I needed to get help, and my dad thought therapy was a waste of time, and none of my friends were speaking to me, and the Harrises believed me to be scarily similar to my mom, then maybe I’d been in the wrong all along.
Maybe I was bad. Diabolical, like Eleanor had described my mom the night of the election. A horrible human being.
I rose from the table.
Libby reached behind Michael’s chair to catch my wrist before I could leave.
“I wanted your father to put you through a treatment program because I want you to get the help you desperately need before all that anger you have inside you causes you to do something you deeply regret. Something you can’t ever come back from or put right with an apology. ”
I struggled to push the words past the lump in my throat. “I guess he should definitely send me away, then.”
Libby released my wrist, and I staggered off.
Nic called after me. “Elliot, honey—”
He stopped when I reached the stairs.
It sounded as if he and Libby were whisper-arguing.
Michael followed me up, keeping his hand firmly planted at the small of my back. As we entered my room, he said, “Elliot, Nic’s not sending you away. Don’t listen to my mom. She—”
“He is,” I said, twisting to face him. “He said it’s the one thing he hasn’t tried yet.” I told him Nic wasn’t sending me to Dr. Goldstein anymore.
“Seriously? That’s great, though. That guy’s a quack. He’s—hey.” Michael righted me as I fumbled with my desk chair. “Maybe you’d better lie down.”
He led me over to the bed, and I climbed in, pulling him with me, not wanting to be alone. He propped himself against my pillows, letting me drop my head in his lap and curl my body toward the headboard.
“They never answered my question about them,” I said after a little while.
Michael pushed his fingers through my still-damp hair, staring straight ahead. “I noticed that, too.”
My eyelids fluttered, too heavy, so I closed them, letting myself be lulled by Michael’s fingertips, still working across my scalp.
Sometime later, your voice roused me. It sounded like you were talking from my doorway. “Is she okay?”
I kept my eyes closed.
“She’s asleep,” Michael said quietly. “What’s with the Johnnie Walker? I see it in there on the bathroom counter.”
“She must’ve snatched it this morning,” you said, “when she finally came out of her room.”
“How long was she in here?”
“A day and a half.” Your voice, much closer. The clink of something on the nightstand. “She needs to eat.”
“You left her in here for a day and a half, Casey?”
“I tried checking on her, but Nic wouldn’t let me. He said she was doing it to get back at him.”
“Nic knows better than to leave her alone. What if she’d been up here…harming herself?”
“I checked her last night,” you said, “after Nic went to bed. Sat with her for thirty minutes. Looked her over for bruises or marks. She hasn’t hurt herself.”
I flushed at the thought of your eyes wandering over my half-naked body while I slept. I’d only worn a flimsy white camisole and underwear to bed.
“They’re down there talking to Nic about sending her to Arizona,” you added.
“He won’t send her.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because he can’t leave her for more than a couple of days. In case you haven’t noticed, he has weird attachment issues where Elliot’s concerned.”
“Because he’s never left her all alone?”
“Well—that, too,” Michael said. “But when I was little? Maybe seven or eight? I saw Nic flip out with my parents over leaving her with Eleanor overnight once. They were supposed to go somewhere—New York, maybe. My parents were ready to go, and Nic was supposed to go with them. But Eleanor called and I could hear Elliot in the background, crying for her dad. Nic freaked out, told them he didn’t want to go anymore, said he couldn’t leave her.
I only remember this because it was the first time I ever saw Nic, like, break down over something.
My parents were trying to convince him she’d be fine, but he got emotional with them and stormed out of our house.
A few years later, she ran off at that Red Sox game, and she’s right—Nic got worked up over it, and so did my parents.
They pulled us out of school the next day and we all went to the Cape for a couple of weeks, even though it was freezing cold out.
Nic was a wreck the whole time. He never left Elliot’s side. He made her sleep in his room.”
“But he seemed pretty determined to send her to that treatment place over the summer,” you said.
“I’m telling you, dude. He might’ve taken her there, but she never would’ve made it out of the car. He can’t let go. That’s why my mom is always on his case. She thinks he needs to do something—before it’s too late.”
“Nic got angry with your mum down there—for comparing Elliot to Victoria.”
“Good. He should be angry with my mom. She should never have compared Elliot to that awful woman.”
“Do you think your mum’s right? About Elliot needing that kind of help?”
“I don’t know what’s best for her. But her mom abandoning her as a baby? Nic never leaving her alone? All the adults down there sidestepping questions about Elliot’s mother her whole life? All the lying? That fucks with a person.”
You guys went silent for a while. Then Michael brushed a strand of hair off my forehead and said, “What were you doing with her on Halloween night?”
A heavy pause. “What do you mean?”