21
PARKER LOOKS STUNNED, BUT HIS ANGER DOESN’T FALTER. HE SAYS, “I DON’T care who you are. You’re hurting her. Let go.”
It’s true. His hand is like a vise around my arm. He doesn’t move, and I finally find my voice. “Get off me,” I say, ripping my arm away.
My father stands there, smirking at me. “I saw the photos. Didn’t think it was true. My daughter, dating this tech protégé? What could she possibly offer him?”
My nails dig into my palms. It takes every ounce of self-control to keep my head held high as he continues.
“Your sister said you write movie reviews online, and not even for a big outlet.” He laughs. “I knew you had to have had someone supporting you in LA, if it wasn’t me.” He looks at Parker. “Now I know who.”
I can almost feel the anger coming off Parker in waves, but I’m grateful he doesn’t say a word. Contradicting him would mean telling him my secret.
There are a million things I want to say to my father, but he doesn’t deserve any of them. “Bye, Dad,” I say. “I’d like to say it’s nice to see you, but it never has been.”
I turn. To my back, he says, “After everything I’ve done for you, this is the thanks I get?”
Everything he’s done for me.
I’m so tempted to let the dam break, to let it all come spilling out, but I would be the only one who drowns. He doesn’t care enough to hurt. So, I keep walking.
I can feel Parker looking at me as we walk out of the members-only club. I don’t look back. I manage to keep the tears in until I’m in the car, and then I face the window and let them fall.
“YOUR FATHER IS DAVID SALAZAR,” HE SAYS. WE’RE IN HIS APARTMENT. I’m sitting on the couch, staring at the floor.
I nod.
“I don’t understand,” Parker says, sounding truly confused. “You said we can’t be together because of my money. But your father . . .”
I look up at him. “Is the CEO of one of the biggest companies in the world?” I finish.
He nods.
“It’s because of him that I can’t,” I say, my voice breaking.
He sits beside me on the couch. I tuck my knees into my chest and face him.
“You assumed, because he was absent, he wasn’t doing well, right?”
He nods. It’s the story of his own father, after all.
Assumptions. We all make so many.
“It was the opposite. My parents didn’t have much, but they were both smart. Really smart. My dad got into the MBA program at Stanford, and my mom moved with him, even though she hadn’t finished her own degree. He said she didn’t need one, that he would take care of them. She didn’t speak English and planned to learn, enroll in classes, but then she got pregnant. With me.
“At first, it was great. They were happy. My mom said she fell in love with his mind. He was the smartest person she had ever met; he could always figure out any problem. And he was caring. He liked to take care of her, maybe a little too much. When they first met, he found out driving stressed her out, so he would take her everywhere himself. She let her license expire. He knew she hated getting her shoes dirty on the dirt patch outside her house, so he would literally carry her to the car. It was so romantic, she said. Then, when they moved here, caring slowly turned to control. First it was Oh, you don’t have to learn English, I can speak it for the both of us. Then it was I’ll be in charge of the money, I’m the one with the MBA. He got a great job in Silicon Valley, and the more he made, the more my mom relied on him. One day, she realized she relied on him for everything . To speak for her. To make decisions for her . . . and for me.
“And he liked it. He liked her being dependent on him, because he thought that meant she could never leave. Success was like poison, she said, it amplified the worst of him. Made him truly believe his way was best, and she should simply follow. When she was pregnant with my sister, he got an even better job, he became even more controlling, and that was when she knew it would only get worse. She didn’t want him to control us too. She started taking English classes. She started saving her money. And then, one day, she left him.
“He was upset, of course, but he still tried to control her. He would withhold child support if she didn’t do what he wanted. He would use his connections to interfere with her job search, so that she wouldn’t have her own money.
“Money was always at the center of it. So, finally, she started refusing the child support. She moved south where she could finally find work. She worked two jobs, and went to school, and gave us everything we needed, on her own. Once it was clear he didn’t have power over us, we never saw him again. He had no interest in having children he couldn’t control.”
I shrug. “She told us what happened to her as a cautionary tale, as a lesson, and it made me hate my dad. I never looked him up over the years, because we didn’t need him. And he didn’t want us anyway.
“I remembered some of his treatment of my mom. I remembered his visits, with gifts that always came with strings attached. My sister didn’t. She googled him when we were teenagers, and, lo and behold, he’s this big shot in New York City. My sister wanted to go see him, she wanted that life, but my mother refused. Then . . . she got sick.”
I feel the tears falling down my face, clinging to my jaw.
“I was in college. I was going back and forth all the time, taking her to treatment. At first, we tried to make it work. I got another job. We used up all our savings.” I give a sad smile. “But it was all too expensive. It was impossible. The trials . . . they were the only chance she had.” I take a shaking breath. “So, I went behind my mom’s back and did the one thing she always told me not to. I went to my dad for help.
“It was sophomore year. I still remember going into that office building. Telling the receptionist who I was. Her not believing me. Me insisting, until she made a few phone calls. Those phone calls led to me being escorted into an office that took up half the floor, floor-to-ceiling windows, New York sprawled out behind his seat like a blanket. Then watching as he looked up at me and smiled.
“ Of course he would help. The money was a drop in the bucket to him. I left, feeling like I made the right decision. The next day, her first trials were paid for. I told my mom it was the result of a charitable grant. She started to improve. Then the phone call came. The string. I’m doing so much to help you. The least you can do is have dinner with me. I still hated him for what he had done to my mom, but he was helping her. Dinner seemed harmless enough. Then it turned into meeting his new family. Fine. Then it turned into him wanting to control my internships and major, which I refused. Then it turned into wanting to meet my sister.”
The guilt ratchets up in me.
“She was going on college visits. I was meant to host her here, in the city, while she visited NYU. I took her to meet him.” I wince. “It’s one of my biggest regrets. What he couldn’t get from me—a genuine connection, forgiveness—he got from her. The same control my mother had told us about started again. He would pay for my sister’s college, as long as he chose where she went. He would pay for her spring break trips, as long as he chose what she studied. He would pay for a single in the dorm, as long as she broke up with the boyfriend he didn’t approve of. My sister didn’t care. It all seemed fine to her. He was helping us. But I could see the pattern. I could see where it would lead. For him, money means control. Complete power over the people who rely on him for it.
“My mom eventually found out, and I’ll never forget the look on her face as she said, What have you done? By then, it was too late. All the treatments were paid for, and, because I begged her, she continued. She lived her last year in comfort. I was so busy going back and forth between school and her treatments, so lost in grief when she died, that I didn’t realize how much the money had changed my sister. Instead of studying, she partied every weekend, flew off to different cities whenever she wanted. Who cares? she said, when I told her that grades were important, to get a good job. Dad says I don’t need a job, if I don’t want to work. ”
I shake my head. “Every lesson my mother had drilled into her, every ounce of ambition, every sacrifice she made, was gone, because of me. Because of him.” I shrug. “After she died, I hated him more. Hated that he had hurt her, that he had made her so untrusting of men, so closed off to love. I stopped speaking to him. He still tried to control me, though. I worked all through college and sold my first screenplay my senior year. I was so proud that I was going to be able to pay off my student loans with my own money. But when I called, guess what? They had already been paid for. By my father.”
I remember the rage, the betrayal, like he had ripped something important away from me.
“I demanded they give the money back, given that he wasn’t even listed as my family or authorized on my account, and they did. I paid for my college myself. But, after that, I was careful. I knew he would try to insert himself into my life, try to control it in any way he could, so that I would feel indebted to him.”
“That’s why you are anonymous,” Parker says softly. He’s been so quiet this whole time.
I nod. “I wanted to be certain that any screenplay I sold was because of me, nothing else. That’s why I’ve kept my whole career a secret. He doesn’t even know what I do, so he can’t interfere with it.”
I don’t think too hard about the fact that my mother would hate that I was anonymous, that I refused to put my name proudly on my work, because of a man. Because of my father. She always told me not to let the men in my life diminish me, and I had allowed him to extinguish me.
It’s a choice I made, though. Even if it was made from fear.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry any of that happened to you.”
I hope he understands now why this would never work between us. “I’ve worked too hard, Parker, to be the woman my mother raised, just to throw it all away. To be . . . erased, inadvertently or not, by the person I’m with. I—I won’t allow it.”
He lets me talk. He listens. Then he says, so softly I could cry, “I’m not your father, Elle. I would never try to control you.”
I know that. God, I know that. But still, I shake my head. “I just . . . I can’t.”
He doesn’t try to change my mind. He just nods. Then he says something I would never expect. “I admire you.”
“What?”
“The way he was talking to you . . .” he says, his jaw tensed. “You handled it really well.”
I laugh without humor. “I stormed out. I wouldn’t say I handled it greatly.”
He shakes his head. “No. The first time I saw my dad, after the company was valued at a ridiculous number, and all he cared about was how much I was going to give him . . . I went off on him. I couldn’t hold it back. I told him exactly how I felt.” His hand is on mine. “You did much better than I would have, under the same circumstances.”
I take a deep breath. I guess he’s right, in a way. Old Elle might have screamed at him in front of everyone. Might have cried right in front of him, let him see how much he hurt me.
I was strong today.
What I don’t tell him is that his mere presence was like a support beam, holding me up. My personal scaffolding, making me feel steadier.
“Your last name,” Parker says.
“It isn’t Salazar. Leon was my mother’s maiden name. I changed it when my dad left.”
He nods, understanding. “Sometimes I wish I had changed mine.”
I know how that feels. Names are so important.
Seeing my dad, having him assume Parker is supporting me, it reminds me why we could never work. But, right now, while it’s still summer . . . I want to let him in just a little bit.
“It’s Elle,” I say softly.
He looks up at me, confused.
“My first name. It’s just Elle. It’s not . . . short for anything.”
Parker smiles, as if another level of his favorite game has been unlocked. “Really?”
I nod. “My mom liked it. It was the name she wished she had, when she was younger. So, she gave it to me.” I take a shaky breath. “She gave me so much.”
That’s why I won’t let myself forget her and what she taught me. It would be like losing her again, disappointing her.
I don’t know why I’m telling him this, but I say, “My mom had dreams. It’s weird, thinking about that, right? That our parents once wanted something they never got? Well, one day, I asked her what she wanted. To my surprise, she told me she also dreamed of being a writer. I asked her why she didn’t do it, why she never tried. She told me some generations are for working, so the next can dream.” I feel tears slip down my face.
“When I was seventeen, I got into a state school with a full scholarship and Columbia with incomplete financial aid. She knew it was my dream to study creative writing there, but it didn’t seem possible. I was going to choose the state school. Then she showed me that she had been saving money from her second job since the day I told her it was my dream to be a writer. It wasn’t much, but it was enough for me to consider Columbia. She said, None of the women before me ever got to do anything but work. But you’re going to do more than that. You’re going to dream. You’re going to do it.
“All that money ended up going to medical bills, but it was the best thing anyone has ever done for me. She gave me a chance. I never would have gone to Columbia, or thought I could do any of this, without her. She used to call me her little lion . She said I was stronger than I thought I was.”
“You are,” Parker says, with all the conviction in the world. With the same certainty my mother had. “You’re strong, and you’re smart, and you’re creative, and I’m glad you write, because it’s a way to be let into your perfect mind.”
“I’m not perfect,” I tell Parker. He’s said the word so many times when it comes to me, and it’s a lie.
He just smiles. “You are, though. To me, you are. It’s like your mind and soul and body and everything was made for me. It’s like you’re perfectly mine.”
“But I’m not,” I say. I’m not yours. I can’t be.
“I know,” he says. “But sometimes, I pretend.”