56. Graham
56
GRAHAM
I f Avery thinks I can soothe her guilty conscience, she’s whining to the wrong person.
“It was so awful. His face , Graham. Roger was such a dick. I think I might actually hate him.”
I’m on the train back to Manhattan after two weeks in DC. The Democrats are still playing their games, but two more senators, one from New Mexico, the other from California, have come to the negotiation table. They want to talk about housing grants, and we’ve been trying to thread the needle between limiting spending and giving them some bipartisan buy-in.
Between personality clashes and major ideological differences, the progress is slow, and the headaches are persistent. I’ve been on television every day, trying to resist the urge to say how I really feel and let loose on some interviewer, but my exhaustion is lowering my guard.
I hate this bill and everything it stands for. The Democrats make sense . I’m half-convinced I’ve acquired a parasite.
More than once a reporter has led me into saying something I don’t want to say, forcing me to do the mental and linguistic gymnastics to walk it back into something my party and father would deem acceptable.
Silas remains front and center in my mind. His life, his struggles, his work, his sexuality. All the freedom I have no interest in taking from him and never did. I can’t even understand why anyone would want to tell a grown man or woman what to do.
My sympathies are shifting, and that’s a slippery slope. I have to force myself to focus on what good the legislation will do—because there’s more than a little there—rather than concern myself with what it fails to address or the potential for exploitation of some of its unstated repercussions.
But that’s getting harder.
“You should give him some thing,” Avery says.
“He doesn’t want anything from me.”
“Maybe this will change his mind. It’s like you said, it’s not like he doesn’t deserve it.”
“When did you suddenly start to care about him?” I ask.
“I’ve always liked him,” she says like I’ve offended her. “I don’t think I’ve ever fully explained to you what it was like with Marianne.”
“I never asked because I don’t want to know.”
“Well, she’s basically a sociopath. I mean—she had her weaknesses, but she’s like mastered the art of mind control.”
“Still don’t want to hear about it,” I say.
She sighs. “Are you planning to see him while you’re in town?”
I shake my head, recoiling at the thought. “Why?”
“It’d make me feel better to know he’s okay. I left the mediation with a bad feeling.”
“What does that mean?” I’m sitting straighter, tense at the thought of anything bad— worse —happening to Silas because of me.
“He looked broken.”
Yeah. I know. That’s exactly the way I left him. To get her off my back and let her off the hook, I say, “He’s probably just broke. ”
“I guess. Still, if you do talk to him or give him some money, will you let me know? I’ll feel better.”
“Sure, Avery. Anything to help.”
“Don’t be like that,” she chides. “I didn’t want it to go this way, either.”
I believe her, but it’s cold comfort.
“Thanks for the update, but I need to let you go. I have some other calls to make.” Lies.
“Have a safe trip,” she tells me, and I hang up with a brisk goodbye.
It’s after ten when I arrive at my apartment, but Theresa is still awake watching a reality show in the living room with a pint of ice cream and a spoon in hand. She mutes the television when she sees me and motions me over to sit with her. I do, leaning my head on her shoulder and opening my mouth for her to feed me a spoonful of buttered pecan.
“How’s Washington?”
“Humid,” I tell her.
“And work?”
“Gross.”
“Strong word.”
“I can’t help it. It’s gross. Am I naive in general or is it just that no one can possibly know how dirty politics are until you’re involved in them.”
“A little of both, probably. You’ve always sort of dawdled when it came to growing up.”
Is that what this is? Is my conscience a late bloomer, too? Someone really should study my brain.
“But,” she says, “You always seemed content with being sheltered. I think you were born missing your rebel streak. You never even cried as a kid. Easiest baby ever.”
She’s seven years older than I am. There were a lot of miscarriages between her birth and mine.
“Is work the only thing that’s got you down?” she asks .
“No,” I admit.
“Is it him?”
She means Silas. “Yeah.”
“Did something happen?”
A lot of things she doesn’t know about have happened. The Hamptons. The lawsuit. The kiss that shredded my soul. “I’ve run into him a few times. He lost another job.”
“Oh, God. Really?” She sighs. “Is he gonna be okay?”
“I don’t know,” I answer honestly.
“Are you?”
“I don’t know that either.”
“Well, let me ask you this—is he as miserable as you are?”
It’s hard to believe anyone could be as miserable as I am, but from what I witnessed a few weeks ago, I’m leaning toward yes. But it’s also been a year since our break-up. It would be arrogant beyond imagination to think he hasn’t moved on.
The chemistry might still be there—the ghosts of feelings past, but in no way do I believe he would want me back if I were available, not now that he knows what he knows about me and what I’ve been doing for a living. For my father.
“He hates me,” I say. “He barely wants anything to do with me.”
“Barely, huh? What does barely mean?”
Heat creeps up my neck when I think about the way he fucked my throat in the shower. The way he palmed my crotch in The Hamptons. “We’ve hooked up,” I admit. “But it wasn’t like—it wasn’t like we meant to or wanted to.”
“You just happened to have sex?”
“That’s a way to put it, I guess. It did feel kind of like a side effect than the actual point.”
“A side effect of what?”
Being in the same room together? “For me? Loneliness, I guess. I just miss him.”
“And for him? ”
“I don’t know, T. He’s angry. He has every right to be.”
“We can agree on that.” She gives me another spoonful of ice cream and has one for herself. “What would happen if you guys just sat down and talked it out?”
“What I have to say only makes it worse.”
“What is it you think you have to say?”
“That I was in an impossible situation, and the safest way out of it was to let him go. I didn’t realize he’d catch so much fallout from it, but I was…scared. Which is no excuse.”
“Does he blame you for the video coming out?”
“I don’t know. Probably.”
“So what does he not want to hear? Why you chose your job over him?”
I finch away from her. “That’s not what I did.”
“Uh…it kinda is.”
“I’m not sure you’re the one to talk to about this.”
She arches a dark brow. “Why not me?”
“Because you know exactly what happens when you go against Dad. You struggled for years. Don’t try to tell me you were happy.”
“I might not have been happy, but I made my own choices. I don’t regret it, Graham.”
“How can you say that?” I ask in disbelief. She had no one and nothing to turn to for a decade. My parents were ruthless when they cut her off. There’s no way I could have survived what she had to live through with no education, no money, no home.
“Because!” she waves a hand in the direction of the kids’ bedrooms. “And I might have struggled, but I also got through it. I didn’t want their help after the shit they said. And because I decided to do things on my own, I learned who I am and what I’m capable of.”
She decided ? To kick herself out? What am I missing here? I would ask, but she’s still talking .
“I made mistakes, and I fucked up, but I also figured out I’m a strong person. I’m resilient and damn proud of it.”
She is all those things. And I’m exactly what she calls me. Daddy’s boy. Eagerly buying into the myth of being the eldest son and carrying on the family name. Except I failed at that, too. Holden takes that honor with his first son on the way. He’ll also take over the business once Dad is gone.
I’m responsible for the legacy.
No pressure.
“The fact that he didn’t disown you when he found out you were gay should have been your first clue that you’re worth more to him than your name.”
“It was also a big hint that I needed to choose between keeping my name or sleeping with men.”
“Not men ,” she says. “Silas.”
Her use of his name is a gut punch.
“He threatened him,” I say.
“And you bent over. It’s okay, I get it. I know how Dad is. But you know he would have backed off, right? You’ve always been his favorite.”
“I didn’t bend over . I did what I thought would cause the least harm to the fewest amount of people.”
“Meaning you thought breaking Silas’s heart was less awful than putting the Lawthers through a scandal?”
I’m getting increasingly agitated. My pulse is pounding in my skull, and my arms and legs are restless, like they want to swing and kick. “It’s easy to say that a year later after it’s all said and done, and I can look back and say, well—that only lasted a couple of months, we probably would have been okay. But at the time I had a billionaire waving a sex tape over my head and a wife trying to bankrupt me.”
“And a daddy willing to bail you out on one condition.”
“Can you not see my side of this at all?” I ask, wanting to wipe the condescension off her face. I’ve never been a fan of tough love. I don’t have the constitution for it. My rejection issues tend to flare, and I’ll do practically anything to make myself acceptable again.
That’s when what she’s saying hits me.
I didn’t choose my family or my job over Silas. I was desperate to avoid the rejection I would have faced had I come out to be with him.
I am so fucked . Up .
“I do see your side,” she continues, oblivious to my catastrophic breakthrough. “But what’s the plan? You live like a priest the rest of your life? Or worse, you marry a woman and fake a pretty picture for politics and Daddy’s sake?”
“I don’t know!” I shout, shooting to my feet. “What the hell do you want me to do?”
“It’s not what I want you to do, Graham. What do you want?”
“I want people to stop giving a shit what I do. That’s what I want. I want to stop mattering. I want to fucking disappear.”
“Mom?”
I startle and turn to see Rowan in the hallway. I was yelling. Cursing. I woke her up.
Theresa stands and goes to her daughter, giving her a long hug and a kiss on the head. She whispers something to her, and then Rowan approaches me with wide, concerned eyes, her arms opening.
I bend down to hug her, apologizing.
“I’d be really sad if you disappeared,” she says.
“I know,” I say. “I know. I’m sorry, Row.”
She kisses my cheek and tells me she loves me.
“I love you, too. Good night. I promise to keep it down.”
Theresa walks her back to her room. When she comes back to the living room, I’m sitting again, sliding rapidly down my spiral.
Sensing it, she sits close, putting both her hands on my leg to ground me. I don’t know why it works or how she knows to do it, but she does, and it helps .
“Okay. So. Maybe one conversation with Silas won’t magically fix everything. Maybe you could start by talking to Dad.”
I shake my head. I can’t do that. Not before this bill passes. He needs me to be perfect right now, and I can do that. We’re almost there. Another month or two. Maybe.
“You can be a gay senator, Graham. You can still do all the things you’ve been doing?—”
“Gay people hate me,” I say, remembering the protest at The Pierre.
“So what? I don’t understand it, but there are other gay Republicans in the world. I’m sure there’s an app for that.”
I’m so sick of hearing about all the other gay Republicans. Where are these unicorns, because I certainly haven’t met any. I shut my eyes, sighing. “I hate me, too,” I whisper.
“I wish you wouldn’t,” she responds softly.
“I still love him.”
“I know.”
Tears fill my eyes, born of exhaustion, frustration and memories of hurting Silas. “I miss him so much.”
“Oh, sweetie.” Her arms fold me against her, and I let the tears fall.