Chapter Seventeen #5
“You want me to cut my hair and wear a suit and get a law degree so my image can bolster yours in the society papers, and you want me to parade around and act like you’re the pinnacle of virtue, like you’re the best mother in the whole wide world, the most generous mother, bequeathing me the family fucking legacy when there were stretches of time growing up where I didn’t see you at all for weeks on end, I only saw my nannies and my father because my own mother couldn’t be bothered to come home to her husband and her son because her work was far more important. ”
Horror flashed over her face, but Theo couldn’t stop himself.
“Yes, I tried to kill myself at Yale. Didn’t they tell you?
Diego knows,” he spat. “He came to visit me one weekend and found me passed out on my dorm room floor. He called an ambulance when I wasn’t responsive and they had to pump my stomach.
How’s that for your fucking legacy?” He pointed accusingly at his mother.
“And now you’re asking me to do it all over again?
To change my career into something more palatable?
“Do you want me to change my name too? Should I ditch Dad’s shameful, low-class, blue-collar name that you gave me and take on the Redmond one, just so you can finally put it in the papers that Theodore Henry Redmond the Fourth, Esquire, finally took over the family business so his mother could spend more time yachting in the Seychelles?
“I’m just getting started, and instead of supporting me, you ask me to upend my whole life, my whole identity for you.
To put my art and my ideas and my future on hold for the sake of yours!
” He threw his hands up. “But oh no, poor Teddy the mistake, the blemish on your perfect record, the untouchable half-breed is fucking up again. We’d better protect him from himself and intervene as a family, because if there’s anything the Redmonds think they’re good at, it’s circling the fucking wagons and protecting their own. ”
His face twisted in disgust. “Except they don’t.
You didn’t protect me when I was a kid, you didn’t protect me when I was at Yale, and you’re not protecting me now!
Here I am, showing up to these stupid fucking family dinners for years when all I want to do is be at home!
” Theo ran his hands over his face and frantically through his hair.
Something had broken inside him.
The words poured forth, scalding his throat from where they boiled up in his stomach.
“Nothing I do is ever good enough!” He reached down and tugged at Eleanor’s perfectly pressed pantsuit, jerking her forward on her feet.
“My opinion doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter how successful my art is.
It doesn’t matter that I’m critically acclaimed, it doesn’t matter that I make so much money, I haven’t touched my trust in years, it doesn’t matter that I’ve raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for charity—none of that is ever fucking good enough.
I am never right. I can never live up to your impossible expectations, just because of this one thing—just because of this one difference.
“I’ll always be the black mark on your record. I’ll always be the black sheep. I can have the perfect grades, the perfect record, the perfect house, but I can never be the perfect son, can I?”
A scorching-hot tear tumbled down his cheek.
“So, Mother,” he growled, “this is why my answer is no: because you’re so selfish and so shortsighted, you can’t even see how you’re tearing your own son apart.”
The pressure in his chest suddenly wrenched even tighter, and light blue eyes blazed up into his own.
Theo had forgotten about Lloyd. Any focus he could muster had been on his mother.
His uncle had finally struggled to his feet and grabbed Theo’s shirt, twisting his hands at his chest and yanking him straight back into his body.
“Get out of my sister’s face, you piece of shit.”
He ripped his uncle’s hands away from his shirt and shoved.
“And you get your fucking hands off of me, you asshole!”
Lloyd shoved back.
Everything became a blur.
Theo had the vague sensation of hearing his mom speak hurriedly to someone in the background while he struggled with his uncle, trying desperately to grab hold of the smaller man.
But he was surprisingly quick for an aging, tenured law professor, and Lloyd ducked and wove better than he should have been able to with as much as he’d had to drink.
He shoved Theo away from the table, blood still streaming down his chin and onto the tweed of his custom three-piece designer suit, now torn open under the arms, and he threw his own punch at Theo’s face. But Theo caught his hand and pushed it away angrily.
“Come on, old man! You think you can take me?” he jeered. “I’ve got thirty years, thirty inches, and far more than thirty pounds on you!”
“You little bastard, you—”
Theo tackled him, wrapping his arms around Lloyd’s waist and pinning him on the ground while the older man struggled.
White flashed across his vision, but the landed punch had little effect: he’d sustained far harder hits to the head in lacrosse, and all it did was flood his vision even further with red.
He couldn’t see anything but his uncle anymore.
Every shitty comment, every snide remark, every dark look that man had ever shot at Theo suddenly rose to the forefront of his mind, and hatred boiled in his veins.
Lloyd had always been like this: odd and bitter, egotistical and opinionated, and if there was one thing he didn’t understand, it was his nephew.
He was a bully.
And said nephew had had enough.
Every hit to Lloyd’s face cracked across Theo’s knuckles like lightning and sent a shudder coursing through his arm, but it was too late now.
Every punch was a victory, every glorious blow something that had been lying in wait for years, decades even, a lifetime of feeling misunderstood, different, outside, unworthy.
Blood splattered across the antique carpet in the dining room, every drop a perfect match to the red Theo so favored in his work, and he painted his knuckles and his uncle’s face with it like an artist.
Until a hand nearly as large as his own grabbed him by the neck and ripped him sharply away from his canvas.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?!” his father roared, pinning Theo’s arms behind his back and dragging him away.
Theo blinked. His uncle was lying still on the floor and his mother was staring at him in stunned silence while tears streamed down her cheeks.
But that only infuriated him more.
“You didn’t even do anything!” he screamed at her as his father dragged him out of the room. “You didn’t take up for me! You didn’t protect me from him! You never really did! You weren’t there for me! YOU NEVER HAVE BEEN!”
“That’s enough! That’s enough, Teddy!” His father’s fingers dug so hard into his skin, he could feel bruises forming. The world blurred as tears flooded his eyes and the colors of the walls melded together while they rushed past him.
Suddenly, they were outside, the cool spring air bracing against Theo’s heated skin.
But it did little to calm him.
All he could feel was his body starting to come apart.
“Get in the goddamn car!” Henry threw him into the front seat and shut the door after him, jogging around and sliding quickly into the driver’s side, locking the doors before peeling out of the gravel drive in front of the picture-perfect red-and-white manor.
It was all a lie.
Theo bent forward and put his head between his knees in an attempt to not pass out. He couldn’t breathe anymore, and the interior of the Thunderbird fizzled at the edges of his vision, despite the huge, gasping breaths he gulped down like water.
He was going to be sick.
He fumbled for the window crank and rolled it down as fast as he could before plunging his head outside and hurling the contents of his stomach into the dark.
They left it behind in an instant.
His mother lived on the outskirts of Albany, and they rocketed down dark back roads at high speed, his father driving like a bat out of hell back south, in the direction of the city.
As soon as Theo rolled up the window and let his head fall back against the headrest, Henry glared at him angrily out of the corner of his eye.
“What the fuck, Teddy!” he yelled, gripping the steering wheel so hard, his knuckles turned white. “Were you trying to kill your uncle?”
“I don’t know,” Theo gasped. “Maybe.” He hated him. That feeling hadn’t dissipated. “He’s an asshole.”
But then he looked down at his lap. His hands were shaking.
Why were they shaking? They wouldn’t stop.
They wouldn’t stop, he couldn’t stop them, and when he turned them over, he flinched and recoiled at the sight of dried, rust-red blood caked onto his knuckles.
It was still there, crimson and brown, mixing red with the fresh dark bruises sprouting underneath.
His stomach churned again, and he gripped the window crank with trembling, scrabbling fingers, finally latching onto it and holding on for dear life in case he vomited again.
It was disgusting.
He was disgusting.
He was a monster.
And his father was furious.
“What happened?” Henry bellowed. “You know he’s not going to let this lie—he’s a lawyer, for god’s sake!
One of the best in the country, no less, the dean of Cornell’s stupid fucking law school, and you just assaulted him!
” He slammed his foot on the gas and they raced through the countryside as fast as they could, putting as much distance between Theo and what he’d just done as possible.
They sat in silence while the landscape whizzed by.
It was a long time before either of them spoke again.
“Did you know Mom’s going to retire?” Theo still felt sick even asking the question.
“Yes. She told me a few weeks ago that she wants to step down.”
The sound of the road purred under the tires of the Thunderbird while Theo turned those words over in his mind.