Letter Ten #3
You led me to the breakfast table and lowered me into a chair.
“Is it broken?” my dad asked, pulling up a chair in front of mine. He took my face in his hands, exactly like you had.
“I can’t tell,” you told him.
Nic pulled the towel from my face, his jaw clenching at the blood. It had run down my chin, down the front of my bathing suit, down between my breasts. I even spotted a red smudge on your chest, Casey—right above your heart.
Nic aimed a furious gaze at Michael. “I thought I told you not to let her play anymore. I told you last year, Michael. I fucking told you, and you agreed.”
“I didn’t think it would be a problem this time,” Michael said. “It’s not even—I didn’t think—I’m sorry, Nic.”
“It’s not his fault, Dad.”
“No, it’s yours,” Nic said. “Can we go one year without you getting hurt, Elliot? Is that too much to ask?”
“Daddy,” I said, because the harsh tone of his voice—the fury and disappointment behind his gaze—gutted me. “It was an accident this time.”
“I don’t believe that,” Nic said. He cast a hard look at you, standing by Michael’s side. “No more volleyball for Elliot. Now you both know.”
John strolled in, breathless and sweaty from a run, removing his earbuds. He stopped when he saw me. “Jesus, Elliot,” he said, putting a hand to his forehead. “Not again.”
Libby helped me clean most of the blood off my chest, then Nic took me to a local emergency room.
Turned out my nose wasn’t broken after all—just badly bruised and swollen—but I still wound up with ugly welts under my eyes.
Tinsley tried helping me cover them with concealer, but no one could look at me without wincing for days.
You kept offering to give me something for the pain, and I kept telling you I didn’t need anything, but you didn’t buy it.
More than once, you sat real close to me at the house. Showed up in my room to “hang out.” Asked me to walk with you on the beach.
Pretty sure you wanted to ask about the volleyball accidents. About my birthday. About whether I’d gotten too close to you on purpose.
But maybe you sensed I wouldn’t want to talk about my birthday, since you’d never talked to me about yours.
While we’re on the subject of birthdays, we celebrate my dad’s the first week of summer, even though he doesn’t like to make a big fuss of it.
Every year, my grandfather sends a gift in lieu of a phone call or his presence, and that year was no different.
The carrier arrived around breakfast, bearing a small wooden crate, and Nic placed it on the kitchen island, where it stayed until we all drifted in from the back patio much later, full from dinner and cake.
You leaned close, gesturing to the crate. “Why doesn’t he open it?”
“Because he already knows what’s inside,” I said.
“What’s inside?”
“A bottle of scotch that costs more than the average car and a note that says, Happy Birthday, Nicky. Enjoy your break from those prying eyes in the city.”
“It says that every year?”
“Yep. Exactly that. Every year.”
You pulled a face. “Bit strange.”
Finally, after our dinner dishes were loaded into the dishwasher, Nic opened the crate. Nestled carefully inside, he found a cylindrical container made of striped oak, and out of that he pulled a voluptuous bottle, almost sensual in its shape and appearance. The label read, The Balvenie.
Nic held the bottle with both hands while Libby clutched his bicep, lifting up on her tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek. John wrapped his arm around my dad and patted his chest, leaving his hand there.
“You want me to take it?” John asked.
Nic sighed. “I’ll do it.”
You watched my dad carry the bottle off with that groove of concern between your eyebrows. You didn’t understand. So, later that night, while everyone else got ready for bed, I took you down there—to the cellar, where my dad and the Harrises store their alcohol—and flipped on the light.
“Wow,” you said, head drawn back in surprise.
Mahogany fills the townhouse in Boston, but the cellar is the only space on the entire estate made up of the rich, vibrant wood.
Three walls of it, the fourth entirely made of glass.
Shelves of scotch line the center wall, flanked by rows of wine on the other two, all backlit by a warm golden glow.
We stood at the glass wall, staring at the shitload of alcohol neatly arranged there.
“Look,” I said, finger pressed to the glass. “There it is. Right in the center. Until next year’s bottle arrives.”
“He doesn’t drink them?”
“Nope.”
“Why?”
“So that when his dad calls, and my grandfather asks, ‘So, how was The Balvenie?’ my dad can say, ‘I don’t know. When you come for a visit, we’ll find out together.’ But Gabe—that’s my grandfather—never comes for a visit, so the bottles sit there, gathering dust.”
“Why doesn’t he ever visit?”
“Well, he does occasionally—but only to Boston. Never here.”
“He doesn’t like the beach?”
I paused to think. “I don’t think that’s it. He and Eleanor owned their own estate on this same beach back when my dad was growing up. The Harrises got married there.”
“Nic once told me he doesn’t get along with his dad, but he didn’t elaborate,” you said.
“Yeah. Gabe lives in Paris with his girlfriend. She’s ditzy and blonde—with huge, fake tits. She’s the same age as my dad, and he can’t stand her. The few times we’ve gone to Paris for a visit, or when Gabe actually does come back to Boston, my dad and Gabe end up fighting the whole time.”
“Why?”
“My dad doesn’t approve of Gabe’s lifestyle, and Gabe doesn’t approve of my dad’s, either.”
“What’s wrong with Nic’s lifestyle?” you asked.
I shrugged. “He never married and remains a bachelor, I guess.”
“Your parents were never married?”
“According to my dad, he asked my mom to marry him after he got her pregnant, but she thought marriage was a bunch of patriarchal bullshit. Anyway, Gabe’s always mentioning some recently divorced daughter of a friend, or trying to set my dad up with one of his girlfriend’s bimbo friends, and my dad hates that.
Also, Gabe’s really critical of my dad, which he hates even more. ”
Gently, you asked, “What about your relationship with him?”
“You know that dissatisfied look on Garland’s face?” I asked, and you nodded. “Well, that’s the way Gabe looks at me—so you can only imagine. I think he secretly hates that I broke the Bancroft streak by being born a girl.”
“I’m sorry,” you said, giving my arm a squeeze. “With Eleanor and this Gabe person as parents, I can’t believe Nic turned out as normal as he did.”
I pulled a face. “My dad does a background check on everyone we meet, moved some strange foreign guy into our house to keep tabs on me, and won’t let us have a dog even though I’ve been begging him my whole life. And you think that’s normal?”
“Okay, first off—‘some strange foreign guy?’” You tossed your hands out, as if to say, Seriously? “And second of all, what I mean by normal is that he’s quite nurturing for a person who was raised by two people who don’t seem the slightest bit nurturing at all.”
I laughed out loud. “He was predominantly raised by nannies. But sure, he’s nurturing, I guess.” I should’ve given Nic the credit he deserved here, and I knew it. Summers, however, typically made me bitter. “He’s outrageously controlling and definitely too involved in my life.”
“He’s involved because he cares.” A look of melancholy—or maybe regret—passed over your face. “You’ve no idea how lucky you are to have him.”
“Well—hey,” I said, trying to lighten the moment, “you’re in luck, too.”
“Why’s that?”
“In case you haven’t noticed, he deeply cares about you, which means you’re trapped in his sticky web of control just like I am. And you can’t escape now, even if you wanted to.”
You rolled your eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
I laughed. “You’re there. You’re trapped. You’re being controlled and you don’t even realize it.”
“I’m not being controlled by your dad, Elliot.”
“Oh, yeah? Whatever happened to smoking? Or your bartending job?”
“I needed to quit those things, anyway.”
“Sure you did. He made you believe that. Pretty soon, he’ll make you believe you need a plan for your future.”
You started to reply, then stopped, lips parted, staring into the cellar with your eyes narrowed.
I nudged your arm. “There’s already a plan, isn’t there?”
You backed up, fingers tugging at the sleeve of my sweatshirt. “I think it’s time we got to bed.”
I laughed as I followed you upstairs.
A couple days later, at dusk, I spotted Michael doing laps in the pool. A breeze ruffled loose strands of my hair as I lowered myself to the pool’s stone ledge and dipped my legs into the water.
After two more laps, he stopped beside me, resting his arms by my thighs.
“So,” I said. “Do you plan on being a dick to me all summer?”
“Do you plan on hurting yourself all summer? Despite knowing how much I hate it?” he fired back.
“You’re mad about the volleyball incident.” I knew he would be.
“I’m mad about all the incidents,” he said, gaze piercing mine. “I’m mad that instead of feeling happy every summer, I mostly feel dread. I’m mad just looking at your face right now.”
Hot tears pricked my eyes. “I didn’t do it because of my birthday this time. I did it because I snuck into your apartment that day, made Sienna think you cheated, and lied to Casey.”
Michael looked away, swiping a hand through his wet hair, slicking it back. “That was months ago, Elliot. A better alternative would’ve been to talk to someone about it. Not try to get your face broken.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, “for making your summers miserable.”
He stared at the ocean down below, his jaw bunched tight.
“Do I need to beg?” I asked. “Because I can do that—if it’ll help you forgive me.”
“You know I can’t stand that shit,” he said roughly.
“Please forgive me,” I said, begging a little, anyway. I pulled his face back to mine, put my thumb to his top lip, and stroked his scar.
His gaze burned through me. “Hard to forgive you when nothing ever changes. It hurts me to even look at you.”