Letter Twenty-Eight #6
You looked my way again as you slipped into a camel coat. “Shall I make your tea before I go?”
“I can make my own tea, Casey. I’m not a child.”
As Nate glanced between the three of us with his dark eyes narrowed, I could see him trying to work it out: the mysterious living arrangement, the strange nature of our relationship, why anyone should have to stay with me.
“Right,” you said, draping a brown houndstooth scarf around your neck. “Well, dinner’s in the fridge. I’ll see you two later.”
You strolled over to the back door while Nate hung back to give Michael one final handshake. “Nice seeing you, mate.” Little nod at me. “Elliot, pleasure to meet you.”
I shot this hot Nate character a death glare. Michael nudged me in the arm. “Sure,” I said. “Bye now.”
Nate chuckled to himself as he backed toward the door, which you held open for him.
When you were gone, I turned to Michael. “You know that guy?”
“Yeah. We had a class together last year. Why were you being a bitch to him?”
I grabbed your teakettle and carried it to the sink. “I’m a bitch to everyone.”
Michael couldn’t argue with that. I felt his eyes on me as I filled the kettle full of fresh water, stewing over Nate. Was he the fellow expat you knew from school? The one you’d met for a drink on Thanksgiving?
How close were you to this guy? Classmates who occasionally talked? Good friends? More than friends?
Would you be hooking up with him later? Would he touch you, trace you, kiss you in all the places I hadn’t gotten around to yet?
The thought of your mouth on someone else hit me like a blade between the ribs. My gaze flicked to the butcher block.
All those sharp knives.
It would be so easy.
To dull my crippling heartache.
With the better kind of pain. The gentler kind. The kind I knew how to carry.
Michael’s voice pierced through my thoughts. “Are you okay?”
“No.” I watched the water overflow, running down the copper sides of your kettle and rushing back down the drain. That’s also when the tears came, burning hot little trails down my cheeks. “I want to hurt myself—really bad.”
I needed Michael to stop me.
And he did. “Well, you’re not doing that,” he said firmly, shutting off the tap, then easing the kettle from my hands. “Let’s take a break.” He led me to the sofa, where I tried—and failed—to stop crying. “What’s wrong?”
I yanked my sleeves over my hands. “I keep sabotaging everything. My dad finally tried to give me a dog—but I ruined it. I promised to keep Casey’s secret—and I ruined that, too.”
“You didn’t ruin his secret, Elliot. It was an accidental slip. I’d blame Casey for keeping everyone in the dark so long, but ultimately? It was Nic’s responsibility to say something when he realized Casey couldn’t.”
“Yeah, but I haven’t told Casey what I’ve done yet. And I need to tell him.”
“No, you don’t. He got himself into this mess. Let him crawl his way out of it.”
My temper flared on your behalf. “Don’t be an asshole, Michael. Have some fucking sympathy.”
Michael tossed his head back against the sofa.
“Casey worries about you all the time. Your happiness actually matters to him. And you aren’t thinking about him at all. You’re just being a dick.”
“I know,” he muttered.
“This isn’t like you. You’re not heartless or cruel—”
“I know! Okay?” His voice rose as he turned a frustrated gaze on me.
“I’m a piece of shit, too—just like his piece-of-shit dad.
It’ll be obvious what a disappointment I am when my dad finds out he has this kind, selfless, agreeable older son who’s better and more perfect than I’ll ever be.
Stick Casey next to Bree, and I’m just…what?
The asshole? The middle kid?” A short pause.
“Oh, shit. I am the middle kid, aren’t I? ”
I laughed through the tears. “Stop. You’re good, too.”
“So are you, Elliot. I wish you could see that.”
“If I were good, I wouldn’t ruin everything. Or dream up ways to hurt myself without my dad finding out.”
“But that’s not your fault, either. You can’t help wanting the pain. It’s a coping mechanism. It’s how you get through stuff because it’s the first way you ever learned how. And right now, with everything that’s going on with Nic and my parents—”
“The first way I ever learned how?” I cut in. “What are you talking about?”
Michael stared at me, his expression going soft—but serious, too. “Shit,” he said, eyes drifting shut. “I shouldn’t tell you this.”
His hesitation made my stomach tighten.
“But I know it bothers you, and you deserve to know. So I’ll go ahead and tell you.”
A chill raced up my spine as I wiped the tears from my face. “Tell me what?”
Michael grabbed my hand. “When you were a baby, you were left all alone. Inside your crib. For over twenty-four hours.”
My initial reaction was to laugh—I laughed, Casey. This hadn’t happened to me. No way. “Okay, what the hell are you talking about?”
“It happened right after your first birthday. Apparently, you were strapped in something? Like a—like a bouncy seat or something? You were strapped in, then left inside your crib for over twenty-four hours. A neighbor heard you screaming and called the police. They had to bust open the front door to get to you.”
It sounded preposterous. Like something that had happened to someone else. Like a story you might hear on the news.
I didn’t believe it. Until Michael kept going, and then suddenly I knew for a fact he was talking about me.
“You were severely dehydrated. Hoarse from crying. Shaking and in shock. And you had”—he paused here, choking up, like he couldn’t bear to finish—“claw marks…all over you.”
I clapped a hand over my mouth.
“A lot of them were on your chest—like you were trying to get free of the bouncy seat, like maybe you were clawing at the straps—but you had marks all over your arms and face, too.”
The panic attack. On your birthday. All the claw marks I’d left on my chest.
“For weeks after that,” Michael said, “you had these episodes—sort of like panic attacks?—whenever your dad left the room. So he tried not to leave the room. He tried to keep you with him always, unless someone else could be there to sit with you.”
The hand against my mouth shook. “Who told you this?”
“My dad. He said it’s why you turn to pain when you’re frustrated. Or angry. Or when you feel trapped—especially when you feel trapped.”
My face collapsed. For one terrible, sinking moment, I cried. Michael squeezed my hand.
It explained everything. The real reason I hurt myself. The reason pain had always felt like a release.
This is how it had all began.
“And no one ever thought I should know? That it might be helpful for me to know this about myself?”
“My dad’s been trying to get Nic to tell you the truth for years.”
“Oh, yeah? And where was my dad when this happened?”
“New York—with your grandad. Nic thought someone was watching you.”
“Who did he think was watching me?”
“The nanny at first. But then…your mom.”
My stomach twisted. “My mom?”
“According to my dad, your mom is the one who strapped you to the seat and left you home alone.”
“No.” The girl in the pictures I saw—the girl who strongly resembled me—didn’t look like a person who was capable of something like that. My dad couldn’t have fallen in love with someone so cruel. I shook my head. “I don’t believe that.”
“Elliot, it’s true.”
“Oh, you know it’s true?” I asked shakily. “How? Because your dad told you so? Was John there?”
“Well—no. We were out of town. But when Nic called my parents, they rushed back.”
“How long have you known about this?”
“My dad told me the summer I broke your nose during volleyball.”
“So for years.”
“Elliot—”
“And when you say you know me better than anyone, it’s because you actually do,” I said, ripping my hand from his. “You know me better than I know myself.”
“Hey,” Michael said, reaching for me again.
But I swatted him away. “Every time you bit me or gave me the pain I wanted, it was only because you knew why I needed those things. It was never because you accepted me the way I am.”
“Elliot, you’ve been hurting yourself as long as I can remember—and I’ve always accepted that about you. Always. When my dad told me this stuff, your behavior suddenly made a lot more sense to me. That’s all.”
“So John just decided to tell you this giant secret about me one day?”
“No. It was after I’d accidentally broken your nose.
Nic called to tell my parents you’d need surgery.
I still had your blood all over my swim shorts, and I was pissed.
You did that shit to yourself every year on your birthday, and I’d had enough, so I vented to my dad about it.
I got so worked up I started crying, so he sat me down and explained everything.
He said I shouldn’t be mad at you—I should try to be more understanding. ”
“Who else have you told?”
“No one.”
I narrowed my eyes.
“I swear, Elliot—not even Bree. And, for the record, Nic was wrong to keep it from you all this time. To let you pine for someone who did something so horrible to you.”
But in that conversation I’d overheard between our parents, Nic had said, “I’m responsible for all of it…because I walked away. I left. I fucked up. And because of that, she’s fucked up. My daughter’s broken—and that’s on me.”
“Did she do something to me?” I asked. “Or is that a lie, too? Maybe everyone kept this a secret because my dad was complicit in some way. Because he’s the one who abandoned me first.”
“Nic isn’t my favorite person at the moment,” Michael said, “but I can’t imagine him ever abandoning you. Not intentionally.”
“He did once.” I told Michael about the day I stabbed him. How Nic had locked me in his office, and John had let me out.
Michael winced. “My dad told me about that, too. He said the stabbing brought back all those scary emotions from when you were abandoned by your mom, and Nic just…froze. He couldn’t deal.”
Fresh tears pricked my eyes. “He couldn’t deal? Do you have any idea how that felt for me? At eight years old?”
“I know. Apparently, Nic regrets doing that to you, and he’s never forgiven himself for it.”