by S. Celi
“Good.” She took my hand. Her attention wasn’t on me, though. She looked both our parents in the eye and took in one long breath. “Three years ago, something awful happened at college, in one of the dorms at UC.”
Linda’s mouth fell into a hard line, and my dad leaned forward in his seat. At least they were listening.
“One night I went to a party . . . and . . . He wasn’t . . . there was a lot going on that night.” Avery tightened her grip on my hand, and I started to rub my thumb back and forth on the creases of her palm.
“I made a lot of mistakes,” Avery said after a deep swallow. It didn’t stop the quiver in her voice, though. “One of the mistakes was him. I still don’t know his name. I don’t know what happened. It’s a blur, but I woke up naked. And I had been . . .”
“Oh my God.” Linda’s voice sounded choked and stifled. “Raped?”
“Yes,” Avery said. “I didn’t consent. I woke up and I knew he had taken advantage of me.” She paused. “I didn’t know what to do or where to go. I was afraid. I thought, well, I thought if I said anything or if I went to the police, I thought it would be so shameful for all of us. I was afraid.” She nodded at Dad. “And you both have always said how important the Chadwick name is; how it means everything for our family.”
“What do you mean you were raped?” Dad said.
“That’s what it was,” Avery said, choking a bit on her words. “I didn’t want to have sex with him. I know that much.” She wiped a stray tear from her face with her left hand. Then she tightened her grip on mine. “I know what perfection means. I know how to be perfect. I know how important that is for us.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?” Tears started to stream fast down Linda’s face.
“I was scared. And I hated myself.” Avery gulped. “For the longest time, I thought it was my fault. I didn’t want anyone to know. No one.” She shut her eyes, as if the memory of it all still burned something inside of her. “For two weeks, I took five showers a day, scrubbing my body until my skin bled. I thought I could wash it away. I wanted to wash him away.” She opened her eyes again. “I thought people would never understand.”
Dad pulled a worn handkerchief out of his pants pocket and handed it to my stepmother, who by now had started crying so hard her sniffles punctuated Avery’s words. The lump of emotion in my throat grew stronger.”
“Oh, Avery,” Linda said after she wiped her eyes, leaving a small mascara streak on her cheek. “If you had said something, if you had talked to one of us, we would have helped you.”
“Spencer is the only one who ever knew.” She cleared her throat. “He wanted to tell the police. He tried. He was the only one who I thought I could trust.” She smiled at me. “And he was so wonderful. So helpful. You loved me then. I know you did. Didn’t you?”
“Yes,” I said. “I loved you then. And I love you now. I’ll never stop.”
She moved closer to me on the sofa, but didn’t give up my hand. “I thought I would be able to forget about it. God, I wanted to so badly. I thought, well, this happened to me but now I have to move on. I thought I would wake one day and it would all be the horrible nightmare that happened to someone else and not me.”
My heart jumped into my throat again. I knew what was coming next.
“A few weeks later, though, it wasn’t over.”
“Oh my God,” Linda said, and what blood remained in her face drained away. My stomach twisted as I realized she had guessed what Avery was about to say. “Oh, honey.”
“The worst had happened. Worse than the rape. I was . . .” Avery’s voice shook and shuddered with every word she spoke. Out of instinct, I pulled my hand from hers and wrapped my arm around her shoulders in a desperate attempt to shield her from something I never could. Everyone else stayed silent, waiting for Avery to continue.
“I didn’t want it. I didn’t want that memory. I couldn’t—There was no way I could be reminded of that rape every single day for the rest of my life.”
Linda had already been crying hard, but now she wept. She wept louder and harder than any other time that I had ever seen her, and her body shook with each sob, each gasp of air. Avery cried, too. Her tears mixed with what remained of the makeup on her face and slid down her apple cheeks like streaking reminders of the pain she’d hidden away for three years.
My father had lost all the color in his face. The pain pinched and twisted his hardened face. A few more moments of stony silence passed.
“So I made a decision,” Avery whispered. “A decision I felt I had to make.”
Then, with a quickness no one could have expected, she stood from the sofa, breaking my hold around her like a matchstick. She took a step toward the hallway, and hesitated.
“Ever since then, I’ve known I was damned,” she said. “I know I’m going to hell.”
“What?” Linda said. “What do you mean?”
Avery looked over at her, and then at my father. “I know it was a sin. I killed a life. I did it. I killed something because I was too selfish. Because I was too stupid. Because I got myself into trouble. And because it’s all my fault.”
Avery started to walk out of the room, and Linda jumped from her chair to follow her. Dad and I followed Linda. By then, panic had replaced whatever anger or sadness any of us felt.
“You’re not going to hell, honey,” Linda said as she followed her daughter. She grabbed for Avery’s arm, but missed. “Stop! Please, honey. Stop and listen to me. You’re not going to hell. This wasn’t your fault. That’s not how this works. I promise you.”
“Stop it, Mom.” Avery reached the hallway and whirled around. She pointed to her chest. “I know. I feel it here. I know I’m one of the worst people alive. I’m the failure of this family. Me. No one else.”
“But, honey,” Linda said. “No one feels that way about you.”
“You should see the way you’re looking at me,” Avery said. “It’s like you think I’m a different person. Like you think I’m some sort of freak. And maybe I am.”
“Please, sweetheart.”
Avery shook her head and her mother stopped talking. “There’s nothing you can say to make me think anything differently.”
“But we love you, honey. We do. We don’t—”
“Leave me alone,” Avery said. “Just leave me alone. I want to go upstairs and be alone.” She whirled around and when Linda tried to stop her again, she pushed her mother away. “What did I say? Leave me alone!”
“Baby, I just want you to understand—”
“No!” Avery said. “There’s nothing you can say to make this better. Nothing. I just want to be alone.”
With that, Avery stormed up the stairs and left us in a clump, staring at her as she disappeared.
“WE SHOULD GO after her,” Dad said after a long pause.
“She had that look in her eye,” Linda said, and swiped at her face. This whole time, she hadn’t stopped crying. “She doesn’t want us to follow her. She doesn’t.”
“What if we . . .” I broke off and tried to think of something else to say.
In the span of one conversation my stepmother had aged at least five years. Her eyes had a tiredness that hadn’t been there before. Strands of grey on her head had magnified, and her voice sounded old. It was as if my stepsister’s secrets had destroyed whatever youth Linda still hung onto.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe we should go up there. Make sure she’s okay.”
Linda wiped a few more tears from her face. “I still can’t believe she never told us. Ever. Who does that?”
“Avery was afraid,” I said. “She thought it would destroy you.”
“She hid it so well,” Dad said, and wrapped his arm around my stepmother. “So well. No one ever suspected. Ever.”
“That’s what being perfect does,” I said. “It killed me, but it’s killed Avery, too. For the last three years, she’s struggled so much.” I clicked my teeth as I thought about it some more. “And even
the best effort can’t keep secrets being hidden forever. Just can’t.”
Linda buried her face in my father’s shoulder for a long moment, and she faced me again. Her tears had washed away whatever remained of her makeup.
“I’m going up there,” she said. “I need to check on her.”
“Do you want us to go with you?” Dad said.
“No. I’ll go by myself.” Linda’s tone had sharpened. “I’m her Mother.”
With that, she wiped her face once more and started to climb the stairs. Dad and I watched her grow smaller as she made her way up them, and when she reached the landing, she turned to us and smiled. Dad and I stayed rooted in our spots as we watched my stepmother walk the open hallway toward Avery’s room.
“I really love her, Dad,” I said, pleading for him to understand this one thing about my life that I didn’t want to hide any longer. “It’s real. You have to understand that. Please, just please try to see it our way.”
“I don’t know if I ever can,” he said. “Just don’t know if I can. It’s not natural to love your Sister.”
“Stepsister,” I said. “And Avery means more to me than—”
I didn’t get to finish my sentence.
Instead, one long, anguished cry from Linda echoed through the entire house. It was the kind of sound only a mother makes in the wild, the type of noise that comes from pain deep within every cell of a person’s body. At first, the cry didn’t have any words, just a few deep, unguarded moans.
Then, with lightning quickness, it morphed into one loud, directed command.
“Richard! It’s Avery! Call 9-1-1! Call 9-1-1 right now!”
Then a blistering, loud, guttural scream filled the house. It was the kind of noise that makes every bone in your body shudder. The kind of sound that stops time. The kind of sound that tells you that everything from here on out will be vastly different.
“YOU MAY HAVE a seat in our waiting area,” a woman with a severe grey bun said after I signed the ledger at Brook Creek Retreat. She pointed at a seating area of overstuffed black couches in front of a large fireplace. On both sides of the roaring fire, large picture windows showed off a few of the Smokey Mountains with snow on their caps. It had been a cold, bitter, stony winter, and Avery’s absence only made it worse.
The nurse had a pinched face and tired eyes. She sneered at me when I made no move to sit. “Miss Jackson will be out shortly.”
“Right. Thank you.” I walked over to a couch. Six months. Forever. Too long.
Around me, a few patients and staffers hustled back and forth. Brook Creek specialized in costly treatment for the elite, and the thousands of dollars Dad and Linda had committed to Avery’s stay looked to be well worth it. This wasn’t like the sterile clinic they wanted to check me into after the DUI, the one I had to fight the entire family about. Not for Avery, and not this time. This was a place to get A-list treatment, and Avery deserved nothing less. She deserved everything the Chadwick fortune could buy her.
We owed her that, at least.
The army of doctors, psychologists, nurses, and specialists all said Avery was crying out for help that night, that she didn’t want to really kill herself, that she carried a burden of guilt inside of her, and that she’d acted out, slashed her wrists, as a way to cope with the problems she had pushed in to the deepest parts of herself for so long.
I still wasn’t sure if I agreed with them about that. For six months, I played that night over and over in my mind until every detail felt branded and burned into my mind. I should have done things differently. I should have followed her when she left the room. And I should have been there to pull her back from the dark cliff.
But, like a coward, I had stayed downstairs. Maybe I would never forgive myself for that.
As I sat on the couch, the iPhone in my pocket buzzed. I pulled it out and found a text message from Henry. Ever the loyal member of our family, he waited in the car in Brook Creek’s parking lot. No amount of coaxing on my part would get him inside the lobby.
“This is between the two of you,” he’d said over and over. “I know my place.”
Still, I knew Avery wanted to see him more than he thought. And now, at last, it was time for Avery to come home.
Well, home could be a relative word.
Avery planned to leave Brook Creek, alright, but not with our parents. She’d made that clear in the few letters, emails, and phone calls they’d allowed her after several weeks in an intensive isolation program. She didn’t want to come home to Chadwick Gardens. She just wanted to leave with me.
You’re the only one who really gets me, the emails always said. Just you, Spencer. Despite all the mistakes we’ve made, I trust only you.
How could I turn her down again? How could I leave her on her own?
So there I sat, six months later, waiting for her, just like she had waited for me all those months ago when I first came home from the Peace Corps, and really, just like she’d waited for me for years before even that. I don’t know how much time passed as I sat in the lobby, and I didn’t care. I would have waited for Avery until my last day on earth.
When she came into the lobby, though, I heard her voice first.
“You’ve gained weight,” she said.
I looked up from a rumpled magazine and saw my stepsister leaning one shoulder on the wall on the far side of the lobby. At first, I couldn’t be sure it was her, and that must have shown in my facial expression.
“I know,” she said. “I look different.”
“You do.”
In six months, she’d lost at least fifteen pounds; not that she had fifteen pounds to lose. She’d also chopped her hair into a plain, sensible, short bob that didn’t resemble in any way the long, blonde hair I remembered. Against the glare of the window, she looked so pale that I wondered if the Brook Creek staff had ever let her outside. A long, black cardigan sweater, black leggings and black boots make her look frailer. She did have one thing, though.
She did have a genuine smile on her face. I hadn’t seen a smile like that since we were kids.
“You look great,” I said.
She took a few tentative steps toward me, then two confident ones, and I threw my arms around her in a hug. I closed my eyes as I held her body again, and my thoughts drifted to that horrible night in August, that night when we found her in a pool of blood, when I thought I had lost her forever. She could have died on the bathroom floor that night, and probably should have.
Thank God she didn’t.
“I love you,” I said into her shoulder as she held onto me. “You know that, right?”
“I love you, too.” When she pulled away the smile hadn’t left her face. “And Spencer, I always knew you did.”
“I thought you would die.”
She put her hand on my arm. “But I didn’t.”
“You really do look amazing.” I frowned. “But maybe that’s not the right word.”
“What is? I mean, what do you say to someone like me? I’ve been a huge mess.”
“You don’t have to go through life alone. You have me. You’ll always have me.”
“It hasn’t been so bad here. I got help.” She shuddered, shifted her weight some, and looked around the lobby. “And I guess it turned out that I really needed it.”
“Now you’re free.”
Jesus.
Sometimes I sounded like such an idiot around her. She laughed, though, a genuine loud, happy laugh that reminded me of when we were little kids. She used to laugh so much back then; she found humor in the smallest things.
“Free at last?” she said.
“Something like that.”
She glanced over her shoulder toward the long, cavernous hallway and what I assumed were the dorms. Only she knew what had happened to her here during the last six months. She’d been on this part of her journey alone.
“Are you okay?” I said when I saw a small frown cross over her face.
“I just want to start over. Ne
w. I want to start a new chapter.”
“Where?”
“Anywhere.” She shrugged. “I don’t care. Just not Chadwick Gardens.”
“They wanted to come,” I said. “And they wanted me to tell you that.”
Linda had broken down in the kitchen and cried for three hours the day before when she saw me come down the steps with my packed duffel bag. Dad blamed himself. They were a mess of insomnia, weight loss and silent dinners. I felt bad about it. Guilt had a funny way of eating at both of them.
“I just don’t want to go back for a while. That’s a house built on lies. Maybe someday, but not today. I can’t stand the idea of seeing that place again.”
“Whatever you want, I’ll do it. I just want you to be healthy. And happy.”
A smile pulled at her lips. “I’ll be happy once I get out of here.”
“Good.” Then I reached into my pocket. “I have something to show you.” I pulled out a pink poker chip. “Five months. Just got this last week. Five months sober.”
“I can’t believe it.”
“Believe it,” I said. “No more drinking. I promise.”
“And you’re not going to leave me?”
“No. Never.”
“I’m so proud of you.”
“No.” I shook my head and put my forehead on hers. “I’m proud of you.”
We stayed that way for a long moment.
“In that case,” she said, “where do you want to go? I’ll let you pick, since you’re the one celebrating a milestone.”
“Just having you back is the milestone.” I hugged her again, then pulled back a little and grasped her chin. “And I think I know the perfect place.”
“Which is?
“Lisbon,” I said. “Lisbon, fucking Portugal.”
Avery laughed so loud and clear that it filled the room and spread through the hallway. I heard something different inside of it. She was laughing from her heart and from her soul. She was laughing because somewhere in the last six months she had learned to live again. And she was laughing because, just like me, she had remembered that life could be funny.