Dad takes another sip of his iced coffee and continues, “We’ve been riding a thin line for a while now, waiting for things to turn around.”
“They still might,” I say hopefully, because this is beginning to sound worse than I had thought.
“That’s true. They might. But not in time. We’re going to lose the store, the house. We’re going to lose it all. I had been working out just how to tell you, but there’s no easy way to tell a boy his father is a failure.”
There’s a silence during which I know I’m supposed to say something reassuring, but my throat has squeezed shut. I can’t make any noise at all. It’s the shock, I guess, the reversal, the notion that for the first time, it’s not me who’s failing him.
Instead Mom says, “Leroy, please.”
He stands and leaves the room. Mom wrings her hands in front of her on the table and I’m struck by how raw they look, how broken. Her red skin is cracking at the knuckles. They’re the hands of someone much older than my mother actually is.
“Is that it?” I ask, expecting her to say it’s okay to take my sandwich up to my room, but she shakes her head.
More time passes before she speaks. Then she says, “We’ve been offered a way to keep the house, the store. It would mean enough money for us to stay above water, avoid bankruptcy. It would mean more money than I thought we’d ever see in this lifetime. You would get to go to Columbia.”
I can tell from her tone that it’s not only this, there’s something more, something I should be afraid of, but foolishly I begin to hope.
“What is it?” I ask when she does not offer an explanation on her own.
She looks down at her hands as if aware of them for the first time and then buries them in her lap. Her eyes, when they find my own, are pleading. It’s the look that gets me, that makes it finally sink in, and suddenly I’m terrified.
“You would have to marry Esther Hicks.”
I know there must be more to this, background of some sort, but I don’t wait to hear it.
“No,” I say. “No way. Not in a million years. I’ll get a job. I won’t go to college. I want nothing to do with that family.”
I pass my dad on the way through the living room but don’t stop. I’m already up the stairs when I hear him say, “What did you expect? We knew it was too good to be true.”
* * *
—————
I leave for practice without saying good-bye. I’m angry, I think. Though really what I’m feeling is more complicated than that. It’s impossible to put a name to. They were willing to trade me, in exchange for money. So what I feel is shame, but I also feel powerful. I wonder if this is how all of those countless girls have felt over the millennia, loaded into trucks and sold into slavery. I saw a show about that on the History channel the other day. There were some boys mixed in there too, though not as many, for the obvious reason that even most pedophiles prefer to think of themselves as straight and it’s generally men who are pigs when it comes to sexual arrangements. It’s men who trust they will suffer no consequences for their actions, while women suffer no matter what they do.
I think about where Essie and I would live—hypothetically, of course, since I’m not really considering it. There’s plenty of room for me in the rectory. That place is an actual mansion. Even if I had to sleep in the garage, it would be about a million steps above the stained concrete bunker where they locked up the girls on that TV show. Maybe I shouldn’t be complaining. Compared with my family’s cramped three-bedroom split-level complete with its leaky roof and cracked foundation, the Hickses’ house is practically Versailles. But we wouldn’t be living there, I remember now, since I’d be at Columbia. In married housing, presumably, if that even exists. It’d have to be a large apartment, huge by New York standards, what with the space needed for the camera crew and hair and makeup and that sort of thing. I assume that would be part of the bargain. I’d be sold not into slavery but into celebrity, which I realize on some level amounts to pretty much the same thing. I think this and then I stop myself, since the idea is no less insane than it was an hour ago and my internal dialogue sounds too close to an actual debate.
I’m glad when Blake slides up next to me and claps me on the back. I can use the distraction. But instead of taking my mind off things, Blake seems to know what I was thinking, because he says, “Dude, why on earth was Esther Hicks all up in your business yesterday? I never got a chance to ask.”
“No reason,” I say, because it’d be too ridiculous to say it out loud. But then, maybe just to see how it would sound, I venture, “She probably wants to marry me.”
I’m careful to say this in a way that makes it clear that I’m joking, the sort of joke that goes over well with Blake. It’s just the right blend of vanity and assholery. Totally up his alley.
I’m rewarded with a laugh and then he says, “Man, what I wouldn’t give to get with her, that prissy little preacher’s girl.”
“Maybe on a temporary basis, but don’t you think it would be a bit much in the long term?”
Blake tilts his head to the side and taps a finger against his pursed lips. “I don’t know. I think I could make it work. I like my creature comforts. Hot tub. Maid service. No one yelling at me to pick up my goddamned underwear because there would be someone whose actual job it was to pick up my goddamned underwear for me.”
“But you’d have all those cameras following you around all the time. And you definitely wouldn’t be allowed to say ‘goddamned.’ ”
“So? I can talk pretty like the rest of them if I have to. Besides, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m incredibly photogenic. I bet I’d be a huge hit with the middle-aged women in Omaha.”
I roll my eyes in response to his overinflated ego and then point out, “I don’t think they have a hot tub.”
Blake looks outraged. “Well, that right there is a deal breaker if I ever heard one. I guess I’ll just have to hold out for Morgan Lily. She was pretty hot in her last movie.”
“I didn’t see it,” I tell him and nod to Coach Willis, who is motioning for us to join him.
Practice starts, and though Blake keeps trying to make me guess Morgan Lily’s bra size, at least he doesn’t mention Essie Hicks again. When she shows up about ten minutes before practice is due to let out, I refuse to look over in her direction. I concentrate instead on the ball in my hand and on Reggie White’s mitt as I throw and catch, throw and catch, repeating the motion over and over until my arm is moving independent of my brain. It’s soothing, the stretch and snap of my muscles and the solid poof as the ball hits my own mitt, finding its center, returning home.
It’s not until we are jogging back to the dugout to pick up our bags that I answer Blake’s questioning glance with a nod of acknowledgment. He sidles up to me and purposely knocks his shoulder into mine.
“Check it out, Roarke,” he whispers.
“What?” I ask, though I know he could only be talking about Essie.
“I think you’re in.”
I shake my head and grimace and stoop to gather my things. I want more than anything to just run home and get out of there, but I know I’ll have to face Essie one way or another, and since there’s no way around it, I figure it’s best to wait until everyone else has left. I help Coach Willis stow the equipment in the athletic building, and when we’ve finished cleaning up, there’s a moment just before I step back outside when I half expect the field to be empty. Instead Blake is leaning against the chest-high fence talking to Essie. The panic that I feel is like a thick tar that nearly blacks out my vision and makes it hard to breathe. I blink a few times before I can see normally again and swallow. My legs are like waterlogged bags of cement, but I force them to run. I’m sweating by the time I reach Blake and Essie and I untuck my shirt to fan myself.
Blake smiles widely, clearly enjoying my discomfort. He and Essie both
are silent, waiting for me to say something, but I just glare at Blake and wait for him to take the hint. Finally, after an uncomfortably long pause, he grins at Essie and reaches out to take her hand and lifts it gallantly to his lips.
“Esther Anne,” he says, “always a pleasure.”
I can hear him laughing as he walks away. I wait until he’s out of earshot before I growl, “What do you think you’re doing here?”
“I just thought that we should talk.”
“About whether I want five kids or maybe seven?”
The chain-link fence is still between us and Essie turns away and leans against it so that her back is to me but off to one side. I can still see most of her face.
“I see your parents have broached the subject.”
“They have. My answer’s no.”
She turns back and grips the top of the fence. Her eyes are burning, but behind that look I can tell that she is scared. “Don’t say that,” she tells me.
“Why on earth do you think I would marry you? The first time we ever talked was yesterday.”
She shrugs and suddenly she looks smaller, completely unthreatening. I remind myself that this is how they lure you in. Then they pounce and strike to kill.
“It’s not like I’m expecting you to love me,” she tells me sadly.
I’m almost sorry for her in this moment. Almost, but not quite. So I say, “I could never love you.”
“I know,” she answers, and this time, strangely, she does not sound sad at all.
“So why, then? Why should I say yes?”
“I think first of all, it’s easier if you don’t think of it as a marriage,” she suggests.
“What should I think of it as?”
“A business arrangement,” she says simply. “An alliance. A pooling of resources for the greater good.”
“Whose greater good?”
Essie lifts her chin, a quick birdlike gesture, as if she is working out how much to trust me, or debating whether she should fly away.
After she has come to a decision, she tells me, “Ours. Yours and mine.”
“You don’t think you have enough already?”
“Enough of what?”
I wave my hand in the air, back and forth, taking in the entire space around us. “Everything.” I stop then and drop my hands. “It doesn’t make you special,” I say quietly.
“What doesn’t?”
“Not being poor.”
“I know it doesn’t.”
She’s looking at me, and though I don’t want to give her the satisfaction, eventually I look away.
“My parents want me to, but I suppose you know that.”
“I know things are difficult for you financially,” she says slowly.
I snort. “Of course you do. You think it makes me an easy target, don’t you? How could I possibly say no to everything you’re offering?”
“Did they tell you what we’re offering?”
“No, but I think I’ve got the gist. Money, fame, a chance to get out of this stupid town.”
“And you don’t want those things?”
I turn and lean against the fence as well. We are almost back-to-back. I can feel Essie’s eyes moving over my face.
“I want to get out of this town, yes. The other two I can do without.”
“But there’s no getting out of here without the money,” she reminds me.
“So I’m caught, then? I’m out of options? You think I’ll just willingly fall into your trap?”
“No,” she says. “It wouldn’t be like that.”
“How would it be, then?”
“I told you. A business arrangement.”
“So no sex?” I see her stiffen and so I continue, hoping that the words alone might hurt her. “No kissing. None of that sort of stuff.”
“No sex,” she tells me defiantly. “But there would have to be a certain amount of kissing, just for the cameras. Lily tells me you’re fairly good at that. I didn’t think it would be a problem.”
“You didn’t think it would be a problem? Do you have any idea how insane you sound?”
I turn back and see the tears in her eyes.
“This could work,” she whispers. “We could both get out.”
I feel a surge of pity, wonder if maybe Essie is the one who is trapped. But even so, why should it be my job to save her?
“I’m sorry,” I tell her. “It wouldn’t work.”
Her breath rattles out of her narrow chest and she sucks in another. For a moment it is silent and I can almost feel Essie letting go.
Then she says quietly, “Is it because you’re gay?”
Without thinking, I spit out, “What did you call me?” and start to walk away.
I want to run, but running would be an admission and I can’t risk that. So I walk. My hands are clenched and my temples throb as the blood rushes, pounding in my ears. Essie runs along the fence until she comes to an opening and her feet stomp up beside me.
“Roarke, wait! I didn’t call you anything. It was just an observation. You’re gay. I’ve known that for a while now.”
“You don’t know anything,” I hiss angrily, and it’s not my voice, it’s my father’s, and the realization is enough to make me stop. I sway slightly, feet planted on the ground.
Essie doesn’t hear the venom or else she ignores it and just keeps talking. “I know you made up a girlfriend somewhere so you wouldn’t have to keep dating Lily. I know you’re a good kisser but you always keep your eyes closed, probably so you don’t have to think too hard about what you’re doing.”
“You don’t know anything,” I say again, but this time I can hear the break in my voice, the weakness.
“I know what it feels like to want to be anywhere but inside your own body.”
I think of all the times Essie has smiled into the camera, batted her eyes, said exactly the right thing. I have seriously underestimated her. Reluctantly I realize that under different circumstances, Esther Hicks is someone I might be able to like. But that still doesn’t mean I want to marry her.
Suddenly she takes my hand and forces me to look at her. “I’m not like my parents. I don’t think the way they do.”
“You sure had me fooled.”
“Thank you. That was always the intention. And it’s why I think this actually might work.”
I’m silent while she tells me, “It wouldn’t just be some money. It would be a lot of money. And it would be ours. Yours and mine. Then when we get divorced, we split it down the middle, fifty-fifty. You can do anything with it that you want.”
Slowly, I say, “My parents said they would get to keep our house, the store.”
Essie nods, but it’s clear that she’s not really interested. “There’s more than enough in the offer, as far as I can tell, that they won’t ever have to worry. But you’re eighteen, Roarke; you should really have your own lawyer. I’ll text you the contact information for the woman who represented Liberty Bell when she sued her parents.”
“I’m not going to sue my parents.”
“Well, if you have your own lawyer, then you won’t have to. You’ll see to that up front.”
“Before your long walk down the aisle?” I ask, and she nods. “I suppose that will be televised as well.”
“That won’t be part of my parents’ demands, but it is part of mine. I want it broadcast live.”
“Why?”
“I have my reasons. One of which is to rake in as much cash as we can if we’re going to go through with this thing.” She pauses and looks at me shyly. “Are we going to go through with this thing?”
I look at Essie and the craziest thing is that she doesn’t seem so crazy anymore.
“How much money are we talking about?”
“For exclusive
wedding interviews and pictures, not to mention the ceremony itself? We should be able to bring in at least five mil, maybe ten.”
I choke and Essie lifts a hand as if she is ready to smack me, but I recover just in time. “Five million?” I gasp.
Essie is calm as she looks at me. “I told you it would be a lot of money.”
I’m feeling dizzy, so I sit down on the grass and lean my head between my knees. Essie sits beside me, close, so that our legs are almost touching.
“How did you know?” I ask, unable even now to say the word.
“That you’re gay? I’ve been watching you for a long time,” she says. Fifteen minutes ago I would have found this statement creepy, but now it seems like the most normal thing that has come out of her mouth so far. She looks down as if she’s embarrassed and tells me, “Also, I know about the summer you were sent away.”
My stomach twists. Essie moves her hand so it’s next to mine, the fingers just barely touching. It’s weird but also comforting. I don’t move away.
“So we would, what? Have separate bedrooms?” I ask.
“Naturally,” she says. “And you’d be welcome to have whatever…company you choose.”
Completely against my will, I smile. There’s still a chance that all this is a trap, but there’s a part of me that feels relief. “You mean guys.”
Next to me I feel Essie smile in return. “I mean guys. I told you, I’m not like my parents.”
“I’m beginning to see that,” I say. “And I’d get to go to Columbia.”
Essie sits up and shifts away from me so that she is looking into my eyes, her expression earnest. “You could go anywhere, do anything, be whoever you want to be.”
“Except when I’m on camera.”
This stops her and she sits back slightly and then says, “Maybe the cameras wouldn’t be with us for very long.”
“What would that feel like, do you think?”
Essie closes her eyes and a dreamy look comes over her. “Different,” she says. “Wonderful.” Then her eyes snap open and she fixes her gaze on me again. “But I can’t get there alone.”
The Book of Essie Page 8