by Kara Thomas
I stared at my mother, my heart crawling into my throat. A stab of fear as I wondered what she had been saying to Marian about Jesse—and her reasons for waiting until now, when I only had a few months left before leaving for college, to tell Marian that we were serious.
Marian’s expectant stare, as if I were a server who had brought her the wrong meal, ignited something in me.
“He’s not just a boy I’m spending time with,” I said icily. “I’ve been friends with him since the ninth grade.”
Marian’s lips pursed as if she tasted something sour. Any reminder of my public schooling had that effect. I had fought like hell to avoid being sent upstate to Barton, like Emma; I had lasted half a year at Amos’s school, St. Genevieve’s, affectionately dubbed “St. Druggies” by all who knew it.
“He’s a very nice boy,” my mother said, but like every sentence she’d ever deigned to utter in Marian’s presence, it sounded more like a question.
My grandmother poured from the Royal Albert china coffeepot, the set she’d handed down to my mother, even though my aunt Erin had coveted it since she was a girl. “Don’t you think it’s time I met him?”
I poured some milk into the coffee, imagining saying no to my grandmother. The grandmother who was paying for my college education, who had showed up at my house days earlier driving my unnecessarily expensive graduation present.
No, I imagined saying. You will never get within ten feet of him.
Marian’s eyes moved to my mother, as if I had vanished from the room. “What about the party? Surely we could fit another place at the table.”
“He works every weekend,” I said, a beat too quickly.
Marian sipped from her coffee cup, leaving a smear of nude-pink lipstick on the rim. Chanel Rouge Coco in Marie; as a child I would sneak into her bathroom and uncap the tube, twist the lipstick to its full height. I imagined writing terrible words on her mirror, words I’d only ever heard my father utter.
“The party is in two weeks,” Marian said. “That’s plenty of time for him to request an afternoon off.”
The phone rang in the kitchen, prompting Marian’s departure from the table. My mother glanced at me, panicked, and said under her breath: “Please make sure he wears a tie.”
* * *
—
There was no way around it; my mother even mailed Jesse an invitation to the party. Maybe she anticipated that I wouldn’t tell him about it. That I would continue to attempt to hide him from the rest of my family. Not only from Marian and my father but the rest of the Sullivan-Marcottes. The Sullivans disgusted me: Marian’s side of the family; a bunch of braggarts, Brookport born and raised. They had all made something of themselves—lawyers, doctors, Wall Street suits—but none like US Congresswoman Marian Sullivan-Marcotte.
I couldn’t stand them, couldn’t stand watching them try to outdo one another, using their successful, beautiful children as props. I pictured Jesse driving up to the country club in Bruce, seeing a fleet of BMWs and Audis and vintage Corvettes. I cared less about what my family would think of him than what Jesse would think of me.
I’d spent our entire relationship trying to be someone else. Someone like Claire, who didn’t stay up all night obsessing about whether or not she’d gotten one answer wrong on a math quiz. I’d fooled myself into thinking I could be someone who didn’t constantly live in fear because Jesse made me feel safe.
Fear, now, so powerful I felt like I might vomit into the bowls of peonies at the center of the table. Fear because Jesse was fifteen minutes late to the country club; fear because my two worlds were about to collide.
I sucked down half a glass of Diet Coke before sneaking away from the table to the lobby, away from the sound of Sinatra crooning through the speakers. I took my phone out and texted Jesse, where are you??
He was coming after work, and even though he promised he would leave an hour early so he’d have time to go home and shower, he was still fifteen minutes late.
“Kat?”
I looked up, and there he was, lingering by the collage of photos my aunt Erin had put together to honor Marian’s life. Jesse, hair still damp, in a blue button-down and khakis. He hadn’t put on a tie, and I guess my face fell a bit, because he asked, “What is it? What’s wrong?”
I said nothing and I gave him a quick peck on the lips. “Nothing. Ready to meet a bunch of rich douchebags?”
My voice slid up to a squeak, and my heartbeat moved to my fingers as I clutched Jesse’s hand and led him into the dining room. I took inventory of the room: my father was congregated with a pack of his cousins at the bar at the far side of the room, mercifully out of our line of sight.
My grandmother held court at her table. She was wearing a tasteful floral wrap dress, her hair freshly blown out and swept into a French twist. The sound of my pulse flooded my ears as I walked Jesse over to her.
Marian spotted us and lowered her champagne glass, an inquisitive look on her face.
“Grandma,” I said. “This is Jesse. My boyfriend.”
Marian accepted his outstretched hand. Hers, lily white, blue veins peeking through the skin. His tanned and calloused from his guitar. “Jesse…”
“Salpietro,” he said.
“What an interesting last name.” Marian’s eyebrows lifted. “Is it Italian?”
Jesse slipped his hands into the pockets of his khakis. No, don’t slouch, I thought. She hates that.
“Yes,” Jesse said. “My mother was Italian and Mexican American.”
It was as fast as a streak of lightning, but we both saw it. My grandmother’s face pinched. Not at the word Italian, obviously, because my grandfather had been Italian.
Mexican American.
I swallowed the sick feeling rising from my stomach as Marian murmured, Excuse me, turning her back on Jesse and me to greet another well-wisher.
“Come speak to me again later, Katherine,” she said, her smile faltering as her eyes rested on Jesse once more.
I guided him away; Jesse’s eyes were still on my grandmother. When I gave his shoulder a squeeze, he mumbled about needing to use the bathroom and headed for the lobby.
Only, the bathrooms were the other way.
“Jesse.” I caught him as he was advancing on the lobby doors.
He turned around, the saddest look on his face I’d ever seen.
“You’re leaving?” I said.
“I don’t think I should be here,” he said.
I opened my mouth, then promptly closed it. There was no excuse for how she’d treated him.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered. “Please. Stay.”
Jesse’s eyes started to water. “Kat, I can’t do this.”
It felt like a hole had been punched through my lungs. “Are you breaking up with me?”
“No—I don’t know, Kat, I just can’t be here right now.” He wiped a hand down his face.
“Because of my grandma? I know she’s awful. They all are. It’s why I tried to keep them from you.” I grabbed his hands, squeezed. “You know I’m nothing like them, right?”
Jesse’s hands trembled in mine. I squeezed harder. “Jesse. Do you seriously think this changes things between us?”
“I don’t know. I need time to figure it out, okay?”
“What do you mean?”
Jesse pulled his hands out of my grasp and he looked around the room as if seeing it for the first time. The crystal chandeliers, marble floors, gloved servers.
“I just can’t be here right now,” he said. “We’ll talk some other time, okay?”
And then, he was gone.
* * *
—
I needed a drink. I needed something stronger than a drink, and luckily, I knew exactly who I could get it from.
Amos was slumped back in a chair at our family’s table
, balancing a butter knife on his knuckles. It was probably taking up his entire reserve of self-control not to take out the cigarette lighter in his pocket and fiddle with it. I slipped into the empty chair next to him.
“What’s up your ass?” he said.
I stared at my grandmother, who was leaning in to talk to an old friend, her hand touching the woman’s wrist. For some reason, I thought about a trip to the Sunfish Creek cabin when we were young. Amos had found me sulking by the dock because Marian had reamed me out so badly over refusing to eat my brussels sprouts that I’d left the dinner table in tears.
Amos got that cat-who-swallowed-a-parakeet look on his face when I announced Grandma is so mean. When everyone was sleeping, he lured me out of my room with a package of bologna. I followed him as he strategically hid slices around the cabin, knowing by the time Marian went back to the lake house in the fall the stench would be unbearable.
Now, Amos studied me studying Marian, as if we were a puzzling math equation. After a beat, he gave up, scooped a flute of champagne off the table and knocked it back. “I fucking hate this family.”
“Me too,” I said.
Amos just looked at me and snorted. “Yeah. Okay, BC.”
Of course, he’d found out Marian was paying my tuition. She’d refused to fund Amos’s education, since the best school he got into was the University of Vermont. There are no secrets in our family.
“Hey,” I said suddenly. “Want to leave?”
“You’re joking.” Amos glanced at my father. “Are you sure—”
I knew my father would go ballistic if we just left, if he and Erin had two empty chairs to explain to the other guests. But suddenly, I didn’t care.
“Not joking,” I said. “Let’s go.”
* * *
—
We both shut off our phones; Amos let me drive his BMW. We wound up on the parkway to Jones Beach, nearly an hour west of Brookport, toward New York City. He smoked a joint, one arm out the window of the passenger side, while I kept my eyes split between the road ahead and the speedometer. Sixty, seventy, eighty miles an hour.
When we parked at the beach, Amos said, “What do you think they’re doing right now?”
I stared straight ahead out the windshield. “Cutting the cake and pretending absolutely nothing is wrong.”
After a beat, Amos said, “You know Marian cut me off completely, right?”
I knew he’d gotten into some sort of trouble at school, that he was “taking a semester off” to straighten his behavior out. But cutting him off? “Are you serious?”
“No trust fund, no inheritance, zip.” Amos snapped his fingers.
“You’re lucky,” I say.
Amos let his hand fall to his lap. He craned his neck to face me and smirked. “Oh yeah? How’s that?”
“Because at least she doesn’t own you.”
* * *
—
I had no choice but to go home. Where else would I go? I could show up at Claire’s and get her parents involved, but no doubt that would turn ugly fast. My father has never liked Claire’s mother; there is only room in his life for one strong woman, and that is his own mother. If Christine Keough tried to help me, citing child protection laws and her psychobabble bullshit, it would be war.
It doesn’t matter what happened when I did go home. There was shouting, of course, accusations lobbed at me.
Humiliated our entire family—
—spoiled brats!
We almost called the police—
But this time I was too calm, which only pissed him off more—when I tried to sidestep him to head into my room, he grabbed my shoulder. “Katherine, don’t you dare—”
“Get the fuck off me!” I screamed.
That made him snap. I knew it would and I didn’t care. I let my body go limp as he threw me onto my bed. In the hall, my mother was screaming: Johnathan, what are you doing—
The world went black when my head smacked against the wall. For a moment I thought I might not come back, that I was dying—
When I woke to him shaking me, fear replacing the rage on his face, my mother in the doorway whimpering, Oh God, Oh God, I stared into his eyes.
I wish you’d killed me, I tried to say with my eyes. Then maybe someone would finally stop you.
* * *
—
In the morning, my father left for work like everything was normal. Three days he’d be gone—Newark to Ireland to the UK and back. It was a pattern I knew well. He’d lose control, run off to work, and come back all smiles and hugs, like he was Atticus Finch.
And yet, something felt different this time. My mother was barely eating and couldn’t look at me without her eyes filling with tears.
My father had locked up my car keys as punishment for the party incident; Monday morning, my mother offered to drive me to school.
“I’ll walk,” I said coolly, before closing my bedroom door in her face.
I thought about texting Claire for a ride but I didn’t want to explain why I was going to her and not Jesse. I wondered if he’d told her what happened at the party, although deep down I knew he wouldn’t. I still didn’t understand what had happened, how he could blame me for my grandmother’s rudeness. How after all this time he still didn’t understand I viewed my last name as a curse and not a privilege.
After the last bell, I was debating blowing off honor society and lacrosse practice when Jesse found me by my locker. Shadows under his eyes and on his jaw.
Good, I thought. You walked out on me and you deserve to be as miserable as I am.
“Hey.” His voice was hoarse, his eyes not meeting mine. “Can we talk?”
I followed him to Bruce. Even in his car, with less than a foot of space between us, he couldn’t look at me.
“Just finish dumping me properly so I can get to my honor society meeting on time,” I said.
When I looked over at Jesse, his eyes were wet. “You think that’s what I want? To dump you?”
“I don’t know what you want, Jesse. For my family to be different? I’ve never once for one second thought you weren’t good enough for me.”
After a long moment, he said, “What if I’m just not right for you?”
Tears sprang to my eyes. “If you love me, then you’re right for me.”
Jesse leaned forward, balancing his elbows on the steering wheel. “I love you more than anything, Kat.”
And that’s when the dam burst.
I told Jesse what happened after Amos and I skipped the party. I told him about the trashed bedrooms when I was a kid, how I learned how to barricade myself in a closet at age seven. I told him how I really got the scar beneath my eyebrow and why my mother moved us home from Italy. How the second my head cracked against my bedroom wall Saturday night, I thought, I’m about to die and I don’t even care.
He held me while I sobbed into his shoulder, soaking his favorite Led Zeppelin T-shirt with snot and tears.
“How can I help?” he pleaded. “Just tell me what to do. I’ll call CPS, I’ll—”
“You can’t,” I said, my heart sinking with the realization. I had no physical proof of what my father had done to me the other night; my mother would lie her ass off for him, and Emma would be too terrified to take my side. My father controlled everything.
The only person who could possibly control him, the only person who could help me was the last person I wanted to ask for help from.
* * *
—
My grandmother did not look surprised to see me when she answered the door that afternoon.
The placid expression on her face put a ball of rage in my throat; my face was raw and tearstained. I hadn’t slept in days. And still, instead of asking if I was all right, she said, “I’m glad you finally decided to apologize for your behavior this week
end.”
I followed her into the sitting room. She sat on the love seat while I took the armchair across the coffee table, and we just kind of stared at each other for a long beat until she said, “Do you know we were all worried sick about you and Amos?”
“Not worried enough to leave the party and look for us.”
Marian pursed her lips; they were bare and pale and it occurred to me this was the first time in my entire life I’d seen my grandmother without makeup on. “How long have you been seeing that boy from the party?”
“His name is Jesse. Maybe you’d remember his name if you’d pretended not to be a miserable racist for five minutes and actually spoken to him.”
I was trembling; I’d never disrespected my grandmother before.
“This nastiness,” she said softly. “I don’t know where it comes from.”
“Maybe you should ask your son the next time he’s slamming my head into a wall.”
Marian blinked at me. “That’s an incredibly serious accusation to make.”
“Accusation? It happened, Grandma.”
Marian raised her voice. “I know you, and I know your father, and I know whatever happened was the unfortunate result of two out-of-control tempers.”
A laugh bubbled up in my chest. It was my fault, then. Sure, I’d made him angry. But somehow, I doubted this was even about me. Maybe Marian needed to believe it in order to live with herself, because what kind of woman raises a man who hurts women?
“I guess we have nothing more to talk about,” I said.
As I stood from the couch, she said, “Katherine.”
I stared back at her, tears hot in my eyes. “What?”
“You’re going to one of the best colleges in the country. You don’t need the distraction of a long-distance relationship.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t really need to be worried about coming home to an abusive father either.”