Robin York - Deeper

Eventually she turns and ascends the carpeted staircase. She leaves the door open. I stand on the threshold in the gray light of morning. An unwanted gift on the doorstep.

I can hear the radio on in the kitchen. From upstairs, a murmur of voices, a verbal dance between Nate and his mother too muffled to make out the specifics of.

A complaint. A sharp reply. Then the conversation gets louder—a door has opened.

“Why are you taking her side?”

“I’m not. But if I find out you did this, don’t expect me to support you just because you’re my son. It’s despicable, what happened to her.”

“What she did is despicable.”

“What she did, she did with you. Now, get dressed and get down there.”

Footfalls. Water running in the upstairs bathroom.

Nate comes down barefoot in a red T-shirt and jeans, smelling like toothpaste.

He rubs his hand over the back of his neck. “I’m not supposed to talk to you.”

“Who says, the dean of students? Please.”

“I could get expelled.”

“Maybe you should have thought of that before you tried to ruin my life.”

His eyes narrow. “Melodramatic much?”

“You think I’m exaggerating ?”

“Nobody tried to ruin your life, Caroline. Your life is fine. It’ll always be fine .”

“What’s that even supposed to mean?”

His lips tighten. He doesn’t answer.

“You have no idea.”

It’s just dawned on me that he doesn’t. I mean, he really doesn’t .

When he said we’d always be friends, in some twisted way, he meant it.

“You think it’s … like a prank. Like the time you and the guys soaped all the windows at the high school or rolled the football coach’s car to the park and left it on top of the teeter-totter. What did you do, stay up late with a six-pack of beer, jerking off to porn, and then think, I should put Caroline up here ?”

“Someone stole my phone,” he mumbles.

“Oh, bullshit. That is such a giant, steaming pile of shit, I’m not even going to—God. You did, didn’t you? You thought you could do this and it would just be funny or awesome or what I deserved . You didn’t think it was going to mess up my chance of getting into law school. Ruin my relationship with my only living parent . You didn’t know it would make it so I couldn’t sleep for months, couldn’t look at a guy without flinching, couldn’t pull on a shirt in the morning without thinking, Does this make me look like a slut? I thought about changing my name, Nate. I get phone calls from strangers telling me they want to stick a razor blade in my cunt. That’s what you unleashed. That, and a million other awful things. I want to know why.”

“I didn’t do it.”

His voice is small, compressed. This is a lie, a bald and ridiculous lie that he’s abandoned here in the space between us. Too pathetic even to back up with volume, body language, anything.

“You did it.”

He shrugs.

“You’re pathetic,” I say. Because he is. He’s so pathetic. Hiding behind his hate, looking down on me, looking down on West. “I feel sorry for you.”

“Yeah, well, you’re a bitch.”

“Why? Why am I a bitch? Is it because I broke up with you? Because I’m standing here? Because I wouldn’t let you put your penis in my butthole? I was good to you, Nate! I loved you! For three fucking years, I did every nice thing I could think of for you, and then you paid me back with this. I want to hear, from you, what you think I did to deserve it.”

“I’m not telling you shit.”

His expression is so mulish—I wish his mom could see him right now. I honestly do. He looks like a four-year-old.

He’s a boy, too stubborn to tell me the truth, too childish to comprehend the consequences of his actions.

He hates me because he can.

Because he’s been allowed to.

Because he’s male, he’s well off, he’s privileged, and the world lets him get away with it.

Not anymore. The life those pictures ruin? It’s not going to be mine.

“Enjoy your break,” I tell him. “Enjoy the rest of your semester. It’ll be your last one.”

And I can see it in his eyes—the fear.

For the first time. Nate is afraid of me.

I like it.

When I get into my car, the slamming door seals me into silence.

I’m in the metal box now, but it’s fine. I can come and go as I please. I can find a way to get comfortable with all the impossibilities in my life.

I don’t know what I’m going to do about Nate, whether the administration will back me up in a fight against him, if there’s any way I can go after him legally—a criminal trial, a civil trial. I’ve poked around a little bit online, but until this month I didn’t want to think about fighting, so I haven’t really considered what this fight is going to look like. How long it might take. What I even want from Nate, now that I’m allowing myself to want things again.

Today’s not the day I’m going to worry about it. Today there are other impossibilities to think about.

West is leaving, and I love him.

I can’t change that. I can only find a way to cope.

I have work here. I have things I need to do, power to exercise, wrongs to right.

I back out of the driveway, headed to my father’s house.

There’s a favor I need to ask, and he’s the only one who can grant it.

“I need you to get my boyfriend out of jail.”

It’s a sentence I never expected to have to say to anyone, much less to my dad, but it comes right out, fluid and easy.

All the fluster, the confusion, is on his side.

“You need me to—your what? Out of jail ?”

Maybe I should have worked my way up to it.

I wish I could have picked another time, some morning when I walked into the kitchen and he actually looked happy to see me. As opposed to this morning, when I found him reading the paper with his coffee, the circles under his eyes too dark, his mouth too sad when he caught sight of me at the French doors.

There’s no other time, though. Only this time, this pain twisting in my guts as I think about how my future with my dad could be like this forever—this disappointment perpetual, our old relationship impossible to recover.

“His name is West Leavitt, and he’s being held in Putnam by the police. At least, I think he is. It would be good if you could find that out for me, actually. He was planning to confess to misdemeanor possession of marijuana.”

“You have a boyfriend. Who smokes marijuana.”

“Sort of. I mean, yes, he’s my boyfriend. And he occasionally smokes it. But mostly he just …” Sells it.

Gah. I need to pay more attention to what I’m saying, because my dad is sharp. He’s been talking to accused people for a long time. I guess he’s pretty good at hearing what they don’t say.

When it dawns on him, I can see it in his eyes. The lines deepen in his face, and his jowls look saggier.

I always used to think he was the handsomest dad. I’ve never seen him as old before, or weak, and it hurts so much to be what’s weakening him.

“This is that kid,” he says. “That kid from across the hall. Last year.”

“Yeah.”

“You promised me you’d stay away from him.”

“I did stay away. For a long time.”

Then there’s silence and snow tapping at the windows, because the weather has turned foul.

He takes a sip of his coffee.

I grip the back of a kitchen chair and wonder about my mother. If she would have taken my side, if she hadn’t died.

I think of my sister Alison in the Peace Corps. She’s got email where she is, and the Internet. I wonder if she knows yet.