At my side, Avery glances at me cautiously. “This painting?”
“I didn’t want to wait until morning. I didn’t want to take the chance that he might change his mind in the meantime. So I went home. Dad was already stinking drunk when I got here. He started in on me about where I’d gone and a dozen other complaints he felt he had to air. I told him I didn’t have time for his bullshit and I ran upstairs to get my work.”
Avery leans against the table so that she’s facing me, her expression tender but etched with dread.
“He followed me upstairs, carrying a glass of bourbon. The way he was talking and swaying on his feet I figured he’d already had several before I got home. I made the mistake of telling him what I was doing, the interest someone had in my art. I thought it might get him off my back but it only made him nastier.”
“Nastier, how?” She asks when it takes me a moment to decide how to continue. How much I should say. “Nick . . . what did he say to you?”
I choke out a brittle laugh. “He went back to one of his favorite cuts—that the last thing he wanted was to raise a son who was a pussy. That I needed to forget about painting and toughen up or life was going to chew me up and spit me out. He said he didn’t want to have some artsy fag for a son, that for my own good I needed to get my hands dirty like a real man. Like him and his father.”
Avery winces. “Jesus.”
“He was drunk,” I say, unsure why I feel the need to defend him. “I’d never seen him so wasted
. So fucking belligerent. But I was drunk too. I lost it. Before I knew it, I was saying things I’d never said to him before. ‘You want me to be a real man, huh? A real man like you, a disgusting drunk and a pitiful excuse for a father? Or maybe you think I ought to be a real man like your father, is that it? A sick monster who gets off on fucking little boys.’”
Avery’s eyes close briefly, but not before a tear leaks down her face. “Oh, Nick.”
She reaches for me, and it takes all of my willpower to stand still and accept her comfort. I’m vibrating with anger at these memories. But I can’t stop them from flooding in now.
“I’ll never forget his expression. His entire face just . . . sagged. As if it were melting because of what I’d said. Then his fury erupted. He called me a liar. He said I was making it up, just trying to hurt him.” I laugh absurdly at the idea. “Jesus Christ, as if what happened to me would hurt him at all. He exploded. Just fucking lost his mind with rage. He threw the glass of bourbon at me, but I ducked out of the way. Instead of hitting me, it smashed against my painting.”
My right hand moves to the small tear that’s been patched from underneath but is still present in the canvas. The faint stain of thrown whiskey still darkens some of the purity of the bird’s feathers.
“He ruined it,” I state flatly. “I couldn’t take it to the man who might have bought it after that. My father destroyed my work. He destroyed my first potential chance to get out of this godforsaken swamp. With or without the painting, I decided I was going to leave that night. Why the fuck didn’t he just let me go?”
“What did he do?”
“He followed after me when I headed back downstairs to the living room. He kept calling me a liar, telling me what I said about my grandfather wasn’t true. But it was true. All of it. How could he not see the evil in his father? He spent practically every day of his life on a boat with the asshole. He had to know something of what his father was really like, didn’t he?”
She slowly shakes her head, seemingly at a loss for words. There are no words that can change what happened. Nothing can be said that will erase the damage.
“I wanted to hurt the old man the way his denial was hurting me. So I told him everything. I gave him details—ugly ones. Graphic ones. I didn’t spare him a thing. Not even when he started hitting me, telling me to shut the fuck up. I just kept talking. I told him how it started—Grandpa inviting me to his house after Mom died, telling me I could cry in front of him if I felt like it, that he wouldn’t make fun of me the way Dad did. He started touching me soon after that. He said it was okay because we were family. Then the other stuff began. I described it all to my father, delighting in his repulsion, in the anger he couldn’t control. At some point, I remember thinking that I just wished he’d finally kill me. If he wanted to shut me up, deny everything I had experienced, why didn’t he just fucking end me right there? The next thing I knew, I was crashing through that window. “
“Oh, my God,” Avery murmurs, her voice catching. “Nick, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry for what you went through. I’m sorry that your father refused to believe you—that he could hurt you like that.”
I scoff. “The fact that he called me a liar was worse than the rest of it. Worse than the injury to my hand and arm. Worse than the loss of my art.”
She nods, and I know she understands. Avery, of all people, understands what I’m feeling and how hard it’s been to keep all of this inside for so long.
Her touch is a warm comfort, her gaze fierce and loving. “You haven’t lost all of your art, Nick. He kept this for you.” She grows quiet, considering in silence for moment. “Nick, maybe he was sorry for what he did to you that night.”
Could that be true? It’s almost impossible for me to fathom. The old man never said he was sorry. Not for that night. Not for a goddamn thing.
I glance at my depiction of Icarus lying on the table. “I never thought I’d see this again. It was gone when I got home from the hospital after my injury. I just assumed he’d thrown it away.”
“It looks like he tried to restore it.”
I nod, feeling oddly numb as I run my finger over the crude repairs. Why would he bother? Why would he keep it on his wall when he couldn’t stand the idea of me painting when I actually lived here?
I may never have those answers. I doubt I’ll ever be able to comprehend my father’s animosity toward me or his vehement denials of everything I told him.
But Avery was right that I needed to see this house again. I needed to walk through this place and realize there’s nothing left here that can hurt me.
Not my father’s confounding hatred of me.
Not even the hideous memories of what my grandfather did to me.