I was three or four when I’d first sheltered down here with my parents. There were shelves bolted to the walls, emergency supplies. While the sky turned a dusky succulent green, my father had collected our musty sleeping bags from a hall closet and dragged the living room sofa cushions down the stairs. He arranged the cushions into a fort in the corner of the room, then slung the sleeping bags across to make a sloping ceiling. My mother brought down Tupperware dishes with sliced apples and strawberries and even a little cooler with chocolate ice cream. A low voice rumbled from the battery-operated NOAA weather radio, and this only added to the mystery, the magic. Back then, my parents were extensions of my own body, holding me before I even finished reaching for them. And that was how it felt, the three of us connected in our cellar fort as the invisible train tore up the world.
I toed aside several boxes, sweeping an old moving blanket off a chair. My mother’s rocker, where she’d read to me until our two shapes had outgrown its contours, and then I’d outgrown her. I ran my hand across the carved back, the deep crack extending from one of the arm screws. Gingerly, I sat down, the cane seat creaking. I closed my eyes and rocked, remembering her arms around me, her fingers turning pages. Her nails short and coarsely trimmed, bitten, maybe. Her smooth skin and bony knuckles and blue-green veins. The animation in her voice, her cinnamon-and-cigarette breath on my cheek. Before I knew it, I was crying. Harsh, loud, ugly tears. Lore, saying she was proud of me. It had been so many years since I’d heard those words. Not since the day I’d gotten the thick envelope from UT. My mother had clutched me to her, hard and fast, knowing how quickly I’d push her away. Her lips to my ear. I am so damn proud of you.
Had she really taken a blow that was meant for me that day? Had she told my father that if he hurt me, she’d kill him? That didn’t sound like the version of her I remembered, the story of her I’d told myself all these years. If she was willing to stand up to him for me, why not for herself?
“Cassie?” Duke’s voice, at the stairs. A ribbon of light from the doorway.
I listened to his heavy approaching footsteps, stared at my own hands. My smooth skin and bony knuckles and blue-green veins. I tried to hold on to the image of my mother, the clarity of her voice, as if I’d stumbled onto the right radio frequency. But she was disappearing.
Duke stopped a few feet in front of me. I looked up, willing him to come closer. To say he understood. I wanted us to take Andrew and go home. I was ready for all of that. Finally.
He didn’t move. “So.”
I gave a thick laugh. “So.”
He sighed, a hand through his hair. “Jesus, Cass. I can’t believe you went through all that. Why didn’t you tell someone?”
“My mom told me not to.”
Duke frowned. “Yeah, but—a friend, a counselor, a teacher.”
“She was a teacher.”
“Okay, then someone else. Anyone.” He shoved his hands in his pockets, as if he didn’t know what else to do with them.
“I just couldn’t.” I tipped the chair back into a quick, anxious rhythm. “I couldn’t betray her like that.”
“Betray?” He shook his head, aghast. “Cass, you would have been helping her!”
“Yeah, well, you asked, and I’m telling you,” I snapped. “Besides, you’ve met him—does he seem like a wife beater? I was afraid no one would believe me. Or that they would and then I’d be taken from my parents, or my dad would get arrested, or maybe nothing would change except both of them hating me.”
Duke’s face bloomed with pity. I looked away, wishing I hadn’t seen it.
“But Andrew,” he said finally.
I waited.
“You could have told someone any time, from miles away—”
I dug my nails into the wooden armrests. “Yes, Duke, I’m aware. You think I haven’t been living with this guilt every day for twelve years?”
“But you didn’t have to!” He took a step closer, almost pleading. “Why didn’t you do something?”
I scrambled to my feet. It felt wrong, somehow, to have this conversation in my mother’s rocker. I didn’t want to taint my memories of it, not when so many other memories of her were already tainted.
“Why, Cass?” Duke asked again, softly.
My breath was coming fast, almost hyperventilating. “Because I could only save one of us, and I chose myself!”
Duke’s solid frame seemed to cave slightly inward, as if I’d knocked the air out of him. “You could have told me,” he said quietly. “We’re supposed to trust each other. I thought we did.”
A fist felt lodged in my throat. “You could have asked. You’ve had five years of me barely talking to my father, barely coming home, even for Andrew. It doesn’t take a trauma expert to think, hey, maybe something bad happened there! Maybe she’s staying away for a reason!”
“Yeah, but that was your business!” Duke slammed his fist on the work bench against the wall. A roll of paper towels fell over, and he righted it. “I’m sorry, but I’m not going to let you make me the bad guy because I don’t pry into every single part of your past the way you do.”
I took a step back, stung.
“And that’s fine,” he added, seeing the hurt on my face. “I’ve been happy to be an open book.”
“Well, it’s easy to be when the book is all good,” I said.
“I guess that’s my fault, too? I had a happy childhood, so I couldn’t possibly understand?”
“Well, you’re not being very understanding now, are you?” I crossed my arms hard against my chest. “You just found out my dad hit my mom for a decade—in front of me—and instead of blaming him or trying to understand what that was like, here you are asking me why, why, why, like I’m the monster.” I laughed roughly. “Believe me, I’ve felt like a monster. I just hoped you wouldn’t see me that way.”
There was a beat where he could have denied it. It passed. And then it was too late.
At 2 A.M., I knocked softly on Andrew’s door before stepping inside. He was in bed facing the wall, stiff and silent, spine curled like a snail. No one is so hard in sleep.
“Hey.” I put a gentle hand on his shoulder. He jerked away. “I’m sorry, Andrew. That’s not how I ever wanted you to find out.”
He didn’t move.
I sighed. “Okay. Well. We’ll leave first thing in the morning. Are you packed?”
Andrew whirled around, glaring. “Are you kidding me? I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“What? Of course you are.”
“No.” He sat up against the wall, beneath the poster of the Hulk. His small face was tight with rage, shadows beneath his eyes. “I’m not.”
“Andrew, you were—you are—a kid. I was trying to protect you.”
“Protect me?” His voice cracked. “How do you figure?”
“I thought things were good here.” I heard the pleading in my own voice, and wasn’t sure who I was trying to convince. “I didn’t want you to think of them that way, Mom and Dad. Especially if Dad was doing right by you.”
Andrew shook his head, resolute. His silky blond hair was rumpled. I wanted to press my nose to the crown of his head, the way I used to when he was a baby and smelled like nothing else on earth.
“I fucked up,” I said. “So bad. But I promise I’ll make it up to you.”
Andrew set his mouth. “You can’t make me go.”
I dug my nails into my palms. He was right. I couldn’t. Not unless I thought he was in imminent danger. Not unless I got lawyers and child protective services involved, which I couldn’t afford, and the last thing I wanted was Andrew in the foster system in the meantime. He’d hate me if I put him through that.
“Andrew, please.” I reached for him. His glare stopped me. “You think you know how bad it can get. But it can be so much worse. Trust me.”
“Trust you?” Tears glinted in his eyes. “How can I trust you when you’ve been lying to me my whole life?”
Lore, 1986