Friends and Strangers - J. Courtney Sullivan Page 0,19
your own industry. But you won’t have a job that gives you health insurance, or a pension, or any kind of protection.”
Tonight, when Elisabeth asked him which candidate she should vote for in the upcoming state senate election, George just sighed.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “They’re all crooked. They’re not coming to save us, Lizzy. We’ll have to save ourselves.”
* * *
—
When they got home, Andrew said, “My dad seemed even more off the rails than usual with the Hollow Tree stuff tonight.”
“He’s working out his frustrations,” she said. “Just go with it.”
Elisabeth had had another beer with dinner, and eaten only a few bites, sneaking the rest to the dog when Faye wasn’t looking. The alcohol mixed with her usual exhaustion made her eyelids feel heavy.
“My parents are getting old,” Andrew said. “It makes me sad. See, this is why Gil needs a brother.”
“You romanticize siblings,” she said. “Look at Charlotte and me. We have nothing in common. The only thing we ever talk about is what a disaster our parents are.”
“Exactly. That right there. Having a person in the world who knows what it’s like to have your parents. Someone to commiserate with. That’s what I’m talking about.”
“You want Gil to have someone to commiserate with about us.”
“Absolutely,” he said.
“You know, even if we wanted one, I don’t think we could afford to have another kid,” she said. “They’re expensive. Nomi was telling me that she’s looking at pre-K programs that cost thirty thousand a year.”
Andrew didn’t respond. She wondered if he’d taken that last comment as a slight about how little he was earning. She hadn’t meant for him to feel that way. Or maybe she had. Maybe she was being defensive because Charlotte was on her mind and she never thought about Charlotte without thinking about money.
When Elisabeth was twenty-three and Charlotte was twenty, they made a pact: they would never again take one dollar from their father.
This had required sacrifice, especially early on. Elisabeth started waiting tables to supplement her magazine salary, which she had previously spent on clothes and purses. But it was worth it. She was free of him.
From the time she and Charlotte were kids, their father had bribed them into keeping his secrets and accepting his horrid behavior. Elisabeth still remembered the pattern on the sofas in the breezy hotel lobby where he left them with a box of crayons while he went upstairs with some woman, and returned an hour later with a fifty-dollar bill for each of them.
When he lost his temper and punched another father who dared steal his parking spot at Charlotte’s fourth-grade ballet recital, he made up for it by buying Charlotte a purebred Havanese puppy. When he showed up reeking of gin, with a woman he introduced as “a colleague,” to pick Elisabeth up from a friend’s birthday party, he took Elisabeth to Arden Fair the next day for a shopping spree.
He used money as both carrot and stick, threatening to withhold it when he didn’t agree with a choice one of them had made. He said he would pay for Elisabeth’s education only if she attended a school ranked in the top ten in the country, since otherwise there was no point. He refused to let Charlotte study dance.
“Dance isn’t something you study,” he said. “It’s just something you do.”
This led to Charlotte majoring in marketing and ultimately dropping out to go live in Mexico City with a boyfriend she met on spring break.
Their mother would say, He only wants the best for you, and it was true, but the best was however he defined it.
Their father was at once a charming man and a vicious narcissist with a gift for making his victims forget the pain he’d caused. It worked on their mother. There was nothing a diamond bracelet or a last-minute getaway couldn’t smooth over with her.
But fourteen years ago, he did something to Elisabeth that she could not forgive.
Charlotte was living in New York then too. She was at Elisabeth’s apartment the day he showed up at the door to make amends. It was meant to be a grand gesture. He’d had to fly across the country.
Elisabeth was in tears when he walked in. When she saw him, every nerve in her body flared.
“Sweetheart,” he said. “Cheer up. I know it seems like the sky is falling, but trust me, you’ll forget all about this in a week. Know how I know?”