Uncovering You 9: Liberation (8 page)

“You can say that again,” I mutter, picking at my food.

“Lilly,” Jeremy’s voice makes me look up. “You still look beautiful. I’m sorry for hitting you. I do not think there will be a bruise.”

I bring my hand up to probe my cheek. The swelling’s all but gone. It doesn’t feel warm to the touch anymore.

“What can I do to make you forgive me?” he asks.

“Nothing,” I sigh. “You can do nothing, Jeremy. It is who you are.”

“I dislike seeing you so melancholy.”

“Well, you foster that feeling. Do you not?” I ask.

Now it’s his turn to sigh. “I cannot help it. If you knew how I was raised…”

“Please,” I cut him off. “Don’t blame your upbringing for what you do. It’s unbecoming. And it’s unlike you to so easily accept destiny.”

He shakes his head a little. “You mistake me. It is not about blame. It’s about understanding. You are the only person I can admit this to. I told you the story of how I found my mother when I was a boy. Domestic violence disturbs me more than you know. Much, much more than I let show. It probably sounds so perversely hypocritical, considering all that I’ve done to you. But it’s very true.”

“A nice sentiment to have,” I say, “particularly if it helps you keep a clear conscience.”

He scowls. “My conscience is far, far from clean, Lilly. You should know. I am not blind to who I am or what I do. What I’ve done. I’m not talking about just to you, either, but about the things I’ve accumulated all my life. The road to the top is not easy, Lilly, and it is not paved in gold. It is littered with the bones of all those who’ve tried to get there and failed. Sometimes, you find decaying bodies along the way, still half-alive, begging for water or food or merely an end. They call at you, they pull at you, they try to bring you deep underground so they can triumph in at least one thing: in your destruction.”

“What stark and pleasant imagery,” I mutter.

“And then you find those who are fully alive, who cannot climb any further, but stand in the way of you and your goals. There is no going around them. The only way to the top is through their still-beating hearts. Those,” he says, “you have no choice but to crush.”

“Jeremy?” I ask. “What’s gotten into you?” I don’t much like him speaking on such metaphysical terms, especially as a man so unyieldingly practical.

“Oh?” he looks up from his momentary reverie. “It’s nothing. I’ve been reading too much. Ann Rice.”

“Huh?” I say, confused. “Since when do you read fiction?”

“Rarely,” he tells me. “My mother used to love those books, however. Visiting our old home in the mountains made me want to do something that reminds me of her.”

“How do you do that?” I wonder. “How is it you can be so cold and distanced in one breath, and in the next, make yourself so very human?”

“An unwavering part of my condition.” He smiles again. “I love how you find it so reassuring.”

“I’m just trying to understand you. That’s all.”

Jeremy barks a laugh. “Hah! Psychologists would have a field day with me. Good luck. I don’t believe it too pompous to say that you need more than is available in this world.”

“I thought you don’t believe in luck,” I remind him.

Now his grin absolutely flashes. “I don’t. That was my way of saying that your undertaking has the makings of an impossibility.”

“No, I don’t think so,” I say. “I already know more about you than you think.”

“Oh?” he sounds curious. “Enlighten me.”

“You have a superiority complex,” I say. “But it’s of a special sort because it’s actually fully justified. You are not one of those delusional fools who proclaim themselves to be the best and firmly believe it. You have objective, outside proof.”

He shrugs. “Any of my business partners could have told me that.”

“Yes, but they wouldn’t know where it comes from, Jeremy. They wouldn’t know the root cause.”

He leans toward me. “And you do?”

“I’m working on it,” I say. “I think it comes from a place of longing. I told you before that you need to be witnessed. That everything you do has to be larger than life so that you can be a spectacle.

“I take that back now. You don’t need to be witnessed. You need to be accepted. It started from your childhood. Your father disdained you. Your brothers didn’t do much better. Only your mother gave you love. But the love of a single parent cannot be enough, especially if countered by apathy and hate from the other.

“And so you put it in your mind that you had to prove yourself. Not just before your brothers and father, but before the whole world.

“In that, you succeeded. To use your term: spectacularly so. Yet even that wasn’t enough, was it? You still felt empty and hollow inside.”

Jeremy is starting to scowl. This is an uncomfortable topic for him. Am I cutting too close to the bone? Maybe.

I carry on in a rush:

“You said that’s what causes you to chase more wealth, when already you clearly have enough. You said it was money that drives you. That you can never have enough. That you always need to claim
more
in order to feel like you are moving forward. In order to feel that you are progressing with your life.

“But I don’t think that’s entirely true. In fact, I know it’s not. Somewhere, locked in some place deep inside, I think you know that, too.”

“Enough, Lilly,” he says. “I don’t want you perpetuating these things. They are not true. But you will make them seem such in your mind if you deliberate on them for longer.”

“And they frighten you!” I cut in over him. I know I’m pushing my luck now. But I cannot stop. This is going to end in either a glorious disaster or a wondrous success. “They frighten you because you cannot control them, Jeremy. You can’t cast them out of your mind like you do with all else. They defy control. And things that you cannot control, in your own head, in the most private of oases
,
make you feel scared.”

Jeremy slams his hand on the table, making the dishware jump. “I said,
enough
!” he snarls at me.

“I have a point,” I say, refusing to back down now that I’ve come so far. “Will you let me make it?”

He hesitates. I’ve got him hooked. I’ve made him curious.

Finally, he gives a stiff nod.

“But,” he cuts me off before I start to speak, and raises one finger. “But, Lilly, know that you are entering dangerous waters. I’m warning you.”

“I know,” I say. “Just listen. My point is this: Those feelings of inadequacy, of self-doubt? No matter how small you’ve made them, no matter how much you’ve luxuriated in external success, they will never go away. You cannot crush them. You cannot cast them aside. Those feelings were developed in your formative years—when you were just a child. They cut to the very soul of you and define everything that you do. And I hate to say this, Jeremy, but they will stay there forever. You cannot change the impression of the world, nor your place in it, that formed when you were a child. It takes until the age of seven for children to develop their own, completely independent self-consciousness. Before then, all that they know is defined by their mother and father—or whoever it is that raises them.”

“And you’re stating that as truth?” Jeremy wonders. “You think such a simple explanation can define everything that I have inside of me?” He leans closer. “You haven’t been inside my head, Lilly. “ He taps the stretch of skin by his temple. “You don’t know what really goes on up here.”

“No, but I’ve gotten closer than most,” I say. “And yes, I do think an explanation like that can encompass who you are. Occam’s Razor, Jeremy. The simplest explanations are often the ones with the most truth.”

“So that’s your impression of me, then, is it?” He asks. “That I’m a slave to my childhood?”

I’ve upset him. I can tell. But it’s too late to change course. And this is not the type of anger that might lead to physical violence.

I hope.

“It’s human psychology, Jeremy,” I say, softening my voice. “Even you are not immune to it.”

He sneers. “So that’s what they taught you at Yale? How to psychoanalyze someone with such pinpoint conviction?”

“Hey, you’re not innocent of that yourself!” I counter. “What about all that you’ve told me about the scars from my past? About certain things triggering relapses? If that’s not psychoanalysis, I don’t know what is.”

“That,” Jeremy says with surprising dignity, “was different.”

“Oh? How so?”

“It came not from a textbook, Lilly, but from life experience.”

“And that somehow tells you more about the world? How? Because you’re the one with the final verdict?”

“Partially,” he says. “But also because I can’t stand the thought of something so grand, so wondrous as human life being distilled into little piecemeal definitions of the origins of underlying behavior.”

“That’s a crude way of looking at things.”

“It is not.”

“It is! And utterly dismissive of the work that others have done before you. You can’t know everything, Jeremy.”

“What about you?” he asks softly. He picks up his wine glass.

“What about me, what?” I ask.

“Where do you place yourself in this tight and pretty little definition of yours? To me, you are still—and will continue to forever be–” He pauses, and then gives a loving smile. “A complete mystery.”

Chapter Ten

We drop the topic after Jeremy’s final declaration and finish the rest of dinner in contemplative silence.

I am caught thinking about all the things Jeremy promised to do and never did. Threats and other allusions to such, mainly.

After dinner, we go upstairs, together. He acts like he never hit me. I find that disturbing.

“Lilly?” he says, just before turning off the light. “I did renew your employment, just so you know. If you cover up properly, you can come to work tomorrow.”

***

I slip out of bed an hour after Jeremy falls asleep and wander downstairs.

He did not touch me once. Maybe he sensed I was not in the mood. Maybe—more likely—he did not want to attempt physical intimacy so soon after striking me. It would feel like too much of a return to old times.

I walk through the empty house. I never liked the stark sterility of the place. It’s pretty, to be sure, with all the furniture expertly arranged, the rooms in possession of more of those black and white abstract paintings that cover the four walls of the sunroom. But there’s no life anywhere. It’s like a storefront display. Tended with care, but without affection.

It fits Jeremy Stonehart: who he was, who he is. But now that this is my home, too, it doesn’t fit
me
.

Mindless chatter. Frivolous thoughts. I’m distracting myself from the more important things I need to think about.

Such as Jeremy’s continued capacity to treat me like little more than a science experiment. A strange specimen to be poked and prodded from afar just to gauge her reaction.

It’s almost like, at those times, he doesn’t even consider me human. Perhaps that’s not too surprising. Jeremy disassociates humanity from many things. It‘s not all that upsetting, even against the backdrop of love.

No, what’s upsetting
and
disconcerting is that he does not seem to see anything wrong with it.

That makes him impossible to predict. Not that Jeremy is one for sticking to definitions, but his lack of concern is frightening. It means that I will constantly have to be on my guard with him.

It makes for a relationship that can be nothing but exhausting.

If our shared past didn’t exist—if he’d never kidnapped me and subjected me to the horrors that
Stonehart
was capable of—if we had just met, say, exactly the way we told Fey and Thalia we had, would I still be here? Would I be with a man who is so utterly inconsistent?

No.

No, and that makes for the greatest irony of all. It’s not access to wealth or a lavish lifestyle that makes me endure. It’s not the amazing sex. It’s not even the promise of a future together, of marriage and children and—

I stop short. Kids with Jeremy Stonehart? Utterly inconceivable.

But anyway. What twists of logic, what sorts of fallacies must I harbor to understand and even
accept
that the reason that I feel so bound to Jeremy comes from the things he did to me in the dark?

Strange, the way life goes sometimes.

I need to put a stop to it, somehow. I need to put my foot down and tell him that treating me like a lab rat is unacceptable. Otherwise, every waking moment I spend around him will be like walking on eggshells. And that’s no way to live.

Besides, shouldn’t I have some say over what happens to my body? Shouldn’t I be able to decide, for myself, what substances go down my throat?

He drugged me to see if I would go to him. That is complete lunacy. It shows such striking lack of compassion. Such irreverent disregard for who I am. It can’t come from a man who claims to be in love with me.

At least, not if that man were anyone but Jeremy Stonehart.

From him, it somehow makes perfect sense.

Maybe that’s
my
greatest flaw: the ability to continuously justify every little thing that Jeremy does. Am I still delusional? I have no qualms about saying that my desire for revenge has all but evaporated. Even with tonight’s earlier episode. Even with the quite literal slap in the face. Where could I go, if I did want to get away? The front door’s unlocked. The keys to his cars are where they always are. I can get into one and just drive away and away and away. All the way north to Alaska, or east and south, to the sweltering metropolis of Miami. I could become completely anonymous amongst the swarms of people there. Or I could lose myself in some abandoned cabin in the middle of the Great White Wilderness. I could be like Christopher McCandless from that movie,
Into the Wild
, living the rest of my life off the land until my final breath…

But, no. Such a scenario does not sit well with me. It says nothing about who I am. And I’m sure that no matter where I go, no matter how well I hide, Jeremy will find me. He won’t just let me get away.