Page 104 of I'll Look for You, Everywhere
I have kept the secret for seventeen years. It has hurt. My first introduction to sex was through my own father’s brute force. I still feel my tiny neck, my little bones, crushed underneath the weight of the hands that he once embraced me with. And now my neck, bigger, responsible for holding my head up high, still feels the strength of his grip for the rest of my life. So, until now, I’ve kept my head low. Unable to stretch tall just yet. But one day, I hope I will. For me. For Mamma. For my Magdalen. For my dreams at night. I really hope.
55
THEO
By the time I am done telling her, it’s dark outside. The crickets chirp wildly in the overgrown grass around us. Someone is having a party in their backyard, and we can hear a bottle of champagne pop open and people cheering. Magdalen is silent the entire time but I see her eyes move frantically, watching her process the story in real time.
‘My mother?’ she says first and dips her head low. ‘Your father?’ Pressing her lips together tightly, her eyes leak with tears. I feel horrible that it’s me, again, making her this upset.
‘You were eight.’ She covers her mouth, and she lets out a guttural sob that breaks through the crickets’ chirp, and I feel my own eyes brim with tears.
‘My dad? How could they do this to him?’
My knees shake as I go to sit down on the bench again and I try not to notice how her body shifts slightly away from me. You knew this would happen, Theo. It would always end with her farther away. I stay parallel to her, careful not to touch.
‘I think...’ My voice feels drained after reliving the memory. ‘I think they’ve been doing it since university.’
I find myself relaxing into the relief that someone finally knows, that this weight can sit across two pairs of shoulders, and, selfishly, I’m relieved it’s Magdalen. Fuck, they could still be doing it now, but I don’t tell her this. I haven’t been back to the attic since that day, haven’t checked to see if the dust has settled back in place since.
‘Oh my god.’ Magdalen runs her hands through her hair, shaking her head, and I can tell she’s trying to put the pieces together from the past seventeen years. Every glance. Every family outing, shared meal, movie night in our living room. Who knows what they’ve done in the dark around us? I watch as the secret stains every holiday, birthday, celebration. While it felt nice for a second to have her underneath this veranda with me, knowing I’ve disturbed treasured memories makes me regret every word.
‘Why haven’t you told anyone?’
Why? Why don’t I speak to my mum just as much as I don’t speak to my dad? Why did I abandon everyone because I was running from a ghost in the attic? Why did it take me seventeen years and the green eyes of Magdalen Savoy to finally unravel this burden?
‘I think he choked the words out of me.’ I shrug in defeat, my eyes watering at the truth. ‘Every time I want to say it, to confess to my mum or Anika or even your father, I’ll get this panic attack. Like I can’t remember how to breathe any more or my lungs turn into concrete and, fuck, it was easier to keep pushing it back. Even when I think about it by myself, I’ll wake up somewhere I don’t remember walking to. It’s all so fucking weird.’ I shake my head, mortified at how this one little moment has manifested into a lifetime of isolation. ‘So I just stopped trying to say it.’
Magdalen continues to look out at the dark backyard but then looks to me, sorrow deep in her eyes. ‘No one that young should have to carry such a heavy secret,’ she whispers.
When a cry breaks through the still of the night, I don’t realize it’s me until Magdalen wraps her arms around my shoulders, rubbing the length of my back tenderly. Closing the space I left between us. My hand covers my mouth, trying to hold it in, trying to shove the memory back inside.
‘It’s okay, Theo. It’s okay.’ She holds me tighter, her cheek pressed against my shaking shoulder.
‘I should have told someone.’ I’m heaving. Salty tears pour down my cheeks, my neck, and I’m sure they coat Magdalen’s arms, too.
‘Yes,’ she agrees, the heat of her face warming the crease in my shoulder. ‘But you shouldn’t have had to. You keep doing things you shouldn’t have had to.’
For the next hour, we both sit on the bench until my cries turn into hiccups and soon, I can’t even lift my head. So I drop my head in my hands and tell her about finding her mother upstairs the day before I left, after she maimed Magdalen. That she was crying on the floor of her bedroom when I walked up those stairs. That I fucking comforted her, the wrong Savoy. My face is swollen; my skin feels red and itchy.
The last time I had seen Vittoria cry was in the attic that day. I suppose she remembered that too because she broke out in another fury of tears and loud sobs and kept apologizing to me.
‘If I had known she just fucking abused you, I would have never forgiven her.’
Magdalen stills at the mention of her mother. ‘You forgave her?’
‘I was leaving. It felt like I could at least forgive one person.’
Her hands slip off me, a coldness stretching around me, and I instantly ache for her body around me again.
‘How could you forgive her?’
‘If it was between forgiving your mother or my father, the choice felt obvious.’
‘My mother—’ she starts but stands up abruptly.
‘Your mother what?’ The same feeling I got when we were together in the ocean descends on me. Of her omitting. It’s like I can see her burning holes in the photos, wanting to alter her own memories for self-preservation. Still, I don’t push.
‘You idolize my father,’ she says. ‘And you watch your father fuck my mum and then go on a three-month excavation in Egypt with him, where he talks about how perfect his fucking wife is, and you say nothing?’
