Page 18 of Romeo vs Romeo

If only you knew, I thought. My appetite may not have been related to food and drinks, but I was growing more and more ravenous for heated, sweaty bodies, smashing and colliding in a mass of dancing sinners, my hand brushing accidentally against a muscled arm or a firm abdomen. I would devour him if I could.

If I could get over this guilt.

“What gluttony, Lavinia? Look at the boy. In a healthy body, there is a healthy spirit.” Father had finished eating. He enjoyed his whiskey and opened his tablet on the table. With mild frustration, he removed his plate to the side, looking around for Mary, who was still on the clock. I assumed she was cleaning the kitchen after preparing all this food.

Mother said nothing for a while. She ate slowly, chewing each bite mindfully and washing it down occasionally with water. Then, as I neared the end of my meal, without looking at either of us in particular, she spoke. “I saw Barbara from my book club this morning.” The high pitch carried a note of foreboding that only I heard. I had been roped into this conversation far too many times.

“Oh?” Father was focused on his tablet, listening with only one ear.

“Joe Bob is recovering from back surgery,” Mother continued idly. “Joseph took over the management of their holdings. Barbara said they couldn’t be more proud of him.”

My teeth clenched. If I had to trace back through my life, the earliest time I could remember being compared to Joseph Burton was in a kindergarten recital. Mother had melted over Joseph’s opening hymn. “Voice of an angel,” she had kept saying for six months. She had never acknowledged my part in the recital after the first night’s “It is done,” which had forever removed any and all desire in me to appear on a stage again.

“Barbara says Joseph is seeing a girl from his church group,” Mother said as if reporting on something totally unimportant.The thing about Lavinia Langley was that nothing was ever unimportant if she took the time to speak. It was the precious time that could be better spent in self-reflection and prayer. “You went to that church group, Everett. You must know her.”

“Um, maybe. That was a long time ago. What’s her name?” I instinctively reached for my water.

“Anita Blakely. I’m sure you’ve met her. Such a fine, sweet girl,” Mother pressed on. “Barbara showed me a photo of her with Joseph. Such a handsome couple.” That pitiful tone of voice irked me. “Have you given it any more thought?”

“Huh?” I thought I’d missed something in my momentary anger.

“The church group, Everett,” Mother clarified with growing impatience.

I looked at Father, but he was absorbed in a memo on his screen. It was from that Jacobs fellow, like all the memos of the past week. It was that Urban Planning business I had a profound lack of interest in, which Mother had pointed out several times.You could join your father and learn the art of negotiation, she had said on a few occasions. Yet whatever grand new development project they were working on would be the same as all the projects they had developed in the past. A big, expensive hotel or some office spaces near the Hudson. I could almost see Roman lying on the street in front of it when businessmen gathered in the lobby.

“Everett?” Mother was close to snapping.

“Oh, I mean, yeah, I’m just not sure I have time for that,” I muttered into my glass.

“Speak clearly,” Mother said tersely.

I sighed and looked at her. “I’m a little busy for joining a church group right now.”

“Are you looking for work?” Mother asked. It was her way of picking up a pinch of salt and rubbing it right into the open soreon her Ivy League graduate of a son. The unemployed Ivy League graduate.

“Yeah,” I lied. It wasn’t common for me to lie, and it never failed to heat up my face. In my whole life, there was only ever one thing I lied about. I was so good at lying about it that I had nearly convinced myself.

“Very well,” Mother said. “It’s well past time for you to choose an internship.”

I held my breath and gripped my glass hard in my hand, not letting any other muscles react. “Yes,” I said.

“I always thought you might join your father’s company. You would have a good start, Everett, but you cannot expect to be treated like you are placed above everyone else. People have worked for your father their entire adult lives. If you would join him, you would have to learn, but you would learn from the experts.” Mother chatted for a time, drafting the exact plan of action for when I inevitably conceded and joined Father’s company. Even though I knew I was running out of time, I didn’t see a bright future hanging around Dad’s office all day long. “…remember, at all times, that we are all Children of God. Do you pray? Everett? Oh, Lord, give me patience.”

“Hm? Oh. Yeah, yes. I pray, Mother.” This wasn’t a lie, exactly. I had prayed for a long time to be cured of my affliction. When that went nowhere, I continued to pray out of habit and for nothing in particular. At times, it felt like I was speaking into a void, but it was not as simple as that. Even though I was nearly certain the void was completely empty, I prayed in that hypocritical way of ancient pagans who converted to Christianity just in case the church was right about the afterlife. I prayed as a backup, even as I found myself stepping further and further from Him.

“Good. Work is important, but your relationship with God is paramount. These are dangerous times we live in. Isn’t thatso, Harold? It has never been easier to stray from His path. Temptations lurk in every shadow, behind every corner, and we must fortify ourselves with prayers and His name in our hearts.” She droned on for a time longer, but my heartbeat drowned the sound of her voice.

When had it all become so messed up? There was a time—I was almost certain of it—when we had been a normal family. Mother had always been a devout Catholic, but it hadn’t dominated her life like this. Father had been busy with work, but he had always had time for his family over dinner. And I…

I had been too young to be attracted to anyone. But looking back, I could almost point out the times that had so clearly informed me I would be the way I was. The fiery jealousy of Joseph Burton receiving my mother’s fondness and attention morphed into vicious hatred with just a touch of possessiveness. Or the daydreams of a fast and budding friendship with Felix from elementary school, who was the second tallest and the fastest in our class and who had a mischievous smile I always wanted to look at. But I had been too young for any of that to bother me.

My father distanced himself from his family due to work. He still whispered some defense of my character in Mother’s hardest attacks, and for that, I was grateful. But Mother and I had gone down different paths, each taking a step further, each pushing the other to entrench themselves deeper. And here we were, having dinner, not enjoying a single bite of it. Here we were: a son who was destined to be a disappointment and an outcast, a mother who couldn’t stand her child, and a father who didn’t notice much of anything.

Once my mother’s words stopped coming, she only added that I should read the Bible tonight. In her sermon, she had spooked herself about all the dangers of the modern world, and she feared that darkness would tempt me to my downfall.

But you don’t have a clue how far I have fallen, I thought grimly as I promised to read verses before sleeping. And even though I took the Bible into my hands once I was in my room, my attention slid off it and returned to someone I couldn’t get out of my head.

The existential dread he had shared with me had haunted me since that night, but I didn’t mind. It was better than the dread of spending an eternity in Hell. The dread Roman had given me was something we could act on. He acted on it. He went out to make a difference. And Hell? I doubted I could do anything to change the one-way ticket I had booked. And if I could, I was pretty damn sure I didn’t want to. Not if it meant I could never be myself again.

---