Page 14 of Exquisite Things
My father doesn’t speak to me as we walk back to our hotel. Doesn’t look at me until we’re in the suite. It’s a cold night. The staff lit a fire in the suite’s fireplace for us while we were out. I sit in front of it. Close my eyes. Let the flames warm me. The first thing my father says as he kicks off his shoes is: “You disgust me. I have half a mind to leave you here to starve like those Irish beggars you see on the street, bringing their famine across the border with them.”
“You’re cruel.” I say it plainly. My eyes on the flames. I was once told that staring at fire could blind you. I don’t care. I need fire. I breathe it in. Welcome it.
“What did you say to me?”
“You heard me. Repetition is a bore. So are you.” I pull out thepages I stole. Read aloud. “Conscience and cowardice are really the same things.Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all.”
“What is that?”
“None of your business.”
“Have you no shame?”
“Perhaps I don’t anymore. Isn’t that a wonderful thing? To have no shame. Tell me one good thing about shame. I dare you.”
“It keeps people in their place!” He believes this. What a sad man.
“I’ve found my place. And it’s not with you.” I wish this were true. I haven’t found my true home. Not yet.
“No? Then where is it? Among buggers?”
I read from the pages. I know Wilde’s words hold answers. “To define is to limit.”
“You need limits! You want to be in the arms of another man?”
“YES.” I cry this out. As if to the heavens. “And not James. He’s incapable of love. I’ll find someone else. Someone tender and honest. Someone who will give me the kind of life you never did. A life of love.”
“YOU DISGUST ME!”
“You can repeat it and repeat it, and still, I won’t care. I know I did nothing wrong.”
“Nothing wrong? You tied a boy—”
“He asked to be tied. He wanted it.”
“Stop talking. I can’t hear this.”
“Then leave!”
“Perhaps it’s good you killed your mother in childbirth.” His voice sizzles. He’s been waiting so long to say these words. He’s always blamed me for her death. He’s just never been bold enough to say it. “At least you spared her this.”
“You’ve never forgiven me for being born.”
Finally.
The real fight.
The one we’ve been waiting seventeen years for.
“You killed her. She was the one good thing I had.”
“Perhaps she died when I was born. But she would never have been pregnant if not for you. So you killed her too, didn’t you? You set the stage, as you always do.”
“And now you’re killing me.” It’s as if he didn’t hear a word I said. “You’re a murderer.”
“Then save yourself. Leave me to my own devices. I don’t need you. I have these pages to read, and in them is more wisdom than you’ll ever have.”
My father snatches the pages out of my hands. “Dorian Gray?” A confirmation of his fears. “This is that deviant’s handwriting. Wilde?”
