Page 33 of The Sound of Temptation

Unable to deny the accuracy of his aim, and unwilling to delve any deeper, I wave my white flag. “I know. But. I’m not ready. I don’t want to say yes if I can’t deliver. And right now I’m not sure I can.”

Pity softens his expression, and I drop my gaze to the table.

“You’ve spent your whole life working toward this moment. I’m just asking you to give yourself a chance to be happy. To let go of things you can’t change, people you can’t get back, and focus on the life you’ve got ahead of you.”

His phone buzzes. “My car’s here. I gotta go. You okay?”

“Yeah, I’ll call you when I get back. Hopefully this fancy rehab place will set me straight.”

He stands and puts a hand on my shoulder. “You’re straight. You just need to believe it.”

He throws a twenty down and strolls out of the restaurant.

I eat my pancakes and decide to go for a walk and lose myself in throng of early morning commuters on Tenth Avenue.

New York City is a glittering sea of ostentatious audacity and unapologetic grandiosity. It’s stuffed to the gills with marvels that cast even the most interesting human being into the shade.

Before my face was plastered on the huge billboards in Times Square, I could roam unnoticed and pretend I was just a normal person, while I watched the live action adventures play out on every corner of this city.

It’s one thing to watch from the sidelines. It’s another thing to be sidelined. And right now, that’s what it feels like. I walk back to my apartment, and for the first time I think rehab might be just what I need after all.

11

Beth

Speaking Out Loud

On my fifth birthday, my Aunt Jude gave me my first art kit. She told me it would help me see in the dark. I didn’t understand what she meant or the power of the gift she’d given me until the first time my father used the dark to punish me.

He sent me to my room and had our housekeeper remove everything he thought might amuse me. He didn’t know I liked to draw, so my art supplies were the only things left.

Desperate for an outlet for my anger, I felt around in the dark and found my kit. And as soon as my fingers curled around the cool wood, I realized the dark was my kindred spirit—terribly misunderstood and underutilized. It was a canvas that made the light in my mind brighter.

It’s what sustained me for the last ten years. I’ve drawn my future on the pages of my sketchpads and notebooks. I used to draw while I was waiting for a meeting to start, or while I ate lunch. And now, after the last remotely promising lead fizzled and my three-month long job search is officially a bust, I also draw when I should be working.

The last five years have been a charade and I was a fool not to see this coming. And even though I have no proof, I know he’s behind all of these rejections. No one wants to make an enemy out of him because he’s got a long memory and vindictive streak that knows no limit.

Not even when it comes to his own children. When you consider he was raised by a woman who said things like “suffering is noble,” and “a woman who works is a stain on her menfolk’s honor,” it’s easy to think it’s not his fault because it’s all he knows.

I’ve never excused him. Because I was milked at the same teat, reared on the same ideology, and I’ve rejected it—body and soul. My mother may have been a terrible parent, but I learned a lot watching her and my father’s marriage fall apart.

But the biggest lesson she taught me was that if I followed in her footsteps, all I’d ever have were the things he wanted me to have. That was problematic because the only time my father seemed to notice me was when I did something that displeased him. So, all he ever gave me was razed earth, emotional violence, and the motivation to fly under his radar.

I did everything he expected, at least on the surface. But on my fifteenth birthday, I begged Bethany to drive to an art supply store two towns over so I could apply for a job. I got the job, and I made the drive three times a week for a year until my father found out and all hell broke loose.

The art store owner got audited by the IRS and was found to be in serious arrears. She had to declare bankruptcy and close her business. She’s a cashier at a Wilde Eats grocery store in Houston. He ran her out of town like he does to everyone who crosses him. Everyone except me, apparently. My phone rings, and my stomach doesn't tighten the way it has for months. I’ve heard from all the companies I applied to already, so at least it’s not another rejection.

I slide my apathetic gaze over to it and scramble to pick it up when I see Aunt Jude’s name flashes on the screen. She and Richard moved back to France permanently after my father evicted them from the lake house. She rarely calls and I have these pangs of guilt because what he did to them was my fault. I was driving to see her at the lake house when I had my accident. My father blamed her for giving me safe haven in the lake house and threw her out. He bought the house for my mother, but Jude lived there 9 months out of the year for twenty years even after she left, and we all considered it hers.

He rented it out after my accident, and I haven’t been back there since.

I pick up the phone. “Hello stranger,”

“Do you have a job or a husband yet?” Her raspy voice has a French accent, muddled and stretched after three decades of living in Southeast Texas.

Normally, I find her irreverent and straight to the point manner of starting conversations endearing and refreshing. But at 5 pm on the Friday of a week that has felt like it would never end, it’s the worst question she could ask.

I press the speakerphone button on my phone and lay it down. “No. I don’t have either and I’m so damn tired, I just don't care.” I cross my arms on the desk, drop my head onto them and close my eyes.

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