Claire at Sixteen (19 page)

“He figured he was getting off cheaply,” Claire replied. “I had Scotty and I had you to bargain with. All he had was meanness.”

“Fifty thousand is more than we need,” Nick said. “Were you planning on that, on overkill?”

Claire shook her head. “I almost told him no,” she admitted. “But then I figured we could always use the extra money. Especially now that we'll be relocating in Oregon. I know we won't be able to buy a house, but we'll rent a nice apartment, and buy a new car, and that'll still leave a few thousand for you to get started with. And Megs can get a job, and things'll be all right again. I'm tired of being poor, Nicky. It might be fine for Thea, maybe even Evvie, but I don't like it.”

“I don't, either,” Nick said. “But that doesn't mean I'm going to accept this money.”

The car was getting warmer and more comfortable. Claire rolled her window down just a fraction to feel the air on her face. “You can't tear up the check,” she declared. “It's for Sybil.”

“Don't you think I know that,” Nick said. “But there are things you don't know.”

“Like what?” Claire asked.

“Like the agreement I made with him,” Nick said. “Never to take another penny from him. Never to see him again, or have any further contact with him or his family.”

“You were only eighteen,” Claire said. “None of that was legally binding.”

“I wasn't even eighteen,” Nick replied. “Seventeen, just a year older than you. I was terrified, but I had nowhere else to turn.”

“He's still scary,” Claire said. She thought about his threat of the acid and how she had known he wasn't kidding. “What did he say to you that time?”

“Nothing flattering,” Nick said. “How does he look?”

“Fine,” Claire said, truly aware for the first time that Sebastian Prescott was Nicky's father, that she was talking to Nicky about his own father, a man he'd only met once, and then for less than an hour. “He's very handsome. He looks just like you, Nicky, only his hair is a beautiful shade of white. Very thick, though, like yours. Except for the hair color, the two of you look like brothers.”

Nicky nodded. “That was how I got in,” he said. “His secretary was so startled by our resemblance she let me through. I'm surprised Scotty's family didn't see it.”

“They were too busy with other things,” Claire said. “Besides, I'm a girl and sixty years younger than he is. I worried about it, but it worked out fine. It was a surprise attack.”

“Did he …” Nicky cleared his throat. “I mean, what did you think of him?”

Claire had seen Nicky a lot of different ways over the years, loving with his daughters, passionate with his wife, friendly with business associates, protective, angered, even, on rare occasions, relaxed. But she had never seen him so defenseless before. This is what fathers do to you, she thought. Even if you have no reason to care.

“I didn't meet him under the best of circumstances,” she replied. “He'd called Scotty in to scream at him, only I went instead. And I was pretty offensive. I wasn't there to beg, and I wanted him to know that. So after he got over being stunned, he was just plain angry.”

“Yeah,” Nick said. “It was the same when he met me.”

“But toward the end, I kind of liked him,” Claire said. “I felt a connection. Maybe it was just physical. I looked at him, and it was like looking at you thirty years from now, looking at me sixty years from now. I think he felt it, also. I think that's why he gave me the money.”

“He gave you the money to get you out of there,” Nick said. “Out of his life.”

“That, too,” Claire said. “But I said something funny and he laughed. His laugh is a lot like yours.”

“What did you say?” Nick asked.

“I don't remember,” Claire replied. “It doesn't matter. When he laughed, it made me feel the way it does when I make you laugh. Proud. Like I've accomplished something. It makes me feel that you must really like me because I've said something to make you laugh.”

“Daisy used to laugh all the time,” Nick said. “Before the accident. I'd come home from work, and I'd hear her laughter. My mother never laughed. It wasn't even a defense mechanism for her. She just never laughed.” He slowed down as a car pulled in ahead of them. “Scotty's mother,” he said. “What's she like?”

“It's hard to say,” Claire replied. “She was mostly hysterical over Scotty. She was okay to me, though, nicer than his father, but I didn't take that too seriously. They might have decided to divide up the roles that way. She looks a little bit like you, but I don't think people would automatically assume you were … related.”

“I don't even remember her name,” Nick said.

“Vivienne,” Claire said. “Evvie told me.”

“Vivienne, that's right,” Nick said. “She's a year older than me. Her mother was pregnant with her when he began the affair with my mother. There's a son, too, a couple of years younger. Sebastian Charles. I thought when I first found out about him that would be what I'd change my name to. Charles Sebastian. But I couldn't see myself as a Charlie.”

“No,” Claire said. “You must have made a terrible George.”

“No one called me that,” Nick said. “Nicholas was my middle name. My mother thought it was classy. I was always called Nick.”

“I'm glad to hear it,” Claire said. “I could believe everything else Aunt Grace told me, but I could never picture you as a George.”

“My mother had a couple of kids with my stepfather,” Nick said. “It's funny. I have two brothers and two sisters, and half of them I haven't seen since I was sixteen, and the other half I've never met. I think about that sometimes, how many nieces and nephews I must have. Of course, now it turns out Scotty's my nephew. I wish I could remember more about him, but the only impression I get is someone mooning over Thea. What's he like? You must know him fairly well if you got him to marry you.”

“He's crazy about Thea,” Claire said. “And he's terribly lonely. He grew up in boarding schools. And he doesn't like his grandfather at all. He says he's cruel.”

“Then I guess you didn't miss much,” Nick declared. “Daisy and I talked about it once, about how I should get in touch with him, let him know he had all those granddaughters, but I just couldn't do it. You don't know what it was like, Claire. Before I saw him, well I was seventeen, and the only time I remember being even close to happy was when I was in school. No, that isn't true. The day my mother came to get me, after she got married, I was happy. I was four or five, and I'd been boarded out, mostly with relatives, never stayed with one family very long, but sometimes my mother would visit me, and that made me feel so good, because it meant I really had a mother. People made it abundantly clear to me that I didn't have a father. So the day she took me with her, told me I was going to meet my new daddy, I think that was the happiest day of my life.”

“Even happier than the day you met Megs?” Claire asked.

“Even happier,” Nick replied. “By the time I met Daisy, I didn't remember what happiness was anymore. She reintroduced me to it, but so much inside of me had already died. I went to live with my mother and meet my new father, and that night I was overexcited and I wet my bed and he hit me so hard he dislocated my jaw.”

Claire wished Nicky would stop talking. She didn't want to know these things about him. She turned her face away, and stared out the window, looking at the lights on the side of the highway.

“By the time I met Prescott, I hated him for what he'd done to my mother, what he hadn't done for me,” Nick said. “But I wanted him to love me. I wanted him to see I was his son and become my father. I had dreams, and I hated myself for that weakness, for letting myself fantasize like that. I had dreams of my own by then, and I knew I was being foolish hoping for a father, hoping for a real family. But I couldn't stop it. I was just a kid, although I didn't know that at the time. You're like me that way. You think because you're smart and ambitious that you must be grown-up as well. Well, I wasn't and you aren't, and I couldn't control my dreams, so he smashed them for me. No father, no long-lost son. Just name-calling and yelling and not even as much money as I'd hoped for.”

“I got more,” Claire said. “I got enough to pay you back for what he did to you.”

Nick shook his head. “It doesn't work that way,” he said. “Interest doesn't accrue. When I took that money, I hated myself. I hadn't counted on that. I went in there, after all, determined to get the money for my full college tuition. Either he was going to love me and be proud of me for what I'd accomplished, and be happy to give me the money, or else he was going to to be ashamed and frightened, and give it to me to keep me out of his life. Either way I was going to walk out of there with four years at Princeton paid for. I couldn't even manage that. I hope you never loathe yourself the way I did that day. I knew I should have refused the money. I knew there are times when pride is the most important thing. But I took what he gave me. I took the crumbs just the way I always had. And I vowed never to do that again. I'd rather starve.”

“He didn't give me crumbs,” Claire said. “Fifty thousand isn't crumbs. He offered me that. His first offer was five thousand and I laughed at him. I didn't even accept twenty, and I was tempted because it was almost enough. But I knew almost enough wouldn't do it. You weren't tough enough with him, Nicky. It wasn't your fault. He was your father, and it's hard to bargain with your father. But I didn't care. I didn't go in there thinking maybe he'll love me, maybe he'll straighten out my life. So I was tough with him, and he gave me all this money, and it's for all of us. It'll save us, Nicky. Sybil'll walk again, and we'll have a home, and you'll start making deals just like you used to, and everything will be all right. That's what this money is for. You can't be proud about it. You can't toss it away because it's too much, or it isn't enough, or somehow it offends your sensibilities. Your sensibilities don't count. Sybil is what counts.”

“That's a very pretty speech,” Nick said, and he sounded like Nicky again, like the Nicky Claire had to deal with and never much liked. “I think you've almost convinced yourself that it's true.”

“It is true,” Claire said.

“The only person who really counts with you is yourself,” Nick declared. “All this is a stunt for you. Can you do it? Can you raise that kind of money using your beauty and your body and your wits? And you proved that you could, and Sybil's going to benefit. But that was never your true motive. You wanted to test your powers. And there was the bonus of hurting Thea as well.”

“Why does everybody assume that about me?” Claire cried. “Why won't people believe that I love Sybil?”

“I know you love Sybil,” Nick said. “But not nearly as much as you love yourself.”

“I'd better love myself,” Claire said. “Nobody else does. Not the way they love Thea.”

“That isn't true,” Nick said. “And I don't want Thea to know about any of this. It's all been a game for you, marrying her boyfriend, taunting my father. But it would destroy Thea to find out what you've done.”

“I have to tell her,” Claire said. “Scotty and I made a deal.”

“Break it,” Nick said.

“Go to hell,” Claire said.

Nick slammed down on the brakes, and pulled the car over to the side of the road. “Give me that check,” he demanded.

“I will not,” Claire said. She turned to face her father, and stared at him, stared at her own mirror image. Nick's face was contorted with rage, and she knew hers was as well.

“I will not have you hurting Thea,” Nick said.

Claire forced herself to laugh. “Hurting Thea's my hobby,” she declared. “It's what I do for relaxation. If I give you the check, and you tear it up, not only do I get to tell Thea all about Scotty and me, and all about your father and who you really are, and how you've lied to her all these years, I get to tell her how you destroyed Sybil's only chance. She'll really love you then. I'll tell Sybil everything then, too. She loves you now because you've been going crazy trying to make her whole again. If she finds out you've kept her from this rehab center because of some stupid proud gesture, she'll never forgive you. I know Sybil better than you do, better than anyone. You don't want her to hate you. She's stronger than your father, stronger than me. Thea'll forgive you someday, but Sybil will cut you off as though you never existed. That's what happens if you tear up this check.”

Nick closed his eyes for a moment, and Claire could see the anger dissolve, replaced by an emotion she didn't care to name. “There are things you don't know,” he said. “Things about me, about my past.”

Claire had trouble believing Nicky had any secrets left. “Does Megs know?” she asked.

“Megs knows everything,” Nick replied.

“Then it can't be too important,” Claire said.

“I guess not,” he said. He turned and faced his daughter. “There's nothing you've done that I haven't done myself,” he said. “No tricks you know, I couldn't have taught you.”

“I'll give you full credit,” Claire replied. “If anybody asks.”

“I look at you, and I see myself,” Nick said. He shook his head ruefully. “Poor Claire,” he said. “Poor me.”

“I'm all right,” Claire said. “I don't know how you are, though.”

“I don't, either,” Nick said. “I do know, though, if I take this money, things will change. I'll cross a line.”

Claire exulted inwardly. “What kind of line?” she asked, trying to sound casual.

“The kind that's best left uncrossed,” he said. “I've spent my life trying to be strong, independent, reliable. I've wanted desperately to be worthy of Daisy. Once I accept the money from my father, I won't bother trying anymore. There won't be any point. I'll be a beggar again, only older and more bitter, with more death inside me. We'll save Sybil, but at the cost of my soul.”