Total pages in book: 44
Estimated words: 41577 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 208(@200wpm)___ 166(@250wpm)___ 139(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 41577 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 208(@200wpm)___ 166(@250wpm)___ 139(@300wpm)
“Is that Henry’s newest piece?” She pointed to the back of the large canvas by the window. The one that, on its front, depicted her teenage daughter masturbating with no clothes on.
“It’s not finished,” I said, trying to sound detached. “He doesn’t want anyone to see it yet.”
She took a few steps toward the painting. My heart kicked against my sternum like a horse. I followed her, trying to grab ahold of her hand before she reached the easel.
“He doesn’t like people to see his work before it’s done,” I said.
She tugged free from my grasp and continued on, determined. Short of physically restraining her, there was no way to stop my mother from seeing the painting. I hugged myself as a bolt of panic ripped through me like lightning. Bile washed the back of my throat. If she saw it, if she assumed the truth and confronted me about what we’d done…I was going to lose it.
My mother rounded the easel and then abruptly stopped. She cupped a hand over her mouth. “Oh, God. No.”
The look of horror and disgust on her face made my stomach coil in on itself.
“It’s not what you think,” I said, though I had a feeling it was exactly what she thought.
“Paige, this is obscene!"
If my body were a house, she’d be the tornado blowing the roof off its frame and tearing the doors from their hinges. “His model called in sick. I offered to take her place.”
“And he let you?” Her voice was pure agony. The sound of it made my stomach cramp, like an infant wailing after hearing its mother’s screams. Tears streamed down her face. “I knew this would happen. I knew it.”
“Knew what would happen?”
My mother wiped her cheeks and turned to the window as if she couldn’t stand to look at either version of me. “There’s a term for it. Genetic sexual attraction. It’s when blood relatives meet for the first time as adults and there’s an overwhelming sexual magnetism between them. I had hoped that since you had memories of Henry from when you were little, it couldn’t happen. Clearly, I was wrong.”
“Mom, that’s crazy. What you’re suggesting is crazy.” Even now, I was still desperately clinging to the hope that I could spin this, that I could somehow convince her the painting was the extent of our physical relationship.
“Just tell me the truth, Paige. Has he fucked you?”
I nearly burst into giggles at the realization that my father’s restraint—infuriating as it was—had inadvertently saved me the burden of lying.
“No, he hasn’t.” I wasn’t sure if she believed me but asking would only undermine my insistence.
She made her way back to the workbench, giving the futon a wide berth as if its presence alone was enough to make her sick. She cried silently for over a minute, then rubbed her eyes and said, “If I had known keeping you apart would only drive you closer together, I’m not sure I would’ve done it. But I couldn’t risk him hurting you.”
I moved around to the opposite side of the workbench. “You’re saying you made him leave?”
“He didn’t tell you?” She choked out a laugh. “Of course, he didn’t tell you.”
“Well, someone had better tell me, because I am sick of being kept in the dark about my own childhood.”
I sat on the stool across from her and waited. I waited a long time. Finally, she wiped the tears from her cheeks and met my gaze.
“Yes,” she said. “I made him go.”
Six years’ worth of pain and anger lodged in my throat. I squeaked, “Why?”
“To protect you.”
“Protect me from what? He’s my father.”
She reached under the table and pulled out the shopping bag. “See for yourself.”
Chapter Seventeen
My mouth went dry as cotton. This was it, the piece of the puzzle I had come all this way to find. Was I ready to know it?
Hesitantly, I reached into the bag and pulled out a stack of sketchbooks. The pages were old and frayed around the edges. I took a deep breath and drew back the cover on the top book. The pencil lines were smudged from having been compressed, but the shape they made was unmistakably that of a sleeping child.
“Who is this?”
“You,” she said.
I turned the page. There I was, around age two, in duck-themed pajama bottoms, then again, curled around a stuffed clown fish. Me wrapped in moon-and-star sheets with one foot off the mattress, my head just south of the pillow. I closed the first sketchbook and moved on to the next, then the next. It was the same thing. Sketch after sketch of me asleep in my old twin bed, from the time I was little to around the age of eleven.
“My dad drew these?”
She nodded.
I watched myself grow up across the pages, saw my limbs lengthen and my hair darken, my face and figure sharpen. My father couldn’t always afford the safest or most spacious living arrangements, so rather than set me up on his couch, he’d crash on the sofa-sleeper in our den. He would've had to have been slipping into my room every weekend, quiet as a ghost, for almost a decade to capture this progression.