(“I know a couple of years ago, I guess when he was about seventeen, he went to Daddy and said something like he knew Daddy knew why you’d gone and where you were, and man to man, what had happened, what was it all about. He was really tense, white, you know? I saw him going into Daddy’s den to talk, and I knew it was something important. I was only fifteen, and I eavesdropped, I know that’s wrong but I wanted to know what was going on and Elliott never told me anything. I almost got caught, though; Daddy told him he honestly didn’t know why you’d left, he’d never found out, and I guess Elliott didn’t believe him, because he didn’t say a word, he just stormed out of the den again and he never said another thing about it. He just decided to go to university, study business and get rich and be secure.”
(Neither of us speaks for a few moments, and then she smiles at me, a funny twisted kind of smile that means I’m not to take personally what she is saying, that she is just talking of a reality, not what might have been if I had been different.
(“It’s so strange,” she says again, “because of all people he should know that the one thing he really wanted, that might have made him feel secure, was something he won’t ever be able to buy, no matter how much money he makes. I think it’s sad. But you know, I don’t really like him. He keeps you away, you know? He doesn’t let anybody come close, he doesn’t share anything, he won’t let anybody help. He’s really straight. He has all these standards, I don’t know where he got them because they’re not the way Daddy wanted us to be. He must have read them or something, and everybody has to conform to them. He’s very big on proper behaviour, being polite, doing the right thing with the right fork, that sort of thing. He never seems to be with you, if you know what I mean. He’s always behaving.”
(She is upset, and is silent for a moment, struggling to be calm. “I just feel so sad for him,” she continues finally. “It’s all such a waste.”
(Katie, I can see, is different in many ways. She wants to understand, which is why she is here; she is more open, ready to talk about how everything has affected her, hesitant only in how what she says may hurt me, kind in that way but stubbornly unkind in others, ruthless almost, perhaps more like her brother than she realizes; but with different goals, wanting to be herself but not knowing what that is. I am only one of her first steps.