“Why not?”
“You could die. You could get hurt. If you are terrified, there’s probably a good reason. You should trust your impulses.”
“So what’s your philosophy, then?” Johnny asks her. “Be a giant chickenhead?”
“Yes,” says Mirren. “That and the kindness thing I said before.”
39
I FOLLOW GAT when he goes upstairs. I chase after him down the long hall, grab his hand and pull his lips to mine.
It is what I am afraid to do, and I do it.
He kisses me back. His fingers twine in mine and I’m dizzy and he’s holding me up and everything is clear and everything is grand, again. Our kiss turns the world to dust. There is only us and nothing else matters.
Then Gat pulls away. “I shouldn’t do this.”
“Why not?” His hand still holds mine.
“It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s—”
“I thought we started over. Isn’t this the starting over?”
“I’m a mess.” Gat steps back and leans against the wall. “This is such a cliché conversation. I don’t know what else to say.”
“Explain.”
A pause. And then: “You don’t know me.”
“Explain,” I say again.
Gat puts his head in his hands. We stand there, both leaning against the wall in the dark. “Okay. Here’s part of it,” he finally whispers. “You’ve never met my mom. You’ve never been to my apartment.”
That’s true. I’ve never seen Gat anywhere but Beechwood.
“You feel like you know me, Cady, but you only know the me who comes here,” he says. “It’s—it’s just not the whole picture. You don’t know my bedroom with the window onto the airshaft, my mom’s curry, the guys from school, the way we celebrate holidays. You only know the me on this island, where everyone’s rich except me and the staff. Where everyone’s white except me, Ginny, and Paulo.”
“Who are Ginny and Paulo?”
Gat hits his fist into his palm. “Ginny is the housekeeper. Paulo is the gardener. You don’t know their names and they’ve worked here summer after summer. That’s part of my point.”
My face heats with shame. “I’m sorry.”
“But do you even want to see the whole picture?” Gat asks. “Could you even understand it?”
“You won’t know unless you try me,” I say. “I haven’t heard from you in forever.”
“You know what I am to your grandfather? What I’ve always been?”
“What?”
“Heathcliff. In Wuthering Heights. Have you read it?”
I shake my head.
“Heathcliff is a gypsy boy taken in and raised by this pristine family, the Earnshaws. Heathcliff falls in love with the girl, Catherine. She loves him, too—but she also thinks he’s dirt, because of his background. And the rest of the family agrees.”
“That’s not how I feel.”
“There’s nothing Heathcliff can ever do to make these Earnshaws think he’s good enough. And he tries. He goes away, educates himself, becomes a gentleman. Still, they think he’s an animal.”
“And?”
“Then, because the book is a tragedy, Heathcliff becomes what they think of him, you know? He becomes a brute. The evil in him comes out.”
“I heard it was a romance.”
Gat shakes his head. “Those people are awful to each other.”
“You’re saying Granddad thinks you’re Heathcliff?”
“I promise you, he does,” says Gat. “A brute beneath a pleasant surface, betraying his kindness in letting me come to his sheltered island every year—I’ve betrayed him by seducing his Catherine, his Cadence. And my penance is to become the monster he always saw in me.”
I am silent.
Gat is silent.
I reach out and touch him. Just the feel of his forearm beneath the thin cotton of his shirt makes me ache to kiss him again.
“You know what’s terrifying?” Gat says, not looking at me.
“What’s terrifying is he’s turned out to be right.”
“No, he hasn’t.”
“Oh, yes, he has.”
“Gat, wait.”
But he has gone into his room and shut the door.
I am alone in the dark hallway.
40
ONCE UPON A time, there was a king who had three beautiful daughters. The girls grew up as lovely as the day was long. They made grand marriages, too, but the arrival of the first grandchild brought disappointment. The youngest princess produced a daughter so very, very tiny that her mother took to keeping her in a pocket, where the girl went unnoticed. Eventually, normal-sized grandchildren arrived, and the king and queen forgot the existence of the tiny princess almost completely.
When the too-small princess grew older, she passed most of her days and nights hardly ever leaving her tiny bed. There was very little reason for her to get up, so solitary was she.
One day, she ventured to the palace library and was delighted to find what good company books could be. She began going there often. One morning, as she read, a mouse appeared on the table. He stood upright and wore a small velvet jacket. His whiskers were clean and his fur was brown. “You read just as I do,” he said, “walking back and forth across the pages.” He stepped forward and made a low bow.
The mouse charmed the tiny princess with stories of his adventures. He told her of trolls who steal people’s feet and gods who abandon the poor. He asked questions about the universe and searched continually for answers. He thought wounds needed attention. In turn, the princess told the mouse fairy tales, drew him pixelated portraits, and made him little crayon drawings. She laughed and argued with him. She felt awake for the first time in her life.
It was not long before they loved each other dearly.
When she presented her suitor to her family, however, the princess met with difficulty. “He is only a mouse!” cried the king in disdain, while the queen screamed and ran from the throne room in fear. Indeed, the entire kingdom, from royalty to servants, viewed the mouse suitor with suspicion and discomfort. “He is unnatural,” people said of him. “An animal masquerading as a person.”
The tiny princess did not hesitate. She and the mouse left the palace and traveled far, far away. In a foreign land they were married, made a home for themselves, filled it with books and chocolate, and lived happily ever after.