Page 44 of Mr. North
T hree days pass. I hear nothing from Raphael. I’d hoped things would become more manageable with the press, that their interest would fade after a few days with no comment from either myself or from North Industries, but if anything, things get worse. Gareth, my doorman, finds people going through the trash in the alley behind the building. Mom has to email me in order to get a message to me since my mailbox is absolutely full of messages from talk show hosts and lifestyle magazines, all offering me vast amounts of money to sell them my story, each one promising to outbid the other. On my way to class, I get stared at, whispered about, sneered over, and, once, actually spat on. I start to rethink taking the subway to school. I’ve never felt unsafe in New York City, but now I feel like something bad might happen. Like someone might attack me, or I’ll get cornered by a bunch of frenzied paparazzi and I’ll end up injured when they take things too far. A part of me refuses to let this affect me, though. I wouldn’t let Raphael talk me out of taking the subway when he wanted Nate to drive me to and from the Osiris Building. It felt like an infringement on my free will then, and it definitely feels that way now, too. So I keep on taking the train. I keep on walking the streets, and I keep my damn head held high.
I constantly think about Raphael. I can’t stop. He’s there, at the forefront of my mind every morning when I open my eyes, and he’s there the second I close them to sleep, too. At night, those vivid, cool green eyes of his stalk me through my dreams. We writhe, naked and covered in sweat, our mouths locked together, our bodies joined, him thrusting into me over and over again until eventually I wake, tangled in the bed sheets, drenched, my hair plastered to my forehead, my heart racing away from me. I have other dreams of Raphael, too. Dreams where he’s in pain, suffering, lost somewhere and I can’t find him. Can’t reach him to help him. I run through an old stone maze, turning one way and then another, constantly searching, and yet I never make it to him.
Thalia doesn’t show up to class. She hasn’t messaged me. Hasn’t come by the apartment to see if I’m okay. Honestly, I don’t think she’s okay. I’m pulled in opposing directions, angry that she seems to have abandoned me during the most difficult moment of my life—a moment she technically caused to happen in the first place—and sad she doesn’t appear to be coping with the pain she’s suffering through, either.
I wake up on Friday and I consider going over to her place and checking in with her. However, by the time I’m ready and out of the door, I’m running late and I don’t have time. On the train, the guy across from me is reading The New York Times , shooting furtive, disapproving looks at me every few seconds over the top of the broadsheet. I’m so used to people gawking at me now that I almost don’t even bother to look at the front page of the paper. Not until the guy clears his throat, shaking it out, and the bold text catches my eye:
Elizabeth Dreymon Sold Virginity To North
And then, underneath, in smaller letters:
Raphael North’s sordid love affair with broke student causes major family rift.
I sold my what ? I sold my virginity to Raphael? Where the hell did they get that idea from? And a family rift? I thought Raphael was the only North left. His parents are long dead and he was an only child, so who the fuck are they claiming he’s fallen out with? I get to my feet and I snatch the paper out of the man’s hands.
“Hey! That’s my paper!” he snaps. “You can’t just take—”
“Taking from me is all anyone’s done for the past four days,” I volley back. “I have a right to know what’s being said about me. Don’t worry. I’ll give it back in a second.”
He must have been expecting me to cow down and hand the paper back right away. His eyes grow round with surprise when I stomp back to my seat and I sit myself down, my eyes scanning over the black text as quickly as I can.
‘…b rother of Beth , David Dreymon, says things have been tense between Beth and their mother for years. When Margo Dreymon, of Hopestanton, KS, saw evidence of her daughter’s antics all over the news, she reportedly collapsed from shock. Elizabeth and Margo fought on the telephone for well over an hour on the night the news of Elizabeth’s sexual relationship with Raphael North went public. The two women have not spoken again since, with Margo Dreymon blocking her daughter’s calls and messages. When asked about the divide that now separates the Dreymon household, David said that his mother was experiencing anxiety and a ‘great deal of stress’ because of the matter, and that he didn’t know if Elizabeth and Margo would ever be able to repair their once close relationship.’
I read on, not really seeing the words that are clearly staring back at me in print. The article goes on forever. It paints a picture of a very rocky past between me and Mom, and in a number of places David is quoted as saying that I had an, ‘intense, kind of odd relationship’ with Dad. What is that supposed to mean? I feel like I’m about to throw up every time the train rocks from side to side. I can’t believe what they’re insinuating. What David is insinuating. He wants people to think I was abused by Dad or something? He wants the public to believe there was something untoward going on behind our family’s closed doors? It makes no sense whatsoever. I…I just can’t believe he would talk to anyone about this. There’s no way he would have. No way in a million years. They have to be lying. My mind is racing, speeding through everything I know about the liable and slander cases that have taken place in the past fifty years. I throw the paper into the guy’s lap, and I bolt from the train the moment the doors open.
Up on street level, I call David, horror slamming through me with every breath I take. He picks up almost immediately, like he was staring at his phone, waiting for someone to call. “Before you get mad, I want you to know, they twisted what I said.”
I stumble over my own feet, nearly falling flat on my face. He…he did speak to the media? David’s a jerk. He’s thoughtless and a total asshole most of the time, but he’s my brother. He’s not evil. I didn’t for a second really think he’d actually gone ahead and sold his story. My story. Whatever. I didn’t think he’d really done it. His defensive words coupled with his equally defensive tone tell me otherwise, however. I screw my eyes shut, trying not to explode in public. It’s a good thing I’m not alone right now. If I was, I’d probably be screaming and using every single curse word under the sun. Even the bad ones. Especially the bad ones.
“I can’t fucking believe you,” I hiss into the phone. “You knew I didn’t want this dragged through the press any further than it already has been. You knew I didn’t want to comment or feed the story in any way, and yet you went ahead and threw in your own two cents, regardless. What’s wrong with you?”
He scoffs, the same annoying way he used to when we were kids and he was caught doing something that made him look stupid in front of his friends. “I was being realistic, Beth. You think one of your old school friends wasn’t going to start blabbing about you the moment they were offered a paycheck? Hmm? You think one of your friends from Columbia wasn’t going to give them every single detail they know about you in return for a fucking whale of a paycheck? It was better that we benefitted from the information making its way into the papers. Our family’s the one suffering right now, after all. No one should profit from that suffering but us.”
“Suffering? How the hell are you suffering, David? You’ve probably been prancing around Brooklyn, telling anyone who’ll listen that you’re the brother of the famous slut who slept with Raphael North. You’re a disgusting pig!”
David grunts. He does that whenever he knows he’s done something wrong, and yet he doesn’t want to back down. “You’re the one who got herself filmed by a drone fucking a dude up against a window, Beth. The whole nation’s seen your pussy but none of them know a single thing about you. Sue me if I told them you were a brainiac in high school, for fuck’s sake. Sue me if I told them your favorite fucking flavor of ice cream and your favorite candy bar, okay?”
“You told them Dad abused me, David!”
“I never said that. Not in so many words.”
“Not in so many words? God…” I shake my head, covering my eyes with my free hand. I’ve stepped off the sidewalk and into the gutter, right alongside my reputation, in order to avoid the people on their way home from or on their way to work. The world feels like it’s seesawing, tilting to the right and then to the left. “Mom’s never going to speak to you again, you realize that, right?”
The line is quiet for a moment, and then, “She’ll get over it. Especially when I use some of the money to pay off the debt we owe on the farm.”
Someof the money. Some of it. So he got paid more than two hundred and fifty grand for his hateful words. Unbelievable. “You haven’t even spoken to Mom, have you?” I whisper. “She doesn’t care about the farm. She doesn’t want to keep it. She wants a fresh start. She’s not going to let you use that money to save the business.”
“Well, it’s too late,” David crows triumphantly. “She doesn’t have a choice in the matter. The wheels are already in motion. I called the bank earlier this morning and paid the debt in full. Now she can always live in the old house.”
“She doesn’t want to fucking stay in the house, David! She wants to fucking go!”
“Bullshit. That’s where we grew up. That’s where she had built a life with Dad.”
“Just because you’re sentimental about it, doesn’t mean she has to be as well. And you’re forgetting one thing, too. Dad died in that house.” I don’t mention Mom’s attack. Maybe David would understand a little better why Mom wouldn’t care about the place very much if he knew what happened, but I can’t voice the words. Mom made me promise all those years ago never to tell Dad or David. She made me swear I wouldn’t breathe a word. Even now, I can’t break that promise to her. “Our father dropped down onto his knees in that house,” I continue. “She watched his eyes roll back into his head, and that was that. He never opened them again. What do you think she sees when she closes her eyes, asshole? She sees the man she loved most in the world, dying in front of her. The man that you just implied sexually abused me. The man that raised both of us, gave everything for us, always. He was such a—“
“He was just a man, Beth!” my brother roars. “People are always going on about him like they know him better than anyone else. They talk about him like he was some kind of fucking saint. Like he rescued starving orphans from the roadside on a daily basis. He was just a fucking guy, though. He cursed, and he dropped shit, and he would stare out of a window with a stupid smile on his face for three hours at a time and never get anything done. And he did slap Mom once. I saw it.”
“Bullshit.”
