His Gift 3(11)

“Dead?” I echoed the word in surprise. That was one thing I hadn’t expected. Maybe it was that I couldn’t imagine my own family dead, my mother and father, my brothers. To hear him say it so calmly made the thought even more frightening.

“It was a long time ago. I was a child.”

I waited for him to continue. He stared into the mirror, not looking at me, only looking at his own face. His expression turned to hatred.

“My name is Jake Carville Jr. My full name. Did you know that?”

I shook my head.

“No. After your dad?”

He nodded.

“My dad was the one who left me this fortune. He was a rich, abusive drunk who hated his employees. But he hated me more.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t want to continue his business. He worked as an insurance executive. Do you know how bad it was? All he talked about was his work. About how much money he could scrape out of people. How he could scare people into buying insurance they didn’t need. Life insurance, car insurance, home insurance. He trained his salesmen to bully and threaten customers until they bought more, more, more.”

He paused for a moment, his face turning red. He breathed slowly. He was standing so still that I almost couldn’t see his chest rising and falling.

“He beat me,” Jake said, and although his voice stayed calm I saw the corner of his eye twitch when he said it. “He beat me, and if he had enough to drink he’d beat my mom, too. One time my little brother was crying and he screamed at her to make it stop. She tried to shush him, but nothing worked, not even his pacifier. I remember he started to shake the baby—”

His voice broke, and I longed to go to him. Tears stung my eyes. I wanted to put my arms around him, to hold him, to tell him that it was alright. But I was tied to the bed and I couldn’t. Maybe he had planned it that way.

“She grabbed his arm to try to stop him and he swung at her. Not with his hand, either, but with a fist.”

Jake’s eyes glazed over. He was lost in his own world of memories. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want him to stop, although it hurt me to hear his pain. My chest clenched as he continued.

“And her nose broke with this awful crack—I remember thinking I had never seen so much blood before. She was screaming and he just kept hitting her and hitting her, and she had her arms around the baby and she was bleeding all over him.”

He released a shaky sigh.

“Afterwards he had his private doctor come and stitch her up. The doctor didn’t say anything. My father paid him well enough that he didn’t say anything. My mom lay in bed and cried. And I cleaned up my brother in the sink. I washed all of her blood off of him.”

Now I was crying, trying not to sob aloud, and tears rolled down my cheeks. Still, I listened to him remember his family.

“I’m telling you this so that you’ll understand… what I did. Or what I didn’t do, I guess. So that you’ll know why it happened the way it did.”

I waited, unable to wipe the tears from my cheeks.

“One night, after my mom had put me to bed, I snuck out to go get a late night snack. My dad had drunk enough that he’d passed out in his office. I don’t remember why, but I went by the hallway and saw smoke coming from under the door.”

“It was stupid, maybe, but I was curious. I was always a curious little kid. And I pushed the door open.”

Jake’s voice grew rasping. Like he was crying, but without the tears.

“And the whole room was on fire. He had passed out on his desk, and I could see the papers burning from his cigar, and the carpet had caught fire behind him where one of the papers had blown off. There was smoke everywhere.”

He bent his head down suddenly, shaking it from side to side. For a long minute he said nothing.

“What happened?”

It was the first question I’d asked. I wasn’t supposed to ask questions. But he turned and looked at me, and his eyes were hollow with pain, so hurt that he didn’t even care.

“I didn’t save him,” Jake said.

“Your dad?”

“No. My brother. I— I ran to my mother’s room but she wasn’t there, and I didn’t see my brother anywhere. I thought I heard her voice calling but I must have imagined it because I didn’t see her anywhere. I’d left the door to his office open and the smoke was billowing out of the door too fast and I couldn’t see anything. So I ran away. I ran down the stairs and let him die. I let them all die.”

My mouth dropped open. Jake looked up at me, and there were no tears on his face but his eyes were burning with hurt.

He turned back to the mirror and looked at himself, but I knew that he was looking at his dad.