Plans
PrologueYour soft face and red lips.
You make my veins pulse.
Close is not what I'd call us.
I'm a stranger, making a useless sacrifice.
The last time you held me
I forced my laughing fit a little longer
For the feel of your hands around my back
And the firm sweet of your body
My facade slips.
It is so ugly the way I want you.
Your loveliness and heat and grace, a tow that pulls me under
We fit; I am your “T”, a hook and clasp, a secret and the truth, a conqueror and conquered,
There is no beauty in my surrender.
Chapter 1
Taylor was trying not to freak out. She sat on the darkened stairwell in her best friend Emma's house with Brian and hoped she wouldn't fuck this up. Here she was, nearly 18, and no one had ever even really hooked up with her. She was a eunuch by her friends’ standards. A constant punch line for jokes about sexual frustration and masturbation among her besties. If they only knew. Brian was the most she'd ever felt for a guy, ever. He was wickedly funny, and flirted shamelessly. He had great long-bang surfer-boy hair that the most of the herd wouldn't be wearing for at least another 10 months. Her musings were stopped short by a hand tugging gently on a lock of her hair that hung over her shoulder.
"Earth to T. Come in T." Brian joked. She smiled sweetly and nudged her shoulder into his. He leaned back into her nudge and remained, fractionally closer. "And now would be the time to get down to business", she thought to herself. She may have been inexperienced in sexual matters, but Taylor was very socially perceptive. It served her well. She didn’t miss the darkening, knowing look in his eyes. Brian was a bit of a slut. But it went along with the territory -- someone as self assured and as good looking as him. Taylor knew the street cred he'd gain by breaking her in, and in exchange she'd gain a credibility to serve her own purposes.
"Baby girl" he softly whispered, "I'm going to kiss you now." Her eyes fluttered closed at this. She felt a brush across her lips. Her gut froze. Brian pulled back only for a second before capturing her lips in a fuller kiss. She was shutting down. He put his hands on either side of her jaw and leaned her back against the stair wall. She was unyielding. He smelled like cedar and smoke. His right hand now massaged her shoulder, while his left ghosted down to her hip, pressing on the strip of bare skin between her short scoop necked top and low boyfriend jeans.
You've been here before she told herself, trying to get on top of the anxiety. Its OK. You CAN DO this.
Crazily, Brian’s smell reminded her of the last camping trip she took with her father and Emma and Allison to the Catskills. Her father, an architect, loved to be outdoors. He said it inspired him to build. Nature is the finest architect of all and so on. They had camped on a treeless stone ledge near the top of a mountain that perched over the forest. Without light pollution, the night closed in on them. She sat under a blanket crushed up between her two friends at the fire, her father telling a ghost story that actually scared them silly. Emma had wrapped her arm around her waist and Allison had an arm wrapped around her shoulder.
The warmth she felt then was helping her now. It was the same feel on her waist that Brian was stroking, which distracted her from the fact that his other hand traced the underside of her breast. She dimly recognized he was talking to her while kissing her neck. "Just feel. Don't think." he chanted. And so she concentrated on those hands. Those soft, sure hands. The reassuring hands. She imagined them disembodied, hands only. They went where they pleased. She buried her face in his longish hair and breathed in his scent and tried not to think. Then it was over. A couple of drunken boys came up the stairs and bellowed about twittering pictures of them. Brian removed his hand from her jeans and smiled a shit-eating grin. He would relish that, Taylor thought. But Brian wasn't stupid. And he knew what a rare opportunity he just had and probably hoped for more. But there would be no more. The objective was met. Her friends would be off her back after this, satisfied that they met their goal of fixing up their friend. He helped her up and walked her back down the stairs.
Chapter 2
Taylor awoke with a start on Sunday just after 7, sweaty. She'd been waking up a lot that way these days, dripping and with an aching jaw. She sat up and looked at the mirror. As always, everything just sort of fell together. Her light brown hair splayed around her shoulders, soft and bouncy, what Emma called “supermodel hair”. Her skin, probably her greatest asset, was a peerless olive tone. She was blessed with what adults called a "presence". By now Taylor knew that others thought she glided through the things that made many of her peers quake and stumble: high school social gaffes, AP classes, the unforgiving rules of cliques, homecoming court, state finals at volleyball, Associated Student Body speeches, accolades for her writings in the school magazine. A framed signing board hung to her left of the mirror that she got at the end of leadership camp this past fall. Instead of signatures, the class had to write in adjectives to describe her: smooth, focused, smart, honest, gracious, compelling, regal, pretty, talented, elegant, witty, steely, confident.
"And gay." She said out loud to the empty room. "Don't forget that little tidbit."
Oh, but last night. A pit blossomed in her belly. It was a trial. To acquiesce in such a primal way, a conviction. As if it wasn't hard enough to simply deny her most basic instinct. Taylor shifted her gaze back to her mirror to survey herself in the midst of these terrifying thoughts. No outward change. Cool as a cucumber.
“No, it just wouldn’t do now, in the final act, to reveal that this whole time you’ve had on a cutaway suit.” She mumbled to her image in the mirror. “But not for much longer.”
The last sentence, once a soft idea in her mind over the past 4 years, had morphed into a thundering howl ever she got early acceptance into Berkeley. The Plan was soon going to Happen. Soon she would start a new life at a college across the country where none of her class would likely go. She couldn’t escape everything about her life, this she knew, but she felt somehow by giving herself a firm deadline to reveal herself in this new way in a new setting was like starting over, under circumstances that she would be able to weather. She grabbed her remote control to her iPod dock and the sounds of her current favorite song, Wishing Well by The Airborne Toxic Event filled her room.
..those soft little secrets
That you tell, that you tell
To yourself, when you think
No one's listening to, well…
Chapter 3
Andrew Ruston grunted through his third set of chin-ups by 7:40 am. It never got easier. The physical aspect of it was punishing. Emotionally it was exhilarating. He liked exercising control of his faculties, in all ways, for it gave him the illusion that he was self-determined. That he could direct how may be seen in the world. Andrew took a shower and looked down his chest. It defied the typical stature of a well-middle-aged father and cut a dashing figure. A figure that lent him a certain gravitas that he enjoyed displaying. He had to work hard for it, but it was the dogged effort that assured him that he and he alone was master of his domain. And this made him feel like more the man he wanted to be.
The sensation was not dissimilar to creating a building. For him, designing and building was more than just a matter of professional pride and good business. No, at a minimum he felt as if he were displaying himself to the world each time he drew up new plans. Like other artists, Andrew saw himself in his creations, his buildings. But, if he were being perfectly honest, his buildings were a subtly constructed testament to him. He knew if he admitted this out loud it would sound selfish. His wife, for example, would criticize him whenever he tried to express it. But he couldn’t help but feel that it was what he deserved. He had, after all, created it.
His wife. Drea would be home from her business trip tomorrow. Her absence would be missed. It used to be that this thought was chased by a pang of guilt. In recent months though, he’d fully inhabited the space left by her frequent travels. He’d spread himself all over the bed. He’d order porn on the Internet. He’d shove aside her paperwork in the office. He’d even taken to staying out late with friends, enjoying drinks and shooting pool after a leisurely dinner. Andrew felt so good with occupying the full physical and emotional space that Drea and he otherwise shared that when Drea reappeared it was nearly a shock to his system. And it left him feeling annoyed and inconvenienced. In this way she had become an interloper in her husband’s life.
He flossed his teeth. His wife was still a very lovely woman. And he admired her for the things she had accomplished. But he couldn’t deny the lightness he felt when she wasn’t around. It was as if, over the years, Drea had formed silent expectations of him that he had never been able to fully define or meet. Back when he used to ask, she refused to acknowledge what he could have meant. Over the years he’d stewed, and flirted with feeling unsure and frustrated. As he walked downstairs toward the kitchen his eyes rested on the portrait of his family on the wall. His eyes settled on Taylor. His lips pursed in a little smile. His remarkable daughter. Andrew felt like he was looking at the female version of himself. She had been accepted to Berkeley, his alma mater, and was going to study urban planning and design. She had a fine mind, an innate grace, and she favored him. Andrew was not a suffocating parent by any means, but part of the pleasure of watching Taylor grow up was knowing that he was inextricably attached to, and responsible for, her rising star. He entered the room and hit with the earthy smell of La Colombe coffee.
“Morning T, aren’t you a wonderful girl for making us coffee.”
“Hey Dad, I certainly am.” She winked. “Are we still going to Felt Gardens today?”
Felt Gardens was Ruston Artura, Inc.’s latest project; they rarely did residential projects anymore, but this was an exception, and Andrew had spent the last 8 months working tirelessly on it.
“Actually, Taylor, I got a voicemail from Carlo this morning and he’d said that there was a delay in the delivery from the quarry and we have to check out a secondary source for stone.” Carlo was the Artura of Ruston Artura, and a defacto family member. He was her Dad’s roommate in college. He was married once, just after college, to a woman he’d met in the Peace Corps, but she died three years later from leukemia. He’d never remarried.
“Oh. Ah. I could... come along, right?” Taylor suddenly felt insecure inviting herself along to her dad’s work site.
“Sure, sure. You could come along with but I don’t know when I’ll be getting over to the site. And Carlo and I have to go over some plans before our meeting with Hersch Reinfelt. Will you be okay on your own today?”
“I can’t wait to see it again, Dad. But, sure, I can hang out with Emma later after she’s done with rehearsal or something.”
“Well then, it sounds like you have a little time on your hands…maybe time enough to finally crack open Ayn Rand?” Andrew had given Taylor a copy of The Fountainhead two weeks ago for her birthday, along with an iphone, when he also bought one for himself. As far as he could tell, she hadn’t even opened the book. The iphone, however, usually needed to be surgically removed from her. He understood, but was eager to have her read the book that he considered a personal manifesto of sorts and encouraged his adulation of the field of architecture as well.
Taylor scrunched her lips together in a tight grin and shook her head yes.
“What will you do when I’m no longer here to direct my traffic?”
“That won’t be a problem.”
“Oh no? You planning to stuff in the loads of advice, impromptu architectural lectures, and general goading into one teensy little winter break? That won’t be nearly enough time for you.” She was teasing him now.
He smiled. “That’s what the iphone is for.” He pulled his iphone from his pocket, waved it and slipped it back in. “See, T, I’ll have you covered, even from 2,500 miles away.” He grabbed his to-go cup. “See you around 6?”
“No, Dad, what you mean is, you got YOU covered.” Taylor couldn’t resist the last word. “And yes. Wait – no. Emma, Ruby, Allison, and all the rest of them…we had plans to go to California Pizza Kitchen and over to Emma’s to watch True Blood.”
Taylor, unlike most girls her age, never really watched television. Just another way she was like Andrew. Watching a show was an ongoing commitment, and often a waste. It was unlike his daughter to be so into a program, and Andrew knew it was quite adult. “AHH. Vampires.”
“Not just vampires, Dad. Social commentary –“
"-of gore, and explicit sex, and violence…”
“Well, yeah, it IS vampires after all, but the creators use the treatment of vampires as a metaphor for other marginalized segments of society.”
Andrew laughed. “Have you seen their cover of Rolling Stone? There are 3 actors wearing only blood spatters and each other. Social commentary indeed.”
“No Dad, really, it’s a metaphor, for example, on the treatment of gays in our society…how they are seen as evil, unnatural, and shunned by legal and religious institutions. They even make a play on a phrase - “God hates Fangs.’”
Andrew grew still and surveyed his daughter. After moment, he said “Touche’, T. I hope you enjoy your social commentary.” He smiled. But his eyes kept a steady gaze.
Chapter 4
Andrew and Carlo met at their firm to carpool over to Galverens Quarry. The drive was about an hour and Carlo was both driving and talking on his phone with their site manager about a renovation of a small office building. Andrew idly took his own phone out. He was still largely ignorant of most of the features. He turned it on and selected the notepad to review his notes from the last meeting with the Galverens people. He couldn’t find the file, and checked the number on the phone. Taylor’s. He’d taken it by mistake. Well, it didn’t pose much of a problem for him, but it would be inconvenient for her. He tried to call his phone. No answer. Then he tried home. A busy signal. He’d forgotten that the cable company was coming back tomorrow to fix the phone and cable trouble they’d been having.
He looked back at the menu. It had one file, created just 4 days ago. His finger hovered over it. Andrew wasn’t a nosy parent. He fantasized for a second about its contents. The start of a new article for the school, notes from a class, a list of boys she liked. Almost involuntarily his finger hit the file name and he began to read. The next thing that happened was that his face got extremely hot. The prickly feeling was from the blood rush. Up from his chest a sound burbled. Like a large, angry bird.
For Emma:
Your soft face and red lips.
You make my veins pulse…..
Chapter 5
Andrew was still not feeling well after the meeting and told Carlo he planned to take it easy for the afternoon and meet him back at the office later. Carlo dropped him off at their office to pick up his car and continue on to Felt Gardens. Andrew stood in the foyer of the 12th Floor. It had that new construction smell of carpet, wood and paint. He and Carlo decided, after 16 years in business together, to fully renovate their space in a manner that expressed the ideals of Ruston Artura, Inc.. Gone were many interior walls, replaced by panes of stained or beveled glass, that provided both transparency and privacy. Gone were the stodgy, boxy bankers’ desks in which its workers sat enclosed as if in a half-tomb. In their place were large, modular custom-made architect drawing boards with custom cutouts for office supplies that would ordinarily be hidden in a drawer. Wireless laptops replaced desktop computers. Files cabinets were adorned with chalkboards and custom murals of a local artist. Large feathery green plants were artfully placed, standing like gentle soldiers. In sum, the space presented the idea that one could see a vista - everywhere at once – but it took a second to realize that for all the view, you really could see nothing in particular. It played on what constituted hidden and visible.
Andrew was at his desk. He could not stop sweating and kept having the feeling of déjà’ vu. He opened his daughter’s poem and read it again. For Emma. Did she return T’s feelings? Likely not. Likely, he mused, as he scanned through the photos of them embracing each other with smiles, stacking themselves in a human pyramid with their friends, that Emma had no idea. Why, Emma just said last week how Taylor needed a date to Prom and they wanted to fix her up with some guy. Ryan someone. Taylor seemed good-natured about it, but not eager. In fact, Taylor was never eager about boys. But being an only child, there was little to compare it against. He just knew he had one of the good ones. One of the easy ones. She was going to have a good life, of this he had felt certain. For the second time that day sound threatened to erupt. His hand covered his mouth, which was now wide as his jaw would allow. He sat there tightly, flexing every throat and face muscle, saliva leaking onto his fingers. A silent howl.
Chapter 6
Andrew arrived home at 2pm to an empty house. He went into Taylor’s room and looked around. Her large purse was on her bed. The “dump truck”, she called it. It was not unusual for her to go out without it on the weekend. It just had too much shit in it to haul around. He looked through it. His phone was not in there. She may have it, he reasoned. He slipped hers into the bottom of her purse, underneath a purple compact, a pair of sunglasses, a paperback book and a Ziploc baggie half full of gummi bears. Just then, he heard a faint ring. He followed it into the workout room. His iphone. Taylor. He rotated his neck and picked it up.
“Hey.”
“Hey yourself. I called you earlier.”
“Oh, yeah, I’ve been tied up. I tried to call you too. Your phone--“
"--I forgot it, yeah. Believe it or not, I must’ve misplaced it because I haven’t seen it since Friday afternoon. And the impossible becomes possible, right? But I was already in the car and headed halfway to Emma’s. Did you see it around?”
Andrew hesitated.
“No. Want me to call it?”
“No, not right now. I was just calling to see if you’d heard from Mom, I forgot she was going to call to let us know if she’s still on the same flight tomorrow.”
“Oh, no, but I will call her, T. You just have fun tonight and I’ll see you around 11.”
“Yep. Bye Dad.”
Andrew’s eyes focused on wall next to Taylor’s mirror. There was a list of adjectives classmates had written in about his daughter that she got at some camp this past year….steely, confident, honest… He grabbed her iphone again, pulled up the poem, and took it to his office.
Chapter 7
Emma Janson had just come home from a long rehearsal for Alice in Wonderland. Her best friend Taylor had sat in for about two hours, busily writing and sketching in her notebook as usual. She then left to go pick up some jeans she’d had altered downtown and was headed back to Emma’s house ahead of their other friends. Emma unlocked the front door. There was a white envelope with her full name printed on it on the threshold. No stamp. Weird. She came into an empty house – her parents were out of town for the day – and sat on the bottom step of the stairs in the foyer. She ripped off the corner and pulled out the paper. Someone had written a…poem to her? It was typed. It was, rather sweet, and as she read, she could see that someone had a case of the nerves.
It is so ugly the way I want you.
Your loveliness and heat and grace, a tow that pulls me under
We fit, I am your “T”, a hook and clasp, a secret and the truth, a conqueror and conquered,
There is no beauty in my surrender.
I am your T?
T??
Her mind rejected the association. She tried to think out who could be screwing with her like this. Her body begged to differ… a bundle of nerves tightened her chest. She rubbed her lips. Why would somebody do this? Is T Taylor? Was it some sick frame up? She was a very popular girl. Nobody fucks with her and her friends like this, goddammit,
“Em?”
Taylor was standing there in the foyer. How long has she been standing there?
“T – Taylor.”
“What’s up? You look weird.”
Wordlessly, Emma just held the paper in her hands. Her eyes questioned.
“What's that? What –“ Taylor stopped.
She sees. Emma thought. She watched a flicker of fear cross Taylor’s face. She recognizes it.
Chapter 8
Taylor came home that night at 11pm to a quiet house. There was no light under her Dad’s bedroom door. She’d been hanging around the park near her house, finishing the book her Dad gave her to stave off the volcano of panic that threatened every time her thoughts drifted. She had found it hard not to be shocked when she saw the first few lines of the poem that Emma was holding before she folded the page. She tried to play it off, but she felt naked and raw and she did a poor job. Emma tried to play it off too, but she acted nervous and flighty. Taylor begged out of dinner saying she felt ill.
She undressed fully and lay down on her bed and stared up at the ceiling. Someone was walking around with her iphone, and what’s more, that someone knew who she was, knew who Emma was. She hadn’t had her phone since Friday before the party. Someone had ruined her Plan. She searched her feelings: this disturbance of her timetable for coming out to the world felt catastrophic. She hated being caught so unaware, especially after the way she’d poured herself into this life she had crafted. She pressed her fingers over her eyelids. Now, harder. She wondered if her eyeballs could erupt inside their sockets. Patterns, colors and shapes appeared beneath the pressure, constantly changing and shifting. It was the last thing she noticed.
Chapter 9
Taylor drove up to the airport at 4pm on Monday to collect her Mom. She had begged off school telling her Dad she felt sick. He had not questioned it. She’d found her phone buried at the bottom of her dump truck. The battery was dead. She plugged it in and pulled up For Emma. She stared it while she ate the rest of her gummi bears. Why in the fuck had she named it? Then she threw them up.
Drea got into the car and kissed her daughter’s head.
“You look awful.”
“Gee thanks. Don’t I know it.”
“Are you sick?”
“Sorta. Not sick enough to pick you up.”
“And your father? Couldn’t he come?”
“No, he’s working late tonight on a proposal for the stadium project. He said not to wait up for him.”
Drea was silent.
“Mom?”
“Do you think, just possibly I could move to California at the beginning of summer instead of the end? There’s an architectural seminar the AIA is sponsoring that runs nearly two months. I could work and settle in and…”
“What does your father say?”
“He doesn’t know, but you know him, he’d probably want to come with me.”
Drea smiled.
“You know, your Dad and I passed a 20 year milestone on Sunday.”
“Oh Mom! Congratulations! I am sorry, I didn’t realize..”
“Oh, sweetheart, its totally okay. Your father didn’t either. For god’s sake, I called him over and over on Sunday but I never reached him.”
“Dad was really busy on Sunday, Mom, I couldn’t even go to Felt Gardens with him.”
“Well, yes. And he’d told me that he had your phone with him all day Sunday because he’d picked it up by mistake. So of course he’d missed my calls.”
Chapter 10
Taylor stood silent outside of her Dad’s office at 6:45 pm and watched Andrew and Carlo sitting side-by-side with some architectural plans. Her view was perforated into segments: the new glass wall alternated with 6 inch bands of clear glass, slightly smaller bands of beveled glass, and then even smaller bands of a rich walnut wood. That left visible their foreheads and hair, their mid-chest, the thin band of the wood of the new architectural drawing board desk, and their knees…what was that? She had been distracted by a shiny glint. And again. Oh. It was just the sun behind them catching her Dad’s wedding band on his hand.
Which…
Which…appeared to be stroking Carlo’s thigh.
The next thing she felt was a hot flush to her face. The accompanying prickly feeling was the rush of blood. She looked away. Not possible. Her father’s hand continued its ministrations. Her eyes darted up to their foreheads. She couldn’t swear it, but it they seemed closer together. Tilted into each other. Her breath quickened. She wanted to run. But instead she opened the door.
Carlo and Andrew both looked up in curiosity when Taylor entered, but their faces lacked surprise or fear. They seem to have forgotten these new desks don’t afford privacy the way that their old desks had, Taylor thought. Just the same, Taylor noticed that her Dad’s hand stilled, then slowly withdrew from Carlo’s leg.
She turned her head away, her eyes full understanding.
Her gaze fixed on the elegantly engraved, large silver inscription from The Fountainhead that adorned her father’s east office wall. All the pieces of the information in the past two hours were a swirling tornado. The setting sun shone through the west windows in her father’s office and lit up the inscription each afternoon, the effect was a laser-like shine. The illumination seemed to sow everything together in her head that had been rushing around it. She saw a complete linear picture in her mind. And for once in the past 24 hours, she felt calm. It read,
"Build it as a monument to that spirit which is yours"
Words to work and live by, her father was fond of saying.
“Taylor?” Her father asked. “What are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be at picking up Mom?”
“That was a couple of hours ago. Happy anniversary by the way.”
Taylor walked over to the bookcase where her Dad's dog-eared copy of The Fountainhead lay. She picked it up.
“I hadn’t told you yet Dad, but I finished this. I wanted to surprise you. And you know what? You’re right: it is a great book. There was a lot in there that I connected with. Just like you’d said. I felt like I knew you better, too, just from reading it.” The last part was nearly a whisper.
“Taylor, honey, what’s wr”
“Don’t interrupt me.” She turned her head back in his direction. “But you know what I found interesting? You never completed this quote.” She flicked her eyes back to the words. “It should read,
‘Build it as a monument to that spirit which is yours –
and could have been mine.’
Her Dad was just staring at her with this hands clasped in front of him on the desk.
“But enough for now about your favorite read. Tell me, Dad, have you read any good poetry lately?” Taylor said this with the most sarcasm she could muster. Then she waited a beat for it to sink in.
“Maybe poetry you'd like to share?”
She heard him inhale. He was no longer looking at her but next to her, as if there was a ghost sitting at her shoulder. He seemed to be lost in what he was seeing. Taylor took this silence as confirmation. He was not stupid. The words hit their mark.
He tried again. "What do you mean? Taylor, honey. What’s happened? What's wrong?" The sentence started out in his usual timbre, but ended as a bleat.
Now it was Taylor’s turn to stare. When she spoke again, it was slow and heavy. She was, after all, carrying a load.
"I'll tell you what's wrong. YOU. YOU are ALL wrong. But not in the way that you think you are. You are wrong for selling me out. For taking my life into your hands. For taking away my choice. My freedom. "
“Oh, no. Oh Christ, no. I know what you think. Believe me, I know. I know what this must look like to you, but Taylor honey, I support you. I want you just the way you are. I just wanted to help you. Everything I do for you, I do as an act of love. I swear it. I didn't want to take away your freedom. I wanted to set you free. I didn't - "
"Shut up, just shut up. I know what you want. You didn't want me to end up like you. A closeted man whose life is a half-truth.“
His eyes glanced over to Carlo who was staring down at their plans.
Their plans, their designs, their creations. Her mind spat this thought out, taking some satisfaction in the irony of the words.
Next to Andrew, Carlo shifted as if to stand up but when he looked at Taylor he sat back down and again stared hard at the plans. A slight, tight smile graced Carlo’s lips, which made her think of the Mona Lisa she saw last summer at the Louvre with her family. A secret smile, everyone liked to say.
There are no secrets anymore, she thought, not for any of us.
Her Dad tried again, his voice soft. “Taylor. Listen. I see me in you. From the moment you were born you have been my girl. The…. struggle to keep a secret like this, I would never wish on anyone. Least of all you. You may consider what I’ve done unacceptable. I know that, but I thought, I really believe, that it would have been worse to watch you live with the kind of life that I have endured. I would not let that happen to you. You can have the life I denied myself. You can now live in a way that I never could....”
“…never could have withstood yourself?” Taylor picked her where her father had trailed off. “You forced on me what you could not do. You did it because YOU were hurting. Because YOU didn’t live the life you wanted for yourself.”
She didn’t miss the fact that the life her father “endured” for decades was one that also produced her.
She repeated, “You didn’t want me to end up like you.” She turned back around and stared at the inscription. It was now past 7pm, and no longer illuminated. She thought about her Plan, now dismantled. She thought about what Tuesday morning might bring. She thought about the man sitting across the table who was not what she had thought he was, in so many ways.
“But I won’t. I could never be so selfish. So cruel. You don’t know what I’ve gone through, to make things happen the way I wanted. I was going to start a whole new page of my life in my time, when I felt I could. I wasn’t… I wasn’t going to hide forever. I won’t ever be like you.”
She began thumbing through the tabs on the book she was still holding. She was crying.
“You’re such a hypocrite. You’re no Howard Roark!”
She tore out a page her father had tagged with a red flag. A quote was highlighted on the page. She crumpled it up and threw it at his chest, and ran out.
Andrew picked up the crumpled page and wondered if this would be the last he’d be acknowledged by his daughter. He felt sure of the long term good of his actions, still, even as his daughter was right about some of the things she’d said. His thoughts proceeded in a clinical, calculated way.
His eyes fell on the highlighted quote. In a calculation where he’d summed up what he determined to be the greatest good, he’d failed to recognize that he sacrificed an opportunity – one that he would never have again.
“A building has integrity,
just as a man and
just as seldom!
It must be true to its own idea,
have its own form,
and serve its own purpose!”
-Howard Roark
It was such an unfamiliar feeling.
