Page 112 of Taking Turns

“Five,” he says. “As soon as they realized I was damaged. Too damaged to take out in public. Too damaged to show off at parties.”

“That really sucks.” I sigh.

“No,” Smith says, shaking his head. “No. It was the perfect answer for me. I was raised by a speech pathologist named Claudia. Claudia Kramer. She was an amazing mother. Like, perfect, you know? She baked cookies and made costumes for Halloween. She didn’t work, didn’t have to. My parents paid her well over a hundred grand a year to take care of me. Help me talk, help me adjust. We lived in this amazing little house up in the mountains near Aspen. I didn’t go to school, I had private tutors. I had the best fucking childhood, Chella. All because my parents threw me away.”

I look away, sadder now than when I first got in this tub.

“My parents still pretended they were my parents, but by the time I was… maybe ten or eleven… I was Smith Kramer in my head. I was very smart, no matter how bad my language skills were. I took the GED at sixteen and my mom, Claudia, she helped me take courses at a local college. I didn’t have much to do up there in the middle of nowhere, so I learned things. I got smarter. But my parents were old by that time. Mr. Baldwin was in his late sixties and Mrs. Baldwin wasn’t far behind.”

“How did you get so rich?” I ask. “If your parents didn’t… bond with you?”

He shrugs. “They had one heir. Me. For better or worse, I was their biological child. So I got it all. Every fucking penny of it. Over sixty billion dollars, Chella.”

“Fuck, Smith. I didn’t know anybody had that kind of money.”

“I lost some of it in taxes. Which was fine, even before I realized there’s no way to lose that kind of money. It grows on its own, Chella. It’s so big, it just grows. And the day it hit me that I’d never run out, no matter how much I spent or how much I lost through carelessness, it made feel sick inside.”

“So,” I whisper, “you decided to give it away.”

He nods. “And like I told your father, it’s not as easy as it sounds. That’s what I do all day. I don’t even think I’ve told this story to Bric or Quin. I don’t think they even know what I do all day. They know I give everything away. They know I only take donations and refuse to buy myself things. That’s why Bric lets me live at the Club.”

“You want to know my secrets,” I say in a low voice as I wiggle my toes under the water and stare at the bubbles. “You’re telling me this so I’ll tell you mine.”

“I want you to know I’m OK.”

I look up at him again.

“I’m fine. They hurt me. What they did, how they reacted, it hurt me, Chella. But I had love. I had everything I ever needed and more. I was lucky. I want you to know I realize that.”

I press my lips together as the tears heat up my eyes.

“And I’d like to know if you were loved too. Whatever that secret is, Chella, I don’t care about it. I just need to know if you were loved. If you feel lucky now that it’s over.”

I start sniffling as I shake my head. “I wasn’t loved, Smith. I was used. And even though I understand that his rejection tonight, his repudiation, was for the best—for all of us—I don’t feel lucky. At all.”

I pull the plug and stand up. Smith hands me an oversized fluffy white towel and watches as I wrap it around my body. He hands me another one to put around my wet hair. And then he follows me out of the bathroom, retreats to stand in the bedroom doorway, and watches as I dry off and get dressed in a t-shirt and shorts.

“Where did you go, Chella?” he finally asks when I’m pulling back the covers of my bed, ready for sleep. “Just tell me that. Where did you go when they made you disappear?”

I turn the lights out and climb in bed. Smith is backlit from the light filtering in from downstairs. Just a black shadow surrounded by white.

“I was with my mother,” I say. “She was crazy. Mentally ill in a way I still don’t understand. She was consumed by religion. We lived in… church places. Where the faithful meet for spiritual retreats.”

“Like a cult?” Smith asks, confused.

And yeah, I guess if I had to put a word on it, I’d call it that. But I say, “No, not really. It was all legitimate. They were all affiliated with real organizations.”

“Hmmm,” is all he has to say about that. “Where was your father for all this?”

“DC,” I say. “He let her do whatever she wanted. He doesn’t believe in divorce. And he wasn’t willing to risk his career to make things right. He felt it was… a good compromise. For me.”

“What’s that mean? I don’t understand that last part,” Smith says.

“No,” I say. “Me either.” I turn over in bed, my back to him now. “Goodnight, Smith. Thanks for playing along tonight. I appreciate it.”

“Goodnight, Chella,” he says, after about a minute of silence. And then he pulls my door closed, blocking out the light. Leaving me alone with the dark with my shame.

That’s all I have left now, right?