“No.”
“But if I turn it over to the press . . .”
“Then I probably will be seen by the world as a rapist unless I challenge the affidavit. Which I won’t.”
“So it’s true.”
“No, it’s not true.”
Kyle just stared at the man. Nothing was making sense. “If it’s not true, I don’t understand why you wouldn’t contest it.”
“Let me ask you something, Kyle. Was your life ever planned out for you? Did you have dreams that you were supposed to fulfill, even though they weren’t your dreams?”
“My mom wasn’t the type to plan anyone’s life, even her own, and my father wasn’t around.”
“Then you were lucky.”
“Screw you. I didn’t have a father because of you.”
“Because of me?”
“That’s what I said.”
“I think you’re gravely mistaken. But what you did have, Kyle, was a clean slate. A chance to invent yourself. I never had that. You know what I always had? A future. Italicized and with a capital F. My Future. It was a beast that consumed everything. Every school I went to, every course I took, every girl I dated and job I accepted was only fodder to be fed to the beast. No youthful folly allowed, no mistakes. ‘Think of your Future,’ I was told over and again. ‘Consider your Future.’ And now I’m in the middle of it all, with the brightest part yet to come, and it doesn’t seem so damn capital anymore.”
“You want me to be sympathetic, is that it? You want me to feel pity for the poor rich senator?”
“No. I want you to be a little grateful for what you did have. And I want you to show at least a little respect.”
“Go to hell.”
“Yeah, well, it’s happening sooner rather than later. You asked for this meeting, and now here I am. Tell me, Kyle, what were you going to ask for?”
Kyle looked carefully at the man across from him and saw something in his eyes. Concern? For Kyle? Son of a bitch must be a hell of a politician, because Kyle almost believed it.
“I was going to . . . you know . . . I was going to trade it for . . .”
“Money?”
Kyle nodded, and at that moment—even sitting across from this man who he was certain only a few moments before was a rapist and a murderer, and even believing that it was all just a ruse on his part—at t hat moment he felt ashamed. A ll t he more so when t he senator laughed. But it wasn’t a mocking laugh. It was gentle, and almost appreciative.
“You can’t even spit the word out of your mouth,” he said. “Money’s not what you want, son. And you have no idea of the price you’d end up paying. Though the affidavit isn’t true, I paid to keep it quiet twice already, paid to stop it from infecting my glorious future. And I’ve regretted both acts ever since. I’m sorry, but I’m not paying again.”
“No money?”
“Nope. Sorry.”
“If it wasn’t true, why did you pay before?”
“Because I had my future to think about. Lies always stick around longer than the truth. But I’m sick of my future, sick of the price I’ve paid for it, so I’m going to think about yours. What do you want to do with your life?”
“I don’t know.”
“Isn’t it time to figure it out?”
“God, I’m getting it now from an asshole like you.”
“If I let you turn yourself into a blackmailer, that’s exactly what I would be,” said the senator. “I did that once, I won’t do it again. I’m going to tell you a story, Kyle. About an arrogant little prick and a sweet girl who loved him and that file of yours. I’m going to tell you because I’ve been wanting to tell someone for years. And I’m going to tell you because it involves your father, and I think you have the right to know.”
CHAPTER 46
ONE OF MY GREAT-GRANDFATHERS was a crony of Morgan’s,” said
Francis Truscott IV. “Another played golf with Rockefeller.” “Bully for you,” said Kyle.
“I’m not bragging here, Kyle, I’m explaining. The Truscotts were a
family of grand ambitions. My father could never live up to them, and eventually they broke him. He had once had the grandest of Truscott dreams. He was going to be a titan of industry, a poker champion, a pilot, the president, something big, something great, maybe even a race-car driver. While still a young man, he disappeared into the West to make his own way. But in his forties he returned to his dour family, with nothing to show for his time away except for a raging alcoholism and a pregnant wife. But his megalomania wasn’t completely burned out of him by his failures, he transferred all his thwarted hopes onto his only child. Me.
“How did you handle the pressure?”
“With a purposeful nonchalance. I was always the star of my sports teams, I was the class president. My grades were only adequate, but I had a confident manner and the Truscott name. By my senior year at Haverford Prep, I was already accepted into Yale. Let me tell you something, Kyle, no one feels more atop the world than a high-school kid on his way to Yale. There were girls, parties, trips to Cabo. Life was brilliant, and my future, the one that had been lined up for me since birth, was well on track.
“But this is a love story, first and foremost, and I found it at a homeless shelter, on Christmas Eve, where, at my mother’s shrewd request, I was helping serve dinner to the city’s least fortunate. It was something for the résumé, something to polish my image and show I could give as good as I got. I had started it two years before I applied to Yale, had featured the experience in my application essay, and I continued after my acceptance only because my mother convinced me that to stop would appear churlish. It was as I was dishing out the mashed potatoes that I noticed the girl beside me pouring the gravy.
“Blond hair, blue eyes, a slim figure, all standard enough as far as I was concerned. But there was a sweetness there, too, and an innocence, two traits sorely lacking in the girls I dated. I almost believed that she was at the shelter because she wanted to do good for others, not for herself. The idea was so foreign to a Truscott as to be revolutionary.
“That was Colleen O’Malley.
“I didn’t think she would be much of a challenge, and truthfully, she wasn’t. She was swept away by my charm, my ease, maybe even my money, as I arrogantly expected she would be. But it wasn’t long before I was swept away, too. It was her unaffected goodness, her purity of intention, the way she stared at me with so much love. Looking into Colleen O’Malley’s eyes was like peering out of a tunnel and catching a glimpse of transcendent sunlight in an otherwise dark, monochromatic world.
“We dated in secret—neither of our sets of parents would have approved, she was poor, and I wasn’t Catholic—and we fell in love in secret, and we made love in secret. But sex with Colleen wasn’t about getting something, a piece or an advantage or a prestigious date for Saturday night, it was about giving, not just pleasure but the whole of ourselves, one to the other, together. One heart, one breath, our souls twining together like the braided candles stuck in the silver holders in the dining room at our estate, the ones that burn down so prettily until they are mere sputtering heaps of blackened wax. Like the pair that was lit one evening when I was summoned to that very dining room by my mother.