Ah, yes. The breakdown of moral society due to the failings of the public school system. All of which I was apparently personally responsible for. It was one of my dad’s favorite topics, and I didn’t even have to listen, once he got rolling.
I knew all the familiar beats. Kids these days had no respect. Spare the rod and spoil the child. America’s schools were nothing but temples to atheism and sin.
“On top of which,” my dad finished, his voice as loud as though he were standing in his pulpit and not sitting in front of a plate of mashed potatoes, “that park won’t even be there two months from now. I met with Scott Nash this week and he assured me that the land will be developed. You’d be better off teaching your students the value of putting land to productive use than this tree-hugging nonsense.”
I wasn’t even sure where to start with that, so I picked the lowest hanging fruit. Scott Nash might be a new council member, but he wasn’t the whole council, and rich though his family was, they didn’t control the whole island.
“The council hasn’t voted yet,” I pointed out. “There’s still plenty of time to change people’s minds. And we’ve been making great progress with our door-to-door efforts on the petition.”
“I don’t know why you insist on aligning yourself with losing interests and the wrong side of every issue. Are you determined to prove yourself a failure in every respect?”
“I don’t think it’s the wrong side to say that our natural resources, and the nesting area of an endangered species, ought to be preserved,” I protested, doing my best to ignore the dig.
“Endangered species.” My dad snorted. “There are plenty of other places they can nest. Are you really arguing that a couple of turtles are more important than the needs of this community?”
“There actually aren’t, though. Places where they can nest, I mean. Anyway, aren’t sea turtles God’s creatures, too?”
Those were fighting words. I regretted them as soon as they came out of my mouth. My father hated being contradicted, and he especially hated when it was suggested that his interpretation of the bible wasn’t the only interpretation.
But dammit, what was the point of having moved out of their house, of having cut ties with my parents as much as possible, if I didn’t stand up to them in the ways I could. Yes, I had to be careful not to push too hard. But sometimes I thought I’d choke on all the careful I was forced to swallow.
“God gave man dominion over the earth.” My dad banged his fist on the table for emphasis. “He commanded us to be fruitful and multiply, to use the earth for our needs.”
“But is that really what the island needs? More condos that no one here can afford? All they’re going to do is make life on Summersea even more precarious for the working class.”
“The working class.” The derision in my father’s voice was as slick as the butter melting on his potatoes. “Trouble-makers and malcontents. If development pushes them off the island, that’s a good thing.”
Evidently, my dad had forgotten that not that long ago, we’d been working class. His congregation might be one of the largest and richest on the island now, but I remembered the way we’d pinched pennies as a kid. I remembered when my dad lectured about the virtues of frugality, instead of those of wealth.
I wanted to blame families like the Nashes, who’d joined the church and started throwing their money around, for pushing the congregation in a more conservative direction, but the truth was, my dad had hardly needed the push.
“If those are the only people signing your petition,” my dad continued, “you can bet that won’t take you too far.”
“Actually,” I said, rising to the bait even though I knew I shouldn’t, “they’re not. Eleanor Churchill is co-chair of the committee working to save the park, and she’s been doing lots of work among her social circle.” I smiled innocently. “Perhaps you hadn’t heard.”
Eleanor Churchill was a member of my dad’s church, and to be honest, I’d been shocked when she’d joined the committee to preserve McIntyre Beach. Demanded to be a part of it, actually. Demanding things was more or less Eleanor’s default mode of interacting with the world.
Still, Tom had been more than happy to have her help, and I was too, even if things between Eleanor and me were a little…complicated.
In addition to being a longstanding member of my father’s church, a fixture in the social scene of Summersea’s monied class, and even an occasional volunteer at Adair Elementary, Eleanor Churchill was Connor’s grandmother. Estranged grandmother. Which only made it weirder that she’d always been nice to me.
Especially because unlike everyone else on the island—unlike even my own family—Eleanor knew I wasn’t straight. And she also knew there was something between me and Connor.
Well, that there had been something between us. There was nothing now, given that I hadn’t talked to Connor in ten years. Well, ten years, nine months, and seventeen days, because even on the times he had come back to Summersea, he’d avoided me like I carried an infectious disease.
But she’d known about us. And yet, where she’d refused to have anything to do with her own grandsons, she’d always been strangely kind to me. I felt guilty about that. But for a long time, I’d been desperate for any scrap of kindness I could find, and I’d never had the courage to ask her why she’d bestowed it on me.
My dad’s eyes went dark at the mention of Eleanor and he picked up his knife, making little stabbing motions in the air to punctuate his words.
“Eleanor Churchill is confused. Even good women can be led astray. Hardly surprising. The weaker sex, after all, and she just lost her husband. Without a man’s hand to guide her, it’s no wonder she’s lost.”
“She didn’t seem lost when she was organizing that Save the Park tea last week. She’s pretty clear about what she wants.”
“She doesn’t know what she wants. She just thinks she does.”
“Don’t you think that’s a little condescending?”
“While you’re under my roof, you won’t talk back to me like that,” my dad snapped. “I won’t have you filling your sister’s brain with unhealthy ideas.”
“Thinking for yourself isn’t an unhe—”
“Unless you’d like to leave.” My dad’s smile could be as threatening as his fists, when he wanted it to be. “You’re more than welcome to do that.”
Sweat broke out on my face, and my stomach clenched. All this time, and I still couldn’t control my response to that tone of voice, to that glint in my dad’s eye. To that thrust of his jaw that said I’d pushed him too far, and now I was going to pay.
As a kid, I’d tried to keep a list of the topics that set my dad off, anything I might do or say that could send his hands flying towards me. But no matter how careful I was, no matter how hard I tried to be the perfect son, I could never manage it.
It was almost like the effort my dad spent in keeping up a smooth, controlled facade with the rest of the world required he find an outlet for all the anger he was hiding. And God knew he cared about that image. Stern but loving father figure, family man, and pastor. He cared more about that image than he did about us.