Abbey froze, her eyes fixed on him, wondering if finally he was going to open up.
He leant forward into his customary position when he was thinking something through, elbows on thighs, hands clasped in front of him with his fingers moving almost constantly. "When I was a kid – seven or eight maybe – I used to sit on my bed – and rub my hand against my face where he'd hit me – and I didn't know why he'd done it, so I started hating him. There was one time when–"
He stopped, and Abbey prompted him gently. "When what?" She held her breath, thinking that he was going to retreat and push the memories back into the inner recesses of his mind, just as he always did.
But this time he went on. "Jonathan was about six so I must have been nine – I had a hamster at the time, I called him Hannibal – and one day Jon let Hannibal out of his cage. He was chasing him round the kitchen and laughing as he tried to stand on his tail. I could see that Hannibal was terrified, so I was trying to catch him and holding out my arm to stop Jon at the same time – and then my Dad came in and yanked me back by my sweater – yanked me real hard – and I fell backwards, right on top of Hannibal. And I remember I – I just stood up and picked up the poor crushed little thing and my father said, 'That will perhaps teach you not to tease Jonathan again.' And it was so unjust, I couldn't even say anything. I just looked up at him – and I hated him. And the look must have been enough, because the punch he gave me knocked me to the floor again–"
He stopped, and Abbey put her hand on his knee. She couldn't look at him, couldn't bear to see the pain in his eyes, and had to blink a few times to try to stop the tears that had flooded to her eyes at the image he had just given her.
After a few long minutes, he went on again. "But then, as I got older – well, once I could start reasoning things out – I started to think that it must be my fault – that he got angry because I disagreed with him and argued with him. And I knew that I should try to keep my mouth shut – but I couldn't do it, even though I knew it would make him mad. There were still times when I just couldn't stop myself from saying something that he didn't like – and then I'd get the slap or the punch again. There were times too when I did it deliberately to annoy him or goad him – and I'm not very proud of myself for that – but somehow I had to show him that he couldn't shut me up by hitting me, that he couldn't stop me from having my own ideas and opinions about things. So then, when he lashed out, I guess I just told myself, 'Well, it's your own fault, you asked for it–'"
There was a silence and Abbey shook her head slowly. "You thought it was your fault – you shifted the blame on to yourself – oh Jed–"
Jed shook his head slightly. "Stanley said I'd spent my life trying to please him – but he was so wrong about that. Okay, he was right when he said it was never going to happen. Now that I know about Eddy, I can understand that. But Stanley was wrong about me spending my life trying to make him like me." He paused for a moment. "I had my own goals – and they were totally separate from him somehow, they were for myself, they weren't an effort to try and win his praise, they were far more important than that. They were part of me, not of him." He shrugged slightly. "Maybe they were part of Eddy, I don't know."
Abbey bit her lip and then drew him back again. "So did you stop hating John when you started blaming yourself?"
Jed thought for a few moments. "I guess so. My religion – my faith – told me it was wrong to hate – and especially wrong to hate my father. 'Honor your father and your mother.' I didn't like him very much – quite apart from how he treated me. He was a snob and a bigot, he thought he was right about everything and couldn't countenance anyone who disagreed with him. But he was my father – and so I forced myself to respect him – I tried, God knows how I tried. He was my father, I owed him that."
For the first time Abbey looked round at him and he turned his head to look at her too. His eyes showed all the pain of his childhood and he looked so very vulnerable that she just wanted to take him in her arms and make everything all right for him again.
"Jed, how much did your Mom know?" she asked
"What?" His face showed the switch he had to make from John to his mother. "Oh, you mean about–"
"Yes."
Jed gave a small shrug. "She didn't. He never hit me when she was there. And I never told her, I didn't want her to know."
Abbey's face creased with distress. "Jed–"
Jed held up his hands in an almost dismissive gesture. "Oh, maybe she knew that he spanked me from time to time – but all kids got spanked at that time and no-one thought anything of it. But I don't think she ever knew that – that he really lashed out sometimes." He paused for a moment. "Mary said something to me the other day–"
"What?"
"She said my Mom had told her that he was sharp or hurtful when I said or did something that reminded him of Eddy."
"So your Mom knew that?"
"Oh yeah, that happened a lot. Well, you saw it sometimes too, didn't you?"
"Yeah." Abbey nodded, remembered the times when John Bartlet had made some scathing comment to Jed about something he had said or done, even when he had reached adulthood. It had seemed so alien to her, compared to her own father's total support for and pride in everything she had done.
"Mary said something else too – that my Mom wanted him and me to get closer, that she thought that if he could get over his jealousy of Eddy, we could develop a real father-son relationship."
Abbey nodded slowly. "Now I understand," she said.
"Understand what?"
"Why she never told you about Eddy."
"But you said yourself that she was probably sworn to secrecy – and Mary confirmed that, she said that John had didn't want any reminders of Eddy."
"It was more than that, Jed. Your Mom was stronger than that, she wouldn't just have meekly agreed to keep quiet, she'd have told you when you were old enough to understand."
Jed frowned. "So why didn't she?"
"Think about it. She hoped that you and John could get closer, have a real father-son relationship. So if she'd told you about Eddy–?"
Abbey let the words hang and Jed nodded, understanding what she was saying. "Yeah, okay, it would have destroyed that hope, if I'd known about Eddy." He paused for a few moments, then went on. "But it never happened anyway – and I have to take some responsibility for that because I didn't make any real effort – even after my Mom died and he was obviously so lonely." He rubbed his hand over his face then rested his forehead against his hand. "It was after he'd gone that I started to feel guilty about that – but now – now that I know that he wasn't my real father–"
"So now, Jed – what? Now that you know he wasn't your father?"
Jed took a deep breath and exhaled slowly as he leant backwards again. "You're pushing me, Abbey – pushing me somewhere that I'm not sure I want to go."
"I think you need to go there. You're okay with Eddy now, but you do need to deal with John."
He grinned suddenly at her, looking at her under his lashes. "Hey, you're in doctor mode now – and I find that very sexy, in case you didn't already know."
Abbey rolled her eyes. "Don't you dare shut down on me now, Jed Bartlet. I'm not your psychiatrist, I'm your wife."
"And I love you." He reached for her hand and held it in both of his, then gave a small shrug. "Yeah, well, okay, there've been times these last few days when I've had to take a step back–"
"From what?"
"From reaching the point where I could say 'He wasn't my father – I don't need to respect him any more – I can start despising him, hating him for what he did to my childhood.' But it's not quite as simple as that, is it?"
"What do you mean?"
"I'm not sure. I just keep thinking that I was the reminder of Eddy – the brother who was so much smarter than he was, the brother who had died, the brother who was hero-worshipped in the family, the brother he was jealous of."
Abbey watched him as his eyes went everywhere, as if searching for an answer that somehow eluded him.
"Put your thoughts into words, Jed," she said gently.
He glanced round at her and gave her a small, almost helpless, smile. "They're all very scrambled at the moment."
"It doesn't matter."
"Okay then – but bear with me, you know I'm not very good at this." He paused for a few moments and then went on slowly, searching for the words to explain his thoughts, "He was trying to bring me up as a son – but I reminded him of Eddy – I reminded him of all his own inadequacies – of his own sense of inferiority compared to his brother. So he tried to make me feel inferior instead – almost as if I was Eddy – he was scornful and sneering about everything I did – and he lashed out when the reminder of Eddy got too big for him to handle–"
"Yes."
Another long pause. "It must have been hell for him," he said, shaking his head slowly.
Abbey's eyes widened in surprise. It was the last thing she had expected him to say. "What – what d'you mean?"
"I'm trying to imagine how I would have felt in the same situation. It must have been almost unbearable for him at times – knowing that part of my mother always belonged to Eddy, and then seeing Eddy resurrected in me."
He put his arm round her and pulled her towards him until her head was resting against his shoulder, and was silent for a few minutes. Then he spoke again. "You want me to sort out my feelings about John Bartlet? I've always thought of him as cold, stern, arrogant, unfeeling, harsh." He drew in a deep breath. "I can't respect him for what he did to me – but I can't hate him either. I can only see him now as a desperately unhappy man – and when I think of what we've had – you and me, and all the happiness we've had together and with the girls – I think – well, I think I actually feel sorry for him, Abbey."
Abbey squeezed his hand hard and bit her lip as her eyes filled again. She couldn't have blamed him for one minute if, once relieved of the need to respect John Bartlet as his father, he had felt free to despise and hate him for what had happened to himself as a child.
But that wouldn't have been Jed – the man who had learned how to love and be loved in equal measure, the man whose heart was so big that he wanted to fix the world, the man whose heart now understood and actually went out in sympathy to the step-father who had abused him, emotionally and physically.
Unconsciously she put her hand up to rest on his chest, feeling that heart's even beating and he covered it with his own hand. Then he looked round at her. "You know, when I became Governor, my biggest regret was that he hadn't lived long enough to see another Bartlet as Governor of New Hampshire. But now – well, now I can only thank God that he didn't live to see me become Governor, and even more to see me become President." He paused for a few moments. "Because that – to use maybe the most ironic metaphor I could possibly use – would have been the biggest slap across the face that I could ever have given him. It would have been the ultimate reminder of all that Eddy might have achieved, of all that he himself could never have achieved." Jed drew in a deep breath and then said quietly, "I'm so glad, so very glad – for his sake – that he never had to face that."
Abbey nodded and they sat in silence – because neither of them needed to say anything more. She relaxed as she leant again him, knowing that he had made his peace with John Bartlet…
TBC