Here is a story, as true as I can make it: things change, and people change. Here's another true story: things change, and people don't. Or people change and things don't. That has always been true, truer than true, and it always will be.
The evening of my twenty-fifth birthday saw me sat across a table from Dr Bertram as he perused the wine list, his lips twisted as he considered. The restaurant was, predictably, low lit and expensive– given all the money I'd spent on outfits for this wedding weekend, I had decided to wear my rehearsal dinner dress tonight. Say what you will about the rich being spoiled, but, other than Ned, Dr Bertram was the only member of the Bertram family who could handle seeing me in the same outfit twice in one week.
"Any requests?" he looked up at me briefly, a small, wry smile tugging one corner of his mouth. He'd been doing that more often over the last year–attempting to smile–and even that changed his face so much it was difficult to reconcile the Dr Bertram in front of me with the hard, cold man I'd grown up with.
I snorted at him, shaking my head. "You know I don't care. Anything is good."
He looked back down at the menu as if it had personally offended him. "You'd be shocked what restaurants will sell to unsuspecting customers just to pay rent."
I rolled my eyes, laughing. "Just choose."
Choose he did, and, when the wine came and it met his expectations, he settled back into his seat, striking up the casual conversation he'd become so much better at in the years since I'd left Mansfield for the last time. The two empty chairs next to us might not have even existed.
It had become a tradition, now that I had said goodbye to Mansfield forever, for Dr Bertram to come visit me in the city on important dates. Normally, he took all of us out, though Liam and Billy often begged off, but with Susie and Billy already in Portland for the wedding, it had just become the two of us. Well, after Gabe and I had broken up, and then Ned had canceled, citing the finishing touches on writing the ceremony. Liam, who was always uncomfortable in places like this, had bought me breakfast this morning, delivering a morning glory muffin with a candle and a plate of cinnamon buns I could never possibly finish. I'd have to take them with me to Maine, or I'd come back to a science experiment on my new kitchen counter.
After the last few years of practically being smothered on my birthday, it felt odd to be sitting with just one other person. Ned had sent a card and texted earlier that day, but he had never missed my birthday, not even when we were kids, except those first three years after they had found my paintings. A sensation, one that had been growing in me for the last few months, prickled under my skin again. I fought to hide a grimace–Dr Bertram had always been good at reading faces.
Between the steak dinner and dessert, Dr Bertram reached into his suit jacket and pulled out an envelope. "And now, we come to That Portion of the evening," he said ruefully, pushing the envelope across to me between our wine glasses. "No," he said, "before you reject it, open it. Because this time, I insist."
"You know what I'm going to say, sir," I said, shaking my head. My hands stayed where they were. "I don't need an Aston Martin."
"I know you don't. Don't know what I was thinking in the first place. I don't want you driving in this town. The mind rebels."
"And I don't need a vacation in Paris."
"Who needs a vacation in Paris? Vacations are rarely about need, I've found." Sometimes, just sometimes, he sounded like Tom, and I couldn't fight the fond smile that softened my rather unconvincing scowl.
"Dinner with you is all I want, sir, you know that. Though this place might cost as much as an Aston Martin."
"This is the part where I tell you that gentlemen don't discuss money, but that would be rather hypocritical of me. Please, Flannery, open it. Do me the great honor of at least pretending to accept it with grace." I met his eyes, surprised. He wasn't just his normal, serious self. He was earnest. I could count the number of times I had heard him say "please" on one hand. I could count the number of times he'd said "please" on one finger, as far as I could recall.
The envelope, when I opened it, proved to hold a letter, not a check. Never a particularly fast reader, I found my hands sweating as I read with an audience. When I finally got to the end, and had read some pertinent bits again to be sure, I looked back up at him and said, "No. Absolutely not."
"Hear me out, Flannery." He held up both hands, though whether that was to stop me, to show he meant no harm, or to supplicate, I didn't know. "You were right to reject those other things, though it hurts my pride to say it. They were gifts, and they were too extravagant, and they were unnecessary."
"But, sir–"
"I would appreciate it, very much, if you would listen for a moment. If after you've heard my presentation, you still don't want it, well, I guess I can't force you. But do me the very great favor of listening to me with an open mind. Can you agree to that?"
My heart pounding, I laid the letter on the table, folding my sweaty hands in my lap. I tried to relax my jaw, but probably failed. Breathe, out and in. "I can agree to that."
He watched me for one more moment, then nodded sharply. "Good. Thank you. You know better than anyone that I am hardly sentimental, but it did occur to me, after you rejected that admittedly extravagant getaway to Paris, that I was offering things to you out of guilt. Guilt, I've found, is particularly useless, so you were right not to accept those presents, and I'm—I want to offer my apologies for putting you in that position in the first place." His brow crinkled slightly before he smoothed it out, his face once again becoming that of the stern, unfeeling man I'd known as a child. I almost gasped, then, at that familiar expression on a different face, but I clenched my hands in my lap and I didn't interrupt. I had made a promise.
"Before you ask, and I can see that you're dying to, no, this–" he indicated the letter on the table, "is not about guilt. Guilt is useless, but responsibility is not. Had I done what was right, this is exactly the amount that you, as one of the children in my household, would have received for your education. In fact, if it makes you feel any better, it's the arithmetic mean, adjusted for inflation. And while you didn't go to an Ivy League institution for four years, that's only because you didn't have the opportunity. To be perfectly frank, the amount I should have paid in tutors and speech therapy sessions would double that amount, but I didn't want to press my luck."
I took a few deep breaths as he paused to drain his wine glass and pour himself another before a solicitous waiter could swoop in on the conversation. He straightened his shoulders and sat back in his chair, folding his arms across his chest in a way I would have found forbidding as a child.
"Now, if I know you at all, and I feel like I'm coming to after all this time, I know you'll tell me that your education was never my responsibility, because Nola was your guardian. And because at this point neither one of us has illusions about Nola, I'd like to tell you that I feel very free to ignore that argument. Of all the adults in your life, I was the only comp—" he paused, and maybe it was pain that crossed his face, or maybe it was just his words catching up to him, "I was responsible for everything that happened in that house. In those houses. Whether or not the state of Connecticut agreed, I was responsible for you, and I failed you. So this is not, not, a gift, Flannery. This is what you're owed. Not even an estimation of what you are owed, but literally every penny of the college tuition that should have been yours. Giving it to you on your birthday is probably unfair, but desperate times." He shrugged, that wry expression reappearing.
"The rest of it, that's for Susie. I'd offer the same to Billy if I thought he'd ever take it, but my money is no good to him, and he's made his own way well enough. Susie will be looking at schools in a few years, and I think we can both agree that she should be able to choose whatever she wants, regardless of price."
At this, I couldn't help myself. "But you were never her guardian, either."
"I find, ultimately, that I don't care. Do you?"
When it came to me? Definitely. When it came to Susie? "No, sir."
"There we go. Well done," he glanced away for the first time, studying the tabletop intensely. He refilled my wine glass absently, then, his hand still on the empty bottle, he spoke into the silence.
"I failed all my children, Flannery. I gave them whatever they wanted, because I knew what it was to want, and I failed them. I thought being strict would save them, but it didn't. I thought giving them the best education money could buy would save them, but it didn't. I cared about them, but I never understood them. Parenting, I've found, is like a mirror–it has shown me exactly who I am, and, as it turns out, the view has not been particularly flattering." His thumb toyed with the bottom edge of the wine label.
"You'll understand this in a way that Ned or Tom, no matter how much they try, never will–when I was young, my parents would spend all their money on payday–whatever we had to spare and then some–just gone on all the things they had denied themselves beforehand. You know what I mean?" I nodded, and he nodded with me. "Raising children, I told myself they would never want for anything, not the way I had, and so then I, knowing how destructive that practice was, I bought them everything I had denied myself beforehand. Everything I had been denied. My children would be different. I failed them. I failed them, and I failed you. That," he pointed at the letter again, "that is the barest minimum of what I owe you. If I could pay that four times over, seven times over, to fix the mistakes I made as a father, I would. But I can't, and that's that, so this is what I can do. Do you understand?"
I reached across the table for his hand, and he gave it to me, though he was clearly unused to that kind of affection–his hand lay limp and uncomfortable in mine.
"I don't want it," he dropped his head, and I continued, "I don't want it, but I'll take it. I hate to admit it, but you're right. I'll have to talk it over with Susie and Liam, but I don't think anyone is going to turn it down. Not in this economy." The corner of his mouth hitched up again, and he patted my hand, sitting up straight back in his chair.
For a moment, we sipped our wine in almost-companionable silence. Then, I said, "he blames himself, you know. Ned."
Dr Bertram nodded soberly, reaching up to rub his eyebrow with two fingers. "He's a good boy. Always was."
"How…" I stopped myself, clearing my throat as it closed, started again, "how is he?"
The look that Dr Bertram sent my way was almost exactly the same look that Tom had been giving me when the subject of Ned came up, a look full of secrets and pity, but also amusement. His face had never been as expressive as Tom's, but it was there, and in my exasperation, I wanted to reach out and strangle him the way I'd threatened to do to Tom a thousand times. "He's well. Busy with the new congregation, of course, and clearly worried about doing right in the ceremony, but well. I take it he hasn't spoken to you."
What an odd way to put it. "Well, we've communicated, but it's been a while since we–"
"I imagine there'll be time at the wedding, especially once the ceremony is over. Just don't let him retreat to his room to do work, like he'll try to do. He's serious. Tends to overthink things."
That prickle had started again, accompanied by a yawning feeling of panic. Dr Bertram knew something I didn't, just like Tom did. Ned was avoiding me, and they knew it, and they knew why. The wine and steak curdled in my stomach just as Dr Bertram ordered sorbet for dessert.
He'd always been good at reading faces, so when he saw mine, he reached across the table one more time and patted my hand, once, twice, three times. "Worry is useless, too, Flannery. Let's just enjoy your birthday, shall we?"
Sighing, I pushed the letter to one side and twirled my spoon between my hands, fighting back a bubble of resentment that would certainly ruin the evening. For all the things he had learned about himself, Dr Bertram clearly didn't understand what it was to be truly powerless, and probably never would. He had changed, and he had not. I had changed, too, but I never would.