Page 60 of Mad Girl

Finally, after our dinner dishes were loaded into the dishwasher, Nic opened the crate. Nestled carefully inside, he found a cylindrical container made of striped oak, and out of that he pulled a voluptuous bottle, almost sensual in its shape and appearance. The label read, The Balvenie.

Nic held the bottle with both hands while Libby clutched his bicep, lifting up on her tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek. John wrapped his arm around my dad and patted his chest, leaving his hand there.

“You want me to take it?” John asked.

Nic sighed. “I’ll do it.”

You watched my dad carry the bottle off with that groove of concern between your eyebrows. You didn’t understand. So, later that night, while everyone else got ready for bed, I took you down there—to the cellar, where my dad and the Harrises store their alcohol—and flipped on the light.

“Wow,” you said, head drawn back in surprise.

Mahogany fills the townhouse in Boston, but the cellar is the only space on the entire estate made up of the rich, vibrant wood. Three walls of it, the fourth entirely made of glass. Shelves of scotch line the center wall, flanked by rows of wine on the other two, all backlit by a warm golden glow. We stood at the glass wall, staring at the shitload of alcohol neatly arranged there.

“Look,” I said, finger pressed to the glass. “There it is. Right in the center. Until next year’s bottle arrives.”

“He doesn’t drink them?”

“Nope.”

“Why?”

“So that when his dad calls, and my grandfather asks, ‘So, how was The Balvenie?’ my dad can say, ‘I don’t know. When you come for a visit, we’ll find out together.’ But Gabe—that’s my grandfather—never comes for a visit, so the bottles sit there, gathering dust.”

“Why doesn’t he ever visit?”

“Well, he does occasionally—but only to Boston. Never here.”

“He doesn’t like the beach?”

I paused to think. “I don’t think that’s it. He and Eleanor owned their own estate on this same beach back when my dad was growing up. The Harrises got married there.”

“Nic once told me he doesn’t get along with his dad, but he didn’t elaborate,” you said.

“Yeah. Gabe lives in Paris with his girlfriend. She’s ditzy and blonde—with huge, fake tits. She’s the same age as my dad, and he can’t stand her. The few times we’ve gone to Paris for a visit, or when Gabe actually does come back to Boston, my dad and Gabe end up fighting the whole time.”

“Why?”

“My dad doesn’t approve of Gabe’s lifestyle, and Gabe doesn’t approve of my dad’s, either.”

“What’s wrong with Nic’s lifestyle?” you asked.

I shrugged. “He never married and remains a bachelor, I guess.”

“Your parents were never married?”

“According to my dad, he asked my mom to marry him after he got her pregnant, but she thought marriage was a bunch of patriarchal bullshit. Anyway, Gabe’s always mentioning some recently divorced daughter of a friend, or trying to set my dad up with one of his girlfriend’s bimbo friends, and my dad hates that. Also, Gabe’s really critical of my dad, which he hates even more.”

Gently, you asked, “What about your relationship with him?”

“You know that dissatisfied look on Garland’s face?” I asked, and you nodded. “Well, that’s the way Gabe looks at me—so you can only imagine. I think he secretly hates that I broke the Bancroft streak by being born a girl.”

“I’m sorry,” you said, giving my arm a squeeze. “With Eleanor and this Gabe person as parents, I can’t believe Nic turned out as normal as he did.”

I pulled a face. “My dad does a background check on everyone we meet, moved some strange foreign guy into our house to keep tabs on me, and won’t let us have a dog even though I’ve been begging him my whole life. And you think that’s normal?”

“Okay, first off—‘some strange foreign guy?’” You tossed your hands out, as if to say, Seriously? “And second of all, what I mean by normal is that he’s quite nurturing for a person who was raised by two people who don’t seem the slightest bit nurturing at all.”

I laughed out loud. “He was predominantly raised by nannies. But sure, he’s nurturing, I guess.” I should’ve given Nic the credit he deserved here, and I knew it. Summers, however, typically made me bitter. “He’s outrageously controlling and definitely too involved in my life.”