The sun had begun to set when he shifted and for the first time since we moved downstairs, Tudor relaxed some and settled back against the cushions, tucking me under his arm, desperately close. I looked up at his face and his eyes were closed and tense, like he was battling with the image of something. When he finally spoke, his voice was gravelly from the strain of the day’s events.
"When I was younger, things were okay at home; at that time we lived in Victoria, BC, that’s where Henry and I were born and raised, and we were a typically normal family. As I grew up, I realised all was not as it seemed, not at all. I first noticed little things, like my mom would sometimes walk funny, like with a limp or a twisted ankle, and then sometimes she would have these bruises on her arms and legs, but I was too young to know what was really going on.
“I was about eight; Henry, ten, when we walked in from hockey practice to see my father pinning my mother down to the floor and beating her, punching her over and over with his fist while he was practically raping her. We didn't know what to do, we were so young – we didn’t even know what sex was, for Christ’s sake! Henry pushed me back to protect me and tried to pull him off her but my dad just swatted him away like a fly. The man we idolised, our hero, was hurting our mom and we didn’t know how to stop it. It was after that when we left the first time. We lived with our grandparents for a few years in Kelowna, BC, and then one day he showed up again, right out of the blue. We had no idea how he had found us but he said he'd changed, he seemed to have changed and my mom took him back. She wanted us to be a family, for her boys to have a dad.”
He sucked in a breath, and I slipped my fingers underneath his T-shirt to run my fingers over his stomach to comfort him. I didn’t want to push him. In my wildest dreams I couldn’t have imagined that this was his secret.
After a couple of minutes, he lifted my chin and kissed me softly on my mouth. I smiled and cuddled back in, and he picked up where he had left off.
“At first everything was great, he was the perfect father, but then the signs appeared again: the flinching from my mother every time he moved, the bruises in places people wouldn't check and the baseball bat he started using to keep me and Henry in line. We were bigger then, both of us teenagers who trained hard at hockey. I was starting to get into weight-lifting to help with my junior varsity career and I was gaining strength by the day. Henry and I both knew how to handle ourselves, but he had my mother wrapped around his little finger, and if we stepped up to him, she would beg us to stop. He used her to control us. It went on for years and there was nothing we could do.
“I was fifteen when I found my mom crying on the bathroom floor, holding something in her hand – a pregnancy test. My father was at work. She was pregnant with Bee and that was the day we left for good. We got in the car, without any of our possessions, and moved to Vancouver and never looked back.“Years went by and we heard nothing from him, life became normal again and the fear of him turning up went away. Bee didn't know much about Dad, we told her he had left us when she was a baby and, with two big brothers around helping Mom raise her, she didn't want for anything. She was happy, at least for a while.”
He began shaking again. I sat up and took his face in my hands. “Tudor you don’t need to keep going, it’s okay,” I reassured and I moved in to kiss his forehead.
He pulled away. “No, I want you to know, I need you to know. No more secrets, Sunshine. Never again.”
I sat back and he stared off, not looking at anything in particular, eyes unfocused. “A few years back, I got my big break – you know how, I told you before – and I moved to LA to be closer to the studios. I’d been there a few months when I got a call from Henry saying that Dad had been back in touch. It just brought all these fears and feelings back, and I didn’t know how to deal with this new career and the fact that… that… that monster was trying to weasel his way back in our lives after everything he’d put us through.
“In LA, if you’re known, everything is available to you, so I turned to alcohol and tried to drink my problems away. You know the drill: I slept around and drank for nearly a year before my mom called and told me to stop being stupid and to come home. So I did. My dad had stopped calling, finally getting the message that he wasn’t welcome, and things were looking better again.”
He rubbed his hand across his face and his eyes once again welled up with tears. I used my thumb to rub them away and waited for him to finish the story.
“Bee was twelve when he showed up. He knocked on the front door, as brazen as all hell, like he had every right to be there. She answered and, having never seen him before, not even a picture, let him in. He claimed he was a family friend. I arrived home half an hour later, I’d forgotten a script that I was supposed to be reading for producers in downtown Vancouver, and walked in to find my father assaulting my baby sister on the living room floor. He didn't manage to rape her, but if I hadn't got there when I did...”