Descended, page 12
indigo
That stolen moment was so fleeting it was almost as though it never happened, but Indigo had felt it, had seen it in her face. But then Robbie had shattered their reverie and she’d flushed and looked away and he wondered if he’d imagined the whole thing. He wished so hard in that moment he could feel what others felt for him. He knew she felt happy when she was around him, but so did a lot of people. She’d stood up quickly and said she needed to go to bed and he was left watching My Girl with Robbie snoring loudly beside him.
Every fibre of his being yelled at him to go after her, to knock on her bedroom door, to enter that private sanctuary of hers and confess his feelings to her and damn the consequences. It was torture being so close to her, yet so far. That afternoon, when she’d wrapped those slender arms around him as they’d ridden down to Avalon, he’d barely been able to concentrate on the road with every contour of her beautiful body moulded against his. Most nights he dreamt of her and in those dreams she was his and life was perfect. But when he woke, reaching for her, aching for her, he always realised too soon that he lived in a reality where they were just friends and he couldn’t just run his fingers through the lengths of her hair any old time he wanted, or touch those crazily kissable lips of hers or hold her near.
Not being with her it was driving him insane. She’d burrowed deep in his heart and expanded within its chambers, consuming it in its entirety so there was barely space for anything or anyone else. He half rose to follow her upstairs but then sat back down again, then just as he was about to get up again, he heard the front door open and close and Joshua appeared looking weary.
“Oh good, I was hoping you were still up,” he said, flopping down beside Indigo on the couch. He had a rolled-up magazine in his hand.
“How was work?” Indigo asked.
“Yeah, fine,” Joshua said distractedly, then, “Listen, Inds, er, have you er…” He twisted the magazine in his hands as he spoke, “have you seen this yet?” he finally asked, unfurling the magazine and showing Indigo the front cover.
Indigo stared at it and shook his head. Joshua held it out and he reached for it tentatively, staring down at an image of his father’s face. ‘Wilson the Lone Wolfe,’ the tag line read, ‘Hollywood’s Ultimate Absentee Father Neglects His Pack.’
“What is this?” Indigo asked, feeling slightly sick. He hated it when his parents were in the press and all the attention it brought.
“Read it,” Joshua said, placing a firm hand on his shoulder, squeezing reassuringly. “I need to go take a shower. We’ll talk after, okay?”
Indigo nodded dumbly, flicking through the pages with shaking hands until he came to the article. There was a picture of him, a recent one too, which creeped him out. Who knows which bush they’d hidden in to get that? He closed his eyes as a feeling of dread washed over him. And then he opened them and began to read.
It turned out that exposé was just the beginning. March of 1993 must have been a slow news month because the whole thing blew into a complete and utter media shitstorm. Wilson Wolfe’s career revolved around his image as an all-round good guy and loving family man. But someone had leaked the truth and now the press was hounding him, branding him a fraud, calling him a truant father and accusing him of being neglectful of his kids. He was torn to shreds by the media, his reputation in tatters. Wilson’s PR manager went into damage control. As his four older sons were now well into their twenties and thirties and he had no jurisdiction over them, Wilson and his entourage set their sights on Indigo, by then seventeen-years-old, still a minor and a ready solution to their problem. If Wilson could get custody of Indigo and move him into his home in New York, he could start to claw back his image.
Bernadette, who was honeymooning on the Amalfi Coast with the twenty-something husband she’d met on her latest movie set, didn’t bother to respond to Wilson’s petitions for custody until he reluctantly dangled the transfer of the title of his beloved Lake Como villa into her name, at which point she was quite willing to sign Indigo over to his father.
Indigo barely knew the man whose name resided on his birth certificate. He knew he was the source of his trust fund and the child support cheque that arrived each month; he knew the big empty house in Aspen he rattled around in two weeks a year belonged to his father, and when he was younger there were the ten days every July he was sent to New York to stay in Wilson’s penthouse with Ana Maria the housekeeper. He’d read articles in which his father declared his love for and closeness to all five of his boys (whom he never saw), but Cordelia was the only one he’d ever told how hurt and angry his father’s hypocrisy made him feel.
Things happen quickly for someone as influential as Wilson Wolfe. It was only a matter of weeks before Indigo was ordered to pack his things and move to New York.
Indigo couldn’t believe his father could just fucking come in like this and destroy his whole universe, that he could tear him from the only family he’d ever known. The megalomaniac piece of shit! Indigo was powerless. It broke him to bits that he had to leave Australia and everyone in it. Her.
He put on a brave face but already he was beginning to withdraw into himself, his smiles growing more forced, the insomnia and anxiety he hadn’t seen in years slowly creeping back in. The day he left, Scarlett prepared all his favourite foods for lunch and they all sat down to eat, stoic and reserved. Indigo caught Cordelia looking at him across the table, and he knew she could see straight through it all, that she could see how he was falling apart inside, and he didn’t want her to see that, because he knew how hard she’d worked over the years to put him back together, to make him whole, to help him reframe the way he saw himself. He’d grown to like who he was in her eyes and right now, seeing someone else reflected back at him in those clear aquamarine pools, he couldn’t cope with that. Not one bit.
cordelia
Indigo was leaving for the airport that night so had spent the day at her house, withdrawn and quiet, but savouring his last moments and saying his goodbyes. Cordelia swore she’d seen tears in his eyes as he’d bounced Matty on his knee and held him close, inhaling his sweet baby smell.
They knew their time was almost up when Indigo went to change for his flight, emerging in jeans and a blue plaid flannel shirt, his hair neatly combed, navy Converse on his feet, his trusty denim jacket slung over his arm. And then his driver arrived to collect him, luggage already piled high inside the black sedan, and it seemed it was all happening way too soon. Her mum began to cry. Her dad was stoic as he pulled Indigo into a bear hug and held him tight, not letting go for a long time. Robbie buried his face in Indigo’s chest, then fled to his room, slamming the door behind him. He later told Cordelia that was the moment he understood friends could break your heart too.
It was Cordelia who walked Indigo out to the car where the driver waited discreetly behind the wheel. Her stomach churned as tears threatened to spill down her cheeks. She could barely fathom that this was it. That in a few moments, he just wouldn’t be there anymore. Two steps down the driveway, he suddenly grabbed her hand and pulled her into the shadows of the banana palms at the side of the house. And she was in his arms. And she could barely breathe at the very nearness of him; his face inches from hers, his whole body pressed to hers, the electricity palpable. All those months and years of wanting, of wondering, of adoration…
“Cordelia,” he whispered, his thumb caressing her lower lip, his eyes bright on hers.
Her breath caught in her throat. Her heart was beating so fast.
And then his lips were on hers, gentle at first until she was kissing him back and then, not gentle, a snatched moment of perfection on what felt like their last day on earth. Nearly three years of yearning, loving, culminating in one perfect kiss. His hands were in her hair, his tongue gently persistent against hers. No one had ever kissed her like this; she could live and die inside this kiss.
When they finally broke apart, they were both breathing heavily.
“I’ve always loved you,” he whispered as he slipped the leather beaded bracelet off his wrist and onto hers. And then he was gone. Gone. Gone before she could catch her breath and gather herself and tell him that from the very depths of her soul, she’d always loved him too.
chapter eight
disarm
manhattan, new york, april, 1993
indigo
So he left them, left her, and he boarded that plane with the most portable of his worldly possessions packed into the hold below and he was broken. Angry. Angry. Angry. And so broken. Everything changed when he left Sydney; he changed. It was like the protective coating that had cocooned him for so long, that had kept him sane and safe, had been ripped off and he was left raw, exposed, vulnerable. His whole world shifted on its axis and he was thrown from dry land, propelled into the darkest depths of the ocean where there was nothing to cling to and it seemed impossible not to drown.
He’d made up his mind to hate New York, to hate his father, to hate everyone and everything. So upon arrival, his first order of business was to find a reliable dealer who could supply him with weed whenever he wanted it, sometimes pills and coke, stuff he’d merely dabbled in for fun in recent years because he hadn’t needed it. But now he did. He started drinking on the weekends, and then every day. He spiralled and spiralled until he’d funnelled himself swiftly and deftly into the depth and breadth of his misery without spilling a single drop.
And Cordelia. Well, he’d left Cordelia with nothing. Nothing but that one aching kiss, both first and final, forever scorched upon his lips.
The night he’d had to leave Sydney, leave her, had ripped his heart to shreds and undone the very last bit of him. To know that endless love had been there all along, right there within his reach and then to have to let it go, unexplored, unresolved, largely unspoken… It had been his demise.
She’d been so beautiful that night. When he closed his eyes, he could see every detail so clearly, her hair cascading down her back in a wild spill, those angel eyes tinged with such sadness. It still made him want to cry just to think of them. She’d been barefoot in a little white dress, her legs long and tanned, her embrace so warm, her lips so generous and soft.
But now he was all alone, lying on his side in his big bed with its rumpled navy sheets, eyes closed, a pillow hugged to his chest. His stomach hurt so much from feeling everyone else so acutely. He had his headphones on, totally immersed in Guns N’ Roses’ Patience, when he felt the energy in his room shift. He split his lids to see the imposing form of Ana Maria looming over him. Night had fallen and she reached to switch on a lamp. He blinked, his gaze sliding listlessly to her round face. She looked majorly pissed off, but she always did. Her mouth was forming words he couldn’t hear. He dragged his headphones off.
“Mr Indi,” she was saying curtly in her lilting Jamaican accent, “phone call. Miss Cordelia again.”
He squeezed his eyes shut tight and shook his head.
Ana Maria sighed heavily. “I cannot keep lying to the poor girl and telling her you’re out, Mr Indi.”
“Just do it. Please,” he murmured. He felt tears prick his eyes. The person he’d been with Cordelia was not the person he was anymore. If she could see him now, she’d be so disappointed in him. They all would be. So he’d done the only thing he could. He’d cut off all contact with them. He never took their calls. He read all their letters, devoured them over and over, yet he never replied. And their letters grew fewer and farther between, and their attempted phone calls had dwindled to once a week, then to once a fortnight.
“Fine,” Ana Maria snapped coldly, “but you better be going to school tomorrow and not be laying round this apartment all day again or I’ll be telling your father.” She spun and huffed out of the room and Indigo reached under his bed for the bottle of bourbon he’d stashed there. He was all alone again. All alone and so lonely. It covered him like a shroud and he felt himself withering more and more each day.
Indigo fit in well at his new private school on the Upper East Side. His whole life, he’d always had his pick of friends and now he purposely sought out those who would only judge him on the surface. Because of who his father was, the teachers turned a blind eye if he slept in class or wagged school or turned up drunk or stoned. As the swirling darkness descended upon him, growing thicker and denser, he merely went through the motions.
The worst thing was that here in New York, the bubble that had kept the voices at bay these past few years had popped. And they’d barrelled back in, whispered at first, then louder and louder, so many telling him he wasn’t good enough, that he was useless and worthless and weak. And his father tended to agree with them.
Indigo hadn’t been the good compliant son his father had naively expected and Wilson Wolfe wasn’t used to not getting what he wanted. His go-to coping method, when things didn’t go his way, was to behave like a petulant child.
“Indi!” Wilson screamed. Grey light bathed Indigo’s room; it must be morning. He could hear his father storming through the sprawling Fifth Avenue penthouse he shared with four staff members and now Indigo.
“Indigo!” Wilson yelled as he flung Indigo’s bedroom door open and tore the curtains back, then yanked the covers off his bed. He kicked the stereo system beside Indigo’s bed and the Smashing Pumpkins abruptly stopped singing Disarm.
“Go ‘way,” Indigo mumbled, curling into the foetal position and squeezing his eyes shut.
“Get up!” Wilson barked. “I want to talk to you, boy.”
Indigo opened his eyes and glared up at his father standing over his bed, hands on hips, face like a thundercloud.
“Why?” Indigo snapped, pulling a pillow over his head.
Wilson leant over and wrenched the pillow away. “Listen, I don’t give a damn if you drink my bar dry, Indi. I’ve turned a blind eye to the pilfering of my coke and pot, but I draw the line at wanton destruction!”
“Whaddaya talking about?”
“I’m talking about the cigarette burn on my brand new damask sofa! That thing cost more than your tuition for a year!”
“Well, you were ripped off, Wilson. That thing is ugly as shit.”
Wilson’s face turned an ugly shade of puce. “That’s enough lip out of you, boy! I hold my meetings in that room. How do you think it makes me look, having a sofa that’s been clearly vandalised in my home?”
“It wasn’t me,” Indigo said, surly, climbing out of bed and pulling a t-shirt on over his Calvin Klein boxer briefs.
“It wasn’t you?”
“Nope,” he replied, folding his arms, scowling.
“So who was it, then?”
“Dunno.”
“Oh, I see. I suppose it was a member of my staff then.” His lip curled as he surveyed his son. “I guess I’ll just have to interrogate them all and fire the one I suspect as the culprit.” He turned to leave the room.
“Fine,” Indigo sighed, “it was me. But for fuck’s sake, it was an accident, okay? I fell asleep smoking a spliff. It’s just one small hole. Put a pillow over it or something.”
“Put a… put a pillow over it?” Wilson spluttered, advancing on him, fists clenched. “What sort of second-rate establishment do you think you’re living in here?” He came close enough that Indigo could see the scars from his latest facelift, could see the silver roots beneath his dyed blond hair. “I rue the day I brought you to live here. I really do. You’re a spoilt, ungrateful waste of space!”
“Yeah well, you only have yourself to blame for that!” Indigo snapped. “You think I want to be here?”
He hadn’t heard one kind word from the moment he’d set foot inside Wilson’s home and it had worn him down like icy water on sandstone. He’d come to believe he was what his father said he was: nothing. And he’d gradually lowered himself to meet his father’s expectations. Cordelia had spent years slowly, gently building him up, but the bad stuff was easier to believe.
“I’m too old for this shit,” Wilson said. “Why I agreed to a fifth child is beyond me. I must have had rocks in my head. I don’t know what I did to deserve a son like you. Why can’t you be more like your brothers? Letting your mother raise you was pure stupidity, I suppose, that self-centred ditz couldn’t raise a sea monkey!”
“You don’t even know me,” Indigo spat, “and you’re the one who made me come here!”
Wilson snorted, “Well, that sure was a mistake, but what’s done is done. If I send you back now, the media will have me for breakfast. Just finish out the year and I’ll give you your passport back, then I don’t care where you go. In the meantime, you keep to your part of the apartment and I’ll keep to mine. I don’t want to see you. I don’t want to hear you.”
“Fine, let’s start now,” Indigo said, gesturing to the door.
Wilson spun to go, but his step faltered and he turned back. “Ana Maria showed me your SAT scores,” he said, studying his son through narrowed eyes.
“She had no right,” Indigo growled.
“Did you pay someone to sit it for you?”
Indigo snorted, crossed his arms. “Nope.” Why would he bother?
A sliver of softness relaxed Wilson’s scowl. “But they were almost perfect scores.” He sounded bewildered. Dumbfounded?
Indigo shrugged. He barely remembered taking them. “I thought you were leaving?”
Wilson’s face hardened back up. “You’re late for school,” he barked, pivoting to leave, “and take a shower. You smell like a bar room floor.”
The moment Wilson slammed the door behind him, Indigo melted back into his bed and squeezed his eyes shut. He hated it here so much. He hated that his father brought out the arsehole in him.
He was just so tired all the time. The darkness encased him like thick choking smoke, devouring all oxygen and light so it was impossible to shake. He clenched his hands into fists, curling his knees to his chest against the constant churning tearing at his insides, like shadow fingers clawing at his gut.
