Here’s a much better
version of what I posted yesterday.  I
have other things to post in a little bit, as well.

“You’re still trying to live it, Becky.  That’s all. 
You want something from it you can never get.” 

“Well, shouldn’t I be able to live it?  Shouldn’t I be able to put writing and living
together, after all I’ve read?”

“Never.  You feel it
too much.  But I’m glad you do.  I need you to feel something because it’s so
bloody obvious no one else ever will.  And
your intricately beautiful and elegant inner life should never ever be exposed
to this brutal, petty world.  The public
doesn’t deserve you, and even if they did they would kill you.” 

“But I’m getting so old, Victor, and I’ve spent so much of
my life around books, I feel like I have to have some response to it all, even
if no one’s going to care.” 

“If you want to write, write something for me.”

“I can’t do that,” she sighed.  “That wouldn’t be a response to my life.  And anyway, you’re part of what I need to
write about.  You can’t know, Victor,
what it’s like to be in your shadow.” 

Victor shook his head. 
“I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told anyone in the world.”

She looked askance at him, “I thought I already knew
everything about you.”

“No one knows this about me, Becky, not even Jennifer.  When I was ten years old I caught my father
with another woman.  I snuck into his
office after the store was closed.  It
was just innocent mischief but then while I was going through his desk I heard
him coming up the stairs.  I panicked and
hid behind a bookshelf.  He came in with
a woman I’d never seen before and started kissing her right there while I
watched.  Eventually they left and I went
back home to bed but I never forgot that woman’s face.  Over the months that followed I caught sight
of her several times, going in and out of my father’s office.

“So here’s my dirty little secret.  From the time I was ten years old I was
convinced that my father was having an affair without my mother’s knowledge,
and I hated him ferociously.  I believed
he was a total hypocrite and a traitor to our family.  It wasn’t until I was in my twenties that I
realized that my mother had always known about it, that she and my father had
agreed that they were not ever going to be in love, but chose to keep up
appearances out of fear of their families.  This affair he was having was totally
unimportant to my mother, just as hers were to him.  But by the time I figured it out it was too
late.

“My first novel was fueled by sheer hatred of him.  He had forbidden me to ever reveal anything
about my life to the world, and I felt that meant that he was preventing me
from ever genuinely being alive.  And so
I wrote a novel about a vampire based on my father who victimizes a hero who
was me.  I knew I could never say what I
felt so I wanted to leave a terrible trail of clues, so the world would secretly
know what a bastard he was and hate him as much as I hated him.

He shrugged, “Of course it didn’t work out that way because
everyone just sees my father as a boring fake.”

Becky agreed.  “People
could tell you were angry but you’re right. 
If that was supposed to be your father you got him completely wrong.”

“I know, it’s funny and stupid.”

“It wasn’t that stupid, Victor.  Even if he’s not a world-class monster he was
still a total ass.  I was there with you
while he was destroying you.  I think you
forget how much you and I talked about it at the time.  He deserves everything he gets.  And you did really care about writing.  It wasn’t just revenge.  If you were that petty you would have
just beat him up.  You thought it was important to
say something about resisting evil.”