Brother/Sister (20 page)

I couldn’t help thinking that these people—every single one of them—were up to unsavory things. The women were all whores. The men were all out to debase and abuse them. Not a place for us to be. Not a place, anyway, for Asheley. Just thinking about what these guys wanted to do to her got me itching to take a knife to their throats.

But she kept me calm. She got us through and out to the coast road, where I was glad to see there wasn’t much traffic at all. A truck full of dusty workingmen rolled by every once in a while. A bright Mexican family out strolling with their children, picking flowers along the side of the road, holding hands, dreaming their Mexican dreams.

We took our time.

We enjoyed ourselves.

We stopped along a sun-baked cliff to take in the view of the ocean, which was different down here—brighter, faded, less threatening. We stopped to get fish tacos and bottled water at an open-air restaurant painted in thick green and red stripes. Asheley convinced me to try the
horchata
, even though I suspected it might be contaminated. Once the coast dipped toward the water and the cliffs evened out, we stopped to run along the beach and get our feet wet in the surf.

It was nice. As long as there weren’t any other people around, and Asheley was safe, and I was relaxed, we were fine—more than fine. We were at peace in a weird way. And, I mean, do you have any idea what that meant to us? I don’t think I’d ever experienced peace before. It was an alien concept. Something I’d always figured was for other people, not me, never me. No way.

But for this one span of time, this one afternoon, as we drove south along the Mexican coastal road, there I was living the life I’d never thought I could have. Asheley and me both. It was maybe the most perfect my life’s ever been. And thinking I could share this experience with Ash—I mean, I had to keep biting my lip to stop myself from tearing up.

All good things must end, though.

We rolled into Baja del Mar around seven that evening, and I mean, I don’t know what I’d been expecting, but it wasn’t this. The place reeked of money. I mean, you know, you live here, but I wasn’t expecting all the houses hidden behind ornate fences and carefully pruned bougainvilleas lining the streets.

I found us a motel that looked like it might be within our price range. Yeah, sort of low rent—or as low rent as motels get down here. Posada El Delfin, that’s what it was called. You know it? Not a bad place. A little worn around the edges, some cracks in the whitewashed concrete.

I mean, the guy who works the desk is a dirtbag, but big surprise, right? I don’t remember what his name was. Maybe Julio? Juan? Young guy, maybe twenty, twenty-one. And really skinny. Like, way, way too skinny. With these big hollow rat eyes.

While we were working out the deal for a room for the night, Ash told him explicitly, “Two beds.” She motioned to me and said, “He’s my brother.” And what did the guy do? He winked at her and said, “
Si
, I understand.” Then he did a mime of locking his lips shut with a key and checked us into a room with one queen size.

I’m sure he thought he was doing us a favor. He probably gets this kind of thing all the time, some couple—some whore with her “boyfriend,” trying to look legit, or some old rich guy with his jailbait girlfriend claiming she’s his daughter, or whatever, people can be disgusting in about ten thousand ways—winking and nodding their way through the check-in process, trying to ask for what they want without coming out and saying it, but still.

Do we look like those kinds of sleazeballs, though?

I guess it doesn’t matter. We needed a room, and this is what the guy gave us. I can sort of understand the way he was thinking. Not that I like it, but I guess I get it. It’s not like people expect to run into somebody as trusting and innocent as Asheley. There’s, like, one of her for every thousand or so sluts out there. The whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth, though. Even though we were completely legit, no bad intentions at all, I still ended up feeling dirty.

Anyway, we got our bags up into the room, which was nice—air conditioning and watercolors on the walls, all that—and we got ourselves situated a little bit.

We didn’t really discuss what we’d do for the night, but my plan was for us to freshen up and then find somewhere to grab dinner. I figured, I mean, this town is fancy—I thought we might be able to find some incredible restaurant, like with an outdoor patio and candles in hurricane glasses on the table, maybe one of those places along the beach with a view of the sunset and the yachts docked off the coast, where we could celebrate with some
chiles rellenos
or mole or something. That was my hope, anyway.

While Ash gathered up her toothbrush and shampoo and all that and headed off to take a shower, I lay down on the bed and let myself relax. I’d been driving for two days straight. It had been even more than that since I’d slept.

I guess I nodded off.

I woke up to Ash nudging me on the shoulder.

“Will,” she said. “Hey, you going to take a shower?”

One look at her, and my heart started breaking.

I mean, she was beautiful, and fragile, and just glowing with hope. It was precious, really. Heartbreaking. She’d made herself all up. She’d put on that Stanford sweatshirt. I’m not so stupid that I couldn’t see what was bopping around in her mind.

“Yeah, I guess I will,” I said, about the shower. “In a few minutes. You look like you’re getting ready for something special.”

This made her blush.

“Well,” she said, “we’re here. I thought we could head over to Dad’s place tonight. I mean . . .”

“I know what you mean.”

There was all this expectation roiling around on her face. If I could only begin to explain to you how sad it made me to see her like this.

Scooting over to the far side of the bed, I turned onto my side and patted the mattress in front of me. “Come,” I said.

“Sit.”

She could sense I was about to deliver bad news. “What’s wrong?” she said. “Will, don’t look at me like that.”

I tried to smile, to put her at ease, but it was hard. I was so, so, so sad for her.

“Just, come.”

Timidly, she did. She scooched up onto the bed and sat next to where I was lying. Waited there, silent and nervous, for what I was about to say.

“How much do you remember about Dad?” I said.

“I don’t know. A lot.”

“Like what?”

“I remember how he used to sit in the living room with his legs crossed, bouncing me up and down on his foot, playing horsey, and he’d ask me silly questions about my day.”

“What else?”

“I remember him building that jungle gym we used to have in the backyard. I don’t know. Why does it matter, Will?”

I sat up. I took her hands in mine and held them. The air conditioning was going full blast and I suddenly realized how cold the room was.

“It’s just . . . I just . . . Ash, those are both things you’ve seen in pictures of him. Do you remember anything about who he was? I mean for real, not just smiling for the camera?”

“I don’t know. I mean, yeah. Let me think.”

“You don’t, Ash. You don’t. ’Cause if you did, you’d know, Dad’s a . . . he’s a bad guy. He’s not any of those nice things you remember him being. You wonder why Mom drinks the way she does? You wonder why she works so hard to destroy herself? It’s cause of Dad. She’s chasing away her memories of Dad. I’m sorry, Ash. I’m—”

“Why are you telling me these things right now?” she said. I could feel the muscles in her hands tensing up, and I massaged her knuckles a tiny bit trying to calm her down.

“He’s not going to help us,” I said. There it was, the brutal truth. I wish there’d been some way for me not to say it, but I’d run out of time. She had to know. “Come,” I said. “Come.”

I tugged at her hand, lightly, and she let me place her on the bed in front of me so I could massage her shoulders.

“I’m sorry. I can’t tell you how sorry I am,” I said.

“It’s okay,” she whispered. She was holding it all in, all the shock and sadness she must have been feeling in that moment. I was proud of her. She was being very brave.

“But, hey,” I said. “We’re in Mexico. Far, far away from Morro Bay. That’s the good thing. And we’ve got each other.” I wrapped my arms around her waist and hugged her. “What else do we need?”

I let my hand go up under her sweatshirt and opened my palm flat on her soft abdomen. It’s something I’d been longing to do since forever.

“Wonder Twins, right?” I said.

Then I kissed her on the tender spot where her neck meets her collarbone and squeezed her tight and held her, rocking her a little.

“Yeah,” she said. “Wonder Twins.”

She patted my knee, and almost daintily, unwrapped my arms from around her. Standing up she said, “I saw a Coke machine out by the office. One of those old kinds, with the bottles. I’m going to go get one. I’m dying of thirst.”

As she walked past me, she squeezed my shoulder.

And then she was gone.

There were reasons to hope.
Will had come through in a kind of way. At least, he’d brought me to the place he’d told me we were going. And Dad
did
live here. I knew that for fact. Will and I hadn’t worked out when we were going to head over to his house, but I’d waited so long, there’s no way I was going to wait another day. The tricky part would be to convince Will to go along with it.

Instead of trying to solve that problem, I concentrated on the good stuff. Dad. He was so close I could almost hear him calling out my name. All these stupid, childlike questions raced through my head. Would he look the same? Would he still smell the way I remembered? Would he like me? Would he understand my insecurities and fears without my having to say them out loud, or would I have to spell every little thing out for him, tell him exactly how frightened I was, of Will, of the future, of absolutely everything? I felt sort of like I was about to go on a blind date and I didn’t want to blow it.

After my shower, I got myself all made up, eyeliner, mascara, blush, the works. Not trashy, just . . . I wanted to look nice for him. I patted a little bit of perfume on my wrists and everything.

Then I put on my favorite pair of jeans and the Stanford sweatshirt I love so much. Maybe he’d make the connection and realize that I was wearing it for him. Like he’d see it and he’d know I’d kept loving him all this time, and forgiven him, whatever his reasons might have been, for running away from us all those years ago.

My hair still wet, I returned to the room.

Will was snoring there, sprawled out across the crisp made bed in the clothes he’d been wearing for two days. He hadn’t even taken his shoes off. I let him sleep—he was less scary that way—and rooted through my bag for a pair of clean socks.

The sun had begun to set while I was in the shower, and the angle of the window, combined with the fading light, made for a lot of shadows and darkness in the room. I turned on a couple lights so it wouldn’t be so gloomy.

Shoes tied and ready to go, I shook him awake.

“Will,” I said. “Hey, you going to take a shower?”

“Yeah, I guess I will,” he said. “In a few minutes.”

He stretched. He luxuriated in the size of the bed, smiling up at me like all his cares had been left far away in California, like he’d reached his destination. No urgency at all. And none of the panic and paranoia and twitchiness that had been so constant over the past few days.

He looked me up and down through heavy-lidded eyes. This is not right, I thought. He’s way too content. The calm before the storm, I thought. And I felt a tug that said,
Go, find Dad, now before it’s too late
.

“You look like you’re getting ready for something special,” he said.

“I am getting ready for something special,” I said. “Go take your shower. If you’re quick enough, we could head over tonight, don’t you think?” I was trying to keep my pep up, to infect him with my positivity.

He sat up at this and made a disconcerted face. “Come,” he said. “Sit.”

It was like he had a secret, some sick thing he was thinking, and it was spilling out through his bloodshot eyes. The twitchiness was returning, too, mostly in the tips of his fingers.

“What’s wrong?” I said. “Will, don’t look at me like that.”

“Just, come.”

Best not to upset him, was what I was thinking. I sat next to him on the bed.

“What’s up?” I said. “Will, this seems like a game and I’m not really in the mood for it.”

That’s when he launched into this long diatribe, accusing Dad of everything from beating Mom senseless every night, to sleeping with every woman in the Bay area. “He’s the most selfish person I’ve ever met,” he said. “You don’t know. You were too young to remember. But I can tell you, all those things you’ve imagined him to be, he’s the opposite of that. Think of Satan, and then multiply by ten.”

Eventually I couldn’t take it anymore. I wanted to scream at him, tell him to take a look at himself, for once. “Why are you telling me these things right now?” I said, keeping as calm as I could.

He took my hands then, and started massaging my fingers.

“Because, you should know, he’s not going to help us,” he said.

I didn’t know whether to believe him or not. I didn’t want to believe him. He had all kinds of reasons to be lying to me. But in his sick way, he loved me, so maybe, I don’t know, maybe he thought he was being noble and kind somehow.

“Come,” he said again. “Come.” Like his only concern was my shattered emotions and his hopes of calming them, comforting me. And he pulled me by the arms toward himself.

I didn’t have much choice. I let myself be maneuvered in front of him so I was sitting with my back nestled up against his chest and I let him wrap his arms around my waist.