Romeo is Homeless (23 page)

Caraleen watched August flee the kitchen. She should run after her daughter, try to comfort her. Coax out more information. Instead she picked up her wine glass and drank the remaining merlot in two long gulps, then poured another drink.

“Well, what do you think?” Don swirled the bourbon in his glass and stared at it before downing the rest.

“I think we’re in trouble. I think there’s going to be more to Reese than we want to know.”

“So let’s make her tell us. Everything.” He strummed the side of his glass with his fingertips. “Now.”

“Is that a good idea? I mean, I want to know. But I don’t at the same time. I need to know. But it scares the shit out of me.” She took another large swig of wine and turned to Don. “We have to let her tell it at her pace. I don’t want to rush her, don’t want to push her. What if I push her to leave again?” She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “I’d rather not know anything if there was a chance we’d lose her.”

The wine went down fast and Don refilled her glass, then poured more bourbon into his. She didn’t drink often and when she did it wasn’t very much. Her head spun, her legs heavy and warm with alcohol.

“Whatever did happen, it’s done.” She stared at the crimson liquid in her glass. A vision of a young boy, mangled and bloody under a subway car flashed through her mind. “Can’t change it. Can’t punish her for any of it, the very idea seems absurd. And it’s not like we haven’t made our own mistakes, didn’t do reckless things when we were young. Things that alienated my parents.”

Don slammed his glass down. Bourbon sloshed onto the table.

Caraleen jumped.

“Damn it, Caraleen. Not good enough. We need to know what the hell she’s done.”

“Don’t yell at me.” Her hands shook.

Don leaned back in his chair and ran both hands through his hair, exhaling loudly. “I’m sorry.” He shot-gunned the rest of his drink and filled his glass again.

She stared at him. “What the hell is the rush? She’s home. And I’ll do anything to keep her here.”

“All right, all right.” He covered her hand with his. “Let’s hear her out. When she’s ready.”

“And support her, try to understand. No lecturing, no yelling.”

“I said I’m sorry. I don’t yell very often.”

“I was talking to myself.”

After a restless night’s sleep, August woke before the rooster even started crowing his sunrise alarm. All that day, through all of her chores, through three meals around the kitchen table, through June’s constant chatter, she girded herself for the evening discussion to come. She played it out in her head, practicing and editing so she wouldn’t spew too much information if they asked an unexpected question. She wanted to be able to tell them everything. But how could she?

That evening, while her parents put her sisters to bed, she put on the kettle and brewed a pot of tea. The smell of bourbon on her father’s breath would push her over the edge again. When they came into the kitchen, steaming mugs were waiting for them and her mother’s oatmeal raisin cookies were stacked on a small plate.

They sat around the cramped table. Her parents waited for her to speak. She took a minute to gather her thoughts and her courage, and then told them of meeting Reese. As she spoke, she focused on a spot on the kitchen table and smiled, lost in a vision of his unfolding frame and sparkling eyes.

She could smell him in the room, feel him right beside her holding her hand. No matter how hard she tried to control it, the damn blood rose in her cheeks. Would they know that she was in love with him? That they’d made love? She couldn’t tell them about any of the sex. Not about how she’d sold her own body to some stranger. They might never look at her the same again if they knew those truths.

There was no way to tell Reese’s story without sadness and pain. It wasn’t even her pain, but she felt it anyway. Every abusive blow that was heaped upon him had sliced and burned her skin, left her invisibly scarred.

She told them how they met, finding Tanya, and some of his past. Her eyes were swollen from crying. Then words just started spilling out. “Mom, his mother gave him drugs. He got addicted because of her. She let men have sex with him. When he wasn’t even ten! Sold him for heroin just so she could get high. How could she do that to her own child?”

Caraleen’s eyes doubled in size, her cheeks drained of color.

“He was just a little kid and she was his mother. And she did those terrible things to him. She didn’t love him. Didn’t protect him. Didn’t care about him at all.”

“I’m so sorry, August. Sorry for him. I really am.” Caraleen rested a hand on her arm. “Did he offer you drugs? Did you take anything?”

She pulled her arm away and pushed back in her chair. “Of course not! You know I wouldn’t do something like that.”

“We didn’t think you’d run away either.”

She looked at her father. She couldn’t read what he was feeling, but he looked like he might cry. He hardly ever did that.

“He used to cut himself.”

“Cut himself? What do you mean?” Two vertical crevasses appeared between her father’s eyes. They deepened when he was confused or concerned or angry. She wasn’t sure which of those he was at that moment. Maybe all of them.

“With a knife. Or broken glass. Long shallow cuts on his arm like this.” She drew a fingernail along the underside of her arm above the wrist leaving a pale, temporary scar. “He said the pain calmed him down when he got upset or something. I didn’t really understand that. His life was all so unbelievable, like an awful movie. But it was real.”

“So.” Her father held his teacup with both hands and tap-tap-tapped it against the saucer. “Gunfire, no money, staying under a bridge with a strange boy who cuts himself and does drugs, finding a girl dead in an alley. And you still didn’t think it was a good idea to call us? To come home? Augus
t
why?”

“Did drugs. I told you, he quit.”

“That’s not an answer.”

She sighed and stared at her hands. “Because I wanted to stay with him. He needed me. I made him happy. He deserved a little of that, don’t you think?”

“August, come on for Christ’s sake. You didn’t know that boy. He was a stranger to you.”

Her head snapped up and she glared at her father, a sob caught in her throat. “He was not a stranger. I did know him. Better than anyone had ever known him.” She put a hand to her mouth to stop the verbal flood. On the verge of telling everything, she put her head on her arms and wept.

“Don, that’s enough. No more tonight.” Her mother slipped an arm around her waist and helped her to her feet. “Come on, sweetheart. Bed time.” They walked up the stairs to her room, August leaning against her mother.

Caraleen pulled some pajamas from a drawer and handed them to her, then sat next to her on the bed and brushed hair away from her face, tucking it behind one ear.

“You got close to Reese pretty fast, huh?”

“It was easy, Mom. He was so nice and sweet to me, a complete gentleman.” She looked at her lap and grinned, a blush warming her cheeks again. “And he was cute, too.”

“Ah, I see. That never hurts, does it?” Her mother put an arm around her shoulder and squeezed, then kissed her head. “Why don’t you get some sleep? I’m sure there’s more to tell tomorrow.”

The next night, August sat in silence across the table from her parents while they sipped tea and ate the apple pie August baked that afternoon.

She told them about the other kids. What she knew of their stories, their abusive families. She glanced at her father. She’d never seen his tanned face so pale. Then she turned to her mother. “Look, you’re not perfect parents. I’m not even sure what that is. But I had no good reason to leave you. What they all went through, how their parents treated them, it’s horrible. Unthinkable. I had no idea people could do any of that to anyone, let alone their own children. But if I hadn’t left, I wouldn’t have known , and I’d probably still be just a brat who isn’t satisfied with anything.” She reached across the table and put a hand on each of theirs, looking at each of them in turn. “I’ve changed. Believe me, my life looks different now.”

Her mother nodded and patted August’s hand. Her father just looked at her. He didn’t say a word. Then he shifted in his chair and leaned forward. “So if they live on the street, how do these kids eat?”

“They’d usually find food in the garbage. Called it Dumpster diving.”

Her mother pushed her half-eaten piece of pie away.

“Sometimes they steal.”

One of her father’s graying eyebrows shot up. “They’re thieves?”

“Just little stuff, a piece of fruit or something.” She twisted the silver ring on her finger.

“August, there aren’t varying degrees of theft. You either steal or you don’t. Bad is bad.”

“I don’t think so.” What about the dirty magazines in the sock drawer? Just pictures, her father wasn’t touching girls in the flesh. But if bad is bad, no varying degrees, then you’re a hypocrite, Daddy. “You have to be there, to live like them to truly understand. And the alternative sucks.” She breathed a deep inhale and took her time letting all the air out.

This particular revelation could wait while she cut a slice of pie and thought about her next words. She scooped a big bite onto her fork and brought it to her mouth. Reese would have loved her apple pie.

“They sell themselves. Prostitute themselves. Usually to get just enough money for one day.” She shoved the pie in her mouth.

Her mother closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Oh, hell no.”

“Sometimes they get hurt.”

“What do you mean?” her mother snapped.

She told them of Amber’s rape, finding Ricki’s body in the next bed.

Her mother gasped and put one hand to her mouth. “Oh my God.”

Another night, another round of unstoppable tears. “Daddy, he said he was a priest. He had a street ministry. A priest!”

Her father ran a hand through his hair and shook his head. “Not like any priest I’ve ever met. But sweetheart, there are bad people everywhere. Sometimes where you least expect them to be.”

“I met him on the bus. He gave me the address to his ministry so I could go there if I needed anything. If I had, he probably would have raped and killed me. A priest! Everything I took for granted, thought was right, got so screwed up, so twisted.”

“And did they arrest this man?”

“Guy beat him up. I think he might have killed him.”

“August what kind of people did you fall in with?” The sudden boom of her father’s shout shook her in her seat. He hadn’t raised his voice to her in years. “Drugs, self-abuse, prostitution. Murder! You could have gotten hurt. Or worse! What were you thinking?”

“They’re the best people I’ve ever met!” she yelled. “Guy did that for Ricki and Tanya. To save Amber, to save other girls from being raped, beaten. Or worse. What kind of priest does that? He’s bad, not Guy, not any of them. What would you have done if it was me, Daddy? The same thing, I bet.” She breathed hard while her father leaned back in his chair, his palms over his eyes. She lowered her voice. “Guy’s a hero. They all are. They put up with so much abuse, so much degrading shit. Just to barely survive. And why? Because they had no family who loved them, they had no home. It’s not fair. Not fair at all. They’re just kids, like me. I don’t even know if Amber is okay. She’s out there all by herself now.” Her whole body started to tremble. “Ricki, Tanya and Reese are all dead, Guy is probably in jail.” She wrapped her arms around her stomach and leaned forward in her chair, rocking and weeping. “Oh my God, it’s all my fault! I came along and everything changed, I ruined their whole family!”

“No, August. That’s not true.” Her mother came around the table and kneeled beside her. “Look at me, sweetheart. That priest was doing those awful things before you met them. Those girls that died were drug addicts and prostitutes for years. They were in peril before you met them. What you did do was give Reese something to be happy about, even if just for a few weeks. It is not your fault, do you hear me?”

She stared into her mother’s eyes. She heard the words, understood why her mother said them. But didn’t believe any of it.

“Mom, I miss them so much. I love them.” She looked at her father. “I love all of them.”

Her mind raced through the night. She replayed her mother’s words over and over, trying to reconcile those reassurances with the horrors she had seen. The longer she agonized, the more exhausted she became. And the more she was convinced she was to blame for every bad thing that had happened. By the time she collapsed into fitful sleep, she was drowning in self-loathing and guilt.

She spent the next day avoiding her parents. That night she would have one last story to tell. The tale of Reese’s suicide. She had to get her head straight and her emotions in check.

She dragged out all of her chores, took forever in the pigpen and idled in the hen house. She visited all the animals and even took the truck out into the field by herself to practice driving. More hypocrisy. No license, no licensed driver beside her, but her father allowed her to break that law all the time. Varying degrees of bad.

“I was in love with him.” She couldn’t think of a better way to start. She refused to be ashamed of her feelings for Reese. Why should she? They were the purest feelings she’d ever known.

Her parents sat side by side, speaking their silent hand code. They shared a glance, but neither spoke a word.

“I wanted to be with him. Forever.” It was times like these she wished she could have a drink. “I asked him to come home with me, but he didn’t think there was any way you’d accept him.” She kept her gaze locked on her parents. Would they have let him in? Would they have loved him? She couldn’t see any indication of what they thought. And it just didn’t matter now.

She shifted in her chair and poured herself a cup of tea. There was no need to rush tonight. She had abandoned the shame and guilt and replaced it with an almost cool detachment. What was done was done. No going back to change it.

“He had such a hard time saying how he felt. Even figuring it out at all. I don’t think he understood love, or could deal with people who truly cared about him. The awful stuff he saw, the evil in people, that didn’t faze him. But love? Love messed him up. That last day, in the subway station, he told me I’d saved him. That he loved me, too. I think maybe I’m the only person he ever said that to.” She took a sip of tea and set her cup down. “Then he jumped in front of a train and died.”

“Just like that?” Her father’s voice cracked.

“Yeah. Just like that. I bet he decided to right then, right on the spot. That’s how he lived, moment to moment. Second to second. That second, he decided to die. It wasn’t the first time he’d tried.”

Her mother’s eyes filled with tears.

Her father cleared his throat. “If he hadn’t done that.” He stared at his cup. “August, would you have stayed with him?”

She sat in silence for a moment. She knew the answer, why was she hesitating to say it out loud? “Yes. Yes, I would have stayed.”

A small cry stuck in her mother’s throat. She looked like she would bawl at the slightest provocation

A spasm of pain gripped August and she bent forward. She rested her arms on the table and her head on her arms and sobbed.

Her parents were on either side of her, touching her head, rubbing her back, engulfing her in an awkward hug, overlapping each other’s embrace.

“I killed him. My love killed him.” She wept in her parents’ arms. How could she have saved him? Undone a lifetime of hurt in a few short weeks? In her head she knew he’d made that choice on his own. He’d told her he didn’t want her to fuck up her life for him. So he made sure she didn’t.