by Katy Regnery
“Help ya?”
“Yes, please,” I say. “May I use your phone?”
“Don’t have a public phone here.”
It’s about six miles from here to the address on Gus’s business card, and Father Joseph, who looked up the ferry stop on the internet, warned me not to try walking it since the roads between the ferry and Gus’s house are heavily wooded on both sides.
I lift my chin. “Do you have a cell phone, ma’am?”
She looked up again. “Yeah. Why?”
“May I pay you something to use it, please?”
“Ya don’t have a phone?”
I shake my head.
She rolls her eyes with a huffing sound. “I’m coming out. I’ll let you make a quick call.”
I watch through the window as she closes and locks the window, puts her denim purse on her shoulder, turns off the lights in the little building, and exits via a side door. She steps over to me, looking up at my face thoughtfully for a moment before squinting.
“Do I know ya?” she asks.
Because of the startling likeness between me and my mother, I have also heard this question many times in my life. People see her face in mine, but it’s just different enough to throw them off. Sometimes I have used this to my advantage, but not tonight. Tonight, I want to be forgettable.
“No, ma’am,” I say. “I’ve never been here before.”
She tilts her head to the side, trying to get a better look at me. “Ya look familiar. Ya have family hereabouts?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Then what’re ya doing here?”
“Visiting a friend,” I say, adjusting my cap, pulling the brim over my forehead.
“A boy?” she asks, her voice warming as she reaches into her purse and takes out her phone.
“Mm-hm,” I say. I reach for her phone and dial Gus’s number.
“Well, be quick. I got a man waiting at home for me too.”
The phone on the other end rings, and I feel a jolt in my belly. Hope. So sharp, it almost makes me cry.
“Hello?”
“Um, hi. May I please speak to Gus?”
“Gus? He’s sleeping. Can you ring back in the morning, please?”
“No!” I raise my voice, worried that he’s going to hang up on me. “I really need to speak to him now, sir.”
There’s a pause, and the voice on the other end asks, “Who is this?”
I glance at the lady standing beside me. She’s lit a cigarette, and the smoke exhaled from her lips catches a ride on the breeze. I turn away from her and cup the phone.
“Ash,” I whisper, praying she doesn’t hear me. Between my mother’s face and my first name, the internet could deliver up my identity quickly.
The man on the other side of the phone gasps. Whoever he is, he knows who I am.
“Gus. Gus, wake up. Wake up, babe. It’s Ashley. Ashley’s on the phone!”
“Wh-what? Ash? Where?”
“Here. Here she is.”
A moment later, my Gus is speaking to me. “Ash? Li’l Ash? You there, honey?”
“I’m at the Charlotte ferry stop,” I say. “Come and get me?”
“You’re . . .? Wait! You’re here? Oh, my God! Yes! Stay there, honey! Stay there. I’m on my way!” Gus’s voice is far away when he says, “Talk to her for a minute. I gotta get dressed.”
“Ash? Ash, it’s Jock, Gus’s partner. He’s on his way.”
I’ll be there. I’ll be there for you.
For the third or fourth time tonight, tears prick my eyes. “I have to go.”
“Stay put. We’re coming. We’ll be there in a few minutes. And Ashley? You’re welcome here.”
I clench my jaw to hold in a grateful sob, nodding my head even though he can’t see it. I pull the phone from my cheek and press the End button. Before I can delete the phone call, the ticket seller plucks it from my fingers.
“All set? Boyfriend on his way?”
“Y-yeah,” I manage with a small sniffle. “Thank you.”
“Want me to wait with ya?”
I look around the empty parking lot, quiet except for the buzz of bugs dive-bombing the ticket booth’s light and the footsteps approaching us as the captain and crew of the small ferry pass by.
“Night, Maude.”
“Night, boys. See ya tomorrow.”
“’Nother day in paradise,” one of them jokes, his eyes lingering on me for an extra second as he walks by, heading for a group of four cars in the corner of the lot.
“N-no,” I whisper, feeling uncertain about my surroundings, but also knowing instinctively that I need to be as inconspicuous as possible during my travels. At this point, I’ve drawn the attention of the woman next to me on the train, the conductor, the taxi driver, the ferry crew, and the ticket seller. I’m not doing a very good job of flying below the radar.
“No, thank you, ma’am,” I say, pulling on the brim of my hat again. “He’s on his way. I’ll be okay.”
She exhales a puff of smoke and clears her throat. “Sure. Take care of yourself, now.”
“Thank you for letting me use your phone.”
She turns and heads toward the last remaining car in the corner of the parking lot, then suddenly stops in her tracks and pivots around, the gravel squishing under her white canvas tennis shoes.
“Tígin! Tig!”
My heart drops, and my stomach flip-flops. For a second, I’m grateful I haven’t eaten anything since lunch or it might have gurgled up and splashed onto her tennies.
Stay calm, Ashley. Stay calm.
I look up at the woman. “Huh?”
“That’s who ya look like!” she exclaims, taking a step toward me as she scans my face. “Spitting image.”
I furrow my brow like I have no idea what she’s talking about. “I don’t—”
“The model,” she says, her tone straddling impatience and wonder. She takes an indignant step toward me. “She was the Christie Brinkley of the 2000s, don’t ya know!”
As if. Christie was a glorified swimsuit model. Tig modeled top-drawer Parisian and New York couture.
“Huh.”
“Come on! Ya know who she is, don’t ya? You’ve heard of her!”
I shrug my shoulders and shake my head. “Sorry. I’m not much for fashion magazines.”
“Well, you’re a dead ringer for her,” says Maude, squinting at me as she takes another long drag on her cigarette. “Hey, what did ya say your name was?”
I didn’t.
Think fast, Ashley.
“Christy,” I answer in the same snotty tone that Tig used when she wasn’t in the mood to deal with people.
“Ya don’t have to make fun of me,” pouts Maude.
I cross my arms over my chest and sigh like I’m bored even though my heart is racing inside.
“Bitch,” says Maude, gesturing at me with the bright orange end of her cigarette. “I hope your ride doesn’t show up.”
I watch her head to her car, hating it that I had to resort to one of my mother’s crappier behaviors to get rid of her after she’d been kind to me. I wish I could yell, “Sorry!” or “Yes, I’m Tig’s kid!” or “You were right! Let’s be friends, Miss Maude,” but I can’t. I’ve made way too much of an impression as it is.
Her car peels out of the parking lot a moment later with her middle finger jabbing through her window in my direction, and I am left alone, waiting for Gus’s headlights to brighten the darkness around me.
Luckily I don’t have to wait long.
A cream-colored Lexus screeches into the parking lot a moment later, the wheels kicking up gravel and dust as it stops beside me at the ticket booth.
I start laughing, my whole body shaking with ripples of giggles, tears streaming down my cheeks. I let my backpack slide off my shoulders, down my back, and onto the gravel. I run to the driver’s side of the car, my arms outstretched, my body pulled, like a magnet, to his.
“Li’l Ash!” he exclaims, running to me from
the passenger side, his voice a beloved mix of California sun, urban African American, and proud homosexual man. “Come here, girl!”
I am enveloped into Gus’s arms, the smell of his cloves and cologne making me sob as he wraps one wiry arm around my waist and cups my skull with the other, pushing my head down on his shoulder.
“Baby doll,” he murmurs near my ear, his voice gritty with emotion, “what on God’s green earth are you doing here?”
***
Gus’s car is big, but it feels small since he’s climbed into the backseat beside me, keeping his arm around my shoulders and his hip pressed against mine as Jock, whom Gus called P.C. when he asked him to drive, sits alone in front.
“What’s P.C.?” I ask, thinking that Gus has never given a flying fig for political correctness.
“What? You don’t see his crown? His goddamned ti-ar-a? He’s my Prince Charming, baby doll. After an endless parade of queer frogs, I finally kissed a prince.”
Jock glances up from the wheel, catching Gus’s eyes in the rearview mirror, and the look they share is so intimate, my stomach clenches with longing for a second. I don’t have the slightest idea of how it would feel to be loved like that, but there isn’t a cell in my body that doesn’t yearn for it.
“He’s being generous, Ashley,” says Jock, and for the first time I realize he has an accent.
“You’re English?”
“Yes. My mother was English. My father was American. From here, actually. Vermont. They divorced when I was small, and I grew up in London with my mum.”
“You left London for . . . here?” I ask, looking out the window at . . . nothingness.
Jock nods. “I have dual citizenship. After 9/11, I moved to the States to serve. Marines.”
“Oh,” I murmur, quickly putting together that Jock, a half-American gay man, served in the military. “Wow. That couldn’t have been easy.”
“Don’t ask, don’t tell,” says Gus, squeezing my shoulder. “Good luck getting anything out of him. I ask him for stories, and he tells me to mind my business.”
Jock grunts softly. “They aren’t the best memories.”
“Poor P.C.,” says Gus, clucking his tongue. “A fairy in fatigues.” His voice is tender when he adds, “You’re with me now, honey. I got your back. For life.”
Jock catches Gus’s eyes in the mirror again, and again I feel the intensely loving bond between these two men. “Thank God for that.”
“Li’l Ash,” says Gus, turning to me. “What happened to you? Why you here, baby?”
My stomach knots uncomfortably, and I burrow closer to Gus, biting hard on my lower lip. Your body is mine! Your virginity is mine! Your pussy is mine! Your womb is mine, and I will pump it full of cum and fill it with son after son until you have built me a beautiful fucking empire, do you hear me?
“Mosier,” I murmur on a release of held breath. “He . . . he had plans for me.”
“What kind of plans?” asks Jock.
“He . . .” I sob. The words are so filthy, so unthinkable, I can’t bear to repeat them. “I can’t, Gus.”
“Don’t grill her, P.C.,” admonishes Gus. “She’s not one of your grunts.” He hugs me tight. “He wanted, uh, things from you, baby doll?”
“Mm-hm.”
“He . . . made a move on you?”
“Mm-hm.”
Jock growls softly from the front seat. “Did he force himself—”
“Sweet man, I’ma have to flog you later if you can’t zip it now,” warns Gus. He turns back to me. “You okay, Ash? Your body hurtin’?”
“N-no,” I manage to whisper. “It didn’t get that far. I . . . I puked on him.”
“You . . . you . . . ha!” Gus chortles. “You puked on the man? Ha! Oh, li’l Ash, I wish I’d been there to see that!”
“No, you don’t,” I sob, my words suddenly rushing from my lips. “He was furious. He said terrible things. He . . . Gus, he said he only married Tig for me. He wanted to . . . to mold me into . . . I don’t know . . . some perfect child wife. He . . . he . . . he said I was g-going to h-have his s-sons and . . . and . . . and . . .”
My sobs are choking me now, and I let them free, crying in terrible gulps and snorts as I think of my dead mother, my callous grandparents, and my terrifying stepfather. How could she have done this to me? How could Tig have married that man, knowing the life he planned for me? Did she hate me so much? Did she resent me that much? That she would consign me to a life of debauched slavery to a man thirty years my senior without a kind bone in his body? My God, what did I do to deserve that future?
“How could she?” I wail, my shoulders shaking, my body aching, my heart a pulverized thing, shredded and dying within my chest.
“How could . . .?” Gus pauses, turning to me, his eyes wide and horrified. “Oh, no. No. Are you . . . Ash, honey, you think Tig did this?”
I take a ragged breath. “He said that it was his p-plan all along. From the m-moment he first saw us. He m-married her for me.”
“And you think she knew?”
I don’t know. I don’t know, and that’s what’s killing me.
I shrug, feeling pitiful.
“Oh, li’l Ash . . . No.” Gus’s voice is kind, but firm. “No. Absolutely not.”
“She hated me, Gus,” I manage to whimper.
“Oh, honey. No,” says Gus, rubbing my back as I tuck my head under his chin. “No. Tig was a lot of things, but she was no pimp. And believe me, baby, she didn’t hate a hair on your head. I promise you that. Your mama—oh, Tig. She was . . . lost. A lost soul. But this? No, baby. She wouldn’t do this to you.”
“Gigi,” says Jock softly, “I’m going to bring Ashley’s bags inside. She can stay here tonight.”
Tonight? Only tonight? Panic grips me. “Do I . . . need to . . . leave tomorrow?”
“No, baby doll—”
“Tomorrow we’ll go talk to Julian,” says Jock, sliding out of the car and leaving me and Gus alone.
“We have to figure things out,” continues Gus, his low voice soothing. “He could find you here. Your pedophile stepmonster. If he tries to track you down, staying with me could be the worst possible thing for you. Jock and I already talked about it on the ride to the ferry. We need to hide you.”
“But, Gus. I want to b-be with you,” I sob. “You’re all I h-have.”
Gus leans away from me, cupping my cheeks, his dark eyes searching mine. “Then trust me. Trust Jock. We’ll keep you safe, baby doll, I promise. But you have to trust us.”
He’s quiet, staring into my face, scanning my eyes, waiting for my reply.
And suddenly I am eight years old again, and Gus has pulled up in front of Tig’s bungalow in his shiny, chrome-blue VW Bug. He is walking up the path from the sidewalk to the front door, and when he gets there, he squats down before me and says, Your mama’s in rehab, baby doll. Wanna roommate?
We’ll keep you safe, baby doll, I promise.
I have a terrible feeling that it’s not a promise Gus will be able to keep, but in a world where I’ve loved few and trusted still fewer, one unassailable truth is law as I look into the eyes of a man who’s been the truest family I’ve ever known.
“I trust you, Gus-Gus.”
He blinks back tears as he pulls me into his arms.
“Let’s get you inside,” he says with an elegant sniff. “I just bet P.C.’s got cold milk and Oreos waiting for us.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Ashley
I wake up in Gus and Jock’s guest room, bright sunlight flooding through the white, gauzy curtains, warming my body, which is utterly inert under an eiderdown quilt. My eyes open slowly, taking in the unfussy room: crisp white walls with several pop art reprints by Roy Lichtenstein hung at careful intervals. My eyes follow the story they tell, starting at my far left.
The first print is of a woman with a ribbon hairband in her bobbed blond hair and a vulnerable expression on her comic book face.
In the second print, th
e woman’s finger is caught between her teeth in a gesture of angst, with tears about to fall from both eyes.
In the third print, her hair is royal blue and she’s almost underwater. The bubble caption over her head reads, “I DON’T CARE! I’D RATHER SINK—THAN CALL BRAD FOR HELP!”
On the wall across from my bed are two windows, but between them is a fourth framed picture of the same woman in a convertible. She’s wearing a fur coat, facing forward, and a man—Brad?—looks at her with sinister eyes as he drives the car.
To my right are two more prints: the first is of a woman’s hand and a man’s hand, and the man is placing an engagement ring on the woman’s finger. And in the sixth and final print, the woman and man are kissing passionately.
I circle my eyes around the room again: the young woman, the tears, the drowning, the car ride, the engagement, the kiss.
In broad strokes it tells a story: first love, conflict, a happy ending.
But why does the girl’s face look so uncertain in the first print? And why is she crying in the second? She’d rather die than ask for his help in the third picture. But in the fourth, they’re back together, though his expression is ominous, like he means her harm. Then there’s a ring and a kiss. Somehow, they end up married.
What is the real story? I wonder. Where is it? In the broad strokes or in the nuance? In the glossed-over happy ending? Or in her tears and his hostility? Where is the truth?
A knock at the bedroom door ends my introspection, and I sit up in bed. “Come in.”
Gus peeks in, his dark skin in stark contrast to the bright white of the room. “You decent?”
I giggle. That’s the way he always woke me up when he stayed with us, and despite its inappropriateness, I love it just as much now as I did then. I pat the bed, and he sits down, crossing his legs, clad in crisp, cuffed khaki. He wears a Christian Lacroix tie as a belt and an ironed, long-sleeved Brooks Brothers button-down shirt in mint green, rolled at the cuffs. He looks like a movie director from the 1930s, cool and sophisticated, and I remember how much I’ve always admired his sense of style.
“Lacroix and Brooks Brothers?” I ask, raising an eyebrow.
“We are in the country,” he notes with a sniff. “I could hardly break out my black leather chaps, baby doll.”