by Karen Reis
Sean nodded but said nothing. We ate in companionable silence for a few minutes.
“So, have you been in contact with your mom?” I asked after he stopped our waitress and asked her to bring us a chocolate shake and two spoons. “Is she still in that weird commune?”
“No. The commune was shut down by the feds, who booked her and several others for tax evasion and growing and selling illegal substances. I found out about all that after she was sent to prison. She somehow found out where I was – this was before my own run-in with the Feds – and wrote me and asked for money. I didn’t write her back, and I never sent her a dime. I was angry with her for abandoning me. I’ve gotten older and now I’m not so angry, but I still don’t contact her. Fact is, she’s no good as a mother, as a person. She’s part of my old life, and I left that behind.” Sean shook his head. “I don’t think she feels any real loss of me anyways, so I don’t worry about it.”
“Well, she did loose out,” I said firmly. “Even if she doesn’t realize it, though she ought to. And you’ve got courage that not many people these days have. It takes guts to leave poisonous people behind you. It takes guts to leave the familiar and start over from scratch, to remake yourself into someone you and others can respect. And you are respected. Genny and Isaac think very highly of you, and so do I.”
Sean’s face was still; I had embarrassed him. “Thank you,” he said. “That’s probably the best thing anyone has ever said to me.”
“You’re welcome.” Our waitress brought out our shake and I waited for her to go before I continued on. “I haven’t yet reached that point myself – of leaving those poisonous to me behind.” I smiled at him as I dipped a spoon into the shake. “Though I do believe with every confrontation, I’m getting closer.”
We were both silent for a moment. Sean played with his shake, but wasn’t really eating it, and I wondered what was up.
“So, uh,” he began, but paused, not quite meeting my gaze. “I told you that I had some things to tell you before I could, you know…”
I smirked at him. “Throw me over your shoulder and ravish me?”
Sean couldn’t help but grin, but then tamped it down. “Yeah. There’s things you should know about me, about my past. I want you to know them, before you decide whether or not you want to get serious about me.”
Crap. I already was.
He held out his hands, and I placed mine in his. “I didn’t tell you much besides the bare details about myself, about my criminal past. I’ve been waiting for you to ask me about it, but you haven’t.”
I shrugged. “It’s been a busy few days. I would have gotten around to it.”
Sean smiled at my joke. “I am curious,” I said. “But I won’t judge you. I promise.”
Sean nodded, but I wasn’t sure if he believed me or not. Still, he launched into his story as if he couldn’t wait another minute to tell me all the dirty details of his past.
“After I ran away from the “home”, I eventually fell in with this guy who ran, among other things, a big chop shop business. My job was to steal the cars – I was good at it, real good, and my boss appreciated it. This guy, he was into money laundering, drug trafficking, prostitution. There was even a rumor that he dabbled in organ trafficking.”
“Ew,” I said, breaking in and making a face.
“Yeah,” said Sean dryly. “Anyways, he liked me. He scared the sh-the crap out of me, but he liked me, and since the pay was right and I had nowhere else to go, I hung around him, became one of his ‘boys’, a right hand man – in small stuff mostly, but he could count on me to show up at this place with this package, or deliver a message to that guy and take an answer back to him, all the while keeping my mouth shut and making him money. I got real close to him – his son was a real screw up, spoiled rotten and dumb. The boss liked me better – I didn’t steal from him – so brought me into his family, let me know things about him, personal things, financial things. Secrets.”
“Like The Godfather,” I breathed, my eyes big like saucers. Though I’d never seen it, I did know a little about it from watching When Harry Met Sally.
Sean’s mouth quirked in a quick smile. “Not really. Anyhow, the cops wanted my boss, knew he was dirty, but like it usually is with organized crime, they couldn’t pin a charge on him. Then one day, I got sent out with a package, and I–.” Seam hunkered down in seat and whispered so softly that I could barely hear him, “I ended up killing a guy.”
Sean stopped there, apparently waiting for me to do or say something.
I just stared at him. Sean had killed someone? Sean had committed murder? I couldn’t picture it. I couldn’t reconcile the idea with what I knew of him, with the person he was now. “Does Isaac know this?” I asked.
Sean shook his head. “No one knows this. It’s important to me that you don’t repeat it, either.”
I nodded. “I can certainly understand that.”
I said no more, and Sean only looked at me, as if waiting for me to say something, or perhaps make some decision. “Well?” he eventually asked, leaning forward in earnest.
I took a nervous sip of water. “Well what?”
“How do you feel about what I just told you?”
I shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t know. It’s kind of hard to digest.” Sean’s shoulders slumped a little in defeat, but I could only be honest with him. “Why are you telling me this if you’ve never told anyone we know?”
“Because I want you.”
It was simple, raw and honest. I was shocked by his admission.
“But I’m damaged goods, Carrie,” Sean admitted. “And I think you need to know these things about me. I want you know what your getting because I don’t want you to regret taking me on.”
How could I not melt at that explanation? “Okay,” I simply said.
Sean shook his head. “Okay what?”
I gave him a half smile. “Okay: I won’t run away screaming. Okay: I’m giving you your chance to lay out all your cards.”
What more could I say at that point? Sean realized this, and so, after eating another spoonful of shake, he went on with his story.
“I guess if there were a lawyer here she would argue that I acted in self-defense. The guy didn’t want to pay and pulled a gun, but I was armed too. Whatever, we were both breaking the law. The cops picked me up a day later. The body had been taken care of, but apparently there had been a couple of witnesses who could and did ID me in a lineup. The Feds laid my situation out on the table. Either I could go to prison for the rest of my life for killing a no-account drug dealing middleman, or I could turn rat and spill my guts on everything I knew about my boss – and I knew a lot.”
“And you did,” I said. “You spilled your guts.”
“Yeah,” Sean said, twiddling his spoon between his fingers. “But it took me a while. I figured my boss would send in one of his lawyers and get me out, but he never did. A little bird stuck the idea in his head that I would without a doubt turn coat, and I almost got killed that night in lockup. So the next morning, I told the cops everything I knew about everything. Where the bastard kept his papers, where his whorehouses were, names, dates, places, addresses. The DA moved and they picked up my boss and his son, shut down his operation, and charged him with felony counts of just about anything you could imagine. I took my plea bargain and was put under federal protection.”
“Wow,” I said, turning all these details over in my mind. “And he and his son went to prison?”
“Yep.”
“And you left it all behind and started over with a new city, a new crowd, an education and a job.”
“I did.”
“So you were a success case.”
Sean looked at my quizzically. “Huh?”
“You reformed,” I stated logically. “You learned your lesson, decided to become an upstanding, contributing member of society, and since then you haven’t fallen back into a criminal path.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Sean said.
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br /> “Well, then,” I said. “What’s to judge? I thank you for the background information, but it doesn’t change the fact that you’ve treated me like a lady the entire time I’ve known you. What more can a girl ask for?”
Relief washed over Sean. “You’re really okay with my past?”
I stood up, came over to his side of our booth and slid in next to him. He put an arm around my shoulders, and I rested my head on his chest. “Like I said, it’s certainly a shock, but I’m not going anywhere. You sir, are one of a kind. I’d be a fool to let you get away from me.”
Sean kissed me. It was a gentle, loving kiss, one that made me melt against him as if all my bones had turned to liquid.
He took to me to go see a movie after that, and we held hands the whole way through. It was sweet, it was perfect. I felt so happy when I was near Sean, so happy when I thought about him. He felt the same way, I could tell. Was this love? I asked myself. I didn’t know. I had never been in love before, and it certainly wasn’t the sort of thing I wanted to ask Sean about.
It was the best evening of my life.
On the way back to our complex, we had to pull over and allow a bellowing fire truck to get around us. Though it left us behind, we mirrored its route. “I hope there hasn’t been any more trouble tonight,” I said, worried about Charles and Glen and my car too.
We watched as the fire truck turned onto our street, and from there we could see the orange glow of a car fire coming from in front of our building. Two cop cars were already at the scene. Neither of us spoke as Sean parked out on the street and we walked, my hand held firmly in his, towards where a small crowd of our neighbors gawked.
“Charles’ truck,” Sean pointed out to me. “What happened?” he asked the person standing closest to us.
“Someone put a pipe bomb in that truck,” the person informed us. “If this keeps up, I’m moving. Seems like every night something bad is going on here.”
“Do the police have any new leads?” Sean asked.
The neighbor shook his head. “They might if the management here would install some security cameras, but no such luck.”
Sean said his thanks to the man and he led me away from the group and over to where he had spotted Glen and Charles standing. They were watching in grim silence as the firemen fought to put out the blaze. They both acknowledged us with a nod of the head.
“Carrie, your car got tore up by the shrapnel,” Glen said apologetically.
It was true. My car was parked nearby Charles’ truck. So much for the new paint job.
“This is terrorism,” I said, angry at what I was seeing. Sean put a comforting hand on my shoulder, but I didn’t want to be comforted at that moment. “That’s exactly what this is. This is designed to make us all afraid. Someone could have gotten killed in the explosion, and whoever is doing this probably doesn’t even care.”
“It gets better, Carrie,” Charles said heavily. “When the cops were checking out the area, they found a note tacked to your door.”
“A note?” I asked. “From who? What did it say?”
“It was short,” Charles explained. “Just two words, written on college rule notebook paper. The cops think that’s significant.”
I nodded impatiently. “But what did it say?” I repeated.
“YOU’RE NEXT,” Charles said. “Expect the police to have a conversation with you before the night is over.”
I was so stunned I didn’t know what to do. Sean drew me close as if to keep me safe, which I appreciated, but I couldn’t help but look around nervously. What if the terrorists were here, watching their handiwork, watching me? What if they lived in the complex? How else could they know exactly which apartment I lived in? How else would they know about Charles and Glen, who were not flamboyant about their relationship?
I was scared as I hadn’t been before, and there was nothing I could about it.
Dear Dad,
Do you remember in my first letter I wrote that I told you that I hate you? Well, I don’t. Not really. But I am angry with you. The sad thing is, I have no idea how these letters to you will affect you. Will you be angry? Or will you be sad? Will you see your parenting years as a failure, or will you think me ungrateful and not understanding of things you had to deal with? I guess part of the reason I’m angry with you is that I don’t know what your response to me will be. You are the most uncommunicative person I know. You keep everything inside. I have no idea who you are as a person – what your favorite food is, your favorite color, what sorts of things make you happy and what sort of things just push your buttons. I don’t know, because in many ways, despite the fact that we lived in the same house together for 20 years, we are strangers.
You know, just the other day, my husband asked me what I think my parents taught me, and after I thought about it for a moment, do you know what I said? I said, “They taught me to work hard.” He thought that was incredibly pathetic and sad. Of all the things you could have taught me, you taught me to work hard. You didn’t teach me to ride a bike, or to dance, or how to take a bothersome boy down. You didn’t teach me to drive, or to write a check. You didn’t teach me a lot of things.
But I don’t want you to think that I’ve forgotten all the things you did do either, like keep my sisters and me clothed with food on the table and hot water in the pipes. I know it was hard a lot of times too, and I appreciate the fact that you spent the effort to take care of us physically. A lot of dads don’t do that.
But despite that there is a hole in my heart and in my brain because you weren’t there emotionally. Just because you went to work every day and paid the bills doesn’t mean you raised me. You left that up to Nancy, a woman with a short temper, our stepmother, a woman who should never, even if she’d been a saint of a woman, have been left to raise and discipline us for the simple reason that she was not our parent and you were. Do you realize that you made a bad situation worse for my sisters, who were teenagers, by leaving them in the care of a stranger who did not endear herself to them and gave them little reason to respect her?
Why did you have kids if you didn’t want to raise us? If you didn’t want to spend time with us and teach us things? I can’t remember a single time when you even played with me. And please don’t try to say that perhaps you read to me as a toddler or changed my diaper as a baby. For one, I wouldn’t believe it, and second, who cares? I don’t even remember that time of my life. From the age of four and onward, you were a ghost in my life.
Is it because I wasn’t a boy? Or were you just too tired? Is that why you didn’t give me, or my sisters, the time of day? Or was it because we were the physical reminders of a woman who had been unfaithful and hurt you? I’d like to hear your excuses.
With much confusion,
Your Daughter
Chapter 8
I spent that night on Sean’s couch because I was too scared to stay alone in my apartment. I refused to sleep in his bed, whether or not he was in it, because I was afraid of what I might do if I put myself into such a vulnerable position. He didn’t push me, though I could tell that he was disappointed. Sean didn’t spend the night in his bed either, though. He took some blankets and bedded down the on the floor in front of the couch, which made me feel much better. Still, I tossed and turned and jumped at every creak and squeak.
But nothing else happened that night, and eventually I was so exhausted my body couldn’t do anything but fall asleep.
“Wake up, baby doll.”
Sean’s hand shaking my shoulder woke me up, and I up straight, my eyes wide in fear. “What’s happening?” I asked.
Sean squatted down next to me and smoothed my tousled hair. “Nothing’s wrong. It’s just time to get up, sleepy head.”
I let myself fall back down on the couch. “I don’t want to get up,” I muttered as I pulled my blanket over my head.
Sean left me alone, but minutes later I smelled eggs and bacon cooking, and my stomach growled fiercely. Throwing back the covers, I stumbled i
nto Sean’s bathroom and splashed some water on my face. I looked in the mirror and grimaced. I had slept in my dress, which was horribly rumpled. My hair looked like I’d been in a wind storm, and there was even a bit of drool encrusted on my chin. Horrified, I scrubbed it away with a wash cloth, and then gargled some of Sean’s mouthwash to get rid of my morning breath.
I couldn’t do much about my hair except run my fingers through it. Sean didn’t own a comb. It made sense, since he was bald after all.
“Do you shave your head because you’re going bald, or do you do it as a fashion statement?” I asked Sean when I exited the bathroom.
Sean looked at me like I was weird, which was an accurate assessment. “I do it because it’s part of my look.”
I nodded, and he fed me. The eggs were soft and fluffy, the bacon crispy. Sean had only marmalade for the toast. I didn’t strike me as a marmalade man, but then Sean was more than he seemed to be. He had layers.
Which made sense, because I when I saw him for the first time, I thought he was an ogre. I smiled at him. He smiled back.
“What are you going to do with your car?” he asked me when we were cleaning up.
“Nothing. When I bought it the paint job sucked.” I shrugged. “Back to status quo. Besides, I can’t afford to keep fixing it.”
“I have to go to work,” Sean said. “This may sound overbearing, but I don’t want you to be alone at your apartment. I think you should spend the nights at Genny’s house till these guys are caught.”
Disappointment washed over me. He didn’t want me to stay here? It wasn’t even an option?
“Or you can stay here, if you want,” Sean offered casually. Perhaps a little too casually.
Airily I said, “Well…it would be more convenient.” Sean glanced at me sharply, and I grinned at him. I was amazed that I could smile after the night I’d had, but that was just how I felt around Sean. Everything was better when he was around.
Was that love? I wondered as he went to his bedroom to put on his coveralls.
The next couple of days were tense but nothing scary happened. I did wedding stuff with Genny, like going through a second fitting for our dresses, making sure that our flowers, cake, and catering requests were in order, and helping to fill out and mail thank you cards for the all the shower gifts she and Isaac had received. I spent an Saturday evening filling little golden party favor bags with expensive candies and tying ribbons on them that said: Isaac and Genny Gebremichael 11/11/2011. Making 135 of them almost killed me and I thought that it was totally unfair that Isaac and Sean, who were hanging out with us, didn’t have to help. Sean made up for it all by making out with me out on Genny’s deck while she and Isaac cooked us dinner. I spent my nights at Sean’s on his couch, alone.