“What do you mean, ‘inappropriately?’” Luca asked.
“Like one of them pinched my ass hard enough to leave a bruise. Another one tried to spy on me in the shower, said stuff about my breasts, which weren’t really in existence. Stuff like that.”
“When did this happen?” His voice was extremely calm.
“When I was…” I thought. “It was before Ty, so maybe I was eleven or twelve. I kept them all away from my other sisters. And I told Ron and my mom, but he never listens, and she’s…” I took a breath and stopped because I was so tired, I felt like I might cry if I talked about my mom.
“Where are those men now? Are they there, with you?” he asked. He was still perfectly calm.
“No, Ron’s pals are all drifter types.” Gross and pretty scary types, too. And those were the people that Ron had allowed to live around my youngest sister, his daughter. “Apparently they’ve all moved on.”
“Jolie, I’m worried about this situation. I don’t like this.”
“Me neither. But I think I just need some sleep and I’ll be able to deal with things,” I said shakily. “If I can sleep, with Nola and my mom and my sister lying on top of me. I’ll feel better in the morning. I was hoping to hang out with you this weekend.”
“I wish we could do that. Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day.”
I knew that. We’d had our class party earlier and there had been some tears. I’d had to clean up the sticky situation that occurred when one girl decided, despite my instructions, to only give Valentines to certain people and not the whole class. “Please tell me you’re not going to meet up with Vesa,” I asked Luca.
“You know she’s calling me.”
“Block her! Right now! Like I did to Ty.”
There was a short silence. “Done. She’ll need to find someone else to cry to.”
“She should make some friends. That’s what they’re for,” I told him. “Man, I’m pretty close to crying myself right now. I could use your shoulder for sure, if I didn’t know that it would scare you into permanent hiding.”
“You could cry on my shoulder. I probably won’t run away screaming, and in case I do, I’m pretty slow. You could catch me.”
He had never seen me running. I started to laugh a little, which I really needed. “No, I won’t do that to you.”
“I’m serious, Jolie. I’m right here.”
He was pretty far away. And oops, that thought did make the tears start. I coughed and wiped my cheeks with a napkin from our greasy dinner. “Anything new with your dad?”
“Nothing,” he said glumly.
“Is that good or bad?”
“I guess…good. I don’t want to talk about him.”
“Well, I don’t want to talk about the cesspool where my mother and little sister are living. I would say my stepfather, too, but since he’ll soon be dead by my hand, he’s not worth mentioning.”
“I guess that just leaves politics for us to talk about,” he said.
“Or the weather.”
“Or you should hang up on me and go to bed, because I can hear you yawning over the phone. Go to sleep, caramellina, and call me tomorrow. Don’t try to do everything by yourself.”
“If you were here, I’d make you do it. Because what spells Valentine’s Day fun like scrubbing someone else’s toilet?” I asked. “I’ll call you tomorrow for sure so I have someone to complain to.”
“I look forward to it,” Luca told me.
“Tell me good night in Italian. Please?”
“Buona notte, piccola.”
“Goodnight, Luca.” I got out of my car and locked it. Back in the motel room, I tried to push Nola over to fit myself in the small bed, and it was amazing how hard it was to maneuver a sleeping three-year-old.
I wished I was there, with him. Or that Luca was here, with us. We’d wedge him in somehow.
∞
And I wished it more the next morning. I had slept almost none, but Kayla and Nola were raring to go early. Maia arrived just as we pulled up to my mom’s apartment building. She and her boyfriend got out of his car, a nice new truck with a few of the mud-splattered BMX bikes he liked to race still in the back. Hunter’s family was wealthy for this town, because his dad was a pretty successful contractor and his mom owned the best hair and nails place. Since Maia had started dating Hunter, she always had a manicure.
“Hi.” She kind of kicked the ground. “I’m sorry, Jolie.”
I hugged her. “For what?”
“I’m sorry that I didn’t check in on your mom. And how we fought earlier, too. I’m sorry about all the college stuff.”
“I don’t even remember the fight, ok? I’m glad you’re here now. Hi, Hunter.” I smiled politely at him. “Thanks for coming over.”
“Maia said you might need the truck to haul away some junk,” he said. He looked a little bored.
“That was a good idea,” I told her, wondering how that would work with the bed full of his bikes. “I probably will, at the end of the day. But for now, can you take the three of them somewhere? Maybe to visit your mom, or to a movie?” I dug out my wallet and handed her some of my ever-dwindling cash. “To lunch, for sure.”
“You think it will take you that long?” She glanced at her boyfriend.
“Yes. I think it’s going to take me hours.”
Hunter was looking pissed by that point, because this was probably not how he’d planned to spend Valentine’s with his cute girlfriend, but Maia helped everyone get in my car and I kissed them goodbye before she drove away. Then I got myself cleaning.
Three hours later, I had made a dent, but it still wasn’t at the point that I could let my mom and sister stay there. The bathroom…it wasn’t possible to put that situation into words. I had dumped out the wastebasket and absolutely flipped out, closed the door, and decided to work on the kitchen instead. Piles of dirty dishes and six garbage bags later, I was filthy, hot, and tired. I had made a clean spot to lay my phone so I could be on-call for emergencies, and I had seen that Maia had checked in, sending a thumbs up emoji. Then she sent a heart “from N” and wrote “GTG.” Luca had called too, but I hadn’t wanted to touch my phone with my dirty gloves to answer it, and I was so angry that I didn’t think I’d be very fun to talk to, anyway.
I looked around the little apartment, feeling so overwhelmed. It wasn’t just the current situation, because I thought if I worked hard enough, like probably all night, I could get the place clean for now. But what about when I left? What would happen then?
“Hello?” A woman’s voice bellowed from the hallway. A hand knocked hard on the door. “Jolie? Jolie Fraser, are you in there?”
Oh, damn. I wanted to hide. “Yes, I’m here,” I called back. I pulled off my gloves and tried to poke down my curls a little before I opened it. Of course, she would show up now, when I was at such a low point. And serendipitously, looking my absolute worst, too.
I swung open the door. “Hi, Cheryl. It’s been a long time.”
Ty’s mother eyed me from the hallway. “It’s been since you moved to the city. Last time you were home, you didn’t bother to tell me so that I could see my grandchild.”
I nodded. “I had let Ty know we were visiting. He was supposed to meet up with us, and we were going to see all of your side of the family, but he didn’t show. You might want to talk to him about that.”
Cheryl sniffed and peered over my head to look into the apartment. “What happened in there? Is your mother here?”
I stepped out into the hallway and closed the door. “No, I’m by myself. How did you know that I was home?”
“Terry saw you driving through town in the car he gave you.”
In the car I had bought from him, not been given. The car that had left me stranded in his driveway as parts fell off of it when I’d tried to drive it away.
“He let me know, otherwise, you could have gotten away with it,” Cheryl said angrily. “You were just going to sneak off again without seeing us, weren’t
you? Ty has been telling me what you’ve been up to.”
“Oh?” My heart was thumping. “What have I been up to?”
“You’ve been stopping him from seeing the baby unless he gives you money. After all he’s done for you!” she spat at me.
I sang “Mary Had a Little Lamb” in my mind to make myself wait before I answered, so I wouldn’t start screaming at her. Ty was her only child; I thought of how I would feel if I thought someone was trying to hurt Nola. “I’m not preventing him from seeing his daughter,” I told Cheryl. “I’ve never asked him for money. I think there’s some kind of misunderstanding.”
She shook her head. “I don’t misunderstand anything. I know exactly what’s going on.” She pulled her phone from out of her giant purse and punched at it with her fingers. “Ty?” she said into it after a moment. “I just ran into Jolie Fraser. Seems like she came home to hide from you.” She reached for my arm as if I was going to run off right now, and I gave her a look. If Cheryl touched me, there would be an issue. My expression must have worked because her hand fell to her side. “Uh huh,” she said to the phone. “Hang on.” She held it out to me. “He wants to talk to you.”
I gingerly took it from her. “Yes?”
“Hi, babe,” Ty said breezily. “Why haven’t you been answering me?”
“Why do you think I haven’t? Give it a good, hard ponder.” I stopped, and sang part of the birthday song to try again to calm down. “Ty, could you please tell your mother that I’m not stopping you from seeing our daughter? She believes that I’m asking for money from you, also. Why would she say that?”
He laughed. “My mom’s nuts. Tell her that you and me, we’re all good.”
“You tell her,” I said, and started to pass the phone back over to Cheryl.
“JoJo! Hold on. Listen, I’m working it all out with the money thing.”
Despite myself, I was curious. He did sound pretty upbeat, happy. Ty had behaved the same way when he’d told me he didn’t need to study for his finals his junior year. It turned out he had already gotten advanced copies of a few of them, and that was his last of year of high school. “How are you working it out?” I asked.
“Don’t worry about it. I’m going to take care of it soon, next week. They won’t be bothering you about it.”
“Bothering me? Why would anyone be bothering me?” I asked suspiciously.
“I told them you could give me a bailout. But don’t worry, ok? Because I don’t need it, I’m all set. And I’m probably going on a little vacation, but I’ll get in touch with you pretty soon.”
“Wait a minute, you gave them my name? You told them that I had the money to pay your debt? Ty—”
“No, it’s fine now! I would have explained all this to you, but you wouldn’t talk to me!” He hesitated. “No one, uh, came to see you or anything, right?”
“What the fuck?” I exploded. “You sent them to me, to my apartment with your daughter in it? What’s the matter with you?”
His mom reached over and grabbed the phone. “Don’t talk to him like that!” she shouted at me. “Tyson? Honey?” She nodded as she listened, then turned her back on me. “She’s here at her mother’s place. I saw inside, and they live like animals. Jolie and her parents are as trashy as they always were. Yeah,” she said into the phone, and snorted, laughing. “Ok, honey. You be careful. Have a great trip. Love you.” Cheryl shoved the phone back into her purse and turned around. “He forgives you,” she told me. “He says not to worry about what you’ve done in the past, and he’ll see you and the baby when he gets back from his vacation.”
I had been leaning against the door, pretty much thunderstruck, but something she said…that was it. “The baby? Do you even know her name? It’s Nola! And she’s not a baby, she’s three years old, and fuck you, Cheryl! I haven’t done anything to be forgiven for. Your son is a piece of shit and—”
And then she was screaming at me, too, both of us went at it at the top of our lungs until several neighbors came out and one said he was calling the cops unless we shut up. Cheryl told me to fuck myself one last time before storming away and I retreated into the still-dirty apartment. I had acted like trash, she was right about that. And Ty had given my name and address to whoever he owed the money to, the people who, in his words, were worse than a bookie.
I sat down on the dirty couch, too upset to care about what I was sitting on and in. Holy fuck. What was I going to do? About any of this? I couldn’t leave my mom and sister in this apartment. And now he had given his scary gambling cronies my name and address, and I had been pulled farther into Ty’s crap. Both me and Nola. How could he have done that to us? I started to sniffle loudly in the quiet room, and I dragged my sleeve over my face to wipe away the tears and gathering snot. I picked up my phone from the clean spot on the coffee table, not caring now about getting my dirty hands all over it, and I called Luca.
“Hi, Jolie. How is it going up there?” he greeted me.
I just sniffed, because all of a sudden when I heard his voice, I lost mine.
“Jolie? Piccola, are you ok?”
I just kept crying. “Mmhm,” I managed to squeak out.
“Are you hurt? Is Nola hurt? What happened?” There was a crash. “Fuck! Can you grab my laptop off the floor?” he called. I heard thumping, running feet. “I’m going to my car right now,” he told me. “I’m coming, right now. Tell me exactly where you are.”
“You don’t have to come,” I said, now all choked and wavering. “We’re all ok. I just had a run-in with Ty’s mom and it was awful. We were screaming at each other and she called him, and he’s such a liar! And this apartment is a disaster, I’ve been cleaning for hours and it’s still so bad, and I found drug syringes in the bathroom wastebasket…” I started to bawl again. “Cheryl said I was trash,” I sobbed, but that part wasn’t really comprehensible. I had covered up my mouth with my hand, because I had totally lost it. Totally.
“You’re not hurt? Physically? You didn’t get poked by a needle, did you? Is Nola there with you?”
I tried to make a negative sounding noise.
“I’ll wait then. Take a little time until you can talk to me.”
I sat on the couch, clutching the phone, for a few long minutes. Luca talked to me very quietly and calmly about very unemotional things. He told me what he was doing that day, working a little in the office on a Saturday. He had been researching more local food producers and talking to some of them to source ingredients for the lunches. “I have someone on my staff working on this already, but I’m interested too. Maybe we could take Nola up to some of the farms. She might like to see everything growing.”
“She’d like that,” I said. I gulped. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I called you and got so hysterical. I was pretty much ok, just crying a little, until I heard your voice.”
“You can call me any time. Can you tell me a little more about today? It’s a major sucker, right?”
I tried to explain. First I told him about the state of the apartment, the dirt and the drug paraphernalia I came across. Ron’s friends were the lowest of the low. “They were using, in an apartment with a child. And then they threw their needles into the trash? What’s the matter with them?”
“It doesn’t sound like it’s good for your family or for you to be there, either. Hold on,” he told me. “Is it broken?” I heard him asking someone else. “It’s working? Ok. Jolie, I’m looking on my laptop right now for a professional service to come in and do this clean-up.”
“No…”
“Yes. It’s too much for you to do alone and it’s not safe if there are needles and God knows what else.” Now he covered up the phone but I could hear murmurs of him talking to someone again before he came back on. “Just send me the address and we’ll set it up from here.”
“Luca, no!”
“Yes. Send it or I’ll find it myself. I don’t want to do what I did before, when I had your car fixed without your permission. I will do that again, but I
’d like to get your ok. I don’t want you to get upset, even though in the end you’ll see that I was right.”
“Luca…”
“Call me an asshole, but this is what is happening.”
I looked around the room, and thought of what else might be beneath the garbage and junk. “I wasn’t going to call you an asshole. I was going to say thank you.” I gave him the address and I could hear him typing.
“What else did you say to me before?” he asked. “What about Ty, his mother?”
Immediately, pure rage spilled out of my mouth. “Cheryl said I was keeping Nola from her father, but she doesn’t even know Nola’s name, she just kept calling her ‘the baby.’ She never even held Nola, not even when she really was a baby. The only thing she did was show up right before I left the hospital and demand a paternity test. And today Cheryl accused me of trying to get more money from Ty, as if I had ever gotten any. I haven’t, and I haven’t been trying to keep Nola from him.”
“It sounds like the mother is a liar, like the son. A liar and a grifter.”
“She’s awful. I wish you could have seen her when she first met her only grandchild, me in a wheelchair getting rolled out of the hospital, holding Nola, and Cheryl yelling for a doctor to do a blood test before we left so I wouldn’t try to cheat her son out of child support.” I gulped a breath, a sob.
“I think it’s very lucky for her that I wasn’t there. Or there with you right now, for this latest conversation,” he said.
I wished, very much, that he was here with me. “I didn’t ask for anything, from any of them. I never have. I worked, you know? I worked all the way through high school, and college. I didn’t want anything for Nola because it was all on me. She was my responsibility. I mean, I should have…” I stopped. “It wasn’t like I was confused about how to get pregnant, right? I was old enough to understand, really, really well. I had grown up watching my mom and her friends have more and more babies they didn’t take care of or want.”
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