Three More Words

by Ashley Rhodes-Courter

  “Uh-huh.” He sounded more frightened.

  Gay waved another note: THROW THE KNIFE AWAY FROM YOURSELF.

  “Luke, listen! I need you to throw the knife as far away from yourself as possible—and away from the cops.” I could actually hear the plink as it landed on the pavement.

  Phil whispered in my ear. “Tell him to sit down with his arms up.”

  “Luke, sit down wherever you are and put your hands up.”

  We heard a scuffling sound, then, “Got him!”

  I started shuddering, and my phone slipped from my hand. Phil picked it up and shouted, “Whoever is there, may I please speak to an officer?”

  “Deputy Baragona. Who’s this?” came a bass voice on Luke’s end of the line.

  “This is his sister’s father,” Phil said, confusing the deputy further. “What’s happening to Luke?”

  “We’re taking him into custody.”

  “This is complicated, Officer, but Luke is a very troubled former foster child with mental health issues. He needs psychological help.”

  “That’s not my call,” he said, and hung up.

  “Ash, you talked Luke down!” Gay said.

  “And probably saved your brother’s life,” Phil added. “Some cops shoot first and ask questions later.”

  A bitter taste rose in my throat as I imagined Luke lying on the pavement covered in blood from a fatal wound. “If I hadn’t answered my phone or if Luke had run or—”

  “You can’t take responsibility for any of this,” Gay said. “Besides, he’s fine.”

  But it wasn’t a bizarre fantasy for me to think that something like that could happen to my brother. Our grandfather Rhodes had been shot and survived; his grandfather had killed Luke’s paternal great-grandfather. Luke seemed genetically wired to attract trouble and plunge into danger.

  I looked toward Phil for answers. “He went crazy because Ed sold his horse. Why would Ed do that?”

  “Ed probably reached the end of his rope,” Phil said, because he knew how Luke loved to escalate conflict.

  “What’s going to happen to him next?”

  “Maybe he’ll get the help he needs,” Gay said, “but at least he’s safe.”

  Two days later, Ed called. “Your loser brother is being released from jail tomorrow. He’s either going to your house or he’ll be out on the street.”

  “Ed, I’m staying with some friends for a few more weeks, and then I have to be back at college.”

  “He can live in your dorm room.”

  “That’s not possible,” I said. “He’s your son.”

  “He’s your blood,” Ed said, “not mine.”

  For a moment I considered asking the Courters to take him on for a few weeks, but then I remembered that they were going on vacation. Besides, the only person Luke listened to was me.

  “I wouldn’t ask this if there was any other choice,” I said to Erick. “Luke will be eighteen at the end of the month, and then I can help him get out on his own.”

  “What grade is he in?”

  “He dropped out, which is why Ed sold the horse. I’ll get him back in school and find him a job to keep him busy.” My voice became more tentative. “Would you do it—for me?”

  “No,” Erick said, “with you.”

  The next morning Ed’s car turned into the semicircular driveway in front of Erick and Ian’s house. Ed popped open the trunk. “Get your crap out of my backseat,” he barked at Luke. As soon as Erick slammed the trunk shut, Ed gunned the motor and drove off.

  “Good-bye, asshole!” Luke cursed, then spit, splattering Erick’s Pumas. He left his bags in the driveway and marched inside. “I’m starving!” He opened the refrigerator, pulled out the orange juice, and gulped from the carton.

  “Hey, Lukie, that’s disgusting,” I said.

  “Don’t call me that stupid baby name.”

  “Then stop acting like a child.”

  He gulped, belched, and tossed the empty carton—which had been half-full—in the sink.

  “The garbage is over there,” I said, indicating the trash can. “And maybe someone else wanted some.”

  “So, buy more.” He opened the refrigerator again. “Where’s the beer?”

  I was seething but didn’t respond. Thinking ahead, Ian had removed all the beer and booze from the house. He even cleaned out some empty bottles from under his bed and found a few swallows of cheap rum, which he poured into a Coke and finished off before kissing the bottle—with a real smack of a kiss—good-bye.

  Most of Luke’s laundry was clean—or could pass the sniff test—and I placed it in baskets in the third bedroom. Luke seemed content to let me do the arranging. One of my biggest fears—of Luke ending up in jail like his birth father—had come true. I hoped he had learned his lesson and would not do anything worse.

  The next day I took Luke to a supermarket to apply for a job. “Show me the money!” Luke crowed when he was handed the application.

  “Keep it down,” I hissed. “You work on that while I do some shopping.”

  I brought home pork chops, canned green beans, bagged salad, and ranch dressing.

  “How do you cook your pork chops?” I asked the guys.

  “Our mom fries them,” Ian said.

  I checked the cabinets only to find the boys were out of oil.

  “Luke, would you please go buy some vegetable oil?”

  “Do I have to?” he whined.

  “You can get it at the convenience store across the street.”

  After half an hour I began to fret—there were four lanes of traffic to cross to get to the store. I opened the front door and looked in the direction of the store. Luke was leaning against the fence of the house, smoking.

  “Where did you get those?” I yelled.

  “Where do you think?”

  “Put that out and come inside.” I grabbed the bag. “Where’s my change?”

  “I’ll pay you back.”

  “With what?”

  “Ed gets a ton of money from my lawsuit trust fund and the state—that’s the only reason he wanted me. He sold my horse and will keep that money too.”

  “Well, right now I’m supporting you, and you can’t buy cigarettes or anything else illegal on my dime.”

  “Ed lets me drink beer.”

  Maybe he did and maybe he didn’t. With Luke I never knew what was true. “That’s not going to happen here.”

  “That’s not going to happen here,” he repeated in a mocking tone.

  For a moment I actually felt sorry for Ed.

  All my life I had wanted my brother to be safe and happy—and loved. The truth was that I wasn’t always able to be there for him because of the separations; and even when we had been together in foster care, I had to keep pushing him away like a pesky puppy that wouldn’t stop jumping or scratching. We were now off to a rocky start because neither of us knew how to negotiate this new dynamic. I didn’t want to be an authority figure like Ed, but I also couldn’t let him do anything he wanted, especially in a home that wasn’t mine. For years I had been lectured by foster mothers and counselors who told me that I wasn’t my brother’s mother, it wasn’t my job to discipline or care for him, and I needed to “know my place” and just “be his sister.” My therapist called my overwhelming feelings of responsibility “being parentified.” Supposedly this hindered my development. No matter what I was told, though, I still worried about Luke whether I was four or fourteen. Finally, with no other volunteers in sight, I had to be his mother again.

  While we were eating the pork chops, Erick told Luke about some of his own problems in high school. “I hated being ordered around,” he said, “and I was terrified to speak up in class. Also I didn’t fit in with the snobs who were headed to college or losers who couldn’t wait to just sit around all day.”

  Luke nodded. “Yeah!”

  “So I transferred to another school right here in St. Pete where they treated me like an adult.” Luke didn’t have a smart reto
rt. “I’d like to show you around the place.”

  Erick took him the next day, before he could lose interest. When they returned, I asked Luke how he’d liked it, but he merely shrugged.

  A few days later, the grocery store called and said Luke had the job. He was to report the next morning. “The hell I will,” he said. “I don’t need to work. I’m rich.”

  Late the next evening two guys wearing ragged hoodies, who I’d never met, knocked on the door, and Luke answered it. “Hey, man!” he said, and started to invite them in.

  “I don’t think so,” I said with my arms outstretched to bar the door.

  “Sorry, guys. My sister can be a real bitch.”

  “That’s it!” I said to Erick when we were alone. “He invites creeps to the house in the middle of the night and then calls me names!”

  “Here’s the part I don’t understand,” Erick said. “Your brother went into foster care when he was less than a year old. I thought people lined up to adopt babies.”

  “They kept giving our mother chances to get us back.”

  Erick thought about that. “Poor kid,” he finally said. “I can hang in there if you can.”

  Two days before Luke’s eighteenth birthday, Ed Kemper called. “How’s my son?” He sounded ablaze with loving-kindness.

  “Okay,” I said warily. “Do you want to talk to him?”

  “No, just tell him I’ll be there later to bring him home. We need to be together for his big birthday.” Ed was crying. “He’ll always be my son.”

  The next day Luke disappeared with Ed as fast as he had arrived.

  Cleaning out Luke’s room, I found two mysterious pills that Ian thought might be Ecstasy, rolling papers, and an empty bottle of Jägermeister. I felt as if I had been slapped in the face. What if a deputy had come for him, searched Erick’s house, and found the drugs? It wasn’t fair to have put any of us in jeopardy. I was amazed that Erick had been willing to take in my brother and assume these risks. His generous heart and optimistic outlook were inspiring and made me feel closer to him than ever. He didn’t look down on me for having such a complicated family, and he could see the best in even Luke, even if my brother was determined to be his own worst enemy. We had weathered this together.

  At the same time, my childhood dream of being the perfect big sister was shattered. Luke still had his golden hair and cute, crooked smile, but he was wrestling demons that were far too powerful for me. Knowing this freed me from responsibility, but I would never regret trying. If I hadn’t, I would have always wondered if I could have diverted his destructive course.

  5.

  get-out-of-jail card

  Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.

  —Oscar Wilde

  After those crazy weeks with my brother, I was relieved for school to start. As a theater major, I was in many plays on campus. I invited both Lorraine and the Courters to see me—on separate nights—acting in our class’s version of Alice in Wonderland with Alice as a psychiatric inmate surrounded by her imaginary acquaintances. The Courters arrived opening night and sat in the first row.

  I was the Cheshire cat, and my scene took place high on the catwalk of the black box theater. “How arrrre you doing?” I said, rolling the r’s. At the end of my main scene, I exited the stage by sliding down a pole before scampering offstage.

  After the performance, Phil said, “I thought you might really break a leg sliding down that pole so fast.”

  Sid joked, “Come back next week for Cheshire Cat on a Hot Tin Roof  with Ashley singing ‘What’s New, Pussycat?’ ”

  Gay and I groaned. “On that note—” Phil said, and waved good-bye. I walked them to their car and thanked them for coming so far.

  “Wouldn’t have missed seeing my little kitty cat,” Phil said so kindly my eyes watered.

  The next evening, Lorraine and Rex roared up on separate Harleys. Both wore black leather jackets and German-style motorcycle helmets. They took seats in the last row and leaned against the back wall. When I made my entrance, Rex whistled, but Lorraine kept him quiet for the rest of the performance. I left the dressing room with my makeup still on to say good-bye.

  “I didn’t get it,” Rex said. Lorraine shot him a warning glance. “But I loved that pole trick.”

  “Glad we came,” Lorraine said.

  “Who were they?” the director asked when I returned.

  “My mom and her boyfriend.”

  “Weren’t your parents here last night?” the girl playing Alice asked.

  “Yes, but—”

  Sid filled in. “Ashley’s family is complicated.”

  I gave him a grateful smile. “To say the least.”

  The Courters wanted to have an elegant dinner the night before my college graduation. “I think we should invite the Hecklers,” Gay said. Lou Heckler was my speech mentor. “And the Gaffneys, who gave you your first college scholarship when you were still at The Children’s Home. Who else?”

  “Erick.” I was now living off-campus with Nikki and another friend. Ian was always around, and inevitably Erick and I were seeing more and more of each other. “His parents have me over so often I’d like to invite them, too.”

  “Okay,” Gay agreed. “It’s your special night. What about your mother and sister?”

  “Not at the dinner at the Vinoy!”

  “No, sorry. I was thinking of the actual ceremony and the luncheon after.”

  “Why would she want to come?”

  “You’re the first person in the family to graduate college. Maybe this will help inspire Autumn.”

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

  Gay shrugged. “They’ll be in the audience with us, and I’ll make it memorable for them.”

  Eckerd College graduations are held in a shaded tent very early in the morning to avoid the cruel May heat. Gay brought three bouquets of flowers. She gave the roses to Lorraine and handed a smaller nosegay to Autumn with a note that read: You’ll get a bigger one on your graduation day. Mine was an enormous bunch of sunflowers—my favorite—interspersed with a riot of yellow and white daisies. Phil took photos of various family groups and then had Lorraine take one of me with Gay and Phil. To an outsider, nothing about the scene would have suggested how odd it really was.

  At the restaurant Lorraine and Autumn sat across from Ms. Sandnes, my primary counselor from The Children’s Home. Her only information about Lorraine had come from my files, and I wondered what she thought about this unusual reunion. Thankfully, lunch went smoothly and everyone left in good spirits. I returned to my apartment, flung myself on the couch, tossed off my heels, and felt a merciful relief that classes, exams, rituals, and the co-mingling of people from my past and present was over.

  Life after graduation was much the same as it had been before—without all the studying. Ian had moved to Pennsylvania with his dog, but not Nikki, who was taking their breakup so badly that Erick preferred not to come to the apartment. Erick and I had agreed to try an exclusive relationship—no more seeing other people—but living apart. Some part of me still wanted freedom . . . just in case.

  I became a full-time motivational speaker, which meant traveling for keynotes, seminars, and fund-raising appearances. My bookings increased considerably when Three Little Words was published, and I did several publicity tours and national television appearances, including Good Morning America with Diane Sawyer. I was on the road almost every week and exhausted when I was home. I had volunteered to become a Guardian ad Litem (or CASA), following in the footsteps of both Gay and Mary Miller, the woman who helped get me released from foster care so I could be adopted. I decided to specialize in teen girls, thinking that they might be more willing to talk to me since I was only a few years older and had been through the system too.

  One weekend when I went to Crystal River for Gay’s birthday, she handed me a packet of recent mail. I was about to toss a postcard that looked like an adv
ertisement. On one side was the Monopoly Get-Out-of-Jail card. As I tipped it to the trash can, I saw that it was an invitation to Uncle Perry’s release-from-prison party in South Carolina. He had served more than twenty years for second-degree murder. At the age of five I had visited him in prison when I lived with Grandpa Rhodes—his father.

  A few days later Lorraine called and offered to pay for airfare and a hotel for both Erick and me. At the graduation lunch she had taken me aside and said, “I’m happy to see Erick is still around.”

  “Do you want to go?” I asked him later that day.

  “I wouldn’t mind meeting more of your family.”

  “I’ve only been there once before—and it was . . . awkward.”

  “Don’t forget I have twelve aunts and uncles—I’m used to wild and crazy reunions.”

  “Maybe not like mine. The first thing they showed me was a photo album with the picture of a dead baby brother who I never knew existed. Then they took me to the grave of my brother’s grandfather, who was murdered by his father over a card game.” Erick’s eyes widened. “Oh, and that’s not all. Lorraine, who wasn’t all cozy with her family at that point, heard I was going to be there, and so she started driving up from Florida. On the way she was arrested for speeding, and Uncle Sammie had to drive a hundred miles to bail her out.”

  “Are you trying to scare me or talk yourself out of it?”

  “A little of both.”

  “It’s a holiday weekend and we have a free trip, so why not?” he said, but his voice sounded more worried than his words.

  “Okay,” I answered, “but don’t say I didn’t warn you about where I really come from.”

  Erick drove the car Lorraine had rented for us down rough roads lined by cotton and tobacco fields. “Look, the cotton is in full puff!” I said.

  Erick laughed. “I love your expressions.”

  “What would you call it?”

  “Full ball? I’m sure there’s an agriculturally-correct term.”

  I laughed. Everything with Erick seemed so easy, so natural, especially since the trip to England. I used to think I was using Erick when I called him for advice or to travel with me; now I realized I asked him because I trusted him the most. I had never expected to still be involved with Erick after all this time—but here we were, closer than ever.