The Promised World: A Novel

by Lisa Tucker

  She was deeply touched, but it wasn’t until they were on the highway, headed back home, that she finally felt brave enough to take him up on his offer. It must have been hard for him to drive and listen to her sobbing out the only part of the story that mattered now. She would never know the truth about her life. She’d lost the plot for good, but she couldn’t find reality, either. And everywhere she looked, she found more sorrow and confusion.

  “I’m like a person without a past,” she cried, “without a self… with nothing I can hold on to to keep me on this earth.” She gulped when she realized how the last part sounded, and she quickly added that she didn’t mean it; she wasn’t going to try to harm herself again. “I’m sorry,” she said, and then she cried harder, knowing what that night must have done to him.

  Through it all, her husband kept his promise. He never seemed afraid or nervous, and he never tried to change the subject. He just held her hand and listened so well that eventually she no longer felt like crying. Even in her gloom, she saw it as a great gift that Patrick truly seemed to want to stand with her in this.

  She slept for a while, and when she woke up, they were on I-95, about two hours from Philadelphia. Now she was ready to think again, and to try to understand. She went round and round but she kept coming back to the same place. If only Billy were here, he could tell her what all this meant.

  She wasn’t sure if Patrick was still paying close attention—it was late and dark and he had to be tired from all this driving—but then he said, “What about the things your brother wrote? You’ve told me writers always use their lives in some way. Maybe he did and you could interpret it.”

  Lila hadn’t forgotten about all the novels and journals Billy had been working on since he was a teenager. She’d seen a lot of pages over the years, but Billy had never denied that there were hundreds, maybe thousands more he wouldn’t show her or anyone. “Call it a writer’s need for privacy,” he’d said, and Lila hadn’t pushed him, knowing writers often felt shy about showing things they thought weren’t as good or were merely unfinished. A few days after the funeral, Lila had called Ashley and asked if she could have the boxes of Billy’s writings and copies of whatever was on his computer, but her sister-in-law had refused. “That stuff is for my kids,” she’d said. “When they’re older. If they want it.”

  At the time, Lila had been too upset to argue, but now she would just have to beg and plead until Ashley relented. All she wanted was a look at everything her twin had written; she could promise to give it all back when she was finished. Or she would give enough of it back that her sister-in-law wouldn’t know the difference, since Ashley had no idea what was in any of those boxes, Lila was sure.

  They were right outside of Baltimore when she asked Patrick how he would feel about stopping by Harrisburg. “We can turn off on Highway 83 and get there by nine, nine-thirty at the latest. I’m sure Ashley and Pearl will be up, even if William and Maisie are in bed.” She waited a moment. “I need to apologize to Pearl anyway.”

  When she’d discovered that her niece and nephew had been the ones to find her unconscious, her guilt had been so immense that she’d told Dr. Kutchins she almost wished she’d never woken up, so she didn’t have to feel this. She’d done a horrible thing to those children—a fact the psychologist didn’t deny. “Suicide is incredibly hard on survivors. It’s hard on survivors when the attempt fails, and immeasurably harder when the attempt succeeds.” Dr. Kutchins had already said many times that Billy’s suicide had hurt both his family and Lila in ways Lila wasn’t admitting. She was always asking Lila why she couldn’t seem to get angry with her twin about anything, but Lila couldn’t answer because she really didn’t know.

  It was too dark to see Patrick’s face, but when he didn’t respond, Lila said, “We can stay in a hotel there tonight so you won’t have to drive home until the morning.” She touched his shoulder. “I’m sorry to ask this, but it would really mean a lot to me.”

  “I don’t mind driving, but I need to tell you something. I probably should have told you before.” He paused. “I think I made a mistake.”

  “It’s all right,” she said, even though she was very nervous. Patrick sounded so strange. And he never kept things from her. True, she hadn’t been herself for the last few weeks, but she still wasn’t. Whatever it was would have to be very important for him to say it now.

  And that’s when he told her what had happened to Pearl. Before he was even finished with the details, she started trembling so violently that her husband decided to pull over on the side of the interstate. As he held Lila in his arms, he stressed that the children were perfectly fine. Their mother’s boyfriend had no access to them, and neither did she. They were probably staying with friends, but even if they were in foster care, they were all right. If Ashley had thought otherwise, she would have complained, Patrick said. She certainly complained about everything else.

  Lila appreciated her husband’s efforts to calm her, even if they didn’t work. She couldn’t explain why she couldn’t stop shaking. It made no sense, but she felt as though she’d been transported to the past, to a night she’d only recently remembered, when she was twelve or thirteen and she’d tried to run away from home.

  It was close to Christmas, maybe Christmas Eve, and the ground was covered in snow; Lila kept slipping as she tried to make her way up the hill in her patent-leather shoes with the little straps. There was no moon, and as she hurried through the thick woods, she had to keep one of her arms straight out so she wouldn’t run into a tree or have a branch stab her in the eye. But the worst part of all was the cold. It stung her cheeks and made her lungs ache every time she took a breath. It numbed her fingers and made her feet feel like concrete blocks she was dragging along with her. By the time Billy found her, she was crouched down on the ground, too frozen to move or scream. He said he had no choice, the way he always did, and then he grabbed her arm to drag her back home.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Ashley left the TV on night and day, but it didn’t help. With her kids gone, the silence of the house seemed louder than even the most blaring commercial. And the whole place felt so weirdly empty with all their toys and clothes and things put away in dressers and closets. According to the social worker, keeping the house clean was an important part of showing that Ashley was a decent mother. Never mind that a house with kids in it would never be this clean. A house with kids could never stay the same for an hour, much less for day after silent, empty day.

  At first, she had her anger at CPS to distract her. That and Kyle, who’d somehow managed to make bail and was staying with some guy he’d met at the truck mechanic’s shop—and calling Ashley constantly to beg her to see him. He knew if she agreed she would jeopardize her case, but he kept saying, “I’m innocent,” as though that was the only thing that mattered. Usually she just repeated that she couldn’t risk it, but after a few more talks like this, she got annoyed and asked him what would happen to her kids if the court didn’t figure that out. “They will, baby,” he said. “They have to or they’re a bunch of lying bastards.”

  “You sound like you don’t even know there are tons of lying bastards in this world. What, were you born yesterday?”

  “I know all about liars.” His voice was low and mean and she knew he meant Pearl. “I know more than I ever wanted to know about liars.”

  She couldn’t really blame him for being angry if he was innocent, which she honestly believed he was—and not because he kept saying so. It was Pearl’s statement to the police that was the problem. It sounded way too much like one of Billy’s stories about Lila.

  What made it particularly strange was that as far as Ashley could remember, Billy had only told this story once, during the last month before he’d moved out, when he’d already started telling those whoppers about their kids’ past. For all Ashley knew, this Lila “memory” was no more real than Billy’s bullshit about William solving the Rubik’s Cube when he was five. Then too, she didn’t think Pe
arl had even been in the room as Billy described the night fifteen-year-old Lila had been forced to lie facedown on her bed without her shirt on while her stepfather struck her back and shoulders repeatedly with his belt. Lila’s only crime, Billy insisted, was questioning that bastard, and for that his twin had been beaten so badly she couldn’t lean against a chair or lie on her back for weeks. The rest of the story involved Billy’s mother, who didn’t know anything about it, Billy said, and something about him and Lila running away shortly after it happened.

  There was nothing about trying to have his stepfather punished or put in jail, but everything else in Pearl’s story was a perfect match: from her lying facedown on the bed to Kyle’s having done it because she questioned him. Of course, the cops would never believe that Pearl had copied the whole idea from her dad; they would think Ashley was just making up shit to protect her boyfriend. Especially since, as that hag social worker pointed out, Ashley had now lived with two men accused of endangering her children. They all probably thought of her like one of those trashy women who would do anything to please a guy, even sacrifice her own kids.

  Why Pearl had done this was the big mystery, but Ashley tried to understand. She also tried repeatedly to explain to Kyle that her daughter had been going through a tough time. “It isn’t fair to you, I know,” she said after his whine about Pearl being a liar. “But she’s only a kid in a lot of ways. And what happened to her daddy hit her really hard. I don’t know why she did it, but I—”

  “You wanna know what I think?”

  She didn’t, but she said, “What?”

  “I think she’s a spoiled little bitch who always gets—”

  “You’re calling my daughter a bitch? Who the hell do you think you are?”

  He backed down immediately, saying he was sorry but he just missed Ashley so much he was going crazy. “I love you, baby,” he said several times. Still, Ashley was mad enough that she would have stopped talking to him forever if she hadn’t been worried he’d try to get back at her by making up lies to the cops about what kind of mother she’d been. But she took fewer and fewer of his calls as he got more whiny and obnoxious. And when she finally told him he couldn’t keep bothering her at work, he snapped and started screaming about how unfair this was and how it was all Pearl’s fault. She could feel her heart beating faster, but she didn’t slam the phone down until he snarled that somebody needed to “teach Little Missy a lesson.”

  She immediately called the detective who’d arrested him. The detective said he’d investigate, and “if the situation warrants, we’ll revoke his bail.” But he added, “I really wouldn’t worry. There’s already a restraining order to keep him from getting near your daughter. As long as you keep him away from her, she should be fine.”

  She felt like she’d been slapped, but she called her social worker, Mrs. Pritzel, hoping she would take this seriously. Mrs. Pritzel said she would call the office of the judge who’d granted bail. She also threw in that it was probably good that the court hadn’t agreed yet that Ashley could be told the exact address where the kids were residing. “This way he can’t get it out of you,” she said, as though she, too, believed that Ashley would actually help that creep find her child.

  Kyle called again that night around eight o’clock, and when Ashley didn’t answer, he kept calling every few minutes all night long. She was afraid to turn off the phone in case the kids needed her—they were allowed to call her, though they hadn’t done it yet, but she couldn’t call them for fear she would pressure them in some way. She didn’t sleep at all and she was a wreck at work the next day, thinking Kyle would show up at her office or even try to hunt down Pearl. But the day after that, they finally issued a warrant to have Kyle picked up again and his bail revoked. Not because of what Ashley said, but because the detective had done his job and found that Kyle had a record in New Mexico. When Ashley heard that her former boyfriend had been in prison before, once for theft and once for domestic assault, she felt like she couldn’t breathe. Mrs. Pritzel said, “This is why a woman with children has to do her homework before she gets involved with a man.” Ashley wondered how she could have found out about a criminal record, but she had no desire to defend herself. It was just like her brother-in-law said: she’d brought a virtual stranger into her kids’ lives, and her excuses at the time seemed pathetic now. She’d been chatting on the internet with an old friend from high school when he showed up at her door one day to “surprise” her. He claimed he was between jobs and needed a place to stay. He gave her some sob story about his hard life, and since she’d always been a sucker for stray dogs, she fell for it. One night on the couch turned into a week and soon he was in her bed, her boyfriend. She’d been a gullible fool—and a bad mother. Again.

  Kyle had stopped calling, but Ashley couldn’t relax for a minute. She wanted to hear that he was behind bars. Her expensive lawyer said that the cops had started a countywide manhunt after Kyle wasn’t found at the address he’d given to the court. But there was nothing but silence until Monday, when Mrs. Pritzel told her the police had determined that Kyle had fled the state to avoid prosecution. She was too relieved to care that Kyle had already made it to Albuquerque, which, Mrs. Pritzel said, would make the extradition process more difficult. Even if he made it to Mexico, where they could never prosecute him, Ashley didn’t care as long as he stayed far away from her children.

  Later that day, her lawyer, Mr. G. Christopher Lynch, called to see if she’d heard that Kyle had left town. He blabbed about that for a few minutes; then he asked a bunch of questions about how Ashley’s home study was going, though he didn’t seem to care about her answers. He didn’t seem to do much of anything, though Barbara Duval had sworn he was the best in the state when she convinced Ashley to hire him and promised to pay all his hefty fees.

  For the next day or so, Ashley continued feeling jittery, but by Wednesday night, she was calm enough to feel extremely depressed that she still hadn’t talked to Pearl and William. Maisie had begged to see her mom, and Ashley had had supervised visitation with her baby at the preschool several times. All of the other mothers had stared at her, which wasn’t a surprise since Kyle’s arrest had been in the papers, but it still hurt like hell. Yet that pain was nothing compared to what it was like to know her oldest kids continued to be unwilling even to speak to her. She’d never gone this long without talking to them, and sure, she could always call Mrs. Pritzel for an update—and hear again that her kids were doing as well as could be expected at Barbara Duval’s house, no need to worry—but it wasn’t the same. She was desperate to tell Pearl how sorry she was, because whether Kyle had hit Pearl or not, and Ashley didn’t know anymore, he was still a bad guy who never should have been allowed to speak to her daughter, much less sarcastically call her beautiful Pearl “Little Missy.” And her sweet little boy, she was dying just to hear his voice. It had been a month and a half since she’d really heard him speak, and his quick whisper in the police station had only made her long to hear him say something, anything else.

  But she knew she deserved all this horrible crap that was happening. Every day that went by, she thought of another reason why she’d been an idiot. Even her mom hadn’t approved of her letting Kyle move in so soon after Billy had moved out—hell, her mom hadn’t approved of Kyle, period. “You need to work this out with your husband,” her mom had said. “Bringing in some loser now is just stupid, and you ain’t stupid, are you, Ashley?”

  As it turned out, yeah, she was. She was stupid enough to think a man who was nice to her had to be a decent guy. She was stupid enough to think that if she separated from Billy, she would be free from the damn curse or the shit luck or whatever it was that had messed up her whole life. And she was stupid, for sure, to think that any guy could come in and make her forget about Billy.

  By the time the weekend rolled around, another weekend without her kids, she was reduced to spending most of her time in bed. She and Billy had bought this bed years ago, before William was
born, on one of those days when Billy woke up normal, better than normal, really: Ashley remembered him telling her some quote that he translated to mean he was thrilled just to be alive. He spent more than an hour picking out the perfect quilt for their new queen-size bed. He said he wanted a pattern that said “permanence” and “family.” “We might have this forever, Ash. Think of that. This quilt could literally be the fabric of our memories.”

  She’d put the quilt away when Kyle moved in, but on Sunday morning, she got it back out. That night, she was lying in a fetal position, using her finger to trace the quilt’s rich gold and green rings, tan and pink squares, and center orange stars. That she was also talking to her dead husband was weird and she knew it, but she no longer cared how weird she was, except when she was being inspected by Mrs. Pritzel or one of the others from CPS.

  She’d believed in angels since her grandma died when she was a little girl. Her mom had told her Grandma was an angel, and it made sense to Ashley since Grandma had been so gentle, almost like an angel when she was alive. Her mom also said you could pray to angels to talk to God for you, and so she decided to pray to Grandma, because Grandma already knew her and would understand what Ashley meant.

  If Billy was in heaven, he might be an angel, too. Her priest had told her the old rule wasn’t true anymore—that someone couldn’t be in heaven if they killed themselves and didn’t receive the last rites. God is love, the priest said. God is forgiveness. If your husband was sorry for his sins, the priest said, that was what mattered—and Ashley knew Billy was sorry because he’d told her so.