Rustled (16 page)

“Mom, have you
been sick?” I blurted. She gave a croak that passed for a laugh and shook her
head. Then she turned away and went to sit in a sagging easy chair in front of
a small TV that was emitting noises in the corner.

“Welcome home,
Charity. It’s good to see you.” I was baffled. Mom looked like a cancer victim,
thin as a rail, straggling hair, much more wrinkled than I remembered. She was
only forty-five, but could easily have been mistaken for sixty. What in the
world had happened to her in my three-year absence?

Then I saw it.
Every flat space was littered with full ashtrays and empty bottles. Beer
bottles, whiskey bottles, bottles of all shapes and sizes with one thing in
common, they had all held some sort of liquor.

“Mom, you
never used to drink or smoke, what happened?” I demanded.

“Honey, you
didn’t know what all I did, but what happened was I sent you to your dad.”

My mouth
dropped open. “You started drinking because you sent me to dad? Why didn’t you
tell him to send me back?” Anger and indignation flooded me at the implied
blame.

“Don’t judge
me, girl. I did what had to be done. I didn’t
start
because I sent you
away, it just took away my limits.” I didn’t understand, but this conversation
was going to take a while.

I said, “Let
me get my luggage in. Is there a place I can sleep?”

“You can sleep
on the sofa. There’s only one bedroom.”

“Thank you,
mom, that will be fine.” It wouldn’t, but there was no sense in upsetting her.
I certainly wasn’t going to put her out of her own bedroom. I also wasn’t going
to stay long. I had read that second-hand smoke is bad for pregnant women and
their babies, so I planned to be out of here within the week, one way or
another. I went out to get my bags, which would stay packed until I could leave
here and get my own place.

§

What I didn’t
know that day, but learned over the course of a couple of painful weeks, was
that a woman my age with a tenth-grade education and no experience was
unemployable. I also learned how my mother earned the money for the booze she
drank, as a series of disgusting low-life men came to the door, some of them
making passes at me if mom didn’t answer the door herself.

When the heat
was shut off, I used most of Russ’s money to pay the back bills and get it
turned on again. I got food stamps and got on a waiting list for subsidized
housing, but it looked like I was going to have to appeal to Russ for help if I
wanted our baby to be healthy.

I kept putting
it off, ashamed, until the money was gone and so were all the beautiful new
dresses he bought me, sold to keep the lights on. All but the lovely green one
I had worn to paint the town of Kingman red. That represented a time, maybe the
only time, I had ever been happy in my life, and I couldn’t bear to part with
it.

I had no
choice. I had been in St. Louis for exactly a month when I decided I had to
call him. Merry Christmas, Russ, I’m having your baby and you need to come get
me. I didn’t know how he would take it, but this was no longer about me, it was
about our baby. One thing I did know was that he would come through for us, no
matter what. I walked to a convenience store and used my last quarter to call
him, collect.

I almost lost
my nerve when his voice came on the line sounding frantic with worry. “Kitten,
is that you? Thank god you called!”

“What’s wrong,
Russ?” I couldn’t imagine what had him so agitated, but it must be important.

“Why are you
still living in that dump?” he almost shouted.

“Wait, Russ,
back up, what are you talking about?”

After a moment
when I imagined him taking a deep breath, he spoke in a calmer way, “Remember
the skip tracer that found your mom?”

“Yeah?”

“I told him to
keep an eye on you, but he’s been reporting you’re not working, barely leaving
that trailer. Twenty times, I’ve had to talk myself out of coming to get you,
to give you your space, and I just can’t do it anymore. Please tell me you’re
ready to come back.”

“Russ, I’m so
sorry,” I interrupted. “I’ve been staying here with my mom the whole time
because I haven’t been able to find a job.” The silence on the other end of the
line sliced into my heart like a knife. Maybe he just wanted to know I was
okay, maybe asking him for more money, or to come for me, wasn’t a good idea.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have called.”

“Don’t hang
up!” he shouted. It was the smartest thing he could have said, as I was about
to do just that. “Kitten, what’s been going on? Are you in trouble? How can I
help?”

The relief was
so great that all I could do was cry, great gulping sobs that were driving him
frantic on the other end of the line. “Kitten,” he pleaded, “talk to me. What
is it?”

Finally, I
gained enough control to say in a tiny voice, “Russ, oh god, I need you. Please
come and get me.”

His voice
shaking, Russ asked, “Where are you? I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“I’m still at
mom’s. Same place. Oh, Russ, it’s been awful.”

“Stay put. I’m
coming. I love you, Charity.” And then he was gone, leaving me to clutch his
last sentence to my heart. He loves me. It’s going to be okay. I walked back to
mom’s, trying to decide what to do about her. I understood her pain, and how
she had ended up the way she was, and I blamed my dad. But blaming didn’t fix
it, and I had no idea
how
to fix it. Maybe Russ could advise me.

§

When the
authoritative knock on the door came less than three hours later, I momentarily
panicked, thinking the police must be there. None of mom’s ‘clients’ knocked
like that. But I didn’t know what either of us might have done wrong, unless
she were about to be arrested for prostitution. I didn’t think they did that
except for streetwalkers or notorious houses. I went to the door with my heart
pounding. Dumbfounded, I stared at Russ, who was staring at me with an equally
lost expression. Then I flew into his arms.

Russ enfolded
me, holding me tenderly as he kissed my hair and then my lips when I raised my
face to his. I don’t know how long we stood there in the open door, lost in the
wonder of holding each other again. My mother’s voice brought me up short,
though.

“Close the
goddam door!”

I pulled Russ
inside with me, heedless of the wrinkling of his nose. I was so used to the
smoke now that I never noticed it. “How did you get here so fast?” I asked him.
It was as if he had been just in the next town.

“Chartered a
Lear,” he said, as casually as if he had called a taxi. I gaped at him.

“Oh, my god,
Russ, that must have cost a fortune!”

“Quit worrying
about my finances and tell me what’s going on,” he growled. I hesitated. Even
though my mom was intoxicated as usual, I just couldn’t talk about it there.

“Can we go
somewhere else?” I asked anxiously.

“Absolutely,”
he declared, pulling me off the sofa. “Where’s your coat?”

“I’ll get it.
First, let me introduce you to mom.” I was ashamed of her, ashamed of her
condition, but I loved her. I couldn’t bear to embarrass her by leaving without
even introducing Russ to her, even if she probably wouldn’t have noticed. “Mom,
this is Russ. Russ, Elizabeth Green.”

“Brown,” she
said.

“What?” I
asked, confused.

“It’s Brown.
Didn’t I tell you I got remarried after you left?” My head was swimming. No,
she had not. And where was Mr. Brown? I looked at Russ helplessly, only to find
he was shaking with mirth.

“What?” I said
again, this time asking him what was so funny. At that he burst out laughing,
chanting “Russ White, Charity Green, Elizabeth Brown. Too funny.” I quelled him
with a look, but now mom had caught the joke and was chuckling herself, a
horrible sound punctuated by a wet cough.

“Mom, we’re
going out for a while. See you later.”

“Okay. Don’t
do anything I wouldn’t do.” Wondering if there
was
anything she wouldn’t
do, I put on my coat and led Russ from the dingy trailer and into the cold
December air.

Still
chuckling a little, he asked, “Where do you want to go?”

“Anywhere.
Somewhere that isn’t
here
,” I snapped. Oh, good, that was bound to make
him want me, I thought.

It sobered
Russ, though. He handed me into the rented SUV he had arrived in, and went
around to the driver’s side.

“Did you
really charter a Learjet?” I asked him.

“Yep, and
don’t worry your pretty little head about it.” His cowboy drawl was back,
easily my favorite of his personas. “Are you gonna tell me what’s happenin’
here, or do I have to spank you?”

Memories of
the couple of times he had spanked me, and the aftermath, flooded my
overwrought mind, and suddenly I was laughing and crying all at once. Russ
pulled over and took me into his arms. “Okay, we’re going to check into a
hotel, and I’m going to sit patiently until you’re ready to talk. Are you
hungry?”

“Always,” I
told him.

“I thought you
looked skinnier. We’ll get something to eat first.”

All through
our meal, a less-than-satisfactory lunch at a nearby Denny’s that I was
determined to keep down despite the smell making me nauseous, Russ stared at
me. I could feel it when I was looking at my plate, and every time I looked at
him I met his blue eyes, the darker Mediterranean blue version that told me he
was laboring under powerful emotion, though he kept his face neutral. I didn’t
want to pour out my woes in public, but he had seen some of them for himself,
and it was clear he was agitated.

Finally we
were finished and he took me straight to a nice hotel, where we would be able
to get a better dinner from room service later, if we wanted. He checked us in
as Mr. and Mrs. Russ White, but I didn’t protest. What difference did it make?

In our suite,
Russ sat me down on the sofa, knelt and removed my boots, then swung my legs up
and covered me with an extra blanket from the closet. Then he pulled a chair
from the table close to me and sat down. “Talk,” he commanded.

Now that he
was here with me, I didn’t know where to start. I stammered a little as I said,
“Y-you saw how my mom lives.”

“Yes,” his
grim reply came.

“It’s even
worse. Russ, she hooks for booze. I’m so sorry your money didn’t last, but I
had to pay back utility bills to stay warm, and I couldn’t get a job anywhere.”
The ‘anywhere’ came out as an anguished wail, making him reach over and take my
hand.

“Don’t worry
about that. What do you want to do now?”

I really
hadn’t thought beyond calling him for help. Did I still want to get my GED? It
cost money for someone over nineteen, and I had none. Without it, I couldn’t
get a job. It was a classic catch-22, I thought. Nor could I go back to that
filthy, smoke-filled trailer. I could smell the smoke on me, in my hair and
clothes, the nausea threatening again. The next thing that popped into my mind
came out my mouth with no filter.

“I want to
take a bath.”

If Russ
thought it was strange for me to answer him so literally, he didn’t say so.
Instead, he said evenly, “That can be arranged.”

He pulled me
off the couch and into the sumptuous bathroom, where a jetted tub was the
finest thing I had seen since Russ appeared on my doorstep. He turned on the
water to fill it, then turned to me to begin undressing me. I was wearing a
long-sleeved t-shirt and vest from his ex-wife’s closet, along with a pair of
her jeans, but with my own underwear that he had bought me in Salt Lake. His
hands were busy as he pulled off my t-shirt and then turned me to unhook the
bra.

Turning me
back to him to get to the button on the jeans, his eyes fell on my breasts, and
he drew a sharp breath. His hands drifted from the button to lift both breasts,
a look of wonder on his face. Then he looked into my eyes, his shining. “When
were you going to tell me?”

“Tell you
what?” I asked absent-mindedly, my attention on the sensations his hands on my
breasts were causing. He removed them, took my shoulders and gave me a little
shake.

“Kitten,
you’re pregnant, aren’t you?” Tears shone in his eyes, with a very
contradictory ear-to-ear smile on his lips, tenderness lighting the whole.

I gasped. I
had intended to tell him, but I wanted to choose my time. How had he known?

I looked up
and him and asked the question, not bothering to deny it. “How did you…”

“Look at
yourself,” he said, turning me toward the mirror. My nipples, once the palest
shell-pink, had grown to twice their normal size and darkened to a deeper pink
with a hint of brown. They puckered as I looked at them. Russ’s hands came
around to cover them, then, as if he couldn’t help it, roll them both between
his thumbs and ring fingers. The sight of his big, familiar hands on my body
flooded me with desire.

“My god,
woman, you are magnificent.”

That statement
startled me out of my reverie. “You’re not mad?” I asked in a small voice.

Russ whirled
me around to face him again and clutched me to his chest. “Mad? God, no. Do you
understand what this means? Now you
have
to stay with me and let me take
care of you. Please, Kitten, don’t tell me no again, I can’t take it. I
won’t
take it. You’re mine.”

“Okay, I
won’t,” I said, but the words were muffled by his pecs where I had buried my
face.

When Russ had
collected himself, he finished the job of removing my clothes and handed me
into the tub, which was now full of water. He turned on the jets, and took a
washcloth from the nearby rack, filled it with fragrant bath wash and began to
wash me, gently, all over. When it came to my breasts, though, he dropped the
washcloth, saying he didn’t want anything to come between him and those founts
of glory, which made me laugh and the afore-mentioned founts of glory to jiggle
enticingly.

“God, woman,
you’re killing me,” he said.

“Well, get in,
then. There’s room.”

Russ lost no
time in tearing off his clothes and getting into the tub with me, his erection
bobbing invitingly. Naturally, I grabbed it.

“Gah, watch
it! That thing’s loaded and it might go off.”

I laughed as I
soaped my hand and proceeded to make sure his manly appendage was clean,
telling him I didn’t want to risk putting any germs in with the baby. A look of
wonder crossed his face again and he promptly wilted.

“What
happened?” I asked.

“I know we can
make love while you’re pregnant,” he said, “but maybe a jetted tub isn’t a good
place.”

“Then let’s
get out,” I retorted.

Russ helped me
out, dried me carefully and tenderly, and then made love to me, barely
restraining his need to drive into me like a bull . To say I liked it rough was
an understatement, but this was the most intense Russ had ever been while in
tender mode. It was as if he was trying, without manhandling me, to put his
stamp on me once and for all, though the precious life inside me had already
done that. Afterward, holding me gently, he apologized for any roughness and
asked anxiously if I thought the baby was okay. Content and languorous from the
orgasms I had missed so much, I hummed a light laugh.

“Of course,” I
told him. “She’s only this big right now,” holding up my thumb and forefinger
about half an inch apart.

“My god,” he
muttered.

“Russ.”

“Yes, my
love?” Oh, that was nice. I liked that endearment best of all.

“You asked
what I want to do now.”

“I did. Please
tell me you want me to take you home. My home, I mean.”

“I want you to
take me home. Your home. But, there are conditions.”

“Anything.”

“I want a GED.
I’ve never felt so useless in all my life. Even if I never go to college, I
want to have something that shows I’m not a dropout.”

“We’ll get you
online for the lessons and tests. I bet you could pass it without studying.”

“Self-educated
doesn’t seem to count. And I’m well-read, but I don’t know a lot about math and
science.”