“Bye, Will,” they say in unison as they’re whisked into the trailer.
Shea stands and gives me a hug, feeling my tremors and trying to calm me down. “Are you okay?”
“Let’s go.” Hand-in-hand, we walk to the car. I take one last, long look at the trailer home, hoping that I made the right decision in coming here today, and in leaving those little girls in his care. I know they have a mother that lives here, too, and Callen said Tonya was good with them. Good with them, but still no better than my father when it comes to teaching them tolerance and acceptance. I open the door for Shea, but stop her before she gets in, saddened by the fact that she’d never be welcomed by this family. It makes me feel better about my decision to walk away from my father. “I love you so much. I want you to know that,” I tell her, smiling at the beauty that radiates from the gleam of her smile and the glistening in her eyes.
Feeling the soft skin of her cheeks, I kiss her once more as we stand in front of the home of this racist man who I may resemble, but couldn’t be more different from me. I think about one day having children with Shea and sending him a picture of them just to spite him. I smile at the thought of our kids, knowing they’d be beautiful and smart and talented and strong and opinionated and independent–a perfect mixture of their parents.
Once again, I’m not entirely freaked out by the thought of having a baby someday.
“Why are you smiling like that?” Shea asks.
“No reason,” I tell her, kissing her harder, deeper. I grasp her long hair in my hands when I start to feel unbalanced and light-headed. “Now we should really go,” I tell her with a nudge to her waistline. She quirks her brow and laughs, nodding her head as she gets in the driver’s seat.
“Will!” I look up at the porch where my father stands with his hands in his pockets. He glances down at his worn boots before speaking again. “I’m proud of you, son,” he says softly.
My heart falls to the pit of my stomach, but I maintain my stoic expression as I walk to the other side of the car.
I glance at him once more before I get in. He looks genuinely remorseful, but I don’t know what he expects from me. “I’m sorry,” he adds.
Again, I’m caught up in a staring match with him. Thirty seconds probably go by. Shea starts the car. Thoughts are swirling through my mind. Sorry for what? Two words can’t cover what he’s done to me over the past twenty-four years; what he did to Max over the past sixteen.
“Bye, Dad.” I’m not sure where that word came from. I didn’t consciously say it, and I don’t know if it’s meant to be an olive branch or something sarcastic and cruel. The latter sounds more like me, but he doesn’t seem to take it that way. I see hope flash across his face before I shut the door. When I glance back before we turn onto the main road, he’s still watching us.
“I guess we head back to Fort Collins?” Shea asks.
“Go west,” I urge her, wanting to take the longer, more scenic route.
Chapter 25
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks me as she sits across the table at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant about thirty minutes away from the family I just left behind.
“Not really.” I smile graciously and offer her my hand, only taking it back when the waiter serves us our food.
“When I was seventeen,” she starts, “I got invited to a Halloween party in Downtown Minneapolis. Momma initially told me that I couldn’t go, but I begged her hard, and I got my best friend’s mom to work her from another angle, and two days before the party, she gave in.”
I give her my full attention as I eat, happy to have it focused elsewhere. “What did you go as?”
She chuckles lightly. “A nun–or at least that was the costume my mother bought for me. And that’s what she saw me leave the house in. But underneath that, I had on this short, tight, stretchy sequined, hooker outfit, and in my oversized purse, I had all of my makeup and a pair of stilettos I’d bought off a clearance rack.”
“Whoa.” I can hardly imagine her in such a costume. Her makeup is always soft and natural, and her style is very toned down. High-heeled shoes don’t really go well with her line of work, and even when she wore the red dress in LA, she opted for comfortable flats.
“I was a good girl in high school. I was kind of quiet and shy, and I couldn’t–for the life of me–get the attention of this one guy that I’d had a crush on for, like, all of high school. But he was going to be at that party. And I was going to make sure he knew I was there, too.
“So Lydia and I stopped at a McDonald’s and the transformation happened. I was the prettiest good-girl hooker you ever saw.”
I laugh at her as she describes herself in detail, but even as she tells her story with humor and a smile, I can tell that something heavy underlies it. There’s a point to this story, and I’m anxious to find out what it is.
“We took a train downtown, and the way people looked at me… It was unnerving. I was uncomfortable, and I had a sick feeling in my stomach all the way there. Some men–older men–never stopped staring the whole train ride. I held onto Lydia’s hand, and a few times, I wanted to pull the nun’s costume out of my bag and put it back on, but I didn’t.”
She smiles wistfully, and I look at her curiously.
“The guy had brought a date to the party. She was wearing a spandex Catwoman costume. She looked hot without even trying, and here I was, looking a fool, made up like a tramp, and still the boy I liked had no idea who I was. I was heartbroken. While Lydia was having fun with our other friends, I decided I just wanted to go home… so I left.
“It was only a couple of blocks back to the train station. No big deal, right?”
Her expression changes, and I put my fork down, sensing what’s coming next.
Her eyes start to water, and she looks away from mine, staring at my chest in a daze. “I never saw him coming.” My heart starts to pound in my chest. “I cut through an alley, like the idiot kid that I was, and a man grabbed me from behind. He smelled like… like rotten produce. You know that smell?”
I nod my head.
“I can’t stand that smell. I’m sure I waste good food because I try to avoid that smell. Anyway. He covered my mouth and pulled me toward the rusty stairs of an old fire escape. He laid his body against mine and started calling me names. Whore. Slut. Cunt. Hooker. Then he told me what he was gonna do to me. I tried to scream, but I was crying too hard.” She takes her napkin and wipes her eyes. I move to her side of the booth and put my arm around her.
“You don’t have to go on, Shea.”
She looks up at me and smiles. “I’m not finished.”
“Okay.” I kiss the top of her head and rub her arm a few more times. She angles herself so she can look into my eyes again. “You okay?”
She nods. “So he pushed up my skirt.” She swallows hard, and I have to close my eyes, the anger at this man welling up inside of me. The feel of her hand prying my fingers out of a fist formation releases the tension and brings my focus back to her. “And he let go of me for a split second to undo his pants. I still couldn’t scream, but some reflex kicked in–something I’d learned from self defense–and I moved my leg back quickly, trying to get him in the groin.”
“And did you?” I ask her, hopeful that the story has a different ending than the one I’d anticipated.
She shakes her head, and my heart sinks. “No. When my foot connected with him, there was some strange resistance, and he shouted out like I’ve never heard another human shout before. When I pulled my leg back, my shoe didn’t come with me. I looked down at my foot to see it covered in blood.
“He was still screaming in what I then realized was agonizing pain, and people were looking out from windows. He fell to the ground, buckled over, grabbing at his thigh. A group of people ran toward us. I remember a woman covering me with her coat, and a police officer was there within a minute.
“My stiletto had broken when he dragged me to the fire escape. It exposed a nail at the heel.
I didn’t realize it. But it tore right through his jeans, and his flesh, his muscle. It tore his leg wide open. Two inches to the right, and his dick would have been gone for good. Which would have been fine… for me, for everyone.”
“Holy shit.” I stare at her, my eyes wide.
“He’d been wanted for beating and raping three other women. He’s in jail now. Walks with a limp.”
A smile spreads across my face as I remember back to a conversation we’d had earlier. “His scar’s worse than yours?”
“I just have the awful memory of that night,” she says. “I had a cracked rib at the time, though, actually. So I know a little about how you’ve been feeling this week.” She touches my side tenderly. “I was afraid Momma wanted to do a little physical damage, as well, when she saw me looking like a hooker at the police station that night. When she found out what I’d done, though, she was happy that I’d put my self-defense classes to good use. Said Daddy’d be proud–except for the fact that I looked like a whore.” She laughs.
“This about your gun?” I ask.
She nods. “You don’t realize how quickly a bad person can take away your power.”
“I still don’t like it, but I’m not going to fight you on it. Not now. Until I can be with you all the time, do whatever you need to do to feel safe. I get it. But I hope someday you’ll feel safe enough with me that you won’t feel the need to have that thing around.”
“Thank you,” she says. “For listening to me. I don’t like taking orders from men, so I wasn’t going to get rid of it no matter what you said, but I decided maybe you needed to know more of the reason behind why I got it.”
“That’s fair,” I say. I feel bad that I ‘gave her orders’ in the first place. “I’m sorry. It’s only because I care and I know the statistics.”
“Okay.” She leans up to kiss me. “Just forget that I have it for now.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Go finish your dinner. The sun’s setting and I want you to teach me things I don’t know about stars.”
I move back to the other side of the booth, looking out the window. It’s a perfectly clear night and mountains line the road back to our destination. “Yeah? You want to do some stargazing?”
“I would love to, and I don’t think there’s a better place or a better night.”
Forty-five minutes after we’ve left the restaurant, I find a dirt road that takes us to some small hills of open land. Shea had let me drive her car to scout out a good location. She felt like we’d be trespassing. We probably are, but I don’t see signs posted, and frankly, I don’t care. The sky belongs to us all, and we should be able to enjoy it from this beautiful land.
Where we stop reminds me of the place I’d taken my first girlfriend the night I lost my virginity. A small hill with mountains in the distance. It was a clear night like tonight, under the stars. Melancholy washes over me. It’s likely from that memory, but it’s also partly from today.
“So, Shea,” I say, looking around her classic car. “Does this convertible actually, like, convert?”
“It does,” she says, reaching for a latch near the passenger door. I unlatch one next to me, too. “I have a few blankets in my trunk, too. Always prepared.”
“To make out on a cold night in Colorado?”
“In case I get stranded in a snowstorm… thank you. Something you were apparently not prepared for in Minneapolis.”
“Touché.” We both get out of the car and push the folding roof back into the compartment behind the backseat, which is roomier than I’d estimated. I pop the trunk and take out the blankets, tossing them in the back. Once I close the trunk, the moon is the only source of light around us. I move up the driver’s seat before climbing in, making even more leg room. “Care to join me?”
“I would love to. Want some music?”
“No,” I tell her, already in love with the silence around us. To my ears that long to hear their own tune, it’s what I imagine a blank canvas is to an artist. I can already hear new melodies, and decide I should come back in the summer with my guitar and write. I sit in the middle of the back seat with my feet on the center console.
“Where do you want me?” Shea asks.
“That’s a loaded question, isn’t it?” She climbs in and shuts the driver’s side door, but stands on the floorboard beside me, waiting for a legitimate answer. “Sit in my lap.”
“No, that’ll hurt you.”
“No, it’s fine. You won’t be pressed up against that side. I’ll hold you against my chest. I want to have the same sightline as you. It’s easier to point things out.”
“Okay. But tell me if it gets uncomfortable.”
“Right,” I say mockingly, helping to get her settled, her back to my chest, and wrapping the blankets around us.
“Surprised you didn’t ask me to strip naked.”
“I’m waiting until we get really cold,” I tease her. I feel her laugh against me. Well, that’s a turn on. I need to make her laugh some more. I hold her close against me. “So tell me what you already know about the stars,” I whisper in her ear before kissing it.
We both look up at the same time. She points to a group of stars directly in front of us. “That… is Orion, I think, right?”
“Yeah. How’d you know?”
“The belt.”
“What do you see below the belt?”
“Will, we’re talking about stars!” she says, giggling again.
“Actually, below his belt is M42, which is the Orion Nebula. You and your dirty mind… from the Hubble, it is…” I pause, because it takes my breath away just thinking about it, just like it did the first time I saw it, “one of the most beautiful visions you’d ever see in the universe. I love it. If I could name a kid M42, I would. No, I wouldn’t. But seriously, it’s just a cloud of gas and dust, and new stars are being formed there as we speak. Thousands of them.”
“Maybe you can name M42 after your kid. Maybe it deserves a proper name, and maybe you’ll get the chance to do that someday.”
“I’ll just call it Carl,” I say, laughing at the first name that pops in my mind. Shea bursts out in hysterics, too. “They don’t want me naming shit in space.”
“Not if Carl is the best you can do.”
“What else do you know?”
“Sirius is that star there… the brightest star in the sky.”
“The brightest star in the night sky.”
“Okay, yeah,” she says.
“It’s called the Dog Star because it’s in Canis Major. We get the term dog days of summer from it. Did you know that?”
“No.”
“Those are the days when Sirius rises and sets with the sun. It’s a double star. There’s a white dwarf with it–Sirius B–it’s called the pup. It’s, like, the corpse of a star. But what we see here is simply Sirius, which is, like, twenty times brighter than the sun. But do you see that other bright star below it? It almost looks bluish?”
“Well, I see a star that’s not as bright. I’m not sure if it looks blue…”
“Well, that’s also part of Canis Major. It’s called Adhara, and it actually lets off a thousand times more light than Sirius. But it’s four-hundred-twenty-five-light-years away.”
“And how far is Sirius?”
“Eight-point-six.”
“Wow. What’s that other bright star?”
“That’s Procyon. Part of Canis Minor. It’s also actually a double star with a white dwarf.”
“Why do stars twinkle?” she asks me.
“They don’t.”
She points to Sirius again and argues with me. “It’s twinkling right now.”
“It’s not.”
“It is, too!”
“That is our planet, playing tricks on your eyes. That is simply our atmosphere getting in the way. If we were to go into space, there would be no pulsating. Just solid light.”
“Did you ever want to be an astronaut?”
“No,” I tell he
r. “I like human contact too much. Always have. And the thought of leaving behind my brothers? No.” I shake my head. “There is plenty to do from earth. I can make my contribution from here. Would I like to see space someday? Fuck, yes. But humanity is nowhere close to being civilized enough to colonize another planet without ruining it, so that’s not something that’ll happen in my lifetime.”
“Do you think there is life… out there?”
“I think it’s completely ignorant to think we’re alone. The edge of the observable universe is more than forty-six billion light years away. Forty-six billion. And we anticipate the observable universe to continue to expand. There’s no way we’re the only life forms. We may be the only humans. The only type we recognize. But it’s myopic to think that just because life as we know it hasn’t been detected in the solar system we have here, or anywhere nearby, that we’re the only ones. What is life anyway? We have our structure, our biology, our science, our vocabulary with our definitions… they’re going to have something altogether different. Alien. Wonderful. Right?”
“How can I argue with that?” she says, smiling.
“I didn’t mean to insinuate you’re ignorant, you know…” I say, realizing I’ve gone off on one of my rants.
“Fortunately, I agree with you. Even if I don’t understand the scope of the time you’re talking about.” She laughs against me again.
“Is it the light years that get you?”
“Yeah.”
“They’re a measure of distance, not time. The name is misleading. A light year is simply how far a beam of light travels in a year.”
“So… that has to be a finite distance, right?”
“It’s… roughly six trillion miles.”
“So the observable universe is forty-six billion times six trillion miles wide?”
“No. The edge is forty-six and a half billion times six trillion miles away. That’s, like, the radius. It’s ninety-three times six trillion miles wide. If you want me to get really nerdy, it’s twenty-eight-point-five-gigaparsecs wide. That number means nothing to you, though.”