The Promised World (8 page)

He stopped himself, but too late. She turned her back to him, but he could hear how angry she was. “Want to guess where I got that from? The
genius
himself told me that a hundred times. Too bad he’s not here so you could call him an idiot.”

Though Patrick apologized, it didn’t matter. She told him to get out of her house. He rushed to his car, furious with himself for losing his temper and ruining whatever chance he’d had to save this. Except it couldn’t have been saved anyway, he felt sure of that now. Ashley was never going to let Lila see those kids as long as she believed Lila was not only “cursed,” but a liar.

Driving down the turnpike, he tried to think about the lecture he was giving, the problem he was trying to solve, the finals he needed to prepare, but nothing worked. He was back in St. Louis again, a twenty-five-year-old man listening to his mother cry from a pain no amount of morphine could help. He was back there, watching her die so slowly and horribly that he sometimes wondered if he’d ever be able to think about what either of them had been like before.

CHAPTER SIX

S
he fell in love with him because he wrote her a poem. How lame is that? This was before she knew that, for Billy, pretty words came as easy as finding salt in the ocean. “That boy can talk,” her mother said. And then, because her mom had already been divorced twice and distrusted men: “Watch that you don’t get hit in the eye when he’s slinging all that bullshit.”

Ashley had never gone to college, but she was twenty-nine and no dummy. She knew the difference between BS and the kind of things Billy Cole talked to her about. His dream to be a writer wasn’t just pie-in-the-sky drunk talk, either, because he was never drunk and he had a briefcase full of stuff he’d already written. And he wasn’t using that stuff to get laid. He wouldn’t even show it to her; he said real writers never show their work until it’s finished.
She was kind of relieved he felt that way, because what if he wanted her to read it and then talk about what it meant? She’d always sucked at those “deeper meaning” questions in high school.

No doubt, she had a weakness for unavailable guys, especially if they had sad puppy dog eyes like Billy Cole did. But where was the harm in hanging out with him? She knew he wasn’t the type to hit a woman, and he didn’t even raise hell on the weekends, like most of the guys she knew did. And it was only going to be for a little while, until he left for California or Oregon or wherever he decided to go next. Ashley’s mom called him a drifter, like that was a bad thing, but Ashley herself thought it would be so cool to travel the country like that. The farthest away she’d ever been was El Paso, for her cousin Karen’s wedding.

Did she ever hope Billy would ask her to leave town with him? No, because she wasn’t a fool and only fools hope for things that will never happen in a million years. That he’d stayed as long as he had was good enough for her, and more than she’d expected. Yeah, he’d given her something she hadn’t planned on, but she could deal with that after he was gone. She wasn’t ready to be a mother and he sure as hell wasn’t ready to be a father. He didn’t have the money she’d need for the clinic, so why tell him about it?

And then he wrote her that damn poem and she fell in love with Billy Cole. How he figured out she was pregnant, she wasn’t sure, but all those pretty words about the pretty baby she was carrying and the pretty family they would have—well, it seemed like one of those fantasies all little girls love, like Cinderella and the slipper. The guys she knew would have run if they guessed she was knocked up, but not Billy. Her mom said it was only because he was too young to get what he was in for with a kid.

Ashley took a lot of shit about Billy’s age from her friends and family. She told Trish if she heard one more joke about robbing the cradle she was going to scream. Trish was the only one who
thought it was romantic that Ashley was marrying Billy Cole, and it wasn’t much comfort. Trish had always been kind of simple.

Still, Trish was her sister and Ashley loved her without question, the way you do with your family. This was why she thought she understood how Billy felt about his sister. Billy and Lila were twins, yeah, but how different could it be? Oh boy, was she ever stupid about that! From the moment Princess Lila blew into town, Billy rarely left her side and the two of them were always whispering in the corner of the bar where Ashley was still working, trying to make enough money for the baby. She was already five and a half months pregnant and her feet hurt from standing all night, but she tried not to bitch. At least Billy was keeping his promise to get married, finally.

They’d waited three months so Lila could finish college. Billy told Ashley he was afraid it would put too much stress on his sister if she had to come to the wedding before the end of the semester, and she might even get sick.

“Does she get sick a lot?” Ashley said, wondering why Billy had mentioned this. It seemed a weird thing to worry about with a girl Lila’s age.

The question seemed to annoy Billy. “No,” he said, frowning, “and I intend to keep it that way. Lila’s going to graduate school to be a professor. It’s what she’s always wanted and I don’t want anything to interrupt her plans.”

Ashley’s mom was the one who’d named Billy’s sister Princess Lila, because she thought Lila acted like she was better than everybody else. Ashley told her mom she was being too hard on the girl, but secretly she worried her mom was right. Lila had a way of looking at Ashley like she was to blame for all this, like Ashley had tricked Billy into marrying her like one of those white-trash women on
Jerry Springer.
It wasn’t until after they’d been married for a few months that Billy admitted he had told Lila something
like that. Of course, this turned into a fight, the first of hundreds they would have over the years.

They were still living in Ashley’s apartment, which was small to begin with and now seemed tiny with Billy always there and Ashley eight months along and big as a truck. The bed took up three quarters of the only room; the kitchen was against the back wall, just a half-refrigerator, a rusted-out sink, a hot plate, and one cabinet where the small amount of dishes Ashley had were crammed together: blackened pots under glasses, spoons and forks on top of chipped plates. The bathroom didn’t even have a shower, just a peeling tub with a hose she’d connected to the faucet so she could wash her hair. Otherwise, all they had were a small TV sitting on an old dresser, and a corner desk next to the window that faced the mountains, with a stack of Billy’s books arranged on the windowsill. He’d put up three pictures on the opposite wall: one of Lila, one of an old guy with a beard (it was somebody Ashley had never heard of; Billy said the guy had written one of his favorite books), and a colorful painting of triangles, circles, and zigzag lines. Over by the bed, Ashley had baby pictures of her nephews and a photo of her whole family at last year’s picnic—normal pictures, not like the one Billy had of his sister, which was downright strange.

She was all by herself in some kind of spooky forest. Her blond hair was shorter then, curled around her face, which was weirdly pale, and her eyes looked big as an owl’s. Her face was heart-shaped, but not soft, and her lips were locked together as firmly as if she’d decided not to talk for the rest of her life. Or maybe like she was holding back a scream? Ashley felt sure that something had scared the shit out of Lila that day, but when she’d suggested that to Billy, he’d said it was “ludicrous.” One of his favorite words, as Ashley was discovering. It always made her lose track of what she was trying to say.

Ashley stared at that picture while Billy explained why he’d lied to Lila about the reason for their marriage. “She’s never had a real boyfriend, Ash.” Billy was still sitting at his desk. “She wouldn’t understand about all this.”

“So you told her it was all a trick?”

He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter now, does it?”

“Did you even tell her you loved me?”

“I told her I didn’t care whether I loved you or not, which was true. That I would have married you anyway because of the baby.”

This was so much worse than him saying she’d tricked him into marrying her; she was stunned. She swallowed hard and stared at his back bent over his desk. His pen was moving again, like that was the end of their little chat.

She grabbed the first thing she could reach—her jean jacket—and threw it at him.

He turned around, rubbing his neck where the snap had hit him. “What?”

“You wrote me that fucking poem!”

“And?”

“You went on and on about how much you loved me and the baby.”

“I said our life together would be great.” He looked into her eyes. “I still believe that.”

“You said a hell of a lot more than that, Jack.” She went to her nightstand and yanked open the top drawer so hard the picture of her family fell forward with a clunk. “I’ve got it right here.”

As angry as she was, she couldn’t help unfolding the sheet of notebook paper gently. It was the best night of her life, wasn’t it? The night Billy waited for her outside the bar and insisted on going to the rundown hotel where he was staying, rather than her place. There were hundreds of stars out that night, and she felt happy riding along in that junker Oldsmobile of his, holding his hand.
When they got inside the room, she noticed that he’d lit a few candles, picked some hyssop from the side of the road and arranged it in the plastic coffeepot—nothing fancy compared to what other women bragged about getting from their men, but it touched her. The truth was no guy had ever done anything remotely romantic for Ashley. She told herself this was because they could tell she was too tough to want this kind of crap, but deep down, she knew that none of those guys had ever loved her. They were attracted by her breasts and her ass; they liked her easy way in bed, but they didn’t really care. But Billy was different, she knew that when he reached into the pocket of his faded jeans and handed her the poem. Billy saw her soft side. He knew she longed to have a family of her own. He thought their baby would be pretty. He actually wanted to marry her.

Except scanning the poem now, she knew that he’d left something out, the most important thing. The pain was so sudden and sharp that she couldn’t help it; she let out a cry and let the poem drop out of her hand.

“I meant all that,” he said, standing up. “Ash, what’s—”

She was fighting back tears, the bitter tears of a woman so stupid it had taken her months to see what was right in front of her nose. Of course Billy Cole didn’t love her. They were so different; why would he? And no man had ever managed to love her, not even her own father. Her own father hadn’t seen or spoken to her in all the years since her mom had thrown his lying, drunken ass out.

“Why do you want this baby?” she said, swallowing hard. “If you don’t love me, why my kid?”

“It’s my kid, too, Ash.”

She put her hands on her belly. “So you love it ‘cause it’s yours?” She was shouting. “Like these books?” She moved over to the windowsill and knocked them all off. “Like your papers?” She pushed them from the desk and watched as they fluttered to the ground.
“Like your precious twin.” She tore the photo from the wall and threw it on the pile.

“That’s enough.” He sounded cold and angry, but she didn’t care. It was over and she would never let him know how much this hurt. She would deny to him and everyone else that she had been dumb enough to believe this smart-guy writer could have actually loved Ashley Harris.

“I’m going to go so far away—” She was holding her belly again, which was cramping up something fierce. “So far away that you’ll never see—” All of a sudden, the cramp got so bad it doubled her over. Then she felt the gush and saw water running down her legs, splashing drops on Billy’s papers and the photograph of Lila.

If he’d gotten mad at her for ruining his things, she would have left after the baby was born. She was pretty sure about that. But instead he said, his voice full of awe, “It’s time, isn’t it?”

She was three weeks early, but he was right; now that her water had broken, the baby was coming. And she was terrified. Of labor. Of taking care of an infant. Of screwing up the child’s life. And yeah, of living without him. Maybe that most of all.

“It’s going to be fine,” he whispered. He was standing right next to her. “We don’t need to worry about all these details anymore.” He was smiling his best Billy smile, but she hoped that wasn’t why she didn’t notice he’d just described not loving her as a “detail.” He nodded at the picture of the bearded man on the wall. “Like he said, happy families are all alike. And that’s what we’re going to be, Ash. The happiest family in the world.” He paused, then said something he’d said before, which she was ashamed to admit made no sense to her: “From experience to innocence, our path to redemption.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

I
f Patrick had wanted to know what it was like, she would have told him that it felt as if pieces of her mind had simply disappeared. This was why she was afraid to even try to read now: without the characters and their voices, the words collided into each other, a cacophony of sound without meaning, a total void that reminded her of the nothingness Billy used to say was crouching right outside, threatening to swallow them up if they weren’t very, very careful. “Read this,” he would say, pushing another book into her hands whenever she felt the fear creeping up on her again. Then he would tell her to pretend she was Jane or Huck or Hester—whoever the main character was in the book. If she was really frightened, he would open up the book and read to
her, page after page in his most expressive voice, until she was calm again, until she remembered these stories were the only truth that mattered now. “The truth with a narrative arc,” as one of her undergraduate professors would call it years later. “A truth that has been shaped and molded, indeed
tortured
into a story to please the short-attention-span set known as readers.”

Billy insisted that professor had to be a hack; otherwise, he would have known that writers loved stories for themselves, not only as a means to get readers. And sitting in Nancy Jamison’s office, Lila knew Billy would probably call this therapist a hack, too, because Nancy said the whole topic was merely a way for Lila to avoid looking at what was
really
bothering her. As if losing her ability to read couldn’t be bothering her. As if losing her life’s passion couldn’t possibly be an issue.