The Red Fox: A Romance (4 page)

“
What's wrong with you?” she asked.

Jay took a few steps backwards, searching for his clothes.

“
I don't think you're
that
. I'd never call you that terrible word. Not you, nor anyone.” He grabbed his pants and quickly pulled them on.

She stepped up to him and pushed his chest, almost knocking him over.

“
You don't know me. That's your problem.” The act was gone. Now she was just plain angry. “If you knew me, you'd cut the good guy act and take me.”

“
No, I wouldn't!” Jay screamed out. “You're a woman. A beautiful woman. A woman I
desire
, but your not a piece of meat. Why are you talking about yourself that way?”

“
Because that's how everyone talks about me!” she screamed back.

“
Then to hell with what people say about you. I don't believe them!”

“
You don't believe them because you don't know me, but that's who I am.” She shook her head before staring at him again. “I brought you out here to have sex with you. Don't you get it?”

He didn't get it. He hadn't expected this.

“
I just want to get to know you.”

She gazed at him. Her steely eyes were bending; hidden tears, begging to be let out, hung around the edges. “Bullshit.” She walked away, back the way they came. Jay turned and watched her, speechless.

“
You're like all the rest,” she said. “You're no different.”

Before Jay could say a word she was gone, disappearing into the thickness of the woods.

“
Where have you been?”

Leaf's father was sitting in
his
chair, his drinking chair.

“
School. I
do
have something I have to do with my days.

“
Oh, little princess thinks she's better than me because she has something to do with her days, does she?”

He poured himself another whiskey.

“
You ask me the same question everyday.”

“
Because I don't believe you. School finished hours ago.”

“
I had to stay back. Detention.”

“
You have your mothers eyes,” pointing to his own eyes then to hers. “I know them, I see through them, those same lying eyes.”

“
Stop comparing me to my mother. I don't even know
who
she is.”

“
But you know
what
she is, a hoar!”

“
And what are you?” she snapped back. “A dirty drunk saving your welfare checks to sleep with the cheapest prostitutes you can find? You're no better—you're worse!”

“
Get out,” he screamed. “Away from me you little tramp. Away with those lying eyes.”

She turned and stomped off into her room.

Six more months. That was all.

Her final exams were exactly six months away. She would leave after the final word was written and never come back to Jacksonville. She wouldn't pack. She wouldn't say goodbye. She didn't give a damn about the graduation ceremonies. But she couldn't leave yet. Everyday she battled with her demons, calling her to give up, to give in, to follow her mother's path—the path everyone expected her to follow.

She hated living with her father, but she had to stay. Not for him, but for her studies. Something deep within her was determined to finish school. It was a promise she had made and was determined to keep. If she could finish her education, she wouldn't be trapped like she was now. With an education at least she had a chance, a chance to start a new life. A new identity, away from her past, from her shame, from the nightmares that haunted her. Most of all, if she finished her studies, she'd keep the only promise that had ever mattered to her.

Every month, the day his welfare check was cashed, her father disappeared for a few days. He went to look for Leaf's mother. For seventeen years he had been looking for her. He never found her, but each new brothel he visited he asked if they had a working girl with a particular tattoo on her stomach; a tattoo of a Red Fox.

Leaf had never met her mother but she knew her story. She had been a working girl, everyone in town knew that, but she also worked as a waitress in a local bed and breakfast. That was where her father had met her. He was a trucker who was unaware of her
other
job. He was the only guy she slept with
who didn't pay her for the pleasure,
and the only man she didn't insist wear a condom.

He had been with her several times over the course of a year. The next time he rolled into town she was six months pregnant.

His mind had become consumed with her over the course of that year, and while he was away he had created his own world where they lived together. He had also created his own version of her, what kind of girl she was, what kind of life they could have together.

She hadn't planned on telling him about the pregnancy at all, but he had surprised her with his visit, and so she had changed her mind about what to do with the child. She wouldn't leave it on the steps of the hospital, she would leave it to him instead.

Her own mother begged her not to give the baby away, but she had also come to hate her own mother for reasons even she couldn't understand. Her mind was no longer fully her own. It made her think things she didn't want to think, and do things she didn't want to do. Perhaps it was the drugs, perhaps the work, perhaps the abuse that both brought into her life. When she gave birth, she was overcome with guilt and grief, overwhelmed with the responsibility of it all. So she passed the responsibility over to the man who got her pregnant—and disappeared.

When he received the phone call that she had given birth, he packed up his truck, took leave from work, and traveled to meet his child. When he arrived she was gone, but the child was still there with her grandmother. She had already been named 'Leaf' by her grandmother. Her father didn't care. It was just a name.

Leaf had been left with her grandmother who lived on the outskirts of town. A note was also left for him, telling him not to look for her. This note burned all his dreams, all his fantasies, and all the good he had ever felt toward her. She had trapped him into parenthood, and now she had run off herself, thinking she could escape it. Well, she was wrong. He determined to escape it, too, as much as he could.

He told the child's grandmother he had to keep working, and that he would stop in once or twice a month when his work route crossed the town. It turned out to be once or twice a year. Some years he didn't even visit at all.

It was a tragic story, but Leaf was always thankful her parents
did
leave her. If they hadn't she never would have been raised by her grandmother. She was a strange lady with an unhealthy amount of cats, but Leaf loved her. Old Lady Green, that's what they called her. To the rest of the world she was crazy, but she genuinely loved Leaf. She was the only person who spoke well of Leaf's mother, as well. She told her stories about when Leaf's mother was just a child. The fun she had. The dreams she had. She never spoke about the life she fell into later in her life. The drugs. The prostitution. Leaf learned all of that a few years later from a few of the meaner Old-Timers in town.

Leaf was eight when her grandmother died suddenly.

When the police finally tracked down her father with the news, he was unemployed and on the verge of being homeless. Once he was informed that Leaf had inherited Old Lady Green's run down cottage, he packed the little he had and moved in. He got rid of the cats, and with a look of disgust on his face made a vow they would only stay a few months; just long enough for him to find another job. He wanted to get out of that God forsaken town as fast as possible. The memories and the shame were still thick and wouldn't leave him alone. He just needed one more whiskey to calm his nerves and help him create a plan.

He was still planning to get a job. Still planning to leave. Still drinking that one last whiskey.

Unlike her grandmother, her father believed Leaf was destined for the same life as her mother, and if he was sitting in
his
chair, then he was always quick to tell her so. She looked just like her: beautiful to distraction with eyes that never told him the truth. Even when she was telling the truth, she was lying. Just like her mother.

Last year he had walked in on her changing and saw the fresh tattoo dancing across her stomach. It was the same one her mother had, the Red Fox. Since that day he began to hate his daughter as much as he did the woman he was convinced had ruined his life.

In her room, Leaf was lying on her bed. She tried not to think about Jay and about what had happened. She tried to just let it fall out of her mind, but she couldn't. No guy had ever refused an offer of sex before. She seriously never believed that was possible. They were all the same, weren't they?

Although she had slept with more than a handful of guys, she wasn't the kind of girl her reputation made her out to be. People in school thought she had slept with hundreds of guys.
Idiots.
It was probably closer to ten. Well, twelve to be exact. If she counted Berkley as half a man, because he
was
, then eleven and a half.

She didn't even like having sex with guys. She didn't know why she had become so quick to sleep with them, either. When she was younger, much younger, her Nanna would tell her stories about men, great men, men of valor; men who didn't try to destroy the hearts of women. She would tell her about magical men. Men not of this world. Better men. Leaf had never met such a man, and later in life she concluded her Nanna, who lived her whole life without a man in the house, was just making up fantasies to make her granddaughter smile.

But maybe such men did exist after all. Maybe she had just met a great man. A man not of this world. A better man.

The next day Jay walked to school alone. When he walked up the stairs he was met by a guy who had the biggest head he had ever seen; his face was enormous. Jay thought his heart would start racing faster, but it didn't. Something about the mountain in front of him didn't cause him any anxiety. He was just too goofy looking.

“
I hear you're from New York,” he mumbled.

“
Yeah, that's right.”

“
My brother moved to New York last year. His name's Brad, do you know him?”

Jay smiled, raising his eyebrows.

“
19 million people live in New York, you know?”

“
Yeah . . . so, do you know him?”

“
Um, let me think for a second . . . Brad . . . actually, I think I met him once. He has an enormous face, right?”

Brick grinned.

“
Yeah, that's him all right. Hey, that's pretty cool that you know him.”

Jay nodded. “Next time you speak with Brad, tell him Jay said hello. He'll know me, we're all friends in New York.”

He made his way around Brick's huge frame and began walking to his locker. He heard him following. He didn't want trouble, and Big Face, although he looked like a goof ball, was big enough to be trouble.

“
Hey, Jay, wait up. I got another question.”

“
Sure—By the way, what's your name?”

“
Don, but everyone calls me Brick.

“
OK, Brick. What's your question.”

“
New York is pretty big, huh?”

Is this guy serious?

“
Pretty big? Yeah, you could say that.”

“
How many schools they got in New York?”

“
Not sure. About a million.”

“
What about your school, was it bigger than this one?”

“
Twice the size.”

“
And the name, was it as lame as 'Jacksonville Rowe High'.

“
Worse, it was “Lady Abigail the 2nd.”

A huge greasy grin flashed across Brick's face.

“
Yeah, that is pretty
stupid
.”

They way Brick emphasized
stupid
worried Jay.

He walked off without a goodbye, and Jay began to wonder if Big Face was going to become another problem to add to his list.

“
This is bad, Jay. This is
bad
bad.”

Day Two
and things were already turning out to be even worse than his last school experience. He had run away from that situation, begging his parents to let him move and finish his final year someone else, anywhere else. He had been in two other schools in New York, and each school had a bully who had made Jay's life miserable. Running from one school to the next one down the street, then another one across town wasn't enough. He had needed to get out of New York. He needed to go where nobody knew him. He wanted a fresh start.