“What about you?” I ask, turning the tables. If I can get him talking, firing question after question, I’m pretty sure I can steer us way from this topic.
I don’t like to revisit my past. It’s only recently that I even allowed myself to entertain memories of Hollis. But, of course, I hardly had a choice in that matter. His book practically screamed for my attention, the words pulling at me from somewhere deep beyond the flesh.
Ford tells me about his family, about his still-married mother and father who both have traditional jobs (she’s a teacher and he’s a mailman), and then his sister, who has Down Syndrome and who he adores more than life itself (so sweet I could vomit). His dad coached little league, and his mom was a troop leader during the two years he was in Boy Scouts, and oh-my-god his family is so cookie-cutter amazing I want to scream. I bet if I went to their house, I’d find a two-story traditional with a cozy kitchen and granite countertops, maybe an apple-fucking-pie cooling on the windowsill. And his parents would be standing there, arm in arm, smiling ear to ear, giving off a feeling of so much fucking security that even if Ford lost everything he owned he’d still be okay because his family would have his back, always have his back.
It’s so easy to be fucking carefree and daring and creative and devil-may-care when you have a place to go if everything falls apart.
When you’re not alone. Fucking alone.
Just listening to tales of Ford’s apple pie childhood has me tensing up, and it’s only when he calls me out on it that I realize my entire body is growing rigid with indignation. I’m edgy and envious, jealous and jaded, my own issues rising to the surface and clawing at the barrier that’s held them back for so long.
“I’m fine,” I assure him, though my voice is clipped.
But Ford sees through my act. “You’re hardly fine. I can feel how tense you are.” He rubs my shoulder, pressing his hand into the meat of my arm as if trying to work some of the stiffness out of my muscles.
The micro massage works, and the tightness slowly begins to fade, my body turning to butter as I melt back against him. He asks me again what’s wrong, and because I’m basically putty in his hands right now, my defenses softened to the point of uselessness, I tell him. “Family is sort of a trigger topic for me. I just…it’s been a long time since I’ve even thought about anyone in my family, much less talked about them.”
Ford squeezes me tighter. “Sorry, Becca. If I had known…”
“Don’t,” I say, stopping him. I don’t want pity, and I can see now how he might mistake my aversion to the subject as something it’s not, like maybe I was horribly abused and, as a result, am now tainted, broken. And since appearing as anything but strong, confident, and capable is out of the question, I drudge up my demons in order to set the record straight. “It’s not anything terrible. Not in the way you’re probably thinking, anyway.” I rush on through this next part, because even though it’s not, as I put it, terrible, per say, it’s still a harsh reminder of where I started, the sorry sad sack of shit parents I had, and the childhood I lost before I was even out of the first grade. “My mom was a timid woman, afraid of everything. My grandmother said she wasn’t always that way, that it started building when she was a teenager but didn’t spiral out of control until she had me. Nice, right? Apparently, my very existence caused her anxiety to triple overnight. Though my grandmother was a crackpot, too, so I always doubted anything that came out of her mouth. My dad, for his part, did everything for me back then. Again, this is all according to my grandmother. But I sort of believe her about that, because I have these, like, distant memories of him walking me to school and making me dinners. It was always macaroni and cheese, sometimes canned spaghetti or soup. But still, it was an effort.”
“Sounds like a good man.”
Oh, Ford. You’re so fucking clueless. Privileged and clueless.
“He was hardly a good man,” I say instead. “He walked out on us when I was six. Never heard from him again.”
Ford blows out a low breath, and with it a faint, “Shit.”
“Not that I can blame him. For wanting out of that situation, at least. My mom was a trainwreck. So needy, all the time. She could barely function by herself, and by the time she had my brother, she was hardly leaving her bedroom, much less taking care of me and my younger sister. All she did was sleep and smoke pot; she said it calmed her nerves. Never calmed them enough to make her functional, though. I guess it just got to be too much for my dad, having to do everything for three kids and a wife who never had the energy to lift a finger. I would’ve left, too.”
Ford’s lips brush the top of my head. “And what? He never called, never visited, never paid child support?”
I’m in it now, the story, my past, and the truth of who I am and where I came from is tumbling out, gushing like a geyser. “Nope. My mom never fought for child support. And I was barely out of the first grade, so I didn’t have a clue as to what child support even meant. Besides, it took…awhile…for me to realize he was gone. Like, permanently.” I clench my jaw, grind my teeth, loath to give any more information. But my inner child has the reins now, and after all these years of being locked away, she’s demanding to be heard. “I used to think he’d come back. That he was just gone, getting our new home ready. One without my mom, of course. Where I was just, you know, free. Free to be. No one constantly demanding, grabbing at me.”
Ford is quiet, but his hands roam my body, caressing, soothing, comforting.
“But obviously that didn’t happen. My grandmother helped us for a couple of years – financially, at least. She didn’t have much, but it was something. Though she died when I was nine, I think? By that time, I’d already figured out how to shop for groceries and mimic my mom’s signature so I could send out checks for utilities and…other stuff.” The skin on the back of my neck crawls when I remember the first month we didn’t have the money for rent; my mom snuck the checkbook out from under my mattress and spent what was supposed to go to bills on weed. The landlord, a sleazy overweight man in his fifties, threatened to throw us out, and when I begged him not to, told him we had nowhere to go, the fucker laughed and offered an alternative way to pay. Beyond desperate, I agreed, dropping to my knees and blowing him right there. It was the first time I’d ever done anything like that and had absolutely no idea what I was doing. But he didn’t care, moaning and grunting like I was the best he’d ever had. He came in my mouth without warning, something I didn’t even know could happen. When I got home, I spent the night in the bathroom, vomiting again and again, over and over, until there was nothing left in my stomach. Then, I dry-heaved.
I was fourteen.
Over the course of the next four years, I paid rent five times with my mouth.
I realize now that I should have turned him in. But back then, I was just a scared kid, terrified of what would happen if I did. If he was locked away, what would become of the tiny, rundown house we called home? What would become of us? And besides, shame does strange things to your psyche. It lowers your sense of worth, leads you down a dark path where you make all the wrong decisions for all the wrong reasons. What would people think? Regardless of my age, I was a willing participant. I’d opened my mouth and didn’t bite off his dick. I made him come, even swallowed it.