Braveheart a love story Page 5

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Ashley

  The drive to New Paltz takes about an hour, and we are driven in a town car by Mosier’s secondary chauffeur and part-time gardener, Cezar.

  Anders sits to my left, staring at his cell phone, and the leather bolster between us remains down for the entire ride. We don’t speak, though I can’t shake my curiosity about Anders’ unexpected presence in my mother’s room this morning. Why was he there? And why was he crying?

  I think back on their relationship, but can’t pinpoint anything that would indicate that they’d been especially close. I wasn’t around very much over the past five years, but I did spend a few days with Tig at Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter every year, and returned again for two months over the summer.

  Had Anders become close to her? Perhaps loved her as a mother figure?

  I don’t know very much about Mosier’s first wife, but her portrait still hangs in his study, with a candle burning beneath it at all times. In the painting, a woman sits in a formal, wingback chair beside a pool, wearing a white dress and veil. She holds a red rose and pink pearl rosary, which Mosier gave to me on my sixteenth birthday. She’s looking to the left, so it’s hard to make out her face, but a blonde curl escapes from beneath the veil, and her profile beneath the heavy white lace is very pretty. I don’t know how she died, but I imagine she meant a great deal to Mosier if he still has her portrait displayed.

  Her sons have barely ever mentioned her, though I heard her name once.

  Rozalia.

  Rose.

  “Anders?”

  “Hmm?” he grunts, not looking up from his phone.

  “How old were you when your mother passed away?”

  He glances at me, his face expressionless. “Four.”

  I nod, looking at the folded hands in my lap. “You must have missed her.”

  “We moved here soon after,” he answers, flicking a look at the rearview mirror and meeting Cezar’s eyes briefly.

  It’s the longest conversation we’ve had in years, but I press on, aware that we’ll be arriving at school in the next ten to fifteen minutes, and the next time I have an opportunity to speak to Anders might be as his—gulp—stepmother.

  “When did my sister start using again?” I whisper, looking over at him.

  His jaw tightens as it did at dinner last night, and his eyes, shiny and profoundly miserable, meet mine, blinking twice in quick succession. “She wasn’t . . . I mean . . . I don’t know.”

  “She’d been clean for years.”

  He doesn’t answer me, just closes his eyes and swipes his hand back and forth over his lips and chin.

  “I don’t understand,” I continue. “I just want—”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he says. “She’s gone. Let her be gone.”

  My shoulders slump, and I glance out the window as we turn off the highway.

  “Please,” I whisper, my eyes burning again as they did this morning when I smelled her perfume. I think of her diary hidden in my bag, and hope that if Anders won’t talk to me, at least her journal can shed some light on her last days.

  We stop at a traffic light, and Anders mumbles something.

  “What?” I ask, turning to face him.

  “She loved you,” he murmurs, his eyes glistening as he blinks at me again.

  No. No, I don’t think she did.

  “Did she tell you that?”

  “She didn’t have to,” he answers.

  She didn’t love me, my heart protests. She couldn’t have. She sold us to Mosier. She sold me to a monster in exchange for a powder-pink Fendi clutch.

  “I don’t think—”

  “She did,” he growls. “Now shut up.”

  Turning back to the window for the remainder of the ride, a single tear slips down my cheek, and I realize it’s the first I’ve cried for her since the moment I learned my mother was dead.

  ***

  I am relieved to watch Anders and Cezar drive away, leaving me at the front door of the conventlike building that serves as both dormitory and dining room. Across a small, well-kept quad, there is a two-story, stone academic building with a dozen classrooms for the fifty-two girls who attend middle and secondary school here. Between the boarding and academic buildings is the Chapel of the Blessed Virgin, the focal point of the small campus. And in the middle of the quad, there is a statue of Jesus on the cross at the head of a square pool with a fountain in the middle that bubbles soothingly.

  I am home.

  There are seven girls in my grade, all of whom are like sisters to me. We board, with the juniors and sophomores, on the top floor, each of us in a very small, simple room that has a bed, dresser, desk and chair, sink, and small mirror. There is a common lounge area, with comfortable couches, reading lights, and puzzles and board games, where we are encouraged to spend time in study, play, or prayer.

  There are no televisions. No phones except the one in Mother Superior’s office on the ground floor by the kitchen. No full-length mirrors. Nothing that would encourage worldliness or vanity. Blessed Virgin offers a simple, quiet upbringing for young ladies whose families desire a careful, ultratraditional, Catholic school experience.

  My peers are at class, but at 11:45 the bells will ring for midday prayer in the chapel, and they’ll return to the dining room at noon for dinner, followed by afternoon classes, music, and fitness. Evening prayer runs from 4:45 to 5:15, and supper is served at 5:30 every evening.

  I climb the stairs to the third floor, noting that I have about an hour before midday prayer and dinner to unpack my bag and freshen up. I place my freshly laundered clothes back in my dresser and change into my school uniform: a crisp white cotton blouse, belted navy blue skirt, navy ballet flats, and navy cardigan sweater monogrammed with the school crest in crimson. I brush my hair and French braid it into a long, blonde tail that almost touches the waistband of my skirt, then secure it with a simple navy blue rubber band.

  With more than forty minutes to spare, I pull my mother’s journal from the almost-empty bag. While part of me is desperate to know what’s inside, there is another part of me that is scared of what I will find. I sit down at my desk, staring at the cover.

  It’s a picture of Marilyn Monroe kneeling on a pink bed with a pink pen between her teeth. A round puff of feathers on the back of the pen rubs against her cheek, and her smile is wide, as though kneeling on a bed with a fluffy pen in her mouth is the most fun she’s ever had. I place my hand over the cover of the journal and close my eyes, offering up a quick prayer:

  Dear Lord, whatever is in this diary, I pray it gives me answers, even at the cost of peace. I need to know what happened to Tig, Lord. I feel like I can’t move forward until I know more about how my mother lived and how she died. Please help. In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.

  Taking a deep breath, I open my eyes and begin.

  Day #1 of THE NEW YOU!

  Dear Diary,

  Jesus, that’s cheesy. Can I be that cheesy? I guess I can. Who’s going to read this sad shit except for me? No one. That’s who.

  Besides, look at that fucking header: THE NEW YOU!

  (I just threw up in my mouth.)

  Dr. Covey gave me this journal on my last day of rehab. She said it might help me stay strong if I wrote down my thoughts. Yeah, right. That was over two years ago, and this thing has been sitting in my drawer, collecting dust since then.

  All that crap they taught me at rehab about One Day At A Time and You Can Do This is bullshit. That’s the first thing I want to say. None of it helps. None of it makes me stop. I know I should stop. I even know it’s going to kill me. Know what? I don’t care. How pathetic is that? I don’t give a shit if I die except . . . Fuck. Except for the kid.

  My fucking parents would put her in a home so they wouldn’t have to look at her, and then what? Just turned thirteen with little tits and a sweet ass. She’s cute, just like I was. She’d be raped ten ways from Sunday before she was fourteen.
Gus would try to take her, but he’s barely better off than me, moving from one sadistic son of a bitch to another before his ass barely has a chance to stop bleeding. I’ll OD and Gus will die from fucking AIDS and they can bury us side by side for all eternity. Ha. Fuck. It’d be funny if it weren’t so fucking sad.

  Besides, the kid. The thousand-weight anchor tied to my neck. I haven’t been free since the day I had her.

  I see her eyes when I bring someone home. I try not to look, but I see. She hates me and thinks I’m a slut. Well, I am a slut. And she can hate me all she wants. I’m all she’s fucking got.

  We were doing okay for a while there. I got clean. The kid was going to private school. I don’t know when things started to slip. I only know they’re fucking slipping now and I should stop using but I can’t. I fucking can’t, okay?

  I missed this morning’s job call and they hired Jane Fake Tits Simpkins to do the shoot instead. A little late and I’m out. Well, fuck them. If they want Fake Jane, they can have her. I’ll find a different gig. Miranda says I’m a pain in the ass and poison and no one wants to shoot me, but fuck, I’m also Tígin. Youngest bitch to own the catwalk since Twiggy. So she can just unwad her granny panties and call me when she’s ready. Fucking Vogue or Elle or someone will call. And until then, I’ll use this journal and do my own fucking rehab for a while.

  I’ll go One Day At A FUCKING Time and say to myself, TIG, You Can FUCKING Do This, and I’ll make the kid macaroni and cheese for dinner and let her watch Survivor with me later because she likes that.

  I’ll get myself back on track.

  It’ll all be okay.

  Tig

  Xxxxxxx

  Day #2 of THE NEW YOU!

  Dear FUCKING Diary,

  FUCK MIRANDA.

  FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK HER.

  FUCK HER SAD PATHETIC LIFE AS A FUCKING AGENT BECAUSE SHE COULDN’T CUT IT IN FRONT OF THE FUCKING LENS, which is exactly what I fucking told her.

  A catalog? A fucking catalog? Are you shitting me? It’s been four weeks without a job, so I call you to see what’s up, and you offer me a fucking catalog shoot?

  Do I LOOK like a fucking catalog model to you, you nearsighted fucking cow?

  “What do you say, Tig? It’s the best I can do.”

  Know what I said?

  I said, “SHOVE YOUR FUCKING CATALOG JOB UP YOUR FUCKING ASS.”

  So she said we’re done.

  Just like that. After 8 fucking years. WE’RE DONE.

  Well, FUCK YOU, MIRANDA, and good luck getting 8 years out of Fake Jane.

  I was done with Wilhelmina anyway. I’ll find someone else to rep me, for fuck’s sake.

  I called Gus and he said to send Miranda flowers and say I’m sorry and take the catalog job. And then, while I’m talking to him, the fucking landlord calls AGAIN for April rent, but fuck him too. He can cool his fucking jets. I’ll come back. I always come back.

  Fuck the landlord.

  Fuck Gus.

  Fuck Miranda.

  Fuck this journal.

  And fuck the kid looking at me with big eyes, hoping I’ll stay home tonight. No fucking way. I’m going out.

  Tig

  Xxxxxxx

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Ashley

  I close the journal with a smack, then stand up from my chair, staring at it like a coiled snake.

  I remember those days right after my thirteenth birthday, right before my mother met Mosier. It was just a handful of weeks, but Tig was off the rails, drinking and smoking every night, barely alive when I left for school, barely awake when I came home, only to start the cycle all over again at nine or ten that evening.

  It was a messy, desperate, chaotic time. While she was spiraling, I was just trying to get through seventh grade without a mom, without a dad, without anyone.

  She loved you.

  I remember Anders’ words from this morning and lift my chin in defiance of them. Loved me? She doesn’t even use my name in her journal. If anything, I was an inconvenience to her suicide plans. Love? I don’t see it. I don’t see a hint of it. Only some grudging responsibility toward my not getting raped.

  Wow, I think, shaking from the crassness of her thoughts about me. What a mother!

  She can hate me all she wants.

  “Good,” I sob, turning away from my desk and Marilyn’s gaudy smile, “because I do hate you!”

  My classmates hug me as I take my assigned seat at midday prayer, and later Sister Agnes sits beside me at dinner. Mother Superior says a special prayer for Tig’s soul, and my spirit and my heartbeat slowly return to normal as I allow the sweet peace of school to envelop me.

  But what I really long for is time alone with Father Joseph.

  Father Joseph is one of two priests who work at the Blessed Virgin Academy and the only one who works there full-time, living in a small rectory adjacent to the chapel. He is in his sixties, with white hair and wrinkles, but after Gus, I love him most in the world. Though our relationship is mostly confined to the confessional, we occasionally have long talks about life and faith. I once clocked our longest talk at almost two hours. The way he listens to me, stopping me now and then to clarify a point or offer feedback, tells me that I am heard. And I place a premium on being heard, since so few people in my life have cared to listen.

  He doesn’t hug me or kiss me or smile at me any more or less than the other girls at my school. He doesn’t favor me or go out of his way to make me feel special. But he gets me, and he is more of a parent to me than Tig ever was.

  He loves me like Jesus loves all of us—in an otherworldly, fatherly way that has no beginning and no end, given freely not because we deserve it or have earned it, but because something in his heart is called to love us no matter what. Sometimes I wonder if Father Joseph’s unconditional love is what stands between my life and a life like Tig’s. Because of him, I believe that God loves us. Because of him, I want to be good.

  And I desperately hope he can help me.

  Confession is offered six times a week, but Father Joseph is in the confessional only on Wednesday and Saturday mornings, so I have to wait a day until I can speak to him.

  I am up by five o’clock to shower and dress.

  I have avoided Tig’s journal over the past two days, though it feels like Marilyn’s face taunts me with her sexy grin whenever I glance over at my desk. I tried turning it over, but the back of the journal has her rump in the air, and Lord forbid one of the nuns sees that! Part of me wants to put the diary in the back of my desk and forget about it, but a larger part of me is gathering the courage to go back and read.

  I need to understand her. Tig. Teagan. My fake sister. My secret mother. I want to know how she died.

  At six o’clock I walk across the quiet campus and enter the Chapel of the Blessed Virgin, relieved to see that the green light over Father Joseph’s side of the confessional box is lit, which means he’s available. Because not many teenage girls relish the idea of getting up at dawn to chitchat with a priest, I know that we’re not likely to be interrupted.

  I open the heavy wooden door to the right of his and step inside the small, dark, quiet space. I kneel down on the velvet-covered hassock and cross myself. When I open my eyes to Father Joseph’s dimly lit profile behind the metal screen that separates us, my tired soul lifts.

  Surely here I will find my way.

  “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”

  “How long has it been since your last confession, my child?”

  “One week,” I whisper, the words strange in my ears.

  How in the world could my life have changed so materially in one short week?

  “Continue.”

  “My sister passed from this world,” I say, “and I don’t know how to feel. My mind wandered at her funeral. And . . . and my feelings have been very mixed, very confused, since she died.” I pause, as I often do during confession, to let Father Joseph speak.

  He clears his throat. “It is normal to fee
l confused after the passing of a loved one. There are things we wish we’d said, questions we wish we’d asked. Did you have a chance to say good-bye to her?”

  “No,” I whisper. “Her death was sudden and unexpected.”

  He takes a long, deep breath, then releases it. “All the more reason to feel unsettled, my child.”

  My eyes burn with tears, but I blink them back, which reminds me of Anders in the car. “My sister’s stepson seems very upset about her passing.”

  “All members of a family, no matter how close or how far away, will grieve differently.”

  “But she wasn’t his actual mother.”

  “Do you begrudge him his feelings?”

  “No,” I say quickly, leaning forward to prop my elbows on the shelf between us. “I just didn’t realize he cared about her.”

  Father Joseph is silent for a moment before responding. “Be careful not to make assumptions, my child. Your sister’s passing could have stirred up memories of his own.”

  I think of Rose’s portrait and nod. “Of course.”

  “Spend time in prayer. Seek the voice of God in your quiet moments. He will comfort you. He is the only one who can give you the peace you long for.”

  “Thank you, Father.”

  We are silent as I absorb his words, a sliver of that promised peace descending on me from his voice alone. I close my eyes and breathe deeply, letting the air expand my lungs and nourish my blood. It is so good to be back at school . . .

  . . . except my time here is finite. And my future looms heavy and horrible on the horizon after graduation.

  “Father,” I start, but my mind fills with images of Mosier kneeling before me, his hands trespassing on forbidden, sacred parts of my body. A renewed sense of horror sends a chill through me. I clench my eyes shut as I shudder. “F-Father, my . . . m-my . . . he . . . he . . .”

  “My child?”

  I open my eyes and blurt it out. “My stepfather has plans to marry me.”