Temptations - The Complete Series Page 26

  She rolled her eyes. “Listen, I’m busy too. When I’m not in school, I’m at a photo shoot, yet I still try to put you first.”

  I didn’t roll my eyes back at her, yet I wanted to. I simply didn’t have time for her bullshit. I had a path in life, and I was determined to follow it as quickly as I possibly could. The sooner I could get out of school and start making some serious money, the sooner I, and my mother, could start to live the way that we wanted to.

  She took a sip of her drink and looked at me. “I know that you want to take care of your mother, but why can’t you just get the money from Helen and Scott to help her live?”

  “You know why.” The short answer to that was that Helen and Scott didn’t even know that I was still in contact with my mother. They would have blown a gasket if they knew. Helen made it clear, all those years that my mother was in prison, that I was to cut her out of my life. She refused to take me to see my mother in prison, and, when my mother was released, she lectured me about how I was never to see her again.

  That’s how much bullshit Helen brought to me. She couldn’t control me now, of course, as I was of age. But, even when I wasn’t of age, I still managed to sneak out at least once a week and see my mom. I would tell her that I was going out with the guys, and she didn’t bat an eye. More often than not, I used my allowance to buy her food and I would take it over to her where she lived, which was in Watts. When I turned 16 and started working nights at a convenience store, I used that money to help support her. It was always difficult, though, because she was working, but making minimum wage, so I worried about her constantly.

  I knew how much she was suffering. I was suffering right along with her. My father was a bastard, an absolute drunk bastard. He beat her constantly, and she took it. She tried to leave several times, with me in tow, but found that the battered women shelters refused to take animals. That was a deal-breaker for her, because we had a Sheltie, and my mom knew that the dog would be in grave danger if we just left her there at the home. She didn’t have the heart to take the dog, Tara, to the animal shelter. All the no-kills were full, so my mother knew that poor Tara probably wouldn’t find a home. She had a soft-spot for animals, which was where I got it, I guess.

  So, she returned, and took the abuse. She always kept me out of it, though. She protected me, and told me to lock myself in my room whenever they would have a fight. It wasn’t until he turned on me and beat me so badly that I went to the hospital, that my mother decided to finally take action. The night that I got back from the hospital, she shot him in his sleep. “You can do what you want to me, but I’ve always warned you never to touch Slade,” she said with gritted teeth to the corpse. “You didn’t listen to me.”

  The bottom line was that she killed my father to protect me. I would never forget that. I couldn’t. When she got out of prison, I knew that I had to keep seeing her and doing what I could to protect her and make sure she had what she needed. I even tried to hire a lawyer to sever my adoptive parents’ rights to me, so that I could return to my mother, but no lawyer would take that case. They all said that I was going to need permission from Helen and Scott, because there wasn’t a reason to sever their parental rights. That was an impossibility, considering how controlling Helen was, so I never did return to my mother’s home.

  “Okay, then,” Charlotte said. “I guess I’m just going to have to find another boy. Somebody who has some time for me.”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “If that’s what you feel you need to do.”

  She made a face, but I knew that she was only bluffing.

  They always said that the person who has the most power in any relationship is the one who cares the least. That certainly was true in my relationship with Charlotte. I couldn’t care less about her, and I pretty much had her wrapped around my finger. Not that I intended it to be that way, but that’s how it was. She had been hanging out with me for two years, begging for the scraps that I would give her. I didn’t want to be cruel to her, because I did like her well enough, but my life was such that I simply didn’t have the time to give to her. If she wanted to hang around and take my scraps, that was her problem, I reasoned.

  “I don’t know why you don’t see what you have with me. I don’t want to sound like a conceited bitch, but I know that I’m going to when I tell you that everybody considers me to be a hot girl. Everyone. Everywhere I go, I turn heads and men are constantly asking me out. I turn them down for you, and you don’t even care.”

  I knew that Charlotte was a “hot girl.” She didn’t have to bring that to my attention, that was for sure. It was plain that she was truly stunning. Long legs, taut stomach, large natural breasts, big blue eyes and beautiful dark hair. She was an in-demand model, and had been since she was 15 years old. She was already offered a slew of cosmetic contracts, and, now that she was graduated from high school, she was able to take her pick. There was even talk of her being the “face” of Lancome. Victoria’s Secret was going to feature her in their next big fashion show in New York. Charlotte was going places, that was for sure, and any other guy my age would be jumping at the chance to be with her.

  Suffice to say that I wasn’t any other guy my age.

  Oh, well.

  “Charlotte, I’ve told you before. You’re free to do what you want. You’re young, you’re gorgeous, and you’re soon going to be a superstar. Don’t let me stand in your way. If you want to hang around, great. If you don’t, well, I don’t blame you. But I’m not going to change my study schedule to accommodate you. You know this, so you can act accordingly.”

  She narrowed her eyes, but said nothing. “Okay, then, I guess I’ll go and see that new movie with Astor.” Astor was her closest girlfriend. She was, like Charlotte, wealthy and completely smoking.

  “Go for it.”

  I got home that night, which was the palace where Helen and Scott lived, and I went to my room to study. I got a phone call about midnight. As I recognized my mother’s number, I immediately picked up. It wasn’t like her to call me in the middle of the night like that, so I figured that there must have been something wrong.

  “Mom, what’s going on?”

  All I heard was heavy breathing. And then I heard screaming.

  That was all that I needed to hear. I raced out of the bedroom, and ran down the steps to my car. I was more than stunned to see Charlotte, who was drunkenly standing outside the house. She had a handful of rocks in her hand, like she was going to use them to tap on my window, which is what she did a lot. Whenever I didn’t pick up the phone, she would appear outside my window and throw rocks at it until I would open the window to tell her to quit. Then she would inevitably shout something at me, usually about how much she was in love with me, and I would, just as inevitably, shut the window and ignore her for the rest of the night.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked her, although I already knew.

  “Was in the neighborhood,” she slurred.

  I then thought of bringing her to my mother’s house. Something told me that, whatever was happening over there, it would be a good thing to have backup. Even if that backup was 115 lbs on a good day, and three sheets to the wind. “Get in the car.”

  “Oh, joy, we’re going for a ride.”

  “Yes, we’re going for a ride.”

  At that, she got in the car, and we took off. “Where are we going?”

  “To my mother’s house.”

  “In Watts?” At that, she buckled her seat belt and locked the door. “You’re going to get us jacked, you know that, don’t you?”

  I knew that she was probably right. I was driving the Audi, which was given to me by Helen and Scott on my 16th birthday. I usually drove my beater 17-year-old Corolla, which I bought with my own money before the Audi gift, when I went to see my mother, but I couldn’t take the chance that it would break down before I got to her. She was clearly in trouble, and this was confirmed when I tried to call her back in the car, and the phone went straight to voice mail.
>
  “What is going on?”

  “I don’t know. I just know that she called me just now and didn’t say anything, but started to scream. That’s all that I know.”

  I felt like puking. I saw a red light ahead, and I gunned the car through it. I prayed that there wasn’t a cop that was at the intersection with his lights off. I had been caught, more than once, blowing through a red light while there was a cop waiting. I somehow knew that every minute counted, and the ride from Helen and Scott’s house in Brentwood down to Watts was going to take too long as it was.

  I might have felt like puking, but so did Charlotte. I looked over at her, and her face was green. “You have to slow down. I’ve had a lot to drink tonight, and I’m about to hurl.”

  “I’m sorry, Charlotte,” I said, and I was truly sorry for driving so fast that she felt like throwing up. I was dragging her along on this, after all, and she had no idea what she was getting into. Not that I exactly knew what I was getting into, but I knew that, whatever it was, it wasn’t good. And Charlotte was going to have to witness it.

  I started to regret having her come along, but that was neither here nor there. She was along, and that was that. It was a spur of the moment decision, and hopefully one that I wouldn’t rue later.

  The neighborhoods started to get sketchier and sketchier, until I finally came to a stop outside my mom’s apartment. Charlotte got out of the car, stumbled really, and made a face. “If I wanted to throw up in the car, I really want to throw up now.” She gingerly stepped over the broken bottles, trash and condoms that were littering the sidewalk. “Really, Slade, these people just don’t seem to care about how their streets look, do they?”

  I sighed. She was absolutely right, but she had to understand that, when you didn’t have the basics, such as safety, enough food and a sound shelter, it was very difficult to care about anything else. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs demonstrated this – you have to have your basic needs met before you can desire higher needs, such as having a clean living environment. If the people living around here didn’t care about the trash outside their homes, there was a good reason for it.

  She gripped my hand, and leaned into me. “I never thought I would be around here after dark. Oh, what am I saying? I never thought that I would be around here, period.”

  “Charlotte, again, I’m sorry for bringing you here. But my mom is in trouble. I’m almost positive of it.”

  She gripped my arm, having let go of my hand. She looked around her, as if she was afraid that somebody would just jump out of the shadows to attack her.

  We walked into the front door of mom’s building, and up the creaky stairs that always smelled like urine and curry. At the moment, only the urine smell remained. I doubted that anyone was cooking at this time of the night. I tried not to breathe in too heavily, and Charlotte was evidently doing the same. But she wasn’t able to stand the smell, and the puke that was threatening in the car finally was released. She heaved in the corner, and I rubbed her back and held her hair while she did it. After she was done, I made a mental note that I would have to clean it up after we saw my mother. There was no need to add to the disgusting stench of the stairway.

  “This is just so gross,” she said to me, as we made our way all the way up the steps to the top floor, which was where my mother lived. “Why do we have to do this again?”

  “Because,” I said to her. “She’s in trouble. I’m now sorry for dragging you along.”

  “Let’s just get this over with.” She gingerly stepped along the creaky wooden floor, as if she was afraid that she would be stepping on bodily functions. Not that I blamed her. I was afraid of the same thing, usually. Not at that moment, though. I was simply afraid that I was going to walk into my mother’s home and see that she was dead.

  I got to her door and opened it. “Mom?” I called out.

  That’s when I saw her. And him. She was standing over a lifeless body of a man who I didn’t recognize. She was shaking, from head to toe, and didn’t even appear to recognize me when she was looking right at me. She had a gun in her hand, and she kneeled down to the man, her hand on his wrist. She shook her head rapidly, and then lay down on top of the dead guy.

  “Mom,” I said to her, approaching her gently and slowly. “Who is that?”

  I apparently startled her, because she popped up onto her feet and she pointed the gun right at me. I put my hands up, realizing that she was in some kind of altered state and there was a danger that she would shoot me. Charlotte, for her part, was standing right next to me, but she hid behind me when my mom pointed the gun at us.

  “Margot, what did you do?” Charlotte asked her. “What happened?”

  Mom started crying as she put down the gun, and she came over to me and threw her arms around me. She sobbed and I wrapped my arms around her. “Shhhhh,” I said to her gently. “Mom, you have to calm down so we can help you. Let us help you.”

  She just shook her head and continued to sob loudly. Charlotte was sobered up by the whole thing and she went over to the dead body and picked up his wrist. I guessed that she wanted to be really, really sure that the guy was dead. I could tell that he was though, just by looking at him. He was perfectly still, his mouth wide open, as were his eyes. His face was a terrified mask.

  After about an hour, my mom was finally cried out, and she seemed to be ready to talk. I made her some hot tea and sat down next to her at the tiny kitchen table. “Okay, mom, you need to talk,” I said to her. “Who is that guy in the living room, and why is he dead?”

  “He, he, he,” she began, and then shook her head. “Oh, my god, I’m so ashamed.”

  “Mom, it’s okay,” I said. “But you need to talk to me. I need to know what happened, and I need to know how I can help you.”

  She took a deep breath. “His name is Hugh. I think that his last name is Robbins. Hugh Robbins.”

  “Okay. Go on.” I felt surprisingly calm, considering the circumstances at hand.

  “He’s a prison guard. He was one of my prison guards.” She had a handkerchief in her hand and she was twisting it around and around and around. “He wanted to go out, so we went out.” She shrugged her shoulders. “I get lonely too, you know.”

  I nodded my head. “I know. Okay, so the two of you went out.”

  “Yeah. We went dancing and we had a very nice time. He showed me to the door and I thought that was the end of it, although I did want to see him again sometime.”

  “Okay. Sounds fine so far.” It sounded fine, but it very clearly wasn’t fine. Something happened, and I was getting impatient to find out what that something was. “So, what happened?”

  “Well, I went inside my apartment and I was planning to turn in, so I took a shower and everything. Brushed my teeth, washed my face, you know the routine. When I came out of the bathroom, he was standing there in my living room. Hugh. Was right there,” she said, pointing to the couch. “He was there, just kinda waiting for me. He had this look on his face.” She shuddered as if she was remembering the look on this Hugh’s face. “I asked him why he was there and he said that he forgot something.”

  I nodded my head. I knew where this was going, and it wasn’t pretty. “Okay. So, he told you that he forgot something. What was this something that he forgot?”

  She shook her head. “He came over to me and put his hands on me. I was scared. I really don’t know him that well, Slade. He was a strange man in my house and I got scared. I was so scared that I ran into the bedroom and I got my piece.”

  She started to cry again and I held her head against my chest. “Mom, tell me what happened. Why did you shoot this man?”

  “I shot him because I was scared. I don’t know why, but when I saw him standing there in my living room like that, I started to think about all the prison guards who tried stuff with me and some of the other girls in prison.” She looked ashamed as she cast her eyes down to the ground. “I was raped in prison by a guard. It wasn’t Hugh, it was a different guard, but, I d
on’t know, Slade, I started to think of that other guard when I looked at Hugh. And, well, he started toward me, and I panicked.”

  I looked over at Charlotte, who was white as a ghost. She finally spoke up. “Okay, Mrs. Facinelli, so it’s self-defense. You have a right to protect yourself in your own home.”

  I shook my head. Charlotte was right, but very naïve. My mother was out on parole. She killed my father in cold blood. There was no way she was going to get the benefit of the doubt, and the fact that she killed a prison guard was going to make it that much worse. “No, Charlotte, we can’t call the police about this. Mom will be back in prison, and she probably won’t be so lucky this time.” I shuddered as my mom started to sob again. “She won’t be so lucky, and she might even end up on death row. We can’t take that chance.”

  “So, what are we going to do?” Charlotte asked me. It was as if the entire weight of what had happened had settled on her shoulders, and she was finally starting to panic as well. “If we don’t call the police, what are we going to do?”

  I turned to my mother. “Mom, what do you know about this Hugh? Did you guys talk about your lives over dinner or whatever?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “Does he have any children, any ex-wives, anybody at all who would miss him?” I didn’t look over at Charlotte, because I knew that she was burning a hole in me with her eyes. I was quite sure she was disbelieving about all of this.

  “No children, and he said that he’s never been married.” She looked up at the ceiling. “I don’t know, though, but I think that he might be an only child. I do remember him saying that his parents were dead. He didn’t mention siblings.”

  “Ah, okay, this is good. This is good.” Of course, he was a prison guard, so, once he went missing, his disappearance would be noticed by his job. But, if he didn’t have loved ones who would be tirelessly searching for him for years, it was a good thing, to say the very least.