The Common Thread (2 page)

After leaving home and hitting the streets, Katie had never really been close to anyone. Her school friends were living lives far different from hers and couldn’t begin to understand the world beyond their clean homes and high-ranked schools, the world of violence and crime, drugs and alcohol that had become Katie’s. After Katie’s first brushes with the law, the parents of her friends had cut off the contact that had for years sustained her. At the age of fifteen, she’d found she was truly on her own.

With her support structure gone, Katie developed new relationships. These new friends didn’t play music on the piano or field hockey after school. They didn’t study and work on school projects. They drank and did drugs together, and when she was intoxicated with one drug or another, that camaraderie was all Katie needed.

She couldn’t even remember her first sexual encounter. She recalled getting high with a bunch of people at a party and, upon awakening the next morning, felt the telltale pain and bleeding that told her she was no longer a virgin. She’d probably been raped, and she really didn’t even care. All she wanted was to get high again.

Over the years before she met Billy, she’d slept with a parade of men. If they shared their drugs, she’d share her body. Only after she became pregnant with her daughter did she clean up her act, realizing the responsibility growing daily within her. Wanting to become the kind of mother she’d had, she gathered all her courage and pulled herself together. Still, she remained isolated. She’d learned not to trust, and in the world in which she lived, that meant keeping to herself. Sure, she knew the parents of her children’s friends, and people at church, and her neighbors. At work, she liked everyone, and they all liked her, but none of them had ever really gotten to know her. Not until a few months ago, when Jet Fox began working at the clinic.

Just the thought of Jet brought a smile to her face and filled her heart with happiness. Katie felt she could talk about anything and laugh about nothing with her. Jet was the first friend she’d made in fifteen years, and now Katie was beginning to develop feelings of a deeper nature, feelings that both thrilled and terrified her.

Katie thought back to that first date with Jet. Was it only two months earlier? After an April shower caused a power outage, closing their clinic for the day, she and Jet had decided to share lunch. They talked for three hours, and Katie found her spirits flying as she rushed to the kids’ school to pick them up that day. Where had the time gone? Katie didn’t know, she only knew it was the most delightful lunch she’d ever shared, the most pleasant time she’d spent since childhood.

Since then, Katie and her children had spent some part of every weekend with Jet, picnicking in the park and exploring Penn’s Landing, driving to Rehoboth, walking and playing Frisbee on the beach, hiking in the mountains, cooking out at Jet’s apartment, and watching movies on her television. Katie’s children, Chloe and Andre, adored Jet as much as Katie did, but lately she’d begun to understand that there was something more stirring within her than the attraction of friendship, and as she looked at Billy, she knew that something was called love.

Katie knew that Jet was a lesbian, and Jet’s sexuality was causing Katie to reconsider everything she’d ever thought of herself. Sex had never been important to her before; it was just something she did to make other people happy. She didn’t need feelings or attraction. She’d never felt desire, until she began to lie in bed at night and imagine Jet next to her, with her mouth and hands on her body. Then, Katie lost her senses, and when she slipped her hands into her panties she found herself wet and ready. Thinking of Jet she could make herself come. She was beginning to seriously believe she might be a lesbian, too.

“It’s fuckin’ hot!” Billy complained as he stood. Not surprisingly he’d decided to forget she’d assaulted him.

It wasn’t really that hot, but it had rained and the humidity was high, making it seem much worse than it was. And the small apartment had no ventilation, sandwiched as it was between two others on the street, where no wayward breeze ever blew through.

“Baby, when we get your inheritance, we should buy an air conditioner and a whole house to go with it.” He was standing in the doorway of the twelve-by-twelve-foot room, his large frame taking up an enormous amount of Katie’s personal space, and even though the lights in the room were off, the glow of the streetlight through the front window allowed her to see his smiling face.

His comment made her uneasy, and she shifted her position to look at him, challenging him. He was smiling, attempting to charm her, but that tactic had ceased working years earlier. Katie was moving because of the inheritance. It would give her the means, for one thing. But even if she did nothing with it, just kept the money saved for her children, she couldn’t trust Billy with it. He’d stolen from her before—not actually taking her money, but borrowing it with promises to return it when things turned his way. Yet they never did turn, and she knew if she allowed him he’d spend every last penny she had.

“Billy, you’re not getting any money from me.” It suddenly occurred to her that his release from jail might have something to do with the fact that her thirtieth birthday was just days away. That was the day Katie would receive the balance of the trust established for her when her mother died. Could he have somehow arranged to get out of jail so he could swindle her, spend this last installment like he’d spent the others? That money had been for Katie’s expenses while she was in college: enough for an apartment, food, clothing, as well as books and tuition. She’d seen little of it, though—Billy had used it for payments on a sports car that the police later confiscated.

The judge had arranged the trust to be distributed in small amounts when she was a teen, then in larger allotments when she was in college, with the balance issued on her thirtieth birthday. Katie was never quite sure how much money was there—it was all so confusing. There was no life-insurance policy, no retirement plan, no savings. Her parents had been a struggling middle-class couple when her mom was killed, trying to pay the mortgage and Katie’s tuition at a Catholic school, car payments and cable bills and still save enough for a few days of vacation each summer at Wildwood, New Jersey. No, there was no savings. The money came from the lawsuit her father had filed against the delivery company whose truck had killed her mother. The judge, in his wisdom, had mandated the award be put into the trust, for he had concerns about her dad’s ability to keep the money safe for Katie. He had received a small award, too, but the majority of the money went to Katie. When all the deductions were added up—attorney and trust-fund fees and prior payments—she no longer had any idea what was left of the three hundred thousand dollars she’d been paid to make up for the loss of the only person in the world who mattered to her. Her lawyer managed the trust for her, but she didn’t feel comfortable talking to him. Bruce Smick had been a friend of her mother, and Katie was ashamed for him to know how she’d screwed up her life. Although he obviously had her best interests in mind, it would have been far better to deal with an anonymous and uncaring stranger who had no ruler with which to measure how far she’d fallen.

For years she’d dreamed of buying a house with her birthday money, the kind she grew up in, in a working-class neighborhood where gardens with flowers bordered every finely manicured lawn. It wouldn’t be a big house, but it would have a big kitchen, where she and her children could hover over school projects and homework. It would have three bedrooms—one for her, one for Chloe, and one for Andre. Her children needed their own rooms. They were getting too old to share such intimate space. And just maybe her friend Jet would sleep over on occasion. She hated when Jet came to this house, seeing the weathered houses and littered lawns that surrounded hers, and the people in the streets who monitored her movements as she came and went. So they spent most of their time at Jet’s apartment, in a neighborhood just a few miles and a whole world away.

When she got her money, she’d pay a first and last month’s rent, and a security deposit. If she had the money for those fees, she would have already left this place. Soon, though, she would. Just a few more days.

Once she was settled in her new apartment, she’d take her time and look around for the house she wanted, and then, in a few months or a year, she’d be a homeowner. Surely she had enough money left in the trust for a down payment. Her job at the clinic was solid, and she could get a loan for the rest. She’d gotten a car loan and paid it off promptly, and she paid her single credit-card balance monthly. Her credit scores were excellent.

If she had enough money after she purchased her house, she planned to buy furniture, too. If not, that was okay. Her apartment’s furnishings were fine, though not luxurious. She just never seemed to have enough money left over to splurge on items like a new bed, when her kids needed jackets and fresh fruit and piano lessons. The quality and quantity of her furniture didn’t bother her. She managed to make the house a home, even without much to work with. She’d painted the secondhand beds herself, stenciling butterflies on her bed and the alphabet on the kids’. The interior of the house was exceptional, and she painted that as well, accenting the house’s fine woodwork, bringing the walls alive with sponging and layers of paint. The children’s room was a jungle, literally. She’d painted an elephant, giraffes, lions, and a zebra. The kids loved it.

The cosmetic changes were easy for her. With a little patience and time, Katie could make anything look more attractive. But the structural problems in the house gave her fits. She couldn’t replace the drafty windows or the buckling floors, install a toilet that didn’t constantly run, or rewire the structure that had barely enough outlets to run the major appliances.

The biggest problem with the house, though, was its location. The neighborhood hadn’t been high class when she moved in, but it had been nice. Since then, it had deteriorated. Businesses that closed during the recession were boarded up and prime squatting grounds for the homeless. The drug dealers found shelter in their dark recesses. The same for the prostitutes.

Good people moved out, and less reputable people moved in. Who would move in when she left? In less than a decade, a clean and quiet neighborhood had changed from a respectable place to raise a family to one she’d avoid if she could.

Billy’s voice brought her out of her reverie. “I don’t need a new place for me, Baby. It’s for you and the kids.”

Katie fought to find her courage. She had to tell him her plans. She was leaving, and he wasn’t coming with her. It would be Jet sharing the couch for movies and the seat at the dinner table, not Billy. “Billy, I want to talk to you about that. I really do want to move…it’s just that—”

“How much you think your house is goin’ to cost?” he asked the darkness.

“I don’t know. I guess it depends on how big and how nice.”

“You think a hundred grand?”

“More, probably. Maybe a hundred and fifty.” Why was she having this conversation with him? She was tired, and she just wanted to go back to sleep. Yet her guilt forced from her a cordiality that wasn’t genuine.

“How much you got comin’?”

“I really don’t know. Maybe a hundred.”

“That don’t seem like enough for the kinda house you want.”

Finally, she’d had enough. It was one thing to make conversation and another altogether to fight the negativity she’d battled for two decades. “It’s none of your fucking business!” Besides, she didn’t want to tell him her plans, let him know she had good enough credit to get a loan. Then he’d start borrowing off her, and she just couldn’t afford that. Her priority was her children, not their father.

“Easy, baby.” Unlike her, he didn’t raise his voice. He usually didn’t. “Don’t you worry! Simon’s comin’ over and we’re goin’ to talk business. All I need is twenty-five grand, and I’ll be set up. In six months, I’ll have all the money you need for that house, and enough left over so I can buy a little corner store. Those places rake in cash. Then we’ll be on Easy Street.”

That was it! The last straw finally broke her resolve to show kindness. Katie leapt forward, on attack, all five feet of her on the offensive, pointing her finger into his bare chest, glaring at him. Even though he towered over her, she wasn’t afraid of him. He’d never hit her. “You’re out of your mind if you think I’m giving you any more of my money. That’s for my house! You and Simon can go rob a bank if you need money, but you’re not getting it from me.”

As if on cue, the doorbell rang.

“Oh, shush, now. Settle down. Let me go talk to Simon,” Billy announced as he turned and disappeared from view.

“Not one penny, Billy,” she shouted to his retreating form, but he was already down the hall and heading toward the stairs. If he heard her, he didn’t acknowledge it.

She stood and watched until his head disappeared. Grabbing her cigarettes from the dresser, she climbed through the open window and onto the roof that covered the porch. She and Jet were both trying to quit, and they’d been doing well with each other for support. Jet wasn’t here now, though, and her frustration with Billy was suddenly too much to bear.

The rough texture of the roof against her feet was familiar, a feeling she’d come to associate with lighting a cigarette. She often came out to smoke, to keep the smell out of the house. It stained the ceilings and made Andre sneeze. Pulling one from the pack, she flicked her lighter and pulled a long, satisfying drag from the filtered end. She held the smoke in her lungs for a moment before exhaling, feeling a fraction of her anger dissipate.

She longed for a joint. When she was as stressed as she felt now, just a puff or two of marijuana would cure her angst. But she couldn’t. Because of Billy’s prior arrests, she was already a target of the Children and Youth Services caseworker who periodically stopped in to monitor her parenting. If they caught her with drugs, they’d take Chloe and Andre from her. And she could never allow that to happen. Besides, Jet didn’t use any. Jet didn’t judge her for her past, but she also wouldn’t tolerate that kind of behavior in the present. One more reason Katie liked her.