Three Little Words (23 page)

“My turn,” Josh said to get me off the hook.

The big family gift was a hot tub. “Let’s have a girls-only hot tub,” Gay suggested when the boys were out with their friends.

We each found comfortable positions. Gay leaned back and closed her eyes.

“You will always love Josh and Blake more than me, won’t you?” I blurted.

It was too dark to see the expression on Gay’s face. “Yes,” she said in a throaty voice, “that’s if length of time equals amount of love. On that basis, I have been with Phil the longest, so I love him the most. Even though I have only known you a few months, I know love is growing in my heart, because—” She waited a long beat. “Well, I almost had a heart attack when you were on that ladder!” She turned off the hot tub jets to make certain I was hearing her. “You are our chosen child, our only daughter. We missed so much of your life, and we cannot erase some of the tragedies.” Gay started to climb out of the hot tub. She turned and smiled. “All we can do is help you be the person you want to be from now on.”

I had never been able to stay up until midnight, but the Courters allowed me to ring in the New Year. Phil poured champagne for the adults while my friends and I drank fizzy grape juice.

At one o’clock Gay turned to my friends and me. “Girls, time for bed.” Blake’s and Josh’s friends were going to continue their party on the patio. A few hours later voices in the living room awakened Gay. She peered over the balcony and saw Tess and me sitting in the living room with my brothers and their friends.

Later that day I overheard Gay scolding her sons. “It was inappropriate for those sixth-grade girls to be prancing around in their nighties around your friends.”

Josh tried to calm her down. “The girls just wanted to hang out.”

“Did I get you in trouble?” I asked him when Gay went to stew in her study.

“Let’s go for a walk,” Josh suggested.

It was windy out, and I hadn’t taken a sweater. Blake joined us. When he saw me shivering, he laughed. “Florida girl.” Halfway down the street Blake said, “Even though we’re a lot older than you, we’re not your parents.”

Josh added, “But we do want to be your brothers.”

“In other words, we are always going to support
you
, not the ’rents,” Blake continued.

“If Mom hadn’t seen you last night, we never would have said anything,” Josh added.

“But now she knows,” I said. I was trembling from the cold, as well as from anxiety.

Josh put his arm around me. “Oh, don’t mind her. She’s like a match. If she rubs up against something, she flares up for a second, but then she fizzles out very quickly.”

“And Phil?”

“He’s harder to pin down. He’ll let something eat away at him without mentioning it, but if you really disappoint him …” Josh let the words linger.

“The point is, they are the best parents ever,” Blake said. “They have always been there for us and they will always be there for you. And so will we.”

In the back of my mind I kept wondering what I would have to do wrong for the Courters to send me back. Refusing to eat something or having a messy room was not going to annoy them enough. I had found all sorts of ways to incite a quarrel between Phil and Gay, which gave me a perverse satisfaction—until Phil lost his usual cool and stormed out to his workshop. I never wanted to hurt his feelings; but I did love to see Gay crumble.

“Want to go to the mall?” Gay asked on a Saturday morning.

“Not particularly.” I was painting my stubby nails.

“Are you sure? There are some great clothing sales.”

After lunch Phil wondered if I wanted to go to the mall with him. “Sure,” I said.

Gay blew up. “I was going to buy her clothes!”

Phil put his hands up in surrender. “I’m just getting a battery at Sears.”

Gay fumed for a while, but the next morning she was cheerful. “Every day is a new day,” she said. Then her voice darkened. “But Phil is different. He’s very slow to anger, but it takes him a long time to forgive and forget. He’ll go the extra ten miles, but if you break faith with him …” Her words trailed off ominously.

Over at the Hudsons’, Luke was testing limits more and more. I overheard Gay trying to calm down Georgia over the phone: “They love to wave the red flag in the bullring. But you don’t have to react.” Gay nodded sympathetically. “I know, I know. I lose it too!”

After Luke was cruel to their dog, the Hudsons admitted that he may have not been ready to live with them, and he returned to The Children’s Home.

I was furious—not at the Hudsons, who had been so patient and loving, but at Luke, who had blown his big chance.

He was not the only reject. Daphne’s sister was sent back for intensive therapy. Will bounced into and out of a family, and Sabrina’s adoption disrupted. We were the boomerang kids. No matter how far we were thrown, we ended up back at our place of origin. I was determined to enjoy my freedom while it lasted.

The Courters traveled for their film business and usually took me along, pulling me out of school for a few days. In January of my sixth-grade year, Josh joined us as a second cameraman at a judges’ conference in Santa Barbara, California. After a long day of shooting, Phil and Gay went to a meeting while Josh and I rented recumbent bikes on the beach. Alone with Josh, I felt a genuine acceptance that I had not yet sensed with his parents. With the wind in my hair and the surf pounding in my ears, I thought:
This is about as far away from foster care as lean get.
But I still warned myself not to let down my guard.

A few weeks later we were off to film again in Washington, D.C. I tagged along while Phil and Gay interviewed some members of Congress. A group of staffers invited me to explain the problems faced by foster children. They were shocked by how often I had changed schools.

When we had a break, Phil asked what I would like to do.

“How about going to the White House to meet the president?”

He grinned. “Okay, we’ll arrange that for next time.”

I decided on the Holocaust Memorial Museum. At the entrance I picked up a card with a young woman’s picture and followed her story. Her life became worse and worse, and I wondered if she had learned to turn off her feelings the way I had. She was separated from all her family members too. At the end of the tour I learned that she perished at Auschwitz. Afterward I wandered around the lobby in a daze.

“Where were you?” Phil asked in annoyance when they finally found me.

“We’re going to have to hustle for our next appointment,” Gay said.

As we hurried toward the Metro, I lagged behind. Phil paid our fares just as a train was coming into the station. The Courters leaped on the train. Since I had never seen a subway before this trip, I feared that the doors were going to squash me. Feeling overwhelmed for a moment, the doors closed while I was still standing on the platform. Phil yelled, “Take the next train to Union Station.” His eyes were wide and Gay looked frantic.

I took the next train and was relieved to get to Union Station. I climbed the stairs, and went directly to the officer at the information booth and said I was looking for my parents. He called the other station and said my parents were at the other end of the platform.

Phil and Gay came panting toward me.

“Where were you?” I asked.

“Where the hell were you?” Phil bellowed.

“I was here the whole time.”

“We were covering both ends of the platform. How did you slip away from us?” he shouted, as if I had done it to defy him.

I pushed through the turnstile to get away from them. Phil was right behind me and grabbed the collar of my jacket. “Don’t you ever, ever pull a stunt like that again!” His face was mottled with red patches. “We thought we had lost you!”

Gay was shaking. “Why didn’t you get on the train with us?”

“The door closed.” I shrugged Phil’s arm off. “You’re hurting me!”

“You hurt
me
, Ashley,” he growled. “Anything could have happened to you!”

We trudged up Capitol Hill in silence. We were staying with some business associates of the Courters, so they could not continue to berate me. After dinner I hurried to get ready for bed and turned out the light hoping I could fall asleep and wake up with one of Gay’s fresh starts. I heard creaking on the stairs in the old house and feared someone was coming to have a little talk with me.

I heard my door’s handle turning slowly. I rolled over to face the wall, which was illuminated with a plank of light from the hallway.

Gay sat on the end of the bed. “This hasn’t been the best day, but it’s something we went through together. Now it’s woven into the fabric of our family story.”

“Threads break,” I mumbled.

“Not if you use tough fibers. If you were not made of resilient material, you would not have come this far. Just remember, you aren’t alone anymore—we’re here to back you up.” She started to close the door behind her. The latch clicked closed, but I did not hear her footsteps moving away. The door snapped open again. “Ashley,” Gay whispered through the gap, “I love you, sweetie. Night-night.”

I pretended I had not heard her.

Even if Gay really thought she loved me, I felt nothing. The Hudsons had said they loved Luke, but that didn’t stop them from sending him back. My mother swore that she loved me, and she abandoned me in the end. Adele, Aunt Leanne, even some of my foster moms had used the
L
word, then disappeared. I liked the Courters’ large house, my school, and my friends. I just had to figure out how not to blow it.

In April we went to Colorado to film foster children who were placed for adoption with military families and remained a few extra days so I could try skiing. Driving up the mountain, it began to snow. “Please stop!” I called out. Phil parked at an overlook. I jumped from the car and thrust out my tongue. Finally, after more than seven years, I tasted the icy tang of snow again! As it tickled my upturned face, I remembered what Adele had said about taking me to Colorado. Now I was there, but with another family. A few years earlier I might have felt guilty that I was having the experience without Luke or any of my other relatives, but I was beginning to accept that I was meant to go on with my life—even a good life—without them. Still, I wondered whether Adele—or my mother—ever thought about me.

Our next trip was a cruise in the Caribbean. I remembered Mrs. Chavez telling me about her mother moving from one island to another and how she had later come to the United States. I started to count all the places I had lived over the past nine years and ran out of fingers. For the first time, I sensed this might be my last move.

On one island we hiked up a steep hill after swimming under a waterfall. Gay panted, “I think I can, I think I can.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“It’s what the Little Engine That Could said. Didn’t anyone ever read it to you?” I shook my head. “Did you ever hear any bedtime stories?”

“Not that I remember.”

After we returned home, Gay started reading me children’s books like
Pat the Bunny, Goodnight Moon
, and
Where the Wild Things Are
at bedtime. I liked being babied more than I dared to admit. One evening I started babbling in baby talk.

Gay played along. “Baby want her ba-ba?” She handed me an invisible bottle.

“I’ve always wanted a bottle!” I announced in a regular voice. “My mother took mine away too soon.”

The next day she actually bought me a bottle. I filled it with juice, relaxed on the couch, and drank it. “This is great!” I tossed it in the air. “And it doesn’t spill.”

After Gay read
Horton Hatches the Egg
, we both were quiet as we contemplated how the mother bird left the elephant to sit on her egg.

“Do you still wish your mother would come back for you?” Gay asked.

I said, “No,” although I was not certain I meant it.

“If you want, you can still see her,” Gay said as she switched off my table lamp. I turned my cheek for the usual kiss. Gay said, “Someday maybe you’ll kiss me back.”

I sat up and stared just past her. “I told you I would
never
kiss you!” She looked as startled as if I had slapped her. I gazed at my ceiling that twinkled with glow-in-the-dark stars. Somewhere my mother was still out there. I would keep my promise to her even if she had not kept any of hers to me, and I would
never
love anyone else.

A few days later the official adoption papers arrived. We had been expecting them for several months, but my caseworkers had changed many times, creating further delays.

“Doesn’t matter to us,” Phil had reassured me. “We’re not letting anyone take you away from us.”

Because I was twelve, I had to sign consent to the adoption and select my name. “I’ve been a Rhodes all my life,” I told the Courters, “and I don’t want to lose that.”

“We’d like everyone to know you are our daughter,” Phil said, “but we won’t force it.” He left the paper in my room. “We’ll never change our minds about adopting you, but you can change yours. Let us know when you have made your decisions.”

For the most part, we were getting along better and better. Phil was easy, but Gay was always on my case when it came to food. Usually, I was starving by four o’clock, so on the way home from school I would beg Gay to stop for a burger. She relented when she was cooking something like curry or a casserole, because she knew I would not even taste foods when she combined them in some disgusting way. I would eat vegetables only if they were canned, and I hated the bright green crunchy ones she steamed and claimed were healthier. At least Gay did not spice my portions and stopped wincing when I dumped steak sauce over every meat. I knew she was trying; and yet—for some reason—that irked me too.

“I’m preparing all of your favorite recipes,” Gay called out as I headed for the portable phone. “Roasted chicken, cauliflower with cheese sauce, pickled cucumbers, and freshly baked blueberry muffins.” I did not respond. “Want to lick the bowl?” she asked after she poured the batter into the muffin tin.

“I’m on the phone,” I said, even though I had not yet dialed. I dragged out the call and came to the table reluctantly. The food smelled delicious, yet I did not want to give Gay the satisfaction of winning—although I did not know why I felt that way. I sat down as though I suspected there was a tack on my chair.