“Mother… Mom, I need to sort out a job, what do I need to do to enter the job market?”
Mum poked her head out from the kitchen.
“Don’t worry honey, once you’ve settled in we’ll go down to the Social Security Administration, get your Social Security number issued, then we’ll have to go over to the Department of Labor, get your qualifications assessed. If you got them from a college in England, then it should be accredited, then the next step is to actually find a job. That’s when the fun starts!”
I sat down gingerly; the drive had aggravated all my cuts and bruises, and mum noticed.
“Baby, take off your shirt, I want to look at your back!”
She appeared with a bottle of something and some cotton wool. I carefully took off my jacket and shirt, as the cuts had been bleeding, and my shirt had stuck to me in places. I took it off and whistled at the amount of blood caked on the inside of it, before wondering what my back looked like.
“OK baby, face away from me!” said mum, and again she hissed as she saw my back. “Oh Jesus, what a mess!”
“What does it look like?” I asked, and she replied, “Not good, but it’ll clean up. Now this is going to sting a little, can’t be helped, I have to clean this up, so yell if you have to!”
She wasn’t joking when she said it was going to sting; it felt like I was being branded, and she kept dropping bloody swatches of cotton wool into the waste bin at my feet, muttering and cursing under her breath all the while.
“OK Nicky, all done, go put on a loose shirt, and don’t lean back against anything, and tonight, sleep on your front. Now, are you hungry?”
Mom had put on a lovely thick beef stew, hot and filling. I’d not eaten anything since lunch the day before and I hadn’t realised how ravenous I was, and she just kept filling my plate. I’d never eaten so well or so much; my father believed in moderation in all things, so meals tended to be frugal and uninteresting, cheap ingredients and minimal cooking to save fuel costs.
When we finished, I helped her clear up and wash-up, and she looked at my back again, as blood was still seeping through my shirt, and as I pulled my shirt off over my head a voice behind me said “Hi mom, what’s for din… Holy shit, what the fuck happened to you?” I whirled around and the girl standing there hissed like Mom. “What the fuck did that to you?” she gasped.
“Ashley!” snapped mum, “I told you about language like that!”
Ashley stared at me. “Mom, who’s this, and what’s he doing half-naked in our house?”
Mum sat her down. “Ashley, meet Nicky Davies… my son. Nicky, this is my daughter, Ashley, your sister.”
Ashley stared at me, her eyes widening and her mouth forming an ‘O’ of shock. “The boy you told me about, the one who disappeared? How did he… I mean…?”
Mom held my hand. “Nicky found out about me two days ago, he’s been living in England, his father took him there, never told him about me, so he when he found out, he came home!” she was crying now.
“Mom, look at him! He looks like he’s been horse-whipped! What the hell happened to him?”
I spoke up. “My father decided to beat up his wife, my step-mother, I tried to stop him, and…”
Ashley looked at me, eyes welling up. “Dear God, your father did this?” she whispered, “What about her, what happened to her?”
I was having a real problem getting the words out now”She tried to protect me, but we both got a beating anyway. She gave me the information about Mom, took me to the train station, and that’s the last time I saw her alive; she got me out of there, and then she killed herself, it was all over the news when I got to the airport. That’s what my father made her do.” Tears were running down my face now, as I relived the guilt and shame. “I should have tried harder to bring her with me, get her out of there; if I had, she’d be alive now, it’s my fault she killed herself, I should have made her come with me, I should have dragged her away…!”
Ashley took my hand, hugged me. “No, not true, you tried, but she wanted to do that, she wanted to escape, and you couldn’t have stopped her; at least she helped you escape, at least she got you out of there first!”
All I wanted to do was sit in a corner and cry, too much had happened in the last 48 hours, and I was still processing where I was, who I was with, the emotional pummelling of the last couple of days finally caught up with me, I saw the floor rise up and that was all I remembered.
+++
When I awoke, the sunlight coming in the window had that fresh brightness that said ‘early morning’ and when I checked my watch I saw it was indeed just after 7am. I could smell coffee, and that more than anything else woke me up. I seemed to be in a girl’s bedroom, frilly and pink were the general tone of the place, and I’d been lying on a sheet, probably placed there to prevent me bleeding all over the bedding; it was blood-smeared, but not as much as my shirt had been, so perhaps the bleeding had stopped now. I was in just my shorts, so someone had brought me in here and undressed me. Finding my jeans and shoes, I slipped them on and went to find the coffee.
I found Ashley curled up on the couch in the living room, looking massively cute in baggy pyjamas, watching cartoons with a big mug of coffee. She grinned at me “Hi Nick, you want a coffee? We haven’t any tea, you know, and I know that’s what you Brits like first thing, eh what, what?” she teased. “Love the accent, by the way!”
I grinned at her. “I’m not English, I’m an American, just like you; I was born in St Peter’s, right here in Albany, although I only found that out a couple of days ago!”
Ashley smiled back. She really was stunning, mid-length, light coppery auburn hair in a casual twist over her shoulder, smoky green eyes, clear, fair skin with just a dusting of freckles across her small snub nose, and a rosebud mouth with rosy pink full lips, and from what I remembered from yesterday, a slim, lithe figure. “See anything you like?” she asked me in a teasing tone, and I realised I’d been assessing the hottie-quotient of my own little sister.
My face and ears felt hot, clear evidence I was blushing, and her grin grew even wider.
“Mom says you’re some kind of hot-shot mechanic; think you can do anything with that shit-heap parked out front?”
Her smile was challenging, and I grinned.
“I can try. Mother… Mom said there’s tools and stuff in the garage, can I use them?”
“I don’t know, can you?” she grinned back, so I poured myself a coffee and went to see what was there. I was pleasantly surprised to see a proper mechanics tool-chest, fully stocked with everything I would need, and a rack full of spares for the LeSabre; obviously Mom’s late husband had been planning a major overhaul of the car before he’d passed away.
I started the car and listened to the various groans, clanks, wheezes and rattles, mentally made a list of what I thought needed doing, and made a start on that lovely classic 3800 V6 engine, working methodically, logically, as I had been taught, addressing each issue in sequence. I worked happily, stopping now and then to chug down the coffee Mom or Ashley brought out to me, until I felt I’d gone as far as I could without a complete shop and pit. Mom came out and leaned on the car, looking closely at me.
“Would you like something to eat, honey, you’ve only been out here for nine hours!” she grinned, and I gaped; I was so lost in playing with this classic that the time had just run away from me.
“I think I’m about done. The silencer, I mean muffler needs replacing, I’ll get one ordered, tomorrow I want to replace the brake pads, so I’ll need her for a couple of hours, if possible, and the air-con needs re-gassing, so I’ll have to find somewhere to get that done, but other than that, she should be roadworthy. Want to try her?”
She jumped in and started her up, no clonking or timing misfires, no wheezing, and when she pulled away, she did so without hitching or stalling. I love big lazy V6 engines, but hardly ever got to work on them in England, the cost of fuel there is so high that V6’s & V8’s are just too expensive to run.
Mom came back around the corner, parked up and slid out. “Honey, I think you just earned a special dinner tonight, what do you want?” she grinned.
“Dinner’s on me Mom, you tell me where you want to go!” I still had more than $11, 000 burning a hole in my pocket, and I wanted to treat my new-found family.
Ashley ambled on out. “How’d he do, Mom, did he get this shit-box off death-row?” she smiled, and Mom, tweaked my ear.
“That he did, Ashley, you have a very talented big brother!”
Ashley leaned up and kissed me on the cheek. “Thanks, Nicky, we depend on that car, and you really made a difference!”
My cheek burned where she’d kissed me, and I felt a frisson pass through me. I think she did too, because her eyes widened for a second, and she blushed prettily before turning away in confusion.
She tugged me back inside, and I have to admit, my eyes were fixed on her lovely rump, cute and round and shapely in her sprayed-on jeans, and the way she swayed as she moved, her cheeks switching as she walked, was truly entrancing. I washed-up with the can of mechanic’s soap I found in the garage, and slumped down on the couch.
I barley saw Ashley for the rest of the day she seemed to be occupied in her room, and so Mom and I chatted around sandwiches about my life in England, school and college, which caused some confusion at first. Americans seem to equate ‘college’ with ‘university’, whereas in the UK, there are Technical Colleges, and Universities, each completely different from the other. Technical Colleges teach craft skills, universities are more academic than anything. I ended up explaining my qualifications, or trying to, until Mom held up her hands in surrender. “Let the people at the Employment Office work it out, Nick, you lost me with all the British talk!” she laughed.
Eventually I dozed, waking when Ashley sat down on the couch next me and flicked on the TV.