Princely Bastard (5 page)

“So,” comes the voice of another woman, “you deny you’re wanted for manslaughter?”

“Yeah, I deny it.”

He’ll live. Maybe.

I think about these words—words I can faintly recall from last night, and I also think about all the other guys I’ve knocked out over the years. Some badly. And I suddenly become frightened, with the reporters not helping at all. All at once ridiculous questions fly at me in a hundred directions. They really believe I’m a fucking prince.

But I don’t. So, while shaking my head, I back up into the building, and I make sure the door is securely closed. Then I run up the four flights of stairs as fast as I can. I run and run, trying to get away from more than just the people outside—while wishing Aimee hadn’t left. I wish this hard.

Unfortunately, as I reach my floor I know this wish won’t come any more true than the others I wished before. So, I just ramble down the corridor toward my apartment. Though as I get to the door I stop. I stop because I feel something in my back—something I’m pretty sure is a gun.

“What do you want?” I say, after raising my hands.

“I’m here to help you, Mr. Stuart,” a man tells me, in what sounds like a British accent.

“Help me with what?”

“Help you commit suicide.”

chapter five

Aimee

I REACH THE bedroom window and stop, right before turning back to the door—a door leading to Mark.

I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to go anywhere, and I hope he calls me. I hope because I really don’t want to return to who and what I was.

But Mark doesn’t say a word. And, not knowing what else to do, I open the bedroom window—and I immediately sense it: it’s hot out, much hotter than yesterday. It’s summer hot. And I get the feeling that the weather in LA is like the neighborhoods—going from one to the other at random.

But I have much bigger problems than the temperature. So, I look down at the alley many stories below. It seems empty, apart from a few parked cars—and, after a brief bout of hesitation—with my legs both hurting and unsteady from the previous night—I step outside onto the rusty fire escape.

Instantly, I wish I hadn’t. Because the whole thing creaks loudly and shakes a bit—and the metal even gives a little to my feet. And I wonder when someone stepped on this last, and if it were after I was born. But I continue downward anyway, slowly and carefully, with the creaking and shaking only getting worse.

Finally, I reach the bottom landing and stop. I stop because the ladder doesn’t extend any farther and I’m nowhere close to the ground. Still I close my eyes and bend my knees, and pretend I’m gonna jump.

Though I don’t pretend long, as I hear voices—and I open my eyes and see a pair of reporters talking to each other at the mouth of the alley, with cameras in their hands.

I just know they’ll hear me if I jump, so I take a deep breath and lean against the brick wall of the building—and wish my mother was here, and not helping some girls halfway around the world. Because I need her. I need her badly. Which reminds me of a time when she was the one in need.

AFTER MY FIRST encounters with Rudi, for months she visited me at the home, with each visit no more than a few weeks apart. She also emailed me almost daily, and phoned me, too—and made plans for future visits.

During these, she would take me to exotic restaurants—restaurants I never imagined going to in a million years. And afterward we’d often take long walks, along the Freedom Trail in downtown Boston or on the beaches of Nahant, where she’d ask me all sorts of questions, as if she were really interested in me and my life.

I tried hard to discourage this interest, in spite of growing more and more attached to her—or maybe it was because of it. Sometimes I’d ignore her completely, and other times I’d be rude and belligerent. But she kept coming, and it wasn’t long before I started counting the days till she did.

Then, one morning Mrs. Falcona summoned me to her office, where Rudi was waiting in a chair next to the woman’s desk, with a big grin on her face.

“I have some good news for you, Aimee,” Mrs. Falcona proclaimed.

“You’ve been fired?” I replied.

The woman frowned at this. But what I really noticed was Rudi, who was hiding her smile underneath her hand.

“No,” Mrs. Falcona growled, while trying hard to control her temper, “Ms. Goodwin has just adopted you.”

“I don’t want to be adopted!” I lied, before turning away from both women and crossing my arms.

“You don’t want to have a family and live in a nice house?”

“No!”

“Well, fortunately for you, you don’t have a choice.”

Furiously, I spun toward Rudi and hollered, “I hate you!”

But she saw right through me, just like she always did—and she said, “Why don’t we get you packed.”

Within an hour, the two of us—along with a plastic bag of all my belongings—were at Logan Airport, which was only a short distance from the home. And, about an hour after that, I was on my first airplane—to New Jersey.

“As soon as I can,” I told Rudi, as soon as my ears stopped popping, “I’m running away. Just so you know right now.”

“That’s exactly what I would do,” she matter-of-factly remarked. “I ran away a lot when I was your age. You have no idea how much you remind me of myself.”

“Bullshit.”

“It’s true,” she insisted, not the least bit upset by my language. “It was obvious to me the moment I saw you. I was so much like you. Not just because I didn’t have a real family or that I lived in a place not that different than East Boston. I was also bitter and hated the whole world, much like you. I did lots of bad things, too. Even worse than you.”

“Yeah, sure.”

Rudi responded to this by reaching into her purse, for a worn black key chain—one without keys. And she said, “Do you know what this is?”

“A key chain,” I blurted out, with unrestrained contempt.

“It’s sobriety,” she retorted. “It means I’ve been clean for a long time. Though truthfully drugs were only the tip of my problems when I was young. I was slowly destroying myself, and only didn’t because of the love of strangers. That’s why I do all this, Aimee. Not just adopting you, but all my work with the foundation. It has nothing to do with ‘kicks.’ I’m simply paying a debt I’ll never pay off in full.”

I didn’t believe her, and didn’t say another word to her until we were in front of a huge three-story white house about twenty miles from New York City.

“This is where I’m gonna live?” I gasped, while looking up at the mansion-like place with eyes that I’m sure were as wide as apples.

“This is your house,” Rudi told me. “It’s as much yours as mine.”

“It’s so . . .”

“I thought the same exact thing the first time I saw it. You’ll get used to it, though. It’s much warmer inside.”

She then took my hand and led me into the house, where we were greeted in the hallway by a tall elderly black woman.

“This is Aunt Elizabeth,” Rudi said proudly.

“
Aunt?”
I muttered.

“
Aunt
,” Rudi replied, before lovingly putting her arm around the woman, who responded in kind. The woman also smiled at me. She smiled at me as if she really were my aunt.

“We’re one big family here,” Rudi continued. “Not always one big happy family, but we’re always a family.”

Rudi afterward took me into the nearby living room and introduced me to my new sisters, who seemed as nervous about me as I was of them.

The first one I met was Kamcha—a 19-year-old Roma girl Rudi long ago rescued from the streets of Prague. Kamcha was then a junior at Princeton, studying so she could one day join Rudi at the foundation, and she came home just to meet me.

Also visiting from college was Alea, who was a freshman at Brandeis. She was originally from Yemen, where she had been married at the age of six—and had only escaped her “husband” and a life of near slavery because of Rudi.

Then I met Lynette, who was 16 and from Compton. When Rudi came across her she was a prostitute, and hadn’t been to school in years. But now she was a straight-A student who would eventually graduate at the top of her class before heading off to MIT.

Finally, I met Vicki, who was a pretty blonde-haired girl my age. She was also Rudi’s only naturally born child—and I took an instant dislike to her, especially when I saw her sneer at me. I disliked her so much that I marched right up to her and growled, “You got a problem?”

Vicki smirked at this, and said to her mother: “She talks funny, Ma.”

“That’s how they speak in Boston,” Rudi explained. “She probably thinks you speak funny.”

“You’re gonna speak real funny,” I barked, as I lifted my fist to Vicki’s face—“after I give you a big fat lip.”

Before I could even blink Vicki grabbed my arm, and she effortlessly flipped me over her shoulder and onto the floor—and she smiled at me. Rudi also smiled a bit, before putting her hands on Vicki’s shoulders and saying, “That wasn’t very fair, honey. We haven’t trained Aimee yet.”

“Trained?” I uttered.

The training came soon after dinner, when we all got into karate robes and Rudi taught us moves in the basement—with the sounds of the Ramones blasting off the walls.

“Every woman should be able to defend herself,” she told me as she showed me how to properly throw a punch.

At this point, I really thought I had entered a madhouse, and I couldn’t wait to leave it. I even told myself I would do so that night—a night that began when Rudi led me and my bag of things up a big old-fashioned staircase.

Eventually, we reached the second floor, and I stopped. I stopped and looked up at a portrait on the wall—one of an elegant woman in her fifties with dirty blonde hair.

“Who’s that?” I asked, while pointing at the painting.

“That was your grandmother,” Rudi answered. “She actually adopted me. She was also the most wonderful woman there ever was.”

“Yeah? She doesn’t look it. She looks like a prig.”

“
Prig?
Where did you learn that word?”

“I don’t know. A book, I guess.”

“Well, she was a bit of a prig. But we all have dimension. Especially you.”

Ignoring this, I glanced at the picture next to the painting—a hand-drawn one set inside a black frame—of a handsome teenage boy with wavy hair.

“Who’s that?” I went on, after pointing at him.

“That,” Rudi said, with a sudden burst of emotion, “that was my husband Tommy.”

“Where is he?”

“He died. He died long before you were born.”

Just then, Rudi no longer seemed so tall. She seemed like a scared little girl, just like I was—and she quickly dragged me away and into my new bedroom, which was big and beautiful, with lots of antique oak furniture and even more warmth—the kind you can both feel and smell. But what I really noticed was that there was only one bed. It angered me, too—even if I wasn’t planning on staying there.

“Vicki and I have to share that little bed?” I cried out, with my hands on my hips.

“Vicki’s room is upstairs,” Rudi replied.

“You, you mean this is all mine?” I mumbled in shock, having never had a room of my own.

“That’s right,” she said, before pointing to a nearby bureau and adding, “Why don’t you get into a nightgown. You’ll find one in the top drawer over there.”

“I don’t wear nightgowns,” I insisted.

“Humor me, just for tonight.

I sighed, but did what she asked—and afterward she tucked me into bed, prior to grabbing a large hardcover book off the nightstand and sitting next to me with it.

“What’s that?” I asked, while pointing at the book without looking at it.

“
Tom Jones
,” she replied.

“I told you,” I barked, as I turned from her and crossed my arms—“I already read it.”

“I thought we might read it together. I haven’t read it in a long, long time. In fact, I had forgotten all about it until you mentioned it. It’s such a beautiful book—way better than the movie. It’s not even close. There’s this incredible character in it—Sophia Western. She’s smart and strong and doesn’t let anyone stop her from getting what she wants, in spite of living in a time where women were not supposed to have any of these qualities. And you can be everything she was.”

“I already read it!”

“All right. Maybe we’ll start tomorrow.”

Of course, I was certain there wouldn’t be a tomorrow—and, once the house was dark and quiet, I got dressed and got my things together, and me and my plastic bag silently headed down the stairs. Though, as I approached the bottom, I heard a faint voice—Rudi’s. And, once I reached the ground floor, I looked around and saw the faint light of a single lamp in the living room.

“Tommy?” Rudi mumbled, from somewhere unseen.

I wanted to run from this. I wanted to run right out the front door. But instead I walked to the threshold of the living room and saw a teary-eyed Rudi asleep on a couch, listening to an iPod with the black key chain clutched in her hand.