The General Read online

  "But he never really got on his feet again."

  "And I couldn't have ever afforded that rehab center. Or even a live-in. And where did that leave him? Trying to fend for himself? Having a seizure while I was at work trying to keep a roof over our heads? It was bad enough that he was this way because of me. I wasn't going to be the reason he died after he was given a second chance. I just... I have so much on my conscience. I couldn't take anything else. So I stayed. I endured. I convinced myself that it was for the greater good."

  Christ.

  What a brutal, hopeless, lonely life she had lived.

  I wanted to dig up Teddy, reanimate him, and kill him my fucking self.

  Jenny fell silent, blowing on her food, but not really eating it.

  It felt like it was now or never.

  To ask.

  To get the details.

  She was talking. Openly. She was giving me all the pieces without me having to pry them out, feeling guilty for doing so.

  I had to ask.

  If she didn't want to tell me, she didn't have to. But if she wanted to share, but just didn't know how much to give me so soon, I didn't want her to keep it to herself out of uncertainty, feeling like it was too heavy a topic for such a budding relationship.

  Because, well, that was what this was. For me at least. A budding relationship. Something important starting.

  And if we wanted that, if we wanted something that required so much of us, we had to give the other person all the bits. Even the hard ones. The ugly ones.

  So I asked.

  And, what's more, I had been right. She wanted to tell me. She was just waiting for me to want to know.

  "Sweetheart, how the fuck did you end up with Teddy in the first place?"

  She gave me a smile that wasn't really a smile at all.

  And then she laid it all out there.

  Raw and ugly as it was.

  NINE

  Jenny

  I wasn't one of those children who was blithely unaware of how poor they were.

  I was acutely, painfully cognizant of the discrepancy between many of the kids in school and the handful of kids who grew up in the trailer park I did.

  It wasn't even the nice trailer park.

  That one was further down the road, full of homes with wheels under them like mine, but with owners who built nice porches, who built up a fake foundation to make it look like the wheels didn't exist. Who had cute little potted plant gardens with gnomes or fairies scattered about.

  No.

  I lived in the one that was wedged between the liquor store and the small old car parts junkyard where the mangy dogs roamed listlessly, barking at everything and nothing both day and night. It was a sad little lullaby for me as a girl - those snarling dogs who I could picture jumping up against the flimsy chain link fence, jaws snapping, next to nothing preventing them from barreling through and sinking their predator-sharp fangs into the throats of whatever they spotted.

  Kids maybe included.

  There were only eight trailers in all, each older than the people who owned them. Some, mine included, older than the generation who had owned them before the current owners did.

  There were no decks, no fake foundations, no black-eyed-susans or marigolds or lavender growing in pots. And there certainly weren't any gnomes or fairies.

  Not even fake fairytale creatures would be caught dead in my little dirt road neighborhood where the skunky smell of pot was a constant in the air. Where screaming matches were hardly kept private thanks to thin tin walls and open windows.

  I hated the idea of going on the school bus for the first time when I was in first grade, somehow already knowing the kids would laugh at my neighborhood when the bus pulled to a stop in front of it, the stop sign and bar moving out so I could cross into it, red-cheeked and feeling bad for being embarrassed of the only home my parents could afford.

  The linoleum in the kitchen where I ate store brand Spaghetti-Os in plastic bowls after school were lackluster with age and wear, chewed up in spots from furniture or who-even-knew-what.

  My bedroom was a living room couch in a hideous mauve and robin's egg blue floral pattern, the material singed through with cigarette holes, spaces I would stick my finger in when I was trying to fall asleep, comforting myself with the idea that somehow, someday, someway, I would get out of this trailer, this neighborhood, this town.

  I would live somewhere where trailer parks didn't even exist. Where no one knew that all my clothes came from the Good Will, that my mom cut my hair in our cramped bathroom because we couldn't afford a six-dollar haircut, that there were some nights in lean months when I went to sleep with my belly empty, woke up and went to school with a grumbling stomach, only getting lunch because the school provided it for low-income families like mine.

  I promised myself as I got older and the behind-my-back snickering became in-my-face taunting, humiliation because my jeans were the wrong brand, because my backpack was the same one three years in a row, because my notebooks and school binders came from the dollar store, that someday, someone would look at me and would never know that sometimes my mom would make me steal cans of soup in my backpack when she went in to supposedly check the price of milk. And I would do it because if I didn't, there would be no food for any of us that night.

  I was going to be someone who no one could associate that kind of poverty with.

  Jenny Eames was just going to be like every other girl. Not the one with a daddy who had a hard time finding work to keep us fed because he had been to jail and no one liked hiring ex-cons.

  I didn't know how I would make it happen since I wasn't a good enough student to get scholarships that would take me to fancy schools where I could learn things that could help me make good money, let me get a leg up in the world. And there weren't many opportunities in my little western Pennsylvania town to allow me to rise the the socio-economic ladder even with a good education.

  But I knew in my heart that I wasn't meant to be poor forever.

  High school was the worst, those in-between years when I was old enough to be acutely aware of the soul-crushing poverty - when everyone around me had cellphones and computers and secondhand cars to drive. While I didn't have any of them, not even when I managed to get a little after-school job and save some money. Because when the heat got cut off, and my parents didn't have the money, really, what could I do? Say no? I needed the heat too. I managed to get a couple new pieces of clothes in my wardrobe, but that was about it. A bill always came up.

  And then, one day, I was working as a waitress at a local restaurant.

  And a man walked in.

  The kind of man who didn't belong.

  The kind who had far too much money to be in my little nowhere town with an expensive suit complete with a pocket square and cufflinks, a matte, platinum watch around his wrist.

  When he was seated in my section, I didn't think thoughts like I was going to sink my claws into him, make him take me away with him into a life of luxury.

  No.

  I just thought how nice it would be if he left a decent tip for a change. And then I worked for it. Smiling, engaging, discussing dishes even though I knew I had refills to fetch for another table and yet another table's food was likely dying in the window.

  Sure, he was handsome. In that aristocratic way, all the right features that - when all put together - almost seemed too perfect. So handsome that he was almost ugly. But there were plenty of good-looking men in and out of the restaurant. I was just glad his check went over fifty - for one person - because it meant his tip would be decent even if he was just a typical fifteen-percent tipper.

  It wasn't until I dropped the check that I felt a sizzle at all. And only because as I pressed the little black book onto the shiny surface of the table, his hand closed around my wrist, sending an odd, unfamiliar jolt through my system, making my gaze shock up to find his gaze on me, a small smile tipping up the side of his mouth.

  "What is a girl like y
ou doing working in a place like this?"

  In hindsight, I hated myself for what I thought when he said those words. Which was something to the effect of Finally, someone realizes I am not meant to be stuck here.

  But I'd been a seventeen-year-old girl. And I had next to no experience with boys. So having this older, wealthy, more worldly man wanting to pay me attention, yeah, it got me fluttering, making my words stumble over each other, something that made him chuckle, a sound that moved through me like a shiver.

  "What are you doing after work?"

  Besides trying not to get kidnapped or raped on my walk home in the pitch black?

  "Nothing," I told him, honestly.

  "What do you say I swing by and take you out for some coffee. There has to be somewhere around here that is open late."

  There was.

  And despite many, many teachers lecturing us about never getting in cars with strangers, I agreed, then spent fifteen minutes after cashing out and sweeping my section in the bathroom trying to get the ponytail kink out of my hair, fixing up my makeup, trying to make my work uniform of black slacks and a black button-up-blouse less hideous. In the end, I had unbuttoned the top three buttons even though my chest area had never been all that big to begin with, and then tied the bottom part of my shirt up, revealing a teensy sliver of belly and lower back. I borrowed perfume from the hostess to get the fried food smell out of my clothes, ate enough Altoids to burn all the tastebuds on my tongue, and moved outside to wait for him to show up.

  Twenty minutes later, there was a crushing feeling in my chest when the restaurant closed behind me, and he still hadn't showed.

  Stood up on my first date.

  That sounded about right.

  But just as the last of my coworkers pulled out of a parking lot, a car turned in. The nice kind of car. The one that didn't groan or grumble when it was running. No, his car purred as it slowed and stopped right in front of me.

  And then he did the damndest thing - that thing from movies I had seen. He climbed out, fastening his middle suit jacket button, and moving around the front of the car to open the door from me, taking my hand as I lowered myself down into the buttery soft leather seat, settling in, watching him as he moved around the hood, unfastened the button again, and slid into the driver's seat.

  He'd been the perfect gentleman to a girl who was used to boys who snapped bra straps and made up lewd songs to sing at groups of girls as they passed out front the high school.

  Being with him made me feel different, made me aware that I could be that person I dreamed about. The one who got out of our town, got out of the poverty.

  He didn't make fun of me when I didn't know the names of the artists he talked about seeing at the Met, didn't correct me in front of the waitress when I pronounced the dishes wrong at a fancy French restaurant he took me to on our second date.

  He called me beautiful.

  He called me sexy.

  He told me I was too good for this town I was living in.

  He told me it enough that I believed him, that I melted into his kisses, letting him run his hands over my too-young body.

  "I shouldn't be doing this," he told me as his hand slid to tease the material between my thighs.

  But he did it.

  He toyed, learned all my curves, all my hidden bits.

  After a few weeks, I followed him back to his hotel room where he had been staying - he said - for the sole reason of spending time with me.

  He was staying a few towns away, in a nicer area that even had things like luxury hotels that sported sparkling chandeliers in their lobbies and the softest sheets I had ever felt in my life.

  The door clicked behind me, and I knew that moment that I had left my childhood - and my innocence - on the other side of the door.

  It was just minutes before my clothes were on the floor with his, and my back was on the sheets, body quaking with uncertainty.

  "You need to relax," he told me, voice almost reproachful as he ran his finger between my folds. "You're not letting yourself get wet," he added, making guilt course through me.

  I was supposed to get wet when he touched me. I was supposed to respond to his touch. And I was disappointing him as he sat there doing everything he could to get me ready.

  In the end, he had slid on a condom he swore was lubricated, spat on his hand to rub it over his rubber-coated, intimidating-looking - for a girl with no experience - cock, pressed my thighs open, and shoved into me.

  The pain had been blinding, making me cry out, cry for it to stop.

  "It will feel good in a minute," he promised, voice rough as he just started thrusting into me. Fast, hard, making my insides feel raw, ripped, burning.

  It never felt good.

  And when it was over, I was bloody and aching. But he pulled me toward him, kissed my forehead, told me I was a good girl, that it would get better, that girls needed to get worn in.

  I'd been young, idealistic. I felt like my body belonged to him now, that it didn't matter that I had begged for it to stop, and it didn't, that I was completely his, that when you gave yourself to a man, he was going to be your happily ever after. Even if his demands in bed were forceful, even if he was wholly unconcerned about not wanting to have him in my mouth, in my ass. Within a week of the first time, he had used me completely.

  But he held me after, he told me how good I was, he promised me that he would get me out of this town as soon as I was old enough.

  Then my birthday passed, and there was a ring on my finger, and he was telling me he was taking me home with him.

  My mother had been angry, telling me I would be back in a few months, pregnant, used and cast aside, never to hear from him again.

  My father had cried, telling me there was just something about Teddy that he didn't like, something about him that he didn't trust, begging me to give it a little more time, get to know him better.

  But I was young and I thought I was in love.

  I let him take me away.

  He hadn't lived in the mansion then, but a giant penthouse overlooking the Navesink River on the good side, though to my eyes both sides looked nice.

  "Jen, it is the difference between banker's salaries and CEOs," he told me, rolling his eyes.

  It was the first time he'd rolled his eyes at me, and I tried never to comment on his town since I was clearly ignorant, and I didn't want to offend him.

  He'd taken me to small boutique shops that plied me with champagne despite me not being of age, demanded I overhaul my entire wardrobe. When we got home, he threw everything I owned - even the things I had bought with my own money that were, in my mind, good - into the trash bin, telling me that I would never dress in castoffs or discount fast fashion ever again.

  And while I felt red-cheeked in shame for having been seen as so beneath him, I was happy to be molded into a better version of myself. I felt like Cinderella when she went from scrubbing floors to dancing with the prince.

  "What's the matter?" I asked one afternoon as I pored over endless bridal catalogs.

  "We have to have dinner with my father tonight," he told me, reaching to pour himself a drink.

  I wanted to say that it was three in the afternoon, too early to drink, but I didn't feel like it was my place.

  "Is that a bad thing?" I'd asked, confused, knowing his father was a senator and that Teddy ran his company for him. I figured that meant they were close.

  "He's not happy about the engagement. He wanted me to marry the heiress of the Duvall family. He's not going to like you."

  "Because I come from a poor family?" I asked, feeling a sinking sensation in my stomach.

  "Among other things," he agreed, pouring more, throwing it back.

  "But he doesn't even know me," I insisted. "I will make you proud, Teddy, I promise," I told him, thinking of all the ways I could try to impress his father.

  "Don't worry, Jen. It will be fine," he told me, pressing a kiss to my temple as he moved past me.

&n
bsp; But it wasn't.

  He'd been right.

  His father didn't like me. I might not have been as smart as they were, but I knew enough to know when I was being condescended to, when every single thing I was doing or saying was being judged and found wanting.

  We'd gotten home after, me feeling dejected, hopeless, him feeling angry and frustrated, taking it out on me with punishing sex that didn't have any of the warm, primal, pleasing sensations sex had started to have at times.

  The next day, he left me for a meeting with his father.

  He came home and drank himself into oblivion.

  I didn't have to ask to know that the senator had likely leashed into him, demanded he change his mind.

  At the time, I thought he had refused because he loved me so much. In retrospect, I was sure it was pride and maybe a bit of rebellion that made him move forward with the marriage plan.

  It was a week before the wedding that he grabbed me hard enough to leave bruises. And, yes, I should have known it was wrong, that even if I had made him angry, he should never get so out of control that he marked me. But I didn't see it that way at the time. I reminded myself to be more careful when speaking to him, not to pester him right when he came in the door, to be more understanding of the stressors in his life.

  Were there red flags, giant blinking warning signs?

  Yes.

  But I'd been blind to them. I'd been too easily reassured by a few sweet words, a hug or kiss, even the occasional blue-green box full of something pretty and sparkly.

  Eighteen-year-old girls were easily persuaded.