Moving Day

The two women disappeared into Jackie's bedroom one night and closed the door. They were in there about an hour before Jackie came running downstairs, jumped in my lap, and wrapped her arms around me.

"Daddy you're the best Dad in the whole world."

I looked up and saw "Ann" standing there, "I told her about our plans for the summer for her. I guess she wants to visit me." It surprised hell out of me!

"Ann" went back to California with her new songs. She and Jackie talked on the phone every day. Eventually I had to get Jackie a cell phone with unlimited minutes so I could use my home phone.

"Ann's" album hit the charts and was soon at the top. Where ever you went you heard that fantastic voice belting out my stuff.

It took almost three months before I found myself standing at the airport waiting for her plane to pull up to the gate. "Ann" was in her housewife disguise, brown wig w/ a little gray. There must have been padding in her outfit because she looked about 50 pounds heavier.

This time she stayed for four months. We had a lovely family Christmas. It was two days after Christmas when I felt someone climbing into my bed in the middle of the night. That fantastic voice whispered in my ear, "Here is the rest of your Christmas present."

I felt her nude body wrap around mine.

We didn't get back to sleep for a couple of hours. But they were a great couple of hours. The next morning I felt a pair of warm wet lips wrapped around my morning erection. We ended up staying in bed the rest of the morning.

Well we would have stayed all day, but a knock on my bedroom door interfered with those plans.

"OK you two, Breakfast will be ready in about 30 minutes. So you guys need to clean up and get down to the kitchen."

"Ann" looked at me and said, "Caught!" We both broke out into gales of laughter as we headed for the bathroom. If it wasn't for "Ann's" repeated "No" in the shower, we would have missed breakfast.

It was May before "Ann" was ready to leave. We had enough music written for two more albums and a road tour. She had to go into the studio and record these gems. As I sat on my bed watching her pack (yes she had moved into my room), a great sadness came over me. I was really going to miss this woman.

Jackie walked into the room with a small prettily wrapped package. She was openly crying.

"I know you must go, but I'll miss you," my Jackie barely choked out. "I wish Daddy had married you first. Then you'd be my mother."

When my son came upstairs to tell us the car was ready, he found us in a group hug crying our eyes out. He joined the hug. He also had a gift for "Ann."

As soon as school was out, I put Jackie on a plane pointed west and wished her a fun summer. I knew I'd see her Labor Day weekend when she returned to her brother and me.

Jr. and I spent the summer doing guy things. We fished, hiked, camped out, and all that fun stuff. We had bought a couple of horses retired from the race track. He and I spent the rest of our free time learning to ride and rubbing liniment on our sore butts.

It was a fun summer. That fall I quit my day job. The royalty checks started well exceeding my take home pay.

I talked to my daughter every couple of days. She was having a ball. I even spotted her in the background at a couple of televised appearances "Ann" made.

God I missed them.

They were even photographed by the paparazzi. Their pictures were in all the tabloids. Well actually "Ann's" picture was the focus and Jackie was in the back ground as usual.

Every time I saw them or heard their voices I tear'd up.

Labor Day arrived too soon for Jackie. She was soon home and spending all her free time either on the phone with "Ann" or with her girlfriends.

By this time I was really missing "Ann".

That was the winter "Ann" won her Grammys singing my music. The kids and I sat on the couch in front of the TV. We were jumping up and down and yelling our head off.

"Ann" was thanking all her music buddies by name. At the end she said, "And a special Thank you for my three friends from the East coast. I don't need to name them. They know who they are."

________________________________________

My trip back in time was interrupted by Mary. She started talking to me. When I last had heard that voice it saw soft and sweet, now it was very deep and horse. Her voice now had the timbre of too many cigarettes and many years of alcohol abuse. If I wasn't looking at her, I never would have recognized her if she phoned.

"Paul, I know we're probably divorced by now, after all it's been 20 years since I walked out on you and the kids. But I need..........."

*******

Mary had a flash back to that period in her life as she was starting her prepared speech. She remembered her feelings of depression. The twins were 6 years old and starting in school. Suddenly she had some free time, when the kids were in school and Paul was at work. She examined her life. She was now sitting on the couch watching soap operas every day. All her girl friends were married or in long term relationships. They had families and various jobs. They had lives! She only had her soaps.

Now Mary never continued her education past high school. She had partied too much and her grades showed that inattention. Partying was her only goal in life. She had a good body, cute face, and could flirt with the best of them.

As luck would have it Mary and Paul ran into each other in a Club one night. Mary had arrived with two of her girl friends but planned on going home with a guy. She had that itch between her legs and wanted to scratch it.

Mary saw Paul standing at the bar. He was nicely dressed. He was tall enough, cute enough, and looked as if he might be fun. Oh yeah, he had a cute butt and what looked like a nice sized bulge in the front of those jeans also. She started giving him looks across the room designed to make him come to her.

The looks worked. He came to her table and asked her to dance. After a few dances, she decided that he might be the one to solve her itch and coaxed him out into the parking lot. After about half an hour she realized that he was too inexperienced to solve her problem. He was a nice guy but she wanted a man that knew how to satisfy a woman.

They went back inside the club. She dropped Paul and quickly found a former lover. She took the lover out to the parking lot. They spent two hours on his back seat. Her itch was scratched.

Then she remembered how Paul saved her from being raped. And recalled how she fell in love with him, married him, and presented him with twins, a son and daughter. She thought she had the perfect life with her husband and family until she got bored with the whole family thing.

She was walking around one of the malls while her kids were in school and her husband was working. She heard her name being called, "Mary...Mary....wait"

Turing she saw one of her girlfriends from the old bar scene. They went to the food court and relived old memories and updated each other on their lives. Sherry was still leading the party life. A new man every time she wanted while Mary cleaned house, made beds, cooked meals, and washed clothes. And that's when she wasn't waiting on whining children.

Mary envied Sherry's life and freedom from family responsibilities.

They started meeting for coffee regularly.

One afternoon she accompanied Sherry to a friend's apartment. It was there she met Tyrone. Tyrone was a friend of Sherry's boyfriend. They started smoking grass. Soon Sherry was walking around naked in front of the three of them, dancing and playing with herself.

Mary got high and soon joined Sherry in her nakedness. Mary watched her friend Sherry deep throat her man. Sherry must have been doing a great job because her boyfriend did nothing but moan in pleasure.

As Mary watched she got wetter and wetter. Tyrone slipped his hand between her legs. She had her first orgasm of the day. Thankfully it was not her last. She and Tyrone had sex all that afternoon. He was a "big" man filling her completely. If she had been able, well actually if Tyrone had been able, she would have screwed all day.

It was the first time she cheated on Paul, but it was destined not to be the last time. She didn't feel guilty. She felt wonderful. This was the life she desired.

These "group meetings" went on for months. The two girls were soon being used by three or four guys each. They were double and triple teamed. It got so that she and Sherry would lie side by side kissing and playing with each other's breasts while the guys took turns with them.

One day she was with Tyrone and a couple of his friends, Mary was naked and being fucked by a couple of the guys. After they all came, Mary was watching one of the guys fix a needle. The guy shoved the needle in her arm. Mary felt the greatest rush she'd ever experienced.

It was about a month later that Mary started showing up at Tyron's apartment every morning after the kids left for school. It got so that all she wore to get there was a coat and shoes. As soon as she walked into the apartment the coat came off and she was naked. She never made it to the bedroom before someone was using her body. She felt the needle as she was being pounded. Her body reacted to the dope and she orgasmed until she passed out. The doses got stronger each day, Mary got wilder. Shortly Mary became addicted. But she didn't care, she loved the feelings.

One day the guys dressed her and took her home. She remembered them packing up some of her stuff, putting everything in back of a van and driving away. They gave her another shot.

She was never to return home.

Soon Mary's life consisted of nothing but sex with various men or women, and her shots. She descended into the life of a crack whore except it wasn't crack, it was heroin. She didn't exist except for her next shot or the crystals and the highs they gave her.

She would do anything the men asked to get her "medicine".

She remembered acts of depravity with men, women, and even animals. She remembered dancing on stages in the nude, exposing herself and performing various sex acts; some with men, and some with women.

This life style continued for years. She deteriated into a junkie. She was usually too stoned to even dance anymore. One day Tyrone told her she had to leave with a couple of men. He was no longer her man. He had sold her to another. She was soon to learn that she had been sold to a Mexican whore house.

They kept her drugged and tortured her if her customers complained. She lost all track of time while in their control. All she knew was the pain and the blessed relief her shots would bring.

She doesn't remember very much of those years. It was just eating a small meal, taking a baths in a tub of cold dirty water, being chained to a small cot, and waiting for the men to use her.

There was no love making or even enjoyable sex with the various partners. Most of the men just dropped their pants and began pounding into her. They did not try to make her ready to have sex or did they seem to even care. They just took her not caring if she was dry or not. The pain was terrible at first, but with time her body just accepted the abuse.

At some point she became pregnant. The men chained her to a cot with nothing but the wire screen under her. The doctor arrived and aborted her baby. He did not give her anything for the pain. She screamed until she passed out.

It was a week before she could "work" again. When her first customer started on her, she realized that she felt nothing between her legs anymore. All the pain she used to feel was gone. The doctor had seen to that.

If the men were all happy, she got her shot that night. If not, well she screamed all night, receiving her medicine just before her next shift on the cot started.

The only change was that the amount of dope in the needle was reduced to a level that stopped her cramps, and allowed her to service her customers. If her customers were happy, she got the full amount in her next shot, bringing the blessed relief she sought before she fell asleep.

How long she was kept there? She had no idea.

She recalled being placed in the back of a van along with the bodies of a couple of girls that either died of abuse by their customers, or were killed by their owners. She wanted her shot. She couldn't sleep in the van without one. The corpuses smelled of abuse, urine and the loss of bowel control.

The van drove for hours. She knew they were headed into the desert toward the spot that the dead whores from the area were to be buried. She hoped they would kill her first before burying her. She had a fear of buried alive since she was a child. She tried to devise a plan to kill herself first, but her brain was so cloudy that no ideas presented themselves.

She wanted her shot before they killed her.

Suddenly the van stopped. She heard gunfire and the sounds of people dying. She knew she would be next.

The gunfire had stopped. She was lying down between the dead whores. She felt the back door of the van being opened. She heard a man gag and the door was quickly closed. Then there was the sound of a truck driving away.

She waited for someone to deliver the fatal bullet into her body and stop the pain of withdrawal. But it never came. She was alone in the back of a van with the dead whores and they were starting to smell really bad. She kicked open the doors and rolled out onto the desert floor.

She didn't remember how she managed but the next time she opened her eyes, she had moved into the cab of the van. The driver and his helper were outside, dead. The desert animals had started recycling them.

She remembered finding their drug stake, some food and water. She was aware that there wasn't enough dope to keep her as high as she'd like, so she cut back on the amount of the "medicine" that she took. That way the drugs would last longer. It would be a while before she would experience the pain of withdrawal again. But she knew that once the drugs ran out the pain would start again.

She had enough water and food to last a week. Just before she ran out a poor Mexican farmer found her. The Mexican wrapped her in a blanket and drove her to his village.

There he gave her to the village priest. The priest, couple of nuns, and a Doctor returned her to health. The doctor sat with her as the pain of withdrawal racked her body while the priest and the nuns prayed for her soul.

It took almost six months before she was again a member of the human race. A member with a terrible scar on her face and only one eye, Mary had no idea when these injuries had occurred.

She cried the first time they let her look in a mirror. At one time she was beautiful, now she was battered and beaten. That night she tried to take her life. A nun caught her and bandaged her wrists. The nuns took turns staying with her until she gave up trying suicide as an answer to her mental pain.

The nuns took the mirror out of her room. It was almost a year later before they allowed it back into her room. This time Mary accepted her ugliness. She just asked for a clean eye patch.

She finally studied the calendar; 16 years had elapsed since she met her friend Sherry in the mall. She wanted to go home and return to what she remembered of her life before the drugs and prostitution.

It took a lot longer to get back home than she thought it would. First there was there fact she had no money. The small church took up a collection and gave her a bus ticket. It only went as far as Mexico City. There she worked at minor jobs until she earned enough to buy a bus ticket to a US/Mexico border town.

At the border she was denied entrance to the United States. She had no passport or ID. It took her two more years to finally gain access to the States. She didn't gain a passport, but they gave her a green card. Her nationality was listed as Brazilian. She was very dark because of her years of exposure to the sun. So she guessed that was alright, anything to get her into the US so she could continue her long trip home.

She spent the next year working odd jobs for the money she needed to live and hitching rides back toward the north east, back to Rochester and back to her family. She slept in alleys and under bridges. She wasn't proud. She was so scary looking with her eye patch and scar that the men left her alone. They thought she was crazy.

She remembered her old address in Rochester, but when she arrived at her old house, the woman living there said her family had moved out a decade or so ago. She didn't have an address, but remembered it was to a small farm in the outskirts of Mendon, NY. The woman never invited Mary into the house.

Mary rented a cheap room with the last of her money in the small village and headquartered her search from there finally getting work with a night cleaning crew of business offices. It was late in October when she finally found an address for her Paul and her kids. She started hitch hiking to their home because she didn't have enough money left to hire a taxi. She was happy she soon was going to re-join her family.

It was late when her last ride dropped her off at the entrance to a long driveway. The weather had turned cold and rainy. It felt as if it was trying to snow. She had spent so many years in the heat of the desert that the cold started affecting her very quickly. She had no coat; she just wrapped her arms across her chest in an effort to stop the shivering.

As she walked up the long driveway she spotted a few lights coming from the rear of the house. It was a big house. It took her some time to walk to its rear. By then the clouds had opened up and she was soaked with a very cold rain. The rain had that solid feel to it. It was trying to snow.

She rang the bell and waited.

The door opened and she saw her Paul for the first time in 20 years. She felt light headed. She was home.

Paul looked at his ex-wife standing there on his rear porch and again felt the pain of all those years. The long and lonely nights holding crying children that kept asking where their Mommy was. The lonely bed, night after night, sitting alone in the den after the kids finally slept. The tears that he shed there in the darkness.

Without saying a word, I closed the door in her face.

As I turned to walk away, I heard a soft thump against the door. I knew that it was the sound of Mary collapsing against it.

"Shit 'Ann' will never forgive me if I don't help her", I thought. I could just imagine the dressing down I'd get.

I opened the door again. There was Mary crumpled on the ground trying to stand. She was making no headway with her task. I reached down and took her by both arms and pulled her up to me.

When she was on her feet, she put those skinny arms around my waist.

She was mumbling something that sounded like, "I'm sorry." But it was just too soft to determine exactly what it was. I put one arm around her and the other under her legs, picking her up.

My first thought was, "She's so light. She weighs almost nothing. And she's so cold" My next thought was getting her some help. I grabbed my cell and dialed 911 with one hand.

The state police arrived first closely followed by an ambulance.

The EMT's took over immediately. They wrapped her in a blanket with some heat packs to stop the shivering her body was using as a means to keep warm. They were talking on a radio to the Emergency Room at a local medical facility. With a doctor's permission they started her on an IV.

While they were working on her, a Trooper very politely took me aside and started filling out a "report".

"Do you know her?

"My ex-wife."

"How long have you been divorced?"

"Around 20 years. This is the first time I have seen her since she disappeared 20 years ago. I don't know what happened to her."