For most of the time that Chez, Joad and I were living together, we didn't worry much about Road. But that didn't mean he was completely out of mind. Chez told me that one day, she was looking around the apartment and thought to herself, "I'd better clean this up before Road gets home." She found this thought very disturbing.
About a month after I'd brought them over, we found out that Road had been arrested for stealing some tools and was serving three months in jail. That really took the pressure off. After he got out of jail, we'd heard that he told someone that he thought Chez and Joad were in Clovis. Chez hoped that he wasn't going to go up there and harass her mother and other family members.
There was also another matter weighing heavily on Chez' mind. Her half-brother, who had raped her when she was 14, was going to be getting out of prison within the next year, following the completion of the seven-year sentence he received in a plea deal. She was afraid of what he was going to do once he got out. From my perspective, it seemed like the best thing for her was to just stay in San Diego with me so that her chances of accidentally running into these two dangerous elements would be a lot less likely.
Late in May, we heard that Road found out they had come to San Diego. Apparently, Chez' sister Kiz told someone he knew where they were and it didn't take long for the news to reach him. He was threatening to come out, kill me, kill Chez and take his son back. While the prospect of him actually committing murder was unlikely, Chez was worried that he was really going to come out and cause her a bunch of problems. I kept trying to tell her that there was no way he was coming out here, and even if he did, he wouldn't be able to find us. But she didn't want to hear it and I couldn't convince her otherwise. In her mind, the best thing to do was to go back to New Mexico.
Even though life with her was horrid, I didn't want her going back because I was afraid of what might happen to her if Road or her half-brother were able to track her down. I still loved her so much that I just wanted her and Joad to be safe.
On June 1st, 1993, Chez received her welfare check. We went out and cashed it. After we got back home, I asked if she wanted to go to Toys R Us. She said no. I knew then that she wasn't going to stick around. She wanted to hop on the Greyhound and go back to Clovis that very night. I told her she didn't need to leave, but I wasn't going to force her to stay here. And I wasn't going to help her pack. I stayed true to that promise, but she just went ahead and packed everything herself. I did agree to watch Joad while she was doing this.
Joad could tell there was something going on and kept whining while Chez was packing. But after she'd emptied out a couple of dresser drawers, he started playing inside them. I took a couple of photos of him. While Chez was concentrating on getting her clothes out of the dresser, I took a picture of her back. Then she turned around and scowled at me. I snapped a shot of that as well. The expression on her face can best be described as the photo Ted shows Barney in the "Robin 101" episode of "How I Met Your Mother." ("...and whatever you do, don't take a picture of it!")
While this was going on, I asked Chez, since she had cashed her welfare check, if she wouldn't mind giving me some of that money to pay the phone bill. She said she wouldn't, because she was going to need every cent to go back to New Mexico. (At least she was planning to buy the bus tickets herself. I would have flat-out refused to take her to the station if she was expecting me to pay for that.)
She put most of her stuff in boxes. (We never got rid of the boxes from when she and Joad first moved in. THAT should have been a sign she Knew all along she wasn't planning to stay for the long run.) We put what we could in the car. I told her I would take a vacation soon and bring the rest of her stuff to New Mexico. We went to the Greyhound station downtown and arrived about 15 minutes before the next bus to New Mexico was set to depart. We told the ticket person we had about ten boxes that needed to be transported and he said there was no way we'd be able to check them in time for the next bus. We'd have to come back the next morning. We drove back to the apartment.
When Chez had been packing her stuff earlier, I discovered the breaker box for the apartment. I found that there was a breaker switch designated for the stove. I wished I had found that several months earlier. We could have turned it off during those times when Joad was pushing the buttons to make the burners come on. It also would have saved me from that incident in which I knocked him in the back with my knee. I turned off the breaker and told Joad he could play with the buttons on the stove all her wanted.
We got up and went back to the station the next morning and arrived about an hour before the bus was scheduled to depart. We took all the boxes. I had to write the address they were going to on each box. They got loaded onto the bus. The time came for her and Joad to board the bus. She held Joad and allowed me to hug her and giver her a quick kiss on the lips. I also kissed Joad goodbye. I watched the bus drive away. I went back to my car and drove home.
I laid down on the bed and the thought entered my mind that this was the first time in almost five months that I had been in the apartment all by myself.
I'll look back on this whole Pretend Marriage with some perspective tomorrow.
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