I nod, my brows knitting together in sympathy. “Yeah…”
“In the end, the story is unfortunately pretty typical. She lived in shelters when she could, on the streets when she couldn’t. She did what she had to, and unfortunately that mostly meant prostitution.” He breaks off as the waiter brings us our food. I can’t help but feel that it would be inappropriate to eat right now.
“I don’t remember a lot of that,” he continues. “Honestly. I do remember living in a house with a big backyard. There was a guy my mom was with, and he let us stay with him for a while. I remember being happier than I’d ever been while I was there. But then that guy was out of the picture and we had to leave. It became the same old thing of a different guy every night. Not long after, the cops were called and I was in the system.”
“Foster care?” I ask.
“Yeah, I bounced around a bunch of different homes until I was sixteen. I probably wasn’t a great kid. I had a lot of anger issues and I could never seem to settle in one place for long. My last foster home was bad. I butted heads with the guy, and we were at each other’s throats. I think at some point he was probably a good foster parent, but it got lost along the way. Really, if he had a bunch of kids like me living with him I wouldn’t be surprised. He’d go off all the time…all he wanted was his check and for the kids to be quiet, and that wasn’t me.”
He stops and takes a bite of his pasta, but I still can’t eat.
“We fought all the time and it got bad. We both hit each other multiple times. He threatened to get me thrown in juvie if I did it again, so I left. It wasn’t the smartest move, but by that time I knew that the social workers almost always believe the foster parents over the kid.”
I take a sip of my wine, and nod my head. “Where did you go?”
“I didn’t have anywhere to go.”
My heart plummets. “You were homeless.”
“For a while, yeah.” He looks at me and frowns. “Vera, eat. It’s all right. Ancient history.”
“How did you get here, then?”
He smiles. “Construction. After fending for myself for awhile I overheard someone talking about a construction job that was hiring people off the street since they needed workers so badly. At that point I was scrawny as anything, but I showed up. I lied about my age, I lied about where I lived, and they gave me the job. One of the foremen, Antony, he knew I was full of shit but he gave me the job anyway. He told me I had one day to prove myself and if I didn’t, I was out.”
“Let me guess. He let you stay.”
James nods and we share a smile. I finally take a bite of my pasta, holding back groan because it’s so delicious, and I appreciate it even more as I listen to James’ voice while he continues with his story.
“Antony kept letting me work whenever I showed up, and I tried to do the best work I could so that I would always be welcome back. He finally got me to admit that I was homeless, and he let me move in with him, sleep on his couch. He trained me in construction, and I finally started to get my own jobs when I showed people the solutions I’d found for using less expensive material.”
“He sounds like an amazing person,” I said.
“He was. And when Antony died, he left me his house.”
“Wow,” I say. We take a moment to eat, and James feeds me a bite of his fettucine, which is without a doubt the best I’ve ever had.
“I owe everything to him,” he goes on, “and I knew that if I screwed up he would come back and kick my ass. So I changed my name—I never knew my mom’s and I always used the name of my foster family. London, California was the place where that house with the big yard was, and it was the last place I felt truly happy. That became my last name. Then I started my own one-man company with the jobs I already had, and slowly started to get more. I would work every possible odd job on the side until I could support myself. I swore that I would never be homeless again.” He takes another bite of his dinner. I watch as each chew softens the expression on his face. “But to answer your original question, I don’t know if I have siblings. Maybe. I’ll probably never know for sure.”
I can’t think of anything to say. What is the response to that? My own life has been so different that the contrast is shocking, and I’m immediately embarrassed by the ridiculous wealth that he sees every day at our house. “I’m sorry you had to go through that,” I say, hoping that it’s the right thing, or at least not the wrong thing. “And so young. You’re so strong. I wish…it had been different.”