SIX
Lenny
I tell time in my memories not so much by the years or the grade I was in at school, but by whose house I was staying at any given time.
Which man's house I was staying in at any given time.
My mother changed men like most people changed sheets.
My first memory was of a man named Brian's house. Brian was an electrical engineer, handsome, funny, and, well, too good to put up with my mother's shit. Even at five I could see that. Even at five, I felt embarrassed for her when Brian would say he was going out for the night - without her - and she had dropped to her knees sobbing, holding onto his leg like a small child throwing a fit.
We came back from the convenience store the next day to find the locks changed and our bags on the front porch.
Brian was getting free before she wrapped him up tight enough to suffocate him.
By the time I was eight, she was on her second marriage and, well, umpteenth man.
And then nine months later, after spending too much time staring at my mother's belly, wondering who the hell was going to take care of a baby when my mother could hardly take care of herself, let alone me.
But there was no stopping it.
There was Letha.
Letha, unlike myself, was lucky enough to be born to a father who gave a shit about her, who provided for her, who put up with my mom's shit for years for Letha's sake.
And Letha, yeah, she bloomed in the light of her father's clear affection.
He didn't care for me.
I was a sullen girl, surly, prone to bursts of obstinate silence, and, well, an extension of my mother who he grew to hate more with each passing day.
My mother, what could be said about the woman who, before all the marriages made it unrecognizable and confusing, was called Leigh Thomas.
I guess it would be fair to point out the things that had always mattered most to her - her looks.
When she was younger, before the plastic surgery stole away the things that had always been a part of her, she had been almost unfairly pretty with her shining blonde hair, blue eyes, delicate feminine face, and perfectly thin frame that was most prized in that time, back before curves became all the rage again.
On top of that, there was her damsel in distress personality that was catnip to all the men she came in contact with.
Oh, thank you so much! If you didn't happen by, my little girl and I would have been stranded here all day! You are an absolute lifesaver! I wouldn't have known a tire iron from a baseball bat.
Meanwhile, she had been varsity in softball in high school, and not only had a tire iron in the trunk, but totally knew how to use it.
Men like feeling needed and masculine, Lenore.
Even as a child, that didn't seem like something I wanted to do - pretend not to know something so someone else could 'teach' me something I already knew.
Even still in grade school, I had been on the receiving end of boys thinking they knew better than me, that because I was just a girl, I didn't know how to play soccer and basketball and how to ride a skateboard.
I couldn't imagine wanting to purposely let them think that. I had always been more inclined to show them up, to wipe those snide looks off their faces when I scored a goal or rode the curb.
You're never going to get a boy to like you if you keep scraping up your knees.
I was nine when she told me that. Boys should have been the furthest thing from my mind.
And while I didn't know the term 'deflecting' at that age, I somehow understood that she was telling me that because it was clear that Letha's daddy was mad at her almost all the time, no matter how pretty she made herself, or how much she hung on his every word.
He barely even looked her way anymore actually.
His whole world was the little girl with the big eyes who had just learned to say 'Daddy' which never ceased to melt him.
It was then that I first began to suspect my mother resented my sister. She was shorter with her, snapping at her for crying, for not being smart enough to know how to use her fork or walk like I had been doing at her age.
When her husband came home and made a bee-line for the spot on the floor where Letha was sitting up on her pink and white baby blanket with a bunch of squishy plastic animal bath toys in neon colors, half of them with teeth marks from her incoming front teeth, all of them dripping in spit, my gaze would often go to my mother.
Without fail, you could see her looking at her baby daughter with a look even my young eyes couldn't mistake. Jealousy.
And the more Jake celebrated each and every one of Letha's many milestones over the next four years, the more my mother turned cold to her.
And at twelve, well, I finally had my mother's card. And I had a mouth confident enough to call her on her nastiness, and start to protect Letha from it. I had probably never played with a Barbie or tea set in my life, but there I was during my first year of middle school, spending every afternoon listening to why this Barbie was mad at that Barbie while pretending to sip tea out of an ornate, mini, hand-painted, real China tea set Jake had bought her for her birthday. All in an attempt to keep her out of my mother's sight.
But I had school.
And Letha didn't.
And I couldn't count the amount of afternoons I would come home to find Letha in bed clutching a stuffed pig, telling me that Mommy was mad at her again.
It wasn't, though, until later that year that I walked into the house one night after taking a rare bit of time to myself to go shoot hoops with the neighborhood kids, to find Jake screaming at my mother in the kitchen. I'd heard men argue with my mother before. In fact, it had happened so much in my life that it was all background noise to me. But this wasn't just an argument. And I had never heard a man yell so loudly that it sounded like he was losing his voice.
My mother, as was her go-to during any argument, was sobbing.
I could only catch bits and pieces, but it seemed like my mother had finally crossed the line and struck Letha. There was, apparently, a mark and everything.
I didn't stay to listen to more, I moved through the house to find Letha on her bed, her piggy in her lap, her hands pressed to her ears.
And there was a mark.
Right there across her cheek.
I sat with her, stroking her hair, telling her that Daddy was just mad at Mommy for hitting her because hitting wasn't nice.
Until I heard the words that would change everything.
"I want you out!" Jake screamed. "Pack your shit and get the fuck out of our lives."
Ours.
It didn't take a genius to know he meant his and Letha's.
Of course he didn't want me, not even if I had been every bit a second mother to Letha her entire life.
He didn't want me.
They never did.
None of them.
And at twelve years old, I had long-since gotten over the shock of being tossed aside like an old shoe that didn't fit anymore.
That didn't mean, however, that it didn't sting. It always stung. It never mattered how many nights I sat across a table from one of the men, how many movies we had all watched like a family, how many times they bought me birthday presents, in the end, to them, it all meant nothing.
Jake had never actually warmed up to me, always seeing me as an extension of my mother who he hated so fully, even if we were nothing alike. But his roof was the one I had lived under for the longest. Almost five years. In the same room. In the same school district. Around all the same kids I couldn't exactly call friends, but did hang out with on occasion. He had given me a stability I had never known in my life, and he was ripping that away from me without a thought.
Then, to make that even worse, he was going to take Letha away from me. I wouldn't lie and say that there weren't times when her dependence on me hadn't been a burden. I was twelve. I wanted to be a kid. I wanted to hang out with people my own age. But those thoughts paled in comparison to the ones that loved my sister, that wanted to be able to read her bedtime stories like I always did, and push her on a swing, and have her wake me up too early on Saturdays by jumping on my bed and calling me Lazy Bones.
What was left of my bruised heart got stomped to slush that night as my mother dragged me out of that house, as Letha cried for me not to leave her, that she wouldn't be such a pest, that she would be a good girl if I stayed.
"Quit your bitching," my mother demanded, using a rare curse word that she wasn't known for because 'men don't like women who talk like truck drivers.'
"He is taking Letha away from me!" I shrieked in the shabby, dated motel room she had set us up in for the night. It smelled like clothes left in the washer too long and stale cigarettes.
"He doesn't get to win," she told me, voice fierce, yet calm, like it always was when she was plotting something. Like the time she planned to expose the infidelity of the current leader of the PTA so she could take over the bake sale. Mind you, my mother hated baking, and was totally known for buying store-bought ones then plating them so the men in her life thought she could bake. It wasn't about the baking or the money raised, it was her needing to look like the best housewife in town. She didn't have the adoration of her husband, so she needed to get it somewhere. So when she wasn't flirting with random delivery guys and store clerks and mechanics, she was trying to make all the women in town look up to her.
"What are you talking about?" I snapped, turning my back on her so I could swipe at the tears that were starting to escape my eyes. I had always hated how she used tears to manipulate people, so I had always felt the need to hide mine when they threatened, not wanting to be anything like the woman who gave me life.
"He doesn't get to win. I gave that man the best years of my life. He doesn't get to win."
I didn't understand what she meant until eight months later as I sat in the back of a courtroom during their heated divorce proceedings.
Jake had a great job, a house he owned, references, family ties.
He was the best choice.
But my mother had a sob story about his abuse, a male lawyer, a male judge, and the sympathy of the room.
So she got full custody, half of everything Jake owned, and a child support check I knew hardly a dime of which would go to the care of Letha.
I would never forget the look of devastation on Jake's face that day, or the fierceness in his face as he walked toward the door, stopping when he got to me.
"You take care of her," he told me, voice shaking. "For me."
And me, well, I was thirteen, ripped away from the only person I cared about, stuck with a mother who ranted and raged all day and night, never giving me a moment's rest from her plots to destroy a man who didn't - for all intents and purposes - deserve it.
I was angry. And bitter. And I had recently taken up cursing just to piss my mother off.
"You never gave a shit about me, Jake. I don't owe you a fucking thing." His face fell at that, and I let that linger for a moment. "But I will take care of Letha. Like I have always done. For her. Because I don't want her to end up like my mother. Or like me," I added, standing, and moving out the door myself.
My mother didn't even hug Letha when she was surrendered to her custody. So I gave her the longest hug known to man, telling her how much I missed her, promised her endless Barbie play and tea parties. I told her we were about to go on a grand adventure, because I knew our mother was plotting to take us out of town, take her newfound money, and go in search of another target.
She cried every night, my sister, so unused to the lifestyle I had been raised in that meant a different motel or hotel room every few nights while the summer vacation would allow for her indecisiveness. She knew that by the end of August, she would need to pick a town, and plan on being there for the nine months out of the year that school was in session. If we were lucky. Usually, she had a rough break-up halfway through the school year, and uprooted to a new town for the remainder of the year, never quite allowing you to feel like you could make friends or get used to the teachers and the classroom layouts.
But I was thirteen. I spent my first eight-ish years of life never putting down any kinds of roots, knowing they would be ripped out. I was world-weary. I didn't need any kind of comforting. That was just life. It sucked. Our mother was a selfish woman. I long since gave up hope of her changing.
Letha, though, actively and constantly sought her approval. In the summer, it was in the form of making her bed in the morning, keeping her toys neatly put away when she was not using them, and making big pieces of adorably awful kid artwork that always said 'I love my mommy' on it, and she would rush up when Mom would come home to show her, to try to get a little bit of praise.
Once we settled down in Miami that year and school started, she tried to get her approval through perfect grades, through her dedication to Girls Scouts and the dance classes I had had ten rounds with my mother about allowing her to take. Since, y'know, the child support checks were meant for things such as that, not to feed her Jimmy Choo habit.
Mom didn't care about her grades. And she never showed up for recitals.
It made my chest deflate when I would see Letha's eyes watering up when she looked out hopefully into the crowd.
In fact, it bothered me enough to dig through my mother's paperwork and find his cell number.
The next time she had a recital, despite it being against the law given their arrangement, Jake was sitting next to me in the audience.
He had even brought her pretty pink tulips and a little jewelry box with music and a dancing ballerina inside.
She still had one of those flowers pressed in between the pages of her diary and the jewelry box was long-broken, but sitting under the floorboard in my apartment, along with her diary.
I had watched the whole interaction with the cynicism of a skeptic, not understanding what would possess him to fly across the country to come see her dance, to bring her little presents. His actions simply didn't make sense to me. Hell, my mother forgot my last birthday. She had been out with one of her guys. And my father, well, who the hell even knew who he was? I certainly didn't. I wasn't even sure that my mother did.
It just didn't add up.
All I could conclude was that Letha was simply the sun, and everyone and everything wanted to be close to her warmth.
I got that.
I felt it myself.
Our mother married her next husband when I was fifteen and Letha was nine. It was the man who had done her breast augmentation, taking her barely-As to definite Ds that on her very slim body with her very blonde hair that she recently got from a bottle because, she claimed, Letha and I were turning her gray far too early, gave her the appearance of a cheap porn star. That wasn't helped when Dr. Ralph convinced her that her lips were losing their plump and she could use some fillers so that, as the creepy fuck put it, she could have lips like mine.
It was the first time my mother's eyes really sliced into me.
It was like she was noticing right then that I was no longer a little girl. And while I was then - and would always be - a bit straight up and down, with very little in the curve department, there was simply something about me that was more mature, more womanly that year.
I wasn't sure if it was simply that my becoming a woman made her aware of her age, or if maybe she was jealous of my youth, but Letha finally got to fall into obscurity in her mind, and all her bitterness and anger was suddenly directed at me.
But that was okay.
I, unlike Letha, could take it.
It didn't hurt my feelings.
It didn't make me doubt myself.
It just reinforced my already low opinion of my mother.
When the good doc cheated on her with a woman who had just turned nineteen, she had ripped us out of school with one night's warning, packing us into a car loaded down with her designer clothes and, well, little else since unlike Jake, this husband had insisted on an iron-clad prenup.
She floundered from man to man for almost two years, which meant we lived in six different cities in that time.
By then, Jake had wizened up, sending Letha a cell he kept on his account so he could contact her, so she could tell him what city she was in so he could send her money discreetly in the mail. It was nowhere near the amount our mother continued to get - and spend on herself - in child support, but it ensured that she got new ballet shoes when she needed them, and some new clothes when she started getting picked on at school in my tomboy hand-me-downs.
Then our mom got her ass done and fat sucked out of everywhere, and steered us in the direction of New York City because the men weren't so 'superficial' up there.
I flourished in the city.
Everyone was a fucking asshole, and totally comfortable with that.
They were crass, guarded, detached, cynical, and messy.
They were my people.
I got a full-time job, just a couple hours after school in the afternoons, then long shifts on the weekends. At seventeen, I could get away with it, but was paid under the table anyway, so no one was the wiser.
It allowed me to give Letha some pocket money on top of what Jake still sent her, but also sock some away for a day I knew would come sooner or later.
When I would have to move out.
My fights with my mother were getting worse, almost coming to blows at times because I, apparently, scared away all her suitors.
And, well, her attitude toward Letha was getting more savage again because, and there was no mistaking it, even at her young age, Letha was already about a thousand times better looking than our mother. In another five years, she was going to put every other woman in a room to shame.
And our mother, the vain, selfish, shallow woman she was, resented that.
In a strange twist, she somehow snagged herself husband number three that year, some stockbroker with beady eyes and a too-big nose, but enough zeros in his bank account to tempt her.
We all moved into a penthouse apartment.
And everything was good for a while.
When our mother was happy, the whole house could rest easily.
Until, of course, we couldn't.
This time, though, it wasn't exactly her fault per se.
Unless marrying him counted as a strike against her.
I was just resentful enough to say it did.
I had come home from a twelve-hour shift waiting tables - on my birthday weekend, the big eighteen saying I had freedom I had yet to feel -and I had passed out still in my work tee on top of my comforter.
I woke up to a cold hand under my shirt, cupping my breast.
I'd never heard my voice make the sound it made then - pure rage, calling my mother's name, making her come stumbling in, a little wine-drunk because she realized that money didn't make up for her sudden lack of youth.
"Kurt, what are you doing in here?" she asked, brows furrowed.
My mother could be given very little credit, but there had always been a rule that the men never came in our bedrooms. Until this night, when I was suddenly not a risk for a child abuse charge, when a man finally broke that rule.
"Feeling me up in my fucking sleep, that's what he's doing," I told her, crossing my hands over my chest that, just from a touch, somehow felt dirty and violated.
It wasn't like I was some blushing virgin. My cherry got popped in the back of some much older guy's pick-up truck the year before. And I hadn't been a saint after that either. But it had always been my choice whose hands got to touch me or not.
So even though the act wouldn't leave any permanent scars, it added another layer of distrust toward the male sex, one I would carry with me for, well, ever.
My mother had looked stricken, though underneath it, I could see the resentment, the part of her brain that was maybe thinking - now that I was of-age - that I was 'stealing her man' instead of being groped without my consent.
"This can't be happening. No. I can't handle this right now," she declared, tearing up, rushing out of the room, her shithead of a husband following behind her, doting on her, just like she wanted, just like she always wanted, even though he was doing it with hands that had just touched her own damn daughter inappropriately.
The rage that night was something new, something that spurred action.
I grabbed a duffle bag, shoving all my clothes and loved possessions inside. I fished my cash out from beneath my bed, shoved it into my purse, then went to wake up Letha as I packed bags for her as well. Four of them. Because, thanks to Jake, she actually had things she wanted to hold onto, things that reminded her of love.
"What's going on?" she asked, her eyes sleepy, but her tone alert, seeming to pick up on my franticness. And I was never frantic.
"We can't stay here anymore," I told her. "It's not safe," I added, grabbing her hand, pulling her out of bed, and demanding she get some clothes and shoes on.
When we walked out into the kitchen ten minutes later, our mother was holding a fresh glass of wine; her tears were dried; everything looked back to normal.
And, well, I'd be damned if I would ever act like that again.
"What do you think you're doing?"
"We are leaving," I enunciated firmly.
"Like hell you are. That is my-"
"Child support check," I cut her off, voice vicious. "We are all well fucking aware of that, Mom. But I'm not staying in a house where a man feels me up when I'm sleeping. And I am not leaving my little sister in a house with a mother who wouldn't even defend her against that kind of shit. No fucking way."
"You can't take her. She's under my custody."
"Yeah well that is about to change. It's high time the court gets to hear our side of the story now, don't you think?" I asked, smile wicked, devoid of any teasing. I was dead fucking serious. "I think they would like to know about that time you left us for three days in a row when I was fourteen, leaving me to take care of my seven-year-old sister. Or, how about the night you left us in the car when you went to fuck your boyfriend for an hour. In winter. Or about how Letha's child support paid for your boob job."
"You wouldn't..."
"What about me makes it sound like I wouldn't? You're always accusing me of being a spiteful, vindictive little bitch, right? Well, now I get to prove it. Sign over custody to Jake, or I swear to Christ I will tell child services all of this. And then I will march my ass down the street and file a sexual assault case against your husband. Bye bye goes your cash cow, Ma. And you'd get your ass kicked in prison, man. I'd almost feel sorry for you if you didn't totally deserve it."
"Lenore..." My mother started, eyes welling up dramatically as Letha squeezed my hand hard. It didn't matter that I told her a million times that our mother's tears were about as real as her tits, she was too soft-hearted not to be affected by it. "Save the tears, Ma. I'm not one of your gullible men. I'm somehow less than moved."
Her eyes dried up almost instantly.
"You don't give a shit about her. You never did. Let her go, and you can keep living the life you always have, but without kids hanging around, reminding your men just how old you really are."
The words landed with impact, making her head snap back with the reality she knew she was facing.
She didn't even say goodbye.
She waved a hand.
And just like that, she was done with us.
That night, I got us a room at a cheap hotel, and we ate junk food we got at a bodega around the corner.
"He won't move here," Letha told me with a Dorito half-raised to her lips.
"Hmm?" I asked mostly lost in my own swirling thoughts that had a lot to do with money and my finite amount of it, and how fast we were going to go through it having to get hotel rooms. On the plus side, I was graduating in just a couple weeks. Once I did, I could get another job that would make everything a lot easier until everything was settled.
"Dad. He's gonna move me back in with him. Then I won't have you anymore." There was a pause. When she spoke again, her voice was uncharacteristically sullen. "I'm always losing someone."
"Babygirl..." I tried, reaching out to touch her hand.
"It's true," she went on. "I got Daddy, but then I lost you. Then I got you, and I lost Daddy. And here we are again. I'm losing you."
I didn't want to go back.
My heart was set on putting down roots finally in New York, despite it being so expensive. It just felt right.
But if it meant it would get that hollowness out of her voice, I would move to the goddamn backwoods where some toothless wonder named Bubba had some goats that looked super traumatized whenever he was around.
I would do that for her.
I would do anything for her.
It was too late for me.
I was too scarred, too damaged, too beat down by the world. There were no hopes of me coming out of this well-adjusted.
But Letha still had a chance.
I owed it to her to make sure she had the best odds of being different, softer, sweeter, open, giving, and optimistic.
That was my goal in life.
"You will never lose me. Do you hear me? I will be by your side until you are so sick of me that you beg me to leave you the fuck alone. Got it?"
She gave me a wobbly smile, trying to hide the relieved tears in her eyes. "Got it."
Two months later, after I had graduated and socked just a tiny bit more money away, and it was clear Letha was sick of the crappy hotels, the papers were finally signed, and we were on a train toward some place called Navesink Bank where Jake had bought a nice big house with his new wife.
They had never been able to have children, and it was clear that Letha filled a void left by that reality. For the first time since she was a little girl, she was spoiled rotten again, with gifts, sure, but more so - with love.
As for me, well, I got an apartment in the shitty end of Navesink Bank, so shitty that Jake insisted when I wanted to see Letha - which was almost daily - that I come to their house or we would go out for hot chocolate.
I didn't blame him, either. As cold and hardened as I was, even I didn't feel comfortable in my area of town.
I bounced job to job and motel to apartment for years while Letha got older and, as predicted, so gorgeous that it was a sin.
Our relationship went from that of a big sister and her little, to a lot more like friends. I was who she talked about losing her virginity with, who she cried to when she had her heart stomped on the first time, who she consulted when looking at colleges.
And my mission worked.
She was everything I had hoped she would grow up to be.
It wasn't until I saw her in that hospital bed, hooked up to wires that had me searching for answers I found in her diary that I started to see that maybe I had done her the greatest disservice ever.
And it could cost her her life.
On that thought, I reached for my cell with the precious few minutes left on it. And I called the gym.
"Hey, Lo, can I maybe trouble you for Edison's number? I need to discuss our final class with him."
"You need to discuss your final class with him, huh?" she asked, a tone in her voice I didn't understand and, well, didn't exactly even try to as I thanked her and shot off a text.
I think a trip down memory lane that reminded you that you had created an environment that ended up allowing your sister to be in a coma in a hospital bed was the world's best Bad Decisions Excuse Card.
Fuck the consequences.