Mom sounds like she’s trying to convince herself along with Rachel. “You…you just will. You’re my child, and that means you keep going no matter what. You hear me? I need you to be strong. Colby’s a big fat disaster, eating everything in sight, and Drew’s sliding into sadness. I’ve never even opened a checking account on my own, much less decided where we should live.”
I sit on the floor outside my sister’s room. My shoulders shake with silent sobs. I’m a disaster: a big fat disaster.
Early Saturday morning, Uncle Dale and Grandma return with the truck and horse trailer. They also bring a new hard drive for the computer in our family room.
“We picked this up at the electronics store last night. Reese was concerned about you and the girls doing without, since those investigators took all your computers.” Grandma turns to Mom and asks pointedly, “Does that sound like someone who doesn’t care about his family?”
“What about my laptop?” Rachel asks.
I jump in, too. “And mine?”
Grandma’s eyes flash. “I’m not made of money! You’ll make do with this, or you’ll have nothing at all!”
Mom accepts the hard drive from Uncle Dale. “Of course, Carol. Thank you.”
Grandma’s worried about Uncle Dale driving back from Oregon by himself, so she’s decided to go along for the ride. Mom and Rachel fake acting happy about “the big day finally being here,” and Drew clings to Rachel in her usual spider monkey way. Uncle Dale makes a run to the local doughnut shop and returns with two dozen. I grab two frosted chocolate and two with pink icing and sprinkles, then rush toward my room to eat them.
Grandma intercepts me as she comes out of the bathroom. She snatches my paper plate from me. “You don’t need that many doughnuts, Colby.”
It’s none of your fucking business! is on the tip of my tongue, but I stop myself before I say it. “I’m hungry,” I lie. I mean, I think it’s a lie. I can’t really tell when I’m hungry. My face burns with embarrassment, and it feels like my double chin is multiplying.
“Pick two doughnuts,” she insists. “Just two.”
I lower my head. “Never mind. I’m not hungry.” I step around her and rush to my room. I close my door, lock it, and slide against it to the floor. After a few minutes, I crawl to my dresser and pull my snack stash out of the bottom drawer.
The horse trailer is filled to the top with Rachel’s stuff. She slams the door on Uncle Dale’s pickup truck and trudges across the yard for a final goodbye. The four of us—Mom, Rachel, Drew, and I—all have spasming faces because we’re trying not to cry as we huddle in a group hug. As bitchy as Rachel can be, I still don’t want her to go. Not right now, when everything’s upside down.
“I’ll call you every day,” Rachel tells Mom.
Mom nods and sounds like she has peanut butter in her throat when she talks. “I’ll let you know as soon as I figure out what’s next.”
This time, Grandma’s the one eavesdropping. “If I have anything to say about it, your mom’s going to unpack and stay put. She’s rushing into this instead of waiting for the misunderstanding to be sorted out. Mark my words: You’re going to be sorry that you acted in haste.”
Mom closes her eyes and shakes her head inside our group hug. Grandma’s still talking, but we ignore her.
Uncle Dale interrupts. “If we’re going to make it to southeast Colorado by dark, we need to get going.”
“Thanks for helping out with Rachel,” Mom tells him. “If it has to be this way, I’m glad that you’re the one delivering her to college.”
“Hey, that reminds me,” he says. He pulls an envelope from his shirt pocket. “When I saw Leah yesterday, she asked me to give you this.”
Mom takes it from him carefully, like it’s contaminated. “Wonder what it could be…”
Uncle Dale laughs. “Knowing Leah, there’s no telling.”
Chapter Six
By Tuesday, Mom decides that we’ll move to Norman, Oklahoma. One of her friends from her pageant days is now an elementary school principal and she promised Mom a teaching job. We drive three hours to get there and spend the day looking for a place to live.
After visiting several places with the leasing agent—a guy who looks and sounds so much like President George W. Bush that I’d swear it’s him—Mom decides on a small house that has a fenced yard with a doghouse in it. This sets Drew to begging Mom for a puppy. Mom says she’ll think about it, which sounds like “Yes” to Drew. We return to the leasing office and Mom fills out the paperwork.
While the agent runs Mom’s credit, we eat an early supper at the barbecue place next door, then return to the office to sign the lease.
“There’s a problem with your credit check,” George W. Bush’s look-alike says. He frowns at Drew and me. “Mrs. Denton, could you come with me, please?”
Mom’s gone a long time. When she finally returns, her eyes are puffy and red. She snatches up her purse and snaps, “Let’s go.”
“What’s wrong, Mama?” Drew asks. “Can I still get a puppy?”
Mom doesn’t answer. Drew starts her skipping CD act, asking the same questions again and again, but I squeeze her shoulder and shake my head at her.
We get in the car. Mom pulls away from the leasing office without even putting on her seat belt, and she never gets in a car without buckling up. She screeches her tires out of the parking lot and shoots into the intersection, causing us to nearly get creamed by oncoming traffic.
I’m freaking out. “Mom! Are you okay?”
She cuts the wheel into the Walmart parking lot across the street, speeds to the rear of the building, and parks next to a dumpster.
I grab her arm. “Mom! What happened? What’s wrong?”
She laughs crazily, shakes her head rapidly, withdraws her cell phone from her purse, and dials. Mom sounds like a machine gun, rat-a-tat-tatting her words: “Reese Thomas Denton, I know you won’t call me back, but I found out that you opened credit card accounts in both of our names. I’m sure you know this, but we owe over a hundred thousand dollars! A. Hundred. Thousand. Dollars. You haven’t been making any payments and maybe you don’t care, but you’ve ruined my credit right along with yours.” She hits the steering wheel: “I [Slam!] didn’t [Slam!] even [Slam!] know about this! [Slam Slam Slam Slam!]” She screams, and Drew and I put our hands over our ears.
I guess Dad’s phone cuts her off, because she redials his number and babbles, “How am I supposed to find a place for our children to live when I can’t pass a credit check, Reese? We have nowhere to go! Nowhere! What have you done to us? We’re going to be homeless!”
Mom throws her phone to the floorboard and pounds the steering wheel some more, then presses her forehead against it and weeps.
Drew throws herself face-down in the back seat and wails, “I don’t want to be homeless!…You said I could get a puppy!”
We drive back to Northside in silence. Drew sleeps and Mom stares straight ahead. I’m spring-loaded with anxiety and watching her every second because I’m afraid she’s going to zone out and drive us into oncoming traffic.
We arrive home around nine that night to find business cards and sticky notes tacked to our front door. Reporters want just five minutes and they promise to be fair, divorce lawyers want to represent Mom, and our neighbors want us out—now.
Late the next morning, I’m snoozing when the phone starts ringing. I groan loudly, “Somebody get the phone!” Nobody does. I roll over and just get back to sleep when it rings again. “Arrrrgh!”
I throw open my door and stomp to the kitchen. I rip the note off the cabinet: “Running errands. Back soon.” I snatch the phone off the charger and growl, “Hello!”
The voice is tentative. “…Sonya?”
“She’s not here. May I take a message?”
“Um, is this Rachel?”
I know I sound pissy, but I don’t care. “No, she lives in Oregon now. Who’s this?”
“This is Leah. Who is this?”
> My stomach clenches when she says her name. “It’s Colby.” I move to the dining room table and sit on the edge of a chair.
“Oh, hey, Colby, I’m returning your mom’s phone call. She left a message for me late last night, but I didn’t get it until this morning.” Leah waits like she’s expecting me to say something else, but I don’t. “…Anyway, tell your mom that the answer is not just yes, but absolutely yes. You guys are more than welcome to it.”
“Uh, we’re welcome to what?”
“The trailer behind my house. You didn’t know? When Dale stopped by last week and told me about your dad and mom having…problems, I sent a letter with him for your mom, offering use of the trailer behind my house for as long as you need it. Your mom left a message last night saying she’d take it, if the offer still stands.”
“You mean, like, a trailer to move our stuff?”
Leah laughs. “No! To live in, silly! It’s a single-wide mobile home.”
“Where do you live?”
“That’s right; you’ve never visited me. I live in Piney Creek, in East Texas. It’s small and real country. But that’s a good thing, because I can have a trailer behind my house and nobody cares.”
“Oh…Okay. Well, thanks. I’ve…got to go.”
“Please have your mom call me when she gets back. We’ll figure out the next step.”
Ever since she and my Uncle Mark split up seven years ago, Aunt Leah’s been pretty standoffish as far as family gatherings. Before the divorce, she, Uncle Mark, and Ryan came over to our house a lot, although she and Dad always got into arguments easily. So, we were surprised when Leah and Ryan agreed to come to the Fourth of July picnic at a state park near Uncle Dale’s house in Louisiana. Even after she stopped coming around, Aunt Leah still sent us birthday cards, usually with a ten-dollar bill tucked inside. Mom and Dad cautioned us to watch out for her because she’s “unstable” and prone to blowing things out of proportion just to get attention.
“Whatever you do,” Mom told Rachel and me before the Fourth of July picnic, “don’t bring up Uncle Mark, politics, or religion, because that’ll start a fight.”
I thought that those were weird things to warn us about. Did she think I was going to say, “Hi, Aunt Leah! Tell me: What was it like to have Uncle Mark arrested for beating the shit out of you?…Election Day’s coming up! You’re registered to vote, right?…So, been to church lately?”…I mean, really.
On the Fourth of July, Dad was grilling burgers when Aunt Leah parked her yellow VW bug next to my grandparents’ motor coach. Ryan got out first. He wore a neon orange cast on his wrist, and his face showed fading bruises and fresh scars that looked like he’d had stitches.
Grandma immediately raised a fuss about it: “Oh, my goodness, darling! Were you in a car crash?”
He looked down and shook his head.
“What on earth happened to you, boy?” Uncle Dale asked a little gruffly. “Did you take second place in an ass-kicking contest?”
Ryan kind of snorted, then moved to the trunk and popped it open. He pulled out their small ice chest, then slammed the lid closed.
Leah emerged from her car and everybody looked her up and down, too. I remembered her as not being very tall, but she was a lot heavier since the last time I saw her. She was wearing a snug tank top that showed off a tattooed wreath of flowers stretching from her back, across her shoulders, and down into the gap between her breasts. Elaborate vines wrapped her upper arms and wound all the way down to her fingers.
Dad glanced at Leah, and his mouth stretched into a smirk. He shook his head disapprovingly and spat, “Nice ink, Hoss.”
I guess Aunt Leah didn’t hear him, but she couldn’t help but hear Grandpa when he unfolded his mountain-sized self from the camping chair by the picnic table and bellowed, “My God Almighty, Leah Jane, what have you done to yourself?”
Leah narrowed her eyes. “Nice to see you, too, Daddy. Well, I guess what I’ve done is driven nearly three hours to see my family for the first time in several years, and this is how you greet me.”
Her eyes ran over my sisters and me, standing with our arms crossed just like the rest of the jury. She gave us the tiniest of smiles. “Drew, I haven’t seen you since you were barely walking. You girls sure have gotten big.”
Rachel and Drew cut their eyes to me and I mumbled, “She means we’re older, okay?”
Rachel hissed, “Yeah, right.”
Uncle Dale’s wife, Aunt Judy, insisted on carrying the ice chest for Ryan. “Oh, honey, let me help.”
She took it from him. He stepped back and mumbled what might have been, “Thanks.”
Later, as we took turns cranking the homemade ice cream maker, Leah cleared her throat and said, “This seems as good a time as any to bring this up.” She ran a finger over the vines on one hand, tracing them over and over. She and Ryan exchanged a look, and she began, “Ryan’s injuries are from three boys attacking him on the last day of school. He spent a week in the hospital.”
Grandma blurted, “Why didn’t you call us? We would have been there in a heartbeat!”
Leah swallowed hard, and her lips quivered. “Well, after the reaction you had to me leaving Mark, I didn’t think you…you know”—she shrugged—“were…interested…in being there for us. I mean, over the last seven years, you haven’t done anything to change that impression.”
Grandpa’s voice was flat. “It may have been seven years, but my rule is the same as it’s been your whole life. If you create the problem for yourself, you clean it up yourself. You chose to leave that marriage. It’s not my job to rescue you—especially given the way you did it: involving the press in your personal business! You nearly killed Mark’s career! And, from the looks of you, I’d say I made a good call. You—a grown woman—covering yourself in that—that—trash! What do people think when they see you?”
Leah stood so abruptly that her chair fell backward. “Look, Dad, I know you don’t believe that Mark was abusive to Ryan and me, but he was; he—”
Dad jumped in. “The Mark Ellis I know would never do the things you claim he did, Leah. Admit it: You got bored, and you wanted out.”
Leah’s eyes shot sparks. “The Mark Ellis you know is a phony, Reese.” She reached into her purse and pulled out an envelope of photos. “I—I didn’t show you these before, but I want to prove to you that he did what I said. These don’t even show half of…just look, okay?”
At first no one would accept the envelope from her, but Aunt Judy started it off, and I peeked over my mom’s shoulder when it was her turn. Of course, Leah was younger, but her face was nearly unrecognizable. Her nose was obviously broken, and a close-up photo of her neck clearly showed handprints.
She accepted the envelope back from my dad, who muttered, “I still have a hard time believing that Mark did these things. He’s on my campaign committee, you know…”
Leah said softly, “He—he choked me until I passed out. If it hadn’t been for Ryan—my God, he was only nine years old at the time—jumping on his back and clawing his eyes—I’d be dead.”
When Ryan spoke clearly for the first time that day, it was a growl. “My dad’s an asshole, Uncle Reese. I hate him. Wish I could run him over with a truck.”
All of the adults except Leah started yelling at Ryan for his language and for wishing such an awful fate on anyone; then they jumped on Leah for poisoning his mind against his dad.
It was like watching a movie that doesn’t make sense: Leah proved that what she was saying was true, but her own parents and brothers—her family—still didn’t believe her.
Leah shrieked, “Stop it! Stop it! Please!” She held up both hands in surrender, closed her eyes, and her voice was barely above a whisper when she spoke. “Believe me: I would not be asking this if I weren’t desperate. Ryan’s hospital bills are swallowing me, and I can’t catch up. You—you have no idea how hard it is for me to come to you, but I need help. Please…I’ll pay you back; I don’t know how long it’ll take
, but—”
Aunt Judy tiptoed over and uprighted Leah’s chair, put her hands on Leah’s shoulders, and gently pushed her down into the seat, then gave her three soft pat-pat-pats. Leah looked up at her and nodded gratefully.
Grandpa crossed his arms. “Same rule about rescuing applies here as anywhere else, Leah Jane. Why did those boys attack Ryan?” He narrowed his eyes and tucked his chin, giving Ryan a beady-eyed stare. “What did you do to them?”
“I’ll bet you gave them as good as you got, right, Ryan? You are from Denton stock, you know!” Uncle Dale winked at him and mimed giving a one-two punch.
Ryan clenched his jaw and glared at the ground. His eyes filled with angry tears, and he impatiently brushed at his cheek with the back of his hand.
Leah calmly explained, “Last May, Ryan attended a party at one of his football teammate’s homes. The parents were out of town, and there was underage drinking going on. Some girls from Cedar Points were there, too, and one of them, a girl named Kimmie, drank too much and passed out. While she was unconscious, the team’s quarterback, Jared, raped her.”
I gasped. “Oh, my God, is the girl all right?” It was as if my words were carried away by the light breeze blowing through our campsite.
At the mention of the word “rape,” my mother ordered, “Go into the motor coach, now, Drew Ann.”
Of course, my little sister immediately obeyed, because that’s what she does. Mom watched her go, then snapped, “Leah, I will thank you to not use words like that around my seven-year-old daughter!”
Leah gave Mom a dull look and continued the story without acknowledging her.
“Afterward, Jared not only bragged about what he’d done; he texted a video and nude pictures of Kimmie to his teammates. He even posed in some of the photos, showing himself in the act of…violating her in a variety of ways.”
My dad bolted out of his chair and stood threateningly over Ryan. “What do you have to do with this? If the press finds out that my nephew—”
Big Fat Disaster Page 6