by Lewin, Renee
“Who?” Joey asked distractedly as he sat cross-legged in the passenger seat, buried in the journal. As I told Joey what occurred, Joey’s face got redder and redder. “I’m going to kill him!”
“Wait! No!” I grabbed for Joey’s arm but he had already shot out of the truck and was heading toward the convenience store. I jumped out of the truck and ran in front of him. “Hold up, man! Not a good idea. You could get yourself locked up! And, and Elaine would never forgive either one of us!”
“You’re going to let him talk about your sister like that?” he said through gritted teeth.
“We’ll tell her. No, actually I think it’s best for just me to tell her. You want Elaine to believe it, don’t you? She’ll be embarrassed and she won’t want to listen if you’re there.”
Joey’s scowl loosened a little into a frown. He continued to glare at me, silently begging me to let him unleash on Raul. I stared him down. “Fine,” Joey grumbled. He brushed past me to the truck.
On the drive to Joey’s house, I glanced over at him. Surprisingly, he’d put the journal away without finishing it. He’d slipped it back into the glove box and was just staring out the window. He was in one of those pensive, feeling-sorry-for-himself moods. For somebody who acted so hard all the time it was always a bit unsettling to see him at his weak points. I pulled up to Joey’s trailer.
“You should be proud of yourself for not murdering Raul back there. It means you’re handling the anger thing better.”
Joey did not respond.
“Why don’t you just tell her?”
“It’s not that simple,” Joey said while getting out of the parked truck.
“She doesn’t hate you,” I said holding Joey’s blue-eyed gaze with my brown-eyed gaze.
Joey gave a skeptical chuckle. “Sure. I’ll talk to you later.” He shut the truck door hard and strolled into his house with his hands in his pockets. I took that as a sign we wouldn’t be hanging out that afternoon.
******
“Hey Mama.”
“Hey Sweetie.”
I entered the living room where my mom was in the recliner watching television. I kneeled by the chair and gave her a kiss on the cheek and a long hug.
“Are you all right, Joseph?”
“I’m fine,” I answered and stood up.
“It’s girl trouble, isn’t it?” She looked up at me.
“You could say that.”
“When are you going to get a girlfriend already?”
My cheeks grew red. “I don’t want to talk about this.”
“You talk to all these girls but you never settle down. When are you going to let a girl care for you for once?”
I kissed Mom on the forehead. “I love you, Mom,” I said ending the conversation and walked into my bedroom.
“Love you, too,” she mumbled and went back to her television program.
I was lying on my bed irritated, staring at the ceiling and reflecting on the disgusting things Raul had said about Elaine, when my cell phone started ringing. I reached into my pocket. It was Denise calling.
“Yeah?”
“Joey?” Her voice shook.
“What’s wrong?” I stood up from the bed.
“I need you to get over here as soon as possible. My dad…”
“Where are you?”
“I’m locked in my bedroom. Just come through my window like you usually do. I need you Joey,” she whispered desperately.
“It’s okay, Denise. I’ll be right there.”
******
I was stalling, driving 25 miles per hour when I could have gone a lot faster. There was no speed limit on the gravel road that ran along the side of the park.
Raul sat on his front porch. My heart started pounding furiously. He had been waiting. I hopped out of the truck. I hesitated to walk towards him, adjusting my glasses. When I realized that Raul refused to look at me as if I was expected to walk over to him and apologize instead of the other way around, my anger gave me the gall to get up in his face when he finally stood.
“How could you?” My voice quivered under the strain of suppressing my anger.
Raul looked at me with his brown almond-shaped eyes. He stepped closer to me and grasped my hand. With his eyes still locked on mine, he brought my hand to his lips and kissed each of my knuckles. I began to cave. I wanted to be his murciélagita again, his little bat. I wanted him to say he’d never do it again and just apologize. “Don’t listen to Manny,” he said instead, each word brushed with his Spanish accent. “I wouldn’t say that about you.” He leaned in to kiss me.
Disgusted I turned my cheek to him. “No! If you didn’t say anything then why are you worried about me listening to Manny?” He didn’t answer. “Well?!” Still no answer. “You’re a liar! Always have been, huh? And you sent those kids over to my house didn’t you? You self-centered bastard!”
“It was just a joke!” Raul defended. “I didn’t really mean anything by it.”
“Which is the joke? Harassing my father, telling people I’m a slut, or you? I’d say the latter.” Tears spilled down my face and my chest constricted. I couldn’t see his face anymore, he was blurred by tears. I didn’t know who he was anymore.
“Lo siento, mi amor.” He whispered. “Mi murciélagita. Nunca lo pasará otra vez. Yo le prometo, mi cielo.”
I chuckled bitterly. “You actually think some smooth Spanish is going to work on me? Two years and this is what I get? You running game on me? This is so predictable! You’re just like all the rest…I don’t ever want to talk to you again.”
His shoulders slumped. He knew I was serious. I wouldn’t say things I didn’t mean. I turned to leave.
“Wait! Laney…Please don’t.”
I turned to see his desperate eyes.
“I love you. You know that. Everyone knows that you’re mine. I made a mistake, I’m sorry.” His eyes brimmed with tears. I started to sob. I’d never seen him cry over me before. I never wanted him to cry over me when he had so many other things he could cry over. His honest display of his feelings for me almost made me stay. I took a deep breath.
“I don’t want your half-assed love anymore. You don’t say those things about someone you truly love. If you really loved me you would respect me. You just…take me for granted. I realize that you have loved me in your own way, but it’s clear to me now that your way isn’t good enough anymore.”
“No one’s been there for you like I have! I gave you a chance when no one would and…I wanted to settle down with you someday.”
“Someday when?”
Raul’s lips parted but no words escaped.
“Exactly.”
“Come on, Elaine! You can’t end it like this. Who understands you como yo? Why are you throwing this relationship away after all the history we got together?”
“By your actions alone, you’re the one who threw it away.”
“Whatever!” Raul snapped, defeated. He raised his hands in the air and let them fall in defeat. “What did you expec’ me to do? You weren’t giving me any, so maybe sometimes I pretended that you did around my friends. So what? Don’t be so damn sensitive about it!”
“Talk trash about me again and I’ll get Manny and Joey to give you a beating you’ll never forget.” I wiped the tears from my face and strode back to the truck. Spinning up some pebbles at Raul with the back tires, I watched him in the rearview mirror as I drove off. He grew smaller and smaller. Seeing him still standing there looking shocked and upset, I started to cry again.
******
Raul angrily spit on the ground, his eyes stinging. He spit to remove the sour taste in his mouth. A bitter taste, a mixture of shame and anger.
FOUR
I stood at the stove scrambling eggs. I absolutely hated eggs. I hated the smell, I hated the look of them, I hated the taste, but I had to hold my breath and cook them because Daddy demanded them for breakfast. He had to have his scrambled eggs and waffles or he’d be inconsolable all day.
> Manny was sitting on the couch in his boxers watching SpongeBob SquarePants.
Why did he watch me here gagging, making eggs almost every morning and never once offer to cook them for me? Because it was a more womanly duty that Manny never once thought to do or even realized was being done. Like the laundry, or the dishes, or the mopping and dusting and watering the plants, or scrubbing the bathroom, or making sure we had all our food and toiletries, organizing and filling out paperwork and getting bills paid on time, or making sure Dad got all his medicine, even when he made up his mind that he wouldn’t take them some days, babysitting Dad, feeding Dad, sometimes clothing Dad, keeping Dad entertained, calming Dad down when he was upset, taking Dad’s violent outbursts, being a damn punching bag for Dad.
I scooped the lumpy yellow eggs onto a plate and threw some waffles down alongside them. I slid it across the table to Dad, causing some eggs to jump out of the plate.
“Elaine! Now I’ll have to eat half my breakfast off the darn table!”
“Hush and eat your breakfast, Dad,” I said sternly as I walked to the stove. I grabbed the dirty pan from the stovetop to wash it.
“Laney,” Manny called from the couch, “Be more careful next time.”
“Yeah,” Dad agreed, “and I’m your father. Watch your attitude.”
The pan crashed down into the sink filled with more dirty dishes. “Give me a break! I have a reason to be pissed off right now.” I pressed a finger to my chest. “I just had my heart broken. I am not a freakin’ Stepford daughter,” I glared at my father and then at Manny, “Or a Stepford sister who will just continue to smile and make you breakfast! So let me be angry, for God’s sake!” I clenched my eyes and hands closed. “I just need a damn break, okay?” I opened my eyes to find Dad and Manny staring at me with their mouths hung open. Briskly, I walked into my room and shut the door.
“Laney?” Manny called from outside my door a few minutes later.
I didn’t answer. I was in a cocoon of pillows and blankets held together by wet tears. I heard the doorknob turn and then a click as the door closed. I felt a weight on the left side of the bed and a tug on one of the sheets that I enveloped myself in. “Laney, I’m sorry.” I squeezed my arms tighter around myself and tried to block out his voice. “I know you just ended it with Raul which, even though it was a good decision, was hard for you to do. He did love you, but not enough.”
“Shut up.” I mumbled through the cotton layers.
Manny pulled at the blanket again. “Why did you bury yourself in these covers like this?” He chuckled. “Can you even breathe?”
Slowly I unrolled the blanket enough to expose my head so I could look at him. He had the decency to put on a shirt and some pants before coming into my room. “I wrapped myself up like this because it’s like when you’re a baby being swaddled, it’s almost like being held. Almost like Raul or Mommy holding me again,” I fought back the tears. My eyes closed, I felt Manny stand up from the bed. He slowly loosened the blankets. The warmth was chased away by room temperature air. Manny sat me up and hugged me to him, my face at his shoulder.
“Laney, I don’t want you to feel like this anymore. We can’t do this for the rest of our lives. We can let Mr. Jimenez go as park manager and then sell the park to Mr. Jeremy at the convenience store. He’s been offering to take it off our hands ever since…you know. We can sell it and move to California, both of us could go to school there, you could become an award-winning journalist,” he smiled, “and I can become a little known civil engineer.”
“But my scholarship is with University of Arizona.”
“Well, couldn’t you just transfer, or something?”
“You wouldn’t have even gone, would you?”
“What do you mean?”
I lifted my head from his shoulder and Manny’s arms fell from around me. “You weren’t going to go to Caltech unless you could’ve found a way to have me come to California too.” Manny’s gaze fell to the bedspread. “I guess what happened to Mom and Dad kept you and me here together. So Mom dying was kind of convenient for you. You and I never separated.”
He cut his eyes at me. “Don’t say that.” He shook his head. “Don’t say it like that.”
My gaze fell onto the bedspread. “I don’t know why I said that. Forgive me.” He was silent. I did know why I said that to him. Getting under his skin seemed the only way he would talk truthfully with me at the time. “So we move to California. Where’s Dad in all this?”
“We get him into the program at Mental Health America. There’s an MHA Village in Long Beach. He could live there and really get help.”
“No.” I couldn’t believe he already had abandoning our father all dreamed up.
“Laney, just admit it. You can’t take care of Dad forever.”
“No. They are going to stuff pills down his throat until he is glassy eyed and complacent. I’m not taking him to those inhumane drug testing facilities disguised as mental health centers!”
“They aren’t going to test drugs on him! Now you’re sounding like Dad or something!”
“You go to California if you want. You’ll be going alone.”
Manny gave me a sore smirk. “You are the most stubborn person I know.”
“I have to be. My twin is a pushover.” We smiled.
“I love you. And I love Dad. Think about that, okay? Please.”
I nodded, scanning his eyes. His eyelids were heavy, his forehead lined, his eyebrows furrowed. I was difficult to deal with, a chore, I knew it. I didn’t understand why he hadn’t left for California yet. If he’d just hurry up and leave it would make our separation hurt less, like ripping off a Band-aid. One day he was going to marry Denise or whoever he might meet and we’d have to split up anyways. Marriage was not in my future anymore. A lot of things weren’t. I wished he would go.
******
“Man, why aren’t you going?!”
“Did you not hear what she said?”
“Tell her she doesn’t have a choice in the matter.”
I laughed. “You’ll have to help me tie her up and throw her in the back of the truck ‘cause that’s the only way she’s going to California with me.”
“You’re her twin brother! Don’t you know anything that will change her mind?”
“Wait a minute. You want us to leave for California? Me and Laney?”
“Well,” Joey paused. “I mean, no, not really, but in the big scheme of things anything is better than Merjoy Trailer Park in Cadence, Arizona with your unpredictable father.” Joey positioned the automatic BB gun in his hands.
“I know, I know! I know it’s not safe for her to be alone with him all the time but I can’t get her to listen to me.”
“Then try harder,” Joey replied.
I glared at Joey as he positioned his eye along the gun’s sight and pulled the trigger. One by one the bottles exploded, the shards falling into the tall dry grass below the warped wooden saw bench.
“Besides, I’ll come visit you guys in California,” he grinned and handed the BB gun to me.
“Sure. Who says you’re invited?” I smirked and took the gun.
Joey smiled and turned toward the trailer. He’d heard the screened door creak open.
“Awesome. Laney’s bringing out some beer,” Joey said and ran towards her. I saw my sister walk out of the house with a bag of chips and some drinks. I smiled and set up another line of beer bottles. Then I heard Joey’s phone go off. Joey had left it sitting on one of the flatter bone white stones out in the backyard. I walked over, picked it up and looked at the caller ID. I stared at it in confusion. I watched the phone chime and vibrate in my hand. Eventually the call went to voicemail. Without hesitation I pressed 1 to listen to the voicemail. I put the phone to my ear.
“Hey Joey. I just wanted to thank you so, so much for last night. How about I make you a good Mexican dinner tonight. There’s nothing my dad can say. So, call me later. Love ya, Joey. Bye! End of new messages.”
******
Raul was pissed. Elaine wasn’t answering his calls. He needed another chance to prove to her he was sorry. Just one more chance. If what he had to tell her wasn’t good enough then there was no one but Manny to blame. If he hadn’t opened his stupid mouth all the time, always telling Laney something or the other to get her to leave him, they’d still be together. If Laney was going to cut him off like this, then Manny would have to pay. As he walked in the direction of Elaine’s trailer he ran the fingers of his left hand over the knuckles of his right hand and then over the cool surface of the rings that he’d slipped onto four of his fingers; the heaviest metal rings he could find. Raul’s hands were hidden in the front pocket of his hoodie as he walked in the direction of the Robert’s home.