by Karen Gordon
Dorothy came to her rescue, “Let her be. She’s a girl. You’re just used to Ben.” They all looked over at the mountain of food on Ben’s plate that threatened to spill over the edges. Ben knew his grandpa was teasing so he played along. “She doesn’t know you have to be rolled out of here before they will let you leave.” He smiled at Carrie. “She’ll make up for it at the dessert table. She has a huge sweet tooth.”
“I made a black forest cake. You’ll be sure to have a big slice of that.” It wasn’t a question, but a gentle direct order from Dorothy. Carrie was more than happy to comply. She was feeling a soaring sense of freedom at being able to eat without her mother criticizing her choices. On her way to the dessert table she stopped at the steam table for another helping of butter noodles.
As soon as lunch was over Ben and the Colonel made a beeline for the gun cases. Dorothy lingered behind with Carrie. “Every year they do this,” she mused. “It’s really the turkey shoot they’re here for. I think they only eat to indulge me.”
Carrie smiled and followed her to the shooting range that had been carved out of the edge of a corn field. Ben had set up lawn chairs in a sunny spot with a good view of the targets. Dorothy made herself comfortable in one and indicated that Carrie should sit in the chair next to her. Ben handed his grandma a blanket to keep her legs warm in the cool October breeze. Dorothy laid one end across her legs and wrapped the other end around Carrie’s. The Colonel appeared with beers for himself and Dorothy and sodas for Ben and Carrie. She jumped and almost spilled her soda when she heard the loud crack of the first gun firing. She waited to be reprimanded for being careless, but Dorothy only chuckled at her. “They’re loud, aren’t they?”
Carrie smiled and nodded in reply.
“You get used to it. Have you seen Ben shoot before?” Carrie shook her head, “No ma’am.” She had never really seen anyone shoot before and the noise was making her jumpy.
When Ben’s name was called he walked to the short wall the shooters had to stand behind. As he placed his box of ammo on the edge of the wall the man running the event said, “OK, kid, we are limiting you and the Colonel to five birds this year,” he paused, then added, “That’s five all together, not each.”
Ben nodded in agreement and puffed up a little at the announcement of him and his grandpa’s impressive record at the event. Last year they had won half of the turkeys available. The Colonel ended up donating most of them to a food pantry, but it was still fun to claim the prizes. Ben was the top marksman in his ROTC class, and there weren’t a lot of places he could show off that skill. His mood dipped for a moment as he remembered that that was another reason he wanted Joelle to come with him today. He glanced back at Carrie who was talking comfortably with his grandma. It meant more than he would care to admit that she was here to watch him shoot and win.
♥ ♪ ♥
When Ben dropped his fifth, and final, winning card in his grandma’s lap, he looked dejected.
“Will they let you keep shooting?” Dorothy asked. Ben just shrugged. He was very competitive and didn’t really want to shoot without the chance of winning. His grandpa, who had taken the other seat next to Dorothy, motioned him over and had him bend down to hear a covert plan. Rising back up, Ben smiled and looked at Carrie.
“What?” Both Ben and the Colonel were looking at her.
Ben grabbed her hand and pulled her out of the chair. “Come on, your turn.”
“I don’t know how,” she protested as he pulled her up in front of the ticket seller. Ben ordered two more target cards and paid for them. Carrie watched as he wrote her name down on the top edge then handed them to the men who tacked them to the hay bales at the end of the range.
“You’re wasting your money.” She continued to protest, but her smile said she was excited to give it a try. When they called her name she reached for Ben’s gun, but he held on to it and walked with her up to the wall.
Seeing her apprehension, he told her, “Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered.” He put a bullet in his gun then positioned her in front of him. He placed the gun correctly in her hands, then wrapped his arms around hers to aim and released the safety. With his cheek pressing against hers he repositioned the barrel until the sights lined up. He glanced briefly over at his grandpa, who winked at him. Leave it to the Colonel to come up with a plan that not only let him win again but also got Carrie close to him.
When he whispered, “Pull the trigger,” Carrie squeezed her eyes shut, pulled, and jolted back into Ben from the gun’s kick. She opened her eyes slowly, not wanting to see any blood or slumping bodies at the other end of the range. Ben lowered the gun and looked at the target card downrange. “OK, try not to close your eyes this time.”
Carrie squinted at the little white target attached to the hay bale 20 yards away and could see nothing. “I don’t see any holes.”
“That’s because you missed the target. You were too high.”
“The gun moved, not me.”
Ben laughed at her analysis and he lined himself and the gun up with Carrie again. “Ready?”
Carrie took a breath and steadied herself against Ben, “Let her rip.”
“You’re pressing the trigger, not me.” “Oh, right.” Carrie squinted to try and see through the sights as she squeezed the trigger. Ben held tighter to offset the kick.
“Another bulls eye, Gorman,” the shoot supervisor jokingly scowled. “Enough, already. We’re not going to let you hide behind your girlfriend the rest of the day.” He winked at Carrie.
♥ ♪ ♥ Ben handed her the winning target card, and she touched the small tear where the bulls eye mark had been. She
looked at Ben with disbelief, “I won a turkey?” “We won a turkey,” Ben corrected, then his grandma swatted him on the leg. “Yeah, you won a turkey.” Carrie did a victory dance complete with an “I won a turkey” chant.
On the drive home Ben had to talk Carrie out of holding her frozen turkey in her lap. He put it with his in the cooler he brought, but she made him put it on top and his grandma drew a big “C” on the wrapper with a sharpie. That was her turkey, it was the first thing she had ever won.
They were both in high spirits, and Carrie didn’t want it to end. This was the part she always dreaded, going home. Lana might be in a good mood, there was always a chance, but if she wasn’t, Carrie would pay for her day of fun. She pushed thoughts of her mom out of her mind and replayed the day.
“I think your grandpa forgot my name after his third beer. He kept calling me Snow White.” Ben smiled, “Yeah, he’s always called you that. He thinks you look like her.” Ben looked over at Carrie’s dark hair, blue eyes and pale skin lit up by the dashboard. “Pale face.”
“Look who’s talking, day-glo white Kraut.”
“At least I can get a tan.” Ben knew she only burned or freckled in the sun where he easily turned golden brown and never burned. Ironically though, it was Ben who avoided swimming pools in the summer, and Carrie was the only one who knew why. She thought about bringing it up to tease him, then reconsidered. That was the second biggest fight they ever had. When Carrie decorated the cabin/fort, Ben wouldn’t talk to her for months. He had a point that the raw, rustic boards couldn’t be repainted from the purple Carrie had chosen back to something tough looking. So that time Carrie took her punishment, and stayed away from the cabin and Ben ‘til he finally gave in and asked her to go sledding on a snow day off school.
The pool incident was different. Carrie still didn’t completely understand what she had done wrong. She had saved his life. She knew Ben was having a horrible summer, and she just wanted to cheer him up. That summer, when they were both 13, was one of the best Carrie could ever remember, even with the Ben incident. And it was probably the worst Ben could ever remember.
Carrie leaned her head against the cold glass of the passenger window. When she closed her eyes, she could still picture the look on Ben’s face the morning that his dad, Don, left. She hated that she had witnessed
it.
CUE THE FLASHBACK: 3 YEARS EARLIER
Chapter 5 Carrie rolled away from the window next to her bed. It wasn’t even 8 a.m. yet, and the sun pouring in through her new east-facing window was already making her sweat. If she had installed curtains, she would pull them, but so far she had been concentrating on decorating the walls with murals of stars and clouds. All day yesterday she had worked on painting boards to match the walls. Ben should be home from his Grandparents’ house tomorrow, and she was going to ask him to help her hang those and the curtains.
When her mom told her she would be moving into the room above the garage, Carrie thought the privacy would be great, but she hadn’t planned on the unbearable heat. She was missing her much-cooler room downstairs, but that was already being converted into a nursery for the baby.
She blew out a breath to cool off and to push away the irritation she was already feeling toward her brother or sister to be. The idea that her mom, who was like, well, old, was pregnant; it was so embarrassing.
Carrie shuttered at the thought of her parents doing “it”, especially now that she had a better idea of what “it” was. Her new best friend, MG, had lent her some steamy romance books. She had loved them, ‘til her mother announced she was pregnant. Then Carrie realized that her parents must have done some of the same stuff as in the books. She shuttered again. Her dad was all old, and hairy, and gag. Her parents didn’t even seem to like each other let alone … god, she couldn’t go there again. She picked up her copy of Stormy Seas and concentrated on the drawing of the tan, muscular pirate tearing the dress off the beautiful brunette girl. That’s what people should look like who do “it”. She couldn’t wait to find her tan muscle man, someday, when she was ready.
MG didn’t seem shocked at all when Carrie told her about her parents and the baby. She said her mom and her boyfriend do it all the time, and they’re really loud. She hears her mom yelling stuff like, “oh, god”, and “yes, Vin, yes”, whenever he comes over. She said it doesn’t bother her because Vin is loaded. A few months earlier he moved MG and her mom into a really cool house, with a pool, and he got her mom a Jaguar to drive. He could come over and make noise anytime, as long as MG and her mom could keep buying clothes on his credit card, she was cool with it. Carrie was happy too, because the new house put MG in the same school district, so they would start high school together this fall.
Carrie was just about to turn to the page in Stormy Seas where MG had bent the corner; the one where Captain Sebastian has taken Lady Savannah hostage and she tries to escape, tearing her dress off in the process. She would die if anyone knew, but she got the most amazing tingly feeling when she read that chapter. Carrie wondered if MG did too, if that was why she had bent the corner on that page. But they had only been friends since they met at Freshman Orientation day last month, and she didn’t want to sound stupid or slutty to her new friend. The books were great, except now Carrie had more questions without a place to find answers than ever before.
Her time with the good Captain was interrupted by the sound of a car pulling up outside. Her parents were home, so it had to be someone at the Gorman’s house.
Ben’s house was an exact mirror of hers. The driveways were right next to each other with only a thin strip of grass separating them. The window in her new room overlooked the twin driveways and also straight into the Gorman’s upstairs room, where she had recently discovered Ben slept. She had looked across one night when she noticed a light on in the room above their garage. The curtains were drawn, but she could just make out Ben moving around and a plaid bedspread on his bed. She wondered why he wanted the hot, melty second floor room when he didn’t have to.
She was kind of hoping that the car was Ben and his mom coming home. Maybe Ben would have time to help her put up a curtain rod and her new shelves. He was supposed to be gone all weekend, but sure enough, that was the top of Sissy’s Celica pulling into the driveway below. The garage door opened and Sissy pulled forward, slowly, to ease into her right side parking spot, but she stopped abruptly before pulling into the garage. Carrie looked into the garage and saw the end of Don Gorman’s BMW. The lid of the trunk was open showing that it was full of boxes and clothes and shoes. Don walked to the end of his car and slammed the trunk quickly, he faced Sissy’s car and Carrie could see he looked extremely sweaty and shocked to see the Celica. Sissy didn’t pull into the garage. She and Ben both got out of the car slowly. Carrie couldn’t hear exactly what they were saying, but the look on Ben’s face made her feel sick.
♥ ♪ ♥ Ben was telling his mom about the computer he and Pat were planning to build this summer when she braked quickly, jerking him forward in his seat. Noticing the look of confusion on her face, he followed her line of sight to the left side of their garage. His dad’s BMW was parked in its usual spot, but the trunk was open, showing his dad’s clothes and shoes haphazardly piled inside. Why would he just dump his clothes in his trunk? Before he or his mom could process an answer, his dad slammed the lid of trunk, revealing the back seat of his car, also piled so high with boxes they touched the ceiling and showed through the back window.
Sissy and Ben slowly got out of the car, facing Don, waiting for someone to talk. Don’s shock turned to anger, “Get in the house,” he barked in Ben’s direction. But Ben held his ground, not wanting to leave his mom or miss finding out what was happening.
“Ben, I said GET IN THE HOUSE!!” Sissy flinched at Don’s screaming. Ben shut the door to the Celica and walked around the back to stand next to his mom. He touched her arm which broke her trance and she spoke to Don, “What? What are you doing? Where are you going?”
Don ignored her questions and marched toward Ben and Sissy, “GET IN THE GOD-DAMNED HOUSE, BEN!” He screamed again, now towering over them at the driver’s side door of Sissy’s car. Though only 5’ 1” to Don’s 6’, Ben did not back down. He moved to stand between his parents. His mother touched his shoulders, “Ben, sweetie, it’s OK. Go in the house.” She glanced around, and realized they were having a loud argument in their driveway. Still holding his shoulders she walked behind him toward the house, “Let’s all go in.”
As Sissy and Ben passed Don, he turned toward the house but didn’t follow them. “I’m not going in,” he said quietly. Sissy and Ben stopped short and turned in tandem. Don looked down at his shoes. “I’m not going in. I’m leaving,” he mumbled almost too quietly to be heard.
Ben could feel his mom’s hand starting to shake. He heard her breath catch and felt the tremors move through her whole body. “Don? I … I don’t understand,” she turned and looked at his car. “Where are you going?”
He looked her in the eye, “I’m leaving.” Then he lost his nerve and hung his head again. “I’m leaving you.” Ben jerked free from his mom’s grasp and lunged toward his dad. “You can’t leave.” It was an order, not a plea, but his teenage hormonal voice cracked, and he sucked in a breath and shook, angry that his voice betrayed him in a moment of force.
“Get in the house Ben.” Don puffed up and faced off against his son.
Red hot anger burned across Ben’s face, “I’m not going in unless you do,” he said between clenched teeth.
Sissy sobbed, “Don? Why?” Don grabbed hold of Ben’s shoulders, moved him aside and walked toward Sissy. He stopped next to her and was about to touch her hands, clenched together, held against her heart, but he stopped just short of making contact. Instead, he reached in his pants pocket for his car keys, then turned from Sissy and walked into the garage.
Ben grabbed onto his father’s arm and hung on to keep him from opening his car door. Don silently struggled to remove Ben’s hands as Sissy watched and sobbed, fixed to a spot in the driveway, her arms now wrapped tightly around her middle. Don shoved Ben off of his arm and into the wall of the garage with a loud clatter as Ben’s back hit a row of shovels and rakes hanging on the wall. Sissy gasped. Don looked at her with brief regret before he jumped into the driver’s seat, slammed the door, and l
ocked the car.
Ben righted himself in time to grab the door handle and pull on it as Don backed out of the garage. As he turned quickly right Ben lost his grip. Don sped up, driving backwards toward the street, till Sissy was close to the passenger side window. “I left a note.” He called through a small opening, before pressing a button on his armrest, rolling up the window. The weight of the trunk and the speed of the car caused the tail pipe to scrape the street when he backed out of the driveway and Don stopped, his instinct to protect his precious car briefly overriding his need to escape. He glanced up to see Ben holding on to his mother, both of them frozen in disbelief, before he moved the gear shift into drive and sped out of the cul de sac.
♥ ♪ ♥ Carrie didn’t tell her parents that she had seen the whole thing. She poked at her dinner with her fork as her mother recounted a mostly-incorrect version of the hot neighborhood gossip to her uninterested father.
“He tried to run Sissy over with his car,” Lana paused briefly to stab a bite of chicken but started talking again before she put it in her mouth, “And he hit Ben with a shovel. I’m sure he’s going to jail.” She shook with distaste at the thought of Don’s actions. She glanced briefly at Carrie and decided she must not be listening since she was looking down at her plate. “Glenda said he has a girlfriend.” Lana whispered loudly in her husband’s direction. He glanced up at her with a brief look of disdain before going back to reading his copy of Aviation Week and Space Technology and eating his dinner.
Not that her parents ever seemed to like each other, but her dad emitted waves of silent hatred since finding out her mom was pregnant. Maybe it’s not his, Carrie thought briefly, then she took a good look at both her parents and figured neither one of them could find another person who would want to do it with them. She poked holes in her mashed potatoes with her fork, feeling too agitated to eat.