Chapter 8

Lee's turn:

It's time for this to be MY story. I have a diary. I've had one for ten years, since somebody came up short for birthday present ideas and gave me one of those little diaries with the little lock on it.

I outgrew those when I became a teen, and I found one of those personal fire safes at a neighborhood garage sale. The lock on that thing can't be opened with a bent paperclip, and I started doing my journals on spiral notebooks. It's almost full of those, but in the last couple of years I've used a USB stick with Portable Apps on it. Even when Gramma gave me that old laptop as my very own, I used the sticks for my journals. Encrypted. Pull my fingernails, but I have a password that's gonna take an NSA computer to pick out, and my stuff is private.

I'm writing this into one of those sticks. It's Monday after one of the weekends I've waited all my life for. That's also one of those weekends that I thought would happen to ME right after the six o'clock news reported that the main streets of Hell were plagued by rolling snowballs piling up too deep.

I won't bore you with my sad story. I live with Gramma, Mom's mom. Gramma's a lot closer to 'responsible adult' than Mom ever hoped to be. Gramma's had legal custody since Mom went to jail that last time. Mom's out now, but I really don't think that mothering a teenager is high on her list of priorities.

It's a good thing that I learned to see things for myself. If I'd watched how Mom did it, my idea of how adult interpersonal relationships form would involve bars and what passes for country music and maintaining and nurturing those relationships would involve gratuitous sex and shared illicit pharmaceuticals.

Gramma is a BIG improvement over life with Mom. Gramma works, only drinks at a recreational level, and up until about six months ago, didn't bring guys home. Now she does, but it's ONE guy and he's into Gramma. Oops! Poor choice of words. Really though, he's spent the night and even though her trailer has a master bedroom at one end and two smaller bedrooms at the other, one of those being mine, I could hear enough to know that he was literally 'into Gramma'. But I'm okay with it. Old people need love too.

I'm eighteen. Into my senior year in high school, and if I wasn't pushing myself, I'd be gliding toward the finish right now. Up until this year, schoolwork was easy enough. That being said, I went after the advanced placement courses for my senior year. Assuming that I pass with a 'C' average or better in each course, I get college credit for them at the local university. It is to laugh. I'm one of those 4.0 kids for the last two years.

Two years? Corresponds to when I moved in with Gramma.

Socially speaking, I'm not. Mom's reputation was not well hidden, so a lot of school kids knew about her, and you know that old saying, "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree."? It's wrong, but a lot of kids thought different, so I caught a lot of crap. I sort of folded in. Mom's money was mostly just that, Mom's money. I got dribs and drabs for school clothes, thanked God for uniforms, and hair care and cosmetics and shoes and I put on some weight for a while so I was the fat girl with the bad complexion and the sloppy hair and I developed an abrasive manner and people stopped messing with me because I just wasn't fun.

And I wasn't stupid. I was me. At least Gramma had cable TV and fast Internet and she didn't mind picking me up at the library. I could walk there after school and she didn't get off work until an hour later so I got library time and I could download books on my poor ol' laptop, so I pushed my literacy forward.

We live in a trailer park. It's a NICE one. Trailer parks do come in varieties. Some are a lot worse than this one.

Trouble with trailer parks, though, is that there tends to be a lot of young couples, because trailers are inexpensive housing, and they're waiting to be able to afford REAL houses, and there are a lot of older people because trailers are inexpensive housing and limited or fixed incomes go further.

That translates to a lot of elementary school (or younger) kids. Period. I'm the only high school kid in three dozen family units.

Gramma was not exactly limited income, but she liked not having to deal with the closeness of apartments she could afford.

She had a lawn mower, so I made a few dollars mowing lawns. If you mow a lot of lawns with a push mower, it's hard to stay the fat girl.

I knew most of the neighbors. One of 'em was Sherry. She's my cousin, actually - Grandma's niece. I don't remember ever seeing her before I moved in here with Gramma, though.

Sherry's got a few years on me. She's not particularly pretty, but she's not ugly, either, and she's by herself a lot. Her husband Ted is a pipeline welder. Makes good money, but stays gone for weeks on end, so she's there by herself and she doesn't mind if I visit a lot. She's not stupid. She's got a good job, one reason why she's here and her husband is doing pipelines up on the Bakken Shale.

Sherry and I talk about a lot of things. Everything, really.

And what happens next is Sherry's fault. There are a few evenings a week where I call her about coming over and she's very polite in informing me "Not tonight."

I'm not stupid. I can look out my window and see the taillight of her car sitting in the driveway, so I know she's probably home. A couple of those evenings, the lights are on. A couple more, they're off. Once or twice I see her talking with the guy that I vaguely remember seeing outside the trailer next to her. They're laughing like they're old friends.

The next time I'm at Sherry's, I ask.

"Oh, that's Lane. He's my next door neighbor. He saved my house when the dryer caught fire. He helps me with things sometimes." Her eyes kind of twinkled when she said 'helps me with things'.

"Y'all spend much time together?"

"Oh, we visit a bit. Maybe twice a week. Sometimes we go out to eat together. He's single, and me, well, I'm a road widow. Neither of us want to cook for one and eat at home all the time."

"I'd go if I had money," I said, "just to get out of the house."

"You wanna make some money?" she asked.

"Depends on what I have to do. I don't want to be a homely young prostitute..."

Sherry laughed. "Oh, certainly not. Lane REALLY needs some help to get his house cleaned. You could do it. He'd pay you."

"Clean some random dude's house. Sounds legit."

"Lane's a really nice guy, Lee. How much would you want?"

"Minimum wage would be nice."

"Tell 'im ten bucks an hour. And don't back down."

I met Lane. Negotiated. Didn't back down. He was funny. A couple years older than Sherry. Not bad looking at all. And he talked to me like I was not only an adult, but one who was smart enough to clean a house without having everything pointed out to me.

We settled on me coming in after school every day, doing what needed to be done, leaving when he got home.

"Sherry, tell me the truth. What's your relationship with Lane?" I asked her.

"Kinda nosy, ain't you?" she said. But she smiled when she said it.

"You don't have to tell me. It's just that you and him spend a lot of time together."

"I'm married, Lee. Ted and I are married. I will stay married to Ted. He works where the money is at right now, but we're gonna try to have a baby soon and when I'm good and pregnant, he's comin' in off the road."

"And you're telling me this, why?"

"Well, he's gone for weeks, I'm here for weeks. We sort of have an understanding, is all."

"So you and Lane..."

"No."

I was later to find out that 'no' was not a lie ONLY if you couched your definitions.

Kept working for Lane. Found guns all over the house. Questioned him. Got a trip to a shooting range. Found out that it's fun.

All along, little step by little step, I found myself getting drawn to the guy. He let me be me. When we talked, he was funny and smart and concerning me, kind and gentle. I got an epic zit. He laughed it off, talking about being a 'pizza face' when he was a teen. His face looks okay now.

We talked about the social aspects of school and we talked about academics. He took a little time to show me some things from his job and we talked about careers.

That's about the time that Gramma's boy friend (who's sixty, at least) started hanging around more. Gramma was happy. He was happy. I wasn't too happy

I was finished with Lane's house, the total rework. I worked twice a week, still.

Tuesday. That's the day I did his week's laundry. So I'm sorting the whites from the coloreds to do the laundry. I pick up a pair of his tightie-whities and they're not white. There on the front, that funny flap thing that men have on their drawers, it has a very prominent smear of red lipstick. On his underwear. Next to his thing.

Two things come to mind. First, I know that oral sex exists. Second, I know that shade of lipstick. Somebody right next door wears it.

I learned a third thing, too. Finding this upset me in a way I was not sure about.

Lane came in after work. We usually sit and chat and I get an opportunity to go out to eat with him. Not today. As soon as he got home, told him what I'd done today. I didn't tell him about having to pretreat the stain on his drawers.

"How about dinner?" he asked.

"No," I said. "Not tonight." I went home. Kept to myself.

Thursday was my other day to work. I vacuum, straighten up, clean the bathroom.

He came home. Same thing. "You wanna go out and eat?"

"No."

And he stopped me. "Lee, is something wrong? Did I say something wrong?"

"No. You didn't say anything. I just..."

"You just – what?"

"Nothing." I wasn't supposed to be affected. He's an adult male, with all that entails, and Sherry's an adult female who LIED to me.

"Bailee Johnson, my little friend, I am NOT an ignorant person. I know that when a woman says 'nothing', the last thing she means is 'nothing'. If you don't want to tell me, your friend, then fine, but don't fib to me."

"I'm not stupid either, Lane. I know what lipstick is."

"Huh?"

"I do your laundry, Lane. I know what lipstick is. Like on your underpants."

You know how a writer will say somebody deflated? It's a good metaphor. I watched Lane do it. Deflated. Like he'd gotten seriously caught.

"And I recognize the color."

"Okay. That's something..." he started.

"You and my COUSIN..."

"Consenting adults, Lee..."

"She's married, Lane."

"I know. And she wants to stay that way."

"Funny way of doing it." I was mad now. "How could ... You ... her ... does Ted know?"

"No."

"I suppose he wouldn't now, would he?"

Not only did he deflate, there were little beads of sweat on his brow.

"Lee, what's this about?"

"I don't know, Lane," Now he wants to know things I don't even know my own self. "I mean, I sort of had you being my friend, and I didn't know about this stuff."

"Lee, I love being your friend. You're a neat person. I like doing things with you. You're fun to talk with. But I'm an adult male. You gotta have thought that just maybe I might have sex with somebody..."

"Not my freakin' COUSIN!" Yep. I'm still mad. "My MARRIED cousin."

"Look, Lee. I don't why I'm telling you this. It probably doesn't make a difference because you already know and even if I ask you NOT to tell anyone, and you agree, that's no guarantee. This is all a big mess, but Sherry and I have not had intercourse."

"Oh, yeah, sure. She's biting the front of your shorts, and you're not doin' it."

"Depends on your set of 'it'. No intercourse."

"OH, that makes it MUCH better."

"Well, sweetie, different people have different ways of setting limits."

"So you sweet-talk your neighbor's wife and she's figured out a way to feel less guilty."

"True. Except for the part where I sweet-talked my neighbor's wife."

"This was HER idea?"

"Yes. Lee, you can't tell ... She doesn't need to be hurt. Neither does Ted. All it would do is hurt them. I'm just a step up from masturbation."

"I know about masturbation. That's a BIG step. And where's Lane in all this talk about who gets hurt?" I was a bit sarcastic. "Oh, wait a minute." I didn't cut him any slack. "Gramma says 'be careful. A stiff dick has no conscience.' As long as you get yours..."