Chapter 2

Ben’s turn:

Barb and Bink live in an apartment building, actually four units. They’ve been there for years. I used to babysit the girls there sometimes when I was in high school, well, actually before I was in high school. They keep the place neat.

Familiar. That’s comforting to me and Mandy both. Bink let us in the door, wrapped her best friend up in hugs. Bink is probably the biggest recipient of return hugs from Mandy. Mandy’s NOT a hugger. I’m probably #2 behind Bink. Mandy’s mom and dad used to remark about her not being a very huggy child.

MY hug came from Barb, along with tears. She’d lost her lifelong friend, a companion like a sister to her. I endured the hug. I’m kind of like Mandy in that regard. That’s why last night’s session in the recliner impacted me so much. It was an opening into Mandy’s personal space that normally does not exist.

Bink dragged Mandy off to her room, leaving me in the living room with Barb and Sara.

“What’re you gonna do now?” Barb asked.

“One step at a time, that’s all I have right now.” I told her about the lawyer’s call.

“You know I’m here to help with all that, too.”

“I don’t know which way you go from here,” I said. “We have two houses full of ... everything.”

Sara spoke up. “Ben, I know some people who liquidate estates, you know, the contents...”

“I’ve heard of that.”

“Well, I can get them to talk with you. Basically, you go through and set aside the stuff you want to keep, and they sell, donate, or dispose of the rest. You get part of whatever they might make on sales.”

“I’ll help you go through things, Ben. I know that’s gonna be hard,” Barb said.

“I can only imagine. All their stuff. Family pictures. Keepsakes...” I closed my eyes, pulled up pictures of not only Mom and Dad’s stuff, but the things they kept from grandparents long gone. What to keep? How? Where?

Mandy’s turn:

It’s Bink. My friend Sabrina Henkel. She’s a normie. I’m not. Somehow the universe conspired to put our brains on the same frequency. She’s the ONLY normie that I really think gets me.

Yes, Uncle Ben gets me, but he’s just another me, except he’s thirteen years older and he’s got a ‘Y’ chromosome

Bink opens up with, “I don’t even know what to say. I mean, ‘I’m sorry’, but you KNOW that already.”

“I know that. What kind of beast would sit on her bed with me and say ‘GOOD!’, right?”

She hugged me again. Long hug. “I know you got a million thoughts...”

“I do. Every now and then, something punches through and I start crying, Bink. It’s all messed up and I didn’t do anything to mess it up and I don’t deserve it, but...”

“ ... here it is,” Bink interrupted. “Like so much stuff. You know Mom says you can move in with us.”

“I know. Heard that yesterday.”

“Are you?”

I shook my head. “Not unless something says I can’t stay with Uncle Ben. He’s, you know, blood...”

“I know. I’d stay with ‘im too if I had the chance...”

Bink is one of several people who pronounce my uncle as ‘hot’. I can kinda see it. I don’t know why he doesn’t have women hanging all over him. Well, I DO know. There’s a list. First, he’s not comfortable with strangers and I don’t think he’d have a woman around long enough to move from ‘stranger’ to ‘acquaintance’ to ‘friend’ and past that. Second, he’s like me. Sometimes he’s subject to unexplainable, deep moods. He says they’re not as bad as when he was closer to my age. He usually says that when he’s bringing me back in from one of my episodes.

Bink, though, she’s expounded upon her diagnosis. We’re both the same age. Well, actually she’s fourteen now. Her birthday was last week. Mine will be in a week. But as Mom told me, we’re becoming young ladies and we’re seeing changes in our bodies as well as changes in our personalities and our thoughts. So I guess she sees him as something else than I do.

“He’s my uncle and he’s the only adult male on the planet that gets me.” I read her eyes. Maybe her brain waves, too. “Or adolescent male, for that matter. You know what I’m talking about. Uncle Ben. The guy that took us everywhere...”

She giggled. “I’m just sayin’ that he’s good looking and maybe there are other ‘everywheres’ to go with ‘im.”

I know what she’s dancing around. We’ve talked, her giving me a lot of schoolyard nonsense, me trying to counter with things I’d actually researched on my own.

Feelings? Knew a lot about them. Mom led me through that whole ‘first menstruation’ thing a year before and I discovered, like women before me, that this THING was a horrible mess for four days a month and when horrible cramps started six months ago another trip to the doctor put me on some pills that I took religiously because they regulate that horror and make it livable.

I also discovered that my anatomy matched the pictures I found, at least some of them, and that I could make myself feel really good if I ... Well, it helps after high-stress days, okay?

And when I discussed my discovery with Bink – “Yeah! Me too!”

Bink and I bathed together, like, forever. It wasn’t until a year or so ago that we started exploring ourselves and each other.

One such session. “I can sorta see how Mom and Mizz Sara...” she told me.

“I think they probably do more than touch each other’s buttons,” I countered. “Like that oral...”

“And kissing.” Bink looked serious. “I mean, REAL kissing, like on TV ‘n stuff.” Bink’s eyes tend to hazel, sometimes green. I think her mood changes the color. Right now? Bright, and as green as I ever saw them.

We figured out the whole ‘kissing’ thing pretty fast and it progressed from there.

Bink and me, we’re REALLY close.

We’re sitting on the bed, still. There’d be a time, like if aunt Barb had to go run errands, leaving us behind, that we might’ve gotten naked and enjoyed each other.

We’re not lezzes. I know I’m not. Bink’s fun and gahhh, she can make me ring like a bell, but there’s something primal missing.

And she goes on entirely too long about Uncle Ben.

“I’ve never known him to even go on a date, Bink.”

“Me neither. But I know he’s spent the night with a woman.”

“Noooo. How do you know that?”

She dropped a bomb. “It was Mom.”

I could tell that my pile of sanity was being dislodged.

“W-when?”

“First time, he babysat me ‘n you while Mom went to dinner with your parents. They came and got you. I was asleep. I woke up, was gonna crawl in bed with Mom, and he was there...”

My lights went out.

Ben’s turn:

“Uncle Ben,” Bink said, a frightened look on her face, “Mandy’s having one of those episodes.”

Barb and I charged to the bedroom door. I cautioned Barb, “Let me...” and I slid beside her in bed. She was sitting, her chin on her knees, arms around her legs, what I called ‘cocooned’ when I discussed it with her mom and dad and others.

I know that between me and Mandy, gentle physical contact, otherwise known as hugging, and soft words will bring her around.

Barb and Bink and Sara left us for a while. Finally, Mandy rejoined me, oozing herself into a more responsive hug.

“You okay, my punkin?”

“Yes.”

I saw tears.

“You’re MINE,” she said.

And I have no idea what that means.

We joined the rest of the bunch in the living room. Mandy was giving Barb a look I couldn’t parse.

“I’m sorry, everybody,” she announced softly. “I want Uncle Ben to take me home...”

I shrugged. “Thanks, y’all. We’ll talk later, okay?”

I stood up, headed for the door.

Bink caught up with Mandy. “I’ll talk with you later, sis.”

In the car. “Something wrong?”

“Nope.” She was stiff.

“You sure?”

“Nothing.”

“Okay.”

Silence the whole way home, then she was into her bedroom, door closed.

Mandy’s turn:

iPad. Messenger. Hit one to Bink.

B: Hey girl, you okay?

M: Fine. Over it.

B: It was about Mom and Uncle Ben, wasn’t it?

M: He’s MY Ben.

B: He’s your uncle. Gosh.

M: Uncle Ben. But MY Ben.

B: I’m gonna call you.

M: K

My phone buzzed. “Hi.”

“You don’t sound happy.”

“It’s a shock. I thought, like...”

“He’s, like almost THIRTY, girl.”

“But he’s like me. I thought...”

“Us...”

“Not the same and you know it.”

“Okay.”

“Does your mom know that you know?”

“Oh, we’ve had a looong talk after the second time. I mean, Mandy, that was two years after ... It’s not like they were a thing...”

“They...”

“Uh, yeah ... I kinda hoped that Mom’d say that she and Uncle Ben would be a thing, you know, get married or something, but she told me that first, he was way too young and second, he was not what she wanted...”

“Like Mizz Sara...”

“That came later. Mom had a buncha men. Mizz Sara’s better’n any of them. ‘Cept Uncle Ben. She said he was safe and convenient and, she says, just what she needed at the time.”

“So they’re not still...”

“No. So she’s out of the way.”

“Out of the way?”

Giggle. “I think he’s hot!”

“You’re not getting MY Ben...”

“Ohhhh, so he’s YOUR Ben?”

“Uncle Ben,” I restated. “And right now he doesn’t need some bimbo in his life.”

“I’m not a bimbo. I’m your sister.”

“You know what I mean. Besides, you’re too young, anyway.”

“You just don’t wanna call me AUNT Bink.”

My turn to giggle. “That’s just evil.”

Okay. Time to go make things better with my benefactor.

I walk into the living room. He’s not there. Bedroom door’s open. He’s lying on the bed with his iPad and he’s not poking at it, so he’s probably reading. I plop down belly first on the bed beside him.