Chapter 1: The Arrival

How can I say this.

Well, I'll just start at the beginning and spin the story of My Cousins Jayne and Sally, their introduction into my life and just how that affected me.

To be honest this all happened years many ago when I was around 16 or 17. My Cousin Jayne was just under three years older than me and Sally was about 4 years younger than me. It goes without saying, we had known each other all of our lives. Their family lived about a half hour from my house and our families saw each other a couple of times a month and on holidays.

I was an only child. Our fathers were brothers so that made the family connection. My father was a couple of years older than theirs.

Her father suffered from the younger sibling syndrome and was not very successful while my father had flourished as an investment banker and we were fairly well off.

The real problem for her family started with the Oil Embargo of the mid 70's when inflation hit record highs. My father didn't even feel the bump in the economy as did those who were the more well off of our country's population.

The less fortunate were really hard hit by the recession as were weaker companies like the one my Uncle Ralph worked for. My uncle was a machinist working for an iron and steel manufacturing firm.

My uncle's company folded about two months into the recession and that left my Uncle with a month's severance pay and the unemployment line. Surviving on about $150.00 a week was next to impossible for a family of four. My Aunt Rose supplemented Uncle Ralph's unemployment but in tough times, waitress's income suffer just as much. Needless to say, my Uncle was crushed and psychologically didn't fare well.

Uncle Ralph had been a social drinker but he fell under the spell of hard liquor to wash away his problems. One night he lost it all when he was driving home from a night at a local bar, stewed to the gills. He ran a red light in his stupor and took out an unlucky station wagon crossing the intersection in front of him at just the wrong time. He killed the driver, a young mother and a passenger, her infant son.

When the cops got to the scene, my Uncle, his head resting on the steering wheel, was bashed out of his mind. After he was extracted and taken by ambulance to the hospital. His blood-alcohol level was 1.80, twice the legal limit. He was immediately charged with two counts of Vehicular Manslaughter and would be spending the next 25 years in jail. I never saw my Uncle Ralph again.

My Aunt Rose and my two cousins were left penniless and the bank took their house away with a snap of their fingers. Being family, my Father invited them to live with us while things quieted down and to give them a roof over their head until my Aunt Rose could get things together.

I could only see the living arrangements in our house very quickly becoming beyond difficult. Our house, sufficient in size for a family of three would be stuffed to bulging, with the three additional people.

My parents owned a two story Colonial. Downstairs was a nice sized living room with the usual large screen television, a dining room with an appropriately sized dining table, a den off the dining room which my father used as a home office and an eat in kitchen. Upstairs we had three bedrooms and two baths.

One bath was off of the Master Bedroom and the other bathroom was at the end of the hall which ran the length of the house. The hallway was next to the stairway leading between the two floors. My bedroom was at the opposite end of the hallway from the master bedroom and the bedroom in between, was used as a guest room.

I always felt lucky that the second bathroom was next to my bedroom because I had an entrance to the bathroom directly from my bedroom. That meant I didn't have to go out into the hallway to use the facility.

School had just let out for the summer when disaster struck my Aunt and her daughters. Which is why I figured I'd all of a sudden I'd have two girls thrust at me and I would have to deal with constant sullen faces and eyes that were almost always ready to tear up, aside from the girl stuff I was sure I'd have to deal with.