Rich Homeless Broken But Beautiful

by Ian Tremblay

  RICH

  HOMELESS

  BROKEN

  BUT BEAUTIFUL

  A Novel by Ian Tremblay

  Rich Homeless Broken But Beautiful

  Copyright © Ian Tremblay, 2015

  All rights reserved. No parts of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted electronically or mechanically, neither photocopying nor recording are permitted without permission of the author.

  Cover design and book design/layout by Anouk Firmin

  All characters, names and events in this book are fictional. Any resemblance to actual people or occurrences is purely coincidental.

  Digital book(s) (epub and mobi) produced by Booknook.biz.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1 - Coming of Age

  Chapter 2 - Tragedy

  Chapter 3 - Wanderings

  Chapter 4 - Coming Home

  About The Author

  Chapter 1

  COMING OF AGE

  Linda Staunton had grown impervious to their advances-impervious, but not indifferent. From boys that is, and later men. Already at a very young age they had begun pursuing her. Chasing her would probably be more exact, and their countless queries were incessant and sometimes laced with an urgency that was certainly more invented than real. It was as if their quests had become their raison d'etre and their very lives depended on her reaction. Linda had grown accustomed to this multitude of advances; she had learned to deal with them as elegantly and as diplomatically as possible. It was an endless stream of propositions-to go to the movies or to see a show, to just hang out or to go to a football game, to be their girlfriends or to be just friends, and even sometimes, to marry them. In short, to do anything she wanted, now, tomorrow, whenever, whatever. The offers were continuous and incessant and resembled more a bombardment than anything else. The heat had really turned up when she had turned sixteen. Already at that age she was an uncommon beauty, strikingly magnificent, a heart stopper, pure and perfect, strong and stellar, fragile and feminine. She had been gifted with all the best possible physical and mental attributes a human being can posses. When she walked into a room, there was an explosion of brilliance, magnificence, and perfection, comparable to the appearance of a fantastic celestial mega body that renders astronomers and scientists speechless. Her thick black hair was shoulder length, lustrous, and bouncy, curling slightly at the ends, and her eyes were the bluest of blues, as the clear azure of a cloudless summer sky. Her skin was delicate and not too white, more like a cream color with shades of healthy pink. She had an incredibly unique smile. It was inviting and warm and just simply fantastic. It was her best trait, and her grandmother called it "that trillion-dollar smile." Linda was a tall girl who held her head high and carried herself with elegance and grace. She was poised and warm and respectful of all. It was an innate trait of her being and of her character. Life emanated from her with tenderness and passion, and she was inhabited by the fragility and the sensitivity of those beings who, by the very eloquence of their natural persons, are, by definition, beings plus.

  In short, Linda Staunton was a stunner, and her life was a constant flow of boys and men coming onto her. She had developed skills to deal with this reality and had learned how to brush them off politely, without hurting their feelings, or how to slide out of a situation, gently but firmly. Guys were so predictable in their approaches, always using the same lame lines, that it made it easy for her. It was as if they were begging to be brushed off. A lot of times they would just come up to her and gawk, or utter some predictable banality, or even yet, be such awkward idiots and totally unable to express the most basic emotion that it was easy for her to send them packing. Of course, with some guys she had to be firmer, because they just did not get the brush off, or they were so full of themselves that they could not believe she was politely saying no. The multiplicity of these situations gave Linda a lot of power and made the other girls intensely jealous; she did not abuse that power, however, and treated every girl with respect and kindness and continuously downplayed the effect she had on her male entourage. Linda Staunton was not pretentious about her beauty. She carried it with grace and dignity; exceptional beauty could not have been given to a kinder or a more generous person. Sometimes life in the distribution of its blessings does things right. This was one of those times.

  Once, she had been in an airport lounge waiting to take off to Florida for spring break with three of her girlfriends. They were waiting for their plane to be called when an older gentleman approached them. He was dressed in a very elegant beige suit, with a matching shirt and a large, colorful bowtie. His freshly cut hair was clean, white as snow, and fell to his shoulders. On his head was a large café au lait brimmed hat, the kind you see worn by lifelong residents of the Caribbean. He walked with the help of a most unusual black sculptured cane, which could have come from the confines of Africa or some other exotic and mysterious place.

  He slowly came up to where Linda and her friends were sitting and with great poise and confidence; he tipped his hat in Linda's direction and said, "Excuse me, miss, although I am sure I am quite out of line here and I do not want in any way to seem rude or anything, but I must confess that I have been observing you for the past twenty minutes or so from over there." He pointed to the other end of the lounge with his cane. "And I just had to come over here to confirm what I saw. I must say my eyesight is better that I thought. You miss, are the most exquisitely beautiful woman I have seen in a very, very long time, and believe me, I know these things." He smiled to Linda, just looking at her for a few seconds, and buried deep in his pale blue eyes was a mischievous twinkling, a je ne sais quoi of unforgettable memories and past encounters with love and beauty. Linda blushed and looked at him in shock, unable to speak; she managed a nervous smile and blurted out,

  “Well…eh…thank you, sir.”She turned toward her girlfriends for support, but they just shrugged in unison and said nothing.

  "You're very welcome, miss." He smiled to her again, tipped his hat, and said to her girlfriends, "Ladies, please excuse my most impolite intrusion, and I do wish you all a very pleasant trip." He turned and walked gracefully back to where he had come from.

  The girls had nervously giggled it off, but Linda had been touched and surprised by the gentleman's approach. At the time she was still young and unsure of herself and when people walked up to her like that, it freaked her out quite a bit; she thought it was just too much. She was conflicted about her looks, and she always had been. She both hated and loved the reaction of men to her looks. She knew it gave her power in a sense, yet she was unsure about what to do with it, if anything at all. It was scary at times, and she could not really talk about these fears or thoughts to anyone, especially not her mother, who considered her looks an asset that would help her get ahead in life. To Linda, it was just the way she looked, and she wished everybody wouldn't make such a big deal about it. She wanted more out of life than just to be pretty, and that was one of the reasons why she studied so hard. Her ambition was to become a veterinarian and to work with animals. She loved animals, and it was a job she knew she would love, but most of all, she wanted to prove to herself and to the world that she could do something useful and meaningful with her life and not just be the prettiest girl on the block.

  There was, however, one lesson that life had taught Linda Staunton more than anything else, and that was poverty. She knew about poverty and how it was to be poor-dirt poor that is. She had been raised in it, real poverty-the one that is closer to misery than anything else. Her mother had raised her and her two sisters and one brother single-handedly. Her father had disappeared one day when Linda was nine; she vaguely reme
mbered him. Her mother had been thirty at the time, and her sisters and brother were seven, five, and four. It had been very hard on all of them, especially her mom. She had had no time to brood on the whereabouts of her deadbeat husband, however, and to feed and care for her children became her one and only priority. She had gotten a job at a local factory and Linda's grandmother Florence, or Grandma Flo, as they all affectionately called her, came over five days a week to help with the chores and with the children. How cruelly in those young years Linda had felt the wrath of poverty. There was never enough of anything, and her mother's wages barely covered the rent and the food, never mind the doctors' bills, medicine, clothes, school supplies, and so on. The list was long of things they needed and had to go without. Every penny was accounted for, every slice of bread calculated, leftovers became tomorrow's meals, clothes were passed on down to the young, as were shoes. Linda remembered once how a pair of semi-white shoes that had belonged to her had been passed on down to her younger brother Derek. She had felt so bad for him at the time. It was bad enough for him that they were girl's shoes, but the worst was that the black polish her mother had used to make them black did not hide all the white. At the time, Derek had been devastated, and to him it had seemed like the end of the world.

  "It's okay Derek, no one will notice. You know, it doesn't show that much. Just wear your pants real low, okay?" Linda had done her best to uplift his spirits at what he considered to be a catastrophe. His baby blue eyes were filled to the brim, and tears rolled down his round pink cheek.

  "I'd rather go barefoot, Linda," he sniffled, wiping the tears from his cheek. "Everybody will laugh at me; I don't want to go to school."

  Linda took him by the shoulders and looked him straight in the eyes. "Look, Derek, I promise no one will make fun of you, okay? I will see to that. Just remember to wear your trousers really low, you got that?" Linda gave him her best smile, and he half smiled back, only partially reassured.

  "Okay, Linda, thanks," he added while wiping his tears with both his forearms.

  Of course the other boys and girls at school made fun of him, with all the cruelty of boys and girls of that age. As a matter of fact, they had a field day with it, for days Derek suffered the constant and vicious rile of his peers. He resisted well to their attacks, all things considered, and had been strong in the face of adversity of the worst kind.

  Linda had never forgotten that. God she had felt bad for poor little Derek. It had broken her heart. She knew that what her brother was going through was because of their poverty, their deep, absolute poverty. It was the kind of poverty that leaves wounds, profound wounds, on all those who live and exist in its formidable grip, especially children. For Linda, her brother, her sisters, and her mother, poverty was their shepherd and their keeper; they belonged to poverty, as it belonged to them. It reminded them of that every day, with the occasional pangs of hunger or the unavailability of simple necessities. They lived within the confines of its invisible boundaries, prisoners of their dire economic conditions and burdened with its inherent humiliation. In a country that idealizes wealth and the accumulation of property, they were on the low end of every scale.

  Linda had suffered tremendously all through her youth because of her family's condition. When she was little, she had actually believed for a long time that poverty was as present inside a person as it was visible from their exterior. She thought that people who saw them walk down the street could actually see through them and instantly knew they were poor, no matter how carefully her mother had dressed or cleaned them. To have lived up close and personal with poverty at a young age was a bitter lesson that life had imposed on her. Linda had been profoundly hurt and ashamed of her family's condition; it had been the dominating sentiment of her youth

  Linda helped her mother as much as she could with the chores and the kids' homework. Her grandparents also did all they could, although they were not rich and subsided on her grandfather's meager pension. They were always there for them, especially her grandmother Flo, and although she suffered terribly from arthritis, she never once complained. She cooked and cleaned and scolded and encouraged, always cheerfully energetic and always strong. She was the rock that they all hung unto in their time of desperate need.

  For the Stauntons' there was never any vacation in Florida, or summer trips to Maine, or weekends at Disney World or Las Vegas. No car either, or any other luxury of any kind whatsoever. There was nothing in their lives that was not essential; it was the nature of their condition. They did, however, have the love they had for each other. For Linda this was everything. She loved her family fiercely and they loved her back, equally unconditionally. Love was the bond that united them and kept them close and strong. As for the exterior world, well, Linda had a built an armor to deal with that, and she used it to put on a defiant face when she needed to do so, even though she was burning and suffering inside. There had been so many nights that she had cried herself to sleep, cursing the world for having been born poor, that she had lost count. All the hurt and pain of those early years had thickened the foundation of her heart and soul and had made her a stronger, better person. She did not realize this at the time, and that realization would not come to her until much later in her life and then, that was under very different circumstances.

  Then, in her last years at high school, things began to change for Linda Staunton, a change that helped put her family's poverty on the back burner, at least in her mind. Boys began acting differently with her, and they became overly attentive, showering her suddenly with compliments and invitations. It confused her at first; she did not understand what was going on and did not fully realize that over the course of the past few years her features and body had changed dramatically. They had exploded, and she had become a spectacularly beautiful young girl. Everyone in her presence, whether male or female, was awed by her looks, and it took her a while to adjust to that. It did help, however, to make those last years in high school joyous ones for her, even though the situation at home remained the same. She was the undeclared star of the school, and just about every boy was secretly or openly attracted or infatuated with her and wanted to date her. Of course, this situation made a lot of the girls bitterly jealous, especially Diane Sorenson. Diane considered Linda a nobody, someone who had nothing to offer-no family connections, no money, no parties, no clothes, or car. In short, she was nothing and had to be totally ignored. That was exactly what Diane Sorenson and her coterie of fans and hangers on had always done. After all, there was nothing in the world that Linda Staunton had that they wanted-well, except for her looks maybe and her boyfriend.

  "Watch out for that little bitch," Diane would hiss. "She will steal all of our boyfriends. She's poison, be very careful. I mean, shit, she doesn't even have one single decent thing to wear; can you believe that? I don't get it, guys are such morons. It should be illegal for them to make their own choices." Her coterie nodded their heads in approval, as they always did. None of them would ever have dared to challenge her about anything anyway, especially about how she felt about Linda Staunton.

  "What does Richard see in her anyway?" Diane was referring to Richard Benson, the very talented quarterback of their high school football team and all-around hunk extraordinaire. Richard Benson was six feet two with blond hair and blue eyes and a zillion gallons of charm. He was the favorite conversation subject of just about every girl in school. He was the catch of the catches; it enraged Diane to the extreme that he had chosen Linda Staunton as a girlfriend. She seethed with envy and jealousy.

  "Maybe he's light in the head or something," a steaming Diane led her friends down the school corridor, fueled by her own sense of unfairness and rage. "I think he's been knocked around too much playing football, and well, he certainly has a problem seeing correctly." Her sarcasms about Linda's looks were legion, "oh well, who cares anyway." Her entourage made no comment. After all, Linda's looks were to all of them self-evidently astounding. It was a blatant truth that even Diane's blind jealous
y could not change and that they cautiously kept to themselves. Just as they turned a corner, the group saw Linda and Richard hand in hand walking their way. Diane slowed down and began swaying her hips suggestively. She kept her head high and looked directly at Richard as the group passed the couple.

  "Hello, Richard." She looked him straight in the eyes, smiling enticingly and ignoring Linda completely.

  "Oh hi, Diane, ladies," Richard smiled to them all as he and Linda passed them by.

  "Hi, Richard," all the other girls behind Diane answered together in unison.

  Richard turned toward Linda and gave her his, "Hey, what can I say?" smile. Linda smiled back.

  "I love you when you smile like that, Richard Benson. You're so bloody loveable," she said and laughed heartily.

  "What do you mean?" He shrugged and had an innocent look on his face.

  "You know what, don't play dumb now." She looked at him with a touch of mischief.

  "Okay, I was just trying to be nice, that's all. I do have to be nice and polite to everybody, you know."

  "Yeah, I know you do. Just don't forget that you're mine."

  "Linda, I love you and only you. You're my all and everything. I don't care about those other girls." He pointed with his thumb backward to the girls they had just passed.

  "Neither do I," she quickly responded. They looked at each other and he realized that she had been pulling his leg a bit, and they both broke out laughing.

  Although they were now well past the girls and Diane Sorenson, their complicity and laughter echoed loudly against the cold gray school corridors, pounding Diane Sorenson's oversized ego with their joy and their love. Diane was seething, she put up a solid front for her entourage, but deep inside her conniving heart, the smoldering seeds of intense jealousy, were ignited and burning furiously.