by Lincoln Cole
“That doesn’t make you worthless.”
“Yes it does,” the kid said. “Makes me completely worthless.”
“What the hell happened to put you on the street?”
“You want to know what happened? Fine.”
“Let’s wait for—”
Ben ignored him: “When I was a kid my Dad used to beat me. Not that often, just once in a while. Maybe twice a week. It’s the only thing I remember about him from when I was little. But, he didn’t just beat me. He beat my Mom, too. I remember this one time, he came home falling-down drunk and told me I was a little shit. A good for nothing little shit.
“My Mom told him to leave me alone. To back off because I didn’t deserve to get hit. Hit her instead. I think that’s the part that got to me, the fact that she told him to hit her, just so he wouldn’t hit me. She was always trying to protect me, but the asshole just didn’t care.
“It never worked, of course. He would end up hitting us both, and then tell her not to try and control him. And she didn’t. That was the thing. She loved him. Or at least she loved whatever version of him she imagined him being.
“After a while I think she just lost touch with reality. She had lied to herself so long that she couldn’t even keep it all straight anymore. It doesn’t really matter, because she never stood up to him. He would hit me, and she would watch, and then she would tell me it wasn’t my fault, it’s just how he was.
“When I turned nine he just left. Disappeared and didn’t say a word. Not even a goodbye. I asked my Mom where he went and she just said she didn’t know. She loved him and missed him and just didn’t know where he went.
“Except that wasn’t the answer I was looking for. I was just a kid, but I still wanted my Mom to be honest with me. Did she throw him out? Did he not love us anymore?”
Richard leaned back in his chair as Ben spoke. The kid became more and more animated as he got into the story, barely noticing that Richard was sitting there at all.
“Not that it really mattered to me, you know? But my sister Lydia, she loved him. She was younger than me and Daddies little angel, so she took it harder than I did when he left. She would beg and plead to know where he went.
“Mom wouldn’t even talk about him, just pretended like he never existed, and we were supposed to pretend the same. I hate when parents do that. I hate it. We might have been little kids, but that doesn’t mean ‘because I said so’ is a good enough answer, you know?
“Like I said, I didn’t care. All I remembered about him was hitting me and hitting my Mom, so I didn’t really give a shit if he was dead in a ditch or not. Probably found someone to take my Mom’s place and never looked back.
“For Lydia it was harder. She kept a lot bottled up inside. You know, not talking much. She was a quiet girl and kept to herself. And she was smart. Book smart from reading all the time, but she was also a scared little girl who missed her Dad a lot.
“I never really realized just how bad it was before…” Ben hesitated and cleared his throat. “She would come to me all the time and tell me Dad was going to come home. ‘Dad’s coming back,’ she would say to me. ‘He will come back, you’ll see.’
“I’d ask her how she could possible know, because we never heard from him or about him. He was just gone.
“’But he will,’ she would say. And she believed it. ‘You’ll see. He’ll come back and we can be a family again.’
“I never had the heart to tell her that it wouldn’t happen. I didn’t even have the heart to tell her how he’d hit me when I was little. She was too young to remember. All I knew was that I didn’t want that lying pathetic man back in my life.
“I would just agree with her, and she would tell me that it would go back to normal; that Dad would protect us and take care of us and things would be good. Things would be great.”
Ben fell silent for a minute, lost in his memories. Richard listened to the kid speak, a flash of déjà vu hitting him. “But they weren’t, were they?” Richard prompted, trying to keep the kid from brooding too much.
“No,” Ben said. “Not at all. Our Mom drank. A lot. It didn’t really start until I turned fourteen but all I really remember was her being drunk. We would come home from school and she would be trashed. We would go to bed, and she would have a bottle in her hand. It was no wonder Lydia idealized her Dad. She had to think at least one of her parents wasn’t useless.
“Mom was usually lying on the couch. She would get her welfare checks and use it on alcohol, then get food stamps and trade them for money for more booze. The only time she talked to us was when she was telling us to get her things. Another beer. A towel. Something to eat.
“If we said no she would scream at us and call us ‘ungrateful little brats’. The only food we got was from school.
“I remember coming home one night after a school party,” Ben continued, eyes on the floor and absorbed in the memory. He chuckled. “I saw her passed out on the couch. It was almost Christmas and she was wearing a skimpy outfit. Something slutty, like a slutty angel or something. She’d gone to a bar drinking and staggered home drunk.
“Anyway, she kind of woke up when I came into the room and told me to get her something. I couldn’t tell what she was saying, she slurred so much. I told her so, and she got pissed at me and tried to stand up. She staggered to the side and fell into a table, collapsing it and passing out. When she woke up the next morning, she didn’t remember it happening.”
“Did she ask about it?”
Ben shook his head. “No, she never brought it up. She said she didn’t remember, but I think she knew. I think she was just too embarrassed to admit it.”
Richard leaned back in his chair. “Sounds harsh.”
“It was crazy, when I look back at it. That Christmas Lydia had just turned eight. She’d cut herself trying to make ornaments in the living room, and Mom was drunk.
“I asked her why the hell she was trying to make ornaments. We didn’t even have a Christmas tree. But Lydia didn’t care. Her teacher showed the class how to cut them out of paper, and she wanted to make some. She just wanted to do something to pretend like it was a happy Christmas. Like it was a real holiday and we were a real family.
“I tried waking Mom up because the cut was really deep, but Mom didn’t even budge. We ended up using super glue and tissues to close the wound. Lydia ended up having to have surgery on her hand later, which my Mom was pissed at us for. She said it was Lydia’s fault for being stupid enough to get herself cut, and she deserved it.”
Ben paused here and looked up at Richard.
“How the hell are you supposed to make friends when your mom is a drunk and your Dad left? We were outcasts, shunned by everyone we met. I didn’t have any friends, and I didn’t really want any either. I was just fine being alone, and if those assholes didn’t want to hang out with me that was just fine.
“Everyone knew about our Mom, and some even called her a ‘whore’ at school. To our faces. It hurt, because I still loved her. Because she was still my Mom. But Lydia…she just didn’t know what to do.
“I was sixteen when I started drinking. It only made sense, when you really think about it. I’m not sure if I did it for attention or because it was the only thing we had around the house.
“Mom never said a word. Maybe it validated her own addiction. I don’t know.
“All I know is I started drinking, and I drank a lot. I was good at it. I guess because it ran in the family. I dropped out of school my senior year because I just didn’t care anymore. What was there to care about, at that point? I was failing most of my classes and skipping every other day.”
Ben paused, rubbing a hand across his mouth.
“Ever drink?” he asked Richard.
“Occasionally,” Richard said.
“What’s your drink of choice?”
“Tequila,” Richard said. “Top shelf.”
“Not me,” Ben replied. “Whiskey all the way. Scotch is my favorite when I c
an get my hands on it.”
“Scotch is good,” Richard said. “But a little too harsh for me. If I drink whiskey, it has to be smooth.”
“I can see that.”
“So you dropped out?” Richard said. “That isn’t so bad. A lot of people don’t finish high school.”
“Dropping out? No way, that was nothing. Didn’t bother me then, and still doesn’t bother me now. I was never that smart.
“Lydia was the smart one. She had a lot of talent,” Ben continued, eyes falling back to the floor. “I suppose I can’t really say that. Everyone always says that about family. Most of the time I assume people are full of crap when they say stuff like that. Everyone thinks that people in their family are really smart, and truth is most of them aren’t.”
Richard nodded. “Fifty percent of all people are below average.”
Ben shrugged. “Sure. All I know is Lydia was smarter than me, and since she didn’t have a lot of friends she spent a lot of time studying. She stopped talking about Dad and grew up from my little sister into a teenager. We knew she would go to college and be successful. She had to, because what else was there?
“When she got a scholarship for a full ride we were elated. Mom was thrilled. I was ecstatic. It was a small local college, but when you think of how hard that is from our background, it meant the world.
“I remember she got the letter and she came running up to me and gave me a big hug and a kiss on the cheek and she said ‘I did it, I did it.’
“I was so proud of her, because it meant the world that she was going to college. She had so much to overcome, and she did.”
Ben hesitated, still staring at the floor. Richard thought to stop him but was afraid to interrupt.
“Her first year went fine. The second one too. She was on the Dean’s list and everything. Getting straight ‘A’s and really getting her life together.
“Her junior year, though, everything went to shit. She was there for three months. A shy little girl in a world that was a lot meaner than she could really deal with.
“You have to understand, before college, we rarely left the house, okay? We were afraid to go out and do things because of our Mom, so we weren’t really exposed to it all. And here she was at college on a campus surrounded by people she barely understood.
“She wanted to fit in so badly. She wanted to be accepted, and she wanted to be needed by people.
“I would talk to her once a week on the phone and she would tell me all about school. I liked being the big brother, having her open up to me. I liked getting to intimidate all the guys who wanted to date her. She’d never let them meet me, afraid of what I might do, but I liked that. I liked looking after her and protecting her, you know?”
“I know,” Richard said. “I have a little sister too.”
“Yeah, so you know. Anyway, I liked being happy for her. It made me happy just knowing that she was doing okay. I was getting to experience it all through her, because I sure as hell was never going to college.
“I would tease her and make fun of her and tell her that if she was actually studying than she was missing the entire point of college. She was supposed to be having fun. I would tell her college was about having fun and exploring. Go out partying.”
Ben stopped talking here, rubbing his eyes and sniffling. His voice was choked up now, and he laughed a little; a self-deprecating laugh.
“I told her that. I actually told her to go out and party. I said: ‘sis, you need to go to more parties. Live a little.’
“I actually said that. I still look back on it, and part of me wonders if it was my fault. Like I’m partly to blame for what happened to her.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Richard offered.
Ben looked up sharply, as though surprised Richard was still sitting there across from him.
“Of course it wasn’t my fault,” Ben said angrily. “It was never my fucking fault. If I knew whose fault it was his head would be smashed in with a crowbar and he’d be dead in a ditch somewhere,” Ben said with a sudden burst of anger.
The anger ebbed just as quickly as it came and Ben shook his head. “The school said they couldn’t release the identity of her rapist but that things were being handled by the local police.
“They told me Lydia had named somebody for it, pointed the finger, but given her ‘traumatic situation’ they couldn’t verify it. They recommended she take some time off from school because of the incident, but it was really so the guy could finish graduating before she came back. They didn’t want to ruin his time at school by having his rape victim on campus with him. The school didn’t want to risk the two bumping into each other.
“I begged and pleaded with Lydia to give me the guy’s name. Please just give me his name. Just his name. I swore I wouldn’t do anything, I just wanted his name.”
“Would you have done anything?” Richard asked.
“Hell yeah, I would have,” Ben said. “I still would if I knew who the guy was. I would kill him and leave him in a ditch somewhere.
She wouldn’t do it, though. She knew I would kill him. She knew me a lot better than I knew myself, and she didn’t want to add more pain to what she was already experiencing.
“The girl who came home from the hospital after the incident wasn’t the same one that went to college. When Lydia came back it was like she was nine again. Weeping for her Daddy and promising he would come home to them.
“Her strength and confidence in herself were gone. She was sullen and withdrawn, barely able to talk to me about anything. I was still drinking, but much less. I even had a job, so I was able to take care of her while she recovered.
“Except she didn’t recover. She just got worse. More withdrawn. More haunted. She was terrified to leave the house. Literally terrified. Not a little scared like I am of spiders. Petrified and helpless.
“It was horrible to watch. I felt so impotent because nothing I tried worked. I tried cheering her up, I tried yelling at her, and I tried pleading with her. Didn’t help. I couldn’t bring her back out of it.
“She tried to go back a few months later. I helped her enroll, praying she would get better, but it didn’t last. She was there three weeks before she came back home. I asked her what happened. She said nothing. She said she was done and wouldn’t be going back.
“It was another week before she overdosed and died.”
Chapter 23
Richard
Ben stopped talking, visibly crying now. Richard doubted Ben even knew he was still in the clinic; the kid was completely absorbed in his story, reliving painful memories he kept buried.
Richard could relate.
Ben rubbed at his eyes and made a choking sound.
“I found her in the bathroom. I didn’t even know she was using, but she had needle marks all over her arms and between her toes. It wasn’t intentional. At least I don’t think so.
“The funeral was small, only a handful of people, and I remember all I could think about was that Dad never showed up. I don’t even know if he knew she had died. Her Dad never came to protect her.
“That’s when I really started drinking. Like it was my job. I drank like a fiend for about a year, as much as I could get my hands on. I left home after that because I couldn’t stand to look at my Mom anymore.
“I couldn’t stand to see her face. Her lying, stinking face. I think she felt the same way, because she didn’t once ask where I was going. I just wandered out one day and never looked back.
“Town to town, city to city, just traveling and moving and doing just enough work to keep my nights hazy with drink. When I couldn’t find a quick job to make some money, I stole a bottle. Anytime I could get my hands on something I would spend my night staring at the sky and drinking myself into a stupor.
“I rode the trains for a while, because it felt like something you do when you don’t have a place called home, but it wasn’t for me. I was a walker. I would just go from place to place. Hitchhike when I could but that
wasn’t very often. I just had to keep moving.
“I spent about a year doing that before I realized what was happening to me. How bad I was getting. I thought constantly about Lydia. She was never far from my mind, and I drank to forget about her. I also drank because…a part of me—a large part—wanted to join her.
“I would get drunk and when I couldn’t get drunk I would start thinking about killing myself. Join Lydia. I would think about how I would do it. I was miserable and hateful and pathetic. I know that I would never actually kill myself, because I’m too much of a coward, but part of me thought I should.
“I went home because I was afraid I had really lost it all. That I would give up and let my depression win. I felt useless, horrible, and lost, and I knew without a doubt that if something didn’t change I would hit that place you can’t come back from.
“If that happened, I might really have done it; you know, kill myself. I heard somewhere that it’s genetic, like we are predisposed to kill ourselves because of our genes. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but it could be.
“Anyway, Mom was gone when I got home. She’d left town months earlier and hadn’t given a forwarding address. But an Uncle of mine on my Mom’s side named Roger offered to take me in.
“He wanted to give me a place to stay until I could get on my feet and decide what I wanted to do with my life. He lived out in the country with his wife and dog. He hated my mother, partly because she wasn’t a Christian like him but mostly because she married my father.
“I think he took me in because, to him, it was the Christian thing to do and because he felt terrible about what happened to his niece. He liked to tell me about Lydia, that she deserved better, like I didn’t know that.
“His only condition for bringing me in was that I never take another sip of alcohol. He told me he would have to throw me out if I ever drank again, even a sip, because then he would know he couldn’t trust me. That was his only condition.
“And I was done,” Ben added. “Totally and completely ready to get off the stuff and get my life together. It was time for me to grow up; to stop living in the past, you know? I was more committed to that than anything else in my life.”
