A Slow Ruin

by Pamela Crane

  “I don’t understand. Where are they?”

  Tears pooled in his eyes, his shoulders slumped defeatedly, and suddenly I felt panic. Something had happened while he was gone.

  He patted his lap for me to sit, like I’d done countless times as a girl.

  I slowly walked to him and sat. He hugged me and wept.

  “I’m scared, Dad.” I didn’t know what to think. Only a dark brooding feeling that my wish had come true. That my parting words to my mother—we’d all be better off if you died and went to hell—had come to pass.

  “It’s gonna be okay.”

  “Daddy, what happened? Please tell me.”

  “Your mom…died, kiddo. We made it to the hospital but she OD’d. Nothing they could do. The drugs she had taken…it was too much. But when you use like she does, the stuff eventually kills ya. I’m so sorry, sweetie.”

  I didn’t have any shock left in me. Only relief. “What about Mom’s…body?” I asked, dreading the answer.

  “Oh, uh…the hospital’s going to take care of her cremation. I can’t afford a real funeral, honey. The hospital said they’d give me the ashes in an urn at some point.”

  “But what happened to the baby?”

  He wiped his face dry. “I gave her away. A really nice lady has her now. From the looks of her car, mighty rich, too.” He took his wallet out from his back pocket and opened it for me to see several bills, bills I’d never seen in real life, all fifties and hundreds.

  “She’ll give her the life she deserves so that I can give you the life you deserve. I can’t raise a newborn. But with just you and me, we’ll be okay. You can understand that, can’t ya, kiddo?”

  The emotions swirling inside me were so convoluted I didn’t know what I was feeling. Sadness. Anger. Grief. Relief. Pain.

  Lots and lots of pain.

  I wrapped my arms around my second dad, weeping all the sorrow out together. I had never seen him cry before then, and I would never see him cry again. Though he wore his sadness every day. I saw through the fake smiles and awful dad jokes he tried to mask it with. This was the first time he was real with me. And maybe even a little hopeful.

  “Did you at least make sure the baby had her velveteen rabbit with her?”

  “Of course. She’ll have it to always remember you by.”

  I kissed his rough cheek. “We’ll be okay.”

  “Because we’re built tough.” He smiled. “What do you call an alligator in a vest?”

  I grinned weakly. “What?”

  “An investigator.”

  I chuckled, not because it was funny but because Dad needed it.

  “How about you take a $100 and get yourself a new wardrobe?” He handed me his wallet as he got up and walked to the kitchen, stirring the Hamburger Helper and smelling it with a satisfying mmm.

  I laughed for real this time that Dad thought I could buy a decent wardrobe for $100. But I learned how to stretch a dollar. I pulled out the bill and noticed a name written across the top:

  Felicity Portman

  In my dad’s neat block handwriting.

  Never before had we had this kind of cash. I wondered if this money was a payment from the nice lady who adopted my sister. Pocketing the bill, I memorized that name, Felicity Portman, because I had a feeling one day I would need it.

  Chapter 38

  Marin

  Eight years ago…

  For my twentieth birthday I decided to treat myself to freedom. I didn’t have enough cash from waitressing and doing community theatre to treat myself to a spa day like I would have preferred, but freedom was the next best thing.

  Tiptoeing to where my father sprawled out on the couch, asleep while watching archeologists uncover the mysteries of ancient Egypt on the History Channel, I kissed his forehead. He stirred, eyelids fluttered open, gazed hazily up at me.

  “Hey, kiddo.” I loved how he still called me kiddo, when ironically I felt like I’d never been a kid. “Ya need something?” His breath reeked of whiskey, assaulting my nose. He shifted to sit up, but I rested my hand on his shoulder.

  “No need to get up, Dad. I’m just heading out for a bit. Go back to sleep.”

  “Mmkay, honey. Could you pick me up a six-pack on your way home?”

  “Sure thing, Dad.”

  I turned to leave, but his hand touched mine, stopping me. “The past, present, and future walk into a bar…” I grinned, already knowing the punchline. He’d told me this one before.

  “It was tense,” I said with a light chuckle.

  “Aw, I musta told you that one already.”

  “Nah, I’m just that clever, Dad.”

  “Ya really are, kiddo. Ya really are.”

  I would miss his riddles, his lame jokes, the humor he always tried to infuse into our family even during the most difficult times. One last kiss on his head, then I headed out the front door, where I had already dropped off two duffel bags. I loved Bennett, but I didn’t love how much he had become like my mother over the years. I guess death and depression did that to a person. Changed them. Emptied them. Destroyed them.

  I couldn’t watch Bennett’s demise anymore, so on my twentieth birthday, I packed everything I owned, which wasn’t much beyond what I could fit in two large Army duffel bags I’d swiped from Mom’s closet after my real dad died. Then I bought a one-way ticket heading out West, to Hollywood, where dreams either went to bloom or die. Community theatre wasn’t paying the bills—nor was waitressing at a dive bar where I was sick of being groped by drunk guys—and I had nothing else to lose. As I hopped in the cab I had called earlier, I watched the home on Mount Washington that I had grown up in, with its yellow brick green with moss and startling front yard view of a sparkling city skyline, disappear behind me.

  The bus station was nearly empty at this late hour, but it was the cheapest ticket they sold, so a red-eye it was. Everyone in my ACA—Adult Children of Alcoholics—group agreed that leaving might be the best decision. Trust my Higher Power. Find something else, somewhere else. Break the chains. Crumble the bondage. Free myself from the past. All those empty mantras that felt meaningless…until now. For once I understood just how powerful they were as each step further away from the brick house that held me hostage crumbled away in the background of my life.

  I sat down on a plastic bench, waiting for the bus as red taillights flickered along distant streets that wound through and around the Steel City. I set my bags at my feet and unzipped one. My finger felt around inside, between folds of clothes, until I contacted the hard ridges. Pulling the item out, it was wrapped in my real dad’s gray Army T-shirt. I had never washed it after he passed, and sometimes I held it to my nose and imagined his scent on it. I unfolded the soft cloth and came face to face with the only memory I brought with me to LA.

  A small framed picture of Mom, Bennett, my newborn baby sister, and me. In the picture I held out the stuffed velveteen rabbit that my dad had given me when I was first born, now out there somewhere in the world keeping my little sister company. She would be seven years old now. I wondered if she still had the rabbit, or if it had ended up in a landfill somewhere. I wondered if Bennett wondered about her every day like I did, or if Mom guarded her from heaven.

  Thoughts of reconnecting with my sibling, of finding Felicity Portman, flittered in and out of my head often. Just to see my sister. Just to make sure she was okay. Every day I resisted it. Every day I shut off the voice. Every day the voice reminded me that it would only cause more devastation than good if I sought her out.

  Sometimes I wasn’t so good at listening to that voice.

  Chapter 39

  Marin

  Five years ago…

  Los Angeles, California, chewed me up and spit me out like a wad of tasteless gum. It was mortifying, going on endless dehumanizing casting calls and being treated like a piece of meat, getting rejected over and over because I wasn’t the right type—too young, too old; too cute, not cu
te enough; and yeah, even too Black, not Black enough. One callback for a speaking part as a police dispatcher wouldn’t pay the bills, but that two-line role at least earned me a lone credit on IMDb. Even the competition for background actors was fierce. After getting a handful of jobs as an extra—and pay bumps for providing my own clothes and, a time or two, miscellaneous props—I couldn’t pay my astronomical rent. Reality set in. The dream popped.

  I hadn’t expected instant fame, though maybe deep down I had. Every wannabe actress clung desperately to the fantasy of being discovered, of basking in the limelight. We expected the unexpected. I fantasized about seeing my face thirty feet tall on the silver screen. My name above the title—that’s how you know you’ve really made it. The press referring to me as the next Kerry Washington. Entertainment Weekly calling me for an interview and photo shoot—talk to my people, ha ha! Except I never got discovered. I never got my limelight. I had wanted it hard, but not hard enough.

  I returned home to Pennsylvania with my tail between my legs and only one person on my mind. The baby who was no longer a baby. My sister.

  The house on Grandview Avenue hadn’t changed since I last walked away. The yellow brick still needed power washing. The railing still left a rusty residue on my hands. As I rang the doorbell, I looked behind me at my gorgeous hometown Pittsburgh landscape, colored in hues of ripe sunset oranges and pinks while deep blue rivers snaked their way through the skyscrapers and mountains. The city held an aloof cinematic splendor that I suddenly realized I had missed.

  When Dad answered the door, I hardly recognized him. Had it been that long?

  “Marin!” He hardly finished my name before he pulled me into a hug that I feared would break every bone in his body. I hated how skeletal he felt in my arms. When he finally released me, I looked him over.

  “Daddy, you look thin. Aren’t you eating?”

  “Eh, your old man is getting too old, kiddo. And I stopped drinking. Totally sober now. Been going to AA and everything. Once I lost my beer gut there wasn’t much left of me.”

  “That’s great! I’m proud of you. Did you get a sobriety chip?”

  “It’s somewhere in the house. My memory isn’t as sharp as it used to be.”

  “When was your memory ever sharp, Dad?”

  He wagged a gnarled finger at me. “True, true.”

  He ushered me into the living room and urged me to sit down. “Let me get ya something to drink.”

  “I can get it.”

  He held his hands out to stop me. “No, no, you sit. You want a pop?”

  I thought back to the time I used that word to describe a soda in LA. It was the last time I would say pop after the ridicule I received.

  I stepped around him. “Dad, I’ve been sitting for fourteen hours straight. I need to stretch my legs anyway, and I’m capable of grabbing myself a drink. What’ll you have?”

  “Same as you’re having,” he called from the living room. His recliner squealed as he dropped into it.

  As I opened the fridge, on the bottom shelf was a six-pack of beer. Sober, huh? Last I heard, if you were trying to stay sober you shouldn’t keep alcohol in the house. And certainly not in the fridge nice and cold and ready to crack open. As I grabbed two orange pops—I was in a safe place to use it again—I decided now wasn’t the time to ask about the beer in the fridge, or the half-empty bottle of whiskey sitting out on the counter. I was too tired to entertain excuses.

  I carried our drinks in, handed Dad his, and sat across from him.

  “Cheers to my prodigal daughter returning home,” he said, lifting his can.

  “Hardly prodigal, Dad. I didn’t have time to be reckless, but cheers anyway.” I leaned forward and clinked mine against his.

  “I’ve been working on some new material,” he said.

  I grinned. Of course our reunion would start off with a riddle. “Give me your best one.”

  “In the morning I have four legs. In the afternoon I have two legs. In the evening I have three legs. What am I?”

  I pretended to think about it, then finally gave up. “I have no idea. What?”

  “A baby, an adult, and an old person with a cane.”

  I chuckled. Oh, Dad.

  “At least the jokes never get old.” Ha.

  “What’s new with you, kiddo?” he asked.

  “LA was a bust.”

  “I’m sorry it didn’t work out, Mare. Did you know they filmed that Fences movie with Denzel Washington and Viola Davis here? In the Hill District, I think. Maybe you could find acting work here in the ’Burg?”

  “Yeah, maybe.” Except I had already given up on the dream. It was too demeaning. “In any case, I’m home for good now. Do you mind if I stay with you until I can find work and a place to live?”

  “You don’t need to ask. Your bedroom hasn’t changed since ya left.”

  “You even left up my Will Smith and Snoop posters?”

  “Even Will and Snoopy are still there.”

  I rolled my eyes. Years of correcting him and he still called the rapper Snoopy.

  “I appreciate it, Dad. I promise it won’t be for long. I already have some stuff planned.”

  I wasn’t going to tell him that the plans involved something illegal. Probably even jail-worthy. He didn’t need to know I had a whole sister-stalking-reunion planned. Better I kept it to myself.

  “You ever think about retiring?”

  His job as a truck driver had been tough on his body. Catching forty winks in the cramped sleeper cab of his rig before hitting the road again, eating at greasy spoons. A body could only take so much abuse.

  “I’ve still got a few more good years left in me. As they say, idle hands are the devil’s tools.”

  From where I was sitting, he didn’t look like he had many good years left. His pallor and jutting cheekbones said there was something severely wrong. Something he wasn’t telling me.

  “You look so much like your mother, Marin. God, I miss Josie so much. Even the crazy parts of her.”

  “C’mon, Dad. It’s been years. Why haven’t you gotten out and tried dating? I could help you find someone. Even if it’s just someone to keep you company.”

  “Nah, there’s no point trying to fill the hole your mom left. I’m too wounded an animal.”

  “Stop being so dramatic. You’re not wounded. You deserve to be happy. Mom would have wanted that for you.”

  He chuckled, then coughed. “Not if it meant me being with someone else! You know your mom woulda wanted me miserable without her.”

  I laughed with him. It was true.

  “Hey, mind if I use the bathroom?” I stood up.

  “It’s right where you left it,” Dad said.

  I slipped into the bathroom and peed eight hours’ worth of gas station coffee mixed with orange soda. As I washed my hands, I noticed a pill bottle on the sink. Picking it up, I read the very long drug name that stretched across the label:

  Leuprolide Acetate

  I grabbed my phone from my pocket and Googled the term. The very first result pulled up the National Cancer Institute website, along with a complex description of what the drug did. All I saw were the words prostate and cancer, and my heart sank. It was the same thing that killed his dad. Hereditary.

  Carrying the bottle out of the bathroom with me, I held it up to Bennett.

  “Care to explain this?”

  He jumped up, the recliner wildly rocking behind him, and grabbed the bottle from me.

  “There’s nothing to explain. I was sick, but I’m getting treatment and will be fine.”

  “Do you have cancer? The same kind your dad had?”

  Dad looked at the floor and shook his head…but it wasn’t a no. It was an apology. When he looked back up at me, his eyes were wet, but he refused to cry.

  “I’m sorry, I should have told you, kiddo. But yeah. Prostate cancer. I didn’t want to worry you, being so far away. I’ll be fine. I�
��m seeing a good doctor. And they caught it early. I’m tough. I know I’ll beat it.”

  Except our family never beat anything. My mother never beat her drug addiction. My dad couldn’t beat the waste of war. Bennett wasn’t beating his alcohol abuse. And I couldn’t beat my demons.

  Chapter 40

  Marin

  Five years ago…

  The little girl swinging on the playground looked nothing like me. It was hard to believe we were biological sisters. She looked just like her father, while I looked like mine. My skin was hazelnut, hers cream. My inky black hair was wild and curly, hers dirty blonde and poker-straight. But our eyes, full of life and light, were the same. I saw our mother in them.

  Even though my life and light had long ago faded.

  Luckily for me, there weren’t many Felicity Portmans in the Pittsburgh area. Or anywhere, for that matter. A little online digging and social media stalking gave me the home address—if you could even call the mansion they lived in a home. A quick property records search showed a house so steeped in opulence and notoriety that it had its own name, the Execution Estate. Not the most welcome-home designation, but who cared when you had three stories of classical-meets-modern splendor?

  The challenging part was figuring out a way to randomly run into Vera Portman—my sister’s name, I came to learn—without drawing attention to myself. I wasn’t even sure why I needed to meet her, or what I would say. I didn’t want to completely upend her world…or did I? I wasn’t sure what I wanted anymore. Just a connection.

  The little girl had constant activities: school, gymnastics class, soccer. I couldn’t just sit in front of their house, spying, and get hauled off by the cops. Lucky for me the house was in a remote, rustic area, and there was a dilapidated barn down the road, reachable by an overgrown cow path from bygone days when the woods were surrounded by farmland. The path was rough on my car, but I was able to park behind the barn and spy on the Portmans with compact binoculars with an excellent zoom—thank you, Amazon! And the few instances where they went out to dinner or to get ice cream—a family favorite, I quickly realized—Vera doted on her little brother, who was always in tow. But my persistence eventually paid off. One random outing to a nearby park, and the golden opportunity presented itself.