Big Fat Disaster (10 page)

Mom’s gone a long time. When she finally returns, her eyes are puffy and red. She snatches up her purse and snaps, “Let’s go.”

“What’s wrong, Mama?” Drew asks. “Can I still get a puppy?”

Mom doesn’t answer. Drew starts her skipping CD act, asking the same questions again and again, but I squeeze her shoulder and shake my head at her.

We get in the car. Mom pulls away from the leasing office without even putting on her seat belt, and she never gets in a car without buckling up. She screeches her tires out of the parking lot and shoots into the intersection, causing us to nearly get creamed by oncoming traffic.

I’m freaking out. “Mom! Are you okay?”

She cuts the wheel into the Walmart parking lot across the street, speeds to the rear of the building, and parks next to a dumpster.

I grab her arm. “Mom!
What happened?
What’s wrong?”

She laughs crazily, shakes her head rapidly, withdraws her cell phone from her purse, and dials. Mom sounds like a machine gun,
rat-a-tat-tatting
her words: “Reese Thomas Denton, I
know
you won’t call me back, but I found out that you opened credit card accounts in both of our names. I’m sure
you
know this, but we owe over a hundred thousand dollars! A. Hundred. Thousand. Dollars. You haven’t been making any payments and maybe
you
don’t care, but you’ve ruined my credit right along with yours.” She hits the steering wheel: “I [
Slam
!] didn’t [
Slam
!] even [
Slam
!] know about this! [
Slam Slam Slam Slam
!]” She screams, and Drew and I put our hands over our ears.

I guess Dad’s phone cuts her off, because she redials his number and babbles, “
How
am I supposed to find a place for our children to live when I can’t pass a credit check, Reese? We have nowhere to go! Nowhere! What have you
done
to us? We’re going to be homeless!”

Mom throws her phone to the floorboard and pounds the steering wheel some more, then presses her forehead against it and weeps.

Drew throws herself face-down in the back seat and wails, “I don’t
want
to be homeless!…You said I could get a puppy!”

We drive back to Northside in silence. Drew sleeps and Mom stares straight ahead. I’m spring-loaded with anxiety and watching her every second because I’m afraid she’s going to zone out and drive us into oncoming traffic.

We arrive home around nine that night to find business cards and sticky notes tacked to our front door. Reporters want just five minutes and they promise to be fair, divorce lawyers want to represent Mom, and our neighbors want us out—
now
.

Late the next morning, I’m snoozing when the phone starts ringing. I groan loudly, “Somebody get the phone!” Nobody does. I roll over and just get back to sleep when it rings again. “Arrrrgh!”

I throw open my door and stomp to the kitchen. I rip the note off the cabinet: “
Running errands. Back soon
.” I snatch the phone off the charger and growl, “Hello!”

The voice is tentative. “…Sonya?”

“She’s not here. May I take a message?”

“Um, is this Rachel?”

I know I sound pissy, but I don’t care. “No, she lives in Oregon now. Who’s this?”

“This is Leah. Who is
this
?”

My stomach clenches when she says her name. “It’s Colby.” I move to the dining room table and sit on the edge of a chair.

“Oh, hey, Colby, I’m returning your mom’s phone call. She left a message for me late last night, but I didn’t get it until this morning.” Leah waits like she’s expecting me to say something else, but I don’t. “…Anyway, tell your mom that the answer is not just yes, but
absolutely
yes. You guys are more than welcome to it.”

“Uh, we’re welcome to what?”

“The trailer behind my house. You didn’t know? When Dale stopped by last week and told me about your dad and mom having…problems, I sent a letter with him for your mom, offering use of the trailer behind my house for as long as you need it. Your mom left a message last night saying she’d take it, if the offer still stands.”

“You mean, like, a trailer to move our stuff?”

Leah laughs. “No! To live in, silly! It’s a single-wide mobile home.”

“Where do you live?”

“That’s right; you’ve never visited me. I live in Piney Creek, in East Texas. It’s small and real country. But that’s a good thing, because I can have a trailer behind my house and nobody cares.”

“Oh…Okay. Well, thanks. I’ve…got to go.”

“Please have your mom call me when she gets back. We’ll figure out the next step.”

Ever since she and my Uncle Mark split up seven years ago, Aunt Leah’s been pretty standoffish as far as family gatherings. Before the divorce, she, Uncle Mark, and Ryan came over to our house a lot, although she and Dad always got into arguments easily. So, we were surprised when Leah and Ryan agreed to come to the Fourth of July picnic at a state park near Uncle Dale’s house in Louisiana. Even after she stopped coming around, Aunt Leah still sent us birthday cards, usually with a ten-dollar bill tucked inside. Mom and Dad cautioned us to watch out for her because she’s “unstable” and prone to blowing things out of proportion just to get attention.

“Whatever you do,” Mom told Rachel and me before the Fourth of July picnic, “don’t bring up Uncle Mark, politics, or religion, because that’ll start a fight.”

I thought that those were weird things to warn us about. Did she think I was going to say, “Hi, Aunt Leah! Tell me: What was it like to have Uncle Mark arrested for beating the shit out of you?…Election Day’s coming up! You’re registered to vote, right?…So, been to church lately?”…I mean,
really
.

On the Fourth of July, Dad was grilling burgers when Aunt Leah parked her yellow VW bug next to my grandparents’ motor coach. Ryan got out first. He wore a neon orange cast on his wrist, and his face showed fading bruises and fresh scars that looked like he’d had stitches.

Grandma immediately raised a fuss about it: “Oh, my
goodness
, darling! Were you in a car crash?”

He looked down and shook his head.

“What on earth happened to you, boy?” Uncle Dale asked a little gruffly. “Did you take second place in an ass-kicking contest?”

Ryan kind of snorted, then moved to the trunk and popped it open. He pulled out their small ice chest, then slammed the lid closed.

Leah emerged from her car and everybody looked her up and down, too. I remembered her as not being very tall, but she was a lot heavier since the last time I saw her. She was wearing a snug tank top that showed off a tattooed wreath of flowers stretching from her back, across her shoulders, and down into the gap between her breasts. Elaborate vines wrapped her upper arms and wound all the way down to her fingers.

Dad glanced at Leah, and his mouth stretched into a smirk. He shook his head disapprovingly and spat, “Nice ink, Hoss.”

I guess Aunt Leah didn’t hear him, but she couldn’t help but hear Grandpa when he unfolded his mountain-sized self from the camping chair by the picnic table and bellowed, “My God Almighty, Leah Jane, what have you
done
to yourself?”

Leah narrowed her eyes. “Nice to see you, too, Daddy. Well, I guess what I’ve done is driven nearly three hours to see my family for the first time in several years, and this is how you greet me.”

Her eyes ran over my sisters and me, standing with our arms crossed just like the rest of the jury. She gave us the tiniest of smiles. “Drew, I haven’t seen you since you were barely walking. You girls sure have gotten big.”

Rachel and Drew cut their eyes to me and I mumbled, “She means we’re
older
, okay?”

Rachel hissed, “Yeah, right.”

Uncle Dale’s wife, Aunt Judy, insisted on carrying the ice chest for Ryan. “Oh, honey, let me help.”

She took it from him. He stepped back and mumbled what might have been, “Thanks.”

Later, as we took turns cranking the homemade ice cream maker, Leah cleared her throat and said, “This seems as good a time as any to bring this up.” She ran a finger over the vines on one hand, tracing them over and over. She and Ryan exchanged a look, and she began, “Ryan’s injuries are from three boys attacking him on the last day of school. He spent a week in the hospital.”

Grandma blurted, “Why didn’t you call us? We would have been there in a heartbeat!”

Leah swallowed hard, and her lips quivered. “Well, after the reaction you had to me leaving Mark, I didn’t think you…you know”—she shrugged—“were…interested…in being there for us. I mean, over the last seven years, you haven’t
done
anything to change that impression.”

Grandpa’s voice was flat. “It may have been seven years, but my rule is the same as it’s been your whole life. If
you
create the problem for
yourself
,
you
clean it up
yourself
. You
chose
to leave that marriage. It’s not my job to rescue you—especially given the way you did it: involving the press in your personal business! You nearly killed Mark’s career! And, from the looks of you, I’d say I made a good call. You—a grown woman—covering yourself in that—that—trash! What do people think when they see you?”