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RE: Trailer Trash 44, Before the party.
🕑 Added 2022-10-09 16:51:12 +0000 UTC/// The full chapter 44. Previous chapter renamed to Talking to a boy.
“I been sayin’ it and sayin’ it and sayin’ it. I’m innocent an’ I ain’t done nothin’, like I been done told y’all!” The bleached blonde woman hissed out and then spat a glob of mucus onto the carpet, narrowly missing the table. “So I ain’t gone talk ta nobody ‘til I getta lawyer!”
“Yes Ma’am, that would be me,” Bill said with a straight face, placing down his case documents. “Bill Kennedy, I’ll be representing you.”
He knew better than to make the mistake of offering her a handshake—some of these junkie types could be downright feral when you least expected it. Here in the county office where she’d been scrubbed clean of her makeup, this Lisa Moore woman had that look, that hard look about her, that gangly, drug-ravaged face Bill was all too familiar with. He’d introduced himself to her two days ago, but the woman had been so strung out that the entire encounter was apparently a bleary hallucination to her now.
The small room here was brightly lit and the furnishings were worn, but having the necessary privacy for the usual farce of legal consultation with yet another extremely belligerent defendant would always feel too confining. As absurd and counterproductive as it was, sometimes clients did attack the attorneys assigned to represent them. Especially these twitchy ones like Lisa. They were to a fault always angry, paranoid, and desperate to shift blame to anyone and everyone else, which meant all the professionalism in the world he could muster here was likely to fall on deaf ears.
That didn’t mean his work was pointless—prosecution could and would always attempt to stick charges well beyond whatever his clients actually deserved, and Bill fought hard to balance the scales of justice as best he could. Even when they didn’t make it easy.
“Y’are?” Lisa gave him an up and down calculating look. “I think yer fulla shit—ain’tcha bit young to be a lawyer?”
“Exercise and clean living,” Bill said with a chuckle and a small smile. “Now, today I’m here to go over a few things with you about custody of your children.”
You will not be retaining custody of your children.
Bill knew this, he suspected this Lisa woman knew this, and although his job was to defend this client, he took his job seriously, and was in fact great at his job—certain realities of the situation were immutable. Lisa was an addict with a criminal record, and had proven she would lie, cheat, and—if circumstances were right—probably kill to ensure she kept getting her fix. He felt some sympathy for her, but after several years of handling similar cases, it was only a very small, distant feeling.
Lisa was, in Bill’s opinion, simply a slave to her compulsion.
She’d lied about her drug abuse, until realizing there was simply no way the police were going to release her back out into society. Then, she’d flipped her story and lied about her usual heroin intake, in an attempt to have their rehabilitation program increase the 10mg dosage of Methadone they were giving her to the maximum of 40mg. In other words, if she thought she could get away with passing for normal, she would try to do that. If Lisa thought exacerbating her own withdrawal symptoms would result in her getting more opioids, then she would obviously exaggerate or even fabricate them.
Her total lack of credibility was not going to make his work easy.
“Mah kids?” Lisa seemed baffled. “Well what the hell about ‘em?”
“Sole legal custody of your children will… likely be defaulting to your husband’s mother—it says here Lauren J. Moore.”
“Yeah well they been stayin’ with their gramma Laurie, but they ain’t her fuckin’ kids,” Lisa seemed to relax upon recognizing a familiar name. “They’re still my kids, and ain’t no law in the world can ever take that away from me.”
“You’re… absolutely correct Ma’am, they will always be your children,” Bill fought not to come off as patronizing. “Custody-wise, however, they will not be under your purview.”
“An’ what in the hell’s that even s’pposed to mean?” Lisa guffawed. “Y’all can’t ever keep me from seein’ my boys. Ain’t legal no way, no how, an’ not a court in all of the united states of America is gonna see otherwise! I’m their momma.”
“Alright, so—let’s start at the beginning,” Bill steeled himself for what was going to be a long and arduous session. “There are seven basic ways a parent can lose custody of a child. One—abuse or neglect.”
“Well I ain’t never hurt nor neglected ‘em,” Lisa asserted with confidence. “I ain’t neven absent, by Kentucky law absentee parentin’s gotta be four months, and I was only off over in Shelbyville like, two months. Two months, tops.”
It’s a little chilling that she knows that, Bill reflected. Almost calculating. But, I suppose her social circle might include some other tweaker would-be mother who may have disseminated her own court experiences. Which usually winds up hurting, rather than helping.
“Two—irresponsible use of drugs or alcohol,” Bill spread out the papers from his folder to indicate why this would be a problem for her.
“Well shit,” The woman scoffed, folding her arms in front of her. “Yer mah lawyer, s’on you to help make sure none o’ them total baloney charges stick. I’m innocent, I ain’t never done no drugs I weren’t a s’pposed to. I take a buncha advils, ‘cause I got chronic pain, and they’re tryna say that cause o’ that it’s like I was testin’ positive for all sortsa illegal stuff. But I ain’t into all that. I been done told them. Again and again.”
“We can fight those charges,” Bill gave her a sober nod. “That’s a battle we can fight, if you choose to. If that’s what you want to do, I’m here to help you do that. But, I will tell you—it will not be an easy fight, and because of your previous drug charges in Shelbyville, that’s enough for a court order for involuntary termination of parental rights. Your previous charges—that is not a battle we can fight. Do you understand? If you decide you want to appeal a custody order—it will not be easy. It will be very difficult.”
“Which was—you know they was all bullshit too, same as this!” Lisa was growing more and more agitated. “This, this is all a buncha bullshit!”
“Okay, okay,” Bill held up a hand. “Let me continue. Where was I? Three—child abduction. Nothing to worry about there, I should hope. Right? Four—disobeying a court order. That one will be a problem, because you had right… yes, right here a court ordered custody evaluation from Shelby County that you were… it says here that you did not appear for. Is that correct?”
“An’ how in the hell was I s’pposed ta even get to it?! It was onna Wednesday, an’ my girl Lizzie weren’t able ta give me a ride out ta there on Wednesday, on account of ‘cause o’ her job hours. Which I ain’t in control of, it’s her job hours, at her job. I’ma not the boss o’ her. I called in and tried to explain that to them at the time when I got that stupid fuckin’ notice, but they was just givin’ me all this, this same bullshit runaround and were’nt even alistenin’ to what I was tellin’ them.”
“Okay, that’s—that’s something,” Bill said, restraining a grimace. “But, failure to appear for your evaluation, that works against you on this, and makes it a difficult battle. You can see how that’d work against you, right?”
“From where I’m standin’ everything and everyone seems set to work against me, and that’s just not right,” Lisa appeared incredulous to her circumstances. “I’m a good momma, I’m a great momma, and I ain’t doin’ drugs or been doin’ drugs. Ever. I was over’n Shelbyville tryin’ get to where I got money comin’ in again, and that’s it! That whole mess of malarkey? They were all dead set on stickin’ me with charges for was bullshit in the first place! An’ I think if we can go back to there and get that all figgered out, this whole new mess just sorts itself out, right? By Kentucky law. I mean that nonsense before was bad enough, and now they tryna take my kids away, too?!”
“Let’s just… let’s move on to five, six, and seven—interference, perjury, and risk,” Bill said with a sigh. “We’re good on those, probably, but they could still be tricky depending on how they decide to interpret how things have gone down. Now, if you decide that what you want to do is fight for custody of your children, we will have to work on the right side of that interpretation, do you understand?”
“S’all that stupid little bitch’s fault, you unnerstand me?” Lisa snarled. “Tabitha! I saw her! I saw her lookin’ down her pretty li’l fuckin’ nose at me. Lookin’ for some bullshit excuse to go and be a little fuckin’ snitch about. Huh? How ‘bout that, huh? She goes and fuckin’, and fuckin’—she just snatches my purse away an’ an’ an’ fuckin’ runs off with it! She coulda planted anything in there and now I’m s’pposed to take the rap for it? NO! No, not no way, no how!”
Bill frowned and leaned back in his chair—away from her implausibly foul breath.
He was still considering it. Possession of the heroin ‘discovered’ in Lisa Moore’s purse was suspect, if only because of how it had been discovered, and in other circumstances that would have been the key detail he built his case around. Maybe for a less belligerent client, he would put in extra effort.
Maybe not. Shelbyville PD had matched up the samples and confirmed that the opiates were from the same source she’d been caught before with there in Shelbyville. This Tabitha girl who’d discovered the heroin was a young teen on home rest from school, recovering from some kind of medical procedure. The mother there was an apparent shut-in, and the dad was an ordinary bloke with no criminal record—none of their drug test results had come back as even ambiguous; they were all completely clean.
The local police here treated Lisa more like a poorly trained animal than another human being, which was unusual; after asking around he discovered she’d urinated inside one of their squad cars. Bill Kennedy was an attorney, not a goddamn miracle worker—he could and probably would bring up that the evidence for the new possession charges was questionable, and go through the motions of trying to wiggle her out from that.
But, I think in this case it really would just be me going through the motions—there’s simply no conceivable way anyone will meet Lisa and then allow her to retain custody of her children.
* * *
“Mom got arrested,” Aiden said.
“We know, doofus,” Nicholas rolled his eyes.
Legends of the Hidden Temple was playing on Nickelodeon, but the volume was turned way down while grandma Laurie had her nap, the contestant teams were on the lackluster steps of knowledge part, and it was a rerun anyways. All four cousins were bored and listless, the two older boys draping themselves across the couch while the younger pair was forced to make do on the floor amid scattered toys. Segments of the already-familiar episode were broken up only by the same old commercials they’d seen dozens of times before already, rendering the television into meaningless noise that none of them were paying much attention to.
“I know you know—it’s just weird,” Aiden insisted. “Now both dad and mom are under arrested. That’s pretty weird.”
“Not really that weird,” Nicholas shrugged. “Remember? Dad said he’s got arrested before.”
“Yeah,” Joshua said. “It’s not even a big deal.”
“It is so a big deal!”
“Is not.”
“But, arrested means you’re in trouble.”
“Arrested doesn’t mean guilty though, it’s not actually a big deal.”
“I mean they probably are guilty, though.”
“Are not!”
“Yeah—whose side are you on?!”
“No but like, that’s not the point,” Aiden said. “Both of our parents are under arrested—so, what do we do if grandma gets arrested, next?”
“That doesn’t even make any sense. They’re not under arrested, and they’re not over arrested. They’re just arrested like the normal amount.”
“If gramma gets arrested, we’d probably have to go stay with Aunt Shannon and Uncle Alan.”
“Getting arrested at all isn’t normal, though.”
“It is so. It’s just like time-out but for grown-ups.”
“Yeah, and what would grandma get arrested for? Sewing too fast on the sewing machine? You’re retarded.”
“Yeah, she didn’t even do anything.”
“Well, mom didn’t do anything either!”
“What if gramma like, sewed something illegal?”
“Like what?!”
“I dunno, illegal stuff.”
“You’re all like a buncha li’l kids,” Samuel sneered. “Dad’s in jail for stealing computers, and mom’s in jail for drugs. Being in jail isn’t even a big deal though, that’s just where they put you after you get arrested. Everyone goes to jail sometimes, it’s normal—like in Monopoly, when you just happen to land on the wrong space.”
“What?” Joshua appeared baffled. “I thought only criminals got arrested. Like—bad guys.”
“That’s prison, not jail. They’re completely different things, stupid.” Samuel pointed out. “How do you think they decide who’s a bad guy and who’s actually innocent? You have to have your trial with the grand jury and the judge—the guy with the wig and everything. If you win, you get free from jail and get to go home, if you lose you get sent to prison forever. That’s where the bad guys and criminals go.”
“So,” Aiden worked it out in his head. “Mom and dad aren’t guilty, or criminals. Not yet, not ‘til their trial.”
“Not yet,” Samuel shrugged. “They prolly are guilty, though.”
“Are not!”
“Whose side are you on?!”
“No wait, but then how does Batman fight criminals? If they’re not really criminals ‘til the judge says they’re guilty.”
“He catches them in the act, he doesn’t even need a trial. He’s Batman.”
“Wait—isn’t that illegal? They’re s’posed to still get a trial.”
“Batman’s a cartoon, doofus, he’s not even real.”
“Then dad is a criminal—‘cause, he got caught stealing computers.”
“Nuh-uh, that’s not even like a real crime. Stealing computers is only even illegal if you get caught. Like mom said—it’s a ‘victimless crime.’”
“He did get caught, though, numb-nuts. Duh.”
“Yeah, but you know what I mean. It’s not like a for real crime.”
“Okay—but, then mom’s not a criminal.”
“She got caught with drugs. Drugs are way worse than computers.”
“Not if the computers are more expensive, nimrod. Duh. How long you get locked up for is based on how much money the stuff was worth. Computers are worth like hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
“They are not. There’s like fifty computers in computer lab at school—that would add up to like a bajillion dollars.”
“Well,” Nicholas crossed his arms. “Some computers are worth like hundreds of thousands of dollars. Just not like dinky school ones. The ones at school are lame.”
“Dad’s court date isn’t ‘til January, and mom doesn’t even have a date yet,” Samuel revealed. “So, they’re not even on trial, yet. I asked. They’re just waiting in jail for like forever.”
“That’s not even ‘til next year!”
“January?! He got arrested like, years ago, though! How’s that even possible?!”
“It wasn’t even years yet, turd brain. It was just back right before Halloween.”
“Still, that’s forever. Why do they take so long?!”
“Well,” Samuel paused for a moment. “Grownup stuff is all slow and stupid. Like, paperwork and mail and stuff. Plus there’s like a long line, ‘cause there’s only one judge and grand jury, but tons of new people get arrested every day. For like, speeding tickets, shoplifting, telemarketing. Stuff like that.”
“That’s dumb.”
“Yeah, that’s dumb.”
“You’re dumb.”
“But think about who caught mom with drugs,” Samuel said. “It was Tabitha.”
His three younger brothers fell into silence for a long moment after that, exchanging looks with each other.
“Momma’s innocent!” Aiden said. “Tabitha was just all out to get her, ‘cause she hates mom.”
“That’s stupid,” Joshua scoffed. “Retard.”
“Is not,” Aiden argued. “You saw what happened—she got all hissy and whiny with mom at Thanksgiving, and then she took you and ran off. Crying like a big crybaby.”
“Shut up, Aiden,” Joshua bristled. “Shut up. You don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
“You shut up,” Aiden huffed. “Tabby just doesn’t like mom, so she made up the whole drugs thing, just to try and get her in trouble. And, Tabitha’s just a pisspants crybaby who just runs off and cries when she doesn’t get her way—mom even said so. You just didn’t hear, ‘cause you were in the back room hiding like a girl with Tabby.”
“Shut up, Aiden,” Joshua warned again. “Tabitha wasn’t crying because she lost an argument or ‘cause she didn’t get her way, moron. That’s dumb. She was crying ’cause of us.”
“That doesn’t even make sense,” Aiden shot back, looking to his brothers for support. “Guys—tell him.”
“I… dunno,” Nicholas admitted, shifting his feet and looking uncomfortable.
“I think,” Samuel said after a moment of deliberation, “that Josh is right. So what if she cried, she’s a girl! Girls are supposed to cry in the first place. Like Josh said, Tabby only even cried and got mad at our mom in the first place because of us. Think about it. What did Tabitha yell at mom that night? She was real mad about mom not even ever being around anymore.”
“She said you walked out on them,” Joshua remembered. “That’s what Tabby said.”
“Mom did kinda walk out on us,” Nicholas agreed. “She was gone like ever since dad got arrested.”
“But, mom came back,” Aiden argued. “She’s back, so—so that doesn’t even count anymore.”
“Yeah, but, so what if she even did come back?” Samuel shrugged. “Mom doesn’t even care about us anyways. That’s why Tabby got all mad, duh.”
“That’s why she was crying, like I said!” Joshua insisted. “That’s why she was so upset. She wasn’t scared.”
“Mom does so care about us—duh, she said so, and she’s our mom,” Aiden insisted. “She’s our mom.”
“Not really?” Nicholas shook his head. “Grandma’s the one who takes care of us.”
“Grandma and Tabby, yeah,” Samuel said. “All mom ever does is boss us around and yell at us all the time.”
“Nuhuh,” Aiden crossed his arms. “That’s not even true. Not all the time.”
“Still counts. It’s most of the time. Plus, she hits us whenever she gets mad, so—”
“Nuhuh. Besides, Tabitha hit you way worse than mom ever hit any of us,” Aiden continued. “She left you that super gnarly bruise back during summer. Remember? So, it doesn’t even make sense if she gets mad at mom for hitting us not even anywhere near that hard.”
“It’s different,” Sam said.
“Is not!”
“It’s different!”
“It’s the same,” Aiden scowled. “You’re all just soooo in love with Tabitha.”
“We are not,” Joshua refuted. “Stupid.”
“Are so,” Aiden snorted. “Are so are so are sooo!”
“Aiden—like you can even talk, you’re just being a sissy momma’s boy,” Nicholas scowled. “Every time that—”
“Joshua and Tabitha, sittin’ in a tree—K-I-S-S-I-N-G—”
“Momma’s boy.”
“Nick, Aiden, shut up,” Samuel stood up. “You don’t talk bad about Tabitha. We don’t talk bad about her—you’re fixin’ to make all of us mad. When I got hit by Tabitha, it was completely different, ‘cause I dared her to. I was makin’ fun of girls, and I slapped her butt and said she wouldn’t do anything about it. Even when she hit me, she said she was wrong and apologized anyways when we saw her next. You think mom would ever friggin’ do that? Besides, you know Tabitha’s not like lame and prissy like normal girls we make fun of. We’ve played on the playground with Tabitha like, how many times? She’s different.”
“Mom doesn’t have to apologize if she hits us,” Aiden argued. “She’s our mom.”
“Tabitha did all that crazy exercise stuff and completely changed from the way she looked before just for high school,” Joshua recounted. “She can beat all of us at tag super easy. She’s faster and better at us in back flips, and jump kicks, and like—everything.”
“Yeah, only ‘cause she’s way older than us,” Aiden scoffed. “She’s already a teenager, o’course she’s always gonna win. That’s already halfway to being a grown up. But, when she was actually up against other people her own age—she got her wrist broken.”
“Yeah, only ‘cause they pushed her from behind without even saying anything,” Joshua’s voice rose. “That’s totally cheating! Besides, all that stuff that went on is completely different. Some other girl went actually crazy and tried to kill her.”
“Tabitha took us trick-or-treating, too,” Nicholas pointed out. “We got like, the biggest most humongous pile of candy ever from that. When she coulda just gone with her friends without us, and then it would’ve been like last year, where grandma only takes us down like three or four streets and then gets all tired and wants to say that was good enough.”
“Mom used to take us trick-or-treating too,” Aiden said. “Not a big deal.”
“Yeah, used to,” Joshua said. “Meaning she hasn’t in forever.”
“Well, then,” Aiden threw up his hands. “It’s the exact same with Tabitha, then. She used to take us to the playground all the time, but now she hasn’t played with us in forever.”
“It’s not even the same at all,” Samuel shook his head. “Mom’s supposed to be with us—she’s our mom. Tabitha’s just our cousin. She doesn’t have to spend time with us, you remember Grandma kept saying she didn’t have to look after us all the time. But, she did. She came and played with us, and the only time she didn’t, it was ‘cause she was in the hospital, you numbnuts. From when she almost died.”
* * *
“I could just be overreacting,” Elena frowned, looking down at her crossed arms. “I don’t know anything for sure.”
“Better safe than sorry,” Mrs. Seelbaugh said, keeping her eyes on the road.
Elena’s mother was tense; she was sitting stiff in the driver’s seat and both hands were rigid on the wheel rather than her more typical relaxed posture Elena was familiar with. The short stretch of state road between Springton and Fairfield offered little in the way of distraction—the sights to take in were bare pavement, an ugly median of dead grass and then wire fence and the passing stands of trees in the distance, the nearest trunks occasionally adorned with POSTED signs to indicate private property.
“I just,” Elena bit out.
“I know, hon,” Mrs. Seelbaugh said.
“I just—it makes me feel dirty, like I’m,” Elena scowled, turning her gaze back out the window again. “I don’t know for sure, and it’s from stuff she kinda told me in confidence, so—so, it feels shitty going around behind her back like this.”
“I know, hon,” Mrs. Seelbaugh repeated. “Still the right thing to do, and I’m proud of you. Better safe than sorry.”
“Yeah,” Elena agreed, but that didn’t change the bitter taste this had in her mouth.
The production plant was situated outside Fairfield proper, and after making a turnoff at a desolate intersection sporting a single seedy gas station and then traveling down a long stretch of semi-rural back road, the Seelbaugh’s silvery minivan arrived at its destination. The sign in front spelled out LINE SAFETY, and featured a silhouette of a lineworker working on a utility pole. The parking lot was mostly filled with employee vehicles, and though each of the actual buildings were large, they were simple boxy cinderblock affairs with aluminum roofs.
I pictured something more IMPRESSIVE when mom said it was a ‘production plant.’ Lots of pipes and silos and electrical transformers and stuff, like you see in movies and on TV. I guess what they do here is some other, more boring kind of production?
Mrs. Seelbaugh pulled into an empty space, turned off the ignition, and then the mother and daughter pair unbuckled their seatbelts and popped open their doors in strained silence. The entire situation had Elena feeling more and more uncomfortable, and she lagged somewhat behind her mother as they made their way towards the doors of the nearest building.
“Hey,” Mrs. Seelbaugh put on a weak smile. “It’s gonna be okay, alright? Just tell her what you told me, and we’ll get everything figured out, alright?”
“Yeah,” Elena frowned again.
“If you’re wrong, then that would be for the best, but if you’re right—if you’re right, it’s better that we find out about it and do what we can. Better safe than sorry.”
“Okay.”
The glass double doors opened into what looked to be an employee break area, featuring a pair of long couches facing a television, a spread of a dozen round tables with simple chairs, and a large kitchen that took up the far wall. Two sinks, four microwaves, a refrigerator with a few photos, and at least six printed out sheets of what might have been rules, warnings, or notices tacked to its door with magnets. A small office with a pair of computer desks and an enormous photocopier and printer took up the corner opposite the kitchen area, and a man with graying hair rose to greet them.
“Hey there, how can I help you?”
“Michelle and Elena Seelbaugh, we’re here to see Sandra Macintire?” Mrs. Seelbaugh explained. “I was told I could find her here at plant two.”
“Sandy? Right, she’s out on the production floor—feel free to take a seat anywhere, she should be out in just a minute.”
“Thank you,” Mrs. Seelbaugh glanced around and finally chose one of the tables. “Elena honey, here.”
When the man ducked out through the door that led into the production floor, Elena could only say that their soundproofing was damned impressive, because the moment that door opened, a cacophony of hammering, heavy machine thumping, mechanical clacks sounding off in staccato, the hiss of hydraulics, and the ominous steady roar of industrial fans the Seelbaughs could hear was overwhelming.
“Jesus,” Elena remarked.
“I know!” Her mother looked just as surprised. “That man—was he wearing earplugs? They must have to wear earplugs to work back there. It can’t be safe otherwise.”
“Probably?” Elena shrugged, having not paid the man much attention.
They settled in at a table to wait, the seats the same stiff metal-and-cushion stackable kind of chair their church used for their big community room. When the back door was closed, the unearthly din from the production floor couldn’t be heard at all, but whatever the mechanical thumping had been, they could still feel its vibrations through the tile floor of the break area. Elena tried to stop hunching her shoulders and forced herself to stop crossing her arms—she needed to compose herself and make sure she was able to properly explain what was going on.
Both Seelbaughs looked up as the door opened again and the noise engulfed them again for a moment, Sandra Macintire quickly turning to close the plant door behind her.
“Sorry about that. It’s so loud!” Mrs. Macintire gave them an apologetic smile as she strode towards them that didn’t quite mask her look of concern. “It’s nice to see you, Miss Elena—is everything okay? You must be Mrs. Seelbaugh.”
“Just Michelle’s fine,” Mrs. Seelbaugh rose from the chair to shake the woman’s hand. “We just wanted to talk to you about something potentially concerning we heard from Tabitha.”
“From Tabitha?” Mrs. Macintire’s eyebrows rose. “What’s happened?”
“Is it okay if we take some of your time?” Mrs. Seelbaugh asked. “This could take a bit, we don’t want you to get in trouble with your bosses here, or anything. We could wait for your lunch break, or something?”
“Oh no, I’m the biggest boss here today, just about,” Mrs. Macintire waved off her concerns. “I work over in the office building, I’m just helping out here at production today. Not doin’ anything in there that can’t wait.”
“Do you use earplugs in there? It’s so noisy!”
“No, but I probably should,” Mrs. Macintire rolled her eyes. “They say it’s perfectly fine so long as you’re not right next to the punch press, but I’ve been standing at one of the rivet machines all day, and they’re loud as all heck, too! You hear that big heavy thump? That’s their big machine punching our die cuts into the big leather sheets. You can feel it all the way out in the parking lot, sometimes.”
“Yeah, we can feel it from here.”
“I’d give you guys a big tour, but honestly we’re only partway-staffed back there, and I wouldn’t be able to tell you what half of the stations are actually for,” Mrs. Macintire winced. “So—what’s going on? Something about Tabitha?”
“Elena, go ahead,” Mrs. Seelbaugh prompted.
“Um,” Elena swallowed, cleared her throat, and then took a deep breath. “Last weekend, when we were all at the mall, something Tabitha said jumped out to me as, uh, as potentially concerning.”
Mrs. Macintire visibly tensed.
“She was… well, it was a random part of a longer conversation about a bunch of other things, but she happened to mention a friend of hers she named ‘Julie.’ Part of the way she described things led me to think that Julie may or may not be real, like, Tabitha might have been trying to tell me… that whether or not ‘Julie’ really exists is up to my interpretation. And. She said that this ‘Julie’ girl, at thirteen years old, was being molested by her father.”
The Macintire woman’s eyes narrowed and she stared down at the table for a long moment. The set of her jaw suggested she was gritting her teeth, and eventually she looked back up at Elena with wet eyes.
“I um, I wasn’t sure if I should say anything, because it was something that Tabitha sort of was telling Alicia and I in confidence, and I hate feeling like I’m betraying that confidence, just—you know. I also felt like. Like I couldn’t risk not saying anything about it, just in case ‘Julie’ was Tabitha’s code for Tabitha herself being… yeah.”
“Fucking CHRIST,” Mrs. Macintire sagged, hiding her face in her hands.
“Better safe than sorry, honey,” Mrs. Seelbaugh reached over to grab Elena’s hand. “I thought, we thought, that with the girl’s… present circumstances, you would be the one to go to about something like this.”
“Yes. I—” Mrs. Macintire wiped her eyes and tried to straighten herself. “Thank you. You’re right. Is it alright if I ask you some more questions? Elena?”
“Of course, anything,” Elena felt a relief she didn’t even know how to articulate.
“Okay, you’re sure it was ‘Julie,’ and not ‘Ashlee?’” Mrs. Macintire asked. “Because, she’d had this other friend Ashlee who—”
“Ashlee Taylor, I’d heard about that, and no,” Elena shook her head. “She didn’t name Ashlee, and I feel that she would have if she meant her, since I think she knew both Alicia and I were kind of aware of the whole Taylor family situation. People were saying that the Taylor girls were all being abused. But also, and this is part of what was setting off alarm bells for me—the ‘Julie’ she used wasn’t consistent. Sometimes she said Julie, sometimes it was Julia. That’s a big part of what made me think it was a um, a cover or a fabrication. I just. I don’t know. All of it just all of the sudden made me very, very uncomfortable. Because it felt like pieces weren’t adding up.”
“Okay. Okay,” Mrs. Macintire rubbed her temples. “So, doesn’t seem to be Ashlee. Maybe.”
“We went through the yearbook we have from Laurel Middle," Mrs. Seelbaugh explained. “Since Elena and Tabitha, they both went to Laurel. We found no Julie. There were two Julias, but in both cases, either the grade doesn’t match up, or the age wouldn’t match up—not if Tabitha had said this girl was getting molested at thirteen.”
“And, because of the grades, I don’t know that Tabitha would have known either of the Julias we found,” Elena added. “Plus back in middle school, Tabitha was—she was very unpopular. Enough that she stood out for that, a little.”
“Very unpopular?”
“She was, um, she was very overweight and never talked to other kids at all,” Elena grimaced. “So, she was… made fun of a lot, excluded sort of.”
“She was a social pariah,” Mrs. Seelbaugh summed up.
“Yeah, she’s… she’s way different now,” Elena said. “She’s changed completely, so I know that it sounds hard to believe. But, back in middle school she was very different.”
“Sudden, drastic changes to her appearance. And behavior. Lots of domestic issues with her family. It’s. I think it’s certainly possible—but dear Lord fucking god damnit I hope it’s not. Fuck. Fuck,” Mrs. Macintire hid a snarl in her hands again. “Sorry. Okay. Okay—we’ll, we’ll get this all sorted out, no matter what it takes. Did she give you any other clues or hints, anything? Anything else she said, that might have stood out?”
“Nothing… nothing that makes sense,” Elena said with some difficulty. “It’s… hard to explain. A lot of that talk was personal stuff to Tabitha that I’m not comfortable sharing. Stuff that didn’t have to do with… that kind of stuff. With the Julie thing, I wanted to demand immediate clarification because I was freaking out but, also—also it’s a little weird. The circumstances, the conversation it was part of.
“Parts of everything she was saying were… phrased as if she thought that no matter what, I wasn’t going to believe her or take her seriously. I, I don’t want to, to just argue with her or poke and prod into her painful traumatic issues, or—or put her on the defensive, or make her feel like she needs to clam up and not say anything. I didn’t know what to do, don’t know what to do, so… so I went to my mom about it.”
“You did the right thing, ‘Lena honey,” Mrs. Seelbaugh assured her. “If Julie’s real, we need to find her and get her safe, and if she’s not real, then we need to take care of Tabitha’s situation. Maybe the whole thing is made up! I don’t want to judge, sometimes girls can just—you know, make things up. For whatever reason. But, we can’t afford to take that chance. We really can’t.”
“Yeah,” Elena let out a slow breath. “Better safe than sorry.”
“I’ll be on the lookout for any signs,” Mrs. Macintire continued to fidget. “I’ve already been trying to keep an eye on her for trauma, just—well, she’s just a very strange girl. I love her to pieces, but she can be very difficult to understand. I’ll see about tracking down Julie or Julia with Mrs. Williams, she knows about doing that kind of thing. Elena hon, do you think you’d be able to talk directly with Tabitha about any of it? Get her to open up a little more?”
“I… maybe,” Elena hedged. “Maybe. Alicia might be better for that. I don’t want to push things the wrong way and have Tabitha start to close up about everything. I kinda worried that I was already doing that before she even brought up the whole Julie thing, so. I don’t know.”
“Okay,” Mrs. Macintire nodded. “Thank you for bringing this to my attention. From here on you just—you just keep on being a good friend to her, keep on being supportive however you can, for now. Keep your eyes open, pay attention. You’re already doing great. I’ll see about… inobtrusively investigating whatever we can. If that ratshit crazy father of hers has ever laid a finger on her—if anyone has… I promise you, they will fucking pay.”
* * *
“Happy birthday!” Hannah cried out.
“Good morning Hannah,” Tabitha replied.
Today was the big day, and Tabitha felt pretty confident. The tickle of anxiety at having to deal with a lot of people in a public situation where everyone was focused on her was there, but it was manageable. Presenting herself to everyone with any kind of personable face wasn’t something she was capable of back during the start of high school, and after plenty of time ruminating over it, Tabitha decided to say that was what had gone wrong with her debut. Being thin and pretty really wasn’t all it took—appearance was a necessary facade, but behind that facade a teenage girl needed social musculature to back it all up, built atop a skeleton of core confidence.
“Happy birthday,” Hannah repeated.
“Yes, thank you,” Tabitha chuckled. “I’m fourteen now. Time to start checking for gray hairs!”
“Hah, yeah right,” Hannah shook her head as she padded across the living room and jumped onto the couch. “When do you get gray hairs? Like, at how old? Fifty? Seventy?”
“It’s a little different for everybody,” Tabitha explained. “But! I do remember there’s a mnemonic about gray hair. They say that fifty percent of the population has fifty percent gray hair at fifty years old.”
The Macintire’s remote control was jammed partway between two of the couch cushions, and Tabitha retrieved it and pointed it towards the entertainment center to turn on the large tube TV. There was no smartphone or bracelet PC that allowed her to glance at the weather, so the local Channel Seven news was her best bet. She was hoping for mid to high fifties today, because if temperatures were into the low forties, she would have to rethink her planned outfit.
“Fifty percent for fifty white hair…?” Hannah giggled. “What. Is that real?”
“Maybe?” Tabitha shrugged. “It means that around half of people have about half of their hair gray when they reach fifty years old.”
“Hmmm,” Hannah pursed her lips into a frown as she fell deep into thought. “Some of the old ladies at church have gray hair. That’s it, though. No one else really even has gray hair. Actually, some of them have white hair. Like the whole way white.”
“They do!” Tabitha nodded. “I remember. As for myself, I’ll start seeing gray in my hair when I’m fifty-two or fifty-three. The gray will creep the rest of the way in almost before I even notice it, and I’ll be all gray by fifty-seven! It’ll all go gray really quick, almost all at once!”
“Yeah, right,” Hannah shook her head in disbelief. “How do you know? From your grandma?”
“Hmmm,” Tabitha hummed out without answering. “Why don’t you come sit at the table, so that we can get you your cereal?”
“Can we have french toast?” Hannah asked.
“Of course,” Tabitha said. “I can make you french toast.”
“Wait, I forgot,” Hannah smacked her own forehead. “It’s your birthday. You don’t have to make food on your birthday!”
“How about… we make breakfast together,” Tabitha proposed. “Do you remember all the ingredients we use for our french toast?”
“No, no—you sit at the table, I’ll make french toast,” Hannah insisted, hurrying across the living room towards the hallway for her room. “Sit, sit!”
“Hannah, if you’re looking for your little cooking apron, I think it’s already dirty,” Tabitha reminded her as she went the other way, stepping into the kitchen. She turned on the stove and withdrew the Macintire’s griddle plate from their lower cabinet. “You remember? We made the big lasagna together?”
“Oh yeah,” Hannah paused. “Can I still wear it?”
“Let’s have you wear your dad’s apron,” Tabitha said. “He won’t need it for grilling for another few months, yet.”
“Okay,” Hannah said. “Do I have to go ask for permission?”
“I think this time it’s okay, and I can allow it,” Tabitha beamed at Hannah. “But, I’m very proud of you for thinking to ask that. Good job, Hannah banana.”
“Yeah.”
The apron was retrieved from its normal spot on the coat hooks near the door to the garage, and then draped over Hannah’s diminutive figure like a sail cloth. The thing was almost wide enough to wrap around the little girl twice, and it hung down across the floor, so a moment was necessary to fold the excess and then tie it all secure with the apron strings looping around Hannah’s front in a large bow. The usual kitchen stool was put in place in front of the kitchen sink so that Hannah could wash her hands before cooking, and though there had never been any mishaps, Tabitha hovered nearby to ensure that Hannah didn’t have a fall.
“Okay,” Hannah dramatically dried her hands on the hand towel and then fwapped it back to where it hung from a kitchen drawer handle. “Now, you go sit. I’ll cook!”
“Hmm. Can I help a little?”
“Tabitha… it’s your birthday.”
“Are you okay cracking the eggs by yourself?”
“Uhhhh—” Hannah wavered. “You can help with those.”
“Okay, I’ll do that.”
“But, I get to do everything else!”
There had been some difficulties with teaching Hannah to crack open eggs, because she didn’t want any uncooked icky inside goop touching her little fingers. Her first try had been almost a full minute of Hannah gently tapping an egg against the lip of a bowl with a nervous smile, as if she needed to slowly chip away all the eggshell bits. When instructed that she needed to use much more force for her second try—Hannah directly smashed the egg against the side of a mixing bowl, yelped at the splattered mess, and jumped back in fright, flinging runny egg all across the kitchen tile.
With a small smile, Tabitha retrieved the other ingredients they needed from the cabinet. Each of them had created important morning lessons in the past week. Nothing was more useful for teaching a seven year old that more of a good thing isn’t always better, than vanilla extract. Likewise, cinnamon taught Hannah its bitter truths about being careful and restrained when measuring out for a dish, and now the little girl adhered to Tabitha’s whispered recipes with deadly seriousness.
“Four eggs?” Tabitha asked.
“What? No way! Just one,” Hannah pursed her lips into a pout. “We don’t eat that much.”
There was still a childish sort of glee in Hannah when they didn’t make enough breakfast for the whole family, as though there was some sort of one-ups-manship to be proud of in being able to enjoy something mom and dad didn’t get and might be jealous of. It wasn’t a behavior Tabitha particularly wanted to encourage in the girl, and it made her incredibly exasperated to see Mr. and Mrs. Macintire always obviously playing along with it, pretending to be huffy and upset.
“But…” Tabitha tried on the new pleading look she was learning from the grandmaster at puppy dog eyes, Hannah herself. “But, it’s my birthday. I want all of us to share a big breakfast, like a family. For my birthday.”
“Ugh, fiiine,” Hannah complained. “Only ‘cause it’s your birthday!”
“Which means…”
“Math,” Hannah groaned in disgust, as if using four of each measurement instead of one was an enormous hassle that would require pencil and paper to puzzle out.
For all that the little girl was incredibly receptive to reading and learning words, Hannah had little patience for the dreaded math, and Tabitha’s attempts at making the subject interesting thus far had run headlong into a wall of total disinterest. That was okay—Tabitha had expected there to be challenges in playing her role as a live-in nanny, and… here they were. Because of how spoiled she was, Hannah just didn’t even have a strong grasp of the importance of money or costs. Counting out the coins from her piggy bank didn’t hold the girl’s attention. Numbers were mostly meaningless towards Hannah’s mental map of the world, where she held power of persuasion over her parents—and parents were the arbiters of reality, as far as Hannah was concerned.
I don’t know if I should be envious or appalled.
French toast wasn’t quite the ordeal pancakes had been, and since they’d done this together twice before already, Hannah didn’t need too many small reminders. Tabitha was able to relax and observe, splitting her attention between the stove area and the TV until a weather segment finally played. The high today would be forty-five degrees fahrenheit, with a low of twenty-nine degrees. It wasn’t what she’d hoped for, but neither was it as bad as it could have been. She could still wear her modified white wedding blouse—what Hannah called the angel outfit, if she had her hoodie overtop in the brief stints outdoors today. It would be very brisk, but not too bad.
“Is this good?” Hannah offered Tabitha the bowl to inspect.
“It looks great, good job mixing Hannah,” Tabitha said. “Do you want help with the—”
“No, I got it!” Hannah insisted. “You can sit and watch TV.”
“I want to help.”
“It’s your birthday.”
“Then—I want to watch. Seeing it come together, smelling it cook will help whet my appetite.”
“It’s breakfast,” Hannah reasoned. “Everyone has a wet appetite for breakfast, ‘cause it’s been hours since they ate.”
“Hmm,” Tabitha broke into another smile.
“Hmmm,” Hannah retorted.
“Hmmmm!” Tabitha rubbed Hannah’s back as the girl dipped the first slice of bread through the mixture in the bowl.
Tabitha was in love with the Macintire family.
Though she was sure part of it was just this idyllic honeymoon phase, as Hannah hadn’t even thrown a major tantrum during Tabitha’s time here with them, the fact remained; Tabitha was deeply in love with the Macintire family. It was a kind of love she’d ever imagined experiencing, having family without all of the baggage attached to that concept, that inescapable love hate relationship she couldn’t escape before. Tabitha’s role as an outsider with the Moores because of her incredible changes in body, mind, and attitude was perfectly suited to her identity as a nanny here. The Macintires had never seen her as Tubby Tabby. Tabitha wasn’t Tubby Tabby anymore, she was someone completely new that she’d never been before, and here with this new family she felt a sense of belonging that was absolutely intoxicating.
“You know what I like?” Tabitha remarked.
“What?”
“I like that we make such a good team,” Tabitha said. “I can help you with what little I can—”
“Yeah, right. You do everything—”
“—And then for what I can’t do—”
“—Practically everything. Laundry, dishes, cooking—”
“—I can ask for your help, without feeling embarrassed or ashamed or anything.”
“Your hand’s in a cast!” Hannah shrugged. “What are you supposed to do?”
“I know. But still,” Tabitha sighed. “Cooking, and dishes? With one hand, it’s such an enormous struggle, but with three hands? Especially for dishes! It’s all a piece of cake, and all because we’re such a good team.”
“I don’t even hardly do anything.”
“You help me cook,” Tabitha rubbed Hannah’s back again. “You help me lift big heavy things and carry them. You tie my shoelaces for me! That’s a big deal. You help me brush out my hair and look pretty. Do you remember how long it took me to fold laundry by myself those first few times? I was almost about to cry, and since then you’ve helped me every single time. Even though I’m supposed to be the nanny here, and take care of things. It just—it means a lot to me.”
“Mom said you’re not even s’posed to do laundry,” Hannah giggled, tilting her head up so she could grin at Tabitha. “Or a bunch of other stuff, like cooking even.”
“I know,” Tabitha admitted with a wistful smile. “But, together you and I make these amazing big breakfasts, and we just keep proving her wrong!”
“I heard that,” Mrs. Macintire yelled over from the master bedroom—apparently the rest of the house was quiet enough for their voices to carry. “What do you think you’re teaching my daughter, huh?!”
“Mom—it’s her birthday!” Hannah called back in retort.
There was a moment of silence, and then Officer Macintire responded instead of Sandra.
“Happy birthday, Tabitha!”
“Thank you, sir!”
“Don’t call me sir, I work for a living!”
While Tabitha had grown very close with Mrs. Macintire and Hannah, she didn’t have much in the way of interaction with Officer Macintire and was happy to at least now have a few inside jokes she could lean on. As a father figure Tabitha found him strange, but with only her own dad for comparison she felt forced to accept that Darren Macintire must be the real normal, while her dad was this stubborn trailer park simpleton.
“Happy birthday, honey!” Mrs. Macintire yelled.
“Thank you,” Tabitha called back across the house. “Get dressed and come on out, we’re making french toast again!”
“Coffee?”
“Umm—” Tabitha crossed the kitchen and flicked on the coffee maker on the opposite counter. “Hannah baby, can you clean your hands and come help me with the coffee water?”
“Got it!”
“Sorry!” Tabitha yelled over. “I wasn’t thinking! Another five minutes?”
“It’s her birthday!” Hannah hollered in consternation. “Sheesh.”
“Happy birthday, Tabitha!” Officer Macintire yelled again.
“Sheesh!” Tabitha agreed.
“Sheesh!”
( 43, Talking to a boy. | RE: Trailer Trash | 45, Let's all go to the movies. )
Comments
Paul Wirtz
Bought the kindle and Audio versions. Also increased level to $5
Stuart Thwaites
Hey Forty, I discovered you less than a month ago when Audible decided to stick Re:TT in my suggested list that's usually filled with high fantasy, space opera and steamy romance aimed at women(sex scenes are better). So out of sheer bafflement as to why it was there, I bought Re:TT and finished it in 2 sittings. Now I'm partially sighted and reading is ,literally, migraine inducing. Yet here I am reading AND writing. Also about the go see if its in paperback so I can force my mum ,sister and nan to read one of the best books I've listened to and THE best book of the year.
